Gender In Psychlogy Flashcards
Universality
- When a theory is applied to all people, irrespective of their gender
- central aim of psychology
Gender bias
The differential treatment or representation of men and women based on stereotypes rather than real diffenreces
Androcentrism
- Many psychological theories represent a male point of view
- differences between male and female behaviour, male behaviour is considered the norm where as female is atypical
Example of androcentrism
Freud
- children’s superego develop when the identify with same sex parent
- girls don’t identify with there mothers as strongly as boys identify with ads
- as a result Freud argues girls have weaker superegos
2 types of gender bias
Alpha bias and beta bias
Alpha bias
- A tendency for theories to exaggerating the differences between male nd female
- consequences is that these theories devalue one gender in comparison to the other
Example of alpha bias
Research about attractiveness - assumed men look for youth where as females look for wealthy and status
Beta bias
- Ignoring and minimising diffenreces between male an females
- theories often assume that the finings from males can equally apply to females
Exsample of beta bias
Asch
- study of conformity using only male ppts made generalisation about conformity where applied to both males and females
How to reduce of gender bias
Take in feminist perspective
- they acknowledge that thee are biological diffeneces between male and females , dont devalue women rather support them
- eagly - proposed women are less effective than leader that men however this knowledge should be used to develop training programmes in order to increase the numbe of female leaders
- However some psychologists suggest male and females are not different from each other
- gender bias due to the research methods used which makes males and females appear different
Over come androcentrism
- develop theories which show differences between males and females but emphases the values of females
- research shows that females are better at learning because they are more flexible, attentive and organised
- research helps reduce stereotypes that male position is better
- valuing women more
Problem with gender bias
Gender issues often go unchallenged
- eg Darwin evolutionary theory
- proposes women are choosy when selecting a partner and males test be a aggressive with other males to increase their chances of being chosen by a women
- only be challenged recently, new DNA evidence shows feels can be equally aggressive to increase their chances of finding a partner