ISSUES AND DEBATES STUDIES

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  • Created by: moll99
  • Created on: 09-02-17 10:07

Gender Bias

Alpha Bias: Sociobiological theory (Wilson 1975) which explains human sexual attraction and behaviour through the principle of survival efficiency. The central premise of sociobiological theory is that sexual promiscuity in males is genetically determined whilst females who engage in the same behaviour are regarded as going against their nature - an exaggeration of the difference between sexes.

Beta Bias: Kohlberg (1973) proposed a stage theory of moral development based entirely on the longitudinal study of a sample of American men. Kohlberg's research was based on male-oritentated principles - though he argued such principles were universal and represented the moral reasoning of both males and females.

Androcentrism: Many feminist commentators have objected to the diagnostic category of pre-menstraul syndrome (PMS) on the grounds that is stereotypes and trivialises female experience. Critics claim that PMS is a social construction which medicalises female emotions, especially anger. Male anger on the other hand is often seen as a rational response to external pressures (Brescoll and Uhlman 2008).

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Cultural Bias

Etnocentrism: Mary Ainsworth's Strange Situation (1970) is criticised as reflecting only norms and values of American culture. Ainsworth identified the key defining variable of attachment type as the child's experience of anxiety on seperation. This led to misinterpretation of child-rearing practices in other countries which were seen to deviate from the American 'norm' - German mothers were seen as cold and rejecting.

Cultural Relativism: John Berry (1969) has drawn a distinction between etic and emic approaches in the study of human behaviour. An etic approach looks at behaviour from outside of a given culture and attempts to describe those behaviours that are universal. An emic approach functions from within of inside certain cultures and identifies behaviours that are specific to that culture. Berry argues that psychology has often been guilty of imposing an etic approach - arguing that theories, models, concepts etc. are universal when they actually came from a single culture. Psychologists should be more mindful of the cultural relativism - that what they discover may only make sense from the perspective of the culture within which they were discovered.

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Nature Vs Nurture

Nature: Plomin (1994) stated that the heritability coefficient is used to assess heredity. It is a numerical figure which indicates the extent to which a characteristic has a genetic basis.

Nurture: Richard Lerner (1986) has indentified different levels of the environment which may be defined in quite narrow pre-natal terms such as the mother's physical and psychological state during pregnancy, or more general through post-natal experiences such as the social conditions the child grows up in and the cultural and historical context they are a part of.

Interactionist approach: Belsky and Rovine (1987) stated that attachment patterns between an infant and its parents are often the result of a 'two-way street' where the childs innate temperament will influence the way its parents respond to it - and their responses will in turn affect the child's behaviour.

Epigenetics: Dias and Ressler (2014) gave lab mice electric shocks every time they were exposed to the smell of acetophenone, a chemical used in perfume. The mice showed fear as soon as the scent was presented and the rats children and grandchildren also feared the smell - even though they had not been exposed to acetophenone or shocks.

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