New gender bias, gamma bias, simultaneously magnifies & minimises gender differences; example: domestic violence, where violence against men tends to be overlooked & against women is often highlighted

Seager M., Barry J.A. (2019) Cognitive Distortion in Thinking About Gender Issues: Gamma Bias and the Gender Distortion Matrix. In: Barry J., Kingerlee R., Seager M., Sullivan L. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Male Psychology and Mental Health. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. Mar 2 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04384-1_5

Abstract: Psychology has identified many examples of cognitive biases and errors. In relation to gender, there are alpha bias (magnifying gender differences) and beta bias (minimising gender differences). In this chapter we identify another gender bias, gamma bias, which simultaneously magnifies and minimises gender differences. An example is domestic violence, where violence against men tends to be overlooked whereas violence against women is often highlighted. It is argued in this chapter that although we live in times where we now rightly talk a lot about conscious and unconscious bias against women, we are not yet conscious of our biases against men. The gender distortion matrix is proposed as a framework for identifying cognitive bias regarding men and boys.

Keywords: Gender Cognitive distortion Minimisation Maximisation Empathy gap

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Introduction

The seed that grew into my (JB) interest in Male Psychology was planted at a seminar on clinical psychology during my undergraduate degree at a respected English university in the mid-1990s. The group had spent a lot of time exploring possible theory-based reasons for female depression (e.g. the female gender role leading to learned helplessness), but then swiftly glossed over the subject of high male suicide rates with a “humorous” remark: “men construct more lethal methods because they are better at DIY”. This raised a few giggles at the sem-inar, and the group quickly moved on to the next topic. However it struck me as odd that my educators—and psychologists in general—appeared to have little serious curiosity about the causes of a fatal issue like suicide. I pre-sumed that this would change, but I heard the same DIY explanation in 2016 at a public talk on gender at LSE, also greeted with giggles from the audience. Clearly this phenomenon—a cognitive distortion involving the minimisation of the importance of male suicide to the point of near-invisibility—was diffi-cult for people to overcome.

Cognitive distortions can be defined as “the result of processing information in ways that predictably result in identifiable errors in thinking” (Yurica etal. 2005). Since the 1960s, a growing number of distortions have been identified. Aaron T. Beck (1967) originally identified cognitive distortions in his work with depressed patients. The six errors he identified were: arbitrary inference; selective abstraction; overgeneralization; magnification and min-imization; personalization; and absolutistic, dichotomous thinking. Since that time others have extended Beck’s list. In this chapter we are postulating a newly identified cognitive distortion, gamma bias.Gamma Bias andthe Gender Distortion MatrixA range of examples of gamma bias are described in the gender distortion matrix, and they fall primarily under two categories: magnification and min-imization. Magnification is defined as “the tendency to exaggerate or magnify either the positive or negative importance or consequence of some personal trait, event, or circumstance” (Yurica etal. 2005). Minimization is defined as “the process of minimizing or discounting the importance of some event, trait, or circumstance” (Yurica etal. 2005).Table 1 describes the gender distortion matrix. It is a 2 × 2 matrix, and in each of the four cells, the experiences, behaviours or characteristics of men and women are either magnified or minimised. The matrix describes how it can be good or harmful to do certain things or receive certain experiences. Unlike either alpha bias (magnification) or beta bias (minimisation), each cell demonstrates that certain gender issues are both magnified and mini-mised. Whether an aspect of the gender issue is magnified or minimised depends upon whether the issue is related to men or women.In this paper we argue that there is much evidence in everyday experience, and some in research, which supports the existence of gamma bias. Note that we do not suggest that gamma bias is eternal and unchangeable. To the degree that it is changeable, we suggest that it is very important that we Table1The gender distortion matrix, describing examples of gamma bias i.e. situ-ations in which aspects of our perceptions of men and women are magnified (upper case/italics) or minimised (lower case)GOODHARMDO (active mode)FEMALE male (celebration)MALE female (perpetration)RECEIVE (passive mode)MALE female (privilege)FEMALE male (victimhood)
