Gender and Culture in Psychology

Date
Some Key Terms

✤ Universality - the belief that all humans are alike.

✤ Gender bias - this is when the differences between genders have not
been fully considered leading to conclusions based on views or
stereotypes rather than evidence.

✤ Androcentrism - a gender bias that comes from a male - centred view of

the world.

✤ Alpha bias - where differences between males and females are

exaggerated.

✤ Beta bias - when any differences between males and females are ignored.
Androcentrism 1 2. Consider psychological research
that has an androcentric bias.

✤ Historically psychology has been male dominated.

Mostly psychologists were men and therefore,
theories were based on a male view of the world.

✤ In some cases research is only carried out on males

and then the results are genderalised to males and
females.

✤ There is no value put onto the differences between

genders.
Alpha Bias
✤ An alpha bias exaggerates the differences between
males and females.

✤ Evolutionary psychology has a strong alpha bias,

especially when discussing, parental investment,
aggression and attraction.

✤ Freud’s theory of gender identification and the

development of the superego.

You have examples of alpha bias in your handout.

Beta Bias

✤ This is tendency to ignore the differences between men

and women. The assumption is that theories derived
from research into men can also be applied to women.

✤ Kohlberg’s research on moral development.

✤ Discuss the beta bias in Milgram's and Asch's research

✤ Beta bias in research into the stress response.

Evaluation of Gender Bias

✤ Alpha bias can promote gender stereotypes.

✤ Beta bias can mean that false generalisations are made,

usually from males to females

✤ With gender bias we tend to focus on females being the

same and males being the same. In doing so we ignore
individual differences.

✤ The best way is to recognise there are differences but

not state that one gender is superior to the other.
Questions

✤ 1. Explain what is meant by gender bias in psychology

(2)

✤ 2. Explain how androcentrism has affected

psychological research (3)

✤ 3. Outline an example of gender bias in psychological

research (4)
Q1

✤ In psychology, gender bias means that any differences

between males and females has not been fully
considered in research. An alpha bias is where the
differences between genders are exaggerated and a
beta bias is when any differences between genders is
ignored.
Q2

✤ Androcentrism has affected psychological research because in the

past most research was conducted only on men and historically
there were very few female psychologists. This means that there
was a rather masculine view of the world as many important
psychological studies only used male participants. An example of
such research is Milgram's research into obedience. The assumption
from this research is that obedience would be at the Same level as it
was in the male sample. Freud's theory of psychosexual
development can also be considered androcentric as much of his
research was focused on the development of the male child. This is
particularly so for the phallic stage of development.
Q3

✤ One example of gender bias in psychological research

is in Kohlberg's theory of moral development.
Kohlberg studied 72 boys and gave them dilemma's to
assess their moral development. This is an example of
a Beta bias because Kohlberg's conclusions were
generalised to females as well as males even though
no females were studied. The assumption is that
moral development occurs in exactly the same way for
females even though they were not actually studied in
his original studies.
Cultural Bias in
Psychology
Ethnocentrism
Cultural relativism
Ethnocentrism

✤ This is a form of cultural bias where researchers favour the

norms and expectations of one culture and attempt to
generalise this to other cultures.

✤ Research is ethnocentric if it only focuses on participants

from one culture.

✤ The idea is that ones own culture is the norm

✤ Ainsworth's strange situation is an example of this.

✤ The SS has been described as an imposed etic

Types of Culture bias

✤ Alpha bias – assumes cultural groups are different.

This bias assumes that cultural differences should
always be taken into account.

✤ Beta bias – This is when cultural differences are

ignored or minimised – results in universality.
Cultural Relativism

✤ This is the idea that behaviour can only be judged in the

context of the culture it is exhibited in. We need to
recognise that what is a norm in one culture differs from
norms in other cultures.

✤ Read up on the research by Margaret Mead.

✤ We can a argue that Margaret Mead's research may not

have considered the contexts of the behaviours she saw.
She tended to emphasise the differences in gender across
cultures and in doing so ignored the universals.
Evaluation of cultural bias

Can be used for unethical reasons – The use of IQ tests to show African
Americans at the bottom of the IQ scale.

Psychological research is dominated by the West, particularly America

– therefore this viewpoint dominates. Smith and Bon found that 66% of
studies into social psychology were American.

Awareness of cultural differences has helped in the diagnosis of mental

illness. – The DSM IV included an appendix on culture bound
syndromes such as amafufunyana (Violent behaviour caused by spirit
possession) and Koro (a fear of genitals
retracting and disappearing (shrinking penis syndrome)
Questions

✤ Explain what is meant by cultural bias in psychology

(2)

✤ Explain the terms ethnocentrism and cultural

relativism (4)
Q1

✤ Cultural bias in psychology occurs when

psychologists of one culture make assumptions abo
the behaviour of people from another culture based
their own cultural practices and norms.
Q2

✤ In psychology, cultural bias can be in the form of

ethnocentrism. This is where a psychologist will
favour the norms and behaviours of one culture and
generalise them to other cultures. Cultural bias can
also be that researchers fail to judge behaviour in the
specific cultural context. Therefore may judge
behaviour as abnormal when it is perfectly acceptable
in that culture. This is known as cultural relativism.