Issues and Debates

Gender and culture in psychology – universality and bias. Gender bias including androcentrism and alpha and beta bias; cultural bias, including ethnocentrism and cultural relativism

• Universality is the idea that there are a range of psychological characteristics of human beings that can be applied to all of us despite differences in experiences and upbringing.

• The term bias is used to suggest that a person’s views are distorted in some way, and in psychology there is evidence that gender is presented in a biased way. This gender bias leads to differential treatment of males and females, based on stereotypes and not real differences.

• The difficulty lies in distinguishing “real” from culturally created gender differences. Evidence suggests that there are a small number of real gender differences, confirmed through cross-cultural studies. For example, in a review of the research on sex differences, Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) concluded that there were only four differences between boys and girls, including:

1. Girls have greater verbal ability

2. Boys have greater visual and spatial abilities

3. Boys have greater arithmetical ability, a difference that only appears at adolescence

4. Girls are less aggressive than boys

• Androcentrism- taking male thinking/behavior as normal, regarding female thinking/behavior as deviant, inferior, abnormal, ‘other’ when it is different. In the past most psychologists were male, and the theories they produced tended to represent a male view of the world. Hare-Mustin and Marecek (1988) argued for there being two types of gender bias: alpha and beta bias.

• Alpha bias refers to theories which exaggerate the differences between males and females

• The evolutionary approach in psychology has been criticised for its alpha bias. This is because this approach suggests that evolutionary processes in the development of the human species explain why men tend to be dominant, why women have a more parental investment in their offspring, and why men are more likely to commit adultery. However, society has changed considerably over recent years, and it is argued that the evolutionary perspective shouldn’t be used to justify gender differences.

• Similarly within the psychodynamic approach Freud and many of his followers believed that biological differences between men and women had major consequences for psychological development. In their view, ‘biology is destiny’.

• Freud believed that gender divergence begins at the onset of the phallic stage, where the girl realises that she has no penis, and starts to feel inferior to boys (penis envy). Penis envy becomes a major driving force in the girl’s mental life, and needs to be successfully sublimated into a desire for a husband and children if it is not to become pathological.

• This view of gender divergence in personality development has implications for other aspects of development. For example, Freud’s view of morality was that it was regulated by the superego, which is an internalisation of the same sex parent that regulates behavior through the threat of punishment. In boys, immoral behavior is regulated through the mechanism of castration anxiety – men obey the rules because of an unconscious fear that their father will take away their penis.

• In the Freudian view, the girl has already had to accept her castration as a fait accompli, which raises important questions about the relative moral strength of men and women.

• The biomedical view of mental illness, which approaches behavioral and psychological abnormality as a manifestation of underlying pathological processes on the biological level, dominates discussion of mental illness.

• In the biomedical view, illnesses such as depression can be explained in terms of chemical imbalances causing malfunction in the parts of the brain associated with emotion.

• When explaining why twice as many women as men are diagnosed with depression, adherents of the biomedical view tend to suggest that this is due to hormonal differences, and point to the existence of, for example, postnatal depression to show how fluctuations in female sex hormones can lead to abnormalities of mood.

• Similarly, sex differences in hormonal processes can be used to explain the existence of disorders that are ‘gender bound’, such as premenstrual syndrome.

• Beta bias theories have traditionally ignored or minimised sex differences. These theories often assume that the findings from males can apply equally to females.

• For example, Kohlberg’s stage theory of moral development was based on extensive interviews that he conducted with boys aged 10-16. The same all male sample was then re-interviewed at intervals of 3-4 years over a 20- year period. His classification system is based on a morality of justice and some researchers, such as Carol Gilligan (1982), have found that women tend to be more focused on relationships when making moral decisions and therefore often appear to be at a lower level of moral reasoning when using Kohlberg’s system. Therefore Kohlberg’s approach meant that a real difference was ignored.

• There is also evidence of beta bias in psychological research. Male and female participants are used in most studies, but there is normally no attempt to analyse the data to see whether there are significant sex differences. Where differences are found, it may be possible that these occur because researchers ignore the differential treatment of participants. For example, Rosenthal (1966) reported that male experimenters were more pleasant, friendly, honest, and encouraging with female than with male participants. This led Rosenthal to conclude: “Male and female subjects may, psychologically, simply not be in the same experiment at all.”

