Issues and debates: culture and gender (soc)

Question 1

INTRO

Culture and Gender Bias

Answer 1

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).

Question 2

A01 & A03 (aren’t issues)

Answer 2

A01:
In social psychology originally Milgram’s research was generalised to females, this was thought to be a beta bias. However, after replication studies including females there is little difference in obedience rates between males and females, therefore this behaviour has gender universality.

A03
gender: burger, no significant difference between results of male or female

Question 3

A01 & A03 (are issues)

Answer 3

A01:
- There is both beta bias and etic bias in prejudice research as well, as it is largely conducted on male samples/western cultures ignoring the possibility of different attitudes/behaviour being displayed by women/collectivist cultures.

A03:
- culture: kilham and mann, countries with low PDI had lower obedience lvels than countries with high PDI