Gender bias

• Universality: Psychologists possess beliefs and values influenced by the social and historical context within which they live. This may undermine psychologists' claims to discover facts about human behaviour that are objective, value-free and consistent across time and culture (universality)
• Bias: a leaning toward a personal view that doesn't reflect reality. Psychological theory and research may not accurately represent the experience and behaviour of men and women. (Gender bias)
• Alpha bias: Regardless of the reality, differences between the sexes are usually presented as fixed and inevitable. Unfortunately, these differences often devalue females in relation to males
• Beta Bias: Ignoring or underestimating differences between men and women. Often occurs when participants of one gender are not included in the research process but it is assumed that research findings apply equally to both sexes
• Examples of alpha bias: The psychodynamic theory favours males through suggesting that in the phallic stage girls have a weaker identification with their mother and therefore females have a weaker superego and weaker moral development.
• Alpha bias favouring females: Chodorow said that daughters and mothers are more connected than sons and mothers so females develop better bonds and empathy for others
• Examples of Beta bias: early research into fight or flight was based on male animals (because female hormones fluctuate). Fight or flight was assumed to be a universal response. Taylor et al suggested that females exhibit a tend and befriend response.
• In the past most psychologists were male, and theories they made represented a male view of the world
• Androcentrism is when research is centred on, or dominated by males and can be conscious or unconscious. This often means that female behaviour (if different) is assumed to be abnormal. Female behaviour is misunderstood, and sometimes pathologised. This means it is so different to the male ‘norm’ that it is assumed to be a sign of a psychological disorder. E.g. PMS. Many women have objected to this being ‘diagnosed’. Feminist psychologists argue that PMS is a social construction that medicalises female emotions by explaining them in hormonal terms.
• Limitation 1-1

  stereotypes to be accepted and allow discrimination to occur. There are a number of implications that arise from gender bias in psychological research. It can create misleading and incorrect assumptions about females, allow negative

  For example, sexual selection theories ‘allows’ males to be sexually promiscuous as biological, whereas women who are promiscuous go against their ‘nature’.
• Limitation 1-2

  In addition, it leads to the issue of androcentrism where female behaviour is judged against the male norm, so females may be more likely to labelled ‘abnormal’ when they differ from the male norm, or even underdiagnoses if they display different symptoms from males. This suggests that gender bias can have damaging effects on the lives of women in the wider world, and can explain why females are two times more likely than males to be diagnosed with depression, but under diagnosed with schizophrenia.
• Limitation 2-1

  It is also important to remember that sometimes the gender bias can work against males as well as females, as sometimes alpha bias theories heighten the value of women. An example is that women are more likely to be diagnosed with depression and given treatment than males. This may be because woman are more likely to suffer from depression, or it could be that the diagnostic system may be biased towards finding depression among women.
• Limitation 2-2

  This suggests that the expectation for males should be able to ‘pull themselves together’ is viewed as a masculine trait which may highlight an issue with the psychological diagnostic systems.
• Strength 3-1

  Our increased understanding has led to recommendations about how to avoid gender bias in research. Worrell (1992) also suggested a number of research criteria that are particularly important to ensure non-gender biased research investigations:

   considering women in the natural settings in which they function

   collaborating with research participants to explore personally relevant variables

   studying diverse samples (age, socio-economic class, partner preference, ethnic group).
• Strength 3-2

  This suggests that awareness of these issues can lead to improved practice in psychological research and contribute to our understanding of males and females, fully addressing the gender bias issues.