Issues and debates: culture and gender (bio) Flashcards
INTRO
Culture and Gender Bias
Culture and gender significantly impact psychological research. Studies often assume males and females are similar, and that American participants are representative of all cultures.
Cultural Bias:
- Emic: Behaviour unique to specific cultures (e.g., collectivist vs individualist).
- Etic: Behaviour assumed to be universal across cultures.
Gender Bias:
- Alpha: Exaggerating differences between genders, often devaluing women.
- Beta: Minimising differences, generalising male findings to females (androcentrism).
A01 & A03 (gender bias)
A01:
- Research shows males have 10–20x more testosterone than females, with a spike during puberty linked to greater aggression, meaning aggression research based mainly on males may not apply to females (beta bias). Evolutionary explanations suggest male aggression was adaptive for survival and reproduction.
A03:
Dabbs et al:
- Tested testosterone levels in saliva of 692 adult male prisoners found higher levels and rapists and violent offenders, and in burglars and thieves. Same effects of distortion also found in women. This means A cause and effect relationship cannot be established between hormones and aggression.
A01 & A03 (culture bias)
A01:
- There are also cultural differences related to aggression, if aggression preferential in culture, see behaviour lead to higher social status, so more likely survive, however ignores impact of cultural harms of aggression e.g. in UK aggression discouraged from youth
- There are not gender or cultural differences in brain activity or function, therefore this explanation for aggression is not affected by gender or cultural bias in research.
A03:
Hill and Hurtado
- among the Yanomamo, aggressive males had higher social status and reproductive success, supporting evolutionary theories but ignoring the broader negative impact of aggression on society.
Rain et al
- PET scan study found abnormal brain functioning in both male and female murderers, suggesting that biological explanations are not culturally biased.
judgement
