Issues and Debates

Question 1

What is meant be universality?

Answer 1

Any underlying human characteristic that is capable of being applied to all despite differences in experience and upbringing

Question 2

What threatens universality?

Answer 2

Gender and cultural bias

Question 3

What is alpha bias in gender bias?

Answer 3

Psychological theories that suggest real and enduring differences between men and women which may enhance or undervalue members of either sex, typically female (Freud)

Question 4

What is beta bias in gender bias?

Answer 4

Theories that ignore or minimalise the differences between the sexes (Zimbardo, Asch, Milgram)

Question 5

What is androcentrism in gender bias?

Answer 5

When the ‘normal’ behaviour is judged according to a male standard, may be that the research is male-centred (PMS is a social construction and society put a medcial term on ‘abnormal’ female behaviour)

Question 6

What is essentialism in gender bias?

Answer 6

The gender difference in question is essential and fixed in nature

Question 7

What are the 4 evaluation points for gender bias associated with sexism within research?

Answer 7

Institutional sexism - senior psychologists are mostly male so female concerns may not be represented in the questions asked, likely to lead to androcentrism
Assume men and women respond in the same way to experiments, judged by a male standard
Researchers may react differently to male and female participants so females may be put in unfair position where their view is not being understood
Males are more likely to have researched published in academic journals which could lead to gender bias in the workplace

Question 8

What are the implications of gender bias?

Answer 8

Misleading assumptions about female behaviour which fail to challenge negative stereotypes. Burns in 1993 found a major focus of research on women with learning disabilities is on issues such as managing periods and using contraception which means they are seen in a negative way

Question 9

What did female psychologists say about avoiding gender bias?

Answer 9

Females should be studied in real-life contexts and viewed as normal humans not the same as men and diversity within the female population should be compared, not men against women

Question 10

What is cultrual bias?

Answer 10

The tendency to ignore cultural differences and interpret all behaviour based on one culture

Question 11

In 1992 how many of the worlds 56000 psychology researchers were American?

Answer 11

64%

Question 12

In Baron and Byrnes 1991 textbook how many studies were conducted in North America?

Answer 12

94%, suggesting psychology is the study of white-American males

Question 13

What is the etic approach in cultural bias?

Answer 13

Where human behaviour is studied from outside a particular culture and generalised and said to be universal

Question 14

What is the emic approach in cultural bias?

Answer 14

Where human behaviour is studied from within a culture and identifies behaviours that are specific to that culture

Question 15

Who made the distinction between the etic and emic approach?

Answer 15

Berry 1969

Question 16

What is imposed etic in cultural bias?

Answer 16

Theory or concept which is rooted in the personal culture of the researcher and is then used to explain other cultures behaviours

Question 17

What is cultural relativism?

Answer 17

Behaviour can only be meaningfully understood within specific cultural contexts

Question 18

What is ethnocentrism in cultural bias?

Answer 18

Judging other cultures by standards and values of your own culture, assuming your behaviour is normal which could lead to discrimination and prejustice- Ainsworth’s strange situation

Question 19

What was Goddards research into cultural bias in 1917?

Answer 19

Gave IQ tests to immigrants as they arrived in USA and claimed how his findings demonstrated the majority of them were ‘feeble-minded’. In 1952 he claimed black people were less genetically intelligent as they scored lower however Brislin 1976 found that intelligence is measured in different ways in different cultures

Question 20

Who suggested cultural bias in the diagnosis of mental health disorders?

Answer 20

Cochrane and Sashidharan 1995 who found African-Carribean immigrants are 7 times more likely to be diagnosed

Question 21

What kind of disorder is seen to be ‘cultural bound’?

Answer 21

KORO - only in South and East Asia and involves extreme anxiety that the penis or nipples will recede into the body and cause death

Question 22

What is one main issue with cultural bias?

