quizlet

• What is alpha bias?


  > Research that focuses on differences between men and women and tends to exaggerate these differences.

  > Most of the time, they act to devalue women.
• What is a classic example of alpha bias?


  > Freud's theory of psychosexual development.

  > In the phallic stage, both boys and girls develop a desire for their opposite-gender parent.

  > For a boy, this is castration anxiety that is resolved when the boy identifies with his father.

  > A girl's eventual identification with her mother is weaker and they therefore have a weaker superego. (women are seen as morally inferior)
• Chodorow (1968) suggested that...

  > daughters and mothers have greater connectedness than boys with their mothers because of biological similarities.

  > Example of alpha bias favouring women.
• What is beta bias?


  > Research that focuses on similarities between men and women, and therefore tends to present a view that ignores or minimises differences.
• What is an example of beta bias?

  > Research on Flight/Fight response.

  > Biological research has favoured using male animals as females are affected by regular hormonal changes due to ovulation and this ignores any differences.

  > Also the role of father.
• What is the Tend and Befriend response?

  > Taylor et al.

  > Oxytocin (the love hormone) is more plentiful in women and it seems that women respond to stress by increasing oxytocin production.

  > Leads to a tend and befriend response rather than flight/fight.
• What is androcentrism?


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

  > If women's behaviour has been considered, it has been misunderstood or pathologised (taken as a sign of illness)
• Gender differences are often presented as... (LImitation)

  > Fixed and enduring when they are not.

  > Maccoby and Jacklin presented findings of gender studies which said girls have better verbal ability and boys have better spatial ability.

  > They suggested that these differences are 'hardwired' into the brain before birth. Such findings have become widely reported and seen as facts.

  > Joel used brain scanning and found no such sex differences in brain structure/processing.

  > Suggests we should be wary of accepting research findings as biological facts when they might be explained better as social stereotypes.
• However, this does not mean....

  > psychologists should avoid studying possible gender differences in the brain.

  > Ingalhalikar et al. suggests that the popular social stereotype that women are better at multitasking may have some biological truth to it. A woman's brain may benefit from better connections between the right and left hemisphere than in a man's brain.

  > Suggests that there still may be some biological differences.
• Gender bias promotes.... (Limitation)

  > Sexism in the research process.

  > Although psychology's undergraduate intake is mainly of women, lecturers in psychology departments are more likely to be men (Murphy et al.)

  > This means that research is more likely to be conducted by men and this may disadvantage participants who are women.

  > E.g. a male researcher may expect women to be irrational and unable to complete complex tasks (Nicolson) and such expectations are likely to mean that women underperform in research studies.

  > Means that university departments can produce research that is gender-biased.
• Research challenging gender biases.... (Limitation)


  > May not even be published.

  > Formanowicz et al. analysed more than 1000 articles relating to gender bias, published over 8 years, and found that research on gender bias is funded less often and published by less prestigious journals. Fewer scholars that become aware of it or apply it within their own work.

  > Suggests that gender bias in psychological research may not be taken as seriously as other forms of bias.
• What is cultural bias?

  > A tendency to interpret all phenomena through the 'lens' of one's own culture, ignoring the effects that cultural differences might have on behaviour.
• Henrich et al...


  > Reviewed hundreds of studies in leading psychology journals

  > Found that 68% of research participants came from the US and 96% from industrialised nations.

  > Coined the term WEIRD - Westernised, Educated people from Industrialised, Rich Democracies. These are the group of people that are most likely to be studied by psychologists.
• What is a cultural relativism?

  > The idea that norms and values, as well as ethics and moral standards, can only be meaningful and understood within specific social and cultural contexts.
• What is an example of ethnocentrism?

  > Ainsworth and Bell's Strange Situation.

  > They suggested that babies showing moderate amounts of distress when left alone (securely attached), is normal behaviour for babies.

  > This led to a misinterpretation of child-rearing practices in other countries which were seen to deviate from the American Norm (e.g. Takahashi + japan)
• What is ethnocentrism?


  > Judging other cultures by the standards and values of one's own culture. In its extreme form, it is the belief in the superiority of one's own culture which may lead to prejudice and discrimination towards other cultures.
• What is an etic approach?

  > Looks at behaviour from outside of a given culture and attempts to describe those behaviours as universal.

  > Berry made the distinction between etic and emic approaches.

  > The strange situation is an example of imposed etic, also definitions of abnormality.
• What is an emic approach?

  > Functions from inside a culture and identifies behaviours that are specific to that culture
• Berry argues that....


  > psychology has often been guilty of an imposed etic approach, arguing that concepts are universal when they actually come about through research conducted inside a single culture. Psychologists should be more mindful of cultural relativism.
• The most influential studies in psychology are... (Limitation)

  > culturally-biased.

  > Both Asch's and Milgram's studies were conducted exclusively with American participants and replications of these studies in different cultures produced different results.

  > Asch-type experiments in collectivist cultures found significantly higher rates of conformity than the original studies in the US (Smith and Bond)
• However, in the age of increased media globalisation....

  > It is suggested that the individualist-collectivist distinction no longer applies.

  > The traditional argument is that individualist countries value individuals and independence, whilst collectivists, value society and the needs of the group.

