ISSUES & DEBATES: Gender & Cultural Bias

Question 1

What is meant by bias?

Answer 1

Any factor (e.g. attitudes, behaviours, beliefs) that interferes with the validity of the research process

Question 2

Bias may lead to researchers forming conclusions which favour… ?

Answer 2

Universality

Question 3

What does bias underime?

Answer 3

Psychological claims to universality

Question 4

What is meant by universality?

Answer 4

When the conclusions drawn can be applied to everyone, anywhere, regardless of time and culture

Question 5

What are the 2 types of gender bias?

Answer 5

1. Alpha bias
2. Beta bias

Question 6

What is Alpha bias?

Answer 6

Psychological research that over-emphasize the differences between males and females

Question 7

What does Alpha bias usually favour and devalue?

Answer 7

Favour men & devalue women

Question 8

How does Freud show Alpha bias in his theory of psychosexual development?

Answer 8

During Phallic stage:
- both boys and girls develop a desire for their opposite-gender parent
Boys= castration anxiety= resolved when boy identifies with father

Girls= eventual identification of
same-gender parent is weaker= weaker Superego

Therefore, girls/women more inferior to boys/men

Question 9

What is Beta bias?

Answer 9

Psychological research that differences between males and females

Question 10

Beta bias can even happen when…?

Answer 10

Women are excluded from the research process

Question 11

How is Research on the fight or flight response an example of Beta bias? (explain)

Answer 11

• biological research has favoured using male animals bc female behaviour is affected by regular hormonal changes due to ovulation
• early research assumed both males and females respond to threatening situations with fight or flight
• This simply ignores any possible differences

Question 12

Who’s research disproves early research on the flight or flight response? (how)

Answer 12

Taylor et al

Describes the tend and befriend response:
- Women= have more oxytocin (‘love’ hormone)
- reduces fight or flight response & enhances preference for ‘tend and befriend’

Question 13

Research that minimises gender differences may result in…?

Answer 13

A misinterpretation of women’s behaviour

Question 14

What studies have misinterpreted men?

Answer 14

Attachment - thought that emotional care is provided solely by mothers

Research on the role of the father= fathers can supply the emotional care that mothers are seen to do

Question 15

What are Alpha and Beta bias consequences of?

Answer 15

Androcentrism

Question 16

What is meant by Androcentrism?

Answer 16

Male-centred: when ‘normal’ behaviour is judged according to a male standard

Question 17

Over the years, what type of version of the world has been presented by psychology?

Answer 17

Male-dominated

Question 18

What does this suggests about traditional psychology as a subject?
- what type of perspective is this?

Answer 18

It has been a subject produced by men, for men, and about men

• an androcentric perspective

Question 19

What has many women’s misunderstood behaviour been taken as?

Answer 19

A sign of illness

Question 20

WIDER READING: How has male bias in medical trails ruined women’s health (example of beta bias):

• what has centuries of female exclusion meant?
• what did a Greek philosopher (what’s his name?) characterise a female as?
• what has this belief done?
• What kind of healthcare system have we ended up with?
• what have women been excluded from?
• What do doctors fill knowledge gaps with? (give an example)
• what must women do when their is limited knowledge on their diseases/problem?
• what’s an example of a disease many women get that’s linked to menstruation?
• what are these patients viewed as by their treating doctors?
• what is the general feeling in medicine about a women’s reaction to having this disease?

Answer 20

• women’s diseases are often missed, misdiagnosed or remain a total mystery
• Aristotle characterised a female as a ‘mutilated male’
• this belief has persisted in western medical culture
• one that has been made by men for men
• medical & science knowledge production
• hysteria narratives (e.g. when women keep returning to the doctor but are stubbornly refusing to be saved)
• make lifestyle changes and take control of their diseases/problem
• Endometriosis
• “reproductive bodies with hysterical tendencies”
• hysterical

Question 21

EVALUATION PEEL: Biological Vs social explanations (LIMITATION)

• what are gender differences often presented as? Is this true?
• what did … (researchers) do?
• what did they conclude?
• what did … (researchers) think about these differences?
• what happens to these findings?
• what other researcher falsified … (researchers) findings?
• what methods did they do?
• what did they find out?
• what does this suggests about… (researchers) data?
• so what should we be wary of?

