Issue And Debates

Question 1

What are the 3 types of Gender bias and outline them.

Answer 1

Alpha bias - this occurs when the differences between men and women are exaggerated.
Beta bias -this occurs when the differences between men and women are minimised.
Androcentrism - taking male thinking/behaviour as normal, regarding female thinking/behaviour as deviant, inferior, abnormal.

Question 2

What are the positives and negatives of Alpha Bias.

Answer 2

+ 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.

• 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.

Question 3

What are the positives and negatives of Beta Bias.

Answer 3

+ 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.

• 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.

Question 4

What are some examples of Gender Bias in Research.

Answer 4

• Freud androcentrism, “penis envy”.

- Kohlberg stages of moral development based around men all male sample, then generalised to females.

Question 5

What is culture bias.

Answer 5

Culture can be described as all the knowledge and values shared by a society.
Cultures may differ from one another in many ways, so that the findings of psychological research conducted in one culture may not apply directly to another.

Culture bias is considering one culture to be the same and applying findings to that culture.

Question 6

What is an emic construct, and emic approach and the culture bias within them.

Answer 6

An emic construct is one that is applied to only in one cultural group, so they vary from place to place.
An emic approach refers to the investigation of a culture from within the culture itself.
Culture bias can occur when a researcher assumes that an emic construct is actually an etic.

Question 7

What is an etic construct, and etic approach and the culture bias within them.

Answer 7

An etic construct is a theoretical idea that is assumed to apply in all cultural groups. Therefore, etic constructs are considered universal to all people, and are factors that hold across all cultures.
Culture bias can occur when making the assumption that behaviours are universal across cultures can lead to imposed etics, where a construct from one culture is applied inappropriately to another.

Question 8

What is ethnocentrism?

Answer 8

Ethnocentrism occurs when a researcher assumes that their own culturally specific practices or ideas are ‘natural’ or ‘right’.

Can lead to racism, as lowers the rank of other cultures.

Question 9

What is cultural Relativism.

Answer 9

The principle is sometimes practiced to avoid cultural bias in research, as well as to avoid judging another culture by the standards of one’s own culture. For this reason, cultural relativism has been considered an attempt to avoid ethnocentrism.

Question 10

What are some examples of culturally biased research.

Answer 10

Strange situation is culturally biased. And is applied universally. (ethnocentric)

IQ tests developed in the West contain embedded assumptions about intelligence, but what counts as ‘intelligent’ behaviour varies from culture to culture.

Question 11

What is free will?

Answer 11

Free Will suggests that we all have a choice and can control and choose our own behaviour. This approach is all about personal responsibility and plays a central role in Humanist Psychology.

Question 12

What are strengths and weaknesses of free will?

Answer 12

+ It emphasises the importance of the individual and studying individual differences.
+ It fits society’s view of personal responsibility e.g. if you break the law you should be punished.
+ The idea of self-efficacy is useful in therapies as it makes them more effective.

• Free will is subjective and some argue it doesn’t exist.
• It is impossible to scientifically test the concept of free will.
• Few people would agree that behaviour is always completely under the control of the individual.

Question 13

What is determinism?

Answer 13

The determinism approach proposes that all behaviour is determined and thus predictable. Some approaches in psychology see the source of this determinism as being outside the individual, a position known as environmental determinism.

Question 14

What is environmental, psychic and biological determinism.

Answer 14

Environmental : The the idea that our behaviour is caused by some sort of outside influence e.g. parental influence.
Psychic : Freud believed childhood experiences and unconscious motivations governed behaviour.
Biological : Our biological systems, such as the nervous system, govern our behaviour.

Question 15

What are the two types of hard determinism and outline.

Answer 15

Hard and soft determinism.
Hard : sees free will as an illusion and believes that every event and action has a cause.
Soft : middle ground, people do have a choice, but that choice is constrained by external factors.

Question 16

What are the strengths and weaknesses of determinism.

