Issues and Debates Flashcards
Alpha bias
Exaggerating differences between men and women
Androcentrism
A bias towards a male-centred view –> many studies use only male ppts
Beta bias
Minimising differences between men and women and assuming we can apply male findings to women as well
Biological determinism
The idea that all behaviour is innate and determined by genes, eg MAOA gene being candidate gene for criminiality
Biological reductionism
The idea that behaviour can be reduced to simple physical components like nerves and ions
Cultural relativism
Understanding cultural practices of other groups in their own cultural context rather than our own standards.
Determinism
The idea that things are predetermined and everything has a cause
Environmental determinism
The idea that all human behaviour is a direct result of environmental/outside forces
Environmental reductionism
The idea that behaviour can be reduced to reactions to environmental stimuli
Ethnocentrism
A bias towards your own culture, and holding other cultures to that standard
Hard determinism
The idea that free will is non-existent
Holism
Suggests that to understand human behaviour we must look at the individual as a whole
Idiographic approach
Suggests that we should focus on the unique experiences of each individual to understand human behaviour
Nomothetic approach
Suggests that we should establish general laws of behaviour that can be applied to everyone
Interactionist approach
Several levels of explanation are needed to explain behaviour, from lower (biological) to higher levels (social and cultural)
Psychic determinism
The idea that all human behaviour is a result of unconscious mental processes
Reductionism
Suggests that to understand human behaviour, we must reduce it to its simplest parts
Social sensitivity
The possibility for studies to have results that could negatively impact some groups of people
Soft determinism
The idea that although the choices we pick from are limited and predetermined, we still have free will to pick within these predetermined choices
Ethical implications
Consider the impact the research has on people in a wider context, not just the ppts of the research
Universality
A theory/findings that can apply to everyone, regardless of gender or culture
Example of alpha bias - Psychodynamic explanations
- Freud’s psychodynamic theory
- suggests females do not go through the oedipus complex and are inferior to men (he viewed femininity as failed masculinity)
Example of beta bias
- Biological psychologist’s research into the fight-or-flight response
- typically only used male animals for research as they assumed female behaviour would be the same –> meant that female’s true response (tend-and-befriend- went unnoticed
Example of alpha bias - Wilson’s sociobiological theory of relationship formation
- suggests sexual promiscuity in males is genetically determined, whereas promiscuous females are going against their nature
- from an evolutionary standpoint, women need to be more selective than males due to a limited supply of eggs and requiring more energy to reproduce
- the alpha bias may lead to the prejudice and stereotyping of women that engage in these behaviours
AO3 Gender bias - Biases go unchallenged
- one of the main limitations of psychological research is that issues of gender bias often go unchallenged. - – eg. Darwin’s theory of sexual selection
suggests that women are selective (choosy) in terms of mate selection. - these views have only recently been challenged by DNA evidence suggesting that women are
equally as competitive as men when the need arises. - - This highlights the importance of continually challenging earlier gender research, and reducing gender bias to ensure that a valid picture of women is portrayed in contemporary studies.
