Issues and Debates

Question 1

Gender Bias

What does universality mean?

Answer 1

Any underlying characteristics of human beings that is capable of being applied to all despite differences of experiences and upbringing

Question 2

Gender bias

What is alpha bias and give examples in psychology

Answer 2

Alpha bias: research that focuses on differences of men and women and presents a view that the differences are exaggerated

example;: electrla complex and odepious complex (girls morally inferior to boys)
=negative consqeunce has it can cause prejudices and sterotypes

Question 3

Gender bias

What is beta bias?

Answer 3

When psychological research downplays the differnces between men and women

example: fight and flight is used univerally to explain the fearb response of humans, but taylor found that women to ‘tend and befriend’
consequence: considered an egalitarian approach as it causes major misrepresentations of both genders.fear responses

other examples: role of the father and the mothers role in attachment

Question 4

Gender bias

What is andocentrisim

Answer 4

when research is centred around males so normal behaviour is judged to a male standard

Examples: Kolhberg and his moral development stages (all male sample and had looked at male moral reasoning) and then genrealised it to women and claimed women that women reached a lower standard, which is an example of andocentricsm

Question 5

Gender bias

What 3 ways can gender bias occur in research

Answer 5

• Male samples can be genralsied to women (studies like milgram, zimbrado, asch)
• take male behaviour as standard (andocentricsm) (examples: kolhberg etc)
• Biological differences empthaised, understeimates role of social and cultural factors

example of biological differences: womens mental helath looked at a biological level like hormones but not a social one

Question 6

Gender bias

How are some research methods biased

there are 3

Answer 6

Institutional sexism: men dominate at a senior level, research follows a male concerns, female concerns not researched enough

Standardised procedures: women and men may react differently to situations, they may be treated differntly (investigator bias) a consequence is that it can create artifical biases

Dissesmination of research results : publish postive results (ones that show a difference between genders)

Question 7

Gender bias evaluation

Sexism in research

Answer 7

P: female psychology student outnumber male students, however in univeristy departments and at a senior research level women are outnumbured by men (murphy)
a consequence of that research is more likely to be conducted by women. Nichelson sugguested that resaerchers may believe that women are irrational and may be unable to finish tasks, as a result women are more likely to underperform on tasks.
resrachers could identify their own biases

Question 8

Gender bias evaluation

Biology and gender sterotypes

Answer 8

• Maccoby and jacklin: conducted gender studies and found that girls have supeior verbal ablities and that boys have superior spatial ablities
• this resaecrh was popular as it fit popular gender sterotypes
• consequence of this may have been that girls may have not been encouraged to do certain jobs
• however joel et al found that there were no sex differences in brain structures or processing
• however we shouldn’t fully ignore biology as ingalhalikar found that women had more connections between both hempisheres comapred to men (mulititasking)

Question 9

Gender bias evaluation

Publications

Answer 9

• Research that doesn’tfind differences may not be publsihed
• Formanowicz anaysled 1000 studies and found that gender studies were less funded and were less lkley to be pubslihed in prestigous journals

Question 10

Gender evaluation

Biomedical explanation of mental health

Answer 10

• Approaches mental illness at a neurochemical and hormonal level
• when it comes to explaining depression in women, it ignores the social factors like domestic violence, discrimintion etc)

Question 11

Gender bias evaluation

Ways to reduce gender bias in research

Answer 11

-The feminist prespective
this involves

Re-examining the ‘facts’ about gender.
View of women as normal humans, not deficient men.
Skepticism towards biological determinism.
Research agenda focusing on women’s’ concerns.
A psychology for women, rather than a psychology of women.

Question 12

Cultural bias

What is culture?

Answer 12

system of beliefs, values, attiutidues and practsies shared by a group of people

eg child-rearing practicies, gender roles

A subculture is a group that differs to the dominant culture in their with their own beliefs

Question 13

Cultural bias

What is cultural bias

Answer 13

Is the tendency to judge people in terms of of one’s own cultural assumptions

Question 14

Cultural bias

What did Berry say and what is cultural relativism

Answer 14

Berry said:psychology has been guilty of an imposed etic approach, sugguesting that theories, models and concepts are universal.

