Issues And Debates

• Universality


  The idea that there are a range of psychological characteristics of human beings that can be applied to all of us despite differences in experiences and upbringing
• Bias


  The suggestion that a person's views are distorted in some way
• In psychology there is evidence that gender is presented in a biased way, leading to differential treatment of males and females based on stereotypes and not real differences</b>
• The difficulty lies in distinguishing "real" from culturally created gender differences
• Real gender differences confirmed through cross-cultural studies

  • Girls have greater verbal ability
  • Boys have greater visual and spatial abilities
  • Boys have greater arithmetical ability, a difference that only appears at adolescence
  • Girls are less aggressive than boys
• Androcentrism


  Taking male thinking/behavior as normal, regarding female thinking/behavior as deviant, inferior, abnormal, 'other' when it is different
• Alpha bias


  • Theories which exaggerate the differences between males and females
• Alpha bias


  • Evolutionary approach in psychology
  • Psychodynamic approach (Freud)
• Beta bias


  • Theories that have traditionally ignored or minimised sex differences, assuming findings from males can apply equally to females
• Beta bias


  • Kohlberg's stage theory of moral development
  • Psychological research that does not analyse data for sex differences
• The result of beta bias in psychological research is that we end up with a view of human nature that is supposed to apply to men and women alike, but in fact, has a male or androcentric bias
• Positive consequences of gender bias

  • Alpha bias: Has led to some theorists asserting the worth and valuation of 'feminine qualities'
  • Beta bias: Makes people see men and women as the same, leading to equal treatment in legal terms and equal access to education and employment
• Negative consequences of gender bias

  • Alpha bias: Can sustain prejudices and stereotypes, focus on differences leads to implication of similarity within genders, judgements about individual women's ability made on basis of average differences or biased stereotypes
  • Beta bias: Draws attention away from differences in power between men and women, results in major misrepresentations of both genders
• Gender bias in the research process

  • Institutional sexism - men dominate at senior teaching and research level in universities
  • Use of standardised procedures that assume men and women respond the same way
  • Publishing bias towards positive results, research finding gender differences more likely to get published
• Equal opportunity legislation and feminist psychology have reduced institutionalised gender bias and drawn attention to sources of bias and under-researched areas
• Solutions to reduce gender bias

  • Developing theories that emphasise the importance or value of women
  • Using alternative methods of inquiry, considering women in natural settings, collaborating with research participants, studying diverse samples
• Culture bias


  Interpreting all human behaviour from only one cultural viewpoint
• Ethnocentrism


  Taking one's own culture as the norm and interpreting deviations as 'abnormal'
• Ethnocentrism


  • Definitions of abnormality varying across cultures
  • Ainsworth's Strange Situation being an 'imposed etic'
• Cultural relativism


  The view that behaviours and concepts can only be understood correctly from the perspective of their cultural context
• Etic construct


  A behaviour thought to be universal across all cultural groups
• Emic


  A behaviour that only applies to certain cultural groups
• Psychology takes an imposed etic approach, arguing that theories/concepts are universal despite research being conducted using emic constructs within a specific culture
• One way to achieve universality would be to employ a derived etic, where a series of emic studies take place in local settings, conducted by local researchers using local constructs
• Research is likely to continue over-representing American college students due to the ease and low cost of obtaining them as an opportunity sample
• Etic construct


  A behaviour that is thought to be universal across all cultural groups (e.g. smiling when happy)
• Berry (1969): 'Psychology takes an imposed etic approach because it argues that theories/concepts are universal despite research being conducted using emic constructs within a specific culture'
• Derived etic


  A series of emic studies take place in local settings, conducted by local researchers using local techniques, to build up a picture of human behaviour in a similar way to the ethnographic approach taken by anthropologists
• One way to deal with cultural bias is to recognise it when it occurs (e.g. Smith and Bond's 1998 study)
• Making the assumption that behaviors are universal across cultures can lead to imposed etics, where a construct from one culture is applied inappropriately to another, leading to research that either intentionally or unintentionally supports racist and discriminatory practices in the real world
• Culturally biased research can have significant real-world effects by, for example, amplifying and validating damaging stereotypes. The US Army used an IQ test before WWI which was culturally biased toward the dominant white majority, showing that African-Americans were at the bottom of the IQ scale and this had a negative effect on the attitudes of Americans' toward this group of people
• Emic approach


  The investigation of a culture from within the culture itself, which is more likely to have ecological validity as the findings are less likely to be distorted or caused by a mismatch between the cultures of the researchers and the culture being investigated
• Equal opportunity legislation aims to rid psychology of cultural bias and racism, but we must be cautious of merely swapping old, overt racism for new, more subtle forms of racism
• Free Will


  The idea that we all have a choice and can control and choose our own behavior, which is central to Humanist Psychology
• By arguing that humans can make free choices, the free will approach appears to be quite the opposite of the deterministic one
• Psychologists who take the free will view suggest that determinism removes freedom and dignity, and devalues human behavior
• To a lesser degree Cognitive Psychology also supports the idea of free will and choice
• In reality, although we do have free will it is constrained by our circumstances and other people. For example, when you go shopping your choices are constrained by how much money you have
• Evaluation of Free Will

  • It emphasises the importance of the individual and studying individual differences
  • It fits society's view of personal responsibility e.g. if you break the law you should be punished
  • The idea of self-efficacy is useful in therapies as it makes them more effective
  • Free will is subjective and some argue it doesn't exist
  • It is impossible to scientifically test the concept of free will
  • Few people would agree that behavior is always completely under the control of the individual
• Environmental (External) Determinism


  The idea that our behavior is caused by some sort of outside influence e.g. parental influence