gender bias Flashcards
what is universality?
the idea that conclusions can be applied to everyone, anywhere, regardless of time or culture
what is gender bias?
psychological research or theory offering a view that does not justifiably represent the experience and behaviour of men or women (usually women)
what is alpha bias?
research that focuses on differences between men and women, which presents a view that exaggerates these differences
what is an example of alpha bias? (freud)
- freud said that during the phallic stage of development, both boys and girsl develop a desire for their opposite-gender parent
- in a boy this creates strong castration anxiety, which is resolved when the boy identifies with his father
- a girl’s eventual identification with her same-gender parent is weaker, which means her superego, which develops as a result of taking on the same-gender parent’s moral perspective, is weaker
- therefore, girls/women are morally inferior to boys/men
how can alpha bias favour women in the psychodynamic approach? (chodorow 1968)
- suggested that daughters and mothers have greater connectedness than sons and mothers because of biological similarities
- due to the child’s closeness, women develop better abilities to bond with others and emphasise
what is beta bias?
research that focuses on similarities between men and women, which tends to present a view that ignores or minimises differences
what is an example of beta bias in research? (fight or flight)
- biological research has generally favoured using male animals as female behaviour is affected by regular hormonal changes due to ovulation, which ignores any possible differences
- early research into fight or flight assumed that both males and females respond to threatening situations with fight or flight
describe the basis of the tend and befriend response (taylor et al. 2000) as an alternative to fight or flight
- oxytocin is more plentiful in women but present in smaller quantities than men
- it seems that women respond to stress by increasing oxytocin productioon
- this reduces the fight or flight response and enhances a preference for ‘tend and befriend’, an evolved response for looking after others
describe an example of how beta bias has misinterpreted men
- attachment research assumed emotional care is provided soley by mothers
- research on the role of the father has shown that fathers can supply the emotional care often assumed to be the province of women
what is androcentrism?
- when ‘normal’ behaviour is judged according to a male standard, meaning that female behaviour is often judged to be abnormal or deficient by comparison
- alpha and beta bias are consequences of androcentrism
how has psychology presented a male-dominated version of the world?
- the american psychological association published a list of the 100 most influential psychologists of the 20th century which included only 6 women
- this suggests that psychology has traditionally been a subject produced by men, for men and about men
in what way has women’s behaviour been pathologised?
- feminists have objected to the diagnostic category premenstural syndrome on the ground that it medicalises women’s emotions, such as anger, by explaining these in hormonal terms
- in contrast, men’s anger is often seen as a rational response to external pressures (brescoll and uhlmann 2008)
evaluation: gender differences are often presented as fixed and enduring when they are not (maccoby and jacklin 1974)
- presented findings of several gender studies that concluded that girls have superior verbal ability whereas boys have better spatial ability
- suggested these differences are ‘hardwired’ into the brain before birth
- such findings became widely reported and were seen as facts
evaluation: gender differences are often presented as fixed and enduring when they are not (joel et al. 2015)
- used brain scanning and found no such sex differences in brain structure or processing
- it is possible that data from M&J was popularised because it fitted existing stereotypes of girls as ‘speakers’ and boys as ‘doers’
- this suggests that we should be way of accepting resaerch findings as biological facts when they might be better explained as social stereotypes
evaluation: psychologists do not need to avoid studying possible gender differences in the brain (ingalhalikar et al. 2014)
- suggests that the popular social stereotype that women are better at multitaking may have some biological truth to it
- it seems that a woman’s brain may benefit from better connections between the right and left hemisphere than in a man’s brain
- this suggests that there may be biological differences but we should still be wary of exaggerating the effect they may have on behaviour
evaluation: institutional structures and methods of psychology may produce findings that are gender-biased
- women remain underrepresented in university departments, particularly in science
- research is more likely to be conducted by men and this may disadvantage female participants
evaluation: underrepresetntation of women at university (murphy et al. 2014)
although psychology’s undergraduate intake is mainly women, lecturers in psychology departments are more likely to be men
evaluation: gender bias promots sexism in the research process (nicolson 1995)
- male researcher may expect women to be irrational and unable to complete complex tasks
- such expectations are likely to mean that women underperform in research studies
evaluation: research challenging gender biases may not be published (formanowicz et al. (2018)
- analysed >1000 articles relating to gender bias, published over 8 years
- research on gender bias is funded less often and is published by less prestigious journals
- consequently, fewer scholars become aware of it or apply it within their own work
- the researchers argued that this still held true when gender bias was compared with other forms of bias, such as ethnic bias, and when other factors were controlled, such as the gender of the author(s) and the methodology used
- this suggests that gender bias in psychological research may not be taken as seriously as other forms of bias
evaluation: consequences of gender-biased research
- creates misleading assumptions about female behaviour
- fails to challenge negative stereotypes
- validates discriminatory practices
- gender bias in research is not just a methodological problem, but may have damaging consequences which affect the lives and prospects of real women
evaluation: normalcy (tavris 1993)
in a domain where men set the standard for normalcy, it ‘becomes normal for women to feel abnormal’
evaluation: greater reflexivity
- many modern researchers now recognise the effect of their own values and assumptions have on the nature of their work (reflexivity)
- rather than seeing such bias as a problem that may threaten the objective status of their work, they embrace it as a crucial aspect of the research process
evaluation: example of reflexivity (dambrin and lambert 2008)
in their study of the lack of women in executive positions in accountancy firms, they include a reflection on how their gender-related experiences influenced their reading of events
evaluation: linguistic turn in psychology (potter and wetherall 1995)
- signifies less of a reliance on the traditional laboratory experiment and more focus on collaborative, qualitative methods, such as interview techniques
- important feature of ethnography, the study of social life and culture
evaluation: ethnographic research
- strives to give participants a voice, enabling those studied to genuinely participate in research, rather than being objects of study
- this allows diversity within groups to be investigated, rather than comparisons made between men and women (eg.)
evaluation: institutional sexism (denmark et al. 1988)
- psychology is guilty of supporting a form of institutional sexism that creates bias in theory and research
- at senior teaching and research levels, men domniate
- research agenda following male concerns, with female concerns marginalised or ignored
- research that finds gender differences is more likely to be published, with further emphasises and incorrectly exaggerates differences
evaluation: essentialism - gender differences are fixed, biological determinism (walkerdine 1990)
- in the 1930s there was ‘scientific’ research that claimed that intellectual activity, such as attending university could shrivel a woman’s ovaries and harm her chances of giving birth
- these politically motivated ‘facts’ can be used to create double standards
evaluation: femininist psychology (worrell 1992)
- importance of focusing on the individual, taking a phenomenological, bottom-up, micro approach
- criteria to avoid gender bias eg: using alternative methods of enquiry to explosre the personal lives of women, conducting in a natural setting, collaborating with research participants to explore personally relevant variables, studying diverse samples to look at femininity through an intersectional lens