• Even some animal research can be argued to suffer from beta bias. For example, biological research into the fight-or-flight response has often been carried out with male animals because they have less variation in hormones than females. It was assumed that this would not be a problem as the fight-or-flight response would be the same for both. However, later stress research by Taylor et al. (2000) has challenged this view by providing evidence that females produce a tend-and-befriend response. The beta-bias in the earlier animal studies meant that for a long time the stress response was not fully understood and a real difference was ignored.

• The result of beta bias in psychological research is that we end up with a view of human nature that is supposed to apply to men and women alike, but in fact, has a male or androcentric bias. For example, Asch’s (1955) conformity studies involved all male participants, as did many of the other conformity studies (e.g., Perrin & Spencer, 1980) and therefore it was assumed that females would respond in the same way.

Positive Consequences of Gender Bias

Alpha Bias:

• Has led to some theorists (Gilligan) to assert the worth and valuation ‘feminine qualities’.

• Has led to healthy criticism of cultural values that praise certain ‘male’ qualities such as aggression and individualism as desirable, adaptive and universal.

• Kitzinger (1998) argues that questions about sex differences aren’t just scientific questions – they’re also political (women have same rights as men). So gender differences distorted to maintain the status quo of male power. For example: Women kept out of male-dominant universities, women were oppressed, and women stereotypes (Bowlby). 

• Feminists argue that although gender differences are minimal or non-existent, they are used against women to maintain male power. So can sustain prejudices and stereotypes.

• Focus on differences between genders leads to the implication of similarity WITHIN genders, thus this ignores the many ways women differ from each other.

• Judgements about an individual women’s ability are made on the basis of average differences between the sexes or biased sex-role stereotypes, and this also had the effect of lowering women’s self esteem; making them, rather than men, think they have to improve themselves (Tavris, 1993).

Beta Bias:

• Makes people see men and women as the same, which has led to equal treatment in legal terms and equal access to, for example, education and employment.

• Draws attention away from the differences in power between men and women

• Is considered as an egalitarian approach but it results in major misrepresentations of both genders.

• Gender Bias in the Research Process- Institutional sexism- Although female psychology students outnumber male, at a senior teaching and research level in universities, men dominate. Men predominate at senior researcher level.

• Research agenda follows male concerns, female concerns may be marginalised or ignored.

• Use of standardised procedures in research studies- Most experimental methodologies are based around standardised treatment of participants. This assumes that men and women respond in the same ways to the experimental situation.

• Women and men might respond differently to research situation.

• Women and men might be treated differently by researchers.

• Could create artificial differences or mask real ones.

• Dissemination of research results through academic journals- Publishing bias towards positive results.

• Research that finds gender differences more likely to get published than that which doesn’t.

• Exaggerates the extent of gender differences.

• Reducing Gender Bias in Psychology- Equal opportunity legislation and feminist psychology have performed the valuable functions of reducing institutionalised gender bias and drawing attention to sources of bias and under-researched areas in psychology like childcare, sexual abuse, dual burden working and prostitution. The prominence of female researchers like Ainsworth and Loftus have also led to increased acknowledgement of women in the psychological field

• By developing a greater understanding of gender bias, psychologists have put forward a number of solutions. For example, some psychologists attempt to develop theories that emphasise the importance or value of women. Cornwell et al. (2013) noted that females are better at learning, as they are more attentive and organised, thus emphasising both the value and the positive attributes of women. As a result, this type of research helps to reduce or challenge gender stereotypes which is important in reducing gender bias.

• Worrell (1992) also suggested a number of research criteria that are particularly important to ensure non-gender biased research investigations: using alternative methods of inquiry to explore the personal lives of women; considering women in the natural settings in which they function; collaborating with research participants to explore personally relevant variables and studying diverse samples (women who vary by age, socio-economic class, partner preference, minority or ethnic group).

