Gender Bias and Culture Bias

Question 1

Gender Bias AO3
Research

Answer 1

Create misleading assumption about female behaviour, fail to challenge negative stereotypes and validate discriminatory practices
- may provide a scientific justification to deny women opportunities within the workplace or in wider society

Question 2

Gender Bias AO3
Institutional Sexism

Answer 2

• Lack of women in psych- female concerns may not be reflected in the research questions asked. Male researchers more likely to have their work published
  Female ppts are placed in inequitable relationship with male researcher who has the power to label them unreasonable, irrational

Question 3

What is gender bias?

Answer 3

The misrepresentation of the gender differences between males and females

Question 4

What does androcentric mean?

Answer 4

taking a masculine perspective with male behaviour as ‘normal’

Question 5

What is alpha bias?

Answer 5

the exaggeration of gender differences

Question 6

What is beta bias?

Answer 6

the minimisation of gender differences

Question 7

What is culture bias?

Answer 7

researchers judging other cultures from the researchers cultural perspective

Question 8

What is ethnocentrism?

Answer 8

when the researcher takes their own cultural behaviour as ‘normal’

Question 9

What is cultural relativism?

Answer 9

suggests behaviours can only be understood from the perspective of its cultural context

Question 10

AO3- Gender Bias
Essentialism

Answer 10

• View that gender differences are essential and fixed in nature
• In the 1930’s, ‘scientific’ research revealed how intellectual activity, like attending uni would shrivel a woman’s ovaries and harm her chances of gving birth
  These views are often politically motivated arguments disguised as ‘facts’
  Which creates a double standard in the way that the same behaviour is viewed from a male and female perspective

Question 11

AO3- Culture Bias
Individualistic and Collectivist Cultures

Answer 11

Individualistic cultures: Western countries such as America

Collectivist cultures: South-East Asian countries such as India and China

Study: Takano and Osaka (1999)- 14/15 studies compared the USA and Japan found no evidence of its distinction between types of culture

However, critics have stated that in this age of global communication and increased interconnectedness, such a simplistic difference between cultures no longer applies

Question 12

AO3- Culture Bias
Cultural Relativism vs Universality

Answer 12

It shouldn’t assumed that all of psychology is culturally relative and that there is no such thing as universal human behaviour

Study: Ekman showed photographs of faces to people in 20 different Western cultures and 11 different isolated groups in Africa. Over 90% of respondents in both groups could identify anger, sadness, fear, disgust and happiness

In terms of attachment, interactional synchrony are universal features of infant- caregiver interactions. Therefore, this suggests that to fully understand behaviour, we must look at both universal and culture-bound

Question 13

AO3- Culture Bias
Unfamiliarity with research tradition

Answer 13

Different cultures have a different understanding of research
For example, in Western culture, the ppts familiarity with the general aims and objectives of scientific enquiry is assumed, However, the same knowledge and ‘faith’ in scientific testing may not extend to cultures that do not have the same historical experience of research

Demand characteristics, may be exaggerated when working with members of the local population- This may have an adverse affect on the validity of the research