IDAs Flashcards
what is androcentrism?
psychology and society is male-dominated, world view tends to be focused on men.
Is a possible consequence of beta bias, if our understanding of normal behaviour is being drawn from research that involves all male samples. Behaviour that deviates from the standard is judged as abnormal.
what is alpha bias?
exaggerates or overestimates differences between the sexes and results in one gender being devalued.
Devalue females in relation to their male counterparts.
what is an example of alpha bias? sociobiology theory
- Sociobiology theory of relationship formation explains the sexual attraction and behaviour.
- Survival efficiency – male’s interest to try and impregnate as many women
- Females interests to preserve her genes, healthy offspring.
- Sexual promiscuity in males in genetically determined, females who engage in the same behaviour are regarded as going against their nature.
- Freud psychoanalytic theory viewed femininity as failed masculinity and women had penis envy, morally inferior.
what is beta bias?
minimises or underestimates gender differences as they are ignored
what is universality?
any underlying characteristics of human beings that is capable of being applied to all, despite differences of experiences and upbringing. Gender bias and culture bias threaten the universality of findings.
what is cultural bias?
refers to a tendency to ignore cultural differences and interpret all phenomena through the lens of one’s own culture.
what is ethnocentrism?
judging other cultures by the standards and values of one’s own culture. In its extreme form it is the belief in the superiority one’s own culture which may lead to prejudice and discrimination towards other cultures.
- Strange situation, reflecting only the norms and values of American culture. Ainsworth identified the key defining variable of attachment type as the child’s experience of anxiety on separation.
- German mothers were seen as cold and rejecting rather than encouraging independence in their children.
what is cultural relativism?
the idea that norms and values, as well as ethics and moral standards, can only be meaningful and understood within specific social and cultural contexts.
what is the etic approach?
etic approach, looks at the behaviours from an outside perspective of the culture
leads to cultural bias and ethnocentricism
what is the emic approach?
looks at behaviours from within the culture, that are specific to that culture.
what is the nature/nurture debate?
nature - innate influences which may appear at any stage of life, genetics, twin studies
nurture - social and physical environment and experiences; we are born as a blank slate, behaviourism CC and OC
what is the importance of hereditary and environment?
Nature and nurture are intertwined, makes little sense to try to separate the two.
Twins studies, it is difficult to tell whether high concordance rates are more the result of shared genetics or shared upbringings.
what is the interactionist approach?
two way street, the child’s innate temperament will influence they way its parent respond to it and their responses will in turn affect the child’s behaviour. Thus nature creates nurture; heredity and environment interact.
what is the diathesis stress model?
suggests that psychopathology is caused by a biological/genetic vulnerability which is only expressed when coupled with a biological environmental trigger. Tienari found that in a group of Finnish adoptees those most likely to develop schizophrenia had biological relatives with a history of the disorder and had relationships with their adoptive families that were defined as dysfunctional.
what are epigenetics?
refers to a change in our genetic activity without changing our genetic code. It is a process that happens throughout life and is caused by interaction with the environment