• It is also important to remember that sometimes the gender bias can work against males as well as females, as sometimes alpha bias theories heighten the value of women. For example, Chodorow (1978) viewed women as more relational and caring. Another example is that women are more likely to be diagnosed with depression and given treatment than males. This may be because women are more likely to suffer from depression, or it could be that the diagnostic system may be biased towards finding depression among women. The expectation for males should be able to ‘pull themselves together’ is viewed as a masculine trait which may highlight an issue with the psychological diagnostic systems.

• Culture bias- Smith and Bond (1988) found that 66% of participants in European textbooks on social psychology were American, 32% European, and only 2% from the rest of the world.

• Western psychologists routinely generalise their findings from societies in small sections of the world like this onto people as a whole, but findings of psychological research conducted in one culture may not apply directly to another.

• Culture can be defined as the values, beliefs and patterns of behaviour shared by a group of people.

• Culture bias occurs when all human behaviour is interpreted from only one cultural viewpoint

• Ethnocentrism is when a researcher takes their own culture as the norm and interprets deviations from this as ‘abnormal’. Ethnocentrism is an often inadvertent lack of awareness that other ways of seeing things can be as valid as one’s own. For example, definitions of abnormality vary from culture to culture. Fernando claims that African-Caribbeans in Britain are sometimes diagnosed as ‘mentally ill’ on the basis of behaviour which is perfectly normal in their subculture, and this is due to the ignorance of African-Caribbean subculture on the part of white psychiatrists.

• When a theory is described as universal, it means that it can apply to all people, irrespective of gender and culture. However, this also means that it needs to include real differences.

• Ainsworth's Strange Situation is another example of ethnocentric research. The Strange Situation was developed to assess attachment types, and many researchers assume that the Strange Situation has the same meaning for the infants from other cultures, as it does for American children. German children, on average, demonstrate a higher rate of insecure-avoidant behaviour. However, it is not the case that German mothers are more insensitive than American mothers. Instead, they value and encourage independent behaviour, and therefore their children react differently in the Strange Situation. The Strange Situation has been described as an imposed etic, where a technique or theory is developed in one culture and then imposed on another.

• Takahashi (1990) aimed to see whether the strange situation is a valid procedure for cultures other than the original. Takashi found no children in the avoidant-insecure stage, this could be explained in cultural terms as Japanese children are taught that such behavior is impolite and the would be actively discouraged from displaying it. Also because Japanese children experience much less separation, the SS was more than mildly stressful.

• Cultural relativism suggests that behaviours and concepts can only be understood correctly from the perspective of their cultural context. Therefore, any study which draws its sample from only one cultural context (like American college students) and then generalises its findings to all people everywhere, is suspect.

• According to this viewpoint, the meaning of intelligence is different in every culture. For example, Sternberg (1985) pointed out that coordination skills that may be essential to life in a preliterate society (e.g., those motor skills required for shooting a bow and arrow) may be mostly irrelevant to intelligent behaviour for most people in a literate and more “developed” society.

• An etic construct is a behaviour that is thought to be universal across all cultural groups (i.e: smiling when happy).

• An emic is a behaviour that only applies to certain cultural groups.

• Berry (1969) stated that “Psychology takes an imposed etic approach because it argues that theories/concepts are universal despite research being conducted using emic constructs within a specific culture”.

Evaluation

• Research is likely to continue over-representing American college students due to the ease and low cost of obtaining them as an opportunity sample.

• With regard to culture, one way to achieve universality would be to employ what Berry (1969) described as a derived etic. This is where a series of emic studies take place in local settings, conducted by local researchers using local techniques. Such studies can build up a picture of human behaviour in a similar way to the ethnographic approach taken by anthropologists. This is the study of different cultures through the use of comparisons, as by making comparisons between cultures we can learn more about a target culture.

• One way to deal with cultural bias is to recognise it when it occurs (i.e: Smith and Bond’s 1998 study).

• Making the assumption that behaviors are universal across cultures can lead to imposed etics, where a construct from one culture is applied inappropriately to another, leading to research that either intentionally or unintentionally supports racist and discriminatory practices in the real world. Culturally biased research can have significant real-world effects by, for example, amplifying and validating damaging stereotypes. The US Army used an IQ test before WWI which was culturally biased toward the dominant white majority. Unsurprisingly, the test showed that African-Americans were at the bottom of the IQ scale and this had a negative effect on the attitudes of Americans’ toward this group of people, which highlights the negative impact that culturally biased research can have.

