Gender bias

• Universality 


  Any underlying characteristic that can be applied to everyone regardless of differences in experience/upbringing
• Gender bias


  A tendency to treat one individual or group in a different way from others. Psychological research tends to offer a view that doesn't justifiably represent the experience/behaviour of men/women (usually women)
• Androcentrism


  Male-centred view. Behaviour is judged according to a male standard. (female behaviour seen as abonrmal)
• Alpha bias 


  There are real and enduring differences between men and women. These may enhance or undervalue either sex. (typically undervalues females)
• Beta bias


  Ignores or minimises the differences between sexes
• Beta bias example- Fight or flight response

  • Early research was exclusively on male animals (due to hormonal fluctuations in females)
  • Assumed to be a universal response to a threatening situation
• Beta bias example- Shelley Taylor

  • Suggested female biology has evolved to inhibit the fight or flight response
  • Caring for offspring and forming defensive networks with other females
• Androcentrism example- PMS


  • Many feminists object to the diagnostic category pre-menstrual syndrome
  • It stereotypes and trivialises female experience
  • Critics claim PMS is a social construction which medicalises female emotions, especially anger, through hormonal terms
  • However, male anger is often seen as a rational response to external pressures (BRESCOLL AND UHLMAN)
• LIMITATION- gender bias implications (AO3)

  • Gender biased research may lead to misleading assumptions on female behaviour and the experience
  • May fail to challenge negative stereotypes and practises and instead reinforce stereotypes women having been trying to deconstruct
  • As a result is may cause a scientific justification to deny women opportunities within the work place or wider society
  • E.g. Research has tended to trivialise the experience of PMS in women, by attempting to categorise feelings of abnormality
  • It has been accused of medicalising female emotions via hormonal terms whilst male emotional responses are seen as rational
  • Therefore may have damaging consequences of the female experience and treatment negatively
• LIMITATION- Essentialism

  • Gender bias has concerned essentialism in which gender differences are states to be fixed in nature
  • In the 1930s scientists proposed intellectual activity such as women attending university shrinks their ovaries
  • Therefore this would harm their chances of falling pregnant and giving birth
  • Limitation as a politically motivated argument has been disguised as a biological fact in which lends scientific justification to harming women's chances for education in attempt to reduce them to passive roles
• STRENGTH- Reflexivity

  • Being aware of gender bias has led to a better understanding of these problems it can cause in research
  • Researchers may be more aware of how their sex may influence the way the conduct a study- such as integrating own personal values and beleifs
  • As a result objectivity is maintained, an important feature of science in which may help gendered studies to become more scientifically credible
• LIMITATION- psychology tends to promote sexism

  • Most researchers are male
  • As a result they have the power to label any female ppt as unreasonable or irrational
  • This means there are likely to be less investigations into what females may want to research
  • As a result a form of institutional sexism is created