issues and debates A01 Flashcards
Gender Bias
The differential treatment and/or representation of males and females, based on stereotypes and not on real differences.
Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) concluded that there were only four differences between boys and girls:
Girls have greater verbal ability.
Boys have greater visual and spatial abilities.
Boys have greater arithmetical ability, which is a difference that only appears at adolescence.
Girls are less aggressive than boys.
Alpha Bias
An alpha bias refers to theories that exaggerate the differences between males and females.
Beta Bias
A beta bias refers to theories that ignore or minimise sex differences. These theories often assume that the findings from studies using males can apply equally to females.
Androcentrism
Theories which are centred on, or focused on males.
Culture Bias
Cultural bias is the tendency to judge people in terms of one’s own cultural assumptions.
Ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism means seeing the world only from one’s own cultural perspective, and believing that this one perspective is both normal and correct.
Universality
When a theory is described as universal, it means that it can apply to all people, irrespective of gender and culture.
biological determinism
Biological determinism refers to the idea that all human behaviour is innate and determined by genes.
Determinism
Determinism is the view that free will is an illusion, and that our behaviour is governed by internal or external forces over which we have no control.
Environmental Determinism
Environmental determinism is the view that behaviour is determined or caused by forces outside the individual. Environmental determinism posits that our behaviour is caused by previous experience learned through classical and operant conditioning.
Hard Determinism
Hard determinism is the view that forces outside of our control (e.g. biology or past experience) shape our behaviour. Hard determinism is seen as incompatible with free will.
Psychic Determinism
Psychic determinism claims that human behaviour is the result of childhood experiences and innate drives (id, ego and superego), as in Freud’s model of psychological development.
Soft Determinism
Soft determinism is an alternative position favoured by many psychologists. According to soft determinism, behaviour is constrained by the environment or biological make-up, but only to a certain extent.
Free Will
Free will is the idea that we can play an active role and have choice in how we behave. The assumption is that individuals are free to choose their behaviour and are self-determined.
Environment
The environment is seen as everything outside the body, which can include people, events and the physical world.
Heredity
Heredity is the process by which traits are passed down genetically from one generation to the next.
Interactionist Approach
An interactionist approach argues that several levels of explanation are necessary to explain a particular behaviour, ranging from lower (biological) to higher levels (social and cultural).
Nature- Nurture Debate
The nature versus nurture debate is one of the oldest debates in psychology. It centres on the relative contributions of genetic inheritance and environmental factors to human development and behaviour.
Reductionism
Reductionism is the belief that human behaviour can be explained by breaking it down into simpler component parts.
Biological Reductionism
Biological reductionism refers to the way that biological psychologists try to reduce behaviour to a physical level and explain it in terms of neurons, neurotransmitters, hormones, brain structure, etc.
Environmental Reductionism
Environmental reductionism is also known as stimulus-response reductionism. Behaviourists assume that all behaviour can be reduced to the simple building blocks of S-R (stimulus-response) associations and that complex behaviours are a series of S-R chains.
Experimental Reductionism
Experimental Reductionism is where a complex behaviour is reduced to a single (isolated) variable for the purpose of testing.
Holism
Holism comes from the Greek word ‘holos’, which means ‘all’, ‘whole’ or ‘entire’ and is the idea that human behaviour should be viewed as a whole integrated experience, and not as separate parts.
Interactionist Approach
An interactionist approach argues that several levels of explanation are necessary to explain a particular behaviour, ranging from lower (biological) to higher levels (social and cultural).
Parsimony
Parsimony is the idea that complex phenomena should be explained in the simplest terms possible.
Idiographic
The term ‘idiographic’ comes from the Greek word ‘idios’, which means ‘own’ or ‘private’. Psychologists who take an idiographic approach focus on the individual, and emphasise the unique personal experience of human nature.
Nomothetic
The term ‘nomothetic’ comes from the Greek word ‘nomos’ which means ‘law’. Psychologists who take a nomothetic approach are concerned with establishing general laws, based on the study of large groups of people, and the use of statistical (quantitative) techniques to analyse data.
Ethical Implications
Ethical implications consider the impact or consequences that psychological research has on the rights of other people in a wider context, not just the participants taking part in the research.
Social Sensitivity
Sieber and Stanley (1988) used the term social sensitivity to describe studies where there are potential social consequences for the participants or the group of people represented by the research.
