GENDER AND CULTURE IN PSYCHOLOGY

Question 1

Androcentrism

Answer 1

centred or focused on men often neglecting or excluding women.

Question 2

alpha bias

Answer 2

• tendency to exaggerate the differences between men and women.
• as a consequence, theories devaluate one gender in comparison to other.

Question 3

beta bias

Answer 3

• tendency to minimise or ignore the differences between male and female.
• assuming that findings derived from men studies apply to women equally.

Question 4

universality

Answer 4

aim to develop a theory that applies to all people.

Question 5

example of alpha bias

Answer 5

• one example of alpha bias comes from freuds study. freuds study reflected the culture in which he lived. in the 1950S , mostly mens were more powerful and educated as compared to womens so in his alpha biased psycho analytic theory freud viewed feminity as failed masculinity
• in his theory women are seen to be inferior than mens because they are jealous of their penises and the oedipus conflict. because superego comes from oedipus conflict, women are said to be morally inferior.

Question 6

example of beta bias

Answer 6

example of beta bias comes from miligrams orih=ginal study where he included 40 male participants and focused only on obedience to male authority figures overlooking potential difference in response to female authority figures.

Question 7

evaluation of bias in psychology ( - )

Answer 7

• gender of the researcher( it may not be the gender affecting the study instead it could be the way the test is observed)
  Rosenthal found that male participants are more pleasant and friendly to female participants as compared to male participants - resulting in male participants performing less well on tasks assigned

Question 8

strength of bias in psychology

Answer 8

beta bias has allowed women greater access to education and occupational opportunities.
- however researchers pointed out that arguing for equlaity draws attention from womens special needs. example equal parenting ignores biological demands of pregnancy
- this suggests that some elements of beta bias may disadvantage women.

Question 9

limitation evaluation of bias

Answer 9

assumption needs to be challenged as darwins theory of sexual selection portrays women to be choosy and male to be aggressive when it comes to compete with other males for a female. however this view has been challenged as it is found that women are equally competitive too when needed. dna evidence supports that it is a good adaptative strategy for female to mate with more than one man putting other females in competition.

Question 10

example of beta bias

Answer 10

early researches conducted into fight or flight response used male lab mice because they experience fewer hormonal fluctuations so chamges in adrenaline due to environmental stressors could be reliably measured.
- however the findings was alos applied to females which ignores the differences between males and females.

Question 11

cultural bias

Answer 11

tendency to judge all cultures and individuals in terms of your own cultural assumptions.

Question 12

cultural relativism

Answer 12

• view that behaviour cannot be judged properly unless viewed in the context of culture in which it originated.

Question 13

ethnocentrism

Answer 13

seeing things from our point of view and our social group and evaluating other groups of people using standard and custom of ones culture.

Question 14

alpha bias

Answer 14

assumption that there are real and enduring differences between cultural groups.
example of alpha bias is the distinction made between individualist and collectivist culture.
- we expect member of individualist culture to be less conformist as they are less oriented to group.
- inorder to assess validity of this view, takano and osaka reviewed 15 studies comapring japan and us in terms of individualism and collectivism
- 14 out of 15 studies didnot support the common view.#
- which suggests that the distinction between an individualist and collectivist may not be a real one.

Question 15

beta bias

Answer 15

refers to theories that ignores or minimises cultural differences.
- assuming that all poeple are same and its reasonable to use same theories on all cultural groups.

Question 16

example of beta bias in culture

Answer 16

• Psychologists use IQ tests to
  study intelligence in many different cultures as they assume that their view of intelligence
  applies equally to all cultures. However this may not always be the case. Western societies
  see intelligence as something within the individual whereas in a collectivist culture
  intelligence is a functional relationship depending on shared information between the
  individual and society. The result is that non-western people may appear less intelligent.
  Such tests are described as taking an “imposed etic” approach, where a test is made in
  one group and then imposed on another

Question 17

etic research

Answer 17

• research from a specific culture which is then applied to other cultures to find universal laws, giving studies universality

Question 18

emic research

Answer 18

• research based on a specific culture, understanding culture from within.
• not generalised to other cultures but instead studies variations in behaviour between groups of research.

Question 19

cultural bias in research methods

Answer 19

• cultural bias in psychology can simply be dealt by usings tudies with samples from different cultural groups.
• smith and bond surveyed research in an european textbook and found 66% studies to be american, 32% european and 2 percent from rest of the world.
• findings are unrepresentative.