Gender Bias

• Gender Bias - the prejudice against an individual for their gender. Psychology is often male orientated leading women to feel marginalised and findings to be generalised. This also leads to assumptions being made about women.
• Alpha Bias - assumes there is a clear difference between men and women and this leads to behaviour being misinterpreted as the difference is overestimated.
• Beta Bias - reduces or ignores differences between men and women. This leads to behaviour being misinterpreted because the difference is underestimated.
• Androcentrism - male behaviour is judged as normal and that anything that deviates is considered abnormal. The opposite is gynocentrism. Freud's androcentrism assumption - girls have weaker gender identity because they have no fear of castration to motivate them to identify to same sex parents. Suggests women are psychologically weaker.