Cultural relativism: idea that research can applied in a meaningful and understood within specific social and cultural contexts

Question 15

Cultural bias

What is an émic construct (Berry)

Answer 15

A construct that is applied to only one cultural group
this often focuses on the uniqueness of a culture and culturally specfic phenomnea, so results from such studies are genralised to that culture

Question 16

Cultural bias

What is the emic approach

Answer 16

• refers to the investigation of a culture from within the culture itself
• for example research of European society from a European perspective is emic
• so the reserach has more ecological validity as they are less likley to be affected by differences beyween those being studied and the researcher

Question 17

Cultural bias

What is an etic construct

Answer 17

• the notion that dea that is assumed to apply in all cultural groups.
• so this means that teh findings can be applied universally
• they also believe that most human behavior is common around the world

Question 18

Cultural bias

What is an imposed etic

Answer 18

believes that research can be applied to all cultures.

Question 19

Cultural bias

What is a consequence of imposed etic

Answer 19

ethnocentrism: occurs when researcher assumes
their own culturally specific practices or ideas are the norm

an example of this is the strange situation
other cultures child rearing practices deviated from the norm in america. For example more children in Japan were insecurlaly attached, this may have been due to child rearing practisicing being different in japan compared to america

Question 20

Cultural bias evaluation

Classic studies in psychology are culturally biased

Answer 20

• people that are studied in psychology mostly come from western, educated, individuaiist rich democrasies
• as is the case with studies like Asch line study and Milgram study of obedience
• these findings were generalised to other cultures
• however replications like smith and bond found higher rates of conformity in collectivsit countries compared indiculaist culutures
• suggests that perhaps studies that were conducted within certain cultures should be applied to that culture

CP: Argued that difference between collectivist and indiduclaist culture no longer applies due to media globalisation, Takano and osaka found that 14/15 studies found no evidence of individualism and collectivism
suggests current psychological research is not affected by such factors

Question 21

Cultural bias evaluation

The emergence of cultural psychology C

Answer 21

• Cohen says that cultural psychology is the study of how people shape and are shaped by their cultural experience
• Combination of sociology, anthropology and political science
• they take an emic approach by conducting research from inside the culture alongside researchers from the culture and using culturally-based techniques
• this illustrates how understanding how cultural bias occurs allowed psychologists to adopt a new way research

Margaret mead
Mar

Question 22

Cultural bias evaluations

IQ tests

Answer 22

• IQ tests were designed to measure people’s intelligence, however, the ethnocentric nature of the tests meant that African Americans and southeastern European people had lower scores
• question on US presidents (ethnocentric)
• As a consequence, this led to assumptions that white Americans were intellectually superior, and this, in turn, led to eugenics
• eugenics is the practice or advocacy of improving the human species by selectively mating people with desirable characteristics
• -in the 1920s results of this test led to eugenics driven policy of restricted immigration and forced sterilisation
• this shows how culturally biased research has detrimental effects on certain groups of people

Question 23

Cultural bias evaluation

How to overcome cultural bias in research

Answer 23

• Reflexivity: acknowledge you have your own biases
• sharing research: greater exchange of ideas, which should reduce ethnocentrism
• Ethnography: anthropological research immersion into data gathering in cultural context
• Indigenous psychologists: try to dispute that European values are universally appropriate descriptions of human behaviour

Abandoning the etic approach: encourage researchers not to use an etic approach, but to use derived etic instead (local investigator, local areas, local techniques)

Question 24

Free will and determinism

What is free will

Answer 24

Idea or notion that we are free to choose our own thougths and actions. It accepts the idea that other forces like biological and enviormantal detrminsm are at play, but we have the will to reject this.

Question 25

Free will and determinism

What is free will

Answer 25

Idea or notion that we are free to choose our own thougths and actions. It accepts the idea that other forces like biological and enviormantal detrminsm are at play, but we have the will to reject this.

Question 26

Free will and determinism

What is determinism

Answer 26

Idea that internal and external forces control a persons behaviour or actions

Question 27

Free will and determinism

What is environmental determinism and give an example

Answer 27

idea that behavior is caused by some sort of outside influence

for example: parents, culture,

Question 28

Free will and determinism

What did skinner say about environmental determinism?

Answer 28

claimed that free will was an illusion – we think we are free, but this is because we are not aware of how our behavior is determined by reinforcement or conditoning

Belived all our ideas of choice is a sum of reinforcements that we have been subjected through life

Question 29

Free will and determinism

What is biological determinism and can you give an example

Answer 29

the idea that our biological systems like the nervous system, hormones, brain etc govern our behaviour.

Examples: MAOA gene implicated in aggression

Question 30

Free will and determinism

What is psychic determinism

Answer 30

The belief that human behaviour is governed by unconscious conflicts repressed in childhood

Question 31

What are the different levels of determinism

Answer 31

Hard determinism: the idea that everything is caused by internal or external forces and that free will is not at play

Soft determinism: represents the middle , people do have a choice, but that choice is influenced by external factors

Question 32

What is the strength of the free will argument?

