Gender bias

• What is gender bias?

  when one gender is treated less favourably than the other, referred to as sexism and it has a range of consequences including, scientifically misleading research and validating discrimination.
• What is universality? 


  The view that any underlying characteristic of human beings is capable of being applied to all, despite differences of experience and upbringing.

   
• what is androcentrism? 


  theories and research which are centred on or focused on males and then applied to females.
• what are examples of androcentrism?

  Examples: Asch only used a sample of men and then generalised his finding to the whole population.
• What are the consequences of androcentrism?

  Some consequences of androcentrism is that male behaviour is judged to be the norm/acceptable and so therefore female behaviour is judged as abnormal and less acceptable.
• What is gynocentrism? 


  Theories and research which are centred on or focused on females and then applied to males.
• What are the two types of gender bias?

  Alpha bias and Beta bias
• What is alpha bias?

  Refers to to theories which exaggerate the differences between males and females.
• what is an example of alpha bias?

  example:  Freud argued that there are genuine psychological differences between men and women. One idea was that girls form a weaker super ego than boys, due to a lack of castration anxiety during the phallic stage.
• what is 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.
• what is an example of beta bias?

  example: Milgram’s study which was carried out on 40 men, assumed that all people in the same situation would succumb to the high rates of destructive obedience.
• how to reduce gender bias?

  • Do not extrapolate findings from research with male participants to females and vis-versa.
  • Use both male and female participants in the research study.
  • Be sensitive to male and female norms when designing research and reporting findings.
  • Take a reflexive approach by constantly reflecting on your own gender biases when carrying out research.
• Evaluation og gender bias.

  1. Implication of gender bias.

  • Freud’s overall negative perspective of women and femineity as a failed form of masculinity may provide justification to deny women opportunities within the workplace and wider society.
  • Gender bias may create misleading assumptions about female behaviour, and thus failing to challenge negative stereotypes and validate discriminatory practices.
• Evaluation of gender bias.

  2.Reflexivity approach.

  • Many modern psychologists are beginning to recognise the effect of their own values and assumptions on the nature of their work. Rather than seeing such bias as a problem that my threaten the validity and objectivity of their research, they embrace it as a crucial and critical aspect of the research process in general.
• Evaluation of gender bias.

  3.Promotion of equality in research.

  • There is more of an awareness of gender bias in psychological research over the years which has led to research in psychology developing a whole host of strategies that can be used to ensure research is more equal in terms of researching males and females.