Lecture 1 Flashcards
What sort of psychology is individual differences also known as?
Differential psychology
What individual differences aimed at investigating?
How and why people differ, in 4 key areas:
- cognitions
- affect
- behaviours
- motivations
What were the ideas of Hippocrates?
imbalances in body = ill health
- he noticed some people could cope with illness better and was interested in what causes these differences
- argued when blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile were in balance - you are healthy
- pain occurs when there is a deficiency/ excess or they are not mixed together
What were the ideas of Galen?
- the 4 humours (temperament) theory (based on hippocrates)
- causal relationship between humours and personality
- Yellow Bile -> Choleric (high energy/ passion/ charisma)
- Phlegm -> phlegmatic (dependability/ kind/ affection)
- Blood -> Sanguine (extroverted/ social)
- Black bile -> Melancholic (Creative/ kind/ considerate)
- mapped on a spectrum from introverted to extroverted, and emotionally stable to emotionally unstable
What were the ideas of Plato
- argued differences between people are innate. We are simply born different to each other
- allegory of the cave
Outline Plato’s allegory of the cave
- prisoners in a cave, chained up and all they can see is shadows
- some will be more than content to do no more than just watch, but the more clever among them will start to figure out patterns - e.g. guards shadow comes in everyday to feed them
- shows how individual differences are innate
- latent variables: also shows we can observe and notice things but not truly understand their meanings
- same thing happens in ID psychology - we can observer behaviour but cant see the explanation behind it - aim of this psychology is to identify latent variables - through psychometrics
- need to interpret reality from their observations
Outline Plato’s tripartite soul
1) rational/ Logical - in the head
- seeks truth, swayed by facts and arguments
2) Spirited/ emotional - in heart
- feelings fuel your actions - like anger/ sadness
3) Appetite/ Physical desires - in liver
- drives you to eat/ sex/ protect yourself
the first 2 often have to override the primal desires from the liver
outline Freud’s theory of the structure of personality (1923)
- Id - primal/ instinct - pleasure - 3rd plato
- Ego - rational - mediates other 2 - 1st plato
- Superego - morality, conciousness, guilt - spirited - 2nd plato
problems occur when the 3 dont get along
What did Theophrastrus do?
- observed and tried to classify/ organise personality types
- created a list of characters - personality traits he had observed
Give examples of Theo’s characters
- the buffoon
- the stupid man
- the arrogant man
- the coward
- the nasty man
He gave a description of each one
Outline what a Lexical approach is
using words to describe personality types
- from one word it gives an idea of the personality type
- individual differences that are so salient will become encoded so far into their language that it can be summed up in one word - like coward
- theo did this
Where did Descartes say the mind and body meet?
Pineal gland
limitation of Descartes? (enlightenment)
- if mind and body are seperate - does this infer we cant study the mind
What did Hobbes suggest? (enlightenment)
- Monism - mind and brain are same
- mind can be located in body and pinned down and measured
What were the ideas of John Locke? (enlightenment)
- We are a tabula rasa at birth
- we are born without innate ideas, and knowledge is determined by sense perception
- environment we are exposed to is origin of ID