Answer 16

+ Determinism is scientific and allows cause and effect relationships to be established.
+ It gives plausible explanations for behaviour backed up by evidence.

• Determinism is reductionist.
• Does not account for individual differences. By creating general laws of behaviour, deterministic psychology underestimates the uniqueness of human beings and their freedom to choose their own destiny.
• Hard determinism suggests criminals cannot be held accountable for their actions. Deterministic explanations for behaviour reduce individual responsibility

Question 17

What is Nature?

Answer 17

+ Nature is the view that all our behaviour is determined by our biology, our genes. This is not the same as the characteristics you are born with, because these may have been determined by your pre-natal environment.
+ In addition, some genetic characteristics only appear later in development as a result of the process of maturation. Supporters of the nature view have been called ‘nativists’.

• Problem of the trans generational effect. Behaviour which appears to be determined by nature (and therefore is used to support this nativist view) may in fact be determined by nurture! e.g.
• This means that the eggs with which each female child is born will also have these negative effects. This can then affect the development of her children a whole generation later.
• This means that a child’s development may in fact be determined by their grandmother’s environment (trans generational effect). This suggests that what may appear to be inherited and in born is in fact caused by the environment and nurture.

Question 18

What is Nurture?

Answer 18

Nurture is the opposite view that all behavior is learnt and influenced by external factors such as the environment etc. Supports of the nurture view are ‘empiricists’ holding the view that all knowledge is gained through experience.

Question 19

What are the strengths and limitations of nurture?

Answer 19

+ Empirical evidence shows that behaviour is learnt and can be modified through conditioning.

• Behaviourist accounts are all in terms of learning, but even learning itself has a genetic basis. For example, research has found that mutant flies missing a crucial gene cannot be conditioned (Quinn et al., 1979).

Question 20

What has the debate of nature and nurture spawned?

Answer 20

Instead of defending extreme nature or nurture views, most psychological researchers are now interested in investigating the ways in which nature and nurture interact. It is limiting to describe behaviour solely in terms of either nature or nurture, and attempts to do this underestimate the complexity of human behaviour.

Question 21

What is Holism?

Answer 21

Holism is often referred to as Gestalt psychology. It argues that behaviour cannot be understood in terms of the components that make them up. This is commonly described as ‘the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.’

Question 22

What are the strengths and limitations of the Holistic approach?

Answer 22

+ Looks at everything that may impact on behaviour.
+ Does not ignore the complexity of behaviour.
+ Integrates different components of behaviour in order to understand the person as a whole.
+ Can be higher in ecological validity.

• Over complicates behaviours which may have simpler explanations (Occam’s Razor).
• Does not lend itself to the scientific method and empirical testing.
• Makes it hard to determine cause and effect.
• Neglects the importance of biological explanations.
• Almost impossible to study all the factors that influence complex human behaviours

Question 23

What is Reductionist?

Answer 23

Reductionism is the belief that human behaviour can be explained by breaking it down into smaller component parts. Reductionists say that the best way to understand why we behave as we do is to look closely at the very simplest parts that make up our systems, and use the simplest explanations to understand how they work.

Question 24

What are strengths and limitations in reductionist psychology.

Answer 24

+ The use of a reductionist approach to behaviour can be a useful one in allowing scientific study to be carried out. Scientific study requires the isolation of variables to make it possible to identify the causes of behaviour. This way a reductionist approach enables the scientific causes of behaviour to be identified and advances the possibility of scientific study.
+ A reductionist approach to studying mental disorders has led to the development of effective chemical treatments

• The disadvantage is that it can be over simplistic. Humans and their environments are so complex that the reductionist explanation falls short of giving the whole explanation of the behaviour. Thus, it lacks ecological validity
• Does not address larger societal issues e.g. poverty.

Question 25

What is a nomothetic approach?

