Issues And Debates 👩⚖️ Flashcards
(32 cards)
Universality
Any underlying characteristic of human beings that is capable of being applied to all despite differences of experience and upbringing.
Gender bias and culture bias threaten the universality of findings in psychology.
Bias
a tendency to treat one individual or group in a different way from others.
Results in distorted view of the world.
Gender bias
research
that offers the view that
does not justifiably
represent the experience
and behaviour of men or
women - usually women
Alpha bias
Theories that suggest there are real and enduring differences between men and women.
●These may enhance or undervalue members of either sex, but typically devalue women in relation to men.
●Tends to exaggerate these differences.
Beta bias
Theories that ignore or minimise differences between the sexes.
●Often occurs when female participants are not included and it is assumed that findings apply equally to both sexes, e.g. Milgram.
●Example: Fight or Flight
Androcentrism
Alpha and Beta bias are a consequence of androcentrism.
●Male-centred
●‘Normal’ behaviour is judged according to a male standard
●As a result - female behaviour is misunderstood and judged to be ‘abnormal’ or ‘deficient’ by comparison.
●Almost all psychologists were (and are) men
○Theories produced tend to represent a male world-view
Evaluations of gender bias
Weakness - bias in research methods, Rosenthal found that male experimenters are more pleasant, friendly and encouraging to female participants than to male participants. As a result, male participants appeared to perform less well on the task assigned.
Weakness - bias in diagnosing, Loring and Powell found that 56% of psychiatrists gave a diagnosis of schizophrenia when the patient in a case study was described as male or no information was provided about gender, but when the same case was described as female only 20% gave diagnosis. This gender bias was only evident in male psychiatrists, so diagnosis can also be affected by the gender of the patient as well as the clinician.
Strength - avoiding beta bias, Hare-Mustin and Marecek point out that arguing for equality between men and women draws attention away from womens’ special-needs and from differences in power between men and women. In a society where one group holds most of the power, seemingly neutral actions end up benefiting the group with power.
Strength - solutions to gender bias, Cornwell et al noted that females are better at learning, as they are more attentive and organised, thus emphasising both the value and the positive attributes of women.
Culture bias
refers to the tendency to ignore cultural differences and interpret all phenomena through the ‘lens’ of one’s own culture.
●Own culture = the ‘norm’
●Cultural differences that deviate from the norm will be seen as ‘abnormal’, ‘inferior’ or ‘unusual’
Ethnocentrism
Judging other cultures by the standards and values of one’s own culture.
In extreme form - belief in the superiority of one’s own culture which may lead to prejudice and discrimination towards other cultures.
Example:
●Ainsworth’s Strange Situation
●‘Secure’ attachment
●German mothers = cold and rejecting
Etic and emic approach
Etic approach:
●Looks at behaviour from outside of a given culture and attempts to describe behaviours as universal.
●E.g. Ainsworth’s Strange Situation (imposed etic)
Emic approach:
●Functions from within or inside certain cultures and identifies behaviours that are specific to that culture
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
Psychologists should be much more mindful of the
cultural relativism of their research - the ‘things’ they
discover may only make sense from the perspective
of the culture within which they were discovered.
Example: Definitions of Abnormality
●Luhrmann et al: cultural differences hearing voices
Evaluations of culture bias
Weakness - unfamiliarity of research tradition, Although Western participants may be familiar with research tradition, the same knowledge and faith in scientific testing may not extend to cultures that do not have the same historical experiences.
For this reason, demand characteristics may be exaggerated when working with members of the local population.
Weakness - bias with diagnosing mental illness, Even within Western cultures there will still be variation in the diagnosis of mental illness. For example, in the USA the DSM-V is used, whereas in Europe the ICD is more commonly applied.
Copeland found that 69% of US psychiatrists diagnosed a patient with schizophrenia compared to only 2% of British psychiatrists using the same patient description.
Weakness - real world consequences, The US Army used an IQ test before WWI which was culturally biased toward the dominant white majority. Unsurprisingly, the test showed that African-Americans were at the bottom of the IQ scale.
As a result, this had a negative effect on the attitudes of Americans’ toward certain groups of people – black people and people from south-eastern Europe.
Strength - Indigenous psychologies, One example is Afrocentrism, a movement which suggests that because all black people have their roots in Africa, theories about them must recognise the African context of behaviours and attitudes.
It argues that the values and culture of Europeans at worst devalue non-Europeans and at best are irrelevant to them. This is an example of an emic approach.
Free will
Humans are free to act and think in whichever way they choose
●Although there may be biological and environment forces that exert some influence on our behaviour, we
can choose whether or not to
reject these influences.
●Unpredictable
●Humanistic approach
Determinism
Free will is an illusion
●Forces beyond our control
govern our behaviour.
●External: e.g. rewards
●Internal: e.g. hormones
●Behaviour is predictable
●The basis of science =
Every event in the universe
has a cause that can be
explained.
Types of determinism
Hard Determinism
●Fatalism - all human behaviour has a cause
●It should be possible to identify these causes → in line with science.
Soft Determinism
●All human behaviour has a cause, however there is some room for flexibility
●People have conscious mental control over the way they behave, but only within the realms of what we know.
Subtypes of determinism
Psychic
Environmental
Biology
Evaluations of free will vs determinism
Strength - good face validity, Everyday experience ‘gives the impression’ that we constantly exercise free will with the choices we make daily.
