Differential psychology Flashcards
(122 cards)
1
Q
What is differential psychology?
A
- how we perceive ourselves and representation to other people
- explain why individuals behave in such manner
2
Q
What is Cronbach’s two disciplines of scientific psychology?
A
experimental psychology: manipulate conditions to see what happens
Correlation psychology: identify & measure patterns of nature not directly controlled
3
Q
What are some criticisms of correlation psychology?
A
- doesn’t acknowlege situations
- constrains behaviour
4
Q
Name a criticism of experimental psychology
A
- some errors in model which are systematic
- i.e individual differeneces
5
Q
How is the correlational methodology used in psychology?
A
study genetics and developmental sources of individual differences in personality and intelligence
6
Q
How is the experimental methodology used in psychology?
A
- manipulate situation circumstances and observe how affects typical behaviour and performance
7
Q
List 3 between-person differences
A
- Physical
- Demographic status
- ## Psychological attributes
8
Q
What is a domain specific difference?
A
- Variance = differences create error in psychological experiments
9
Q
Why is the variance and mean needed?
A
- measure traits and compare difference to mean as distributed in population
10
Q
How does Gottfredson define intelligence?
A
- mental capability to reason, plan, problem solve, comprehend complex ideas and learn quickly from experience
11
Q
What is personality?
A
- individual’s characterisitcs of behaving, thinking, feeling
- psychological mechanisms in a person
12
Q
Why is it important to study variation and differences?
A
- differences in personality & intelligence predict life outcomes
13
Q
What are the difficulties in measuring individual differences?
A
- characteristics not directly observed
- reliability crisis
14
Q
What is intelligence?
A
- global concept allowing purposeful actions and thoughts
- measuring unobserved concept
- intelligence is what intelligence test measures
15
Q
How is intelligence measured?
A
Classical Hierarchical Model:
g = generalised quality of intelligence
the increase in one type of intelligence causes the increase in the other
16
Q
Name Cattell’s two different types of intelligence
A
Fluid
Crystalised
17
Q
What is fluid intelligence?
A
Biological fixed cognitive capacities applied to anything
- Ability to do something
- processing power
- context free, applicable to anything
18
Q
What is crystallised intelligence?
A
- Acquisition of knowlegde and procedural skills
- continuously improving
- learning something new
19
Q
What affects learning rate?
A
- time spent learning
- previous knowledge
- fear of future
20
Q
What is personality?
A
- Individual characteristic style of behaving, thinking and feeling
- infer pattern of traits from behaviour
21
Q
How is personality measured?
A
Normative: indicate how much you agree w statement on Likert scale
Ipsative: choosing which statement appeals the most
22
Q
How are personality and intelligence similar?
A
- heriable, develop overtime
- active conscious roles in development and constraint
23
Q
How are personality and intelligence different?
A
- no unitary personal capacity for personality
- typical performance vs maximal performance
24
Q
How are personality and intelligence tests used?
A
- research -> description, prediction and explanation
- Decision-making -> diagnosis and classification
25
What is the difference between quantitative change and qualitative change?
quantitative = change in magnitude
qualitative = change in nature
26
How does Mendel argue traits develop?
- Genetically: parents passing to offspring
- dichotomous traits
27
What is the difference between genotype and phenotype?
- Genotype = what's in the gene
- Phenotype = what's expressed in the world
28
How does genetics explain traits to be developed?
- Dominant and recessive traits
- Genotypes and Phenotypes
29
What roles do genes play in personality and intelligence?
- psychological characterisitcs show genetic influence
- genes and environments interact during development
30
What are the two continuous not dichotomous traits?
- Polygenic = more than one gene contribute to trait
- pleiotropic = one gene influence two unrelated traits
31
What role does environment and genes have on traits?
- enviro affects gene expression -> affect development
- genes and environment not independent
32
What are the requirements for differential research?
- representative sample size
- dependent on difficulty of population access
- large sample size to maximise stats power
33
What did the Lothian Birth Cohort aim to look about intelligence?
- How intelligence from child changes into adulthood and what causes those differences
34
What is the pre-psychology history of differential development?
- different accounts of individual differences before formalised field
- wanting to know why individuals differences occur
35
What did the early personality researchers develop?
- lexical hypohthesis and idea personality encoded in language through traits
36
What did the early intelligence researchers develop?
- measure and analyse psychological attributes
- psychological characteristics are inherited
37
What is Galton's great man theory?
- greatness inherited and continues while others dies
38
What did Spearman develop?
- factor analysis
- reliability
- general factor of ability
39
What did Binet develop?
IQ test
40
How is eugentics revelant to differential psychology?
- Pioneers were eugenicists; used stats to demonstrate some races superior than others
41
What parts of Freud's theory is still used today?
- Dual process models: implicit/ unconscious + explicit/ conscious processing
- projection
42
What are the basics of psychological measurements?
- required ground truth or fixed quality that measurements can be derived from
- uses ratio scales
- dependent on making inferences rather that direct observations
- measurement consistent and in-line with theory
43
What is an error in psychological measurement?
why/how?
