Gender Bias

Question 1

What is Gender Bias?

Answer 1

The different representation of men and women based on
stereotypes rather than real differences

Question 2

Alpha Bias

Answer 2

The assumption there are large
differences between men and
women

E.g : Some research will be
alpha-biased towards women,
suggesting that women are more
caring or nurturing

E.g : Some will be alpha biased
towards men, suggesting that men
are the stronger sex

Question 3

Beta Bias

Answer 3

Occurs when the differences between men
and women is ignored.

Beta bias ignores the lives of women and
assume that the insights or behaviour of men
will also apply to women or vice versa.

Question 4

Androcentric Bias

Answer 4

Male behaviour is “normal” and
female behaviour is “different”.

Often women’s behaviour is
(seen as ‘ill’) – for example, PMS is seen as a condition to be treated instead of a normal factor of women’s behaviour.

This suggests that males are the
power in society. This view is
challenged by feminist psychology.

Question 5

Androcentrism vs Feminism

Answer 5

Feminist psychologists argue that although there are biological differences between
the sexes, it is the stereotyping that has widened the bridge of differences between
men and women within psychological research.

Question 6

AO3 – Implications of Gender Research

Answer 6

P : Gender-biased research may create misleading assumptions
about female behaviour

E : It may create a scientific ‘justification’ to deny women
opportunities within the workplace or wider society. In any
domain in which men set the standard of normalcy, it
becomes normal for women to feel abnormal.

E : Thus, gender-biased research is not just a methodological
problem but has damaging consequences to the lives of real
women.

Question 7

AO3 - Sexism within the Research Process

Answer 7

A lack of women appointed at senior research level means that female concerns may not reflect in the research questions asked. Male researchers are more likely to get their research
published.

Additionally, female participants in lab studies are in an unbalanced relationship with (usually a
male) researcher who has the power to label them irrational or unable to complete complex
tasks.

Therefore, psychology may be guilty of supporting a form of institutional sexism that creates bias in theory and in research.

Question 8

A03 - Essentialism

Answer 8

The view that gender differences are essential and fixed in
nature.

In the 1930’s, ‘scientific’ research revealed how intellectual
activity, like attending university, would shrivel a woman’s ovaries
and harm her chances of giving birth.

Such essentialist accounts in psychology are often politically
motivated arguments disguised as ‘facts’.

This creates a double standard in the way that the same
behaviour is viewed from a male and female perspective.