Gender Bias

Universality & bias

  • Bias refers to any factor (e.g. attitudes, behaviours, beliefs) that interferes with the validity (i.e. the ‘truth’) of the research process

  • Bias may lead to researchers forming conclusions which favour universality

  • Universality occurs when a researcher has not considered the fact that there is no ‘one size fits all’ in terms of human behaviour and experience, e.g.

    • Milgram’s (1963) obedience study used only male participants which limits the extent of its generalisability and its usefulness

      • How could Milgram make assumptions as to how people are destructively obedient without considering a female perspective or response?

    • Bowlby’s attachment theory (initially at least) assumed that the mother is the primary caregiver and his maternal deprivation hypothesis places the burden of dysfunction attachment on women rather than a shared responsibility between both parents

      • Men are equally important in terms of both healthy and unhealthy attachment behaviours

  • Adopting a universal approach can result in research that is subjective and laden with value judgements, e.g.

    • X behaviour is abnormal because it does not align with the behaviour I am familiar with…

    • My research using a male-only sample leads me to conclude that this is a general tendency of humans…

  • Gender bias occurs when one gender is either favoured over another gender or one gender is discriminated against via prejudicial attitudes or behaviour

  • Adopting a universal bias can involve gender bias

    • Due to the male-dominant body of literature in the field of psychology, gender bias inevitably has been (and continues to be) an issue in psychological research

Alpha bias

  • Alpha bias occurs when researchers over-emphasise the differences between males and females, e.g.

    • males are competitive; females are caring

    • males like a variety of sexual partners; females want to bond with one mate

    • males like youth and beauty; females want a mate with resources

    • males are aggressive; females are nurturing

  • Alpha bias usually (but not always) favours males and devalues females (possibly because most psychological research has been conducted by males)

  • Differences between males and females allow for no flexibility when it comes to alpha bias

    • Male/female traits, behaviours and characteristics are presented as fixed, stable and inevitable

    • Freud’s psychodynamic theory is guilty of such inflexibility with its insistence that women are essentially inferior to men

    • Schizophrenia is diagnosed more frequently in men which means that women may have to try harder to mask their symptoms or they may believe that there is nothing wrong with them, i.e. they are just being ‘hysterical’

Beta bias

  • Beta bias occurs when researchers ignore or downplay differences between males and females, e.g.

    • as with universal bias, the complete absence of females in a sample means that conclusions drawn are applied to both males and females alike, with no acknowledgement/awareness that females may respond differently to males within that given context

    • psychobiology, particularly when it comes to hormones, means that research in this field should account for gender differences but, generally, it hasn’t

      • The fight-or-flight response is based on the male experience which can only explain male biological mechanisms

      • Kohlberg’s theory of moral reasoning used American males whose results were then generalised to both men and women (Carol Gilligan then went on to develop her Ethics of Care theory to incorporate the female perspective)

Androcentrism

  • Androcentrism means male-centered

    • It results from and perpetuates a worldview that is persistently male

  • The male viewpoint/behaviour becomes the ‘norm’ or the model for behaviour generally which could lead to female behaviour being viewed as ‘abnormal’, e.g.

    • research by Milgram (1963), Asch (1951) and Zimbardo (1973) used all-male samples to draw conclusions about the nature of, respectively, destructive obedience, normative conformity and conformity to social roles

      • This assumes that the findings from this research represent a general population when in fact 50% of the population was unrepresented in each study

    • Males who express strong emotions, e.g. anger are likely to be seen as ‘impressive/assertive/rational’ whereas the same degree of emotion expressed by a woman may be labelled ‘bossy/shrill/hormonal’

Evaluation of gender bias

Strengths

  • Researchers who are aware of gender bias may practice reflexivity

    • This in turn can lead to good practice and the modelling of an ideal for other researchers to aspire to

  • Cornwell et al. (2013) showed that women are successful when it comes to learning because they are more attentive, flexible and organised

    • Stereotypes that the male model of behaviour is superior are therefore challenged

    • This is an example of reverse alpha bias which can help to readdress inequalities

Limitations

  • As well as ignoring the female experience in psychology there are other potential consequences of gender bias, e.g.

    • female researchers may receive less funding than their male colleagues as their role as serious psychologists may be questioned

    • research which ignores or devalues the female experience/perspective is that prejudice, discrimination or sexism are viewed as normal and acceptable

  • There is some external validity to gender bias in research as the lack of female representation can give rise to the idea that women generally are not as important or high-status as men