issues and debates

• Universality


  The idea that conclusions drawn can be applied to everyone, anywhere, regardless of time or culture
• Bias


  A tendency to treat one individual or group in a different way from others
• Gender bias


  Psychological research or theory that offers a view that does not justifiably represent the experience and behaviour of men or women
• Types of gender bias

  • Alpha bias
  • Beta bias
• Alpha bias


  Psychological research/theories that exaggerate or overestimate the difference between the sexes
• Group most likely affected by alpha bias

  Women, in relation to men
• Theory with alpha bias


  • Sociobiological theory of relationship formation (Wilson 1975)
• Beta bias


  Psychological research/theories that ignore, minimise or underestimate differences between men and women
• Why psychological research is often beta biased
• Theory with beta bias


  • The fight or flight response
• Androcentrism


  If our understanding of 'normal behaviour' is drawn from research with all-male samples, behaviour that deviates from this is likely to be seen as 'abnormal' or 'inferior'
• Example of androcentrism


  • PMS - critics often claim that PMS is a social construction which medicalises female emotions, seeing them in hormonal terms
• Essentialist perspective on gender


  The gender difference in question is inevitable and 'fixed' in nature
• Implications of gender bias

  • It is scientifically misleading
  • Upholds stereotypical assumptions, and might provide a justification to deny women opportunities where men set the standard of noramilty
  • It validates sex discrimination - double standard in the way the same behaviour is viewed from a male and female perspective
  • Institutional sexism creates bias in theory and research - male researchers are more likely to have their work published. Lack of women appointed at senior research levels means female perspective may not be reflected in research questions asked
• Culture


  The learned set of behaviours, values and norms of a particular group
• Cultural bias


  The tendency to ignore cultural differences and interpret all phenomena through the 'lens' of ones own culture
• Ethnocentrism


  Occurs when a researcher takes the views or behaviour of their own culture as 'normal', and if other cultures differ from this, views them as abnormal or deficient
• Anglocentrism


  A form of ethnocentrism from an English/anglo-American perspective
• Most common form of ethnocentric bias
• Studies with ethnocentric cultural bias

  • Goddard (1913), Luria (1969), Kohlberg's theory of moral development
• Cultural relativism


  The idea that norms, values, ethics and moral standards are only meaningful when understood within specific cultural contexts
• Etics


  Universal human behaviours that don't change based on culture
• Imposed etic


  When a culturally specific idea is imposed on another culture
• Problem with etic approach in psychological research
• Emic approach


  The research attempts to understand the culture they are studying, learning their rules and values
• Psychological research has generally leaned towards a more etic approach
• Forms of cultural bias

  • Alpha bias
  • Beta bias
• Alpha bias (cultural)


  Theories that argue that there are real and enduring differences between cultural groups, but may over-exaggerate these differences
• Beta bias (cultural)


  Studies that ignore or minimise the differences between cultures
• Main groups of culture

  • Individualism
  • Collectivism
• Takano and Osaka (1999) found no evidence of the traditional distinction between individualism and collectivism
• Free will


  The notion that humans can make choices, and are not determined by biological or external factors
• Example of free will approach

  • Humanism - Rogers and Maslow believed that humans are self-determining
• Determinism


  The view that an individual's behaviour is shaped or controlled by internal or external forces, rather than an individual's will to do something
• Types of determinism


  • Hard determinism
  • Soft determinism
• Examples of determinism in psychology

  • Biological approach, biological determinism, environmental determinism, psychic determinism
• Libertarianism


  The theory that humans do have genuine freedom to make a morally undetermined decision, although our behaviour may be partially determined by external factors
• Most psychological approaches are deterministic
• Nature-nurture debate


  A debate concerned with the extent to which aspects of behaviour are a product of inherited or acquired characteristics
• Liberty of indifference


  A genuine freedom to act according to independent choices that are not wholly determined by external constraints