Investigating Androcentrism in the Psychology Curriculum

Psychology, the study of the human mind and its behavior, is one of the most popular fields of study for college students. In 2023, 140,711 students graduated with a bachelors in psychology (American Psychological Association, 2018) However, despite its emerging popularity, psychology still has a long way to go when it comes to equally representing and crediting women’s work in the field. It has to move away from androcentrism, which is defined as the propensity to center society around men and men’s needs, priorities, and values and to relegate women to the periphery. (Bailey, 2018) This paper investigates how androcentrism bias is present within the psychology field and can be proven by the depiction of women in research findings, the credit given to women for research, the pathologization of women’s traits, and the focus on the male perspective.

Textbooks are the main source of learning a subject in university for college students. Most college students will read the textbook assigned for a class without ever questioning the material they are learning from, or ask if there is any androcentric bias present in the teaching materials. In a study done in 2014 by the Journal of Critical Psychology researchers selected a sample of 11 of the most commonly found social psychology textbooks in psychology classrooms in North America. They analyzed 1 chapter from each book while paying attention to specific variables such as the gender of the person mentioned, the reason for the mention such as being credited for a research finding or being used as an example, as well as the gender of people in images.  The results of the study found that among a total of 946 mentions of people across all 11 chapters, 269 were identified as women (28%) and 639 were identified as men (68%). Additionally, among 45 individuals represented in images across the textbooks, 152 were women (34.2%) and 270 were men (60.1%) These unequal ratios do not align with the fact that women have been earning PhDs in social psychology ever since the 1980’s with rates equivalent or greater to men.(George et al.,) This gender disparity is problematic in that it erases the important research that women psychologists contribute, and it also signals to students that men are the primary contributors to the field, inadvertently reinforcing a male-centered understanding of psychology.

Another study that draws the attention to androcentrism in psychology is the  case of Ivan Pavlov and the female researchers. Ivan Pavlov, is one of the most well known researchers in psychology, most famously known for discovering classical conditioning during the 1980s, an era where behaviorism, the approach that all behaviors are learned from interacting with our external environment, was the main perspective psychologists were following. Pavlov conducted an  experiment in which he paired the ring of a bell- a neutral stimulus- with food which elicited the response of the dogs salivating because they associated the ringing of the bell with receiving food. 

Although Pavlov is credited for discovering classical conditioning, he did not do it alone and had the help of assistants in his lab. There were 23 female researchers in the lab (Hill, 2019 ) However, Pavlov only credited 7 of those female researchers: Maria Yerofeyeva, Maria Petrova, Anna Pavlova, Maria Bezbokaya, Natalia Shenger-Krestovnikova, Adezhda Kasherininova and Yevgenia Voskoboinikova-Gangstrem. Additionally, when researchers sampled 24 intro psychology textbooks that were published from 2005-2015, each source had only mentioned Pavlov, few mentioned he had associates and none of the textbooks mentioned they were female assistants. If any pictures were included in the textbook chapters, they only featured a picture of Pavlov, his male colleagues and only 2 women. In the psychology of women textbook notes female colleagues were  frequently cropped in photos of many textbooks. The intentional erasure of women’s contributions in textbooks, the most popular teaching material that serves as a student's introduction to the field of study, is not simply an issue of gender representation, it's a lost opportunity in learning years of important history and research findings in psychology regardless of the gender of contributors. The fact that sexism continues to play a role in the field of psychology as well as other fields in academia in the 21st century calls for a re-examination of ethics in academia.

Women never being fully credited for their work is only one of many issues with psychology textbooks. In psychology textbooks, the depiction of women strays further from reality, often being dramatized and or fictional in some cases. One study in particular, done by  Rebecca (2020)  examined 22 introductory evolutionary  psychology textbooks to see how often the role of women is mentioned as well as what type of data is used to support these arguments. The study found that 86.4% of the texts discussed that being physically attractive helped women in their “evolutionary success” while only 7 discussed female intelligence as a helpful trait. In addition, there are examples of  male authors who describe female behavior without using evidence to back up their claims. For example, in one textbook, male author Mathew Rossano stated several expectations women were held to during the hunter gatherer era without citing any evidence. He wrote, “Males agreed to be reliable providers for wife and family (meat) in return for young females who agreed to have the full measure of their reproductive lives dominated by a single man.” (Rossano, 2003)  This paints a false picture that women were only seen as sex objects while also insinuating they played no other roles. Research has found that women hunted and gathered just as much as men, due to evidence where researchers discovered skeletal remains of women being buried with tools associated with hunting and gathering. (Burch. 2020)

Ultimately, despite the  growing popularity of the field of psychology and the increasing number of women entering the field, it continues to be shaped by androcentric biases that undermine the contributions of women and perpetuate a male-centered understanding of human behavior. There are various ways in which these biases manifest, from the underrepresentation of women in textbooks and research, to the historical erasure of female contributors in landmark studies like Pavlov's classical conditioning experiment. The disproportionate focus on male researchers and the exclusion or misrepresentation of women in psychology texts. not only distorts students’ understanding of the discipline but also reinforces outdated gender hierarchies that limit both academic perspectives and the recognition of women’s critical contributions. 

A solution to combating androcentrism is for students to apply a gender based analysis (GBA) when looking at research. (Women and Gender Equality, 2024) A gender based analysis is a method where one thinks critically about the stigma surrounding gender and sex in psychology, as well as biases and ideologies and how this can be present during research. It’s also critical of the research methods being utilized, and it pays close attention to how the research study was designed and how results were interpreted. Another technique that can help readers combat androcentric biases in research is applying the critically reflective based approach to reading and writing. In this technique, readers understand and embrace that their reality is subjective (ie: shaped by values, beliefs, actions) so the conclusions researchers come to are not entirely objective. (Mezirow, 1997) By adopting this type of thinking we can draw our own conclusions, instead of blindly accepting research presented as correct and safe from criticism. 

References

Fowler, G., Cope, C., Michalski, D., Christidis, P., Lin, L., & Conroy, J. (2018, December 1). Women outnumber men in psychology graduate programs. Monitor on Psychology, 49(11). https://www.apa.org/monitor/2018/12/datapoint

Bailey, A. H., LaFrance, M., & Dovidio, J. F. (2019). Is Man the Measure of All Things? A Social Cognitive Account of Androcentrism. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 23(4), 307-331. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868318782848

Ball. (2012). GENIUS WITHOUT THE “GREAT MAN”: New Possibilities for the Historian of Psychology. History of Psychology, 15(1), 72–83. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023247

Burch, R. L., Salmon, C., & Fisher, M. L. (2020). More Than Just a Pretty Face: The Overlooked Contributions of Women in Evolutionary Psychology Textbooks. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, 14(1), 100–114. https://doi.org/10.1037/ebs0000166

George, Meghan & Mulvale, Susannah & Davidson, Tal & Young, Jacy & Rutherford, Alexandra. (2020). Disrupting Androcentrism in Social Psychology Textbooks: A Call for Critical Reflexivity. 1. 15. https://awryjcp.com/index.php/awry/article/view/7