Friday 30th November

Today's lesson is ON (periods 3 & 4). We will be doing the timed essay on the restoration theory of sleep.

Mrs Watson

A homework essay on gender dysphoria – due next Wednesday:

Discuss the possible role of biological and social factors in gender dysphoria. 8 + 16 marks.

There is a new double-spread in the newer edition of the ‘dog book’ that deals with dysphoria in the greater detail that the new specification requires. We don’t have this edition, but you can download the new pages here:

http://fds.oup.com/www.oup.com/pdf/oxed/secondary/psychology/a2_gender_update.pdf

Sleep disorders

We've now covered insomnia, narcolepsy and sleepwalking. The insomnia ppt is here, the patient accounts are here and the narcolepsy & sleepwalking ppt is here.

The current homework essay is:

Discuss evolutionary explanations of the function of sleep      (8+16 marks)

This is due on Friday 30th November. On that date we will also be doing a timed essay on the restoration theory of sleep. The lesson powerpoint on the restoration theory of sleep is here. 

Rosjen, Charlie & Shalina: please can you fill in your student comments for the long reports on the following sheet and then email back to me asap?

Gender Dysphoria

The last part of our gender topic is gender dysphoria. Since your textbook was published the specification has changed slightly - androgyny (having both masculine and feminine psychological characteristics) is no longer in the spec and you won't be asked about it. Dysphoria has moved into the biosocial section (along with the biological and evolutionary explanations) and exam questions on it will be somewhat different to those in past years. The focus will be more on how combinations of biological and social (nature and nurture) factors can lead to people having a gender identity at odds with their physical sex.

There are some useful online resources relating to dysphoria - have a look at what the NHS has to say about the condition (the videos are well worth watching):
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Gender-dysphoria/Pages/Introduction.aspx
and about the possible causes:
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Gender-dysphoria/Pages/Causes.aspx
What do you think of the second comment on this page?

Have a read in your book too and make some notes on the following:

• How can a combination of biological (genes and hormones) and social (reinforcement and modelling) factors be used to explain gender dysphoria?
• Can you relate Money and Ehrhardt's biosocial theory to dysphoria?
• It is possible for either biological or social theories to explain dysphoria without the other?
• Could Gender Schema theory play a role?

Bring your notes and thoughts to Friday's lesson.

Biosocial Theories of Gender Development

'Biosocial' simply means that a theory deals with both biological and social factors. It's worth knowing two, and we have looked at Money & Ehrhardt's biosocial theory and Eagly & Wood's Social Role Theory.

Money & Ehrhardt developed their theory based on research with abnormal individuals born with 'ambiguous genitalia' - somewhere between a penis and vagina. Their theory is basically that the factors we covered in our look at Social Learning Theory (parents, peers, the media and schools, through reinforcement, modelling and direct tuition) are the key shapers of gender identity, but with labelling as 'male' or 'female' based on biology at birth, and hormones (especially at puberty) interacting with the socialisation.

They supported their claim that a child's gender could be simply reassigned as long as the process was started before they were two with the Bruce/Brenda/David Reimer case study. Of course, the truth of this supports the claim of the biological approach that prenatal hormones are crucial to gender identity.

Eagley & Wood put a 'social constructionist' twist on the claims of Evolutionary psychology. Their theory states that biological differences between the sexes have evolved, but not behavioural differences. They state that these arise through socialisation, but due to the 'social roles' which are assigned to men and women (by society) based on their physical differences. Furthermore, they claim that hormonal differences between men and women are largely due to the different social situations they are encouraged into (men have more testosterone because they are competitive and hostile, rather than the other way round).

Here is a 'colourful' presentation which has some more details, and here is an exemplar essay written by a helpful psychology teacher somewhere - careful though, it's not necessarily great!

Gender Schema Theory

Last Friday we completed our look at cognitive explanations of gender development with gender schema theory. This is the most recent of the theories we have looked at, and an influential one with plenty of common-sense appeal.

 Like Kohlberg's cognitive developmental theory it broadly agrees with the social learning explanation, but stresses that early in childhood children learn their gender schema from their parents, peers, the media etc. This mental framework then affects what they learn from their models in the future. Information which doesn't fit with their schema is likely to be forgotten or distorted. This makes gender identity / behaviour less flexible than SLT suggests.

This approach disagrees with Kohlberg in that it claims that children's gender schemas are developed early - as soon as they have gender identity aged around two.

Here is the presentation.

And the video illustrating how young children have fairly fixed, stereotypical views relating to gender role and behaviour - their gender schema: