Understanding human diversity

2 dimensions of diversity

• structural diversity

• individual diversity

structural diversity

demographic composition (age, gender, race, etc.)

individual diversity

differences between people (personality, beliefs, attitudes, skills, etc.)

historical shifts in individual differences research

• variation matters

• measuring variation

• identifying underlying structures

• thinking in dimensions

• explaining variation

• integrating multiple influences

variation matters

recognising that individual differences are scientifically relevant and interesting → not seeing them as a measurement error
beneficial in education and work (e.g. ‘who needs support?’ or ‘who is suited to this role?’)

measuring variation

development of psychometrics
developed standardised tests

began thinking about reliability, validity, and norms

identifying underlying structures

recognising patterns/correlations between characteristics and that they could both be caused by the same underlying structure(s)

thinking in dimensions

shift from thinking about people as belonging to distinct categories to thinking about characteristics as continuois dimensiuons
important in diagnosing
allows for comparing how different two people are

explaining variation

shift from description to explanation (genetic, biological, environmental)

integrating multiple influences

shift from ‘ what is the cause?’ → ‘ what factors contribute to individual differences, and how do they interact?’

self-report measures evaluation

positives:

• cheap

• easy to make large scale

negatives:

• social desirability bias

• acquiescence bias - tendency to agree

experience sampling evaluation

positives

• real world contexts

negatives

• burden on the participants

• those specific times may not be reflective of the participants life

behaviour and performance measures evaluation

positives:

• quantifiable

• objective

negatives:

• ecological validity

• only captures part of a construct

biases which could effect observational studies

expectation bias

halo effect

cultural bias

priming paradigm

a way to measure the unconscious

participant is exposed to stimulus and their response is measured

previous stimuli influences response to later stimuli

2 types of factor analysis

exploratory

confirmatory

hereditability

the proportion of variation in a characteristic within a particular population that is statistically attributable to genetic differences

NOT, how much of a person’s characteristic can be attributed to genetics

pluripotency

the same brain region can contribute to several psychological processes

degeneracy

a psychological function can be supported by multiple brain regions

disturbed processing

brain regions work together, in parallel, rather than operating in a sequential hierarchy

overlapping networks

a brain region can participate in several networks, depending on the task and the context