Cognitive Distortion in Thinking About Gender Issues ... 89rectify, or at least recognise, these distortions. When discussions of gender are distorted, this misshapes the narrative and warps our public attitudes, policies and conversations about gender. For example, as a result of wide-spread gamma bias we tend to believe that:•men are more harmful than helpful•women are more helpful than harmful•men are more privileged than disadvantaged•women are more disadvantaged than privileged.Examples ofEach Type ofDistortionWe list below some preliminary examples of the very public ways that these distorted attitudes to gender are reinforced continually in the English-speaking or Western world. Examples will at this stage be brief and sche-matic, but hopefully sufficient to demonstrate the face validity of this new hypothesis, which will be subjected to rigorous empirical testing in research over the coming years.Doing Good (Active Mode) (Celebration/Appreciation)Female Magnification•We celebrate women publicly—for their gender alone—in the archetypal realms of beauty, fashion, sexuality and motherhood.•The UN has got four days dedicated to women: International Day of Women and Girls in Science, International Women’s Day, International Day of Rural Women and International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.•The Royal Society in the UK and other institutions worldwide have at various times held “Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon” days, when people are encouraged to add the names and achievements of women to Wikipedia, in order to make women in science more visible (Huffington Post 2012).•Suffragettes—female suffrage has been selectively celebrated in writings, films and the media as a gender issue, minimising the lack of suffrage for half of the male population in the same historical period.
90M. •The careers and achievements of women in science, politics, business and education are actively promoted and celebrated as a gender issue.•Women in the military and emergency services are celebrated for their gender and not just their actions.Male Minimisation•We do not celebrate men collectively for their gender alone, only the par-ticular achievements of individual men.•The UN has no special day to celebrate men. In many countries International Men’s Day has been celebrated on November 19th since around 2010, but this is not recognised by the UN.•The heroism within the military and the emergency services is often remarked upon in the news. However, the almost exclusively male gender of the heroes is not marked. In ceremonies to pay tribute to war heroes we acknowledge their brave deeds but not their masculine gender. We also include women when celebrating war sacrifice so that celebrations become gender-neutral rather than gender-specific. Recently, the rescue of a group of boys by male cave divers in Thailand was celebrated, but not marked as a gender issue or as an example of positive masculinity. In the Titanic disaster in 1912 most men were drowned (80%) but most women (75%) were saved. Men were clearly acting heroically to protect the women and children, but this, though a famous story, has not been celebrated as a story of positive masculinity.•Working class sacrifice—the complete physical infrastructure and security of the UK and other nations has been built and maintained almost exclu-sively by working class men. This is reflected in the fact that to this day in the UK men account for 96% of deaths at work. The same picture is found across the world. Clearly men continue to do the heavy, dirty and dangerous jobs in all societies. However, males who are builders, miners, firefighters, quarrymen, road workers, deep sea fishermen, scaffolders, steeplejacks, navvies and who occupy many other dangerous professions are not celebrated for their gender in a positive way. The image of male builders, for example, still tends to be more “wolf whistler” than “DIY SOS” hero.•Male suffrage—the vote for men has never been celebrated as a gender issue even though 44% men also only got the vote for the first time in 1918 and at a time when men had been sacrificed in large numbers in World War One for the protection of society.
