issues and ethical debates

Question 1

how many types of gender bias are there

Answer 1

2

Question 2

what are the 2 type of gender bias

Answer 2

alpha bias and beta bias

Question 3

alpha bias

Answer 3

when differences between genders are overexaggerated

Question 4

beta bias

Answer 4

difference between males and females are minimalised or ignored

Question 5

what does bias mean

Answer 5

showing favouritism to one group

Question 6

gender bias

Answer 6

showing favouritism towards or prejudice against a particular gender

Question 7

what is it called when theories are centered on or dominated by males. normal behaviour is judged according to males standard and females behaviour are often judged as abnormal

Answer 7

androcentrism

Question 8

androcentrism

Answer 8

theories are centered on or dominated by males. normal behaviour is judged according to males standard and females behaviour are often judged as abnormal

Question 9

alpha + beta bias are consequences of

Answer 9

androcentrism

Question 10

strengths of gender bias

Answer 10

strength of gender bias in psychological research is that it allows researchers to propose solution to the problem.
e.g. some psychologists attempt to develop theories that emphasises the importance and value of women rather than belittle them.. This is supported by cornwell et al who noted that females are better learning as they were more attentive and organised. This types of research helps to reduce or challege gender sterotypes.

Question 11

limitations of gender bias

Answer 11

1) it could create misleading assuimption as maccoby and jacklin has found that girls had better verbal abilities and boys had spatial abilities and these where are innate.
however joel et al carried our brain structure and found no difference in brain structure. Therefore we must be careful in assuming research findings biological facts when they be better explained at social stereotypes

Question 12

cultural bias definition

Answer 12

tendency to judge ppl interms of one’s own cultural assumption

Question 13

definition of ethnocentrism

Answer 13

seeing the world only from one’s own culture perspective is both normal and correct

Question 14

etic approach

Answer 14

assume to apply in one culture, universally

Question 15

imposed etic approach

Answer 15

when a construct of one culture is seen inappropriate to each other

Question 16

emic approach

Answer 16

only applied to one culture, so they can vary from places to place

Question 17

cultural relativism

Answer 17

regarding beliefs and values, practices cultures from that viewpoint

Question 18

one strength of culture bias

Answer 18

one strength is the emergence of cultural psychology which is the study of how people are shaped by their cultural experiences. This field incorporates work from other disciplines such as anthropology, sociology and political science. They aim to to avoid ethnocentrism assumption by taking an emic approach and conducting research and focuses on cross culture. these suggest that modern psychologist are mindul of modern implication and trying to avoid them.

Question 19

limitation of culture bias

Answer 19

one limitation is that most studies in psychology are culturally biased. for example Asch and Milgrams studies were carried out in America on had used white, middle classed males. However replication of their studies have found other results. Replication of Aschs studies in a collectivist culture found higher conformity level than the original study which was individualist culture. This suggests that research carried out in social influence should only be applied to indiviualist culture.

Question 20

strength of free will

Answer 20

Humanist psychologists argue against the determinism view, claiming that humans have self-determination and free will and that behaviour is not the result of any single cause. Furthermore, there is plenty of evidence to support humanist psychologists. For example, identical twin studies typically find an 80% similarity in intelligence scores and a 40% similarity in the likelihood of depression. However, as identical twins share 100% of their genes, these results suggest that 20% is caused by other (environmental) factors. This demonstrates that biological determinism is unable to explain any particular behaviour,

Question 21

strength for determinism (freud)

Answer 21

Freud appears to support a deterministic point of view, in that he argued that the unconscious controls our actions and our thoughts, the goal of psychoanalysis is to help patients overcome that force. He argued that all of us have the potential to control our lives but that many of us are too afraid to do so, which means we give up our freedom and allow our lives to be governed by circumstance, other people, political ideology or irrational feelings. However, determinism is not inevitable, and Fromm sees the essence of human freedom in being the choice between good and evil.