- operationalising psychological character has error
- impacts of stochastic and systematic processes
- interpretative disagreement
- Bias in testing -> distort accuracy of test capturing target constructs
44
What is the difference between error and noise?
- error/bias = mistake in something objective vs.
- noise = aggregations of error
45
What is beneficial about understanding nosie?
- examine impact of noise learn more about processes underlying them
- allows minimisation
46
What is classical test theory?
foundations of psychometrics
47
What is the central tenet?
- observed score = True score and error
(true scrore includes test + individual item components)
48
What inferences do we need to make about results?
- not all results mean the same
- consider test content, populations etc before conclusions
49
What are psychometrics?
- science of measuring psychological characterisitcs
50
Name the two main criteria for psychometrics
- reliability
- validity
51
What is the role of factor analysis in differential psychology?
- correlation = measure of association
- factor analysis = measure of association between many variables
52
What determines the structure of tests?
- a priori -> sub-tests within a test
- a posterior -> factor analysis
53
What is the origin of the type models?
the 4 humours
54
What is the modern iteration of the types model?
- Myers-Brig
55
What are the benefits of the type models?
- central tenet: people organised into discrete, discontinuous categories
- intuitive, easy to grasp
56
What are 4 criticisms of the type model?
- lacks internal consistency
- lacks test-retest reliability
- lacks predictive validity
- not credible in academic psychology
57
What is an alternative type of model for personality?
Dynamic model
58
What is the interactionist perspective on measuring personality?
- personality traits reflect stable patterns of corresponding personality states
- behaviour is product of trait-environment interactions
59
What has the interactionist perspective of personality found?
- varying more in own expression than between two people
60
How was the trait model developed?
- lexical hypothesis (personality encoded in langauge)
- several adjectives then wittled down into 5 important ones
- 5 factor model created
61
What is a negative of the 5 factor model development?
- subjectivity involved
62
List the 5 traits in the 5 factor model
- Openness
- Conscientiousness
- Extraversion
- Agreeableness
- Neuroticism
63
What are 4 traits missing from the FFM?
- Antisocial behaviour
- Social dominance
- Morality & religiosity
- Psychopathology
64
List 4 critiques of the FFM
- created without underlying theory of personality
- created from subjective methods
- social desirability
- broad trait definitions making lack of consensus + vary in models
65
What could the lexical hypothesis alternatively point out?
- more about socialisation than biology
- derive 5 factors in other cultures but specifics differ
66
What does each trait in the FFM predict?
- High N and low A predict psychopathology
- High C, O and low N predict educational achievement and work
- Low A predicts higher income
High C predicts health
67
Why does the FFM work?
- influence behaviour and life choices
- definitions are psychologically relevant
- social desirable behaviour rewarded
- content overlap between items
68
What does the FFM reflect?
- biological contributions are relatively fixed and stable after 30
69
What do the FFM cause causal influence on?
- affect
- behaviour
- cognition
- desire
which all maintain stability; environment produces short-term variance
70
What does the FFM not account for?
- factors correlate
- personality keeps changing
- environment contributes to stability
evidence for biological coherence is limited
71
What are ABCDs?
- traits comprised of
- Affect: how we feel
- Behaviour: what we do
- Cognition: what we think
- Desire: what we want
- Personality traits present patterns of ABCD = consistent over situations, stable overtime and heritable
72
Explain Narcissim using ABCD
Affect: extremely emotional
Behaviour: hypersensitive to heriarchy
Cognition: better than everyone
Desire: needs to be fulfilled
73
How do we measure personality?
- Personality inventories
- self-report statements/adjective apply on scale
- Projective techniques
- Reactions/ responses interpreted by test administrator
- free from reaction to ambiguous stimuli
74
How are empirically designed objective tests designed?
- match groups differing in some crucial way
- administer tests to both groups
- identify items distinguish sub-groups
- clinical testing
75
What are the limitation of questionnaire measures?
- Inventory responses aren't referenced behaviours
- implicitly reflect social desirability
- people lack insight on how others view them
- interpretations are subjective and speculative
76
What are the advantages of questionnaire measures?
- information breadth
- motivation to report
- casual force
- practicality
77
How has self-presentation bias been avoided?
- modify personality items to be more neutral
- rephrasing variable to make it less social desirable & more honest
78
What causes correlations to inflate?
- measuring predictors and outcome using same method
-
79
How effective are trait measures overall?
- evidence suggests all trait measures are very good at population level
- High re-tests reliability
- self & informant reports correlate
- different measures of same constructs correlate
80
What are the downsides to trait measures overall?
- Type measures are less good
- all personality measures are less good than intelligence measures
81
What is IQ?
A score on specific test following a normal distribution
82
What is cognitive ability?
Used to refer to intelligence or used to refer to similar cognitive constructs
83
How is intelligence distributed?
Normally distributed:
- mean of 100
- standard deviation 15
84
What is a hidden assumption of intelligence?