Answer 21

P: gender differences often presented as fixed and enduring (i.e. alpha bias) when they aren’t

E: Maccoby & Jacklin - presented findings of several gender studies which concluded that:
- Girls have superior verbal ability
- Boys have better spatial ability

E: Maccoby & Jacklin suggested these differences are ‘hardwired’ into brain before birth
- such findings become widely reported and seen as facts

Joel et al:
- used brain scanning
- found no such sex differences in brain structure or processing
- possible that data from Maccoby & Jacklin was popularised bc fitted existing stereotypes
- girls as ‘speakers’ and boys as ‘doers’

L: we should be wary of accepting research findings as biological facts when they might be better explained as social stereotypes

Question 22

EVALUATION PEEL: Biological Vs social explanations (CA/strength)

• what should psychologists not stop doing?
• which researcher found about about a possible biological truth about women?
• what is this?
• why is this?
• what does this suggest overall? (There may be… but we should be wary of…)

Answer 22

P: does not mean psychologists should avoid studying possible gender differences in the brain

E: Ingalhalikar
- popular social stereotypes that women are better at multitasking may have some biological truth to it

E:
- woman’s brain may benefit from better connections between L & H hemispheres than in a man’s brain

L: may be biological differences but we should still be wary of exaggerating the effect they may have on behaviour

Question 23

EVALUATION PEEL: Sexism in research (LIMITATION)
- what does gender bias promote?
- what happens to women in university departments?
- which department especially?
- What did 2 different researchers say?
- what do these expectations likely mean about women in research studies?
- what does this possibly cause the institution structures and methods of psychology to produce?

Answer 23

p: promotes sexism in the research process

E: women remain unrepresented in university departments (particularly in science)

Murphey et al: lectures in psychology departments most likely to be men

Nicolson: male researchers may expect women to be irrational and unable to complete complex tasks

E: such expectations likely mean that women underperform in research studies

L: means that the institution structures and methods of psychology may produce findings that are gender-biased

Question 24

EVALUATION PEEL: gender-biased research (LIMITATION)
- what may happen to research that challenges gender biases?
- what did… (researcher) analyse?
- what did they find? (2 things)
- what are the consequences?
- what did researchers argue that?
- what does it suggest about gender bias in psychological research?

Answer 24

P: research challenging gender biases may not be published

E: Formanowicz et al - analysed more than 1,000 articles relating to gender bias, published over 8 years
- found that research on gender bias is funded less often & published by less prestigious journals= not taken seriously
- consequences= fewer scholars become aware of it or apply it within their own work

E: researchers argued that this still held true when gender bias was compared with other forms of bias (e.g. ethnic bias)

L: suggests that gender bias in psychological research may not be taken as seriously as other forms of bias

Question 25

EVALUATION PEEL: understanding bias (LIMITATION)
- what may gender-biased research create?
- what other 2 things may gender-biased research fail to do?
- what may women feel when men do a certain thing (& what is this certain thing)?
- what researcher said this?
- so gender bias research is not just a…?
- what else may it have?
- what do many modern researchers now recognise? What is this called?
- what researchers included this in their study? and how?
- what was their study on?

Answer 25

P: gender-biased research may create misleading assumptions about female behaviour
& fail to challenge negative stereotypes and validate discriminatory practises

E: When men set the standard of normality it becomes normal for women to feel abnormal (Tavris)
- gender bias in research= not just a methodological problem
- may have damaging consequences which affect lives of real women

E: many modern researchers now recognise the effect their own values & assumptions have on the nature of their work (reflexivity)

Lambert & Lambert: Included reflexivity on how their gender-related experiences influenced their readings of events in their study of lack of women in executive positions in accounting firms.