Gender Bias Flashcards
Gender bias
Bias leads to differential treatment of males + females, based on stereotypes.
For example, Freud said “anatomy is destiny’ meaning genuine psychological diff between M + W’ ‘penis envy’. he viewed feminity as failed masculinity.
Difficult lie’s distinguishing ‘real’ from culturally created gender diff. Ev - small num ofreal gender diff (cross-cultural research)
Not necessarily conscious process. May think objective t value free
Maccoby + Jacklin (1984)
Only 4 diff between boys and girls.
- Girls have greater verbal ability.
- boys have greater spatial + visual.
- boys have greater arithmetic ability which occurs in adolescence
- girls less aggressive.
Alpha Bias
Overestimate/exaggerate diff between genders. Real t enduring diff between m+w. May enhance/undervalue members of sex-typically females.
What did Freud say on Alpha bias?
Because girls don’t suffer same Oedipal conflict as as boys don’t identity with their mothers as strongly as boy, identify W their fathers, so devel weaker superegos.
Evolutionary approach _ Alpha bias
Criticised for alpha bias. Approach suggests evolutionary processes in the development of the human species explicit whymen tend to be dominant, why women have a more parental investment in their offspring, and why mes are more likely to commit adultery. But society has changed considerably over recent years. So shouldn’t be used to justify gender differences
Beta bias
Downplay diff between genders. Ignore Q’s about lives of women/assume studies of men will apply equally
Ev of beta bias
M + F participants used in most studies. Normally no attempt to analyse the datato see whether their sig sex diff. Differences found due to Researchers ignore differential treatment of participants. [Rosenthal ]
Rosenthal (1966)
Male experimenters were more pleasant, friendly etc with females. Conducted ‘m+f subjects may, psychologically, simply not be in same experiment at all’
Animal research and beta bias.
Fight or fligh response carried actor male animals because they have less variation in hormones than females. Research by Taylor et al challenged this with er that females produce tend + befriend response.
Androcentrism
Dominated by males. [Conscious/unconscious] past psychologists were male + theories produce male representation of world. Men’s Behavior standard. Female behave ‘abnormal’ and ‘inferior’ female misunderstood.
Example of androcentrism.
DSM-III-R proposed masochistic personality disorder for women. Symptoms included things men don’t show [seff-sacrifice/rejecting opp for pleasure]
Pre-menstrual syndrome [PMs] criticised as being social construction, which stereotypes female experience. Medicalises female emotions especially anger by explaining there in hormonal terms. But male anger seer as logical response to ext pressures.
