Gender Bias

• What is universality?

  The conclusions psychologists draw can be applied to anyone, anywhere, anytime
• What is gender bias?

  Representing men and women based on stereotypes rather than real differences

  Could be in the way that research is carried out or in theories that are biased in favour of a particular gender
• What are the two types of gender bias?

  • Alpha bias
  • Beta Bias
• What is alpha bias?

  • Research which exaggerates the differences between men and women
  • Can be caused by preconceived stereotypes or by investigator effects
• Rosenthal - Alpha bias:

  Reported that male experimenters acted more encouraging with female participants compared to male participants
• Alpha bias - Example:

  The evolutionary explanation of relationships say that sexual promiscuity in males is genetically determined whereas this behaviour in females in unnatural
• Alpha bias - Example:

  • Maccoby and Jecklin
  • Proposed the gender similarities hypothesis
  • Gender differences are exaggerated and males and females have more similarities than differences
  • Conducted a meta analysis of studies that found a difference between male and female behaviour and compared the effect size
  • Found that in over 70% of these studies the effect size was small or close to 0
• What is beta bias?

  • Research which ignores the difference between men and women, assuming they are the same
  • Some studies did not use female participants because it was felt there was no need
  • Can also occur when researchers study a sample of males and females but don’t analyse data to see if there were any gender differences
• Beta bias - Example:

  • Fight or flight response
  • Early research was carried out on males (female hormones fluctuate too much)
  • Recent research suggests that females‘ actually react to stress with a ‘tend and befriend‘ response
• What is androcentrism?

  The belief that males and male behaviour represents the norm and therefore that any behaviour typical of females might be judged abnormal
• Androcentrism - Example:

  • Formula to determine standard office temperature was developed in the 1960’s around the metabolic resting rate of the average man
  • Recent research found that the metabolic rate of females working in offices was significantly lower than the standard values for men. Office temperatures are on average 5 degrees too cold for women
• Negative Implication:

  • Morality - women are seen as more caring than men who are seen as more ruthless
  • Maths ability - women may be labelled as academically inferior so receive fewer opportunities
  • Self esteem - Not seen as a problem for boys so men's mental health can be ignored
  • Verbal aggression - No gender difference despite males being seen as more aggressive
• The psychological research process can be labelled as sexist:

  • There is a lack of women at the senior research level of psychology (only 33% of professors are women although 80% of students are female)
  • The Matilda Effect means that women often do not receive credit for their research
• Feminist psychologists have made suggestions on how to improve the research process:

  • Gathering qualitative data in a way that female participants are involved in research
  • Studying diversity in groups of women instead of always comparing men and women
  • Formulating questions in a gender sensitive way
• The effect of gender bias can be reduced through reflexivity:

  • Reflexivity means acknowledging how your own values and experiences will influence how you see the world
  • Psychologists are encouraged to be reflexive when reporting their research so that any potential bias is clear and understood
  • e.g. female researcher studying sexism in the workplace should be upfront about their own experiences of sexism