Issues and Debates Flashcards
Gender Bias
What does universality mean?
Any underlying characteristics of human beings that is capable of being applied to all despite differences of experiences and upbringing
Gender bias
What is alpha bias and give examples in psychology
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
Gender bias
What is beta bias?
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
Gender bias
What is andocentrisim
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
Gender bias
What 3 ways can gender bias occur in research
- 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
Gender bias
How are some research methods biased
there are 3
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)
Gender bias evaluation
Sexism in research
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
Gender bias evaluation
Biology and gender sterotypes
- 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)
Gender bias evaluation
Publications
- 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
Gender evaluation
Biomedical explanation of mental health
- 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)
Gender bias evaluation
Ways to reduce gender bias in research
-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.
Cultural bias
What is culture?
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
Cultural bias
What is cultural bias
Is the tendency to judge people in terms of of one’s own cultural assumptions
Cultural bias
What did Berry say and what is cultural relativism
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
Cultural bias
What is an émic construct (Berry)
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
Cultural bias
What is the emic approach
- 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
Cultural bias
What is an etic construct
- 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
Cultural bias
What is an imposed etic
believes that research can be applied to all cultures.
Cultural bias
What is a consequence of imposed etic
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
Cultural bias evaluation
Classic studies in psychology are culturally biased
- 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
Cultural bias evaluation
The emergence of cultural psychology C
- 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
Cultural bias evaluations
IQ tests
- 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
Cultural bias evaluation
How to overcome cultural bias in research
- 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)
Free will and determinism
What is free will
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.
Free will and determinism
What is free will
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.
Free will and determinism
What is determinism
Idea that internal and external forces control a persons behaviour or actions
Free will and determinism
What is environmental determinism and give an example
idea that behavior is caused by some sort of outside influence
for example: parents, culture,
Free will and determinism
What did skinner say about environmental determinism?
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
Free will and determinism
What is biological determinism and can you give an example
the idea that our biological systems like the nervous system, hormones, brain etc govern our behaviour.
Examples: MAOA gene implicated in aggression
Free will and determinism
What is psychic determinism
The belief that human behaviour is governed by unconscious conflicts repressed in childhood
What are the different levels of determinism
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
What is the strength of the free will argument?
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)
What is a limitation of free will
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
What is a strength of determinism
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 …….
What is a limitation of determinism
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
Nature v nuture
What is nature
Decartes belives that human behaviour is inate and heridatory
For example intelligence may be detrmined just by genes and not the environment
Nature v Nuture
What is nuture
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
Which approach adopts a nature point of view
Biological approach
Which approach adopts a nuture point of view
Learning approach
Nature v Nuture
What is the herdiatory co effienient
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)
Nature vs Nuture
What is the interactonalist approach
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.
Nature vs Nuture
What is diathesis stress model and give and example
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
Nature vs Nuture
What is epigenetics
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
What is a positive implication of the nature nuture debate
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
What is a negtative implication of the nature and nuture debate
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
How can nuture affect nature (AO3)
: 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)
How does this debtae support epigenetics
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
Reduactanism vs holism
…..
