Gender Bias

• Gender bias is when the differences between men and women are misrepresented.
• Alpha Bias: When the differences between men and women are exaggerated.

  e.g. Freuds theories claims that there are enormous differences between men and women. says men traits are desirable and woman's traits are not.

  
  

  
  

  Beta Bias: When the differences between men and women are minimised or ignored.

  e.g. Asch's, Zimbardo's study only included men meaning that the research suffered from beta bias.
• Androcentrism: When the focus is on male behaviours and attitudes.
• Limitation) Inaccurate and misleading conclusions about female behaviour has gone unchallenged. For example, Freud theories state that females experience penis envy because they have weaker moral development.
• Limitation) Women are underrepresented in university departments and research is more likely to be conducted by males. For example, male researcher may expect female participants to be unable to complete complex tasks. This means the findings produced will be gender biased.
• Limitation) Gender differences like girls having better verbal ability and boys having better spatial ability because of their biological differences has been disproven using brain scans which has found no such differences. This suggests we should be wary of accepting research as biological fact when it may just be stereotypes.