Answer 22

The individualism-collectivism dimension is overly simplistic
Individualism (independent and personal freedom cultures like the USA and UK)
Collectivism (emphasis on interdependence and needs of the group like India and China)
Takano and Osaka 1999 found 14/15 studies comparing US to Japan found no evidence of distinction between them, suggesting cultural bias is less of an issue than we thought

Question 23

Why is it that cultural bias is less evident nowadays?

Answer 23

Because Eastern cultures are becoming more Westernised due to global communication

Question 24

What is another weakness of cultural bias?

Answer 24

It is wrong to assume all behaviour is culturally relative - Ekman 1989 carried out cross-cultural research into facial expressions and found that 6 emotions are the same in all cultures
Other examples such as language, music, use of weapons, medicine - all culturally universal

Question 25

What are the 2 approaches to avoiding cultural bias?

Answer 25

Cross-cultural appraoch (study different cultures to identify variations)
Transcultural approach (study different cultures to identify similarities)
However there may be barriers to studying other cultures such as gaining trust, understanding, communication etc (e.g. in Milgrams replication study on a Mascho-Piro tribe)

Question 26

What is freewill?

Answer 26

Making our own choices that are not determined by biological/external factors

Question 27

What is determinism?

Answer 27

Behaviour is shaped or controlled by external/internal factors

Question 28

What is hard determinism (fatalism)?

Answer 28

Freewill is not possible as our behaviour is always caused by events beyond our control (Lombroso)

Question 29

What is soft determinism?

Answer 29

All human behaviour and events have causes but they are determined by our concious choices

Question 30

What is biological, environmental and psychic determinism?

Answer 30

Behaviour is caused by biological influences that we cannot control (Sperry)
Behaviour is caused by features of the environment that we cannot control
Behaviour is caused by unconscious conflicts that we cannot control (Freud)

Question 31

What do deterministic theories support?

Answer 31

Psychology’s claim to be a science - every event has a cause and can be predicted so applies general laws which are tested through the experimental method, this is the only way to establish causation (keeping everything the same except 1 thing such as Pavlov, Skinner, Asch etc)

Question 32

What are 2 strengths of determinism?

Answer 32

Supports psychology as a science as the notion that all human behaviour is orderly and obeys laws makes psychology coincide with more established sciences
Positive implications for the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness - precision and control has led to therapies and treatments

Question 33

What is a weakness of determinism?

Answer 33

Incompatible with the legal system - offenders are held morally responsible for their actions. so the determinist approach may not be as scientific as it seems, as it cannot be proven wrong its unfalsifiable

Question 34

What is a strength of freewill?

Answer 34

People who have an internal LOC are more likely to be mentally healthy as seen in Roberts et al 2000 who found people with an external LOC were more likely to be diagnosed with depression - we have control

Question 35

What is a weakness of freewill?

Answer 35

Soon et al 2008 found that brain activity decided when to press a button on the left or right up to 10 seconds before participants responded consciously and were aware of their decision - shows our most basic experiences of choice are determined for us

Question 36

What did Descartes and John Locke believe about nature vs nurture?

Answer 36

Descartes believed that human characteristics are a result of heredity (genetic transmission of mental and physical characteristics)
Locke believed that the mind is a blank slate when we are born and as an empiricist, we learn through exp

Question 37

What is the heredity coefficient for IQ?

Answer 37

0.5, which shows nature and nurture work together

Question 38

What did Lerner 1986 identify about the nurture side of the debate?

Answer 38

Levels of the environment including post-natal experiences and historical and cultural contexts

Question 39

What is the interactionist approach?

Answer 39

Nature and nurture influence and interact with each other to the extent that it doesn’t make sense to separate the two (Belsky and Rovine 1987 who suggested attachment is a two way street)

Question 40

What is the diathesis stress model?

Answer 40

An interactionist approach based on mental illness (Dias and Ressler 2014 gave mice a shock when exposed to a smell, children and grandchildren feared the smell too)

Question 41

What is epigenetics in the nature/nurture debate?