Furthermore, people with an internal locus of control (believing they have a high degree of control over their own behaviour) tend to be more mentally healthy. Roberts who found that adolescents with strong belief in determinism, were at significantly greater risk of developing depression.
Weakness - counter evidence, Soon et al demonstrated that brain activity that determines the outcome of simple choice predates our knowledge of having made that choice.
Researchers found that the activity related to whether to press a button with the left or right hand, actually occurs in the brain up to 10 seconds before the participant reported being aware of a decision.
Strength of determinism - he idea that human behaviour is orderly and obeys laws places psychology on equal footing with the other natural sciences.
Additionally, the value of psychological research is that the prediction and control of human behaviour had led to the development of treatments, therapies and behavioural interventions that have helped many people, e.g. Psychotherapeutic drug treatments for mental disorders such as depression and schizophrenia.
Weakness - interactionist approach, Approaches in psychology that have a cognitive element tend to adopt the soft determinism approach, for example Social Learning Theory.
For instance, Bandura argued that although environmental factors in learning are key, we are free to choose who or what we attend to and when to perform certain behaviours.
Nature
●Innate influences
○Not necessarily present at birth, but determined by genetics e.g. Huntington’s disease
●Genetic explanations:
○Schizophrenia: 48% MZ, 17% DZ (Gottesman)
○OCD: 68% MZ, 31% DZ (Nestadt et al)
○Aggression: 50% MZ, 19% DZ (Coccaro et al)
●Evolutionary explanations:
○Natural selection - survival and reproduction
○Bowlby’s theory of attachment
○Sexual selection
Nurture
Environmental influences
○Both physical and social world
○Effects on infant before birth, e.g. smoking mother
●Tabula rasa = blank slate
●Behaviourism:
○All behaviour explained by experience
○Conditioning
●Social Learning Theory:
○Direct and vicarious reinforcement
○Biology plays a role, e.g. provides urge to be
aggressive, but expression acquired through environment
Evaluations of nature vs nurture
Nature effects nurture - P
E
E
L
Genes (nature) may exert an indirect effect in a number of ways.
For example, Plomin et al suggested that a child who is genetically more aggressive might provoke an aggressive response in others; affecting the child’s development. Alternatively, a parent with a genetically determined mental illness may create an unsettled home environment, resulting in an indirect effect on the child’s mental health.
In addition, Scarr and McCartney suggested that as children grow older, they seek out experiences and environments that suit their genes.
Nurture affects nature - Nurture may also exert an indirect effect on nature in a number of ways.
Research into neural plasticity has demonstrated how life experiences shape biology. For example, playing video games, learning a new skill and meditation are all environmental experiences but have been found to have an effect on neural development.
Maguire et al’s study of London taxi drivers showed that the region of the brain associated with spatial memory was bigger than in controls. The taxi drivers were not born this way; rather their hippocampi had responded to increased use.
Diathesis stress model - The diathesis-stress model conceptualises the interaction between nature and nurture.
This model is often used to explain mental disorders such as phobias or schizophrenia.
A diathesis is a genetic vulnerability, such as being born with certain genes that predispose a person to developing a disorder. However, research has shown that not everyone with those genes does develop the
disorder. Expression of the gene or genes depends on experience, in the form of a stressor, which triggers the condition e.g. trauma; life change etc.
Holism
argument or theory which proposes that it only makes sense to study an indivisible system rather than its constituent parts.
A person, behaviour or experience can only be understood when considering them/it as a whole.
We cannot predict how the whole system will behave just from the knowledge of the individual components.
Humanistic approach.
Reductionism
Biological Reductionism:
●Biological organisms = all behaviour is at some level biological.
●Can be explained through neurochemical, physiological, genetic and evolutionary influences.
●Assumption of the biological approach
●Applied to explaining and treating mental illness (drug therapy: neurotransmitter activity).
Environmental (stimulus-response) Reductionism:
●Learning occurs through interactions with the environment.
●Assumption of behaviourist approach
●Applied to explaining attachment (learning theory) and phobias
Levels of reductionism
Highest level: Cultural and Social Explanations
●Middle level: Psychological Explanations
●Lower level: Biological Explanations
Lower levels are more reductionist.
Evaluations of holism vs reductionism
Lower levels causing issues - For example, Wolpe, who developed the therapy of systematic desensitisation, treated one woman for a fear of insects. He found no improvement from this behavioural method of therapy. It turned out that her husband, with whom she had not been getting along, was given an insect nickname.
Therefore, her fear was not the result of conditioning but a means of representing her marital problems; to focus on the behavioural level and ignore meaning would have been an error.
Case against holism - For example, humanistic psychology, which takes a holistic approach to behaviour, tends to be criticised for its lack of empirical evidence, and is instead seen by many as a rather loose set of concepts.
Higher levels of explanation that combine many different perspectives present researchers with a practical dilemma, as when there are many factors involves it is difficult to establish which is the most influential and which one to use, for example, as the basis of therapy.
Biological reductionism- Such treatments have led to a considerable reduction in institutionalisation since the 1950s. They are also a more humane approach to the treatment of mental illness as they do not blame the patient, which may lead to a greater tolerance of the mentally ill.
On the other hand, drug therapies are not always successful and reducing mental illness to the biological level ignores the context and function of such behaviour.
