Issues and Debates

Question 1

Gender bias

Answer 1

When research presents a perspective that doesn’t accurately represent the experiences of men or women
Alpha bias - overestimating/exaggerating differences between genders, especially devaluing women in relation to men, e.g sexual selection theory, Bowlby attachment theory
Beta bias - underestimating/minimising differences, often when females are not included in a study but findings still assumed to apply to them e.g fight or flight, Milgram and Asch (conformity/obedience)
Can lead to androcentrism - male centred view of the world were male behaviour/traits are seen as the norm/desirable compared to feminine characteristics

Question 2

Gender bias eval

Answer 2

• Research finding gender differences more likely to be published than research without - may contribute to institutional sexism
• Leads to denying women opportunities in society - previous research suggested that intellectual activity e.g attending uni could shrink women’s ovaries and reduce fertility
• essentialist perspective - idea that differences are fixed deterministic - but e.g in society where both men and women work and share childcare responsibilities the differences are smaller
  + many modern researches now realise the impact of their gender biases e.g Dambrin and Lambert reflecting after a study on why women work less in accounting firms
• most influential research is by men - only 2 women on our spec

Question 3

Cultural bias

Answer 3

Tendency to judge people based on one’s own cultural assumptions - can lead to ethnocentrism where own culture is seen to have superior and generalisable traits and can lead to prejudice/discrimination.
Emphasis of apparent differences between groups rather than individual variation within groups
Dominance of a ‘Western norm’ which can devalue other cultures - ethnocentric research findings are invalid if generalised to other cultures
Psychologists encouraged to adopt a culturally relativistic approach- behaviour only fully understood within the context of the society/culture studied and its norms

Question 4

Cultural bias eval

Answer 4

• Historical individualistic vs collectivist culture divide may be oversimplistic and inaccurate, 15 studies comparing between US and Japan showed no evidence of traditional divide
• African-Caribbean immigrants in UK 7x more likely to be diagnosed with mental illness, concerns of validity in DSM and ICD where immigrants are misunderstood coming from different norms and values
• Some illnesses exist in some cultures but not others e.g Brain fag in West Africa describes difficulty concentrating and thinking while koro in China describes a man who believes his penis is retracting into his body
  + Evidence that some behaviours are universal - e.g basic facial expressions for happiness and disgust are consistent across all cultures and even some animals
• most influential research by white (americans) - everyone on our spec is white

Question 5

Reducing gender and cultural bias

Answer 5

Avoid extrapolating findings to different genders/cultures
Use cross cultural/gender samples and have researches of both genders and who understand the cultures being studied
Reflect on your own biases when designing/reporting studies
Study individual cultures in depth to understand them better - emic approach

Question 6

Free will vs determinism

Answer 6

Free will i.e self determining and choose thoughts/actions
Determinism - traits and behaviours beyond out control, influenced by internal/external factors over which we have no authority
Hard determinism i.e entirely outside control - aligns with aims of science as specific causes of behaviour can be uncovered to find causal laws of thoughts/actions - science is inherently deterministic due to causal relationships by controlling all but one variable - ultimate goal is prediction and control of human behaviour
e.g biological, environmental, psychic determinism
Soft determinism i.e determined by other forces but individuals have some control e,g thought processes and decision making

Question 7

Determinism eval

Answer 7

+ supported by empirical evidence e.g brain activity determines simple choices before we are consciously aware of a decision e,g participants choose to press a button with left/right hand and imaging found that brain decided up to 10 seconds before they consciously decided
+ allows psychology to be regarded as a science, essential to increase credibility and study/predict causes of behaviour
+ practical applications of deterministic science e.g developments of therapies/treatments to help many e,g drug therapy for schizophrenia/OCD
+ existence of disorders like schizophrenia challenge concept of free will, nobody would choose to develop such conditions
- free will has strong face validity as idea that we consciously make choices aligns with common sense and everyday experiences - people generally feel they exercise free will in daily decisions
- people with internal locus of control tend to be more mentally healthy whereas research found that adolescents who believed their lives were controlled by external events had higher risk of depression - believing in free will positively impacts mental health/wellbeing

Question 8

Nature vs nurture

Answer 8

Debate not between which one is correct, but which has more relative importance in determining behaviour and in what situations
Nature assumes that heredity (genetic) more influential - not all of bio approach - founded in nativist theory which suggests that knowledge and abilities are innate
Nurture assumes that environment and experience is more influential - founded in empiricist theory which argues that knowledge derives from learning and experience - mind seen as a blank slate on which experiences are to be written
Interaction is is the view that biology and environment work together to determine behaviour - most psychologists agree with this

Question 9

Nature vs nurture eval

Answer 9

+ extensive research evidence for interactionism - IQ heritability (coefficient using MZ vs DZ?) about 0.5 suggesting key and equal roles of genetics and environment
+ Diathesis-stress models used to explain mental illnesses due to an interaction between genetic vulnerability and environmental triggers - e.g Finnish adoptees most at risk of schizophrenia when both genetic predisposition and dysfunctional adoptive family
- Nature influences nurture - Niche-Picking theory suggests that individuals actively select environments to align with genetic traits reinforcing natural tendencies and shaping development
- Nurture influences nature - London taxi drivers have larger hippocampus (spatial memory) than control group due to increased navigational skill experience - supported by ideas of brain plasticity
-The same babies are treated differently when dressed in pink (e.g coddled, given dolls, told pretty) vs blue (helped to walk, given hammers, told strong) so differences seemingly due to nature likely also due to nurture
-epigenetics as a third factor - influence of previous generations on our genetic code and DNA via lifestyle factors e.g smoking, diet, pollution leave epigenetic markers on DNA - regulate gene expression and can switch genes on and off - markers can be passed to future generations as well

