issues and debates

• Rather than seeing cultural bias as an issue that may threaten the objectivity of their work, researchers are learning to embrace this bias as a crucial aspect of the research process
• The effect on reflexivity is minimal
• One negative implication of the culture bias issue is that it amplifies and validates damaging stereotypes
• Evidence to support this

  • The US Army used an IQ test before WWI which was culturally biased toward the dominant white American ideas of intelligence
  • The test showed that African-Americans were at the bottom of the IQ scale
  • This had a negative effect on the attitudes of Americans' toward this group of people
• The negative impact that culturally biased research can have is that it can result in the reinforcement of pre-existing discrimination and prevent other cultures from having equal properties
• Intention behind using these tests

  Not necessarily to validate harmful stereotypes, but instead used to approximate cognitive ability, in order to determine eligibility for certain roles or assignments as a matter of safety
• The fact that cultural bias can lead to discrimination of minorities, provides research into cultural bias to have negative connotations, as a result, decreasing the likelihood of individuals supporting the research, decreasing the overall usefulness of cultural bias
• Cultural psychology


  • Attempts to decrease the effects of past bias in psychological research
  • Attempts to decrease the effects of culture bias in future research
  • Avoids ethnocentric assumptions by taking an emic approach
• Studying a wide range of cultures

  Could have extraneous variables that can't be controlled
• Mix of cultural upbringings


  Could skew the results of the research
• Cultural psychology


  • Attempts to decrease the effects of past bias in psychological research
  • Attempts to decrease the effects of bias on future research
  • Psychologists strive to avoid ethnocentric assumptions by taking an emic approach
• Studying a wide range of cultures

  Could have extraneous variables that can't be controlled
• Mix of cultural upbringings


  Could skew the results of the research
• Positive implication of understanding the ethical implications of psychological research


  It has led to the development of the BPS guidelines
• Role of the BPS guidelines

  1. Accept and decline research based on ethical grounds

  2. Psychologists offer counselling to protect participants from harm

  3. Psychologists use confidentiality and privacy of participants
• Understanding ethical implications of psychological research

  Has led to psychologists looking at a cost-benefit approach to their research, and preventing any harm to the individuals in the study or groups
• Researchers following BPS guidelines


  Researchers are liked and trusted more
• The BPS guidelines are very strict, so researching into topics such as social influence becomes harder, as often deception is needed to accurately see whether there is social influence
• By following BPS guidelines, a lot of research into social influence becomes impossible
• Taking a deterministic stance in explaining behaviour

  Can have negative implications for the justice system
• Some psychologists argue that if behaviour is argued to be predetermined by internal or external influences (for example, genetics), it is difficult to hold a person accountable for a crime they committed
• Hard deterministic stance


  Is not consistent with the way in which our legal system operates by diminishing their responsibility and making society unsafe as they may be let off for their crimes, weakening the explanation for behaviour as it goes against values in society that makes society function smoothly
• Individuals can be pre-determined to develop a certain trait or behaviour


  Must be taken into consideration when deciding punishment because the crime therefore may not be their complete fault
• The influence of using determinism in explaining behaviour


  Undermines individual's inhibition and offers criminal behaviour to be excused, which would restrict options of punishments, making the explanation less credible and useful to society
• A negative implication of the free-will and determinism debate is that both sides of the debate ignore the other
• Free will argues that we can choose to behave in a certain way and there is no influence of internal or external factors on behaviour
• Determinism argues behaviour is only the influence of internal or external factors, and we have no choice in our behaviour
• This is a negative implication of the debate as both sides of the debate are therefore reductionist as they ignore the impact of the other side of the debate in explaining how we act, presenting both sides as incomplete explanations of behaviour
• However, some may argue that we are trying to take an interactionist approach of looking at the debate


  To do this, the two sides of the debate must first be studied separately to determine their explanations before they can be brought together, therefore reductionism can be considered as essential to look at the complexity of combining nature and nurture
• Despite this, as both sides of the debate ignore the other's impact and can be seen as advocating reductionism, the explanations can both be seen as uncomprehensive and inaccurate, decreasing the validity of the explanations in explaining behaviour
• Taking the free will stance in explaining behaviour

  Improves psychological wellbeing
• Most people see themselves as making their own choices rather than being 'pushed' by forces we cannot control
• Believing in fatalism


  Significantly greater risk of developing depression
• Although we cannot prove that we do have free will, if we believe we do, it may have a positive impact on mind and behaviour
• The determinist explanation may be more useful to society as it establishes a clear cause-and-effect relationship so effective treatments can be produced
• Biological determinism has led to SSRIs being created to treat OCD
• Free-will having a positive impact on people's mental-wellbeing


  Increases their levels of happiness and their standards of living
• The usefulness of the free-will side of the debate increases, which increases our ability to trust this side of the debate due to its positive impact
• Gender bias issue


  One positive implication is that it has led to feminist psychology
• Criteria for eliminating gender bias in research

  • Advocating for studies between women rather than comparing to men
  • Reducing the impact of gender bias in the future due to new disciplines