Issues and debates: culture and gender (learning)

Question 1

INTRO

Culture and Gender Bias

Answer 1

Culture and gender significantly impact psychological research. Studies often assume males and females are similar, and that American participants are representative of all cultures.

Cultural Bias:
- Emic: Behaviour unique to specific cultures (e.g., collectivist vs individualist).
- Etic: Behaviour assumed to be universal across cultures.

Gender Bias:
- Alpha: Exaggerating differences between genders, often devaluing women.
- Beta: Minimising differences, generalising male findings to females (androcentrism).

Question 2

A01 & A03 - aren’t

Answer 2

A01
- Learning can be considered to be universal and not affected by either gender or culture. For example, the ideas of how learning behaviours occur act on the basis of observation and association, neither of which are dependent on the type of gender an individual is, or where they are from.

A03
Pavlov
- Demonstrated that in dogs, through association with the bell and with food, they elicit a salvation response.
- As learning is universal, it’ll be the same for everyone, so animal research can be generalised without gender and culture issues.

Question 3

A01 & A03 - are

Answer 3

A01
- However, it may not be the way a person learns that is gender or culturally specific, but the type of behaviour that is learnt, as outlined by SLT.

Bandura
- Found we learn through observation. Therefore, what a person is exposed to in their culture will influence their behaviour based on their role models.

Becker
- Only used female P, cannot generalise impact on TV characters and media on development of unhealthy eating habits to all genders however could be accused of beta bias as we cannot conclude that males eating attitude will be influenced in the same way.