- intelligence is an inherent personal capacity, stable throughout life varying between people
85
Name 5 ways intelligence can be measured
- Vocabulary
- Identifying sequence progressions
- Short-term and working memory
- Speed of simple processing
- Ability to visualise transformation
86
Name 4 challenges in intelligence measurements
- Drop in from the sky
- artificial, limited context and low real-world fidelity
- Non-verbal IQ tests
- testing situations are often intimidating
- Some stress improves performance and some hinders
87
What is the drop in the sky measurement?
intelligence tests
- extremely fast-paced questions
confounded w prior experience w related material
88
What is missing from the drop in the sky tests?
- self- insight and ability to understand
- creativity
- ability to carry out practical tasks
- decision-making quality
89
Why might intelligence tests not work well?
- some more test-retest reliable than others
- tap into different specific components of intelligence
90
Why might intelligence tests work well?
All tend to correlate together
- Positive manifold/ Spearman's g
- robust observation
91
What are the two different views of intelligence?
- one intelligence -> g loaded
- many intelligences
92
What is the modern consensus of intelligence?
- Pattern of correlations -> 8 mid-level abilities independent of each other and g
i.e, fluid intelligence, crystallised intelligence, general memory and learning
93
What is the classical hierarchical model of intelligence?
- variation in g causes variation in underlying abilities
- underlying abilities arbitrary depending on test structure
94
What is the Flynn effect?
- Rise in IQ scores -> WWI soldiers intellectually disabled today
- Charles Dickens never sold novels in pulp magazine
95
What has caused the Flynn effect?
- Education
- Cultural saturation in abstract thinking
- Better nutrition
- Better healthcare
96
Name 3 misconceptions of intelligence
- fluid intelligence biologically limited capacity for processing info
- crystallised intelligence = accuracy and amount of info available for processing things perceive and measure
- Cant measure them discriminately
97
What is development?
- growing/shrinking in size or becoming more or less mature or emergence of something new over time.
98
How can we examine the development of differences?
- establish whether differences are stable
- make a good prediction about something in one's life later on
99
What are the requirements for examining the development of differences?
- Identify needed data
- collect good sample
- appropriate research design
100
Name 2 developmental research designs
- cross-sectional design
- longitudinal design
101
Name 5 disadvantages of a cross-sectional design
- varying levels of sample selectivity
- can't evaluate prior influences on individual differences
- cohort effects -> generational difference not accounted for
102
Name 5 disadvantages of a longitudinal design
- Limited to one cohort
- high drop out rate
- order effects -> retests effects
- questions and measured get dated
- age and time-of-measurement effects are tangled
- time consuming and expensive
103
List 3 advantages of cross-sectional design
- Faster and Cheaper
- fewer concerns around drop-out
- enable bigger samples
104
List 3 advantages of longitudinal design
- measures change in indivduals
- measures individual differences in change
- evaluate prior influences on individual differences
105
What was the Lothian Birth Cohort about?
- Tested intelligence of every 11 yr old in Scotland and tested their cognitive ability later on
106
What was the population representation for the Lothian cohort?
- Focused on geographical proximity to Edinburgh -> sample was better educated on average and higher social class
- eligible criteria
107
List 5 extraneous variables which could affect the Lothian Birth Cohort?
- social class
- Education
- Lifestyle between data collection
- community, hobbies
- Personality
108
What kind of changes occur in the Lothian Birth Cohort?
- Quantitiative
- Qualitative
109
What occurs in a qualitative change?
- Simple difference in magnitiude with same mechanisms
- needs common measuring rod used in same way
110
What occurs in a qualitative change?
- capacities appeared or disappeared
- no common measuring rod
- pervasive in childhood and young adulthood and life transitions
111
What are the common patterns of change?
- step like change
- inverted U-shape
- Continious increasing ability
- continuous decreasing ability
112
What is change and stability measured by?
- mean-level
- Rank-order
113
What is mean-level?
- Population level change
- Do average trait scores increase or decrease
114
What is rank-order?
- Do relative standings change or stay the same in relation to others
115
What other patterns of change can occur?
- rank- order remain stable but variance increases]
116
What change occurs in intelligence?
- relatively stable over lifespan but declines in older age
- affected by drop-out and decline
- mean-level smoothed population level pattern miss a lot on individual differences
117
what changes occur in personality?
- changes relatively stable development over lifespan
- maturation principle -> more conscientious, emotionally stable over lifespan
118
What key biological components interact with genetics?
- DNA, Chromosomes
- Base pair, SNP, gene
- Genotype and Phenotype
- Shared and non-shared environmental effects
119
What does Mendel reveal about genetic production?
parents have genetic potential to pass off traits to offspring
Dominant traits: expressed if relative gene inherited from 1+ parent
Recessive traits: expressed if only relevant inherited from both parents
120
What is the problem with the Mendelian genetic work?
- over-simplified for complex continuous characteristics for psychological characteristics
121
How do we explore genetic influence in humans?
natural experiments
122
