issues and debates notes

• androcentrism 


  centered or focused on men, often to neglect or exclusion of women
• alpha bias


  tendency to exaggerate differences between men and women. the consequence is that theories devalue one gender in comparison to the other
• beta bias


  tendency to ignore or minimise differences between men and women. such theories tend either to ignore questions about the lives of women, or assume insights derived from studies of men will apply equally well to women
• gender bias


  differential treatment or representation of men and women based on stereotypes rather than real differences
• cultural bias 


  tendency to judge all people in terms of your own cultural assumptions. this distorts or biases your judgement
• cultural relativism


  view that behaviour cannot be judged properly unless it is viewed in the context of the culture in which it originates
• ethnocentrism 


  seeing things from the point of view of ourselves and our social group. evaluating other groups of people using the standards and customs of one's own culture
• determinism 


  behaviour is controlled by external or internal factors acting upon the individual
• free will 


  each individual has the power to make choices about their behaviour
• hard determinism 


  view that all behaviour can be predicted and there is no free will.
• soft determinism 


  version of determinism that allows for some element of free will
• holism


  perceiving the whole experience rather than the individual features and/or the relations between them
• reductionism


  breaks complex phenomena into more simple components, implying that this is desirable because complex phenomena are best understood in terms of a simpler level of explanation
• idiographic approach


  focuses on individuals and emphasis uniqueness, favours qualitative methods in research
• nomothetic approach


  seeks to formulate general laws of behaviour based on the study groups and the use of statistical (quantitative) techniques. it attempts to summarise the differences between people through generalisations
• socially sensitive research


  research that might have direct social consequences for the participants in the research or the group that they represent