• An emic approach refers to the investigation of a culture from within the culture itself. This means that research of European society from a European perspective is emic, and African society by African researchers in Africa is also emic. An emic approach is more likely to have ecological validity as the findings are less likely to be distorted or caused by a mismatch between the cultures of the researchers and the culture being investigated. This suggests that Culture bias can occur when a researcher assumes that an emic construct (behavior specific to a single culture) is actually an etic (behavior universal to all cultures).

• Equal opportunity legislation aims to rid psychology of cultural bias and racism, but we must be cautious of merely swapping old, overt racism for new, more subtle forms of racism (Howitt and Owusu-Bempah, 1994)

• Free Will suggests that we all have a choice and can control and choose our own behavior. This approach is all about personal responsibility and plays a central role in Humanist Psychology.

• By arguing that humans can make free choices, the free will approach appears to be quite the opposite of the deterministic one. Psychologists who take the free will view suggest that determinism removes freedom and dignity, and devalues human behavior.

• To a lesser degree Cognitive Psychology also supports the idea of free will and choice. In reality, although we do have free will it is constrained by our circumstances and other people. For example, when you go shopping your choices are constrained by how much money you have.

Evaluation

• It emphasises the importance of the individual and studying individual differences.

• It fits society’s view of personal responsibility e.g. if you break the law you should be punished.

• The idea of self-efficacy is useful in therapies as it makes them more effective.

• Free will is subjective and some argue it doesn’t exist.

• It is impossible to scientifically test the concept of free will.

• Few people would agree that behavior is always completely under the control of the individual.

Free will and determinism: hard determinism and soft determinism; biological, environmental and psychic determinism. The scientific emphasis on causal explanations

• The determinist approach proposes that all behavior is determined and thus predictable. Some approaches in psychology see the source of this determinism as being outside the individual, a position known as environmental determinism.

• Others see it from coming inside i.e., in the form of unconscious motivation or genetic determinism – biological determinism.

• Environmental (External) Determinism: This is the idea that our behavior is caused by some sort of outside influence e.g. parental influence. Skinner (1971) argued that freedom is an illusion. We may think we have free will but the probability of any behavior occurring is determined by past experiences. Skinner claimed that free will was an illusion – we think we are free, but this is because we are not aware of how our behavior is determined by reinforcement.

The two types of internal determinism are:

1. Biological (Internal) Determinism: Our biological systems, such as the nervous system, govern our behavior. For example, a high IQ may be related to the IGF2R gene (Chorney et al. 1998).

2. Psychic (Internal) Determinism: Freud believed childhood experiences and unconscious motivations governed behavior. Freud thought that free will was an illusion, because he felt that the causes of our behavior is unconscious and still predictable.

There are different levels of determinism:

• Hard Determinism sees free will as an illusion and believes that every event and action has a cause.

• Soft Determinism represents a middle ground, people do have a choice, but that choice is constrained by external factors e.g. Being poor doesn’t make you steal, but it may make you more likely to take that route through desperation.

Evaluation

• Determinism is scientific and allows cause and effect relationships to be established.

• It gives plausible explanations for behavior backed up by evidence.

• Determinism is reductionist.

• Does not account for individual differences. By creating general laws of behavior, deterministic psychology underestimates the uniqueness of human beings and their freedom to choose their own destiny.

• Hard determinism suggests criminals cannot be held accountable for their actions. Deterministic explanations for behavior reduce individual responsibility. A person arrested for a violent attack for example might plead that they were not responsible for their behavior – it was due to their upbringing, a bang on the head they received earlier in life, recent relationship stresses, or a psychiatric problem. In other words, their behavior was determined.

The nature-nurture debate: the relative importance of heredity and environment in determining behaviour; the interactionist approach

• The central question is the extent to which our behavior is determined by our biology (nature) and the genes we inherit from our parents versus the influence of environmental factors (nurture) such as home school and friends.

