gender biases

7/27/2019 Gender Biases

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vvvGender Bias in Psychology

"Works Cited Missing"

In psychology, there seems to be a bias towards females, leading tothe misinterpretation of women. For example in experimental studies,


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the performance of the participants tends to be influenced by the

expectations of the investigator. People have lower expectations for

women; therefore we collect data showing lower task performance for

them.

Two people who have investigated gender biasin psychological researchare Hare-Mustin and Marecek (1988). They give two forms of gender

bias; firstly Alpha Bias which is the tendency to exaggerate

differences between the sexes and Beta Bias, this is the tendency to

minimise or ignore differences between the sexes.

It has appeared to be that alpha bias is more popular in western

cultures. For example Freud said that a childs superego develops when

they identify with their parent of the same sex. Boys identify with

their father more than daughters identify with their mother resulting

in boys developing the stronger superego. Hoffman disagreed with this

theory saying that there was no significant difference in thebehaviours of boy and girls and also found that girls in fact are much

better at resisting temptation. Also Freud only studied middle-class

Viennese women which suggest cultural bias.

Beta bias produces sex differences in research. Male and female

participants are used in most studies but there is no attempt to

analyse the data to see whether there are significant sex differences.

These sex differences found maybe due to differential treatment of the

participants. Rosenthal found that experimenters were more pleasant

and friendly towards the female participants. Rosenthal concluded that

male and female participants may psychologically simply not be in the

same experiment.

Stage theories inpsychology tend to have been founded on research

done with men and then have their results generalised to women also.

For example Levisons Seasons of a Mans Life. Levinson based his

theory on research with 40 men. He attributed these seasons to women

too.

In 1986 Levinson did research to develop the Seasons of a Womans

Life. Levinson based this on research with 45 women over a period ofyears. Similarly Roberts and Newton (1987) reviewed work on this

theme and whilst they found broad similarities between men and women,

they found a key difference in the dreams and aspirations of men and

women. Levinson finds what he calls gender splitting whereby men

have a unified vision of their future whilst women and split between

career and marriage. In a similar way, Roberts and Newton found that

the family provides a supporting role for men but women actually

construct their dreams around their relationships with their family.

Therefore it could suggest alpha bias rather than beta bias.

Social influence studies have shown a gender bias through participantsused. For example in Milgrams study where is used 40 men aged 20
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50. All of whom were from New Haven area, North America. They

responded to an advert asking for participants for a research study

into memory and learning at Yale Uni. Also Asch used groups of 17 men.

Moscovici used groups of 6 women in his study.

Kohlbergs theory of moral development found that men tended to be athigher level of moral development than women, he assumed that there

were minimal differences in terms of moral thinking (beta bias)

therefore it wouldnt have mattered if he had used male participants

because they still represent everyone. Kohlbergs claim of mens

superiority to women has been disputed by Gilligan who said that

Kohlberg has focused too much on mortality of justice rather than

care. He says that boys develop mortality of justice and girls develop

mortality of care.

Kohlbergs theory is said to have an androcentric view in his theory

of mortality, where it has a male bias and also in Aschs conformitystudy where it was based largely on male conformity.

Women tend to conform more and men conform less when they think they

are being observed. Eagly says that this difference is the result of

the pressure the individual has to behave in ways that are viewed

acceptable within traditional gender-role constraints. Baumeister and

Sommer suggest that both sexes are motivated to be accepted by their

groups. But men aim to be accepted by demonstrating independence and

leadership qualities. Furthermore, people who volunteer for

experiments are less authoritarian than those who dont.

It could be that there was experimenter bias in these studies. For

instance, Rosenthal observed more than 70% of male experimenters

smiled when they gave instructions to female subjects; only 12% smiled

at males. This could this have happened in Moscovicis experiment.

Also Gender bias in diagnosis is a fundamental issue. There is the

argument that there is gender bias in the DSM. For example, the

DSM-IV criteria for anorexia nervosa include an intense fear of

gaining weight, a distorted self-perception of body image, refusal to

maintain normal body weight and three consecutive months ofamenorrhea. The criterion of amenorrhea has been subject to much

criticism for the creation of a gender bias in diagnosis of the

disorder. Russell suggests we solve this problem by altering the

amenorrhea criterion to an endocrine disorder which manifests itself

clinical in amenorrhea, or in the case of male subjects, a loss of

sexual interest and lack of potency.

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