Issues, debates and options

3.1 · Free notes

Issues and debates

Key points

• Gender and culture bias: alpha bias exaggerates differences, beta bias minimises them; androcentrism and ethnocentrism (e.g. imposed etic) limit generalisability.
• Free will and determinism: hard determinism, soft determinism, and biological, environmental and psychic determinism.
• Nature-nurture: the interactionist approach, diathesis-stress model and epigenetics.
• Holism and reductionism: levels of explanation, biological reductionism and environmental reductionism.
• Idiographic approaches study individuals in depth; nomothetic approaches seek general laws.
• Ethical implications and socially sensitive research: findings can affect groups in society beyond the participants themselves.

In more detail

• Worked gender bias example: Kohlberg's theory of moral development was based on interviews with American boys only, then applied to everyone, which is an example of beta bias and androcentrism.
• Worked determinism example: the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia is biologically deterministic; a soft-determinist view says genes create a vulnerability, but stress and choices still matter.
• Socially sensitive research: Sieber and Stanley (1988) warned researchers to think about the implications of their findings, how they might be used (e.g. in policy) and whether the research is valid, for example in research on genetic causes of crime.
• Cultural relativism example: hearing the voices of ancestors may be seen as normal in some cultures, but as a symptom of psychosis under UK diagnostic systems.
• 16-mark technique: pick one debate, use a specific topic (e.g. aggression or schizophrenia) as the example, give both sides, and finish with a reasoned judgement, often interactionism.