• Nature is the view that all our behavior is determined by our biology, our genes. This is not the same as the characteristics you are born with, because these may have been determined by your prenatal environment. In addition, some genetic characteristics only appear later in development as a result of the process of maturation. Supporters of the nature view have been called ‘nativists’.

• Evolutionary explanations of human behavior exemplify the nature approach of psychology. The main assumption underlying this approach is that any particular behavior has evolved because of its survival value.

• E.g., Bowlby suggested that attachment behaviors are displayed because they ensure the survival of an infant and the perpetuation of the parents’ genes. This survival value is further increased because attachment has implications for later relationship formation which will ultimately promote successful reproduction.

• Evolutionary psychologists assume that behavior is a product of natural selection. Interpersonal attraction can, for example, be explained as a consequence of sexual selection. Men and women select partners who enhance their productive success, judging this in terms of traits that ‘advertise’ reproductive fitness, such as signs as healthiness (white teeth) or resources.

• Physiological psychology is also based on the assumption that behavior can be explained in terms of genetically programmed systems.

Evaluation

• Bowlby’s explanation of attachment does not ignore environmental influences, as is generally true for evolutionary explanations. In the case of attachment theory, Bowlby proposed that infants become most strongly attached to the caregiver who responds most sensitively to the infant’s needs. The experience of sensitive caregiving leads a child to develop expectations that others will be equally sensitive, so that they tend to form adult relationships that are enduring and trusting.

• Problem of the transgenerational effect. Behavior which appears to be determined by nature (and therefore is used to support this nativist view) may in fact be determined by nurture! e.g. if a woman has poor diet during her pregnancy, her unborn child will suffer. This means that the eggs with which each female child is born will also have these negative effects. This can then affect the development of her children a whole generation later.

• This means that a child’s development may in fact be determined by their grandmother’s environment (transgenerational effect). This suggests that what may appear to be inherited and in born is in fact caused by the environment and nurture.

• Nurture is the opposite view that all behavior is learnt and influenced by external factors such as the environment etc. Supports of the nurture view are ‘empiricists’ holding the view that all knowledge is gained through experience.

• The behaviorist approach is the clearest examples of the nurture position in psychology, which assumes that all behavior is learned through the environment. The best known example is the social learning explanation of aggression, using the Bobo doll.

• SLT proposes that much of what we learn is through observation and vicarious reinforcement. E.g., Bandura demonstrated this in his Bobo doll experiments. He found that children who watched an adult role model being rewarded for aggression towards an inflatable doll, tended to imitate that behavior when later on their own with a Bobo doll.

• This supports the idea that personality is determined by nurture rather than nature. This provides us with a model of how to behave. However, such behavior becomes part of an individual’s behavioral repertoire through direct reinforcement – when a behavior is imitated, it receives direct reinforcement (or not).

• Another assumption of the nurture approach is that there is the double bind hypothesis which explains schizophrenia. They suggest that schizophrenia develops because children receive contradictory messages from their parents.

Evaluation

• Empirical evidence shows that behavior is learnt and can be modified through conditioning.

• Behaviorist accounts are all in terms of learning, but even learning itself has a genetic basis. For example, research has found that mutant flies missing a crucial gene cannot be conditioned (Quinn et al., 1979).

• Instead of defending extreme nature or nurture views, most psychological researchers are now interested in investigating the ways in which nature and nurture interact. It is limiting to describe behavior solely in terms of either nature or nurture, and attempts to do this underestimate the complexity of human behavior.

• For example, in psychopathology, this means that both a genetic predisposition and an appropriate environmental trigger are required for a mental disorder to develop. Therefore, it makes more sense to say that the difference between two people’s behavior is mostly due to hereditary factors or mostly due to environmental factors.

• The Diathesis-stress model of Schizophrenia suggests that although people may inherit a predisposition to Schizophrenia, some sort of environmental stressor is required in order to develop the disease. This explains why Schizophrenia happens in the late teens or early adulthood, times of considerable upheaval and stress in people’s lives e.g. leaving home, starting work, forging new relationships etc.

