AO3

Gender Bias:

Limitation: biological versus social explanations

• gender differences often presented as fixed (alpha bias)

• Maccoby & Jacklin present girls as having superior verbal ability and boys better spacial ability

  • ‘hardwired’ into the brain before birth → findings reported as seen facts

• Joel → used brain scanning and found no difference

• should be wary accepting research findings as biological facts

Counter point strength: multitasking women shouldnt exaggerate effect on behaviour

• popular stereotype that women are better at multitasking → some biological truth

• women’s brain benefit from better connections between right and left hemisphere

• suggests biological differences → but shouldn’t exaggerate effect on behaviour

Limitation: sexism in research

• women underrepresented in university departments; particularly science

• psychology undergraduates = mainly women

• lecturers = men

• research is more likely to be conducted by men → disadvantaging participants who are women

• male researcher may expect women to be irrational and unable to complete complex tasks → such expectations mean more women underperform in research studies

• institutional structures and methods of psychology may produce gender-biased findings

Culture bias

Limitation: classic studies

• most influential studies are culturally biased

• Asch + Milgram = conducted exclusively with US participants (white, middle-class students)

• replications produce different results

  • Asch-type experiments in collectivist cultures found higher rates of conformity than in original studies in US (individualist culture)

• understanding of these topics should only be applied to individualist cultures

Counterpoint strength: increased media globalisation

• increased media globalisation lead to individualist-collectivist distinction no longer applying

• traditional argument is that individualist countries (US) value individuals + independence → collectivist (China + India) value society and needs of group

• Takano + Osaka = 14/15 studies compared US to Japan and found no evidence of individualism or collectivism → describing distinction as lazy and simplistic

• suggests cultural bias may be less of an issue in more recent research

Strength: emergence of cultural psychology

• cultural psychology according to Cohen → study of how people are shaped by cultural experience

• emerging field and incorporated other researchers from different disciplines; anthropology, sociology, political science

• cultural psychologists strive to avoid ethnocentric assumptions → take more emic approach

  • conducts research from inside a culture alongside local researchers = culturally based techniques

  • focus on two cultures; instead of large scale

• modern psychologists more mindful of dangers of cultural bias and take steps to avoid it

Free will and determinism

Strength: practical value

• common-sense view → we exercise free choice everyday

• even if we don’t exercising free choice improves mental health

• Roberts → researched adolescents who had strong belief in fatalism (lives were decided by events outside of control)

  • found: significant greater risk of developing depression

• people who exhibit external locus of control = less likely to be optimistic

• suggests if we don’t have free will → may have positive impact on mind and behaviour

Limitation: brain scan research evidence

• brain scan evidence does not support it but its supports determinism

• Libet et al. told participants to choose a random time to flick their wrist whilst measuring brain activity (‘readiness potential’)

• they had to say when they felt the conscious will to move

• Libet found the unconscious brain activity leading up to the conscious decision to move came around half a second before the participant consciously felt they decided to move

• may be interpreted as meaning that even our most basic experience of free will are determined by the brain before we are aware of them

Strength: counterpoints

• Libets findings showing that the brain is involved in decision-making is not surprising and what we would expect

• just because the action comes from the conscious awareness of the decision to act - doesn’t mean there is not decision, just that the decision to act took time to reach consciousness

• conscious awareness of the decision is simple a ‘read-out’ of our unconscious decision-making

• suggests this evidence is not appropriate as a challenge to free will

Nature Nurture debate

Strength: use of adoption studies

• they are useful because they separate the competing influences of nature and nurture

• if adopted children are found to be similar to adoptive parents - suggests environmental influences

• if more similar to biological - genetic factors dominate

• meta-analysis of adoption studies by Rhee and Waldman found genetic influences accounted for 41% of variance in aggression

• research separates influences of nature and nurture

Limitation: counterpoint

• research is misguided and nature + nurture are not two entities that can be pulled apart

• Plomin says people create their own nurture by seeking environments appropriate for their nature

• example; a naturally aggressive child is more likely to feel comfortable with children of similar behaviour and choose them as their environment

• their chosen companions further influence their development - Plomic calls this niche-picking

• suggests that it does not make sense to look at evidence of either nature or nurture

Strength: support for epigenetics

• one example of how environmental effects can span generations presumably through epigenetics effects that came from events of WW2

• nazis blocked the distribution of food to the Dutch and 22,000 died of starvation - Dutch Hunger Winter

• Susser and Lin report that women who became pregnant during the famine went on to have low birth weight babies - they then went on to be 2x more likely to develop schizophrenia when they grew up compared to the more typical population rates

• supports the view that the life experiences of previous generations leaves epigenetic ‘markers’ that influence the health of their offspring

Holism and Reduction

Strength(holism): offers a more complete explanation

• the holistic approach offers a more valid, complete explanation for certain complex human behaviours, particularly social processes

• for example, conformity observed in the Stanford Prison Experiment was a product of group interaction and situational factors, rather than a single, isolated element like an individual's traits or a hypothetical "conformity gene."

• demonstrates that, while reductionism fails to account for the emergent properties of a system, a holistic understanding, operating at a higher level of explanation, is essential for fully grasping and explaining such behaviours

Limitation(holism): holism lacks practical value

• holistic accounts of human behaviour are hard to use as they become more complex

• presents researchers with practical dilemma

• if we accept, from humanistic perspective, that there are many factors which contribute to depression (past, relationships, job, family) - becomes difficult to know which is most influential

• difficult to then know which to prioritise for therapy

• suggests holistic accounts may lack practical value

Strength(reductionist): form basis of scientific approach

• they often form the basis of a scientific approach

• in order to conduct well-controlled research - need to operationalise the variables to be studied-to break target behaviours down into constituent parts

• makes it possible to conduct experiments or record observations (behavioural categories) in a way that is objective and reliable

• E.g. research on attachment (the strange situation) operationalised component behaviours such as separation anxiety

• scientific approach gives psychology greater credibility, placing it on equal terms with the natural sciences.

Limitation(reductionist): oversimplify complex phenomena

• can oversimplify complex phenomena, leading to reduced validity.

• for example, explanations of a gene or neurotransmitter level do not analyse behaviours occurring in a social context

• if someone were to point their finger, the physiological process will always be the same regardless of the context, but an analysis of this action may not explain the reason why a person pointed their finger; it could be aggression for example

• reductionism only ever offers part of an explanation.