social explanations for gender dysphoria

• Psychoanalytic explanation of gender development

  • Not easy to empirically test
  • Emphasises the role of unconscious fantasies in gender dysphoria
  • Impossible to scientifically test or falsify the claim about the unconscious as it is not empirical and cannot be tested or verified
• The psychoanalytic explanation of gender dysphoria disorder lacks scientific rigour and some psychologists therefore reject the theory
• The psychoanalytic theory cannot explain gender dysphoria in females as it only describes the process in boys, so it is over-simplistic
• Social Learning Theory


  Individuals develop gender dysphoria because they lack a role model of the same gender and therefore learn their gender identity by observing the consequences of the behaviour of models of the opposite gender (vicarious reinforcement)
• Operant Conditioning


  Parents who have a strong desire for a child of the opposite gender may (not necessarily deliberately) reinforce behaviours in their children that are traditionally associated with the opposite gender which leads them to have non-stereotypical characteristics
• Another social explanation of gender dysphoria is learning theory which comprises of Social Learning Theory and Operant Conditioning
•  

  A further limitation is that the theory supports the nurture side of the nature vs nurture debate and is an environmentally determinist and reductionist theory.  The theory suggests that gender dysphoria is determined solely by social factors such as the lack of a role model of the same gender.  This is a limitation because this is an over-simplistic explanation which ignores any evidence for the nature explanation e.g. research suggesting that gender dysphoria has a genetic basis or is linked to brain development similar to that of the opposite gender.