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Assess the Cultural and Gender issues in psychological research (20) -…
Assess the Cultural and Gender issues in psychological research (20)
Culture
Ethnocentric implications are those that can apply to only one culture/set of people.
Clinical - Rosenhan's (1973) choice of hospitals would have been representative of American hospitals in the 1970's but may have been verey different to those in collectivist cultures so could be considered ethnocentric.
Viewing certain behaviours such as hearing voices that are not there as abnormal in one culture, such as the USA or UK and imposing this on other cultures who believe this is 'normal' such as Costa Rica could be considered Ethnocentric.
Eurocentric implications are those that can apply to European/Western concepts.
Cognitive - Sebastian & Hernandez-Gil (2012) showed differences between Spanish and Anglo Saxon in digit span supporting differences within Europe so the differences beyond Europe are likely to be pronounced.
Cross-cultural research can be Etic, Emic or Imposed Etic
Social - Milgram's procedure has been replicated across the world and can be viewed as an Etic form of research which has been used to suggest obedience is a universal trait.
An imposed etic bias occurs when an observer attempts to generalise observations from one culture to another.
Social - for instance a researcher studies a jungle dwelling Amazon tribe and comes to the conclusions regarding the tribes social organisation, history and traditions.
E.g. not all cultures view quick thinking as a sign of high intelligence, such as the Baganda people of Uganda who value slow, careful and deliberate thought.
Sherif experienced both Turkish and American cultures so may have interpreted the findings with a more varied understanding of cultural differences.
Gender
Alpha bias is a tendency to exaggerate any differences between men and women which can lead to stereotypical differences between the sexes being overemphasised.
Biological - The work of David Buss in evolutionary psychology may be considered an example of alpha bias where male and female roles are clearly defined with women said to focus on children ad prefer males who can provide resources with little scientific evidence to support the conclusions made can reinforce gender stereotypes in society.
Biological - Research overemphasing the differences between males and females in terms of aggression being due to hormones like testosterone (Dolan, 1991) can exaggerate stereotypical differences between males and females but other research shows testosterone is important for female aggression to (Dabbs & Hargrove, 1997)
Beta bias is where the differences between men and women are minimised and male behaviour or thinking applied to females.
Social - Sherif's research may be considered a form of beta bias where the assertions made regarding prejudice and discrimination concerning the role of competition and cooperation were gained from male only samples and applied to women without additional validation.
Androcentrism is considering male behaviour as normal and regarding female behaviour as abnormal when it is not the same as males.
Social - Milgram's original baseline experiment into obedience (1963) had a male only sample and applie the findings to women but when he did a female only sample the same percentage of women went to 450v so there does appear to be similarity in gender and obedience levels and could justify use of his original sample.
Gender bias can occur during all stages of the research process from what is being studied through to the conclusions made.
Bandura's research in the 1960's found differences in male and female aggression to the Bobo Doll with males showing greater imitative aggression but Bandura did account for the cultural context with females being socialised as less aggressive at the time.
The focus of researchers such as Bandura (1961) on the role of TV or video games in aggression could be said to be more relevant to white males rather than research focussing on those relevant to females or more marginalised communities.