Behavioural approaches Flashcards
What are some challenges to the behavioural approach?
- inconsistent use of terminology → ‘behaviour’ used to describe multiple methodologies (questionnaire, observational, experimental)
- complicates the identification and assessment of research that targets behavior → impedes a clear assessment of the status quo.
- No common paradigm (e.g. lexical methodology is a paradigm because it follows the same set of ideas or concepts)
- Complicates the comparison of research findings (not a systematic investigation when comparing personality traits and behaviours).
How has extraversion and sociability been operationalized?
- talking more
- communicating more
- ability to decode non-verbal cues (on the basis that this is a skill picked up on from being more sociable)
Smolensky, Carmody & Halcomb (1990):
- hypothesis: extraverts communicate more
- semantic measures (Eyesenck Personality Inventory; EPI); behavioural measure (amount of speech)
- results: r=.62 (significance not reported but large effect)
Cuperman & Ickes (2009):
- hypothesis: extraverts talk more
- task type: dyadic conversations (involving two people)
- semantic measures (EPI); behavioural measures (no. of speaking turns)
- Results: r=.0.03 (.ns.)
Funder & Sneed (1993):
- hypothesis: people are judged to be extraverted, because they talk more
- semantic measures (California Q-sort: Acquaintance rating, stranger rating); Behavioural measure (Behavioural Q-sort with trained raters) → looks at correlations between subjects across a sample of variables, namely E → participants video-taped.
- Results: AR- r= .25 (p
Akert & Ponter (1988):
- hypothesis: extraverts decode non-verbal cues between (because they socialize more)
- task type: determine the ‘topic of conversation’ for video excerpts without sound.
- Semantic measure (EPI); behavioural measure (responses to questions about the excerpt)
- Result: r=.26; n.s.
What are the overall conclusions that can be made with regards to extraversion and empirical evidence found?
OVERALL:
-There are inconsistencies in reported statistical significances, and effect sizes
What is the TRANS-MARGINAL INHIBITION (TMI)?
-Describes changes in stimulus – response pairings when response system becomes over stimulated
•EQUIVALENT PHASE: when responses match stimuli (i.e. more arousing stimuli leads to stronger responding)
•PARADOXICAL PHASE: when the strength of responding reverses (i.e. more arousing stimuli leads to weaker responding)
•ULTRA – PARADOXICAL PHASE: when the type of responding reverses (i.e. negative stimuli leads to positive responding, and positive stimuli leads to negative responding).
What was Eysenck’s take on TMI? (1994)
- thought to moderate the effects of arousal on how stimuli are experienced:
• those who score LOWER on EXTRAVERSION are more likely to experience a negative relationship between arousal and valence (I.e. as a stimulus becomes more arousing, it is likely to be perceived as less positive, resulting in a ‘shut down’ when stimuli is very arousing).
• Those who score HIGHER on EXTRAVERSION are more likely to experience a positive relationship between arousal and valence (i.e as stimuli becomes more arousing, it is likely to be perceived more positively).
What did Furnham, Trew & Snead (1999) show in studying of TMI?
- hypothesis: extraverts are positively affected by instrumental music while working
- task type: cognitive
- semantic measure (EPQ); Behavioural measures (reading comprehension, logical deduction, coding)
- analysis: 2 (introversion/extraversion) X 3 (vocal, instrumental, silent) ANOVA
- Results: EPQ Extraversion*noise & Reading comprehension (p
Dobbs, Furnham & McLelland (2011) and TMI?
- hypothesis: that a positive r/s would be observed between the level of E and performance in the presene of both background music and noise, but not in the silence condition
- Task type: cognitive
- Semantic: EPI; Behavioural: Ravens, Wonderlic personnel, verbal reasoning
- Analysis: hierarchical multiple regression
- Results: interaction between background music and noise and EPI extraversion, but also an effect between for silence. ?? Is there a r/s between EPI Extraversion and Intelligence?
Furnahm & Strbac (2010) and TMI?
- Hypothesis: introverts will perform worse on cognitive tasks in the presence of noise
- Task: cognitive
- Semantic measure: EPQ; behavioural measure (reading comprehension, memory for prose, mental arithmetic (simple addition, subtraction)
- results: significant results for sound and reading comprehension only, but not for other tasks
What are the overall findings with regards to TMI research?
-again, there are inconsistencies in reported statistical significances
Kambouroplous & Staiger (2004) and TMI?
- Examined the r/s between sensitivity to reward and sensitivity to punishment and behavior
-(used original model)
-sensitivity to reward is a measure of BAS; Sensitivity to punishment is a measure of the BIS
-2 behavioural tasks:
•card arranging reward Responsivity Objective Task (CARROT)→ attempts to test responsiveness to reward; compares performance when small rewards are offered with those when no reward is available
•Q-task → only asked to respond when if letter strings don’t contain the letter ‘Q’ → get certain points → then ask to respond as possibly but only if they don’t contain a number. Hypothesis: learn that Q is an aversive stimuli, so RT should take longer if you’re more aversive to punishment in the second task (because you’ve learnt that Q is an aversive stimuli)
-Results: correlation between semantic measures of reward and behavioural measures of reward (CARROT) and correlation of semantic measures of sensitivity to punish and behavioural measures (Q-task).
Jackson, Loxton, Harnett, Ciarrochi & Gullo (2014) and TMI?
- tested r/s between measures of r- FFFS/r-BAS and executive functons (processes involved in problem solving)
- semantic measures: Jackson 5 (BAS/BIS/FIGHT/FLIGHT/FREEZE); behavioural measures: Colourful stroop task (congruent/incongruent trials), trail-making (congruent/incongruent trials), time estimation task (judege time intervals while speaking out loud numbers that appear randomly on a screen)
- Hypotheses: r-FFFS measures negatively related to executive functioning→ i.e. FFFS impulses will interfere with cognitive regulation; r-BAS measures positively related to executive functioning
- Results: inconsistencies in resported statistical significances and effect sizes