Cognitive Distortion in Thinking About Gender Issues ... 91•We do not celebrate fatherhood or male childcare. Indeed in many ways public attitudes towards men as caregivers of children are negative, ambivalent and even suspicious, even amongst politicians (Dench 1996).•Male sexuality is typically viewed in public life and policy as a source of harm, threat, abuse and power. The joy and positivity of male sexuality is rarely celebrated today, except indirectly through the arts.Doing Harm (Active Mode) (Perpetration/Toxicity)Male Magnification•Negative attitudes towards masculinity have become widely accepted in mainstream public discourse in recent years. In contrast to the “women are wonderful” effect (Eagly etal. 1991), contemporary men are subject to a “men are toxic” effect. The notion of “toxic masculinity” has emerged and has even gained widespread credence despite the lack of any empirical testing (see chapter on masculinity by Seager and Barry). In general terms it appears as if attitudes to men have been based on generalisations made from the most damaged and extreme individual males. An example of this is the case from 2016, when a young woman called India Chipchase was raped and murdered. There were two men in her story: the rapist/mur-derer, and her grieving father who movingly stated “I will never get to walk my daughter down the aisle”. However, the media attention follow-ing this tragic event focussed almost exclusively on a sense of urgent need to teach boys and men in general to respect women. This suggests that in terms of public attitudes, the rapist/murderer was being viewed as more representative of masculinity than the victim’s father.•The concept of ‘rape culture’ has also developed and gained credibility, originating in the USA in the 1970s. However, in 2012 figures for the USA as a whole show that 0.6% of adult males had been registered for sexual offences (including rape), meaning that 99.4% were not. Even allowing for some inevitable under-representation, and whilst recognising that one rape is one too many, the evidence suggests that the vast major-ity of adult males are not sexually violent or dangerous. The public per-ception, however, is very different, especially in an age of “#MeToo” and “Enough is enough”.
92M. •In the UK and elsewhere the image of domestic violence and intimate partner violence (IPV) is almost exclusively one of male perpetrators and female victims. This is reflected in “treatment” approaches to IPV such as the “Duluth model” which is aimed exclusively at males (see chap-ter by Powney and Graham-Kevan). It is also reflected in the provision of places in refuges for victims of IPV. In 2010 in the UK, for example, whilst male victims accounted for at least 33% of IPV victims, less than 1% of a total of 7650 refuge places were available for men. Research evidence of equal levels of IPV by females (e.g. Archer 2000) is still not being reflected in public attitudes in this area (Seager 2019, in this vol-ume Chapter 12).Female Minimisation•We have already seen (above) that evidence of equivalent levels of domes-tic and IPV by females (e.g. Archer 2000) is not reflected in public atti-tudes or policies.•There is evidence that women receive less severe sentences for the same crimes (e.g. Starr 2012; Mustard 2001).•The high level of online emotional abuse by women (cyber-bullying) (e.g. Marcum etal. 2012) is not reflected in public attitudes or policies.•52% of men in a sample of high-security prisoners who had committed serious offences against women and had been sexually abused in child-hood were found to have been abused by female abusers acting inde-pendently ofmen (Murphy 2018). However, the picture of sexual abuse portrayed in the media does not reflect this complex gender picture of sexual abuse. Those who propose a social transmission theory of “toxic masculinity” would have to take account of the fact that male children spend significantly more of the developing years in the company of adult females than adult males.•Parental alienation, a diagnosis newly added to the ICD-11, is a form of child abuse involving one parent alienating their child from the other. Evidence has long shown that the father is more often the victim and the mother the perpetrator (e.g. Bala etal. 2010). Briggs, in another chap-ter in this volume, also shows examples of clinical cases in which moth-ers have alienated children from fathers prior to psychotherapeutic intervention.
