1. An exaggerated tendency to consider one's own social or national group as being superior to all others and to judge outsiders by the standards of one's group as if they provided a normative model.
2. The tendency to view other cultures in terms of the values or customs of one's own culture.
3. The practice of regarding traditional, nontechnological cultures as inferior to industrialized Western cultures.
4. In health care, a perspective that supports the worldview of the caretaker, rather than considering the patient's perspective of health and illness.