Issues and debates Flashcards
Why are gender and culture bias important
Threatened the universality of psychology
define universality
underlying characteristic of humans that can be applied to all despite differences, experience and upbringing
Alpha bias
Psych research exaggerates difference between sexes
Example of alpha bias
Freuds psychosecual development - during phallic stage - develop desire to opposite gender.
-boys have castration anxiety but resoled when identify with father (same sex)
-girl identification with same sex parent is weaker due to super ego being weaker so therefore girls and inferior to boys
-Chodorow (1968) - daughters and mothers have a greater connectedness than son due to biological similarities so women develop better abilities to bond and emphasise
Beta bias
Minimise the differences between the sexes
-occurs when females aren’t part of an experiment so we assume findings apply equally
Example of beta bias
Research of fight or flight
-Taylor (2000) women tend and befriend response - respond to stress by increasing oxytocin so reduced fight or flight
-research that minimises gender differences may result in a misrepresentation of women’s behaviour
Define androcentrism
when normal behaviour is judged according to male standard
consequence of androcentrism
leads to female behaviour beings misunderstood as it is conducted on males so female behaviour is seen as ‘abnormal’ or ‘DFTN’
Gender bias A03 (biological vs social explanation)
-gender differences are often presented as fixed and enduring when they’re not >Maccoby +Jacklin girls have superior verbal ability whereas boys have better spatial ability > hard-wired into brain before birth > Joel useds brain scanning technique but no sex differences in brain structure so original study with popularised because it fitted existing stereotype > should be careful of accepting findings as biological facts when they may be social stereotypes
-but this doesn’t mean psychologists should avoid studying gender
Gender bias A03 (counterpoint to biological vs social explanations)
-doesn’t means psychs should avoids studying gender differences in brain > popular stereotype females better at multitasking may have biological truth > women brain benefit from better connections between right and left hemispheres than men > there may be biological differences but we should be mindful of exaggerating effect they have on behaviour
Gender bias A03 (gender-biased research)
-if challenges gender bias it may not be published
-formanowicz (2018) analysed 1000 articles relating to gender bias published over 8 years
-found research on gender bias published by less prestigious journals
-consequence = fewer scholars become aware of it
-research may not be taken as seriously as other forms of bias
Gender bias A03 (sexism in research)
-women remain unrepresented in uni departments esp science
-although undergraduate intake mainly women in psych, lecturers mainly men (Murphy 1024)
-research more likely to be conducted by men
-may disadvantage ppt who are women and so women may underperform due to expectations like women being irrational
What’s culture bias
tendency to ignore cultural differences and interpret all phenomena through ‘lens’ of one’s own culture
culture bias examples
-In 2010, 68% of research participants from hundreds of
journals were from USA.
-96% of the studies were carried out in industrialised
nations.
-80% of research participants were psychology
undergraduates
Universality and bias
-Mainstream psychology is argued to ignore cultures
-In reality, results can only be applied to the groups of people where they were studied.
-If the ‘norm’ for a particular behaviour is judged from one culture then any cultural differences in
behaviour are seen as ‘abnormal’
-Most likely to be studied – Henrich
-WEIRD, westernised, educated, industrialised,
Rich democracies.
