gender bias

• universality

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

  psychological theories/research may offer a view that doesn’t justifiably represent the experience/behavior of men and women(usually women).
• androcentricism

  male centered,when normal behavior is judged according to a male standard
• alpha bias

  theories that suggest that there are real,enduring differences between and men and women.These may enhance/undervalue members of either sex
• beta bias

  theories that ignore/minimise differences between the sexes.This often happens when findings obtained from men are applied to women without additional validation.
• universality and bias

  Psychologists have their own beliefs and values that have been influenced by the social/historical context within which they live.So,bias is inevitable.These biases undermine the universality of findings in psychology.
• Alpha bias within research is the exaggeration or overestimation of differences between the sexes.These differences are presented as fixed and inevitable .They usually devalue females compared to males e.g the sociobiological theory of relationship formation.
• beta biasminimises/underestimates the differences between men and women.This occurs when female participants aren’t included as part of the research process and then findings are assumed to be applicable to both sexes equally.For example,the fight or flight response.Early research into this was based exclusively on male animals and was assumed to be an universal response to a threatening situation. Recently,Shelley et al(2000) have suggested that female biology has evolved to inhibit flight or fight response,shifting attention onto caring for offspring.
• androcentricism

  A consequence of beta bias.If the classification of normal behaviour is drawn for research from all male samples,then any behaviour that deviates from this standard is seen as abnormal by comparison.This leads to female behavior being misunderstood or pathologised.