Gender and culture bias

• Bias occurs when a psychologists pre-existing beliefs and viewpoints influence their theories and data. This stems from personal beliefs, cultural background, education, political beliefs and gender-related social experiments. The issue with this is that results concluded from such studies are shaped by the researcher's perspectives rather than being completely objective.
• Gender bias is the tendency to favour one gender over the other in psychological research. This leads to misrepresentations of the actual male and female behaviours by incorrectly assuming differences where they do not exist or by overlooking significant gender-specific differences.
• Cultural bias is interpreting and judging human behaviour based on ones own cultural norms and experiences. This often stems from ethnocentric perspectives (a bias towards your own culture), which leads to misrepresentation of other cultures.
• Universality is the argument that certain observed behaviour can apply to all humans, regardless of their differences in gender, biology or cultural background.
• When psychologists discover a behaviour, they often claim it is universal, suggesting that universality is true. However, if their hypothesis is tested on a non-diverse sample, this claim remains as an assumption and may not be generalisable to the wider population.
• The majority of participants in psychological studies are from Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic societies, unlike most of the worlds population.
• W - Western

  E - Educated

  I - Industrialised

  R - Rich

  D - Democratic
• When other groups behaviour varies from a standard which was falsely claimed to be universal, their behaviour will be defined as abnormal.
• Androcentrism is when research reflect a male-centred view. This bias is because psychologists who develop said theories were male. Such studies assume research conducted with all males will have the same outcome when conducted with females.
• Alpha bias is a tendency to exaggerate differences between men and women, suggesting that there are real and enduring differences between the two sexes. The consequences are that theories devalue one gender in comparison to the other (typically women).
• Examples of alpha bias:

  • Bowlby's monotropic theory emphasised the role of the mother as a crucial attachment figure in an infants development, more than the role of the father. This perspective was likely influenced by the social norms of the 1950s Britain, where women did not have independent careers and child-rearing roles were less shared between parents. A concern with this theory is that it may have lead male single parents to feel inadequate.
• Examples of alpha bias:

  • Evolutionary theory - Argues males, with the potential to father many children but uncertain of their paternity, are innately promiscuous, seeking to impregnate multiple women to increase their genetic legacy. They are also seen as possessive, aiming to prevent their partners from having children with others. However, females have limited number of children but are more certain of their maternity and so seek men with resources to support child-rearing. This theory reinforces a gender double standard.
• Examples of alpha bias:

  • Historically, since the 1980s, schizophrenia has been diagnosed more frequently in men compared to women, whereas before this time there had been no significant differences. This is an example of alpha bias, according to Cotton et al, because women are more likely to be able to continue working, maintain good interpersonal relationships and show less distress than men. This means that the schizophrenic symptoms of women may be masked or not severe enough to merit a diagnosis.
• Beta bias is a tendency to ignore or minimise differences between men and women. Such theories tend to ignore questions about the lives of women, or insights derived from studies of men will apply equally well to women.
• Examples of beta bias:

  • The fight or flight response is based on male survival strategies. Research supporting this have been conducted more on human males and male animals. Sherry Taylor argued that fighting or fleeing may not be the most effective strategy for women, instead she proposed they 'tend and befriend'. Tend involves actions to maximise survival of both mother and children (eg - keeping children quiet to avoid detection). Befriend is the building of social connections that can provide support in an emergency. This perspective challenges the view of the fight or flight response.
• Examples of beta bias:

  • Kohlberg’s levels of moral reasoning theory was developed on the basis of studying groups of American males, who all answered questions based on moral dilemmas (eg - the Heinz dilemma). These results were then generalised to represent levels of moral reasoning for both men and women.
• Culture bias is the tendency to judge all cultures and individuals in terms of your own cultural assumptions. This distorts or biases your judgements.
• Cultural relativism is the view that behaviour, morals, standards and values cannot be judged properly unless they are viewed in the context of the culture in which they originate.
• Examples of cultural relativism:

