Discuss gender bias in psychological theories and/or studies (e.g. androcentrism and alpha-beta-bias)

The first 200 words of this essay...

Discuss gender bias in psychological theories and/or studies (e.g. androcentrism and alpha-beta-bias)

A theory frequently criticised for its gender bias is Kohlberg's theory of moral development, which describes the development of morality as a sequence of maturational stages which everyone passes through as they develop. Of the six stages, the first four have received support (e.g. Colby, who followed for 20 years the same groups of participants as Kohlberg used to develop his theory); but the final two are open to debate. Some research has found that women are much less likely than men to reach the final two stages. This would imply that women are unable to function on as high a moral level as men, and that, since the process is based on biological maturation, there is nothing they can do about it. It may be, however, that the theory is beta-biased, in that it overlooks the differences between men's and women's morality. Kohlberg's moral dilemmas were based largely on situations about justice.

Gilligan suggested that this may be flawed - women operate, according to her theory, on a care-based morality, and men on a justice-based one. Her research partially supports this claim, but also exposes