Gender Bias

• define gender bias

  The differential treatment and/or representation of males and females, based on stereotypes and not on real differences.
• define alpha bias

  An alpha bias refers to theories that exaggerate the differences between males and females.
• define beta bias


  A beta bias refers to theories that ignore or minimise sex differences. These theories often assume that the findings from studies using males can apply equally to females.
• define androcentrism 


  Theories which are centred on, or focused on males.
• give an example of alpha bias in psychology

  • psychoanalytic approach, Freud argued that because girls do not suffer the same oedipal conflict as boys, they do not identify with their mothers as strongly as boys identify with their fathers, and so develop weaker superegos.
• give an example of beta bias in psychology

  • biological research into the fight-or-flight response has often been carried out with male animals because they have fewer variations in hormones
  • It was assumed that this would not be a problem as the fight-or-flight response would be the same
  • However, later stress research by Taylor et al. (2000) has challenged this view by providing evidence that females produce a tend-and-befriend response.
  • The beta-bias in the earlier animal studies meant that for a long time the stress response was not fully understood and a real difference was ignored.
• evaluation of gender bias in psychology (1)

  • Unfortunately, issues of gender bias often go unchallenged. For example, Darwin’s established theory of sexual selection suggests that women are selective (choosy) in terms of mate selection.
  • These views have only recently been challenged by DNA evidence suggesting that women are equally as competitive as men when the need arises.
• evaluation of gender bias in psychology (2)

  • one way to reduce gender bias is to take a feminist approach that attempts to restore the imbalance in both psychological theories and research. For example, feminist psychology accepts that there are biological differences between males and females: Research by Eagly (1978) claims that females are less effective leaders than males. However, the purpose of Eagly’s claim is to help researchers develop training programmes aimed at increasing the number of female leaders in the real world.
• evaluation of gender bias in psychology (3)

  • As society has changed and females have progressed further in academic disciplines such as psychology, there have been changes, both in the research methodology used and in the earlier theories. Carol Gilligan (a student of Kohlberg’s) proposed that women have a different sense of moral understanding from men and compiled her own stage theory of moral understanding. Her approach showed that men and women are different, but neither kind of moral reasoning (justice focus or care focus) is considered to be better, they are just differen