Cognitive Distortion in Thinking About Gender Issues ... 93Receive Good (Passive Mode) (or Privilege)Male Magnification•The whole sociological concept of “patriarchy” (see also chapter on mas-culinity by Barry and Seager) is predicated on the idea that it is a “man’s world”. Specifically, society is viewed as inherently privileging and advan-tageous for men and organised in ways that empower men and disem-power and exclude women. This bold and sweeping hypothesis has received widespread acceptance despite being subject to relatively lit-tle academic evaluation, let alone being subject to empirical testing as a scientific hypothesis. This uncritical acceptance of a radical theory by mainstream society in itself indicates that gender distortions may be in operation on a large scale. The concept of patriarchy focuses on an elite group of more powerful and wealthy males, whilst minimising the vast majority of men who are working class men, homeless men, parentally alienated men, suicidal men and other relatively disadvantaged male groups. It also minimises the benefits and protections involved in moth-erhood, family and domestic life for many women including the poten-tial joys and rewards of raising children. Also the concept of patriarchy minimises the hardships of the traditional male role, such as fighting in wars, lower life expectancy, higher risk-taking and working in dangerous occupations.•Young women in the UK are now in fact earning more on average than their male counterparts (see below), yet the gender pay gap is misun-derstood and presented as an example of women’s oppression, primarily because of dubious and selective methods of measuring and comparing pay. Even when men are earning more, there are other “trade-offs” and risks that men choose to take on that confer counterbalancing disadvan-tages (Farrell 2005). However, the public perception and emotional out-rage on gender pay are out of proportion to the actual differences that emerge if the matter is analysed more scientifically.Female Minimisation•As we saw above, there is evidence that women receive less severe sen-tences for the same crimes (e.g. Starr 2012; Mustard 2001). Women also enjoy better health and living conditions than men (Carcedo etal. 2008).
94M. Mothers who are prisoners also enjoy better access to their children than fathers who are prisoners (Collins etal. 2011). And yet in terms of public perception there is an image of women being “oppressed in a male-centric prison system” (e.g. Baroness Corston in The Guardian2018).•In OECD countries at the present time significantly more young women than young men graduate from school and college. According to fig-ures supplied by the Guardian newspaper (2017), for every 13 girls who entered university, only 10 boys did so. The education gap has seen boys fall behind girls in the UK since the 1980s, and 30 years later it has become usual for women in their 20s to be earning more than their male peers, and has been for some years (Guardian 2015). There are still more male senior academics and professors than female in academia, but apart from this 0.3% of jobs at the top of the educational hierarchy, the rest of the hierarchy—from primary school onwards—favours females (Brown 2016).•Parental privilege—it is a widespread practice in many countries that in legal cases of parental dispute over child custody, sole custody is awarded to mothers rather than fathers almost by default.•Maternity privilege—when children are born, antenatal, perinatal and postnatal services are highly female-centric and the role of the father is generally not thought about or included. The assumption is that fathers are not as important to children as mothers.•Protection—we have seen (above) that both in times of war and peace women enjoy the protection of men at times of great threat.•Elsewhere in this volume (Chapter 10) Belinda Brown presents evidence indicating that females enjoy power and privileges within the domestic and household domain.Receive Bad (Passive Mode) (or Victimhood)Male Minimisation•Men across the globe have a significantly lower average life expectancy than women. As we have also seen (above) men account for almost all deaths at work both in the UK and other nations. However, in terms of public attitudes and beliefs, these facts are relatively invisible. Certainly, no concept of a “gender death gap” has been proposed.
Cognitive Distortion in Thinking About Gender Issues ... 95•Although there are signs of this changing, for years there has been less investment in prostate cancer than breast cancer, even though the rates of death caused by each are similar (around 10,000 per year for each in the UK).•The vast majority of rough sleepers (85% in the UK) are male but there are no gender policies to address this.•Boys have been falling behind girls in education since the 1980s. Boys are now in the UK around a third less likely to attend university than girls. This however has met with no political action and has never been referred to as the “gender education gap”.•In almost every country across the world men kill themselves at a higher rate than women do. This is now starting to be recognised, but research into suicide and services for those at risk have remained relatively “gender-blind” (Seager, in this volume Chapter 12).•When in distress, women tend to want to talk about their feel-ings whereas men tend to want to fix whatever is causing the distress (Holloway etal. 2018). However our mental health services are delivered in a “gender blind” way, so that treatment options that might suit men better are rarely considered (Liddon etal. 2017).•Issues that impact males more than females such as colour blindness (in 8% of boys and 0.5% girls), tend to be overlooked, despite the signifi-cant impact on QoL (Barry etal. 2017). For example, although coloured graphs are difficult for colour blind students to read, a large educational board in the UK recently declined to make graphs in exam papers more colour blind friendly. •Bedi etal. (2016) found that there are significantly more psychology papers dedicated to women and women’s issues compared to men and men’s issues.•Field experiments of domestic violence show that bystanders intervene if the victim is a woman, but keep walking—or even laugh—when the vic-tim is male and the perpetrator female (e.g. ABC News 2010).•In Nigeria in 2014, 300 female students were kidnapped by the terror group Boko Haram, prompting an international outcry. At the same time, however, and in the same country, as many as 10,000 boys were abducted and many even murdered. However, this even greater outrage went almost completely unnoticed in the media.•Whilst female genital mutilation (FGM) has rightly received widespread condemnation, male genital mutilation (MGM) has been relatively ignored, despite evidence of harm caused to those who are circumcised.