Answer 25

The Nomothetic approach looks at how our behaviours are similar to each other as human beings. The term “nomothetic” comes from the Greek word “nomos” meaning “law”.
Psychologists who adopt this approach are mainly concerned with studying what we share with others. That is to say in establishing laws or generalisations. Tend to use quantitative methods.

Question 26

What are strengths and limitations of the nomothetic approach?

Answer 26

+ The nomothetic approach is seen as far more scientific than the idiographic approach, as it takes an evidence based, objective approach to formulate causal laws.
+ This enables us to make predictions about how people are likely to react in certain circumstances, which can be very useful e.g. Zimbardo’s findings about how prisoners and guards react in a prison environment.

• Predictions can be made about groups but these may not apply to individuals.
• Approach has been accused of losing sight of the ‘whole person’.
• Best approach is to combine both.

Question 27

What is the idiographic approach?

Answer 27

The Idiographic or individual differences approach looks at how our behaviours are different to each other. The term “idiographic” comes from the Greek word “idios” meaning “own” or “private”. Psychologists interested in this aspect of experience want to discover what makes each of us unique. Tend to use qualitative methods.

Question 28

What are the strengths and limitations of the idiographic approach?

Answer 28

+ A major strength of the idiographic approach is its focus on the individual. Gordon Allport argues that it is only by knowing the person as a person that we can predict what the person will do in any given situation.

• The idiographic approach is very time consuming. It takes a lot of time and money to study individuals in depth. If a researcher is using the nomothetic approach once a questionnaire, psychometric test or experiment has been designed data can be collected relatively quickly.
• Best approach is to combine both.

Question 29

What are ethics and socially sensitive research?

Answer 29

There has been an assumption over the years by many psychologists that provided they follow the BPS guidelines when using human participants and that all leave in a similar state of mind to how they turned up, not having been deceived or humiliated, given a debrief, and not having had their confidentiality breached, that there are no ethical concerns with their research.

Question 30

What are the four types of people affected by socially sensitive research identified by Sieber and Stanley?

Answer 30

1) Members of the social group being studied such as racial or ethnic group. For example early research on IQ was used to discriminate against US Blacks.
2) Friends and relatives of those taking part in the study, particularly in case studies, where individuals may become famous or infamous. Cases that spring to mind would include Genie’s mother.
3) The research team. There are examples of researchers being intimidated because of the line of research they are in.
4) The institution in which the research is conducted.

Question 31

What are the four main ethical concerns when conducting socially sensitive research identified by Sieber And Stanley?

Answer 31

• The research question or hypothesis.
• The treatment of individual participants.
• The institutional context.
• The way in which the findings of research are interpreted and applied.

Question 32

What are the ethical guidelines when carrying out socially sensitive research?

Answer 32

Privacy,
Confidentiality,
Sound & valid methodology,
Deception, Informed consent, 
Justice & equitable treatment,
Scientific freedom,
Ownership of data,
The values of social scientists,
Cost/benefit analysis.

Question 33

What are strengths of reformation towards socially sensitive research?

Answer 33

• Psychologists have devised methods to resolve the issues raised.
• SSR is the most scrutinised research in psychology. Ethical committees reject more SSR than any other form of research.
• By gaining a better understanding of issues such as gender, race and sexuality we are able to gain a greater acceptance and reduce prejudice.
• SSR has been of benefit to society, for example EWT. This has made us aware that EWT can be flawed and should not be used without corroboration.
• Most research is still carried out on white middle class Americans (about 90% of research quoted in texts!). SSR is helping to redress the balance and make us more aware of other cultures and outlooks.

Question 34

What are limitations of reformation towards socially sensative research?

Answer 34

• Flawed research has been used to dictate social policy and put certain groups at a disadvantage.
• Research has been used to discriminate against groups in society such as sterilisation of people in the USA between 1910 and 1920 because they were of low intelligence, criminal or suffered from psychological illness.
• The guidelines used by psychologists to control SSR lack power and as a result are unable to prevent indefensible research being carried out.