PSYCH II Individual Differences

What are Individual Differences?

Ways people differ, what produces these differences, and how these differences relate to other behavioral, emotional, and cognitive processes.

What are subject variables?

Variables that set subjects apart from each other: age, race, IQ, gender, education level, dementia status, and personality status.

What is a between subjects design?

A subject is only one of the conditions of the experiment. Subjects can only be one or the other variables.

What two studies indicated individual differences in working memory?

Category fluency (Rosen & Engle, 1997) and Noun reference (Daneman & Carpenter, 1990)

What does a correlation do?

Determines if two things are related.

What is intelligence?

Knowledge, the ability to use that knowledge, and adapt to the situation.

What is emotional intelligence according to Sternberg & Sternberg (2017)

Abilities relating to perception, expression, and control of emotion.

Who is David Wechsler?

The creator of the Wechsler adult intelligence scale in 1955, and the Wechsler intelligence scale for children.

When were group aptitude tests first introduced?

World War I

What are the different group aptitude tests?

SAT, ACT, MCAT, LSAT, GRE

What are the 2 fundamental approaches to how aptitude tests are devised?

Base test on theory, and base test on the ability to discriminate.

What is reliability?

Consistency of measurement.

What is test-test reliability?

Same test done 2 different times, it gets you the correlation coefficient.

What is alternate forms reliability?

Different forms of the test.

What is inter-rater reliability?

Different raters (judges)

What question does construct validity ask?

Does the test measure validity?

What question does predictive validity ask?

Can future performance be predicted?

What is the psychometric approach to studying intelligence?

It studies the structure of intelligence.

What is factor analysis?

It is a technique that IDs factors that correlate with each other.

General Intelligence Model

When 1 factor emerges.

Separate Intelligences Model

More than 1 factor emerges.

Hierarchical Model

Separate factors that emerge are moderately correlated.

What is the computational approach to studying intelligence?

Studies the processes of intelligence.

What studies deal with the speed of processing?

Hunt (1978) - posner matching task. Sternberg (2017) analogy problems.

What is global planning?

Encoding problem, general problem solving strategies.

What is local planning?

It deals with implementing details.

What studies suggest that working memory is correlated with IQ?

Daneman and Carpenter (1980), and Hambrick et. Al., (2005)

What is the biological approach to studying intelligence?

It is the study of intelligence via the brain.

Hypothesis of the Biological Approach?

Smarter brains are more efficient brains.

What is the contextualist approach to studying intelligence?

It emphasizes social context.

Ceci & Bronfenbrenner (1985) (Contextualist Approach Support)

-battery charging vs. cupcake baking

Even though they were given the same task, subjects (young boys) performed better on the task titled battery charging.

Schliemann & Magalhues (1990) (Contextualist Approach Support)

Brazilian children who were street vendors performed better on math problems in that context over original.

Gardner based his theory of multiple intelligences on?

Psychometric data, gifted individuals, and brain damage.

What are Gardner’s 8 types of Intelligence?

Linguistic (language), logical mathematical (abstract reasoning), spatial (mental imagery), musical (sing, compose, play), bodily kinesthetic (gross and fine movement), interpersonal (faces and voices), intrapersonal (insight into ones own thoughts and feelings), and naturalistic (identify and characterize things in nature)

What is the triarchic theory of intelligence, Sternberg (1985)

Three types of intelligence:

Information processing (IQ and aptitude tests), Creative (ability to apply knowledge in a unique way), Practical (apply knowledge to everyday situations)

What are the 5 components of creativity?

Expertise, imagination, venturesome personality, intrinsic motivation, and a creative environment.

What are the two states of reversal theory? (Smith & Apter, 1975)

Telic state- goal oriented, serious minded, and working state.

Paratelic state- pleasure seeking, risk taking, curiosity, and creativity.

What are the motivational factors related to creativity?

Patience, persistence, preparations, independence, and flexibility.

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Intelligence (Tyron, 1940)

“Maze bright” rats and “maze dull” rats.

Can intelligence be improved?

Yes, create an enriching environment and increase motivation.

What is personality?

A person’s enduring pattern of thoughts, feeling, motives, and behaviors.

What is a trait?

A measurable characteristic of personality existing along a continuum that ranges from low-high.

Allport and Odbert (1936)

200 traits

Catell (1965)

16 traits → factor analysis.

What are the big 5 personality traits?

Extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience.

Extroversion:

High = gregarious, outgoing, daring.