Answer 32

P: Has practical value
E: Roberts et al found that adolescents that had a strong belief in fatalism had a significantly greater chance of developing depression
E: This shows how understanding free will can help develop therapies around cognition to improve mental health
L: shows how free will has face validity and it can be used to create therapies that will help people live a better life

(maybe rewrite this)

Question 33

What is a limitation of free will

Answer 33

P:conflicting evdience from neurological studies
E:Libert et al found unconscious activity leading up to a concuous activity came half a second before.
E: shows how basic experiences are governed by unconscious thought

Question 34

What is a strength of determinism

Answer 34

P: it has research support and practical application
lab studies have led to the development of treatments, therapies and behavioural interventions.
An example of this is the use of psychoactive drugs to treat schizophrenia.
Therefore this shows …….

Question 35

What is a limitation of determinism

Answer 35

P: may not be consistent with the law
E: suggests criminals cannot be held accountable for their actions.
Mobley tried arguing that he was not responsible for his crimes as he may have inherited a criminal gene, but this was thrown out in court. However bayout sentences was reduced after the judge found that he had a variant of the MAOA gene
L: this highlights how biological determinism could help explain crimes, however this may harm the legal system as if this stance is taken it may be harder to prosecute people

Question 36

Nature v nuture

What is nature

Answer 36

Decartes belives that human behaviour is inate and heridatory
For example intelligence may be detrmined just by genes and not the environment

Question 37

Nature v Nuture

What is nuture

Answer 37

Locke was an empiricist who suggested that we are born with a clean slate (tableau rasa)
this means that our experiences from birth contribute to our behaviour

Question 38

Which approach adopts a nature point of view

Answer 38

Biological approach

Question 39

Which approach adopts a nuture point of view

Answer 39

Learning approach

Question 40

Nature v Nuture

What is the herdiatory co effienient

Answer 40

Gives an idea of whether a trait has a genetic basis
For example hair colour has the coefficient 1.0 suggested it uis mainly controlled by genes, whereas intelligence is 0.5 (Plomin et al)

Question 41

Nature vs Nuture

What is the interactonalist approach

Answer 41

the middle ground and it is a way of explaining how biology and the environment can interact with each other to produce certain behaviours

For example attachment studies temperament (Kagan) and warmth and contuinty (bowlby), the child temperate can influence how much love a parent gives, shows how nature and nuture interact.

Question 42

Nature vs Nuture

What is diathesis stress model and give and example

Answer 42

Explanation of how you may have a predispostion for a disorder but it will show if it is triggered by an environmental stressor

For example some people may inherit a predisposition to Schizophrenia, but this may be triggered by things like stress like leaving home, starting work, etc

Question 43

Nature vs Nuture

What is epigenetics

Answer 43

refers to change in genetic activity without changing the gene itself.

For example: things like stress, war, diet can contribute to genes being switched on or off, which affects how your genes are expressed. Tthis can then go onto influence the genetic code of future generations

Question 44

What is a positive implication of the nature nuture debate

Answer 44

P:Nature can affect your enviorment
E: Plomin et al found that if a child is genetically more aggressive then it can affects the response of others to them (environment), this called relative gene environment
E: This shows how nature has adverse affects on the envioorent around people
L: understanding the effects of nature on the environment, means we can think of ways to make people’s environment better

Question 45

What is a negtative implication of the nature and nuture debate

Answer 45

P: Ideas can be socially sensitive
E:Can lead to selective bredding and forced sterlaisation,could talk about IQ, America etc
E: Ilustrates how harmful this debate could be to certain populations
L: therefore people may use scientific evidence to justify human rights abuses

Question 46

How can nuture affect nature (AO3)

Answer 46

: Nuture can affect nature
E: Maguire et al, studied hippacmapus of London taxi drivers and found the more grey matter around the happiacampus than teh control group
E: This was because they had to learn many different routes around London, which as a result affected their neural plasticity
L: Therefore this shows how nuture the environmental demands can affect nature (in this case structures of the brain)

Question 47

How does this debtae support epigenetics

Answer 47

P: Evidence to show that enviormental affects can influence future generations
E: Susser and lin found that women who became pregnant during the dutch winter famine gave birth to low weight babies, moreover they found these babies were twice as likely to develop schizophrenia compared to other populations
E: Illustares how enviomrnetal factors can influence how genes are expressed in future generations as well as current generations

Question 48

Reduactanism vs holism

Answer 48

…..