Issues and Debates Flashcards
What is universality?
This is any underlying characteristic of human beings that is capable of being applied to all, despite differences in experience and upbringing.
How are women seen in Psychology?
Psychology has always been male dominated and that causes the female voice to be unheard, minimised, marginalised, judged or seen as abnormal against the male standard.
Why is psychology gender biased?
Since the psychologists are men, they tend to have their values influenced by social and historical factors. Due to their beliefs being biased, it can affect research and not reflect objective reality.
Is psychology able to claim universality?
Due to inevitable bias in the research process, the claim to universality is undermined, as conclusions can’t be drawn from anywhere or to everyone regardless of time and culture.
How do we overcome bias?
Changing outdated theories.
What is gender bias?
The differential treatment or representation of males and females based on stereotypes and not real differences. In psychology theories and studies don’t represent the experiences and behaviours of one gender which is usually women.
What is alpha bias?
It is a type of gender bias which focuses on differences between genders.
It refers to psychological theories that exaggerates gender differences.
It ignores and devalues one gender, which is usually females.
What is an example of alpha bias?
Freud’s Psychodynamic approach
- In the phallic stage, both genders show a desire for their parent of the opposite sex.
Boys have castration anxiety which is resolved when they begin to identify with their dad.
However, girls tend to have a weaker identification with their mother. This means her superego is weaker which makes girls seem morally inferior.
All the information on this exaggerates the differences in behaviour within the sexes and all the research is based on the need for a penis.
What is another example of alpha bias?
Wilson’s Relationship Formation
- This explains sexual attraction and behaviour through survival efficiency.
It is in a males nature to impregnate as many women as possible to pass on his genes.
However, it is in a woman’s best interest to preserve her genes by ensuring healthy survival of offspring.
Is survival efficiency applicable to humans?
It can be argued survival efficiency isn’t applicable because humans are complex. In modern society it isn’t practical for a man to have multiple children because children are expensive (Till the age of 21 it costs around £227,000 to raise them).
As well as by men just having multiple children it means they are committing less so it increases broken homes.
What is essentialism and provide an example
It is the idea that gender differences are evitable and essential and fixed in nature.
An example of this is Wilsons belief that sexual promiscuity in men is genetically determined.
What does alpha bias lead to?
Androcentrism
What is Androcentrism?
This is when normal behaviour is equated with men behaviour so women’s behaviour and experiences are judged as abnormal, deviant or are pathologised. As a result of this male behaviour is seen as the standard
What is an example of Androcentism?
Brescoll and Ulham objected to the diagnostic claim of premenstrual syndrome as it stereotypes, trivialises and pathologised female experiences.
They claim it is social construct which medicalises female emotions by explaining things like anger in hormonal terms.
However, male anger is seen as rational in response to external factors.
What is beta bias?
It is a type of gender bias that focuses on the similarities between genders and therefore ignores and minimises key differences. It assumes findings from one gender which is typically men can be applicable to all through generalisations.
What is an example of beta bias?
The original fight or flight theory used make animals as they believed females behaviour is affected by regular hormonal changes due to ovulation, so they assumed both males and females responds to stress with fight or flight.
More recently, Taylor et al found that women have a different stress response to men. They believe the stress response for women is tend and befriend.
In this the love hormone oxytocin which is more plentiful in women and is less in men, is produced more when women are stressed, which reduces fight or flight response.
This shows how research that minimises gender differences can result in a misrepresentation of women’s behaviour.
What is nature vs nurture?
The debate on whether behaviours (personality, mental disorders etc.) are caused by innate factors or learning and experience.
What is recent research concerned with?
The interaction of nature and nurture and howthey influence each other.
Is nature vs nurture a debate?
Not really, because any behaviour or characteristic can arise from a combination of both factors. Brauer and Chopra argue eye colour isn’t completely determined by your genes as 80% is heritable. Likewise behaviours aren’t all inherited, both nature and nurture interact.
What did Bowlby claim?
A baby’s attachment type is determined by the warmth and continuity of parental love which is an environmental influence.
What did Kagan claim?
A baby’s innate personality/temperament can affect their attachment type. So the nature (temperament) creates the nurture (parents response) so environment and heredity interact.
What is the diathesis stress model?
An example of an interactionist theory. It suggests behaviour is as a result of biological or environmental vulnerability which is expressed when paired with a biological or environmental trigger.
What is an example of the diathesis stress model?
A person who inherits a genetic vulnerability for OCD may not develop the disorder if not met with a trigger, such as a traumatic event.
What is epigenetics ?
A change in our genetic activity without the genes themselves changing.
It can happen throughout life and can be caused by our interaction with the environment.
Our lifestyle and life events can leave a mark on our DNA, which can switch genes on and off.
For example, even once a person has stopped smoking it will leave a lifelong influence after they stop because it’s changed the way genes are expressed.
Can epigentics be passed on?
Research shows it can be passed on. These epigentic changes can influence the genetic code of our children and their children. This adds a third element to the debate which is ‘the life experience of previous generations’
What did Dias and Ressler find?
They gave male lab mice electric shocks when exposed to the smell of acetophenone which is a chemical in perfume. The mice showed a fear reaction whenever they smelt the scent .
Surprisingly the rats children and grandchildren also feared the smell though they didn’t have a traumatic experience themselves.
Where do approaches sit on the debate ?
What is nature ?
The view that behaviour is as a result of inherited influences . Early nativists like Descartes argue all human characteristics and some aspects of knowledge are innate.
Psychological characteristics such as intelligence or personality are determined by biological factors in the same way physical characteristics are.
What is heredity?
The process traits are passed down from one generation to the next.
What’s an example of nature ?
Bowlby believes children come into this world biologically programmed to form attachments as it helps them to survive. Therefore this suggested that attachment behaviours are naturally selected and passed on due to genetic inheritance.
What is nurture?
The influence of experience and the environment. Empiriscts like John Locke argue the mind is a blank slate at birth and is shaped by the environment. This view later became the behaviourist approach.
What did Lerner identify?
The different levels of the environment.
Prenatal factors like physical influences (smoking) or psychological factors (music) affect a foetus.
Postnatal factors like the conditions a child grows up in. This more generally influences development.
What is an example of nurture?
Behaviour psychologists explain attachment in terms of classical conditioning where the mother becomes the conditioned stimulus by giving the child pleasure through food.
How is nature and nurture measured?
N/A
What is an advantage ?
N/A
What is the holism vs reductionism debate?
The debate on which is the better approach to understand human behaviour.
What is holism?
A argument that stated it only makes sense to study an indivisible rather than a continuum like the reductionist approach.
What did Gestalt argue?
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
- This means knowing how the parts work doesn’t help us to understand the essence of that person.
What is Gestalt psychology?
A holistic approach to perception
