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Detailed 16 marker plans for Issues and Debates (Paper 3)
Discuss how gender bias has been presented in psychology (16)
AO1
S- Gender bias occurs when one gender is favoured against another, or one is discriminated
against
om
E- This is seen, for instance, as some people hold prejudicial attitudes towards women, often
regarding their place in society and in work.
AO1
l.c
S- One type of gender bias is alpha bias, which is when researchers overemphasise differences
between genders
E- For example, in his psychodynamic approach, Freud argued that because girls do not suffer
ai
the same oedipal conflict as boys, they do not identify with their mothers as strongly as boys
identify with their fathers, so develop weaker superegos. Here, he overemphasised the
differences between development in boys and girls
gm
AO1
S- Another type of gender bias is beta bias, which is when researchers downplay the differences
between genders
@
E- An example of this is Zimbardo 1973, where he used an all male sample to draw conclusions
about the nature of social roles in the whole of society, essentially ignoring the differences in
72
social influence responses between males and females
AO3
ct
P- A limitation of gender bias is that it can cause invalid conclusions based on irrelevant findings
to be made
E- For example, Asch’s 1953 line test incorrectly generalised his conformity findings to both men
so
and women and so believed the nature of social influence was universal.
E- This is a weakness as it can affect the validity of research and theories. In Asch’s case, other
tu
research has found that women are more conformist than men, so his procedure which suffered
beta bias, as it downplayed differences between genders, and his androcentric view has led to
invalid conclusions
lo
L- Thus, androcentric procedures which feature beta bias, for example, weaken the validity and
credibility of certain studies, as there has been research contradicting Asch’s results
AO3
P- One strength of identifying gender bias in psychology is that it leads to a better
understanding of its consequences and how to tackle them.
distribution, or sharing without explicit written permission is strictly prohibited.
Detailed 16 marker plans for Issues and Debates (Paper 3)
Discuss how gender bias has been presented in psychology (16)
AO1
S- Gender bias occurs when one gender is favoured against another, or one is discriminated
against
om
E- This is seen, for instance, as some people hold prejudicial attitudes towards women, often
regarding their place in society and in work.
AO1
l.c
S- One type of gender bias is alpha bias, which is when researchers overemphasise differences
between genders
E- For example, in his psychodynamic approach, Freud argued that because girls do not suffer
ai
the same oedipal conflict as boys, they do not identify with their mothers as strongly as boys
identify with their fathers, so develop weaker superegos. Here, he overemphasised the
differences between development in boys and girls
gm
AO1
S- Another type of gender bias is beta bias, which is when researchers downplay the differences
between genders
@
E- An example of this is Zimbardo 1973, where he used an all male sample to draw conclusions
about the nature of social roles in the whole of society, essentially ignoring the differences in
72
social influence responses between males and females
AO3
ct
P- A limitation of gender bias is that it can cause invalid conclusions based on irrelevant findings
to be made
E- For example, Asch’s 1953 line test incorrectly generalised his conformity findings to both men
so
and women and so believed the nature of social influence was universal.
E- This is a weakness as it can affect the validity of research and theories. In Asch’s case, other
tu
research has found that women are more conformist than men, so his procedure which suffered
beta bias, as it downplayed differences between genders, and his androcentric view has led to
invalid conclusions
lo
L- Thus, androcentric procedures which feature beta bias, for example, weaken the validity and
credibility of certain studies, as there has been research contradicting Asch’s results
AO3
P- One strength of identifying gender bias in psychology is that it leads to a better
understanding of its consequences and how to tackle them.
