https://padlet.com/mimimjamja/j6wf99sppfc6ntag en-us 2023-03-22 14:38:14 UTC 2025-10-21 12:10:10 UTC hello@padlet.com mimimjamja https://padlet.com/mimimjamja/j6wf99sppfc6ntag/wish/2527792581 Gender differences

• Evolutionary psychologists - physical differences between men & women, men are bigger, have faster metabolism, more muscular. 
• Physical differences evolved because men were hunters, adaptive physique.
• Psychological differences evolved because women raised children, adaptive for women to be more focused on interpersonal needs.

• Male-female divide is an illusion - overlap physically & psychologically, some women taller, more muscular than men. Some men more caring than some women.
• Approx, 1 in 2000 people born with an intersex condition, external genitals don't match their chromosomal sex.

Gender bias

• Alpha Bias - exaggerating the differences
• Freud's theory of psychosexual development - viewed femininity as failed masculinity, women have penis envy, morally inferior - undervalues women.
• However, Horney suggested that men have 'womb envy' as they're jealous of childbirth so men and women are equally as important.
• Beta Bias - ignores or minimises the differences, ignoring questions about lives of women, assuming insights derived from men will apply equally to women.
• Kohlberg's theory of moral reasoning has androcentric bias as dilemmas used to assess moral reasoning based on male perspective (justice orientation) with male Ps. Suggesting universal relevance to men & women - ETIC.
• However, should be studying females as there are differences in morals of males & females, males morals based on justice, females based on principle of care (Gilligan, 1982).

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Assumes that the 'natural' kind of sexual/romantic relationship should be between males & females, as opposed to homosexuality.

For many years mainstream social psychology tended to focus on romantic, loving relationships among heterosexuals. Challenged by Wood & Duck - 'understudied relationships'.

Psychological research ignores long-distance relationships, online relationships, lesbian & gay relationships.

Alpha bias example is Hamers gay gene study which suggests that homosexuality was due to a difference in genes. This massively over exaggerates the differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals, and could have catastrophic outcomes such as some countries conducting human experiments and gene therapy to try to change this, so the minimal advantages like a decrease in prejudice, pale in comparison.

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views in psychology point to gender as a social construct and that sexism helps reinforce gender identities and gender sterotypes from a young age, for example Moss-Racusin (2012) sent non applications to academics and found if the application was sent by "Jennifer" they were perceived as less competent than the applications labelled "John". Shows stereotypes continue even today between men and women, people are aware of this bias and now there are laws of now to hire equal numbers of men and women and that CVs come through as anonymous. It is expected that there is some sexism prevalent in biological psychology too. For example, there are stereotypes prevalent in the Stanford IQ test. This took place in Virginia and all applicants complete the test that made base based on men, but generalised it to all, this is an example of beta bias. As a result of the tests of women coming back as very low IQ, about 7000 women were sterilised wrongly.

feminist psychologists aim to redress the balance of men and women in psychology. One way to address this balance is to use evidence and acknowledge there may be some differences in women and men, but this should be used to provide more support for women. For example, Eagley (78) acknowledged that women may be less effective leaders than men, but this knowledge should be used to develop a suitable training programme. BUT, the equal pay act (73) which was used to try to create more equality, actually created more inequalities as employers in the 70s just changed the job titles of women to keep women's pay lower than mens. Another example is that premenstrual syndrome, or premenstrual dysphoric disorder is a recognised condition in the DSM V. This is a good example of how female behaviour is pathologists as it doesn't fit with male norms for behaviour.

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female researchers in psychology seem not to be as mainstream as male research on psychology, which shows the gender bias in psychology. Zhang et al (2022) found those with feminine names don't get their research published as often as those with gender neutral or masculine names. This is coined the invisibility of women in psychology and an example is that of the top 100 psychologists list, only total of 6 women present on that list. Despite this, there are many female psychologist, such as Eleanor Maccoby who has conducted very influential research Into the current understanding of social and biological influences of sexual different and gender roles.

Other examples of influential female psychologists include

there are some psychologists who claim there are differences in the male and female brains, however, research by Joel et al (2015) analysed brain scans of a large sample of males and females finding many differences in terms of individual feature, but no unique clusters of features found in either males or females. She concluded that there is no male or female brain. This suggests that psychology is evolving and it is not as bad as it's past.

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