issues and debates

• universality and bias - psychologists seek universality but bias may be inevitable (as psychologists are products of their time and place)
• alpha bias - exaggerates differences, presented as inevitable, tends to devalue females
• examples of alpha bias - girls have weaker identification with same-sex parent, so weaker conscience (Freud), boys lack connectedness to mother so less empathy (Chodrow)
• beta bias - underestimates differences e.g. when conducting research
• examples of beta bias - fight or flight response based on male animals and assumed to be universal, tend and befriend more common in females (Taylor et al.)
• androcentrism - leads to alpha or beta bias. normal behaviour is judged from the male standard, e.g. female aggression explained by PMS, male anger seen as rational (Brescoll and Uhlmann)
• evaluation of gender bias

  • biological versus social explanations
  • sexism in research
  • gender biased research
  • good or bad?
• biological versus social explanations for gender bias - social stereotypes (girls have better verbal ability, boys have better spacial ability) presented as facts (Maccoby and Jackie)

  counterpoint - some stereotypes have a biological basis, e.g. female multitasking explained by hemispheric connections in women (Ingalhalikar et al.)
• sexism in research (gender bias) - male researchers more likely (Murphy et al.) and their expectations about women (e.g. expect irrationality) may mean that female participants underperform in studies (Nicolson)
• gender biased research (gender bias) - studies of gender bias published less than studies of other biases e.g. ethnicity, taken less seriously (Formanowicz et al)
• good or bad? (gender bias) - gender biased research has damaging consequences for women (e.g validates discriminatory practices) but reflexivity may permit more value-free research
• universality and bias (cultural bias) - 68% of research participants from US (Henrich et al), 80% are students (Arnett)
• WEIRD participants - westernised, educated people from industrialised, rich democracies (Henrich et al)
• ethnocentrism - the superiority of own cultural group, others seem as deficient
• example of ethnocentrism - ainsworth's attachment types, baby left on own classed as insecure led Japanese babies classed as insecure (Takahashi)
• cultural relativism - etic (study behaviour from outside a culture) and emic (from inside) (Berry)
• imposed etic - ainsworth's strange situation, definitions of abnormality
• evaluation of cultural bias

  • classic studies
  • cultural psychology
  • ethnic stereotyping
  • relativism versus universality
• classic studies (cultural bias) - social influence research, e.g asch findings in individualist US, not replicated in collectivist culture (Smith and Bond)

  counterpoint - individualism-collectivism distinction may no longer apply due to increasing global media, no differences in more recent research (taken and osaka)
• cultural psychology - studies show how people shape/are shaped by their culture (cohen), epic approach to avoid ethnocentrism, e.g. local researchers and culturally-biased techniques
• ethnic stereotyping - early army iq tests were ethnocentric views and highlights social influences, but then used as evidence that certain ethnic/cultural groups were generically inferior (gould)
• relativism versus universality (cultural bias) - relativism challenges our ethnocentric views and highlights social influences, but there are universals (e.g emotion and interactional synchrony)
• the free will and determinism debate - is our behaviour selected without constraint (free will) or caused by internal or external factors (determinism)?
• free will - humans are free to make choices. biological and environmental influences can be rejected, the humanistic appoach
• hard determinism (fatalism) - all human action has a cause
• soft determinism - people have freedom to make choices within a restricted range of options
• determinism - james though scientists should explain the determining forces acting upon us, but we still have freedom to make choices
• biological determinism - e.g. influence of ANS on stress response, genes on mental health. mediating influence of the environment is also determinist
• environmental determinism - skinner described free will as an 'illusion'. 'choice' is the sum of our total of our reinforcement contingencies
• psychic determinism - freud identified drives, instincts and unconscious conflicts, repressed in childhood
• the scientific emphasis on causal explanations (free will and determinism) - science seeks to explain causes by identifying general laws, the laboratory experiment (like a test tube) allows control over other variables
• evaluation of free will and determinism

  • practical value
  • research evidence
  • the law
  • do we want determinism?
• practical value of free will and determinism - adolescents who believed in fatalism more prone to depression, internal locus of control 'healthier' (roberts et al)
• research evidence (free will and determinism) - participants asked randomly to flick wrist and say so, brain activity came before (libet et al)

  counterpoint - not evidence against free will, delayed conscious awareness still means the person may have made the decision to act
• the law (free will and determinism) - hard determinism not consistent with legal principle of moral responsbility
• do we want determinism ? - determinism helps psychology be scientific and leads to useful applications, but free will has intuitive appeal (e.g. not feeling your genes determine you
• interactionist approach - cannot separate nature and nurture, relative contribution is what matters e.g attachment - parenting (bowlby) versus temperament of child (kagan)
• diathesis-stress model - vulnerability and trigger e.g. ocd (inherited gene and trauma)
• epigenetics -lifestyle and events (e.g smoking, trauma) switch genes on or off, permanent and can be passed on
• nature - nativists argue that human characteristics are determined by heredity, genes determine behaviour in same way as they determine physical characteristics