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Gender and culture bias in psychology: Gender Bias - Coggle Diagram
Gender and culture bias in psychology: Gender Bias
universality: conclusions can be applied to everyone, anywhere regardless of time or culture
psychologists hold biases that reflect the social & historical context that they live/d in - bias in the research process therefore may be inevitable
goes against psychologists' claims of universality of conclusions.
alpha bias: research that focuses on differences between men and women and therefore tends to present a view that exaggerates these differences
....exaggerated to either heighten the value of women or devalue them.
e.g.
Freud's (1905)
theory of psychosexual development. during phallic stage boys and girls develop desire for their opposite-gender parent. in boys this creates castration anxiety. the anxiety is resolved when boy identifies with same sex parent but a girl's eventual identification with her same sex parent is weaker, meaning her superego is weaker (because it develops as result of taking on same-sex parent's moral standards). therefore women/girls are morally inferior to boys/men
alpha bias can sometimes favour women in the psychodynamic approach.
-
Nancy Chodorow (1968)
suggested daughters & mothers have greater connectedness than sons an mothers because of biological similarities. as result of child's closeness, women develop better abilities to bond with others and empathise.
Beta Bias: research that focuses on similarities between men and women, and therefore tends to present a view that ignores or minimises differences.
..... this occurs when we assume research findings apply equally to both men & women even when women have been excluded from the research process.
e.g. research on
fight or flight
response. biological research generally favoured using male animals because female behaviour is affected by regular hormonal changes due to ovulation - this simply ignores any differences.
early research into fight or flight assumed both males & females respond to threatening situations with fight or flight.
Shelly Taylor et al. (2000) claimed this isn't true & described the
tend and befriend** response.
Androcentrism: male-centred, when 'normal' behaviour is judged according to a male standard (meaning that female behaviour is often judged to be 'abnormal' or 'deficient' by comparison)
alpha bias and beta bias are consequences of androcentrism..
over time, psychology has presented a male-dominated version of the world, e.g. APA published list of the 100 most influential psychologists of the 20th century which included merely 6 women.
.... suggests psychology has traditionally been a subject produced by men, for men, and about men - and androcentric perspective.
if ever considered, women's behaviour had been misunderstood and at worst, pathologized - taken as as sign of illness.
feminist have objected to the diagnostic category
premenstrual syndrome
, e.g. on the grounds that is medicalises women's emotions, such as anger, by explaining these in hormonal terms.
... mens anger, in contrast, is often seen as a rational response to external pressures (Brescroll and Uhlmann 2008)
Evaluation
P:
gender differences are often presented as fixed and enduring (i.e. alpha bias) when they're not.
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E:
Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) presented the finding of several different gender studies which concluded that girls have superior verbal ability whereas boys has better spatial ability. researchers suggested these differences are 'hardwired' into the brain before birth. findings became widely reported and seen as facts. however Daphna Joel et al. (2015) used brain scanning & found no such sex differences in brain structure or processing
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E:
weakness - suggests we should be wary of accepting research findings as biological facts when they might be explained better as stereotypes.
P:
Gender bias promotes sexism in psychological research
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E:
Women are underrepresented in uni departments (especially science). despite psychology undergraduate intake being primarily women, lectures in psychology are more likely to be men. this means research is more likely to be conducted by men & this may disadvantage ppts who are women. e.g. male researcher may expect women to be irrational and unable to complete complex tasks & such expectations are likely to mean that women underperform in research studies
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E:
weakness - means research from institutions may provide gender biased findings.
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P:
Research challenging gender-biases may not be published which means they will not be considered by investigators when undertaking research.
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E:
Formanowicz et al. (2018) analysed more than 1,000 articles relating to gender bias, published over 8 yrs. found research on gender bias is funded less often and is published by less prestigious journals. as result, less scholars become aware of it or apply it within their own work even when compared with research on other types of biases.
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E:
weakness - suggests gender bias in psychological research may not be taken as seriously as other forms of bias
P:
Gender biased research may create misleading assumptions about female behaviour, fail to challenge negative stereotypes and validate discriminatory practices
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E:
in the domain where men set 'normalcy' as Carol Travis (1993) says' it becomes normal for women to feel abnormal'. thus gender bias in research is not just a methodological problem but may have damaging consequences which affect the lives and prospects of real women
however, in more modern research, rather than seeing such bias as a problem that may threaten the objective status of their work, they embrace it as a crucial aspect of the research process. e.g. in their study of the lack of women in executive positions in accountancy firms, Claire Dambrin and Caroline Lambert (2008) include reflection on how their gender-related experiments influence their reading events.
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E:
strength - many more modern researchers now recognise the effect of their own values and assumption have on the nature of their work (known as
reflexivity
)