Gender Bias
What is 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 produce attitudes and behaviours which favour universality
- Adopting a universal approach can result in research that is subjective and laden with value-judgments (e.g. ‘X behaviour is abnormal because it does not align with the behaviour I am familiar with’)
Gender bias:
- Gender bias occurs when one gender is either favoured over another gender or one gender is discriminated against e.g. via prejudicial attitudes or behaviour
- Alpha bias occurs when researchers over-emphasize differences between males and females
- Beta bias occurs when researchers ignore of downplay differences between males and females
An example of alpha bias
Which studies show gender bias?
- Paper 1 content – Social Influence: research by Milgram (1963), Asch (1951, 1955) and Zimbardo (1973) used all-male samples to draw conclusions about the nature of, respectively, destructive obedience, normative conformity and conformity to social roles
- By not using a gender-balanced sample each study could be accused of gender bias, specifically beta bias
- Kohlberg’s (1973) theory has been criticised by Gilligan (1981) for taking a male-focused approach to moral development
The possible consequences of gender bias:
- Prejudice, discrimination and sexism are viewed as normal and acceptable
- Female researchers may receive less funding as their role as serious psychologists may be questioned
- The male viewpoint/behaviour becomes the ‘norm’ or the model for behaviour generally which could lead to female behaviour being viewed as ‘abnormal’
Asch’s (1951) research is an example of beta bias as it ignores the role of females in measuring conformity: how can an all-male sample represent a general population?