Issue 6- Culture and gender Flashcards
What is meant by the term culture?
The collective beliefs, attitudes and social norms of a group of people. Behaviours and attitudes are passed on from one generation to the next and are typically resistant to change over time.
This could be studied through cross cultural research but this has strengths and weaknesses, considering the validity of the measure when used in different cultures, issues of ethnocentricism and in some cases cross cultural conclusions are made based on studies.
What is meant by the term gender?
Sex refers to being male or female whilst gender refers more to your role and identity as male or female. Gender may be something that’s learned.
Why is this an issue in society?
Most of the research comes from America and Europe studying middle class white participants. There is an issue with this as psychology is represented as a universal description of human behaviour but it is not studied universally.
Bias occurs when a researcher assumes that their own culture is doing things the ‘right’ way and therefore any other way is negative. Alpha bias refers to theories that assume there are differences between cultures. Beta biased theories ignore or minimise cultural differences assuming all people are the same and therefore it is reasonable to use the same theories and methods with any cultural group.
Issues with ethnocentricism.
Describe the role of culture and obedience in social psychology.
Obedience in society may be seen as a survival trait. If everyone was autonomous, there would be no order in society. Research agrees that the situation people are in has a huge impact on whether people are obedient or not. This is consistent in other cultures.
Blass (2012) reviewed studies in the USA and other countries found an average obedience rate of 60.94% in the USA and 65.94% in other countries. Even when the studies seemed to differ because of culture, there were often other differences.
Describe the role of gender and obedience in social psychology.
Milgram used predominantly male participants, apart from experiment 8 which used 40 female teachers. The female obedience was almost the same as male obedience, with 27.5% stopping at 300V. However their rated anxiety level was much higher in females. This was also found by Burger (2009)
Describe the role of culture and predjudice in social psychology.
Culture can impact on prejudice if the social norms legitimise prejudice behaviours. This may link to religious regimes or laws that endorse prejudice attitudes towards certain groups.
Describe the role of culture and gender in cognitive psychology.
There is little to suggest that memory is affected by culture. General memory processes such as the encoding in STM and working memory are thought to be universal. However, we can look at some theories and research that may be relevant.
Reconstructive memory model states that memory is not a tape recording and relies on schemas that we have developed through interactions with our environment. This could be influenced by culture.
Gender should not impact on memory as processes are generally universal, as with culture. However, a person’s gender may mean that they have different experiences and therefore develop different schemas which can affect memory
Describe the role of culture and gender in learning psychology.
Operant conditioning means that specific behaviours familiar to a culture will be observed and reinforced if they are seen as socially acceptable.
Male and female children will be treated differently by others and strongly socialise according to their gender.
SLT suggests that we learn from imitating role models, for example parents. This would explain cultural differences because children imitate different attitudes. Children may also learn gender sterotypes from same sex role models. The children are still exposed to these behaviours even if they are not reinforced.
Gender appropraite behaviours are reinforced through operant conditioning and gender innapropriate behaviours are punished.
Describe the role of culture and gender in biological psychology.
Behaviour is universal and therefore does not consider that culture would impact behaviour. It may be accepted taht there are cultural differences as to what counts as aggression.
There are gender differences in aggression. It can be linked to testosterone which is found in much greater levels in males than females. Male envolvement in crime often increases as testosterone increases. Aggression can also be explained by XYY which only affects males.
Aggression can be seen to be evolutionary as a result of survival of the fitest and to try and pass on genes and protect offspring.
Describe the role of culture and gender in criminal psychology.
Culture can be seen in labelling and self-fulfilling prophecy as well as in social learning theory.
Gender and brain injury- males are more likely to take part in activity that casues brain injury.
No differences in gender in amygdala functioning.
Gender and XYY
Describe the role of culture and gender in clinical psychology.
Anorexia is more common in western cultures and may be as a result of the impact of the media. There is lots of research to support this. Can be seen to be underdiagnosed in some cultures
More common among females than males
