Gender bias:

• COUNTERPOINT:

  • However this does not mean that psychologists should avoid studying possible gender differences in the brain
  • IE research by Madura et al suggests that the popular social stereotype that women are better at multitasking may have some biological truth to it
  • It seems that a woman's brain may benefit from better connections between the right and the left hemisphere than in a man's brain

  This suggests that there may be biological differences but we still should be wary of exaggerating the effect they may have on behaviour
• X

  • Promotes sexism in research process
  • Women remain underrepresented in uni departments particularly in science
  • Although psych undergraduate intake is mainly of women, lecturers in psych departments are more likely to be men Murphy et al
  • Means research is more likely to be conducted by men and this may disadvantage pp who are women
  • IE a male researcher may expect women to be irrational and unable to complete complex tasks (Nicolson) such expectations are likely to mean that women underperform in research studies

  Institutional methods of psych may produce findings that are gender-biased
• X

  • Presented as fixed when they're not
  • Jacklin et al presented findings of gender studies concluding that girls have superior verbal ability and boys have better spatial ability
  • Suggested that these differences are 'hardwired' into the brain before birth it
  • Joel et al used brain scans and found no such sex differences in brain structure or processing
  • Possible that the data was popularised because it fitted existing stereotypes of girls as speakers and boys as doers

  Should be wary of accepting research findings as biological facts when might be explained better as social stereotype