5.1. Gender Bias Flashcards
What are psychologists’ beliefs and values influenced by?
The social and historical context within which they live -> this may undermine their claims to discover facts about human behaviour that are objective, value-free and consistent across time and culture
What is universality?
Refers to the idea that psychological theories, concepts and research findings should be applicable to all people, regardless of their gender, culture or background
What is bias?
Leaning towards a personal view that doesn’t reflect reality- research + theory may not accurately represent the experience and behaviour of men and women.
What is alpha bias?
Theories that assume there are real and enduring diffs between men and women -> diffs exaggerated
What is beta bias?
Theories that ignore or minimise gender diffs
How is beta bias used?
Assuming people are all the same, therefore, it’s reasonable to apply these theories with both men and women
Alpha bias example
Evident in Freud’s research as he exaggerate the diffs between men and women -> women are inferior due to superego
Beta bias example
Fight vs flight as it suggests it’s the same in everyone but Taylor found that females produce a tend and befriend response at times of stress which is adaptive -> ensures survival of their offspring and networking of females which contradicts
What is androcentrism?
- From the start, psychology was always male dominated, most of the theories we study therefore represent a male word view
- May produce alpha or beta bias
- Also leads to female behaviour being misunderstood + even pathologised.
What is the problem with universality?
- It would be wrong to eradicate gender diffs as a way to resolve the gender bias issue -> that would be beta bias
- Solution lies in recognising diffs but not superiority of one gender over the other
What was the moral reasoning research?
- Kohlberg produced a theory on moral development -> suggesting that the moral decisions we make are based on an ethic of justice.
- His research entailed asking men to describe what behaviour was more appropriate in certain situations, then applied to all = beta bias
- When Kohlberg tested women in 1982, he found they were less morally developed than men = alpha bias -> the original bias meant that he now exaggerated men and women diffs
- Gilligan showed that women favoured a care orientation whereas men favoured a justice orientation -> shows difference but no bias
Discussion: feminist psychology
- Only way to cure androcentrism is to take a feminist perspective.
- Feminist psychology argues that diffs arise from biological explanations of behaviour. However, they believe these are socially determined stereotypes which make far greater diffs
- They are a branch of psychologists aimed to address the imbalance in theory and research in psychology
- Eagly acknowledged that women may be less effective leaders than men, but this knowledge should be used to develop suitable training programmes and therefore create a fixture with more women as leaders.
- This way, the balance can be restored through greater support.
Discussion: bias in research methods
- It may not be that gender differs, rather the methods used to test or observe them are biased, so males and females appear to be different
- Rosenthal found that male experiences are more pleasant, friendly and encouraging to female ppts than to male ppts.
- Results -> male ppts performed less well than female
Discussion: lab experiments
- Feminists argue that lab experiments disadvantage women because findings created in the controlled world tell us little about women outside of these settings
- Eagly and Johnson noted that studies in real settings found women and men were judged as more similar in styles of leadership than labs.
Discussion: reflexivity
Embrace own biases as an important aspect of the research process
