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Summary Issues and Debates - 16 Marker plans
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Discuss gender bias in psychology:A ● (**) Gender bias refers to the idea that psychological data have a bias towards one or other
O gender.
1 - When differences have not been considered properly, it leads to a biassed
:-
conclusion about gender
- Includes the different treatments of male and females as a result of stereotypes
● (*) Historically, Psychology has been mainly a male-dominated field, with research being
carried out by white middle-class men
- This means, psychological theories generally represent a male-viewpoint
- This is known as androcentrism, as research falls particularly in favour of men
There are two types of Gender bias:
● (*) Alpha bias:- Theories which exaggerate the differences between males and females
➔ Commonly used to undervalue one of the sexes (historically women)
➔ E.g., Freuds’ Women are less morally mature, because they have a less developed
superego
- Led to women being treated as second-class citizens
- Castration anxiety - Suggests women have penis envy in replacement to
castration anxiety
● (*) Beta bias:- Theories which ignore or minimise sex differences between males and
females
➔ Assumes all findings can be generalised and applied to them equally
➔ E.g., Milgram's obedience test - generalised levels of obedience to all genders
A (S) - Feminist psychology - agree that there are real Biologically based sex differences, but
O socially determined stereotypes make a far greater contribution to perceived differences. This can
3 be acknowledged by the androcentric view held by Eagly
:- - Eagly - acknowledged that women might be less effective leaders than men, but this
knowledge should be used to develop suitable training programmes and therefore create
more female leaders
(S) - Beta bias has allowed women greater opportunities such as education. However, it can also be
a disadvantage as it draws away from the needs of women, for example, the biological need for
childbirth
(L) - Has had negative consequences to society (women) - it reinforces negative stereotypes,
especially around women and justifies their mistreatment
- This leads to discrimination
- Stereotypes against women is also political - women are kept out of work and
make-dominated universities, because of research theories such as Bowlby’s critical period
- Reinforces patriarchal norms
(L) - assumptions need to be challenged - Gender bias has not been challenged in many theories.
- E.g, Darwin's evolutionary theory of sexual selection portray women as choosy and males as
the ones competing to be chosen
- However, the research found that women also compete with other females and use a
strategy to mate with more than one man
, Discuss cultural bias in psychology:
A Culture is Values, beliefs and patterns of behaviour shared by a group of people
O ● Culture bias refers to the researchers judging other cultures from the researchers cultural
1 perspective
:-
- Judging people in terms of their own cultural assumptions
● Universality = When a theory can be applied to all people regardless of gender and culture
● Ethnocentrism = Seeing the world only from one’s own cultural perspective, and believing
that this one perspective is both normal and correct
● Eurocentrism = Form of ethnocentrism that focuses on western world viewpoint
● Emic - focuses on a single culture to understand it within a local context
● Etic - focus across multiple cultures in order to understand elements that apply across all
cultures
● Alpha and Beta bias (applied to culture) =
- Alpha = exaggerated cultural differences
➔ The assumption is made that collectivist cultures are far more confmists than
individualist cultures - However, Takano and Osaka - 14/15 studies did not
support that view
- Beta = minimise or ignoring cultural differences
➔ Heavily biassed towards white American soldiers, as they scored the highest
and African-Americans scored the lowest, making them seem less intelligent
Led to negative stereotypes against African-Americans
● Cultural relativism = The idea that behaviour can be properly understood only if the cultural
context is taken into consideration
A (S) - led to psychology becoming more inclusive - this is obtained through including all sub-groups
O for research in order to generalise
3 - E.g., BUSS’ study - they collected data from 37 different countries
:-
(S) - indigenous psychologies - used to counter ethnocentrism
- Through looking at an Indigenous perspective, psychologists can discover that not all white
European cultures are universally accepted
(L) - consequences of culture bias - American Army IQ test resulting in Stereotypes and hate
against a culture
(L) - psychology students - SEARS found that most psychology students were western and highly
academic youths - resulted in strongly biassed findings and difficult to generalise different cultural
groups that are not western (white)
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