Psychology - Issues & debates

• Psychologists seek universality but bias may be inevitable as they are products of their time


  Bias may be inevitable due to being products of their time
• Alpha bias


  Exaggerates differences, tends to devalue females
• Alpha bias examples


  • Freud, girls have weaker identification with same-sex parent than boys, so weaker conscience
• Beta bias


  Ignores or underestimates differences
• Beta bias examples


  • Fight or flight response based on male animals and assumed to be universal, tend and be-friend more common in females, an evolved response for caring for young (Taylor et al)
• Androcentrism


  Male centred, leads to alpha and beta bias, non-male behaviour judged as abnormal, e.g. premenstrual syndrome
• Implications raised from psychological studies and theories that are gender biased may lead to misleading assumptions and fail to challenge negative stereotypes, validating discriminatory practices
• Gender bias promotes sexism in the research process. Male researchers more likely and their expectations about women (e.g. expect irrationality) may mean that female participants underperform in studies (Nicolson)
• Gender bias has resulted in greater reflexivity, recognising the effect of own values and assumptions may have on the nature of their work
• Marginal utility


  The additional utility (satisfaction) gained from the consumption of an additional product
• If you add up marginal utility for each unit you get total utility
• Free will-determinism debate


  Is our behaviour selected without constraint (free will) or caused by internal/external factors (determinism)
• Free will


  We are self-determining, biological and environmental influences can be rejected, the humanistic approach
• Hard determinism


  All human actions have a cause
• Soft determinism


  Freedom within a restricted range of choices
• Biological determinism


  Autonomic Nervous System causes stress response, genes cause mental health problems
• Environmental determinism


  We are the sum total of reinforcement contingencies: free will is an illusion
• Psychic determinism


  Behaviour caused by unconscious childhood conflicts
• Scientific emphasis: every event has a cause, allowing prediction and control of events. Determinism is more consistent with the aims of science
• The law: hard determinism is not consistent with the legal principle of moral responsibility
• Even if we do not have free will, evidence suggests (Roberts) the fact that we believe we do may have a positive impact on mind and behaviour
• Against free will: research evidence shows that brain activity precedes conscious decisions (Libet et al)
• Cultural bias


  68% of research participants from the US, 80% are students
• WEIRD participants: Westernised, Educated people from Industrialised, Rich Democracies
• Ethnocentrism


  Superiority of own cultural group, others seen as deficient
• Cultural relativism: norms and ethics only make sense in their cultural context
• Universality


  Etic approach looks at behaviour from outside (looks for universals), whereas emic approach is from inside a culture. Imposed etic e.g. Ainsworth's Strange Situation
• Wealth of evidence shows that cultural bias is still an issue in psychology. Some of the most influential studies in psychology are culturally biased
• Emergence of cultural psychology: takes an emic approach to avoid ethnocentrism e.g. local researcher and culturally-based techniques
• The nature-nurture debate


  Nature: heredity, influence of genes on behaviour, innate influences. Nurture: environment, the mind starts as a blank slate (behaviourist approach)
• Measuring nature-nurture concordance estimates how much trait is inherited, used to estimate heritability (proportion within a population due to genes-IQ is .5 (50%) half nature, half nurture
• The interactionist approach


  Cannot separate nature and nurture, relative contribution is what matters e.g. attachment (parenting versus temperament of child)
• Diathesis-stress model: vulnerability + trigger e.g. OCD (inherited gene + trauma)
• Epigenetics: lifestyle and events (e.g. smoking, trauma) leave 'marks' on our genes, switching them on or off, permanent and can be passed on
• Support for nature: twin study evidence. You can use an example from any topic
• Support for nurture: evidence from studies of social learning theory or classical/operant conditioning. You can use an example from any topic
• Implications of both nativism (nature) and empiricism (nurture)
• Strong support for adopting an interactionist approach as opposed to only nature or nurture
• Ethical implications: being concerned about the consequences of theory/studies
• Socially sensitive research (SSR): research that has consequences