Gender bias in psychology

Gender bias in psychology • Types of bias • Bias in theory • Bias in research www.psychlotron.org.uk

Gender bias • Range of consequences including: • Scientifically misleading • Upholding stereotypical assumptions • Validating sex discrimination • Avoiding gender bias does not mean pretending that men and women are the same www.psychlotron.org.uk

Gender bias • Alpha bias • Exaggerating the differences between men & women • Beta bias • Exaggerating the similarity between men & women • Often happens when findings obtained from men and applied to women without additional validation www.psychlotron.org.uk

Gender bias • Androcentrism • Similar idea to ethnocentrism • Taking male thinking/behaviour as normal, regarding female thinking/behaviour as deviant, inferior, abnormal, ‘other’ when it is different www.psychlotron.org.uk

Examples of gender bias • Kohlberg & moral development • Based stages of moral development around male moral reasoning • Inappropriate generalisation to women (beta bias) • Claimed women generally reached lower level of development (androcentrism) www.psychlotron.org.uk

Examples of gender bias • Gilligan & moral development • Highlighted bias inherent in Kohlberg’s work • Suggested women make moral decisions in a different way to men (care ethic vs. justice ethic) • Arguably also (alpha) biased, as M & F moral reasoning is more similar than her work suggests www.psychlotron.org.uk

Examples of gender bias • Freud & psychosexual development • ‘Biology is destiny’ – women’s roles are prescribed & predetermined • ‘Penis envy’ – women are defined psychologically by the fact that they aren’t men www.psychlotron.org.uk

Examples of gender bias • Consequences of Freud’s ideas: • Reinforcing stereotypes e.g. of women’s moral inferiority • Treating deviations from traditional sex-role behaviour as pathological (career ambition = penis envy) • Androcentric (phallocentric) www.psychlotron.org.uk

Examples of gender bias • Biomedical theories of abnormality • Abnormal behaviour explained in terms of neurochemical/hormonal processes • Higher prevalence of depression in women explained in hormonal terms, not social/environmental (e.g. violence, unpaid labour, discrimination) • ‘Is it your hormones, love?’ www.psychlotron.org.uk

Gender bias in research • Institutional sexism • Men predominate at senior researcher level • Research agenda follows male concerns, female concerns may be marginalised or ignored www.psychlotron.org.uk

Gender bias in research • Use of standardised procedures in research studies • 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 www.psychlotron.org.uk

Gender bias in research • Dissemination of research results • Publishing bias towards positive results • Research that finds gender differences more likely to get published than that which doesn’t • Exaggerates extent of gender differences www.psychlotron.org.uk

Addressing gender bias • Feminist perspective • Re-examining the ‘facts’ about gender • View of women as normal humans, not deficient men • Scepticism towards biological determinism • Research agenda focusing on womens’ concerns • A psychology for women, rather than a psychology of women www.psychlotron.org.uk

Gender bias in psychology