General info Flashcards
Universality
-Any underlying characteristic of human beings that is capable of being applied to all despite differences of upbringing= This can threaten the universality of findings in psychology
Bias
Tendency to treat 1 individual/ group in a different way from others
Alpha bias
Research that show real and enduring differences between men and women= It may enhance or undervalue each sex
Alpha bias example
Sexual promiscuity is genetically determined in males but deviant in females
Beta bias
- Research that ignore/ minimise differences between sexes
- It often occurs when female ppts aren’t included and its assumed that findings apply equally to both sexes eg, MIlgram
Beta bias example
- Fight or flight
- Early research is based on males
- Research now lends to the fact that females tend and befriend rather than fight or flight
Androcentrism
- Male centred
- ‘Normal’ behaviour is judged according to a male standard
- As a result female behaviour is often misunderstood and judged to be ‘abnormal’ or ‘deficient’ by comparison
- Almost all psychologists were (+are) men
- Theories produced tend to represent a male world-view
Evaluations of gender biased:
Solution
- Psychologists have put forward solutions for gender bias
- eg. attempted to emphasise the importance of women
- Cornell et al suggested females are better at learning as they are more organised, which emphasises the value of women
- Helps to challenge stereotypes, helping reduce gender bias
Evaluations of gender biased:
Bias in RM
- Studies are gender bias as they methods used are biased
- Rosenthal found that male experimenters are more friendly to female ppts than male ppts, consequently males ppts performed worse
- Lab studies disadvantage women as findings in the controlled lab tell us little about experiences of women in the outside world
- Eagly and Johnson’s meta-analysis noted studies based on a real world setting, finding that male and females had a similar type of leadership style
- Shows issues with the way data is collected and creates a false picture of differences
Evaluations of gender biased:
Avoiding beta bias
- Equal treatment for men and women (beta bias) has given women greater opportunities but this may be a disadvantage
- Hare-Mustin and Marecek pointed out that arguing for equality draws attention away from women’s needs and create differences in power
- Where 1 group (males) holds most of the power, even neutral actions benefit the group with power
- Eg, equal parental leave ignored the biological demands of pregnancy and disadvantage women
- Suggests we should avoid beta bias to ensure differences are accounted for
Culture bias
- Tendency to ignore cultural differences and interpret all phenomena through the ‘lens’ of one’s own culture
- Own culture= their ‘norm’
- Cultural differences that deviate from the norm will be ‘abnormal’, ‘inferior’ or ‘unusual’
Culture bias example
-Van Ijzendoorn
Ethnocentrism
- Judging other cultures by the standards and values of their own culture
- Extreme= superiority of own culture and leads to prejudice
Ethnocentrism example
- Ainsworth strange situation
- ‘Secure’ attachment type
- German mums are cold stereotypes
Etic and example
- Looks at behaviours from outside of a culture and attempts to describe behaviours as universal
- Eg, Ainsworth’s strange situation (imposed etic)
Emic
- Functions from within/ inside certain cultures and identifies behaviours that are specific to that culture
- Psych has been guilty of imposing an etic
Cultural relativism and example
- Ideas that norms and values can only be meaningful and understood within specific social and cultural contexts
- Psychologists should be more meaning of the cultural relativism of their research as what they discover may only make sense in the culture it was discovered
- Eg, deviation from social norms
Evaluation for cultural bias:
Real world
- Helps to create stereotypes
- US army used an IQ test before WW1 which was culturally biased towards the dominant white majority, where they showed African-Americans were at the bottom of IQ scale
- Negative effect on attitudes of Americans
- Data led to enduring stereotypes concerning ethnic groups and their IQ, showing the negative of a cultural bias
Evaluation for cultural bias:
Indigenous psychologies
- Counter culture bias by encouraging indigenous psychologies
- Eg, Afrocentrism= as all black people have roots in Africa, theories must recognise the African attitudes
- Values of europeans at worst devalue non-europeans and at best are irrelevant based on the emic approach
- Led to the emergence of theories that are more relevant to the lives of people not in Africa
Evaluation for cultural bias:
bias with diagnosing mental illnesses
- Different diagnostic criteria in different cultures is that diagnosing mental illnesses will be unreliable
- In US the DSM-V is used, whereas in Europe the ICD is more commonly used
- Copeland found 69% of US psychiatrists diagnosed a patient with schizophrenia compared to 2% of British psychiatrists with the same patient description
- Poses a significant cultural bias as individuals may be more likely to be diagnosed in 1 country
