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Personality Revision 2 > Lecture 6 - Stability, Change and Ageing > Flashcards

Lecture 6 - Stability, Change and Ageing Flashcards

1
Q

What are the 4 psychological constructs in this lecture

A
  1. Intelligence
  2. Performance
  3. Personality
  4. Mood (emotion)
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2
Q

What are the 5 that influence trait expression

A
  1. Social Demands
  2. Expectations
  3. Social Values
  4. Biology
  5. Individual circumstances (etc)
  • These factors all change with age
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3
Q

What are the 3 areas that Roberts & Mroczek (2008) said people change in?

A
  1. Warmth
  2. Self-growth
  3. Emotional Stability
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4
Q

Outline contextual change of being young

A

For instance, in the 1930s
- Being young meant you were hard working

In the 1950s
- being young meant you were rebellious

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5
Q

Outline Contextual change of being middle-aged

A
  • In the 1940s, being middle age was at a lot younger of an age
  • In 2000s, it is at an older age, when you are considered middle aged
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6
Q

Define Age Change

A

Change to attributalble chronological age

- distance from birth

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7
Q

Define cohort effects

A

Differences between groups of (similary aged) indivduals who share a common experience

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8
Q

Outline Raven’s Progressive Matrice’s and the different ones for ages

A

Different versions for different ages:1

  1. Coloured Progressive Matrices: 4-11 years
  2. Standard Progressive Matrices: 11-18 years
  3. Ravens Advanced Progressive Matrices: Adults

Mainly non-verbal stuff, like pattern completion

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9
Q

Outline the Wechsler Abbreaviated Intelligence Scale

- NOT THE WAIS

A
  • Currently in its 2nd revision: WASI-II
  • for ages 6-90
  • Abbreviated version of the original one, specifically related to age
  • 4 subsets, 30 mins each:
    1. Similarities - Picture/ word shared characteristics
    2. Vocabulary - Word and Picture description
    3. Matrix Reasoning - Pattern completion on paper
    4. Block Design - Pattern completion with blocks

Items 2 and 3 have 2 subsets of 15 minutes each

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10
Q

Outline some vocabulary tests of intelligence

- Sometimes known as Knowledge, or verbal fluency

A
  • Could be having to tell the researcher the meaning of some words, like what does bed mean?
  • Then gets harder, words like:
    • Repair
    •Conceal
    • Edifice
    •Ominous
    •Travesty

Or name as many animals as possible within this category:
• Dogs, cats, birds, fish etc

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11
Q

Outline a Block Design - visual/ spatial ability test of intelligence

A

given 9 blocks with shapes on them

- have to rearrange them into a pattern

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12
Q

What did Wechsler (1958) find about the scores on the WASI tests, and age?

A
  • As people got older, they got worse
  • The mean scores of different cohorts, of different ages, decresead as participants got older

X - cohort effects? they were different people at different age points, so can you compare them?

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13
Q

What did Schaie (1994) found in response to wechslers results?

A
  • Cross-sectional (like wechsler did), meant scores got worse with age
  • But when they did a Longitudinal, scores didnt really change with age, and fluctuated up and down throughout life
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14
Q

what is a limitation of Cross-sectional studies?

A

X - Results can be contaminated by cohort effects

  • something that influenced one group but not another group later on
  • E.g. disease
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15
Q

What is a limitation of using Longitudinal studies

A

√ - can demonstrate the long period of stability, folloed by heterogeneous decline
X - But can Only really show one variable, as decline could be greater/ worse on some tasks than others

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16
Q

Outline the Hold and Dont hold tasks

A
  1. Hold tasks - can show deteoriation
    - e.g. Verbal stuff in the WASI-II
    - Information, comprehension, Arithmetic, Similarities, Digit-span, Vocabulary
  • They are based on knowledge that is taught, and can therefore fade
  • Especially in cases of Az etc
  1. Dont Hold Tasks - Cannot deteriorate
    - E.g. performance scale in WASI-II
    - Digit symbol, Picture completion, Block Design, Picture Arrangement, Object assembly
    - Visual and spatial reasoning task
  • Dont fade because they are not about knowledge, they can just pass the tasks cos they’re good at it for instance
17
Q

Outline Fluid intelligence and Crystallised intelligence

A
  1. Fluid intelligence
    - Innate intellectual power
    - Think logically and solve new problems
    - Not learnt
  2. Crystallised Intelligence
    - Uses experience and education
    - Wisdom and knowledge - that has been learnt
18
Q

Outline Horn (1970) study into the levels of Crystallised, Fluid and General intelligence

A
  • Tracked levels of fluid intelligence, crystallised intelligence and general IQ over age, longitudinal
  • Over time - fluid intelligence (innate) reduces
  • Over time - crystallised intelligence (taught) increases
  • General IQ as a result of this trade off, stays pretty much the same, and if anything gets a tiny bit better with age
19
Q

What did Schaie (1990, 2004) do?