AO3 Gender bias - Reducing gender bias by taking a feminist approach
- one way to reduce gender bias is to take a feminist
approach which attempts to restore the imbalance in both psychological theories and research. - eg. feminist psychology accepts that there are biological differences between males and females: Eagly (1978) actually claims that female are less effective leaders than males, however, the purpose of Eagly’s claim is to help researchers develop training programmes aimed at reducing the lack of female leaders in the real-world and ultimately foster greater equality
AO3 Gender bias - Theories are gender-biased due to the methods used
- Rosenthal (1966) found that male experimenters are more pleasant, friendly, and encouraging to female ppts than males –> this lead to male ppts appearing to perform worse in tasks
- feminist psychologists argue that findings in controlled lab settings tell us little about the experiences of women in real life settings
- there are serious issues in the way data is collected, and it creates a false image of male-female differences –> beta bias
AO3 Gender bias - How to counter gender bias
- develop theories that recognise the differences between men and women, but emphasise the value of women
- this is seen in feminist research which shows instances where women are better
- Cornwell et Al’s research shows that women are better at learning because they are more attentive, flexible, and organised
- research of this nature challenges any preconceptions that men are superior to women
Example of Cultural Relativism - Milgram
- Milgram’s study into obedience was initially conducted with 40 male American ppts
- later repeated with Spanish students (over 90% obedience rates) and Australian students (only 16% went to the highest voltage setting)
- these findings show that Milgram’s original study’s results were bound to only American cultures
Cultural bias
The tendency to judge people in terms of your own cultural assumptions
Example of cultural beta bias - IQ tests
- western-based IQ tests used to measure other cultural groups, assuming that their view of intelligence applies to all cultures equally
- western culture sees intelligence as something WITHIN the individual, whereas some collectivist cultures see intelligence as a functional relationship depending on shared knowledge between the individual and society
- This makes other cultural groups appear less intelligent (an imposed etic)
Example of cultural beta bias - Statistical infrequency
- may mistakenly assume symptoms of mental disorder are universal (e.g. hearing voices) –> results in misdiagnosis
- eg. in the case of statistical infrequency definition of abnormality, behaviours that are statistically infrequent in one culture may be statistically more frequent in another
- one of the symptoms of schizophrenia is claiming to hear voices. However, this is an experience that is common in some cultures. By assuming that the same rules apply universally (a beta bias), we may diagnose some people as mentally ill, but that diagnosis is relative to our culture)
AO3 Culture bias - Worldwide psychology community
- psychologists nowadays travel far more than they did 50 years ago
- this means they have an increased understanding of other cultures on both a personal and professional level
- psychologists now hold international conferences where researchers from many different countries regularly meet to discuss ideas
–> there is a greater understanding of the worlds’ cultures, which enables us to reduce ethnocentrism in psychology
AO3 Cultural bias - Consequences
- culturally biased research reinforces/creates stereotypes
- an example of the damage done by psychologists through cultural bias was the US Army IQ test, used just before WW1
- the tests showed that European immigrants fell slightly below white Americans in terms of IQ, and African Americans were at the bottom of the scale with the lowest mental age. The data from these tests had a profound effect on the attitudes held by Americans towards certain groups of people – black people and people from southeastern Europe.
–> led to enduring stereotypes concerning certain ethnic groups and their IQ
AO3 Cultural Bias - Indigenous psychologies
- one way to counter ethnocentrism is to encourage indigenous psychologies: the development of different groups of theories in different countries
- eg. Afrocentrism is a movement who’s central proposition is that all black people have their roots in Africa and that psychological theories concerning such people must therefore be African-centred and express African values
- Afrocentrism disputes the view that European values are universally appropriate descriptions of human behaviour –> suggests that the values and cultures of European’s at worst devalue non-European people, and at best are irrelevant to the life/culture of people of African descent
- this has led to the development of theories relevant to people of african descent
AO3 Cultural Bias - Bias in research methods
- cultural bias in psychology can be dealt with simply by using studies with samples from different cultural groups
- this has not always been the case! a 1998 survey of a European social psychology textbook found that 66% of the studies were American, 32% were European and 2% came from the rest of the world
- a 2010 study found that 67% of research studies come from American psychology students - a random American student is 4000x more likely to be a ppt in a psychology study than a random non-Westerner
–> psychology findings are not only unrepresentative on a global scale, but also within the Western world - there is a pressing need for more research with samples from different cultural groups
Example of soft determinism
