Chapter 1 - Differential Psychology and The Study of Individual Differences Flashcards
Differential Psychology (definition)
The systematic investigation of individual differences
What are the 2 meanings of Psychology?
Psychology as an activity and as a discipline
Who said “Psychology has a long past but a short history”
Hermann Ebbinghaus
Psyche (definition) - how was it different in the Middle Ages?
The mind; the thing that animates us. Middle Ages: what we reason, feel, desire
What are the narrow and wide meanings of the mind? Which does Psychology’s definition use?
Narrow: thinking. intellect.
Wide: all mental phenomena (or all psyche activity)
What does logos mean?
something we think or communicate to others
Psychology (definition)
The study or rational defence of the mind
How can we learn about others’ mental attributes?
Through observing behavior
Expanded definition of Psychology based on how we observe it
The study of persons in relation to mental attributes through exercised or expressed behavior
What does Psychology being a discipline mean?
Systematic body of knowledge; focus on creating knowledge; facts, concepts, methods, approaches, descriptions, theories
What are the internal relations of Psychology? Which is Differential Psychology
Relations within the field; Orientations (attitudes towards phenomena) and Branches (subfields)
What are the external relations of Psychology?
How the field relates to other fields; biological, behavioral, and human sciences
What are the 2 competing Orientations in Psychology?
Differential and Experimental Psychology
What does each of the 2 orientations focus on? What’s in common?
Experimental Psychology focuses on the regularities (why does this exist?). Differential Psychology focuses on the differences (why are there differences?). Both look at averages of people or individuals.
What are the 3 ‘classes’ of Individual Differences?
Inter-individual Differences, Intra-individual Differences, and Inter-individual Differences in Intra-individual differences
Inter-individual Differences (definition)
Differences between people
Intra-individual Differences (definition)
Differences within persons
Inter-individual differences in Intra-individual differences (definition)
Differences between people about differences within people (example: rates of change in cognitive ability)
What are the 2 types of Intra-individual Differences?
Ipsative and Developmental differences
Ipsative Differences
Strengths or Weaknesses of people - person types
Developmental Differences
Changes in attributes over time
What’s a person type?
One or more persons with a particularly salient attribute or collection of attributes
What is a branch in Psychology?
Content
What does Differential Psychology as a branch focus on?
Personality (mainly)
Personality (definition)
an integrated organization of attributes that distinguish persons
Personality Sphere
The 3 dimensions of personality; 1) Area of knowledge (theories/content), 2) Co-ordinated Concept (personality system with attributes), 3) Super-ordinated concept (idiomatic shorthand for its definition)
2 Greek terms our personality consists of
Neosis and Orexis
Neosis (definition)
Our conscious knowing from experience and reason (cognition)
Orexis (definition)
Conation (desire, motivation, purpose, will) and affection (mental state, mood, emotion)
What differentiates conation and affection?
Conation is active, Affection is passive
How is personality empirical, basic, applied, and individual?
experiential, produces knowledge, practical, and unitary among individuals
What are the 2 orientations to personality?
Attribute-Orientation and Person-Orientation
What is the attribute-orientation in personality? What are the assumptions?
An approach to personality that focuses on specific attributes or mental phenomena. 2 Assumptions: 1) the attribute exists (not just by name) and 2) persons are interchangeable data carriers
What is the person-orientation in personality? What do they claim?
An approach to personality that focuses on person or personality types, or a particularly salient attribute or profile of attributes of people. They claim that there are only a small amount of meaningful types of persons and that attributes are only meaningful when they co-occur.
What is a current popular mistake when interpreting personality?
Attributing attribute-orientation investigations to persons; they don’t give info about persons unless certain criteria are met.
What perspective were differences between people seen through in early days?
Usually a religious lens (except 7th Century BCE Greece, where they used experiences rather than empirical hypothesis-testing)
On what basis did Aristotle explain his thoughts?
Based on logic rather than facts (empirically)
How did capital P Psychology emerge?
Amidst chaos; unscientific theories, vague concepts, etc.
Who wrote the first scholarly book to differential psych? When? What did he write about?
Juan Huarte de San Juan; 1575; Wrote about attributes and theory of influences on attributes
Mental Chronometry (definition)
The measuring of the speed of mental processes
What does Mental Chronometry have to do with Differential Psychology?
Francis Galton and Alfred Binet believed that understanding mental chronometry was impossible without understanding individual differences.
What else did Francis Galton do apart from Differential Psych?
Coined the term Eugenics (was not his concept)
What was the danger of interpreting individual differences with Galton?
Differences can be interpreted as inferior
What did Alfred Binet develop in Differential Psych?
Psychologie Individuelle - a research program in 1895
Who officially founded Differential Psychology? When?
William Stern; 1900
What was the 3 part endeavour of William Stern’s founding of Differential Psychology?
To determine the most important mental attributes to understand persons, to understand how the differences manifest in behavior, and to understand what influences the differences
What 2 types of attributes did William Stern split individual attributes into?
Simple and Complex attributes
What is a danger of the scientific approach for Differential Psych?
Reducing persons to inanimate objects
What was the state of schools of Psychology after WW2?
There were different intellectual communities and they mostly focused on arguing about why the ‘other schools’ are wrong
What does “Meta” mean?
An overarching self-referral; or “pursuing in the midst of”
