issues and debates in psychology

Question 1

define issue

Answer 1

an area of consideration/concern for psychologists

Question 2

define debate

Answer 2

an area of ongoing discussion that has more than one side

Question 3

define bias

Answer 3

tendency to treat one individual or group in a. different way from others, which creates a distorted view of the world

Question 4

define universality

Answer 4

the idea that a theory can apply to all people, irrespective of gender and culture

Question 5

define gender bias

Answer 5

a type of bias where psychological research or theory may offer a view that does not justifiably represent the experience of men and women

Question 6

define andocentrism

Answer 6

research focuses on and revolve around men, often to the neglect of women

Question 7

examples of androcentrism

Answer 7

• bowlby suggested women should stay at home and look after children
• freud said women suffer from “penis envy”
• PMS is a social construction to use female biology against them

Question 8

define alpha bias

Answer 8

psychological research that over exaggerates or overestimates between the senses, which may enhance or undervalue members of either sex

Question 9

example of alpha bias

Answer 9

freud argues women develop weaker superegos

Question 10

define beta bias

Answer 10

psychological research that ignores or minimises differences between the sexes, usually where females are not part of the research process and findings are assumes to apply to both sexes

Question 11

examples of beta bias

Answer 11

• bem’s theory of androgyny as she views all characteristics in the same level field
• fight or flight research ignores women’s response “tend and befriend”

Question 12

why can you not eradicate gender differences

Answer 12

example of beta bias as we need to recognise differences but not superiority of genders

Question 13

evaluation of gender bias strengths

Answer 13

+ feminist psychology helps to redress the imbalances in psychology by recognising the biological differences between the genders and help to reduce the bias by having real world application, e.g creating training programmes to help women become leaders
+ reverse alpha bias helps to highlight where women are better, where Cornwell et al found women are better at learning, which helps to counter stereotypes

Question 14

evaluation of gender bias weaknesses

Answer 14

• arguing for equality takes away women’s special needs, e.g childbirth and breastfeeding, and doesn’t help achieve equality
  -methodology is flawed as Rosenthal found male experiments were more friendly to female participants which led to males not performing as well
• lab experiments to may be an example of institutionalised sexism as studies in real settings found women and men’s leadership qualities were similar
• gender bias remains unchallenged, as seen in Darwin’s theory where women are choosy

Question 15

define culture bias

Answer 15

a tendency to ignore cultural differences and interpret all phenomena through the lens of one’s own culture

Question 16

define culture

Answer 16

• the ideas, cultures and social behaviours of a particular group or society
• Gross argues objective aspects are things that can be seen like buildings, music and food and subjective aspects are beliefs and values

Question 17

define western bias

Answer 17

• psychologists are trained in the West and conduct research based on Western culture and norms
• Rozenzweig found 64% of world’s psychologists are American

Question 18

define universality (culture)

Answer 18

assumption that research findings can be applied to everyone

Question 19

define ethnocentrism

Answer 19

use of our own cultural group as a basis for judgements about other groups

Question 20

define alpha bias in culture and example

Answer 20

• theories that assume there are real differences between cultures
• Takano and Osaka reviewed 15 studies that compared individualist and collectivist cultures in Japan and US and found 14/15 did not find difference in conformity

Question 21

define beta bias in culture and example

Answer 21

• theories that ignore cultural differences
• IQ tests like US military one focus on American ideals and thus would determine people to have a low IQ

Question 22

define imposed ethic and example

Answer 22

• an approach that looks at behaviour from the outside of a given culture and attempts to decide behaviours that are universal
• Asch as he only studied Americans
• Milgram tried to explain obedience of German soldiers, but used American partisans to generalise the findings

Question 23

define emic approach

Answer 23

approach that looks within cultures to identify behaviours that are specific to that culture

Question 24

define cultural relativism

Answer 24

• ideas that things are observed in research only make sense from the perspective of the culture being observed and all cultures are of equal value
• behaviours seen as statistical,t, infrequency may be seen as abnormal in some cultures more than others like hearing voices

Question 25

evaluation of gender bias strengths

Answer 25

+ can be reduced now as psychologists can travel and go to international conferences to understand other cultures
+ can encourage indigenous psychologists like afrocentrism movement, which aimed to look into the culture and how it is relevant to their behaviour

Question 26

evaluation of culture bias weaknesses

Answer 26

• can create or reinforce stereotypes
• bias in research methods as Baron and Byme found 94% of studies on social psychology were conducted in North America
• emic approaches can only be applied within that culture so it is hard and time consuming to get universal data
• cross cultural research is difficult as it requires translators and may not be carried out exactly the same