  > However, Takano and Osaka found that 14 out of 15 studies that compared the US and Japan found no evidence of individualism or collectivism - describing the distinction as lazy and simplistic.
• The emergence of cultural psychology (Strength)


  > Cultural psychology is the study of how people shape and are shaped by their cultural experience.

  > Incorporates work from other disciplines that include: anthropology, sociology and political scientists.

  > They strive to avoid ethnocentric assumptions by taking an emic approach and conducting research inside a culture alongside local researchers using culturally-based techniques.

  > Helps to avoid the dangers of cultural bias.
• Ethnic stereotyping (Limitation)


  > Cultural bias has led to prejudice against groups of people.

  > Gould explained how the first intelligence tests led to eugenic social policies in the US.

  > Psychologists used WW1 to pilot their first IQ tests on 1.75 million army recruits.

  > Many of the items on the test were ethnocentric (assuming that people would know the names of US presidents)

  > Recruits from South-eastern Europe and African-Americans received the lowest score.

  > Ethnic minorities were deemed to be 'mentally unfit' and 'feeble-minded' in comparison to the white majority and were denied educational and professional opportunities as a result.

  > This shows how cultural bias can be used to justify prejudice and discrimination towards certain cultural and ethnic groups.
• What is the free-will determinism debate?

  > The argument about how much choice/free will/control we have over our behaviour vs. how much it is controlled by internal/external factors
• What is free will?

  > The notion that humans can make choices and their behaviour/thoughts are not determined by biological or external factors.

  > A belief in free will does not deny that there are biological/environmental forces that exert some influence on behaviour but still implies we are able to reject these forces.
• What is determinism?


  > The view that an individual's behaviour is shaped or controlled by internal or external forces rather than an individual's will to do something.
• What is the difference between hard and soft determinism?

  > Soft = James was the first to put forward this theory, he thought that although it may be the scientists job to explain what determines our behaviour, this does not detract from the freedom we have to make our own rational decisions. Key feature of the cognitive approach.

  > Hard = suggests that all human behaviour has a cause so free will is an illusion. This position can be too extreme.
• What are the three types of determinism?

  > Biological

  > Environmental

  > Psychic
• What is psychic determinism?

  > Psychic = The belief that behaviour is caused by unconscious psychodynamic conflicts that we cannot control. Freud saw behaviour determined by unconscious conflicts repressed in childhood.
• What is biological determinism?


  > The belief that behaviour is caused by biological (genetic, hormonal, evolutionary) influences that we cannot control.

  > e.g. the influence of the autonomic nervous system on the stress response.
• What is environmental determinism?


  > The belief that behaviour is caused by features of the environment (such as systems of reward and punishment) that we cannot control

  > Skinner argued that our behaviour is based on our total reinforcement history.
• One strength of free will... (Strength)

  > Is its practical value.

  > Thinking we exercise free choice in our everyday life can have positive implications for our mental health.

  > Roberts et al. looked at adolescents who had a strong belief in fatalism (determinism).

  > The study showed that they were at a higher risk of developing depression. Seems that people who exhibit an external locus of control are more likely to be optimistic.

  > Shows that the belief of free will can have a positive impact on our mental health.
• One limitation of free will....(limitation)

  > Brain scan evidence only supports determinism

  > Libet et al. instructed to choose a random moment to flick their wrists while he measured activity in their brain.

  > Participants had to say when they had a conscious will to move.

  > He found that the unconscious brain activity leading up to the conscious decision to move came a half second BEFORE the participant consciously felt they had to move.

  > Suggests our behaviour is determined by our brain before we become aware of it.
• However Libet's findings...


  > Are not surprising and something we would expect.

  > Just because the action comes before the conscious awareness to act, doesn't mean that there was no decision to act, it just took some time to reach our consciousness.

  > Suggests that this evidence is not appropriate to challenge the theory of free will.
• One limitation of determinism... (Limitation)


  > Is the position of the legal system on responsibility.

  > The hard determinist stance is that individual's choice is not the cause of behaviour which is not consistent with the way our legal system works.

  > In a court of law, offenders are held responsible for their actions and the idea is that they have exercise their free will in conducting the behaviour that has gotten them arrested.

  > Suggests that in the real world, determinist arguments do not work.
• What is the nature-nurture debate?

  > Concerned with the extent to which aspects of behaviour are a product of inherited or acquired characteristics.

  > Nature = refers to inherited influences.

  > Nurture = refers to the influence of experience and the environment

  > Measured through concordance rate. (shown by correlation coefficient)
• What is heritability?


  > How much of a variance within a population can be attributed to genetic rather than the environment.

  > A figure of 1% means genes contribute almost nothing to individual differences.

  > General figure for heritability in IQ is about .5 (means that half of a person's intelligence is determined by genetic factors)
• What did Lerner do?

  > Identify different levels of the environment.

  > This includes prenatal factors - how physical (smoking) or psychological (music) affect a foetus.
• What is heredity?


  > The genetic transmission of mental and physical characteristics from one generation to another.
• What is the interactionist approach?

  > Behaviour often result of interaction between nature and nurture.

  > eye colour is only .80 heritable (Brauer and Chopra)