Beta Bias

• EXAMPLES

  • Zimbardo's prison experiment on social conformity
  • Milgram's study of obedience
  • Asch's study of conformity
  • Kohlberg's stages of moral development
  • Stress response in animals (Taylor et al)
• Beta bias can lead to awful consequences. e.g. women started falling asleep while driving, after taking sleeping pills that were studied on men and generalised to both genders
• Beta Bias refers to theories which ignore or minimise sex differences. These theories often assume that the findings from males can apply equally to females
• Kohlberg’s theory of moral development based on interviews that he conducted with boys minimised the differences between men and women’s morality by assuming the male responses in his research would apply to women
• Asch’s conformity studies involved all male participants as it was just assumed females would respond in same way
• fight or flight based on male animals as they have fewer variations in hormones and then thought to be universal. This minimised differences in the stress response between men and women, failing to consider a ‘tend and befriend response’- Taylor Et Al.