Gender Bias in psychology

Gender bias Differential treatment or representation of men and women based on stereotypes rather than real differences.

Androcentrism Describes a theory based on male behaviour but applied to females and is therefore biased.At best, this leads to female behaviour being misunderstood, and at worst, pathologised (e.g. seen as mentally ill).Freud’s theory of psycho-sexual development is androcentric –‘normal’ behaviour is judged according to a male standard (meaning that female behaviour is often judged to be ‘abnormal or ‘deficient’ by comparison). Freud’s theories reinforce stereotypes of women as morally inferior to men and treats deviations from traditional sex-role behaviour as deficient.

Alpha bias Theories that are alpha-biased exaggerate gender differences.Differences may heighten the value of women, or may devalue females in relation to males.

Beta bias Theories that ignore or minimise gender differences and assume that what is true for one gender is true for all human kind.May occur when females not included as part of research process but assumed that research findings apply equally to both sexes, e.g. Kolhberg’s theory of moral development.

Universality Any underlying characteristic of human beings that is capable of being applied to all, despite differences of experience and upbringing.

Read pages 94-95 PHG

Moral development – Kohlberg vs Gilligan

1. Kohlberg based his stages of moral development around male moral reasoning as he only tested male participants. He can be accused of inappropriate generalisation to women from just testing males. This minimised gender differences, which is an example of beta bias. He also claimed women generally reached lower levels of moral development, which is an example of androcentrism.

2. Gilligan’s theory is also gender biased as she assumes that women make moral decision in a different way from men. It is alpha biased because she may have exaggerated the differences, as moral reasoning in males and females is more similar than her work suggests.

Tutor2u webinar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EYy6MlGAwITutor2U model answer explained https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKeIL94CQVo

Social influence research

1. To conduct a content analysis the first step would be to look through all 20 studies and identify themes related to gender (thematic analysis).Recurrent themes are likely to be:

o The gender of the sample.o The gender of the investigator.o The way that behaviour was measured (was the task male-oriented, e.g. obedience to an

authority figure, or female-oriented, or neutral?).

Once themes have been identified, each study can then be coded for the gender-related issues.

What does coding mean?

2. This is an example of secondary research because it involves the use of existing research to form conclusions rather than conducting primary research.

What does primary research mean?

EssentialismSociobiology is based on the notion that behaviours are partly inherited and affected by natural selection. Behaviours have evolved over time, in the same way that physical traits are thought to have evolved. A double-standard is a set of principles that applies differently and usually more rigorously to one group of people than to another, for example the sociobiological theory of relationships promotes gender differences in sexual behaviour, e.g. applies more severe standards of sexual behaviour to women than to men, justifying behavioural differences in mating strategy.

Feminist psychologyLaboratory-based research permits investigator biases to affect behavior, and the behaviour of female participants may be more greatly affected by the investigators’ expectations and stereotypes than in the case of male participants.Research that looked at diversity might show that female stereotypes don’t apply to all women and could reduce stereotypes.

Collaborative research producing qualitative data allows for unexpected findings because questions are not fixed in advance. The data produced may not support existing views.