history of psychology - week 4

stigma

stigma

the culturally shared knowledge that society regards the members of a particular group/category negatively and accords them inferior status in their social interactions with the nonstigmatized

sexual stigma

stigma attached to any nonheterosexual behavior, identity, relationship or community

structural sexual stigma / heterosexism

ensures that non-heterosexuals have less power than heterosexuals by promoting a heterosexual assumption (assuming people are heterosexual and this is considered normal and natural)

1868

homosexualität was first introduced. before this homosexuality and heterosexuality, with that sexuality as a whole, were understood very differently from now.

marriage

was regarded as an institution for securing wealth and property rights. procreative acts were authorized by heterosexual marriage, where as non-procreative acts were considered animalistic and condemned as sodomy by religious teachings.

love and sexual desired were regarded as polar opposites > difference between the body, spirit and the flesh.

latter of the 19th century

he belief that individuals can be meaningfully defined by their sexual attractions and behaviors only started spreading

round this same time, love and sex came to be seen as related. this was partly with freud’s conceptualization of homosexuality and heterosexuality

1940

american psychoanalysis had broken with freud and he started embracing that humans are naturally heterosexual and that homosexuality represents a phobic response to members of the other sex → homosexuality was considered a sickness.

(military) illness model

the illness model was incorporated. whereas existing military regulations already prohibited sodomy, now armed forces sought to bar homosexuals from their ranks

• witch hunts occured frequently, and lgbtq+ members were undesirably discharged, and they consequently were outed to their community which caused them to also be ostracized socially.

• institutions the used their bad discharge papers to discriminate against them on the basis of their undesirable status (or their homosexuality)

• many psychiatrists and physicians attempted to “cure” homosexuality, they tried turning homosexuals into heterosexuals

• many states passed sexual psychopath laws that put homosexuals in the same category as rapists and child molesters and were therefore permitted indefinite confinement in psychiatric institutions

1948

alfred kinsey published his book on sexual behavior in the human male. followed in the sequel on female sexuality in 1953.

kinsey’s team found that homosexual experiences were extremely common which directly contradicted the heterosexual assumption

1951

ford and beach published a review of cross-cultural and cross-species studies of sexual behavior, concluding that same-sex sexual behavior occurs in many animal species and was considered normal in majority of societies.

they revealed homosexual behavior to be common, not rare nor pathological.

evelyn hooker

conducted the first published study comparing the psychological functioning of a nonclinical sample of homosexuals and heterosexuals.

she did not accept the conventional wisdom that homosexuality was a pathology → she used science to test this assumption.

gonsiorek

noted that when family patterns observed in a homosexual sample differed from those in a heterosexual comparison group, the former’s experiences were assumed to exist due to pathology whereas the latter were assumed to be influenced by mental health

• due to circular logic, homosexuals were assumed to be mentally ill because they often reported “presumed” pathological theories within their family patterns

1970

lgbtq+ activists confronted the psychiatric establishments with protests > demanding that diagnostic assumptions be subjected to scientific scrutiny

1973

the american psychiatric associations board of directors voted to remove homosexuality from the DSM

”homosexuality per se implies no impairment in judgement, stability, reliability or general social capabilities

—> the focus of clinical practice stopped aiming to “cure” homosexuality and started assisting minorities in leading happier lives. scientific research started examining the psychological roots of heterosexuals prejudice against sexual minorities

sex and gender

the distinction between the two terms was made in the 1950s when john money and his colleagues used the word “sex” to refer to someone’s physical and biological characteristics and “gender” to refer to their psychological characteristics and behavior

rhoda unger

argued that the word “sex” didn’t only imply biological mechanisms and causes, but also promoted the essentialist view that differs between females and males were inherent and unchangeable

she suggested that “gender” referred to characteristics culturally considered to be appropriate for females.

the early phase

critics began to raise questions about the male-centered nature of the field (androcentric bias). women and issues related to women were marginalized and omitted during these years.

men against women

expressed that women were biologically and culturally unsuited for high-status careers, and that they naturally lacked the skills and drive to succeed in science

a claim to explain why women would be unfit was that “their brains were smaller” > this was later discredited by the discovery that relative brain size (weight of brain relative to weight of body) is greater in women than men. there were also no differences within their intellectual capabilities.

compensatory phase

women were “discovered” as psychologists and legitimate objects of research. the focus went from women to gender.

transformational phase

women psychologists and research related to women and gender are no longer marginalized but incorporated into psychology as a well-established and legitimate field of study.

early female psychologists

the first women in psychology were faced with many obstacles, since many universities didn’t welcome women. plus if a woman married, she was no longer considered serious about her profession and was turned down.

margaret floy washburn

the first woman to receive a PHD in psychology in the US. another 40 years were passed before african american women were awarded with doctoral degrees.

