issues and debates

• Gender bias


  When one gender is treated less favorably than the other, often referred to as sexism
• Types of gender bias

  • Alpha bias
  • Beta bias
  • Androcentrism
• Alpha bias


  Differences between men and women are exaggerated
• Beta bias


  Differences between men and women are minimized
• Androcentrism


  Taking male thinking/behavior as normal, regarding female thinking/behavior as deviant, inferior, abnormal, or 'other' when it is different
• Positive consequences of gender bias include asserting the worth of 'feminine qualities' and leading to equal treatment and access
• Negative consequences of gender bias include sustaining prejudices and stereotypes, and drawing attention away from differences in power between men and women
• Examples of gender bias in research

  • Kohlberg's moral development theory
  • Freud's psychosexual development theory
  • Biomedical theories of abnormality
• Gender bias in the research process includes institutional sexism, use of standardized procedures, and publishing bias
• Feminist perspective


  Re-examining the 'facts' about gender, viewing women as normal humans, skepticism towards biological determinism, research agenda focusing on women's concerns
• Emic construct


  Theoretical idea that is applied only to one cultural group
• Etic construct


  Theoretical idea that is assumed to apply in all cultural groups
• Ethnocentrism


  Assuming one's own culturally specific practices or ideas are 'natural' or 'right'
• Cultural relativism


  Principle of regarding the beliefs, values, and practices of a culture from the viewpoint of that culture itself
• Example of culturally biased research

  • Ainsworth's Strange Situation for Attachment
• The principle of cultural relativism is sometimes practiced to avoid cultural bias in research, as well as to avoid judging another culture by the standards of one's own culture. For this reason, cultural relativism has been considered an attempt to avoid ethnocentrism.
• The strange situation procedure is not appropriate for assessing children from non-US or UK populations as it is based on Western childrearing ideals (i.e., ethnocentric).
• The original study of the strange situation only used American, middle-class, white, home-reared infants and mothers; therefore, the generalisability of the findings could be questioned, as well as whether this procedure would be valid for other cultures too.
• Cultural differences in child-rearing styles make results liable to misinterpretation, e.g., German or Japanese samples.
• Takashi (1990) found no children in the avoidant-insecure stage, which could be explained in cultural terms as Japanese children are taught that such behavior is impolite, and they would be actively discouraged from displaying it. Also, because Japanese children experience much less separation, the SSC was more than mildly stressful.
• An example of an etic approach that produces bias might be the imposition of IQ tests designed within one culture on another culture. If a test is designed to measure a European person's understanding of what intelligence is, it may not be a valid measurement of the intelligence of people from other continents.
• IQ tests developed in the West contain embedded assumptions about intelligence, but what counts as 'intelligent' behavior varies from culture to culture.
• Non-Westerners may be disadvantaged by such tests – and then viewed as 'inferior' when they don't perform as Westerners do.
• Nobles (1976) argues that western psychology has been a tool of oppression and dominance. Cultural bias has also made it difficult for psychologists to separate the behavior they have observed from the context in which they observed it.
• Equal opportunity legislation aims to rid psychology of cultural bias and racism, but we must be aware that merely swapping old, overt racism for new, more subtle forms of racism (Howitt and Owusu-Bempah, 1994).
• Free Will


  Suggests that we all have a choice and can control and choose our own behavior. This approach is all about personal responsibility and plays a central role in Humanist Psychology.
• By arguing that humans can make free choices, the free will approach is 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.
• 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.
• Strengths of Free Will

  • It emphasizes 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
• Limitations of Free Will

  • 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
• Determinism


  The determinist approach proposes that all behavior is determined and thus predictable.
• Types of Determinism


  • Environmental (External) Determinism
  • Biological (Internal) Determinism
  • Psychic (Internal) Determinism
• Environmental (External) Determinism


  The idea that our behavior is caused by some sort of outside influence, e.g., parental influence.
• Skinner (1971) argued that freedom is an illusion. We may think we have free will, but the probability of any behavior occurring is determined by past experiences.
• Skinner claimed that free will was an illusion – we think we are free, but this is because we are not aware of how our behavior is determined by reinforcement.
• Biological (Internal) Determinism


  Our biological systems, such as the nervous system, govern our behavior.
• For example, a high IQ may be related to the IGF2R gene (Chorney et al. 1998).
• Psychic (Internal) Determinism


  Freud believed childhood experiences and unconscious motivations governed behavior.
• Freud thought that free will was an illusion because he felt that the causes of our behavior are unconscious and still predictable.