Agreeableness:

High = accommodating and generous

Low = antagonistic and skeptical

Conscientiousness:

High = responsible.

Neuroticism:

High = insecure, anxious, high emotional variability.

Low = calm, well adjusted, and low emotional variability.

Openness to experience:

High = curious, imaginative, open-minded.

Big 5 Model Criticisms

An inductive approach - a theoretical structure, only 5?, what to call the factors.

Bem & Allen, 1974

Consistency of trait behavior can be determined.

How is personality assessed?

Unstructured interview, structured interview, self report inventory, and projective tests.

Projective tests

Rorschach (ink blots), thematic apperception test (TAT)

Type A personality:

Hard driving, ambitious, highly competitive, achievement oriental, and striving.

Type B personality:

Mellow, easygoing, relaxed, laid back.

According to Burger (2015), what are the three components to finding personality type?

Competitiveness, time urgency, and anger/hostility.

Chronic anger and hostility (Denollet, 1953)

15% of a group of 24 y/o doctors and lawyers who scored high on a test measuring hostility were dead by age 50.

How does stress contribute to heart disease physiologically?

Causes blood vessels to constrict, and stress causes lipids to be released into blood.

According to Williams (1989), how can one reduce hostile feelings?

Trust others, find ways to reduce anger, learn to be considerate of and kind to others.

What are the cognitive-social learning theories of personality?

Locus of control and performance standard

What is Locus of Control?

Expectancy about whether or not achievement of a goal is under internal or external control.

Internal locus =

Optimism

External locus =

Pessimism

What is performance standard?

Standard used to judge the success of behaviors.

Attribution is

Explaining the causes of behavior.

Internal attributions =

Personal characteristics

External Attributions =

External characteristics

What are mastery goals?

Wanting to achieve competence in a subject area.

What are performance goals?

Wanting to achieve accomplishments in a subject area.

Sensory Processing Sensitivity Aron & Aron (1997) (Highly Sensitive Persons Booth et. Al (2015), Neal et. Al. (2002)):

Are hypersensitive to external stimuli, show a greater depth of cognitive processing, display higher emotional reactivity, and are generally anxious.

What does SPS indicate?

Indicates that the thresholds at which people perceive stimuli can explain why the same stimulus can affect different people differently.

Eysenck’s Theory of Personality

Structure of personality, factor analysis, traits and supertraits, and specific behaviors/habitual behaviors.

Eysenck’s 3 Supertraits

Extroversion, Neuroticism, and Psychoticism

Optimal Level of Arousal Theory

We are motivated to seek optimal level.

3 hypothesized temperaments

Emotionality (intensity of emotional reactions), activity (general level of energy output), and sociability (tendency to interact with others).

Temperament related to personality:

Temperament will lead to specific personality traits.

Stability of Temperament (Inhibited Children)-

Anxiety to novelty.

Stability of Temperament (Uninhibited Children)-

Spontaneous and energetic, not anxious is new situations.

Cerebral Asymmetry

In general, people show more LH activity when experiencing positive emotions and more RH activity when experiencing negative emotions.

While ___ will be informative about the number of factors that best describes a large number of item reponses, it does not tel us what to call the factors.

Factor analysis

If we plot score on the X axis and frequency of the score on the Y axis, we find that the distribution of scores on a personality trait is:

Normal shaped (bell-shaped curve)

According the the lecture, ___ measure(s) the information processing component of Sternberg’s triarchic theory?

Typical IQ and group aptitude tests.

Which part of the brain is most related to emotion and has shown individual differences in activity for people processing novelty stimuli?

Amygdala

In a between-subjects design, how many levels of the independent variable are subjects exposed to?

One

What type of experiment compares two DIFFERENT groups?

Between-subjects

Epstein (1979) measured the relationship between extraversion and the number of social contacts initiated. The correlation was highest when the number of social contacts was measured:

Over a two-week period

Fluid intelligence refers to

The speed and accuracy of abstract reasoning.

Crystallized intelligence refers to:

The accumulation of knowledge.

What is NOT one of Eysenck’s personality supertraits?

Creativity

When comparing pairs of monozygotic twins to pairs of dizygotic (DZ) twins on the big 5 personality traits, one finds that the correlation coefficients are stronger for the DZ pairs on

None of the big 5 personality measures.

In a quasi-experiment, intelligence, working memory capacity, gender, etc. are varied via a ______-subjects design.

Between