Gender bias Flashcards
What is an issue ?
Ongoing causes for concern within the field of psychology
What is a debate ?
Two conflicting ideas about how to study human behaviour
What does universality mean ?
Any characteristic’s that is capable of being applied to all
e.g emotions (facial expressions)
What is alpha bias ?
- Exaggerates differences between the sexes
- Real + enduring, fixed and ineviatble differences
- devalues females in relation to males
- Essentialist (fixed)
- Looks at partner preferences (male have unlimited sperm so more likely to sleep around)
- Overestimate differences
What is Beta bias ?
- ignores and minimises the differences between the sexes
- this occurs when females are not included in the research and then the results are presumed to apply to both genders
- Can also be the other way around but often the females are the ones not included
What is androcentrism ?
- consequence of beta bias
- male behaviour is viewed as the norm
- female behaviour is seen as abnormal
- Women being leaders is seen as bossy where as men are just seen as dominant leaders
What are the ways that gender bias can be dealt with ?
- not extrapolating findings to both genders
- representative sample
- both male and female researchers
- avoid alpha and beta bias
How bad is the issue of gender bias ? (Limitations)
Research challenging bias isn’t being published:
Formanowicz analysed 1000 articles relating to gender bias
Gender bias research is funded less and published to less prestigious journals
Other bias’ are considered more seriously than gender bias
Murphy:
Psychology is largely taken by female students but taught by male lectures’
What did Maccoby and Jacklin say about gender bias ?
Gender differences are in the brain before birth
Found that in scans there were differences in girls and boys brain:
Girls have superior verbal ability
Boys had superior spatial awareness
COUNTERPOINT:
Joel = used more up to date brain scans and found no difference