• developed a motor theory of consciousness

• argued that all thought can be traced back to bodily movements

• consciousness arises when a motion or a tendency towards movement is partially inhibited by a tendency towards another movement

mary whiton calkins

• calkins became the first female president in 1905

• established one of the first psychological laboratories in the country at Wellesley College

• invented a widely used technique for studying memory

• invention of the paired association

christine ladd-franklin

• concluded that color vision evolved in three stages: achromatic vision (black and white), blue-yellow sensitivity and red-green sensitivity

• the property of color was in the observer, not the wavelengths

• 2nd female president of the apa

anne anastasti

• third woman president of the apa

• each individual was a product of a combination of factors that included genetic, hereditary, and environmental influences

helen thompson woolley

found little difference in the intellectual skills of women and men

leta stetter hollingworth

challenged the assumption that women’s menstrual cycles were debilitating, she found that women’s intellectual and sensory-motor skills did not vary systematically across the menstrual cycle

nepotism

women psychologists who married male academic psychologists faced the additional obstacle of nepotism. many institutions did not allow married couples to hold faculty positions in the same departement.

two related reasons of women’s invisibility

1. citing references refers to authors only by their last name and first initials. 2. the absence of information that identifies the sex of the author causes people to “assume” something is written by men.

male as normative

• another manifestation of the androcentric bias that characterized the early years of psychology were that research participants were almost always males

  → additionally these males were young, white, middle class, able bodied and heterosexual. this restricted sample lead to unwarranted and inaccurate conclusions about the excluded groups

the male as normative bias

appeared when interpreting the results of research, one form in which this was expressed was to interpret findings in ways that suggest female weakness or inferiority

“female shortcoming” assumption

interpretation of research which indicates that females are more likely to use tentative speech → tag questions, uncertain verbes and hedges.

⇒ this pattern of speech was said to indicate a lack of confidence but in actuality indicates that women have a more communal orientation.

1960s

- betty friedan’s book “the feminine mystique” (63)

- the passage of the federal equal pay act (63)

• the formation of the national organization for women (66)

⇒ these events turned the spotlight on the inequities that existed between men and women. then the association for women in psychology was founded in 1969, this was followed in 1973 by the establishment within the APA of division of the psychology of women.

naomi weisstein

kinder, kuche, kirche: as scientific law: psychology constructs the female” which argued that theories and assumptions about women made by prominent psychologists were flawed by their biases and fantasies.

—> weisstein and other feminist writers attributed existing sexist biases to a failure to examine the social and cultural contexts of the lives of girls and women.

key activities of feminist researchers during the compensatory phase

• the demonstration of the sexist bias in the psychological field

• another corrective activity of this phase was to focus on the neglected foremothers of psychology: the recognition of the important women of the early days of psychology

• shift in the focus of theory and research from women to gender, gender was not conceptualised not only as an identifying category, but also as a principle of social organization which structures relationships between women and men

a woman as problem or anomaly

in this approach researchers emphasize deficiencies or diminished achievements in terms of socially transmitted roles and expectations rather than biological factors

the transformational years

transformations in conceptualization, theory and methodology in research on women and gender have been tied to the application of feminist perspectives and principles to psychological research

• during the third, most recent, wave of feminism, researchers have been urged to examine the heterogeneity of women’s experiences by attending to the way in which gender intersects with other social identities such as race and ethnicity, nationality, social class, sexual orientation, ableness, marital status, parental status, and age.

etaugh and worell

= collected a set of six feminist principles, beliefs and values that are used to evaluate transformations in theory and research related to women and gender

1. challenging the beliefs of traditional scientific research.

2. focusing on the experience and lives of women.

3. viewing power relations as the base of the patriarchal social arrangements.

4. recognizing gender as a category of analysis, pointing out multiple conceptions of gender and emphasizing the situational context.

5. attention to the use of language and reducing the polarization between private and public in women’s lives.

6. promoting social activism toward societal change.

eagly and co-workers

revealed several important trends in the development of research on the psychology of gender

• the first to emphasize that few gender differences were well documented.

• a steep increase in the annual frequency of articles on sex differences, gender and women from 1960 on.

- compared the number of articles on gender and women to the total in human psychology in a given year. (high point 1979, decline early 1980s and gradual climb in 1990s)

- found that articles on gender and women mostly appeared in the subject area of social processes and social issues.

biosocial constructionist theory of alice eagly and wendy wood

important new model. instead of the traditional feminist seperation with sex as nature and gender as nurture, their theory intertwines culture and biology in both distal evolutionary processes that shaped human psychology and proximal mechanisms that underlie similarities and differences in the behaviors of women and men.

sandra bem’s sex role inventory

instrument for measuring femininity, masculinity and androgyny

→ got a grant and a reward but still denied some jobs because it was “out of the mainstreams

intersectionality

the ways in which systems of inequality based on gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, class and other forms of discrimination “intersect“ to create unique dynamics and effects should not only think about gender but also about race, colour etc.

standpoint theory

women see the world from their own subjective experience

feminist social constructionism

knowledge is dependent on the language which is also shaped by community → social, cultural and historical contexts

biosocial constructionist theory

intertwines culture and biology in study of human psychology and mechanisms that underlie similarities and differences in the behaviors of women and men

fryer - dr h. anonymous

american psychiatrist and gay rights activist → spoke publically about his sexuality and experiences during a 1972 apa conference