Critical thinking about Individual differences & mechanisms Flashcards
What is meant by differential psychology?
Psychology which focuses on correlations
What is factor analysis used for?
Multiple variable correlations
What can a united discipline between correlational and experimental psychology achieve which cannot be achieved separated?
neglected interactions between organismic and treatment variables
What did Bergmann and Spence declare that (at the present stage of psychological knowledge) the equation R = f(S) must be expanded into?
R = f (S, T, D, I)
What do the added variables in the expanded equation of R= F(S) represent?
innate differences, motivation, and past experience, all differential variables
What is the simpsons paradox?
The direction of an association at the population-level may be reversed within the subgroups comprising that population. A treatment that appears effective at the population-level may, in fact, have adverse consequences within each of the population’s subgroups.
What action can cause Simpsons paradox to become a problem
when (causal) inferences are drawn across different explanatory levels: from populations to subgroups, or subgroups to individuals, or from cross-sectional data to intra-individual changes over time
How can one be sure that a group-level finding generalises to individuals?
When the data is ergodic, which is a very strict requirement
`What do people often incorrectly infer about inter-individual differences in personality?
That these cross-sectional patterns of inter-individual patterns are causally relevant at the level of individuals (Extraversion causes party going etc)
What is meant by the term ergodic?
1 : of or relating to a process in which every sequence or sizable sample is equally representative of the whole (as in regard to a statistical parameter) 2 : involving or relating to the probability that any state will recur especially : having zero probability that any state will never recur.
What do the dimensions that appear in a covariance structure analysis describe?
variation between people, not variation within individuals over time.
The relationship between alcohol and IQ and coffee and neuroticism could be used as examples for….
two variables may correlate positively across a population of individuals, but negatively within each individual over time.
Evaluate the method of controlling for subgroups to prevent simpsons paradox?
may sometimes be appropriate, but may sometimes increase spurious dependencies
When does a test exist to determine whether sp could arise?
It appears that some cases are observationally equivalent, and only when it can be assumed that the cause of interest does not influence another variable associated with the effect
which incorrect inference is more likely- individual to a group or group to individual?
Group to individual both in terms of prevalence (there are fewer time-series than cross-sectional studies) and in terms of statistical inference (most studies that collect time-series data are specifically designed to address complex statistical dynamics).