Holism and reductionism: levels of explanation in psychology. Biological reductionism and environmental (stimulus-response) reductionism

• Holism is often referred to as Gestalt psychology. It argues that behavior cannot be understood in terms of the components that make them up. This is commonly described as ‘the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.’

• Psychologists study the whole person to gain an understanding of all the factors that might influence behavior. Holism uses several levels of explanation including biological, environment and social factors.

• Holistic approaches include Humanism, Social and Gestalt psychology and makes use of the case study method. Jahoda’s 6 elements of Optimal Living are an example of a holistic approach to defining abnormality.

Evaluation

• Looks at everything that may impact on behavior.

• Does not ignore the complexity of behavior.

• Integrates different components of behavior in order to understand the person as a whole.

• Can be higher in ecological validity.

• Over complicates behaviors which may have simpler explanations (Occam’s Razor).

• Does not lend itself to the scientific method and empirical testing.

• Makes it hard to determine cause and effect.

• Neglects the importance of biological explanations.

• Almost impossible to study all the factors that influence complex human behaviors

• Reductionism is the belief that human behavior can be explained by breaking it down into smaller component parts. Reductionists say that the best way to understand why we behave as we do is to look closely at the very simplest parts that make up our systems, and use the simplest explanations to understand how they work.

• In psychology, the term is most appropriately applied to biological explanations (e.g. genetics, neurotransmitters, hormones) of complex human behaviors such as schizophrenia, gender and aggression. Such reductionist explanations can be legitimately criticised as ignoring psychological, social and cultural factors.

• Cognitive psychology with its use of the computer analogy reduces behavior to the level of a machine, mechanistic reductionism. Behaviorist psychology sees behavior in terms of simple stimulus/response relationships. And finally, the psychodynamic perspective reduces behavior to unconscious motivation and early childhood experiences.

Evaluation

• The use of a reductionist approach to behavior can be a useful one in allowing scientific study to be carried out. Scientific study requires the isolation of variables to make it possible to identify the causes of behavior. For example, research into the genetic basis on mental disorders has enabled researchers to identify specific genes believed to be responsible for schizophrenia. This way a reductionist approach enables the scientific causes of behavior to be identified and advances the possibility of scientific study.

• A reductionist approach to studying mental disorders has led to the development of effective chemical treatments

• The disadvantage is that it can be over simplistic. Humans and their environments are so complex that the reductionist explanation falls short of giving the whole explanation of the behavior. Thus, it lacks ecological validity

• Does not address larger societal issues e.g. poverty

• Reductionism in psychology is useful, as sometimes the simplest explanation is the best. Physiological approaches do tend to be reductionist, but as long as we bare these limitations in mind. It is difficult, if not impossible, to take a completely holistic approach to psychology, as human behavior is so complex. Case studies come closest to taking a holistic approach.

• Explaining behavior in a reductionist manner is seen as a low level explanation, whereas more holistic explanations are high level explanations.

Idiographic and nomothetic approaches to psychological investigation

• Nomothetic- The Nomothetic approach looks at how our behaviors are similar to each other as human beings. The term “nomothetic” comes from the Greek word “nomos” meaning “law”.

• Psychologists who adopt this approach are mainly concerned with studying what we share with others. That is to say in establishing laws or generalizations. Tend to use quantitative methods.

• The psychometric approach to the study of personality compares individuals in terms of traits or dimensions common to everyone. This is a nomothetic approach and two examples are Hans Eysenck’s type and Raymond Cattell’s 16PF trait theories.

• Suffice to say they both assume that there are a small number of traits that account for the basic structure of all personalities and that individual differences can be measured along these dimensions.

Evaluation

• The nomothetic approach is seen as far more scientific than the idiographic approach, as it takes an evidence based, objective approach to formulate causal laws.

• This enables us to make predictions about how people are likely to react in certain circumstances, which can be very useful e.g. Zimbardo’s findings about how prisoners and guards react in a prison environment.

• Predictions can be made about groups but these may not apply to individuals.

• Approach has been accused of losing sight of the ‘whole person’.

• The Idiographic or individual differences approach looks at how our behaviors are different to each other. The term “idiographic” comes from the Greek word “idios” meaning “own” or “private”. Psychologists interested in this aspect of experience want to discover what makes each of us unique. Tend to use qualitative methods.

