Question: What's the topic that psychologists are confused about and trying to figure out the problem of?

Madeleine Pownall answered on 19 Mar 2020:

There a huge number of debates happening all over psychology at any given time.
One of the sources of confusion/debate/discussion that I’m particularly interested in (as both a psychologist and just a person!) is the idea of ‘hard-wired’ brain differences between men and women. This been a huge source of debate and discussion over recent years – and the ‘gender differences’ debate started years and years ago (we’re talking back to medieval times…)

Professor Gina Rippon is a psychologist who has asked us to consider how these ‘brain differences’ between men and women might be more about gender stereotypes and our interpretation of data, rather than clear-cut differences. Professor Rippon doesn’t necessarily argue that there are absolutely no differences between the female and male brain, she just thinks that all brains are different, so to focus on small differences between men and women does not make sense in the context of huge individual differences. Some people (myself included!) think that looking at ‘hard wired’ brain differences by gender may ignore some much more interesting ideas, such as gender norms (which are like stereotypes), and wider brain differences across people.

Corelia Fine is another psychologist whose done fascinating work in this area. You can read an interview with her here: https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-23/edition-11/battle-sex-differences

There are, of course, other psychologists who argue that there are fundamental brain differences and this shapes our social world (men are hardwired to be good at X, women are hardwired to be good at Y) but I think this will continue to be challenged!