The Biosocial Approach to Gender

The answer to the question 'nature or nurture?' is almost always 'both', but this poses another important question; 'how exactly do the two interact?' The Biosocial approach essentially says that the main factors shaping our gender behaviour are the 'nurture' processes of the Social Learning approach (see previous post), but that biological differences need to be taken into account. These lead to children being labelled as male or female, and society 'interprets' these differences and 'constructs' (this kind of approach is called 'social constructionist') ideas about gender. These then lead parents / peers / the media / schools to reinforce and model appropriate behaviours.

Here is the presentation from the lesson.

Cross Cultural Gender Research and Homework for Monday 31st October

We've now looked at the cross cultural research into gender development. Here is the presentation from the lesson. This contributes to the nature/nurture question, because if gender roles / behaviour are genetic / hormonal in origin we'd expect every culture to show the same differences. Anthropologists like Margaret Mead went looking for cultures which didn't fit, and found them, providing seemingly strong evidence for the Social Learning explanation of gender. However there are big methodological issues with anthropological research, particularly investigator effects (seeing what they want to see) and participant reactivity (trying to please the investigator).

Here's the question, for Edmodo submission on Monday please:

a) Discuss the social learning explanation for the development of different gender roles / behaviour. 6 AO1 + 8 AO2
b) To what extend does cross cultural research support the importance of social learning in gender development? 3 AO1 + 8AO2

I need some sleep

We looked at the nature of sleep (ppt here) - what can we say about sleep in general? It involves being still, unresponsive, quiet and the time spent asleep varies. As there's costs involved and it is so widespread, sleep is assumed to be adaptive.

TV alert

This looks great - if you missed the first episode like I did, catch up on i-player

Social Learning Explanations of Gender Development

The presentation from today's lesson is here.

This is the nurture side of the nature/nurture gender debate. Behaviourism assumes that humans (and other animals) are 'blank slates' with nothing inherited or innate except for some very simple reflexes (automatic responses to stimuli). Everything else is learned according to this approach. Extreme behaviourism is highly reductionist, denying the importance of mental processes and explaining all behaviour through classical and operant conditioning. Social Learning Theory (sometimes called Social Cognitive Learning Theory) uses the same ideas of association and reinforcement, but is less reductionist as it includes 'mental' or cognitive learning, for example Modelling.

For Monday's lesson, watch this video compilation of adverts, and if you can some current adverts on TV. Make a list of behaviours and psychological characteristics which are presented as desirable or 'normal' in men and women and bring to the lesson.

Evolutionary Explanations of Gender Behaviour

Here is the presentation from last week's lesson. You need to be able to outline the key assumptions of the evolutionary approach - that our behaviour is controlled (or at least influenced) by genes, and that it has evolved to be adaptive in the EEA. There is important general evaluation here - that is, evaluation of the whole approach (in terms of nature over nurture, reductionism and determinism, and in terms of scientific testability).

Useful explanations of gender behaviour are the 'division of labour' theory (not in your textbook) which focuses on hunting / gathering and child rearing roles, and the 'parental investment' theory and its effects on mate-choice and reproductive behaviour.

Disrupted rhythms

We looked at ways in which humans have attempted to override our natural rhythms. The shift work ppt is here and the jet-lag one is here. Most of what we learnt is AO2 ie interesting stuff to say about the facts - research, applications, commentary.