He therefore concluded that variation must be a sign of inferiority as it is linked to women (Shields, 1975). Following the publication of Charles Darwin’s ideas where emphasis was put on the importance of variation as a basic requirement through which progress is attained, greater variation was now linked to superiority and therefore agreed that men it is men who have greater variability as they are the superior sex. This demonstrates the variability hypothesis as the misuse of science in psychology, if science is objective then how can two opposing arguments conclude the same thing. Greater variability among men was backed by evidence from the fact that there were more males in institutions for feeble mindedness than women and
-1How Did Darwinism Influence Theories of Race in the Nineteenth Century? Charles Darwin’s work and theories on evolution, most notably in his magnum opus On the Origin of the Species, had a profound effect on the scientific community during the nineteenth century. Darwin altered views on race in a variety of ways, some negative and some positive but he provided the first contentious argument to explain variety within human characteristics that is still maintained today. His theories of evolution were controversial and influenced the ideas of others that purposefully contradicted his own. Nott and Gliddon’s work for example specifically counters Darwin’s theories concerning race but we now know theirs to be fiction.1 The work of Sir Francis Galton, Herbert Spencer and Ernst Heackel was directly influenced by Darwin, hence a number of their theories are now referred to as Social Darwinism, though this has become a somewhat derogatory term.2 Theories descended from Darwinism such as eugenics, embryology and the “survival of the fittest” have been used both to support and dismiss racist principles, such as the justification of the slave trade.3 It must be acknowledged that Darwin’s influence transcended political and ethical arguments.
Over the years, many questions have been posed on the relationship between biology and the environment. When it comes to studying homosexuality, people’s opinions are usually spilt down the middle forming two distinct groups of thought: the environmentalists and the geneticists. Environmentalists “acknowledge that genes help create a human being with the capacity to fall in love in homosexual as well as heterosexual ways, that genes create genital structures and many nerve connections, and that genes permit a great deal of cortical control over sexual impulses (Weinrich 165-166).” These people usually focus on explaining behaviors as learned and learned alone. They believe that the environment in which they developed affects people the most. The geneticists, on the other hand, are a whole different ball game.
The link between testosterone and aggression may explain why males are generally more aggressive than females: males produce much higher concentrations of testosterone than females, and this may therefore lead to higher levels of aggression. This link also explains why aggression appears to be highest in male adolescents: testosterone levels are highest at this stage. There is a large body of research supporting this link between testosterone and aggression. One meta-analysis of 45 studies found a correlation of 0.14 between testosterone and aggression, showing a significant - though fairly weak - link. However, critics of this study have claimed that due to its methodological problems, an even weaker correlation of 0.08 was more appropriate.
Arrests and self-reports are two types of resources that can be used to describe differences in offending rates. Few differences exist between arrest data and self-reported data for gender characteristics. Both indicate that males are more delinquent than females. Arrest Data. Males are significantly more delinquent than females.
In order to build background knowledge to audiences, Michael Cramphorn first introduce how the gender different in psychological aspect. Michael highly supported Simon Baron-Cohen’s idea, which is about “Gender Different in brain” (Cramphron 148). He is a psychopathologist of University of Cambridge, and he indicated that different structure of brain between male and female result in primarily different personality and reaction of life. Even though Michael is not professional in this field, his objective and informative tone is persuasive for our readers to understand and believe the gender difference has existed when we at birth. For example, Michael indicated that “Gender difference caused by chromosome.
The Biological Approach to Abnormality The biological approach to abnormality mainly looks at the human body and uses it to explain why certain people show abnormal behaviours or disorders. Psychologists believe that genetics may be the cause of abnormality but in order to test this they must look at twins, they study monozygotic and dizygotic twins and look at the concordance rate to see if both twins have the same disorder. They use twins to look at genetics because they share mostly the same genes meaning in theory if an abnormality is due to genes then both twins will show signs of the abnormality. The second part of the body psychologists look at is the brain, by performing brain scans on people who do not show abnormalities and people who do show abnormality they can see if there is a physical difference in brain structure that could be cause of the disorder. For example people with schizophrenia are believed to have this disorder because they have a bigger gaps in their brains due to the shrinkage of brain tissue.
The articles, book writers, scientists and some people say that it is strictly genes that affect our way of living. For centuries scientists were struggling to decide whether a personality are born or made. Have researchers found a balance between genetic and the environmental influence for certain kind of traits that changes as the person got older? People react to us in so many ways because of a genetically influence personality and, we may choose certain experience because they fit for personal preference. That may just mean that our experience may be influence by our personal tendencies.
Assess Sociological Explanations for Gender Differences in Crime and Deviance Official crime statistics show that men much more likely to commit crimes than women and there is also a difference in the types of crimes each gender is more likely to commit – women committing shoplifting and men committing more violent crimes. There have been numerous different explanations for gender differences in crime including the chivalry thesis, sex role theory, control theory, and the liberation thesis. However, the official crime statistics are largely questioned by sociologists because it has been argued that they only show the criminal justice system’s view that men are more likely to commit the crimes and therefore they look more for male criminals rather than female ones. The chivalry thesis argue that these official statistics are unrepresentative due to the fact that most of the criminal justice agents – such as police officers, judges or magistrates – are men and they are more likely to treat women in a chivalrous way and therefore be more likely to convict men than women. The main idea of the chivalry thesis is this prospect that men are socialised to act in a way more chivalrous – or gentlemanly – toward women so they end up convicting men more than women.
Suicide rates are higher in the divorced and widowed than in single people, who in turn have higher suicide rates than married people. This protective effect of marriage on suicide is stronger for men than for women, although it is found for both men and women (Gove 1972). The strong association of divorce with suicide is found at the societal level as well as at the individual level. For example, nations with higher divorce rates have higher suicide rates, U.S. states with higher divorce rates have higher suicide rates and, within nations, years with higher divorce rates have higher suicide rates. This association is probably the most robust association found in suicidology.