Female Magnification•We have already seen (above) that in the field of domestic violence and IPV, the emphasis is largely on female victims and treatments for male perpetrators, when the reality is that both genders are equally capable of such abuses (Archer 2000; Fiebert 2010).•We have also seen (above) that the concept of “rape culture” exaggerates the perception of men as potential rapists and creates a climate of fear for women. Campaigns such as “#MeToo” can also play into a sense of fear that is based on distorted generalisations from small samples of damaged men to the whole male population.•The Boko Haram example (above) provides strong evidence that there are much greater empathy levels for females than for males. Correspondingly, our sense of female victimhood is magnified and our sense of outrage is increased by virtue of the gender of the victim rather than the crime.Why Do These Gender Distortions Exist?It is challenging to think about the possible adaptive function of biases and errors, but an adaptive value helps us to understand their existence, as well as absolving people of blame for holding them. Haselton etal. (2015) high-light some of the adaptive functions of cognitive biases, and suggest that our evolved adaptive responses can sometimes act against our self-interest when faced with novel modern rules.Why We Favour WomenThe “women are wonderful” effect (Eagly etal. 1991) predicts a type of “halo effect” for women. This effect means that we magnify women in the Do/Good cell. This might involve a certain amount of what Beck (1979) call emotional reasoning, where one’s emotional state guides conclusions about self and others. Such views would be expected if the effect is the result of positive views about women being created from positive early experiences with mothers and other female caregivers.It also makes sense that women are more valuable than men, because of their importance in reproduction. A very basic way of understanding this is to think about the question of which hypothetical village would have the better chance of survival: the one with 100 women and one man or the
Cognitive Distortion in Thinking About Gender Issues ... 97village with 100 men and one woman? The answer to the question demon-strates the unquestionable value of women to human survival.Why We Disfavour MenOn an evolutionary level, males can be seen as the providers of protec-tion, not the recipients of protection (Seager etal. 2016). It makes sense that someone should have the role of protecting offspring, and also pro-tect those who give birth to and nurture the offspring. Thus social attitudes would have been calibrated accordingly over many thousands of years to associate femininity with nurturing and vulnerability and masculinity with protection and strength. Because of this, it would be more difficult—both unconsciously and consciously—to feel the same level of emotional sympa-thy for a male than a female. For the man, it might also therefore be diffi-cult to deviate from the script of the protector and seek help. By the same token, it might also be difficult for society to see men as victims rather than protectors.Another explanation, which is probably an extension to the previ-ous rather than an alternative explanation, is derived from research in social psychology. The phenomenon of ingroup favouritism and outgroup bias is a cornerstone of social psychology. The strength of such biases vary by group e.g. it is well-established that higher-status groups invoke more ingroup bias (e.g. Nosek etal. 2002). Men in general (historically and cross- culturally) have had higher status than women in the public realm (politics, finance etc.), so one might expect that male identity invokes a high level of ingroup bias. However research shows that—uniquely in social identity theory—male identity, unlike female identity, invokes no significant ingroup bias (e.g. Richeson and Ambady 2001).Men support each other effectively when the identity is based on some-thing other than being male (e.g. football teams), but how do we explain the incohesive effect of male identity? There are several possibilities. For exam-ple, it could be that because infant attachment mostly happens with moth-ers, this programmes for greater bias towards women in later life (Rudman 2004). Similarly, it could be that men are stereotypically more associated with violence and aggression and thus invoke less sympathy even from each other (Rudman and Goodwin 2004).It is likely that seeing men as protectors rather than receivers of protection leads to a lack of sympathetic bias in their favour, and leads to male gender blindness (Seager etal. 2014), the phenomenon where men’s problems go
