EDP 362T Study Guide - Spring 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Sexism, Stereotype, Social Class
EDP 362T
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
Lecture 1:
Beginnings:
• Critical psychology: questions and challenges the moral, political, and scientific claims of
psychology and tries to influence the direction of the field as a whole.
o Feminist psychology: theoretical connections to women’s studies and social
activism.
o Psychology of women: women’s lives and experiences.
o Psychology of gender: social and biological difference between men and women.
• 1960s: realized psychology is androcentric (male-centered), began to rethink
psychological concepts and methods to produce new research with women as focus of
study, and analysis of social relations between women and men.
o Naomi Weisstein (1968): psychology didn’t represent needs/wants of women.
o Phyllis Chesler (1972): Women and Madness, psychology was used to control
women.
Psychology and Feminism:
• First Wave:
o Seneca Falls Declaration 1848 – rejected doctrine of female inferiority; won right
to vote 19th Amendment 1920.
• Second Wave:
o 1960s, female psychologists and men who supported them began to focus on
study of women and gender.
▪ 1969 Association of Women in Psychology (AWP)
▪ 1973 American Psychological Association (APA) forms Div. 35, the
Psychology of Women.
▪ Feminist activism fuels the movement.
• Third Wave:
o Early 1990s, freedom to do what you wanted.
o Continued to build on successes in new generation, taking more leadership roles.
AWP continues to thrive independently as an activist organization. Division 35
grew.
o Ensuring reproductive freedom, ending violence against women, integrating
women into politics.
o Integrational conflict b/w 2nd and 3rd wave feminists: 2nd wavers wanted to break
barriers into previously restricted jobs, vs. 3rd wavers wanted freedom of choice.
• Fourth Wave:
o 2005 or 2008 started: 2012 represented a significant resurgence, focuses on the
use of social media intensely.
o Justice for women and opposition to sexual harassment and violence against
women (workplace harassment, campus sexual assault, rape culture).
o Defined by technology.
Voices from the Margins:
• Mary Calkins: never got PhD from Harvard because she was a woman.
• Helen Thompson Wooley: 1st experiment on sex difference in mental traits, openly
critical of anti-woman prejudices. Paved way to replace unexamined assumptions about
women’s natural limits.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Feminism:
• Socialist feminism – sexuality, gender, race are all equally important and wrong.
• Womanism/Women-of-color feminism – men of color also oppressed, started due to
response to exclusion of women of color from 2nd wave.
• Radical feminism – closest to stereotype of feminism; men are the ultimate oppressors of
women through time and history.
• Liberal feminism – equality b/w men and women.
• Cultural feminism – men and women are different, but women’s differences are
undervalued.
• Global feminism – globalism and neocolonialism on people outside of US; do not use
Western women as standard.
Definitions:
• Feminist: an individual who believes that women are valuable and social change that
benefits women is needed.
• Feminism: movement to end sexism and sexist oppression.
• Profeminist: acknowledge women’s leadership of feminist movement and expression of
understanding that men and women have different gender experiences.
• Conservatism: urge to return to good old days of men > women; justified on biology or
religion that women shouldn’t do anything against their nature because supreme being
allows female submission.
• Sexism: negative attitudes and values about women as a group
• Sex discrimination: differential treatment of women, adds another behavior that sexism
does not.
Methods of Scientific Inquiry:
• Question Formulation: bias and stereotypes can affect the way the question is formed.
• Designing Research: selection of method, research participants/comparison group,
materials/lab setups, and ways to measure.
o Choice of research participants can be affected by biases of age, social class,
developmental stage, not representative of entire population, and choosing more
males than females.
• Analyzing Data: focuses on statistical significance on differences.
o Significant results = different b/w 2 groups is unlikely due to mere chance.
• Interpreting and Publishing Research Results
o Interpretation biases: encourage thinking men vs. women in 2 different categories.
1. Overgeneralization: when gender differences in performing a specific task
are interpreted as evidence of a more general difference.
2. When performance style of a typical girl/woman is given a negative label.
3. Publication biases: studies that report differences b/w gender is more
likely to be published.
4. Bias after publication in media: press focuses on publicizing discoveries
on gender differences.
• Psychology’s methods:
o Quantitative methods: measuring behavior, averaging it over a group for people
and comparing groups with statistical tests, can use random samples for
generalization of results, and surveys (very descriptive).
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Psychology of women: feminist activism fuels the movement, third wave, early 1990s, freedom to do what you wanted, continued to build on successes in new generation, taking more leadership roles. Awp continues to thrive independently as an activist organization. Voices from the margins: mary calkins: never got phd from harvard because she was a woman, helen thompson wooley: 1st experiment on sex difference in mental traits, openly critical of anti-woman prejudices. Paved way to replace unexamined assumptions about women"s natural limits. Themes: gender is more than just sex, language and naming are sources of power, women are not all alike, psychological research can foster social change. Can also be positive attitude toward a group. It"s very important, so when gender cues are ambiguous, people try to figure out the correct gender. Gender as a presentation of self: self-presentation acting out a self in response to expectations of others.