The cognitive approach states that individuals can reason and make decisions within limits of the cognitive system
Examples of hard determinism
-behaviourism suggests that all behaviour is a result of classical and operant conditioning (environmental determinism)
-the biological approach sees human behaviour as a product of genes and neurochemistry
-social learning theory suggests that all behaviour is the product of vicarious reinforcement and mediational approaches
Example of psychic determinism
-Freud’s theory of personality suggests that all adult behaviour is determined by innate drives and childhood experiences that result in conscious conflicts over which we have no control over
-his psychosexual stages of development suggest each stage is characterised by a conflict which, if unsolved, leads to a fixation in adulthood
AO3 Genetic and environmental determinism - neither are sole determining factor in behaviour
- twin studies have never found 100% concordance rates, (80% for intelligence and 40% for depression)
- therefore, genes don’t entirely determine behaviour but neither does the environment
–> an interactionist should be taken rather than determinist
AO3 Determinism and criminal justice
- in some US criminal cases, murderers claim that their behaviour was determined by inherited aggressive tendencies and therefore they should not be punished w/ the death penalty
- Stephen Mobley killed a pizza shop manager in 1981, and claimed it was bc he was ‘born to kill’ as evidenced by a family history of violence (his argument was rejected + sentenced to death)
- on the other hand, in 2009 an Italian court reduced a murderer’s sentence by 1 year upon discovering he had the MAOA mutant gene
–> determinist approach is undesirable as it allows criminals to try and excuse their behaviour
AO3 Determinism and the treatment of mental health issues
- if we take the view that disorders like schizophrenia, OCD, and depression are determined by biology (genes and neurotransmitters), it follows that treatments should target these areas eg. SSRIs
- this however blocks the consideration of other beneficial treatments, like CBT
- SSRIs take on average 4 months to work so they clearly aren’t the most effective treatment and the determinist approach restricts options for treatment –> interactionist approach behaviour
AO3 Free will - is an illusion and culturally-relative concept
- BF Skinner argued that just being able to decide between different courses of action is not free will, but merely an illusion of free will
- he argued that someone may choose to watch a certain film, but these choices are determined by previous behavioural reinforcement
- furthermore, the idea of self-determination may be a culturally relevant concept and only appropriate to individualist societies.
–> suggests free will is a product of socialisation and not something real
AO3 scientific research challenging determinism
- Dennett (2003) argued that in the physical sciences determinism doesn’t exist
- chaos theory proposes that very small changes in initial original conditions can lead to big changes - butterfly effect 🦋
- therefore, causal relationships are probabilistic rather than deterministic
- ## deterministic explanations oversimplify human behaviour –> we are less rigid than over animals and are influenced by both cognitive factors and biological impulses
The nature-nurture debate
The argument as to whether a person’s development is mainly due to their genes or to environmental influences
Nature
Behaviour seen to be a product of innate (biological or genetic) factors
Nature - Genetic explanations
Family, twin and adoption studies show that the closer 2 individuals are genetically, the more likely that both of them will develop the same behaviours
–> eg. the concordance rate for schizophrenia is 40% for MZ twins and 7% for DZ twins (who share ~50% of their genes.
- the closer similarity for individuals with the same genes shows that nature has a major contribution to the disorder
Nature - evolutionary explanations
- any evolutionary explanation is based on the principle that a behaviour or characteristic that promotes survival and reproduction will be naturally selected (explain natural selection)
- eg. Bowlby proposed that attachment was adaptive because it meant that an infant was more likely to be protected and therefore more likely to survive – attachment behaviour is naturally selected, which can only be done through genetic mechanisms
Nurture
Behaviour is a product of environmental/external influences
Nurture - Behaviourism and SLT
B: the assumption that all behaviour can be explained in terms of experience (classical and operant conditioning)
SLT: the urge to be aggressive may be biological, but we learn to express this through direct and indirect reinforcement
Nurture - Schizophrenia
- the double-bind theory of schizophrenia suggests that schizophrenia develops in children who frequently receive contradictory messages from their parents, eg. mother tells daughter that she loves her but at the same time constantly criticised her
- such conflicting messages about her feelings prevent the child from developing an internally consistent construction of reality –> may lead to symptoms of schizophrenia
AO3 NvN - diathesis stress model
- offers a way to understand nature and nurture
- a diathesis is a biological vulnerability, eg. being born with genes that predispose you to a disorder (often used to explain mental disorders like schizophrenia)
- however, not everyone w/ these genes develops the disorder as the expression of the gene depends on experience in the form of a stressor
–> a person’s nature is only expressed under certain conditions of nurture
–> emphasises the importance of taking an interactionist approach
