Need To Know Issues And Debates

Question 1

Gender bias

Answer 1

-differential treatment or representation of men and women based on stereotypes rather than real differences

Question 2

Androcentrism

Answer 2

• taking male thinking/behaviour as normal

- regarding female thinking/behaviour as deviant, inferiour, abnormal, ‘other’ when different.

Question 3

Alpha bias

Answer 3

• tendency to exaggerate differences between men and women

- means theories deviate one gender in comparison to another

Question 4

Beta bias

Answer 4

• occurs when differences between men and women are minimised
• often happens when findings obtained from men are applied to women without additional validation.

Question 5

Universality

Answer 5

-aim to develop theories that apply to all people which may include real differences

Question 6

Culture bias

Answer 6

• judging all people in terms of your own cultural assumptions which biases your judgement

Question 7

Ethnocentrism

Answer 7

• belief in superiority of ones own cultural group
• eg Ainsworths strange situation showed the norms and values of American culture and showed the ideal attachement type as being secure

Question 8

Cultural relativism

Answer 8

• all cultures are worthy of respect and that in studying another culture we need to try and understand the way a particular culture sees the world

Question 9

Imposed Etic

Answer 9

• whereby behavior from outside of a particular culture are then described those behavior as universal

Question 10

Free will

Answer 10

-each individual has power to make choices about their behaviour and aren’t controlled by biological or external forces

Question 11

Determinism

Answer 11

• behaviour controlled by external or internal factors acting upon individual

Question 12

Hard determinism

Answer 12

• all behaviour can be predicted

- no free will which means the two incompatible

Question 13

Soft determinism

Answer 13

-version of determinism that allows for some element of free will

Question 14

Environmental determinism

Answer 14

• behaviour is under control of features in external environment such as reinforcement and punishment ie social forces.
• eg behaviourist approach sees behaviour as the product of reinforcement and punishment

Question 15

Biological determinism

Answer 15

• behavior is under control of hormones, brain activity and genetic
• eg mental illness like depression caused by low levels of serotonin

Question 16

Psychic determinism

Answer 16

-thoughts and feelings are determined by life or death instincts and by repressed conflicts

Question 17

Causal explanations

Answer 17

• science is heavily deterministic in its search for causal relationships as it seeks to discover whether x causes y or whether IV causes changes in the DV

Question 18

Environment

Answer 18

• seen as everything outside body which can include people, events and the physical world

Question 19

Heredity

Answer 19

• process by which resists are passed down genetically from one generation to the next

Question 20

Interactionist approach

Answer 20

-approach argues several levels of explanation are necessary to explain a particular behaviour ranging from lower ( biological) to higher levels (social and cultural)

Question 21

Nature /nurture debate

Answer 21

• centres on relative contributions of genetic inheritance and environmental factors to human development and behaviour

Question 22

Biological reductionism

Answer 22

• refers to way that biological psychologists try to reduce behaviour to physical level and explain it in terms of
• neurons
• neurotransmitters
• hormones
• brain structure

Question 23

Environmental reductionism

Answer 23

• aka stimulus response reductionism
• Behaviourists assume all behaviour can be reduced to simple building blocks of stimulus response associations and complex behaviours are a series of S-R chains

Question 24

Experimental reductionism

Answer 24

• where complex behaviour is reduced to a single variable for the purpose of testing

Question 25

Holism

Answer 25

-idea that human behaviour should be viewed as a whole integrated experience and not as separate parts

Question 26

Levels of explanations

Answer 26

• reductionist approach suggests behaviour can be explained at different levels
• eg social and cultural, psychological or biological

Question 27

Parsimony

Answer 27

-idea that complex phenomena should be explained in the simplest terms possible

Question 28

Reductionism

Answer 28

-belief that human behaviour can be explained by breaking it down into simpler component parts

Question 29

Idiographic approach

Answer 29

• psychologists who take an idiographic approach focus on individual
• emphasise unique personal experience of human nature

Question 30

Nomothetic approach

Answer 30

• psychologists who take a nomothetic approach are concerned with establishing general laws based on study of large groups of people
• with the use of statistical (quantitative) techniques to analyse data

Question 31

Ethical implications

Answer 31

• ethical implications consider impact or consequences that psychological research has on rights of other people in a wider context
• not just participants taking part in research

Question 32

Social sensitivity

Answer 32

• Sieber and Stanley used term social sensitivity to describe studies
• where there are potential social consequences for participants or group of people represented by research