Issues and Debates

Question 1

Gender Bias

Answer 1

Alpha Bias:
() Exagerrated gender differences
() Example: Girl superego is implied weaker because girl does not experience castration anxiety
() Example: Nancy Chodorow: Girls develop more empathy due to increased closeness with mother due to similarity

Beta Bias:
() Undestimates differences: Assumes application to women even when none present
() Example: Fight or flight research ignores female animals due to hormonal changes
(^) Shelly Taylor: Tend and Befriend Response: Women produce more oxytocin when threatened.

Androcentrism:
() “Normal” behaviour is judged by male standard
() American Psychological Association: 100 most influential included only 6 women (Psychology is male dominated)
() Premanstraul syndrome: Women behaviour pathologised

Question 2

Culture Bias

Answer 2

Universality: Any charactersitc of humans that can be applied to all regardless of culture and gender

Ethnocentrism:
() Belief in the superiority of own cultural group
() Ainsworth strange situation: “Norm was based on western values”
() Led to other cultures being seen as worse

Cultural Relavitism:
() Etic: Attempts to describe behaviour from within a cutlure as universal
() Emic: Identifies behaviours that are specific to that culture
() Ainsworth is an expame of IMPOSED etic
() Berry did emic and etic and said psychologists should be mindful of cultural relativism: What is discovered may only make sense to the culture

Question 3

Free will and detirminism

Answer 3

Free will:
() Human beings are SELF-DETIRMINING and free to choose actions

Detirminism:
() Hard Detirminism: Fatalism: All behaviour has a cause
() Soft Detirminism: Science explains what detirmins out behaviour but that does not detract from freedom

Types:
() Biological - Example autonomic nervous system
() Environmental: Conditioning, Skinner
() Psychic: Detirmined by repressed conflicts, Frued

The scientific emphasis on causal explanations:
() Everything has a cause an effect

Question 4

Nature Nurture:

Answer 4

Nature:
() Inherited influences

Nurture:
() Empiricists: John Lock argued TABULA RASA
() Richard Lenner: LEVELS OF ENVIRONMENT: includes prenatal factors

Measuring:
()The degree to which 2 people are similar are measured by CORRELATION COEFFICIENT called CONCORDANCE
() Concordance provides HERITABLITY: An eastimate to which extent
() Between 0.01 and 1

Question 5

Holism and Reductionism

Answer 5

Holism:
() Looks at the human system as a whole
() GESTALT PSYCHOLOGISTS: Greater than sum of its parts
() Humanist psychologists use THEMATIC ANALYSIS
() Kohler: Arm, stick, banana, distance

Reductionism:
() Based on PARSIMONY: Phenomena should be exxplained through lowest level principles
() Levels of explaination: Socio-cultural, psychological, physical, environmental (learning experiences), physiological, neurochemical
(^) OCD Example

Biological reductionism:
() Neurochemical and physiological levels + EVOLUTION and GENETICS
() Often works backwards (drugs)

Environmental reductionism:
() All behaviour is learned throough interactions with env
(^) Attachment for example

Question 6

Idiographic-nomothetic

Answer 6

Idiographic:
() Small / single case study
() QUALITATIVE DATA and THEMATIC ANALYSIS
() Rogers UPG: Based on clients
() Sigmund Freud: Little hans
() Subjectivity: Persons own experience

Nomothetic:
() Generalisation: Principles of behaviour
() Quantitative research: Hypotheses, numerical data, stats significance
() Skinner, Sperry
() Objective: STANDARDISATION leads to REPLICATION