A

Seattle Longitudinal Study

20
Q

Outline the Seattle Longitudinal study (Schaie, 1990, 2004) methods

A

Looked at individual differences in intellectual change

  • Study Began in 1956
  • Looked at Cognitive ageing, personality and lifestyle
  • Inductive reasoning, spatial, memory, verbal tasks etc
  • Longitudinal design to see the path of these variables
21
Q

Outline the Seattle Longitudinal study (Schaie, 1990, 2004) findings

A

50-59: average decline, affects a minority of measures and individuals. When people hit 50, they may slow down and abilities slightly decline. Key age where these abilities start to decline

75-79: Average decline affects most measures and individuals. At this age, most abilities decline, at quite a large rate

But at 80: they have hit the point where they cant have any further decline in this ability. So it stops declining

22
Q

Evaluations of Seattle Longitudinal Study

A

X - didnt study anything to do with dementia or alzheimers

√ - see decline in different types of ability of tasks

23
Q

What are some issues with testing aging and intellectual ability?

A

X - conducting studies in the lab, not as ecological valid as intellect in the real world

  • dont refelct real world
  • Just a snapshot of ability
  • Demand characteristics
24
Q

What did Wilkinson & Allison (1989) find about reaction time?

A
  • RT Got worse as people aged, but then got better again

- Gets more stable over time

25
Q

Outline Rabbitt et al (2001) reaction time

A
  • Did a Choice Reaction Time Task
  • Where participants have to do lots of things at once -better ecological validity as people in real world have
  • Found lots of variability between people, but also variability within participants
  • Got different scores on different days and on different tasks
  • Highlights importance of the types of tasks you test people with

X - practice effects for repeated tasks

26
Q

Why might performance measures decrease with age?

A
  • Increasing age just means there is greater caution
  • This allows more information to accumulate before making a decision
  • This results in fewer erros
  • Cautious of making mistakes, and monitoring their progress
  • This explains why their performance declines, its not that their cognitive ability is declining
  • They could be using their additional experience to think more
27
Q

What did Hampson & Goldber (2006) do about the stability of Big 5 traits?

A

Looked at the BIG 5 traits

  • 2404 Primary school children assessed from 1959-1967
  • About 400 followed up 1998-2004
  • At both points, 2 measurements were taken
  • Examine strenght of correlations within and between childhood and adulthood
28
Q

What did Hampson & Goldber (2006) find about the stability of Big 5 traits? - what were the findings?

A
  • Stability across 40 years - childhood to adulthood is greater for extraversion and conscientiousness
  • Instead of openness, agreeableness and neuroticism
29
Q

What did Milojev & Sibley (2014) do for personality across the lifespan

A

Looekd at the BIG 6 traits across time

  • Surveyed nearly 3910 New Zealanders aged from 20-80
  • Questionnaires measuring the big 6 two years apart
30
Q

Outline Milojev & Sibley (2014) results

A
  • Rank ordering of scores within the sample was relatively stable
  • But stability varied by age
  • Increasing Stability from 20-50 years old
  • Decreasing Stability from 50+ to age 80

Extraversion was most stable
Agreeableness least stable

31
Q

What do studies show about personality and ageing then?

A
  • Some traits are more ‘state’ like than others
  • Moderate age continuity among the big 5, especialyl extraversion
  • Greater continuity in the component attributes of each trait
32
Q

Outline Woodruff (1983) - Do we change as much as we think we do?

A

1944: University students tested for ‘personal & social adjustment’

25 years later

1969: retested under 2 conditions:
1. Complete as you remember yourself 25 years earlier
2. Complete as you are now

33
Q

What was Woodruff (1983)’s results?

A

The remembered answers were inaccurate
- they overestimated change

  • People had changed less than they thought they had
34
Q

Outline Robins et al (2005) methods

A
  • 290 first year UG students complete assessments of Big 5 personality traits
  • then 4 years later, after graduation, they were asked: •to rate the degree of change on big 5
    •And had to retake the Big 5 test as well
  • So they were asked how much they had changed, then tested to see how much they had changed
35
Q

Outline Robins et al (2005) findings

A
  • Again, people thought they had changed more than they had
  • They thought they had become more extraverted, agreable, conscientious and open, and less neurotic
  • But this wasnt the case, their personality traits hadnt changed much over time
  • Also found positive correlations between these judgements and their actual scores. So if they thought they had become more open, they rated themselves as such
36
Q

What is a limitation of Robins et al (2005)

A

X - Only over 4 years, not very long

- usually, longitudinal studies go over like 25/ 30 years

37
Q

What are the 2 contrasting theorys of emotional change over age?

A
  1. Disengagement theory (Cumming & Henry, 1961)

2. Development of emotion (Lawrie & Phillips, 2016)

38
Q

Outline Disengagement theory

A

Emotion DOES change

  • As we grow, we become withdrawn from social activities and society
  • But this theory argues that this is okay, and this is normal
  • As a student, you join groups and get involved in society
  • But as you age, you become more focused on work and become more individualistic
  • But this is okay to disengage from life and from peers as we age
39
Q

Outline development of emotion (Lawrie & Phillips, 2016)

A
  • Argues disengagement theory is too simple
  • As it ignores cultural and situational factors
  • This theory argues as we age, we get better at regulation of emotions - we develop superior emotional regulation

Personality Revision 2 (10 decks)

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