Issues and Debates

• Alpha bias refers to theories that exaggerate the differences between males and females
• Androcentrism refers to theories that are centred on, or focused on males
• Beta bias refers to theories that ignore or minimise sex differences. These theories often assume that the findings from studies using males can apply equally to females
• Biological determinism refers to the idea that all human behaviour is innate and determined by genes
• Biological reductionism refers to the way that biological psychologists try to reduce behaviour to a physical level and explain it in terms of neurons, neurotransmitters, hormones, brain structure etc
• Casual explanations is science is heavily deterministic in its search for casual explanations as it seeks to discover whether X causes Y, or whether the independent variable causes changes in the dependent variable
• Cultural relativism insists that behaviour can be properly understood only if the cultural context is taken into consideration
• Culture bias is the tendency to judge people in terms of one's own cultural assumptions
• Determinism is the view that free will is an illusion, and that our behaviour is governed by internal or external forces over which we have no control
• Environmental determinism is the view that behaviour is determined or caused by forces outside the individual. Environmental determinism poses that our behaviour is caused by previous experience learned through conditioning
• Environmental reductionism is also known as stimulus-response reductionism. Behaviourists assume that all behaviour can be reduced to the simple building blocks of S-R associations and that complex behaviours are a series of S-R chains
• ethical implications consider the impact or consequences that psychological research has on the rights of other people in a wider context, not just the participants taking part in the research
• Ethnocentrism means seeing the world only from one's own cultural perspective, and believing that this one perspective is both normal and correct
• Free will is the idea that we can play an active role and have choice in how we behave. The assumption is that individuals are free to choose their behaviour and are self-determined
• Gender bias is the differential treatment and/or representation of males and females, based on stereotypes and not on real differences
• hard determinism is the view that forces outside of our control shape our behaviour. hard determinism is seen as incompatible with free will
• Holism is the idea that human behaviour should be viewed as a whole integrated experience, and not as separate parts
• Idiographic approach focuses on the individual and emphasise the unique personal experience of human nature
• Interactionist approach argues that several levels of explanation are necessary to explain a particular behaviour, ranging from lower (biological) to higher levels (social/cultural)
• Levels of explanation is that the reductionist approach suggests that behaviour can be explained at different levels (e.g. social and cultural, psychological or biological)
• Nature versus nurture debate is one of the oldest debates in psychology. It centres on the relative contributions of genetic inheritance and environmental factors to human development and behaviour
• Nomothetic approach is concerned with establishing general laws, based on the study of large groups or people and the use of statistical techniques to analyse data
• Psychic determinism claims that human behaviour is the result of childhood experiences and innate drives as in freuds model of psychological development
• Reductionism is the belief that human behaviour can be explained by breaking it down into simpler component parts
• Social sensitivity - sieber and stanley (1988) - used the term social sensitivity to describe studies where there are potential social consequences for the participants or the group of people represented by the research
• Soft determinism is an aor biological make-up, but only to an alternative position favoured by many psychologists. Behaviour is constrained by the environment or biological make-up, but only to a certain extent
• Universality means that it can apply to all people, irrespective of gender and culture