Question 10

Levels of explanation of behaviour

Answer 10

How much behaviour is broken down to be explained - hierarchy’s structure where reductionism moves down the levels - e.g looking at the whole picture vs at specific things
Highest level - sociological - cultural and social explanations of behaviour
Middle level - psychological - behavioural and cognitive explanations
Biological level - physiological explanations (biological, and where the most reductionism occurs as this is smallest component parts)

Question 11

Holism vs reductionism

Answer 11

Holism as highest level of explanation of behaviour - take into account all aspects of behaviour/experience - individual acts as an organised whole rather than a set of stimulus response links - cannot understand behaviour based on studies of component parts alone
What matters is a persons sense of unified identity - lack of identity/ sense of wholeness leads to problems
Reductionism explains behaviour by breaking it down into its constituent parts
Biological - most extreme - reduces activity to neurons, hormones, genes, neurotransmitters e.g schizophrenia linked to excess dopamine
Machine - mid level - explaining cognitive processes by comparing human thinking to computer processes
Environmental - mid level - reduces behaviour to stimulus response relationship, ignores internal processes e.g attachment explained as a learned association

Question 12

Reductionism eval

Answer 12

+ Reductionism is scientific - breaks complex behaviour into scientifically testable constituent parts - then over time objective explanations of behaviour emerge
+ Supported by philosophical theories e.g Occam’s razor (when you have multiple solutions the one which uses the least assumptions (i.e the simplest) is most likely correct) - simple reductionism uses little assumptions so high chance of accuracy
+ Applications e.g drug therapy - SSRI used to normalise worry circuit and reduce anxiety associated with OCD - thanks to reductionism of serotonin to OCD
- Bio reductionism Ignores complex interaction of many factors e.g Ritalin reduces ADHD symptoms but success rates vary - purely biological understanding seems inadequate and may e.g mistake symptoms for the cause
- Research for environmental reductionism uses non-human animals - issues with seeing human behaviour as a scaled up version as social
context and hrs to measure factors like cognition, emotion, personality - reductionism seems inadequate
- Env reductionism can overlook true meaning of behaviour - e.g Wolpe treated woman with phobia of insects using SD but no improvement - Actually her husband who she was having issues with had an insect nickname and the phobia was not due to CC but an expression of marital difficulties

Question 13

Idiographic vs Nomothetic

Answer 13

Idiographic - in depth individuals rather than generalising, qualitative using rich detailed data e.g case studies and unstructured interviews
Humanistic is idiographic as emphasises personal experience and holistic, so is psychodynamic as even though it makes general laws these are based on unique individuals e.g little Hans
Nomothetic - study large representative sample (using random sampling) to collect large amount of data to test a (operationalised) hypothesis - formulates general laws of behaviour, aligns with scientific approach in psychology. Quantitative methods used with statistical analysis - while research studies may have small samples, normative research e.g for IQ tests involves thousands of people
Biological, behavioural, cognitive approach are nomothetic, issues e.g generalising male findings or animal findings exist and e,g cognitive does use some abnormal brain case studies (HM, KF) but these are to help establish universal rules by understanding odd cases

Question 14

Idiographic (vs nomothetic) eval

Answer 14

+ provides rich in-depth insights into individual cases while nomothetic cannot - researchers argue that understanding a person as an individual is key to predicting their behaviour in specific situations
+ idiographic methods like case studies can be made scientific and objective using reflexivity where researchers critically reflect on biases affecting both participants and themselves - enhancing validity
- lacks scientific rigour leading to criticism e,g humanistic approach which is seen as insufficiently evidence based - hence contributing to the rise of positive psychology which aims to be more empirical
- limited generalisability - struggles to make the necessary broad behavioural predictions - e.g developing personalised therapy for mentally ill people is impractical
+ perhaps general predictions can be made when enough case study data is collected
- time consuming and costly to collect lots of data for one or few patients unlike nomothetic which gets less data from more people and analyse quickly via statistics
- studying individuals fully helps to abolish cultural and gender biases
reverse eval for nomothetic approach

Question 15

Socially sensitive research

Answer 15

Sieber and Stanley (1998) - research that can change/justify how certain groups/topics are treated or perceived - implications in wider society - scientists have a responsibility for the way their research is used in the future
4 aspects in scientific research process that raise ethical implications
1 - Research question - do not single out or alienate certain groups e.g ‘are there racial differences in intelligence?’ which may damage members of certain groups
2 - Methodology - consider treatment of participants and right to confidentiality/anonymity - this must be broken if the person poses a threat to themselves/ others e.g admitting to committing certain crime/ unprotected sex w/ HIV
3 - Institutional context - who is funding the research and why/how will they use the data - ulterior motives/ data manipulation
4 - Interpretation and application of findings - how may findings be used in the real world e.g inform government policy, hiring/social decisions

Question 16

Socially sensitive research eval

Answer 16

+ Needs to be conducted so groups in society do not suffer the consequences of being excluded from research or misrepresented- reducing our understanding of human behaviour and causing certain people to miss out on the benefits of research
+- Ethical issues can be dealt with via ethical guidelines, while these protect immediate needs of participants it doesn’t deal with all possible ways that research can inflict societal harm, e.g doesn’t ask psychologists to consider how their research may be used by others
+ Psychologists should be more willing to take responsibility for what happens to their findings - increases awareness that their results may lead to abuse/discrimination, so decreases likelihood that data is mishandled
- Not enough to just protect individuals Increased potential for more indirect impact on groups that the participants represent e.g women, addicts, elderly