Gender Bias

• What is gender bias?

  differential treatment or representation of men and womenbased on stereotypesrather than real differences.
• Universality


  Anunderlying characteristic of human beings that is capable of being applied to all, despite differences of experience and upbringing.E.g. facial expressions are the same in all cultures.
• What are the 3 main types of gender bias?

  Alpha bias, Beta bias and Androcentrism
• What is alpha bias?


  Exaggerates differences between the two sexes
• Topic link - Bowlby


  Bowlby's theory of maternal deprivation. Bowlby claimed that if a child formed a close emotional bond with their mother but then this bond was broken, the child would then end up with a range of social development issues later in life. Bowlby's maternal deprivation theory supports the idea that it is the mother who should be the main person involved in childcare and his theory went on to influence social policy such as maternity leave.However, this approach could be criticised for Alpha Bias, claiming that the mother rather than the father is the only parental figure that should be considered.
• Topic link - Freud

  Freud argued that because girls do not suffer the same oedipus conflict as boys, they do not identify with their mothers as strongly as boys identify with their fathers, so develop weaker superegos. However, Freud waslegitimising the treatment of women as second-class citizens in Victorian society. Women were excluded from many professions in Freud's time and were also denied the vote.
• Male psychologists


  More senior male psychologists and male psychologists are more likely to get their research published. Studies which support a gender difference between males and females are more likely to get published in journals. This may encourage gender bias within publications.
• What is beta bias?

  A tendency toignore or minimisedifferences between the two sexes - usually as a result of male only research
• Topic link - Asch


  Asch's (1955) conformity studies involved all male participants, as did many of the other conformity studies (e.g., Perrin & Spencer, 1980) andtherefore it was assumed that females would respond in the same way. However, seeing both sexes as the same may also have been helpful in paving the way for equality laws within the area of careers and education.
• Topic link - animal studies

  Animals can also suffer from beta bias. For example,biological research into the fight-or-flight response has often been carried out with male animalsbecause they have less variation in hormones than females. It was assumed that this would not be a problem as the fight-or-flight response would be the same for both. However, later research byTaylor et al. (2000)has challenged this view by providing evidence that females produce atend-and-befriendresponse.
• What is androcentrism?


  Male centred; when normal behaviour is judged according to a male standard