• At the other extreme Gordon Allport found over 18,000 separate terms describing personal characteristics. Whilst some of these are common traits (that could be investigated nomothetically) the majority, in Allport’s view, referred to more or less unique dispositions based on life experiences peculiar to ourselves. He argues that they cannot be effectively studied using standardised tests. What is needed is a way of investigating them idiographically.

• Carl Rogers, a Humanist psychologist, has developed a method of doing this, a procedure called the “Q-sort”. First the subject is given a large set of cards with a self-evaluative statement written on each one. For example “I am friendly” or “I am ambitious” etc. The subject is then asked to sort the cards into piles. One pile to contain statements that are “most like me”, one statements that are “least like me” and one or more piles for statements that are in-between.

• In a Q-sort the number of cards can be varied as can the number of piles and the type of question (e.g. How I am now? How I used to be? How my partner sees me? How I would like to be?) So there are a potentially infinite number of variations. That, of course, is exactly as it should be for an idiographic psychologist because in his/her view there are ultimately as many different personalities as there are people.

Evaluation

• A major strength of the idiographic approach is its focus on the individual. Gordon Allport argues that it is only by knowing the person as a person that we can predict what the person will do in any given situation.

• The idiographic approach is very time consuming. It takes a lot of time and money to study individuals in depth. If a researcher is using the nomothetic approach once a questionnaire, psychometric test or experiment has been designed data can be collected relatively quickly.

• From these examples we can see that the difference between a nomothetic and an idiographic approach is not just a question of what the psychologist wants to discover but also of the methods used. Experiments, correlation, psychometric testing and other quantitative methods are favoured from a nomothetic point of view. Case studies, informal interviews, unstructured observation and other qualitative methods are idiographic.

• There are also broad differences between theoretical perspectives. Behaviorist, cognitive and biological psychologists tend to focus on discovering laws or establishing generalizations: - Nomothetic. The humanists are interested in the individual: - Idiographic.

• As always, it is best to take a combined approach. Millon & Davis (1996) suggest research should start with a nomothetic approach and once general ‘laws’ have been established, research can then move to a more idiographic approach. Thus, getting the best of both worlds!

Ethical implications of research studies and theory, including reference to social sensitivity

• There has been an assumption over the years by many psychologists that provided they follow the BPS guidelines when using human participants and that all leave in a similar state of mind to how they turned up, not having been deceived or humiliated, given a debrief, and not having had their confidentiality breached, that there are no ethical concerns with their research.

But, consider the following examples:

1. Caughy et al 1994 who found that middle class children put in daycare at an early age generally score less on cognitive tests than children from similar families reared in the home. Assuming all guidelines were followed, neither the parents nor the children that participated would have been unduly affected by this research. Nobody would have been deceived, consent would have been obtained, and no harm would have been caused. However, think of the wider implications of this study when the results are published, particularly for parents of middle class infants who are considering placing their young charges in day care or those who recently have!

2. IQ tests administered to black Americans show that they typically score 15 points below the average white score. When black Americans are given these tests they presumably complete them willingly and are in no way harmed as individuals. However, when published, findings of this sort seek to reinforce racial stereotypes and are used to discriminate against the black population in the job market etc.

Sieber and Stanley (1988) used the term social sensitivity to describe studies where there are potential social consequences for the participants or the group of people represented by the research. They outline 4 groups that may be affected by socially sensitive psychological research: 

1. Members of the social group being studied such as racial or ethnic group. For example early research on IQ was used to discriminate against US Blacks.

2. Friends and relatives of those taking part in the study, particularly in case studies, where individuals may become famous or infamous. Cases that spring to mind would include Genie’s mother.

3. The research team. There are examples of researchers being intimidated because of the line of research they are in.

4. The institution in which the research is conducted.

Sieber & Stanley (1988) also suggest there are 4 main ethical concerns when conducting SSR:

1. The research question or hypothesis.

2. The treatment of individual participants.

3. The institutional context.

4. The way in which the findings of research are interpreted and applied.

Ethical guidelines for carrying out socially sensitive research

Sieber and Stanley suggest the following ethical guidelines for carrying out SSR. There is some overlap between these and research on human participants in general.

