gender bias Flashcards
A01: What is universality?
Any underlying characteristic of human beings that is capable of being applied to all, despite differences of experience and upbringing.
A01: What is gender bias?
- the tendency to prefer one gender over another.
In psychology it’s where , theories/ studies do not represent the experiences and behaviours of one gender (usually girls/ women).
A01: define androcentrism
‘Normal’ behaviour/experience is equated with men’s behaviour experience, so women’s behaviour/experience is judged as abnormal or deviant or is pathologised.
what is alpha bias?
refers to theories which exaggerate the differences between males and females.
what is beta bias?
minimise sex differences. These theories often assume that the findings from males can apply equally to females.
what is an example of beta bias?
Taylor et al (2000)
Tend and Befriend vs Fight or Flight
Early research into fight or flight did just that - it assumed that both males and females respond to threatening situations with fight or flight.
Shelley Taylor et al. (2000) claimed that this is not true and described the tend and befriend response.
Example of beta bias: what did Taylor et al conclude?
- The love hormone Oxytocin is more plentiful in women (present in smaller quantities in men) and it seems that women respond to stress by increasing oxytocin production.
- This reduces the fight or flight response and enhances a preference for ‘tend and befriend’
what is an example of androcentrism
Premenstrual syndrome (Brescoll and Uhlam, 2008).
Many feminist commentators have objected to the diagnostic category of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) on the grounds that it stereotypes and trivialises female behaviour. Critics claim that PMS is a social construction which medicalises female emotions, especially anger, by explaining this in hormonal terms. Male anger, on the other hand, is often seen as a rational response to external pressures
what is an example of alpha bias research
Wilson, 1975): Relationship Formation
- Is in the male’s interest to impregnate as many women as possible, to increase his chances of passing on his genes
- For females, it is their best interest to preserve her genes by ensuring the healthy survival of her offspring
what are the consequences of Wilson et al study?
(alpha bias)
According to this theory, sexual promiscuity in males is genetically determined, whilst sexual promiscuity for females goes against their “nature”.
This is an example of an alpha bias AND an example of essentialism.
The idea that the gender difference in question is evitable (essential) and fixed in nature.
what is a limitation of gender bias
(social explanations
P: One limitation is that gender differences are often presented as fixed and enduring (i.e. alpha bias) when they are not.
EE: Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) presented the findings of several gender studies which concluded that girls have superior verbal ability whereas boys have better spatial ability. They suggested that these differences are ‘hardwired’ into the brain before birth. Such findings become widely reported and seen as facts. Recently Joel et al. (2015) used brain scanning and found no such sex differences in brain structure or processing. It is possible that the data from Maccoby and Jacklin was popularised because it fitted existing stereotypes of girls as ‘speakers’ and boys as ‘doers.
L: This suggests that we should be wary of accepting research findings as biological facts when they might be explained better as social stereotypes.
what is a counter point of social explanations?
p: counterpoint
EE : However, this does not mean that psychologists should avoid studying possible gender differences in the brain.
E.g. research by Ingalhalikar et al. (2014) suggests that the popular social stereotype that women are better at multitasking may have some biological truth to it.
It seems that a woman’s brain may benefit from better connections between the right and the left hemisphere than in a man’s brain
L: This suggests that there may be biological differences but we still should be wary of exaggerating the effect they may have on behaviour.
what is limitation of gender bias on sexism?
P: Another limitation is that gender bias promotes sexism in the research process.
EE: Women remain underrepresented in university departments, particularly in science.
Although psychology’s undergraduate intake is mainly of women, lecturers in psychology departments are more likely to be men (Murphy et al. 2014).
This means research is more likely to be conducted by men and this may disadvantage participants who are women.
E.g. a male researcher may expect women to be irrational and unable to complete complex tasks (Nicolson 1995) and such expectations are likely to mean that women underperform in research studies.
L : This means that the institutional structures and methods of psychology may produce findings that are gender-biased and need to be reconsidered.