98M. Seager and J. A. Barryrelatively unseen. This in turn facilitates the gender empathy gap, the phe-nomenon where males receive less empathy than females, even when in a similar predicament (Barry 2016).Intersectionality asMale Gender BlindnessAccording to a much-cited paper by Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies, Stephanie Shields, “Intersectionality, the mutually constitutive rela-tions amongst social identities, is a central tenet of feminist thinking and has transformed how gender is conceptualised in research” (Shields 2008, p. 301). According to this view, men are historically privileged and therefore don’t generally deserve help or attention unless they are also members of another historically oppressed, disempowered and marginalised group (e.g. gay, BAME or disabled men). Intersectionality is therefore sometimes used as a way of criticising or devaluing efforts to understand issues facing men in gen-eral by deflecting attention exclusively onto specific marginalised sub-groups of men, and so minimising the importance of universal issues facing men.On one level, the idea of intersectionality has merit in the same way that interactions in ANOVA help identify interesting differences between sub-groups of the main variable. But there is one major flaw with the intersec-tional level of analysis when it comes to understanding male psychology: there is a main effect of being male that runs through all levels of the varia-ble. For example, when it comes to suicide, not only do men in general kill themselves more frequently than women, but BAME men kill themselves more frequently than BAME women (Oquendo etal. 2001), and gay men attempt to kill themselves more frequently than gay women (Bagley and Tremblay 2000). Similarly, the academic underperformance of boys cuts across all social strata and geographies (Curnock-Cook 2016). We should note that firm statistics are not always available related to demographic groups, but what evidence there is tends to support the idea that men in general, not just specific demographics of men, need our help. “Drilling down” into data can be enlightening, but focusing on a single tree might not tell us much about the forest. Focusing on specific issues facing subgroups is of value to the individuals in these groups, but should not be used to distract attention when we are trying to understand wider issues in male psychology.There are various ways in which male gender blindness is both a cause and effect of the ways we study gender. For example, it can be argued that the concept of “masculinities” is largely based on subjective judgements by
Cognitive Distortion in Thinking About Gender Issues ... 99theorists trying to make the case for alternatives ‘hegemonic’ masculinity. Interestingly, at the same time as magnifying different varieties of masculin-ity, these theorists tend to minimize difference between men and women, an approach which is a type of gamma bias (see chapter on gamma bias by Seager and Barry). Moreover, in attempting to identify multiple versions of masculinity, theorists run the risk of obscuring masculinity as a unitary phe-nomenon. This means that focusing only on a plurality of “masculinities” doesn’t help us address more general issues related to masculinity and may even distract us from doing so.By looking at men only in terms of the other sub-groups that their gen-der intersects with, there is in truth the great danger that we will miss the wider gender issues altogether. By defining men only in terms of their sub-group identities (e.g. by race or sexuality) without honouring their collective group identity as a gender, the needs of men of all kinds are likely to be overlooked. If men across various demographic groups, for example, appear to respond in a similar way to therapy (as suggested by Groth in his chapter on existential therapy), then it is likely that the concept of intersectionality is of much less practical or clinical value than the underlying concept of gen-der itself.Like the blind man who touches the elephant’s tail and then thinks an elephant is like a snake, those who dismiss the idea that men in general need help are committing the cognitive bias of selective abstraction: instead of appreciating the whole picture, they focus on just one part of it. If science is to understand the problems facing men, scientific investigation needs to examine how some discussions about gender tend to distort the issues, mak-ing some parts of the picture invisible and magnifying others as if they were the whole picture.Unconscious Bias RevisitedSome or all of the phenomena described in the cells of the matrix can be considered types of unconscious bias. Distorted narratives that put men perpetually in the role of toxic abuser, risk alienating men from themselves and others, leading to what might be called a state of gender alienation. As pointed out by Damien Ridge in his chapter in this book: “the disconnec-tion between theoretical discussions and the daily reality of men promotes a poverty of understanding of male subjectivity... Masculinity has essentially become what different theorists and their followers say it is”, and something that probably means little to the average man.