1. Privacy: This refers to people, rather than data. Asking people questions of a personal nature (e.g. about sexuality) could offend.

2. Confidentiality: This refers to data. Information (e.g. about H.I.V. status), leaked to others, may affect the participant’s life.

3. Sound & valid methodology: This is even more vital when the research topic is socially sensitive. Academics are able to detect flaws in method but the lay public and the media often don’t. When research findings are published, people are likely to take them as fact and policies may be based on them. Examples are Bowlby’s maternal deprivation studies and intelligence testing.

4. Deception: Causing the wider public to believe something, which isn’t true by the findings, you report (e.g. that parents are totally responsible for how their children turn out).

5. Informed consent: Participants should be made aware of how taking part in the research may affect them.

6. Justice & equitable treatment: Examples of unjust treatment are (i) publicising an idea, which creates prejudice against a group, & (ii) withholding a treatment, which you believe is beneficial, from some participants so that you can use them as controls. E.g. The Tuskergee Study which withheld treatment for STIs from black men to investigate the effects of syphilis on the body.

7. Scientific freedom: Science should not be censored but there should be some monitoring of sensitive research. The researcher should weigh their responsibilities against their rights to do the research.

8. Ownership of data: When research findings could be used to make social policies, which affect people’s lives, should they be publicly accessible? Sometimes, a party commissions research with their own interests in mind (e.g. an industry, an advertising agency, a political party, the military). Some people argue that scientists should be compelled to disclose their results so that other scientists can re-analyse them. If this had happened in Burt’s day, there may not have been such widespread belief in the genetic transmission of intelligence. George Miller (Miller’s Magic 7) famously argued that we should give psychology away.

9. The values of social scientists: Psychologists can be divided into 2 main groups: those who advocate a humanistic approach (individuals are important and worthy of study, quality of life is important, intuition is useful) and those advocating a scientific approach (rigorous methodology, objective data). The researcher’s values may conflict with those of the participant/institution. For example, if someone with a scientific approach was evaluating a counselling technique based on a humanistic approach, they would judge it on criteria which those giving & receiving the therapy may not consider important.

10. Cost/benefit analysis: If the costs outweigh the potential/actual benefits, it is unethical. However, it is difficult to assess costs & benefits accurately & the participants themselves rarely benefit from research.

Sieber & Stanley advise: 

1. Researchers should not avoid researching socially sensitive issues. Scientists have a responsibility to society to find useful knowledge.

2. They need to take more care over consent, debriefing, etc., when the issue is sensitive.

3. They should be aware of how their findings may be interpreted & used by others.

4. They should make explicit the assumptions underlying their research, so that the public can consider whether they agree with these.

5. They should make the limitations of their research explicit (e.g. ‘the study was only carried out on white middle class American male students’, ‘the study is based on questionnaire data, which may be inaccurate’, etc.

6. They should be careful how they communicate with the media and policymakers.

7. They should be aware of the balance between their obligations to participants and those to society (e.g. if the participant tells them something which they feel they should tell the police/social services).

8. They should be aware of their own values and biases and those of the participants.

Evaluation of socially sensitive research

• Psychologists have devised methods to resolve the issues raised.

• SSR is the most scrutinised research in psychology. Ethical committees reject more SSR than any other form of research.

• By gaining a better understanding of issues such as gender, race and sexuality we are able to gain a greater acceptance and reduce prejudice.

• SSR has been of benefit to society, for example EWT. This has made us aware that EWT can be flawed and should not be used without corroboration. It has also made us aware that the EWT of children is every bit as reliable as that of adults.

• Most research is still carried out on white middle class Americans (about 90% of research quoted in texts!). SSR is helping to redress the balance and make us more aware of other cultures and outlooks.

• Research has been used to discriminate against groups in society such as sterilisation of people in the USA between 1910 and 1920 because they were of low intelligence, criminal or suffered from psychological illness.

• The guidelines used by psychologists to control SSR lack power and as a result are unable to prevent indefensible research being carried out.