issues and debates

• What is gender bias?

  Differential treatment based on stereotypes
• What is alpha bias?

  Exaggerating differences between men and women
• What is a consequence of alpha bias?

  Theories devalue one gender compared to another
• What does psychodynamic explanation suggest about females and morality?

  Females are less moral than males
• How does Wilson’s sociobiological theory view promiscuity in males and females?

  Males are genetically determined, females are not
• What does Cotton et al. suggest about the diagnosis of schizophrenia in women?

  Symptoms may be masked or less severe
• What is androcentrism?

  Behavior compared to a male standard
• How is PMS viewed in terms of androcentrism?

  Trivializes female emotion, especially anger
• What did Shelley Taylor challenge regarding the fight or flight response?

  Females also exhibit a tend and befriend response
• What is beta bias?

  Minimizing differences between genders
• How did Kohlberg's theory exemplify beta bias?

  Generalized findings from males to females
• What is universality in psychology?

  Theories that apply to all individuals
• What does feminist psychology argue about perceived differences?

  Social stereotypes contribute more than biology
• How can androcentrism be countered?

  By adopting a feminist perspective
• What did Rosenthal's study reveal about gender bias in research methods?

  Male experimenters are more encouraging to females
• What did Eagly and Johnson find about leadership styles?

  Men and women are judged similarly in real settings
• What is reverse alpha bias?

  Theories emphasize women's strengths over men's
• What did Cornwell et al. find about women's learning abilities?

  Women are better learners due to attentiveness
• How can beta bias disadvantage women?

  Ignores women's special needs in equality arguments
• What does Darwin's theory of sexual selection suggest about gender roles?

  Women are choosy, men are competitive
• What is cultural bias?

  Judging cultures based on one's own assumptions
• What is cultural relativism?

  Behavior judged in its cultural context
• How did Milgram's study illustrate cultural relativism?

  Obedience rates varied across cultures
• How does beta bias manifest in defining mental disorders?

  Assuming universal rules for all cultures
• What is ethnocentrism?

  Evaluating others by one's own cultural standards
• How does Ainsworth's Strange Situation exemplify cultural bias?

  Judges German mothers as cold based on norms
• What is the emic-etic distinction?

  Emic focuses on cultural uniqueness, etic on universals
• What did Smith and Bond find about cultural bias in psychology research?

  Most studies were conducted in America
• What were the consequences of cultural bias in the US army IQ test?

  Led to stereotyping and discrimination
• What did Ekman et al. demonstrate about facial expressions?

  Facial expressions are universally recognized
• What is determinism?

  Behavior controlled by external or internal factors
• What are the three types of determinism?

  Biological, environmental, and psychic
• What is biological determinism?

  Behavior caused by internal biological forces
• How does environmental determinism explain phobias?

  Phobias result from classical and operant conditioning
• What does psychic determination suggest about adult behavior?

  Determined by innate drives and early experiences
• What is free will in psychology?

  Power to make choices about behavior
• What is hard determinism?

  All behavior can be predicted by external forces
• What does soft determinism allow for?

  Some element of free will in behavior
• What does Freud’s psychosexual stages of development suggest?

  Each stage has a conflict that can lead to fixation
• What can result from fixation at the anal stage according to Freud?

  Anal expulsive personalities