Answer 41

Genetic activity can change through interaction with the environment as marks are left on our DNA that is passed onto future generations (e.g. smoking) an example is Tienari et al 2004 who found in a group of adoptees those were more likely to be diagnosed with S if had the genes but also a dysfunctional family

Question 42

What is the implications of nature vs nurture in education?

Answer 42

Nature argues we should be streamlined in schools as our IQ is innate
Nurture argues that we should put everyone in the same classes as we can all achieve with effective teaching and support

Question 43

What is the implications of nature vs nurture in mental illness?

Answer 43

Nature argues we should have a drug therapy that focuses on targeting biology
Nurture argues the therapy should focus on the individuals interaction with the environment

Question 44

What is the implications of nature vs nurture in the criminal justice system?

Answer 44

Nature argues that we should lock people up as they have no control over their behaviour as genetically predisposed to criminality
Nurture argues we should let them be free as all offenders can be rehabilitated

Question 45

What is 3 points in the difficulty of separating out the effect of nature vs nurture?

Answer 45

Shared and unshared environments - even siblings with the same family may not have exact same environment so may react to life events differently suggested by Dunn and Plomin 1960
Constructivism - people create own nurture based on whats appropriate for their nature
Geneotype-environment interaction - Scarr and McCartney 1983 put forward 3 types of interaction (passive which is parents genes influence children, evocative which is genes shape environment child grew up in and active which is where we create our own environment due to experience)

Question 46

What do Scarr and McCartney’s types of interaction suggest about nature and nurture?

Answer 46

It is a complex, multi-layered relationship

Question 47

What is holism and reductionism concerned with?

Answer 47

At what level we should explain human behaviour

Question 48

What is reductionism?

Answer 48

The belief that human bheaviour is best explained by breaking it down into smaller, constituent parts

Question 49

What is biological and environmental reductionism?

Answer 49

B - explaining psychological phenomena at a lower biological level
E - explaining behaviour in terms of stimulus-response links that have been learnt through experience

Question 50

What is holism?

Answer 50

Looking at the whole person rather than one specific factor to explain behaviour

Question 51

What do Gestalt psychologists suggest about holism?

Answer 51

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” - we cannot understand something by looking at smaller elements as it doesn’t make sense, this is supported by humanistic psychologists

Question 52

What is levels of explanation in psychology?

Answer 52

Different ways of explaining the same phenomena in psychology with some being more reductionist than others

Question 53

What are the 6 stages in the levels of explanation?

Answer 53

Social cognition, social interactions, cognition and emotions, physiology, neurochemical, genetics
It gets more reductionist as it goes down

Question 54

What is a strength of reductionism?

Answer 54

It supports psychology as a science as we can create operationalised variables by breaking it down into smaller parts so we can study them more reliably, it gives it greater scientific credability

Question 55

What is a weakness of reductionism?

Answer 55

It lacks validity as they oversimplify complex concepts as they may ignore factors that contribute to behaviour so therefore only form part of an explanation

Question 56

What is a strength of holism?

Answer 56

Same level/holism explanations provide a more complete and global understanding of behaviour than reductionist ones

Question 57

What is a weakness of holism?

Answer 57

They tend not to lend themselves to scientific testing as they come across vague and speculative as they become more complex, they are seen as loose concepts so they lack empirical evidence

Question 58

What are ethical implications?

Answer 58

The impact psychological research could have on peoples rights. how it affects public policy and the way certain groups of people are viewed and treated

Question 59

What is socially sensitive research?

Answer 59

Any research which has ethical implications that impact outside the research context. It could affect the participants, researchers or potentially different groups of people

Question 60

Give 3 examples of socially sensitive research…

Answer 60

Lowney 1995 - research into teenage Satanists in the USA who drunk underage and took drugs
Humphreys 1970 - research into social interactions and practices of homosexuals meeting in public toilets for sex
Raine 1996 - research into brain scans of violent criminals who had ‘damage’ in the frontal lobe