Psychology Issues And Debates

Question 1

What is Alpha and beta bias?

Answer 1

Alpha - Difference is exaggerated (assumes real differences of culture that are better/inferior to other cultures)
Beta - Difference is ignored (believe your view is the only view)

Question 2

What is Androcentrism?

Answer 2

Psychology research is sided towards men, expects behaviour of men is the norm.

Question 3

What is collectivist or individualist culture?

Answer 3

Collectivist - value country or group before oneself
individualist - Value yourself

Question 4

What is cultural relativism?

Answer 4

Behaviour is understood if cultural context is also understood, how difficult it is to generalise other findings to other cultures.

Question 5

What is culture?

Answer 5

ways of life including arts and beliefs, laws, language and the norms and values of behaviour.

Question 6

What is an etic and emic approach?

Answer 6

Emic - studying cultural behaviour from the outside
etic - finding universal behaviours from the outside

Question 7

What is gender and gender bias?

Answer 7

Gender - socially constructed characteristics and behaviour of men and women
Gender bias - Research biased towards one gender due to one sided samples, trying to find universality between genders using one gender for behaviour and trying to find biological differences between genders.

Question 8

What is ethnocentrism?

Answer 8

Evaluating cultures using preconceptions of other cultures.

Question 9

What is universality?

Answer 9

Research considers other peoples perspectives.

Question 10

Examples of nature influence?

Answer 10

Twin studies show twins share behavioural traits
bowlby 44 thieves
statistical anomaly
bandura (learning violence from others)
little albert study
darwinism (adapting to survive)

Question 11

Examples of nurture influence?

Answer 11

Positive and negative reinforcement (skinners rats)
Bobo doll study found that children imitate behaviour
Milgrams study on obedience
zimbardo conformity to social roles
Diathesis stress model - some innate triggers may need the environment in order to trigger it under certain cases
Aggressive genes become part of the environment
Maguire taxi driver study (taxi drivers had better spatial memory due to learning environment

Question 12

What is idiographic and nomothetic?

Answer 12

Idiographic - focus on individual due to uniqueness (Qualitative and high validity)
Nomothetic - focus on groups in order to generalise results (Quantitative and reliable which can be used to generalise to other groups)