Individual differences Flashcards
(16 cards)
Background of Goulds study?
Binet-Simon (1905) - first intelligence test designed to help children who had special educational needs.
Hereditarian views – belief that genetics is more important than factors such as environment in determining intelligence and behaviour.
Eugenics – a set of beliefs that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population, typically by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior and promoting those judged to be superior.
Efforts to test intelligence objectively - Yerkes believed that to be a science psychology needed to concern itself with numbers and quantification. His primary aim was to prove that psychology could be as rigorous a science as physics.
Review study - Gould examines the work of Robert Yerkes.
G Aim?
The aim of Gould’s study was to reveal basic problems in attempts to measure intelligence.
The aim of Yerkes’ study was devising a scientific way to test the natural trait of intelligence on a mass scale.
G Method?
Large scale psychometric testing
G Procedure?
Army Alpha – for literate recruits and could be given to large groups at the same time. Most of the items in the test comprised such tasks as filling in the next number in a sequence, unscrambling sentences, and analogies.
Army Beta – for illiterate recruits + those who failed the Alpha which included 7 parts and it was designed to be used by illiterate men, but still relied on pencil
work (writing), knowledge of numbers and how to write them.
Individual spoken test for participants who had failed the Army Beta.
Conditions- Crowded, noisy, rushed.
G What are the results?
1) Average mental age of white American men is around 13 years.
2) Black Americans had a mean mental age of 10.4 years.
Used to assign army roles: Army psychologists would give a grade to each man, ranging from A to E. Yerkes suggested that recruits with a score of C− should be classed as low average intelligence and would be best suited to ordinary private. Men getting a D grade were considered ‘rarely suited for tasks requiring special skill’.
Conclusions- Yerkes
Intelligence is an innate quality with a hereditary basis.
The average man of most nations could be considered a moron.
Mental testing of this kind is a valid, scientific technique with wider implications for society
Criticisms of Yerkes by Gould?
The intelligence tests used were culturally biased to American culture – therefore produce invalid results.
Many recruits were illiterate and hadn’t ever even picked up a pen - how could they accurately complete the IQ test?
Conditions in the camps were inconsistent – some noisy, busy; may have affected performance on the IQ test.
Some ethnic groups were not granted the opportunity to take the Beta test despite this being most appropriate.
Analysis of results were biased – psychologists analysed in light of the ‘hereditary view’.
Ethics evaluated?
Broken- Protection of ps, Right to withdraw, Informed consent , Confidentiality – when taking the tests, the army recruits had to fill in ‘… their names, age, and education’.
Guidelines kept- Confidentiality/privacy – although they’ve had to fill in their names, age and education we are not privy to this information. Debrief – presumed they would have been told their results but maybe not in a proper debrief.
Background to Hancocks study?
PCL-R – Usually completed by a trained professional during interviews. Hare determined 30 to be a threshold after which the individual is deemed a psychopath.
Clinical characteristics of a psychopath – manipulative, grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying, lack of remorse, lack of empathy, shallow emotions, parasitic lifestyle.
3 language characteristics – unique socioemotional needs (food, money, sex, etc.), poverty of affect (past tense verbs, e.g. stabbed; disfluencies e.g. erm, uh…), instrumental and world predatory view (that, because, in order to get X, I had to do Y’).
Oxman (1988) – Statistical speech analysis was shown to be more accurate than a clinician’s diagnosis.
Porter (2009) – There is a popular notion that psychopaths are skilled conversationalists – indeed, Porter found that psychopathic offenders in the Canadian penal system were approx. 2.5x more likely than non-psychopaths to be
successful in their parole applications, despite being far more likely to reoffend.
Williamson (1993) – psychopathic language might actually be less cohesive and more incoherent than that of non-psychopaths.
What was the aim of Hancocks study?
To compare the crime narratives of psychopaths compared with non-psychopathic murderers. Speech was
analysed for instrumental worldview, unique socioemotional needs and poverty of affect.
What was the method?
Self-report method – semi-structured face-to-face interviews.
Potentially a quasi-experiment (IV – psychopath or not; DV – number of language characteristics used).
Psychopathy was measured using Psychopathy Checklist Revised (Hare)
H Who was the sample?
Androcentric, self-selected sample of 14 psychopaths and 38 non-psychopaths.
Canadian correctional facility.
H What was the procedure?
PCL-R a 20 criteria scored from 0 – 2 for a maximum score of 40. The clinical diagnostic cut-off for psychopathy is
scores of 30 or above, however the researcher used 25.
Conducted by trained prison psychologists or a researcher who trained in the coding of the PCL–R.
Audiotaped interview (25 mins)
- The aim was verbally explained.
- Ps were asked to describe their homicide offences in as much detail as possible and
were prompted to provide details using a Step-Wise Interview. The interviewers were two senior psychology graduate students and one research assistant.
Post interview analysis
- The narratives were subsequently transcribed, as close to verbatim as possible.
- Analysed using Wmatrix (used to compare parts of speech and to analyse semantic concepts) and DAL (used to examine the affective tone of the words).
H What were the main results?
Psychopaths used more subordinating conjunctions eg ‘so’ and ‘because, 1.54% controls vs 1.82% of psychopaths. Socioemotional needs Psychopaths used approx twice as many words related to psychological and safety needs. The controls used significantly more words relating to social needs. Poverty of affect Psychopaths used more past tense verbs and fewer present verbs than controls. Psychopathic language was significantly less fluent that the controls’ language – 33% more disfluencies.
H Main conclusions?
Psychopaths are more likely than non-psychopaths to describe cause and effect relationships when describing their murder
Psychopaths focus more on physiological needs (money/food/sex) than higher level social needs when compared to non-psychopaths.
Psychopaths will linguistically frame their murders as more in the past and in more psychologically distant terms than non-psychopaths.
Evaluation?
Reliability-
Inter-rater reliability was high - the PCL–R Interviews all followed the same ‘step-wise’ interview procedure DAL, WMATRIX used to analyse language – ensured data from each participant approached in a consistent way interview – narratives varied in, for example, which parts of the crime they described in most detail 14 psychopaths not really large enough to establish a consistent effect.
Internal validity-
Aimed to reduce demand characteristics - did not mention psychopathy when explaining aims, data was kept confidential, which potentially reduced socially desirable answers, double blind – reduced the likelihood of researcher bias during interviews, step-Wise – used to ensure that interviewers are well trained + they avoid leading questions, valid measured used – Wmatrix, DAL
Cut off point was 25, where normally it should be 30 – were they psychopaths? Accuracy of the description could be questioned – time, Language use – what about education (could affect disfluencies) or culture?