100M. Seager and J. A. BarryThe Patriarchy RevisitedEssentially, patriarchy theory (Walby 1990) is a distorted and untested way of explaining the differences we observe in the reproduction-based division of labour. For example, women are seen as oppressed by the role of “housewife”, and men are seen as liberated in the role of “breadwinner”. However this is not the only way of viewing traditional gender roles. For example, Dench (1996) suggests that women can have a much more rewarding role in the private realm, and men can have a much harder time in the dangerous, dirty and soulless world of the workplace. Dench also suggests that the idea of the traditional male role as desirable rather than a burden was a way to encourage men to accept a supporting role in society, one that is ultimately of lesser value. Similarly, Van Creveld in his book The Privileged Sex (van Creveld 2013) hypothesises that women have always had privileges (e.g. ‘women and children first’, less dangerous jobs) and that this is something that most people unquestioningly accept as a good thing.Nobody’s life is without suffering, but the suggestion that women have been oppressed by the patriarchy is at best an untested theory and at worst a damaging distortion. At best, it is like looking at the famous rabbit/duck illusion and claiming that there is only a rabbit and no duck, or that the rab-bit is being oppressed by the duck. Once evolutionary biology is honoured rather than dismissed, it can be seen that the traditional family structure is based primarily on reciprocal and evolved reproductive roles. Thus the great-est influence on the balance of gender relations, is perhaps none other than the great matriarch herself, “mother nature”.Criticism ofthe Preliminary Evidence ofGamma BiasThe evidence that we have presented above might be criticised on the grounds of confirmatory bias i.e. the tendency to select only infor-mation that supports your view. At the time of writing (August 2018), gamma bias is being presented as a hypothesis that promises to explain broad patterns of data in relation to how issues of gender are perceived, expressed and responded to both in academia and elsewhere in life. The examples we have provided are incomplete and inevitably selective, but we are confident that they offer preliminary support for the existence of gamma bias.
Cognitive Distortion in Thinking About Gender Issues ... 101Future ResearchThe gender distortion matrix offers many examples of how the gamma bias hypothesis can be tested. As we write, a new research programme is being organised by the Male Psychology Network, and no doubt our hypothesis will be modified in light of the findings. To enhance ecological validity, real-world examples might be found in newspapers (e.g. the Boka Haram com-parison) or the cinema, and assessed. The same principle might be expanded to academic writing and work. It might even be possible to quantify the degree of distortion within a given news article or academic paper. These are just some very basic ideas which we are happy to see others elaborate upon.ConclusionsIn academia, beta-bias and the gender similarities hypothesis are encouraged to such a degree that the term “sex differences” now has an air of contro-versy, and to point out differences between men and women is considered somewhat distasteful. Perhaps a more acceptable term than “sex differences” is “gender distinctions” (Lemkey etal. 2016) with its connotations that both genders have attributes that are unique and positive.There is a serious risk arising from using terms such as “toxic masculin-ity”. Unlike “male depression”, which helps identify a set of symptoms that can be alleviated with therapy, the term “toxic masculinity” has no clinical value. In fact it is an example of another cognitive distortion called labelling(Yurica etal. 2005). Negative labelling and terminology usually have a nega-tive impact, including self-fulfilling prophecies and alienation of the groups who are being labelled. We wouldn’t use the term “toxic” to describe any other human demographic. Such a term would be unthinkable with refer-ence to age, disability, ethnicity or religion. The same principle of respect must surely apply to the male gender. It is likely therefore that developing a more realistic and positive narrative about masculinity in our culture will be a good thing for everyone.