Issues and debate - Synoptic paper Flashcards
gender bias
Gender bias refers to the tendency to favour one gender over another in psychological research, theory, or practice.
Alpha gender bias
Research focuses on differences between men and women and therefore tends to present a view that exaggerates these differences.
- upholds gender stereotypes
During the phallic stage of development, both boys and girls develop a strong desire for their opposite-gender parents. In a boy, this creates, a very strong castration anxiety (father will cut his penis off). The anxiety is resolved when the boy identifies with his father. But a girl’s eventual identification with the same-gender parent is weaker, which means her superego is weaker because it develops as a result of taking on the same-gender moral perspective. Therefore girls/women are morally inferior to boys/men.
Beta bias
Research that focuses on similarities between men and women, and therefore ignores and minimises differences.
Moscovici 1969 study on minority influence only used female participants.
Androcentrism
Male-centred -where normal behaviour is judged according to a male standard (meaning female behaviour is often judged to be abnormal or deficient by comparison.
Universality- applies to all
Any underlying characteristic of human beings that can be applied to all, despite differences of experience and upbringing. Gender bias and cultural bias threaten the universality of findings in psychology.
Culture bias
A tendency to interpret all phenomena through the lens of one’s culture, ignoring the effects that cultural differences might have on behaviour
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 of one’s own culture which may lead to prejudice and discrimination towards the other cultures.
Mary Ainsworth and Silvia Bell’s 1970 strange situation is an example of this, criticised as reflecting only the norms and values of Western cultures. - Germany had the highest amount of insecure-avoidant behaviour, and german moms encouraged independence.
Richard
uses intelligence tests as an illustration of the concepts of ethnocentrism and imposed etic. Such tests often involve completing
tasks against the clock. However, Brislin asks about the validity of this notion of mental quickness in relation to intelligence. The Baganda people of Uganda characterise intelligence as slow, careful and deliberate thought. They make view the speed as thoughtlessness or rashness.
Cultural relativism
Sternberg 1985 - coordination
skills
Ainsworth and Bells research
The idea that norms, values, ethics, and moral standards, can be meaningful and understood within specific social and cultural contexts
Etic approach
looks at behaviour from outside and attempts to describe those behaviours as universal. An example of imposed etic can be considered about how we define abnormality.
Emic approach
Considers behaviour from the inside of a culture and identifies behaviours that are specific to that culture.
Berry argues that psychology has often been guilty of an imposed
etic approach - arguing that theories, models and concepts are universal when they come about through emic research inside a single research.
Ethical issues
deception - Arsh
Ps should not be misled during an investigation. However, sometimes participants need to be unaware of the aims of an investigation or even that they are participating in a study to yield results that are considered valid. Ps need to be debriefed at the end of the study.
Informed consent - Zimbardo
Ps must be debriefed on the objectives of the investigation and what will be required of them if they take part. They must accept these conditions to proceed and need to be put under no pressure to do so.
privacy and confidentially
ps should remain anonymous so that data cannot be identified as theirs.
Psychological and physical harm
Research must ensure that those participating in research will not be caused distress. They must be protected from physical and mental harm. They shouldn’t be embarrassed, frighten, offend or harm Ps.
Socially sensitive research
Studies in which there are potential consequences or implications, either directly for the participants in the research or for the class of individuals represented by the research - consequences for the broader social groups the participants represent.
Sieber and Stanley 1988
warn that how research questions are phrased and investigated may influence the way in which findings are interpreted
Cyril Burt +11
11+ education in the UK determines what school a child will go to grammar, secondary modern, and technical school.
After Burt’s research was used after the fraud was exposed. The 11+ continued to be used. Therefore any research on socially sensitive topics needs to be planned with the greatest care too ensure the findings are valid because of the enduring effects on particular groups of people.
Bowlby MDH
Research into attachment and maternal deprivation and became an advisor for WHO.
he influenced the government’s decision not to offer free healthcare places to children after 5. Indirectly affects the legal norm that mothers are granted custody of children in divorce and separation whereas previously it would have been fathers.
Hypothesis - proposed a warm intimate & continuous relationship with a mother figure is necessary for healthy, psychological/ emotional development. Mother love in infancy and childhood is as important for mental health as are vitamins & proteins for physical health.
Goddard IQ tests
Moron 51-70
Imbecile 26-50
Idiot 0-25
definitions for a system for classifying individuals with intellectual disability on IQ.
Morons according to Goddard were unfit for society and should be removed from society through institutionalisation, sterilisation or both.
Goddard established an intelligence testing program on Ellis Island in 1913, on immigrants who were arriving to the US. The purpose of the program was to identify “feeble-minded” people, which he
identified as the Jews, Hungarians, Italians and Russians.
Levels of explanations = Reductionism / Holistic
Reductionism
R seeks to analyse behaviour by breaking it down into its constituent parts. It is based on the scientific principle of parsimony - that all phenomena should be explained using the simplest (lowest level) principles.
OCD may be understood as a:
Socio-cultural level - OCD interrupts social relationships
Psychological level - the person’s experience of anxiety
Physical level - movements e.g washing one’s hands
Environmental/behavioural level - learning experiences
Physiological level - abnormal functioning in the frontal lobes
Neurochemical level - underproduction of serotonin
which of these provides the best explanation of OCD is a matter of debate, but each level is more reductionist than the one before.
Experimental Reductionism
Reducing complex behaviour to a form that can be studied (variables which can be manipulated and measured to determine cause and effect. - An experimental approach
- The attempt to explain behaviour in terms of stimulus and response links that have been learned through experience.
For example, the learning theory of attachment reduces the idea of love (between baby and the person who does the feeding) to a learned association between the person doing the feeding (neutral stimulus) and food (unconditioned stimulus) resulting in pleasure (conditioned response)
Machine reductionism
The cognitive approach uses the principle of machine reductionism.
Information processing uses approaches that have analogy of machine systems and the simple components of such machines, as a means to describe behaviour and explain behaviour.
Biological reductionism
A form of reductionism which attempts to explain behaviour at the lowest biological level( in terms of the actions of genes, hormones, etc)
For example, drugs that increase serotonin are effective in treating OCD. Therefore, working backwards, low serotonin may be the cause of OCD. We have reduced OCD to the level of neurotransmitter activity.
