Gender in Psychology: Gender bias Flashcards
What is a gender bias a result of?
when one gender is treated less favourably than the other, often referred to as sexism
What are consequence of gender bias?
- Scientifically misleading
- Upholding stereotypical assumptions
- Validating sex discrimination
What are the three main types of gender bias?
- Alpha bias
- Beta bias
- Androcentrism
What is Alpha bias?
this occurs when the differences between men and women are exaggerated. Therefore, stereotypically male and female characteristics may be emphasised
What is Beta bias?
this occurs when the differences between men and women are minimised. This often happens when findings obtained from men are applied to women without additional validation.
What is Androcentrism?
Taking male thinking/behavior as normal, regarding female thinking/behavior as deviant, inferiour, abnormal, ‘other’ when it is different.
What are positives of the gender bias?
Alpha bias?
- Has led to some theorists (Gilligan) to assert the worth and valuation ‘feminine qualities’.
- Has led to healthy criticism of cultural values that praise certain ‘male’ qualities such as aggression and individualism as desirable, adaptive and universal.
What are positives of the gender bias?
Beta bias
- Makes people see men and women as the same, which has led to equal treatment in legal terms and equal access to, for example, education and employment.
what are negative consequences of gender bias?
Alpha bias
- Focus on differences between genders leads to the implication of similarity WITHIN genders, thus this ignores the many ways women differ from each other.
- Can sustain prejudices and stereotypes.
What are negative consequences of the gender bias?
Beta bias
- Draws attention away from the differences in power between men and women.
- Is considered as an egalitarian approach but it results in major misrepresentations of both genders.
What does Kitzinger (1998) argue?
that questions about sex differences aren’t just scientific questions – they’re also political (women have same rights as men). So gender differences distorted to maintain the status quo of male power.
What do feminists argue about the gender bias?
that although gender differences are minimal or non-existent, they are used against women to maintain male power.
What are some examples of gender bias in research?
- Kohlberg & Moral Development
- Freud & Psychosexual Development
How is there a gender bias in Kohlberg & Moral Development?
Kohlberg based his stages of moral development around male moral reasoning and had an all-male sample. He then inappropriately generalized his findings to women (beta bias) and also claimed women generally reached lower level of moral development (androcentrism).
Carol Gilligan highlighted the gender bias inherent in Kohlberg’s work and suggested women make moral decisions in a different way to men (care ethic vs. justice ethic).
However, her research is, arguably, also (alpha) biased, as male and female moral reasoning is more similar than her work suggests.
How is there a gender bias in Freud’s psychosexual stages?
Freud’s ideas are seen as inherently gender biased, but it must be remembered that he was a product of his time. He saw ‘Biology as destiny’ and women’s roles as prescribed & predetermined.
All his theories are androcentric, most obviously: -‘Penis envy’ – women are defined psychologically by the fact that they aren’t men.
But Freud’s ideas had serious consequences/implications they reinforced stereotypes e.g. of women’s moral Inferiority, treated deviations from traditional sex-role behavior as pathological (career ambition = penis envy) and are clearly androcentric (phallocentric).
