Gender

Terms you need to know

Universality, gender bias, androcentrism, alpha bias and beta bias

Gender bias including androcentrism

Useful article introduces the work of Carol Gilligan who who famous book “In a different voice“, calls out much of psychology’s research for its androcentric approach, useful to learn about her ideas on ethic of justice versus ethic of care. This fits in very nicely with Milgram with regard to reasons that participants might give for obeying or defying orders to harm Mr Wallace. may help to explain gender differences such as Kilham and Mann where women were less obedient then men (40% fully obedient for males and only 17% for females): https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/men–women-justice–compassion/

Although AQA won’t use this term in the exam, its worth knowing that the opposite of androcentrism is gynocentric. Due to the greater ratio of women to men on undergraduate psychology degree, research using students as participants is gradually becoming gynocentric and it is important to think about whether the results would be different if the samples had inclded more men.

Top 100 eminent psychologists

A short video about revolutionary thinker Simone de Beauvoir, who famously said that men “‘ describe the world from their own point of view which they confuse with the truth” and described the process as “othering” by which girls, born as equals to boys, undergo other as they learn from their experiences in society that women are undervalued in comparison to men.

The video is also useful to understand more about freewill, as de Beauvoir and her partner Satre believed humans come into the world free and able to choose their own path to a meaningful life although this view was in conflict with the experiences of women and people from ethnic backgrounds other than white.