Issues and Debates: Gender Bias

Question 1

Gender bias

Answer 1

Treating a person in a more favourable or less favourable way based on gender

Question 2

Alpha bias

Answer 2

Misrepresentation of behaviour because researchers overestimate or exaggerate differences between men and women

Question 3

Beta bias

Answer 3

Misrepresentation of behaviour because researchers underestimate or minimise differences between men and women.

Question 4

Androcentrism

Answer 4

Having a male-centred view of the world
Male behaviour is judged to be the norm, more acceptable + desirable

Question 5

Universality

Answer 5

Where a theory is thought to apply to all people in the same way, despite, any differences between genders

Question 6

How Freud shows Alpha Bias

Answer 6

Says, women are morally inferior to men:
Process of identification - girls do not identify with their mothers as strongly as boys identify with their fathers.
Girls identify passively, boys identify actively.
- If girls’ identification is weaker, this means they will internalise weaker morals.
= AB misrepresenting behaviour as Freud exaggerated the differences between men + women - in terms of morality

Question 7

How Kohlberg’s Moral Development shows Beta Bias

Answer 7

Theory of moral development based largely on a longitudinal study of male sample - women’s reasoning was lower than men’s ^ women’s morality less sophisticated than men.
Gilligan - Female morality had a focus on caring for others + not hurting someone else’s feelings - an ethic of care.
= BB minimised the differences between men + women’s morality by assuming male responses in his research would apply to women.

Question 8

Biological research into stress response

Answer 8

Most research is conducted with male animals.
Scientists stated that fluctuating hormones would render results in experiments, even when studying conditions more likely to affect women.
= BB based on male animals + thought to be universal - minimised differences in the stress response between men + women - fail to consider a ‘tend + befriend’ response.
Androcentrism: create misleading assumptions about female behaviour + have negative implications for females.

Question 9

What can be done

Answer 9

AB: change in publication of results - Bias towards publishing positive results, results that find gender differences are more likely to get published than those which don’t - exaggerates differences.
BB: improve sampling - not having all male samples in studies - Milgram, Asch, Zimbardo - ensure women are included.
BB: Not generalising findings from research with male p’s to females, or the other way round.