Summary AQA A level psychology: Issues and Debates
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Course
Issues and Debates
Institution
AQA
Whilst following the specification of AQA, these notes would be useful for any exam board to understand issues and debates better. Covers every element of the spec, in great depth in order to more easily understand. Breaks each section into easily manageable topics, useful when revising before exam...
Issues and debates
Contents
Gender and culture in psychology
Free will and determinism
The nature-nurture debate
Holism and reductionism
Idiographic and nomothetic
Ethical implications
,Gender and culture in psychology
Most psychological research studies focus on one particular cultural group or gender.
Therefore, research and theories often have gender or culture bias.
Gender bias
Reductionism vs holism
Ethnocentrism
Nature vs nurture
Approaches
Determinism vs free will
Ethics (e.g. socially sensitive research)
Definition Examples
Andro Male-centered, behavior judged to a male Zimbardo / Ash / Milgram
centris standard. Psychology presents a male- Women 2x more likely to be
m dominated version of the world, women’s diagnosed with depression
behaviors are therefore misunderstood or
unnecessarily pathologized
Alpha Emphasizes differences between male Freud’s psychodynamic theory
bias and female behavior. Historically used to Hrdy – men can’t play role of
devalue women mother
Sexual selection (justifies male
promiscuity)
Beta Focuses on similarities between male and Milgram, Ash, Zimbardo
bias female behavior and therefore ignores / Attachment focuses on role of the
minimizes the differences mother
Previous research into fight / flight
response used only male birds (*)
* Taylor found that women actually have the tend and befriend response, showing that not
including female perspectives in psychology is unsophisticated.
Evaluation:
Practical applications
o Existence of gender bias becoming more widely acknowledged means
organisations can anonymise details of applicants
o E.g. when candidates names removed from Hubble Space telescope 2018,
women were selected at a higher rate
o Shows psychology can be used to benefit underrepresented groups in society,
ensuring social justice & leading to more female role models for young women
Awareness of male gender bias
o Can work against males / alpha biased theories emphasise value of women
, o E.g. women more likely to be diagnosed w depression and given treatments
o May be that DSM biased towards finding depression in women – male
symptoms (irritability, anger, fatigue) les likely to be found
Negative stereotypes and sexism
o Gender bias has implications for what behaviors were studied historically
o Male researchers more likely to have work published and studies which do
gender bias may be more likely to be published (publication bias)
o Research agendas may have followed male concerns – females marginalized
or ignored
o Therefore psychology could be criticized for being institutionally sexist as a
discipline
Research methods may be inherently gender biased
o Experimental methodologies are based around experiments with more real life
research to have higher ecological validity at explaining gender bias
o Standardized treatment of pts – assuming men and women respond in the same
way to experimental situations
o Rosenthal discovered experimenters more friendly / encouraging towards
female pts than male, who therefore achieve lower scores which could create
artificial differences
o Psychology therefore needs to examine the controlled environments in which
it studies behavior and establishes reliability from
Culture bias
Cultural bias is seeing the world from one’s own perspective, believing this to be right and
correct.
Ethnocentrism, whilst similar to cultural bias differs as it believes in the superiority of one’s
own cultural group.
Cultural relativity refers to the idea that the meaning of a behavior can only be understood if
specific cultural context is considered.
Examples of ethnocentrism in psychological research:
- Mary Ainsworth (imposed etic)
- Ash, Milgram, Zimbardo
- Schaeffer and Emmerson
- Definitions of abnormality (DFSN, FFA, DFIMH, SI)
- Humanistic approach – self-actualization
Social learning theory attempts to be culturally relative.
Margaret Mead took an emic approach when studying tribes in New Guinea.
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