gender bias

• gender bias - the differential representation or treatment of males or females based on stereotype rather than real difference
• alpha bias - tendency to over exaggerate the differences between men and women, emphasising that there are real and enduring differences between both genders. this can lead to one gender being devalued, typically women

  EXAMPLE - Historically schizophrenia has been diagnosed more frequently in men compared to women, whereas before this there were no difference. this shows alpha bias, because women are more likely to be able to continue working and maintain good interpersonal relationships than men - suggests schizophrenic symptoms of women may be not severe enough to merit a diagnosis.
• beta bias - a tendency to minimise or ignore differences between men and women. this can lead to theories about one gender being applied to the other gender

  EXAMPLE - kohlbergs levels of moral reasoning was based on groups of males, and Heinz dilemma. these results were generalised to represent the levels of moral reasoning between both men and women
• androcentrism - the result of beta bias. comparing behaviour to a male standard and ignoring the influence of women
• universality - the aim to develop theories that apply to all people, which may include real differences. This describes any underlying characteristic of human behaviour which can be applied to all individuals, regardless of their differences. Bias, lack of validity and issues with reliability reduce the universality of psychological findings.
• A03

  -bias in research methods - If theories and studies are gender biased, the research may find differences between genders but it may not be the genders that differ but simply the methods used to test or observe them. for example Rosenthal proposed that male researchers are usually encouraging and positive towards female participants which usually motivates them and they perform better in tasks compared to men. this therefore means caution needs to be taken in place when producing causal conclusions as gender may not be the reason for the results but rather the research methods
• A03

  -gender bias is rarely argued against - for example, for centuries Darwins theory on evolution, regarding relationships, states females are choosy and not competitive while males employ a set of psychological characteristics such as aggressiveness or protectiveness to win over a female. however, this has only been challenged as of recently whereby women 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.
• A03

  + Another way to reduce gender bias is to take a feminist approach which 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 claims that female are less effective leaders than males. However, the purpose of Eagly’s claim is to help researchers develop training programmes aimed at reducing the lack of female leaders in the real-world. therefore research into beta bias/gender bias can be beneficial in the real world