issues and debates Flashcards
gender bias
-alpha bias (frued)
-beta bias (fight or flight)
-andocentrism (PMS vs men anger)
-maccoby and Jacklin - girls have superior verbal ability vs boys who have better spatial
-Joel did brain scans
-M and J study was popularised because it fit existing stereotypes
-however, this doesn’t mean gender differences in brain should be ignored - studies suggest that women being better at multitasking may have some biological truth to it
-sexism in research - psychology lecturers more likely to be men- more research done by men - gender biased institutionalisations lead to gender bias research
-gender biased research - formancowiz analysed 1000 articles relating to gender bias published over 8 years- found that gender bias is funded less and is published by less journals - therefore fewer scholars are aware of it and cannot apply it to their work
Culture bias -
-WEIRD as the standard- making the behaviour of non westernised cultures as “abnormal”
-ethnocentrism - judging others culture by the standards and values of ones own culture - Mary Ainsworth strange situation
-cultural relitivism - one cannot judge a behaviour properly unless it is viewed in the context of the culture in which it originates - hearing voices
-imposed etic- technique of theory developed in one culture and used to study behaviour of people in another
-emic approach - something that applies only in one culture
-classic studies - Milgram, ache - only used US ppts- and when replication in collectivist - conformity was higher
however- globalisation has lead to a decrease in collectivist/ individualist cultures
+cultural psychology -
-ethnic stereotyping - first intelligence test lead to eugenic social policies in US- IQ tests consistenting of questions on US presidents - Europe and African Americans scored lowest and deemed them ‘mentally unfit;’
free will determinism
hard determinism - fatalism
soft determinism
free willl
biological
psychic
environmental
+practical value of free will - can improve mental health - fatlism people theought their lives were out of their control and had a much greater risk at developing depression and having an external locus of control
-brain scan supports determinism - libel asked ppts to choose a random moment to flick their risk while he measured activity in their brain and ppts had to say when they felt the conscious will to move - libet found the unconscious brain activity leading up to the conscious decision came out half a second before the ppts consciously decided to move
however - it doesn’t mean there was no decision to act, just that the decision took time to reach our consciousness
-the law - offenders are held responsible for their actions - excerisizing free will
nature nurture
-interactionalist- - bowlby clawed that a baby’s attatchment type is determined by the warmth and continuity of parental love (an environmental influence) - KAGAN PROPOSED THAT A BABYS INNATE PERSONALITY (TEMPERAMENT) also affects the attachment relationshi
-nature (Childs temperament) creates nurture (parents response)
-diathesis stress model - onset of SZ
-epigenetic - change in our genetic activity without changing the genes themselves - happens throughout life and is caused by interaction with the environment - smoking, diet,, trauma - leaving marks on our DNA
-measuring nature/ nurture through correlation coefficient of concordance rates - the extent to which a trait is inherited
+adoption studies
-howeber
+epigenetics - WW11 - nazis blocked the distribution of food to the dutch people and 22,000 died of starvation in Dutch Hinger Winter - reported that women who became pregnant during the famine went on to have low birth weight babies and were twice as likely to develop SZ
+real world application - eg Nestadt - genetic counselling for OCD
Holism reductionism
-holism - the whole is greater then the sum of its parts - qualitative
-reductionism - based on scientific principle of parsimony
-levels of explanation - socio cultural, psychological, physical, environmental, physiological, neurochemical
-biological reductionism
-environmental
-lacks practocal value - holism - holistic accounts of human behaviour become hard to use as they are more complex - difficult to know what is most influential on behaviour - past, present relationships, job, family etc)
+reductionist scientific - lab studies - controlled - but lack external validity and may be too simplistic
-reductionism can only be understood at higher level - eg cannot be understood in individual context - but only as a group (conformity)
idiographic nomothetic
-idiographic- study of individuals - detailed- qualitative- case study - humanistic or freud
-nomothetoc- general laws of human behaviour - quantitative - large scale structured questionnaires - Skinner- laws from animals
+idiographic contributes to nomothetic - basis of hypothesis
-however idiographic should still acknowledge narrowness
+scientific approaches
-losing the person
ethical implications
-research question
-method used
-instutional context
-interpretation and application
