Gender bias

• Bias

  • Occurs when a psychologists pre-existing beliefs and viewpoints influence their theories and data interpretation.
  • Stems from personal experiences, cultural background, education, political beliefs, gender-related societal experiences.
• Gender bias

  • Occurs when the researchers stereotypical views about males and females behaviour affects their theoretical assumptions, which leads to misrepresentations of actual male and female behaviour.
• Universality

  • The argument that certain observed behaviours apply to all humans, regardless of gender, biology or cultural background.
  • When psychologists discover a behaviour they often claim or assume universality, suggesting it is universally true.
  • However, if their hypothesis was tested on a non-diverse sample, this claim remains an assumption and may not be generalised to the broader population.
• Abnormal behaviour

  When other groups behaviour varies from a standard falsely claimed to be universal their behaviour can be defined as abnormal
• Androcentrism 


  Male centred. When normal behaviour is judged according to a male standard, meaning that female behaviour is often judged to be abnormal.
• Alpha bias

  • The assumption that there are significant differences in the behaviour between 2 genders, often leading to an overemphasis or exaggeration of these differences between males and females.
• Example of Alpha bias

  • Bowlby’s monotropic theory emphasises the mothers role as crucial in an infants development more so that the fathers role.
  • This perspective was likely influenced by the social norms of 1950’s Britain, where women commonly didnt have independent careers and child-rearing roles were less shared between parents.
  • A concern with this theory is that it may lead to male single parents and single-gender families feeling inadequate believing they cannot provide the same level of care as traditional family structures.
• Beta bias example

  • Milgram’s original study included 40 male participants and focused only on obedience to male authority figures, overlooking potential differences in responses to female authority figures.
  • Similarly Asch’s conformity study was conducted only using male participants, the use of male samples in these studies ignored the possibility of gender-specific differences and was influenced by societal norms of the time and a belief that male subjects would yield more generalisable results
• Beta bias

  • The assumption that there are no significant differences in the behaviour of males and females, often leading to underestimating or minimising actual behavioural differences.
• Dealing with bias

  • In theory construction, researchers should not assume universal norms or differences across sexes, any claims of universality should be supported by empirical data.
  • Equal representation of researchers, including encouraging more female researchers.
  • Diverse samples including males and females.
• One limitation is gender differences are presented as fixed when they are not. Maccoby and Jacklin concluded girls have superior verbal ability, whereas boys have better spatial ability. These suggested differences are hardwired into the brain before birth, and these findings have been reported as facts. Joel et al found no such sex differences in brain structure or processing. The data by Maccoby and Jacklin may have been popularised because it fitted the stereotype that girls are speakers and boys as doers. Therefore we should be wary of accessing research findings as biological facts as they may be better explained as a social stereotype.
• Counterpoint: However this does not mean that psychologists should avoid studying gender differences. Ingalhalikar et al suggests the popular stereotype that women are better at multi-tasking may have been biologically true. This is because a womens brain has better connections between the right and left hemisphere than in a mans brain. Therefore this suggests that there may be biological differences but we should be wary of exaggerating the effect it has on behaviour.
• One limitation is gender bias promotes sexism in the research process. Murphy et al found despite psychology undergraduate intake being mainly women, lecturers in psychology departments are more likely to be men. This means research is more likely to be conducted by men and this may disadvantage participants who are women. For example, a male researcher may expect women to be irrational and unable to complete tasks and such expectations are likely to mean that women underperform in research studies. Therefore this suggests institutional structures e.g universities may produce findings which are gender biased.
• One limitation is research challenging gender biases may not be published. An analysis of over 1000 articles relating to gender biases, published over 8 years found that research on gender biases is funded less often and is published by less prestigious journals. The consequence of this is fewer scholars become aware of it or apply it within work. Therefore this suggests that gender bias in psychological research may not be taken seriously.