  • Milgram’s study into obedience was originally conducted using 40 male American participants, but then also replicated using Spanish students (Miranda found over 90% obedience rates in Spanish students) and Australian students (where only 16% of female participants continued to the highest voltage setting, as shown by Kilham and Mann). This suggests that Milgram’s original results were specifically bound to American cultures.
• Cultural relativism can lead to an alpha bias, where the assumption of real differences lead psychologists to overlook universals.
• Cultural relativism is often discussed in the context of defining mental disorder. Behaviours that are statistically infrequent in one culture may be more frequent in another, (eg - schizophrenia is claiming to hear voices but this experience is more common in African cultures, where hearing voices is a sign of spirituality and so individuals are more likely to openly report these experiences to their psychiatrist. By assuming the same rules universally we may diagnose some people as mentally ill but relative to the culture they may not be).
• Strengths of gender bias:

  • Feminist psychology - Argues that there are real differences in behaviour but also socially determined stereotypes make a greater contribution to said differences. Androcentrism can be argued by a feminist view and balance can be readdressed. For example, Eagly acknowledged that women may be less effective leaders than men but this knowledge should be used to develop suitable training programmes and therefore create a future with more women leaders.
• Strengths of gender bias:

  • Practical application - Reverse alpha bias describes the development of theories showing greater emphasis on women. Cornwell showed women are better at learning because they are more attentive, flexible and organised. Such research challenged the stereotype that in any gender differences the male position must be better and challenges people's preconceptions.
• Strengths of gender bias:

  • Avoiding of beta bias has allowed women greater access to educational and occupational opportunities. However, Hare, Mustin and Mareck pointed out that arguing for equality draws away from women's special needs (eg - equal parenting ignores the biological demands of pregnancy, childbirth and the needs of women). Therefore, this suggest some elements of beta bias may disadvantage women.
• Limitations of gender bias:

  • Bias in research methods - If theories and studies suffer from gender bias, the research may find differences between genders but it may not be the genders that differ, but simply the methods use to observe them. For example, Rosenthal found that male experimenters are more pleasant and encouraging to female participants resulting in them performing better in tasks compared to the male participants. As well as this, fewer women are appointed at senior research positions meaning that female concerns are less likely to be reflected in the experimental questions.
• Limitations of gender bias:

  • Lab experiments may be an example of institutionalised sexism within psychology due to male researchers having authority and deeming women as 'unreasonable, irrational and unable to complete complex tasks'. Eagly and Johnson noted that studies that used real settings found women and men were judged more similarly in styles of leadership compared to lab settings, hence having higher ecological validity.
• Limitations of gender bias:

  • Gender bias remains unchallenged in many theories. Darwin’s theory of sexual selection portrays women as choosy and males as the ones who compete to be chosen, arguing that women are coy and males as aggressive as they are in competition with other males. However, this view has been challenged as Vernimmen found that women are equally competitive when needed. DNA evidence supports the idea that it is a good adaptive strategy for females to mate with more than one man and this puts females in competition with other females.
• Limitations of culture bias:

  • Bias in research methods was investigated by Smith and Bond who surveyed research in one European textbook on social psychology and found that 66% of the studies were American, 32% European and 2% from the rest of the world. A considerable amount of psychology is based on middle class academic young adults who are males. This suggests that there is almost an institutionalised cultural bias in psychology, as students would be learning about ‘universal’ behaviours that were demonstrated only in certain cultures.
• Limitations of culture bias:

  • Consequences - The US army IQ test showed that European immigrants fell slightly below white Americans in terms of IQ. This data has a profound effect on attitudes held by Americans towards certain groups of people, leading to stereotyping and discrimination.
• Limitations of culture bias:

  • Not all behaviours are affected by culture bias. Although there are differences in obedience rates and conformity between collectivist and individualist cultures. Ekman demonstrated that facial expressions for anger, guilt and disgust were universally recognised across all cultures, in terms of attachment, interactional synchrony and reciprocity are universal features of infant-caregiver interactions. Therefore, this suggests that to fully understand behaviour, we must look at both universal and culture-bound examples.