Question 22

strength for determinism (skinners theory)

Answer 22

the idea of free will has attracted similar criticisms. Some psychologists, such as Skinner, argue that free will is an illusion. Skinner insisted that our behaviour is in fact environmentally determined, even if we are unable (or unwilling) to admit it. Also, more recent evidence provides some support for Skinner’s claim. For example, Libet et al. (1983) found that the motor regions of the brain become active before a person registers conscious awareness of a decision, i.e. the decision to move the finger was actually a pre-determined action of the brain. This strongly suggests that many responses are biologically determined and that although we may believe that we have free will, Skinner’s claim that free will is an illusion, may be correct.

Question 23

strength for nature

Answer 23

concordance rate provides strong support for the nature arguement. Gottesman found that the concordance rate for identical twins (monozygotic) is 48% and 17% for non-identical twins (dizygotic twin) for a genetic disorder scizophrenia. This suggests that schizophrenia is a genetic disorder as identical twins share the exact same genes. This supports that natavism /nature, that knowledge and behaviour are inherited via our genetics.

Question 24

strength for nurture

Answer 24

Social learning theory and Bandura’s bobo doll study provides evidence support for the nurture argument. Bandura showed that children would copy and imitate aggressive roles behaviour demonstrated by adult model roles. Bandura also demonstrated that other environmental factors such as the same sex model impacted their likelihood of imitation. This suports the nature argument as behaviour are gained through sensory experiment and their environment.

Question 25

strength for holism

Answer 25

a strength for holism is its application to social psychology. For example, the effects of conformity to social rules and deindivualisation of the prisnor and gurads in the stanford prison experiment cannnot be explained by studying the participent as indiviuals. This is because the interaction between the people and the behaviour of the group that is important, conformity and deindiviualisation cannot be understood at an indiviual level. This suggests the holstic explanation provide a more complex and global understanding of behaviour than reductionsit approach.

Question 26

limitation of holism

Answer 26

The holistic explanation attempts to blend different levels of explanation; holistic theory and approaches attempt to provide a complete and realistic understanding of human behaviour. However, holistic explanations do not establish causation because they do not examine behaviour in terms of operationalised variables that can be manipulated and measured. This means that holistic explanations are view as unscientific.

Question 27

strength of reductionism

Answer 27

a reductionist approach often forms the basis if research. For example, behaviourist break down complex learning int simple stimulus-response links within the laboratory. This breaks behaviours up. Thus making it possible to conduct experiment or record observations in a meaningful and reliable way. This gives psychology greater creadibility in comparson to other science.

Question 28

limiation of reductionism

Answer 28

oversiplified

Question 29

interactionist approach

Answer 29

Schizophrenia can be explained by the stress-diathesis model. A child may have inherited the gene from their parents (nature). This means that they are predisposed to the gene.
However, environmental factors, (nurture) such as a stressful life event, may trigger the activation of the gene, which then results in a schizophrenic episode. There is growing evidence that the stress-diathesis model offers a more credible explanation for behaviour than looking at genetics and the environment as separate factors.

Question 30

strength of idiogrraphic approach

Answer 30

the qualatative depth it produces gives an in depth and more compete accound of the indiviual. E.g, the case studies conducted HM and Clive wearing demonstrated that diff types of LTM re stored in diff areas of the brain leading to development of impoved physchologist theories further research of localisatio and memory. This strengthens the use of IA as it emphasises how important it is to approach things from a qualatitive approach

Question 31

limitation if IA

Answer 31

is thta research method lacks scientific rigour. Eg case studies and unstrusctured interviews rely heavily on indiviual and subjective interpretation and therfore can be open to researcher bias. This suggests that IA is limited and lacks validiy when developing theories due to the unscientific nature of the approach.

Question 32

strength of NA

Answer 32

ultaisation of highly scientific method. produces reliable data, by adopting standard conditions and having high levels of contol of extraneous and comfounding variables. This strengthens the useof NA as the findings wil have greater scientific creditablity due to their method of collection.