Differential 3.2 and 3.3 Flashcards
What are Turkheimer’s (2000) ‘Three laws of behaviour genetics’?
- All human behavioural traits are heritable
- Shared environmental influences tend to be
weaker than genetic influences - Neither accounts for all the variance
(Non-shared environmental influences matter too, Psychology measures always contain error)
What are five implications of Turkheimer’s (2000) ‘Three laws of behaviour genetics’?
- Can’t assume correlations between
life circumstances and later outcomes are
causal - Family environments make us different as much as similar
- Environmental influences are idiosyncratic
(They transact with our genes in individual ways + there are very few direct main effects out there)
What three types of Mendelian medical conditions has genome technology caused spectacular breakthroughs for?
Huntington’s Disease
Phenylketonuria
Specific Intellectual disabilities
What is the fourth ‘law’ of behavioural genetics (Chabris et al., 2015)?
Typical human trait is associated with very many genetic variants, each accounting for miniscule amounts of variance
What is the definition of intelligence?
An individual’s mental ability to act purposefully, think rationally, and deal effectively with the environment
How is intelligence measured? (10 points)
- Vocabulary
- Relations among words
- Identifying sequences
- Short-term and working memory (lists, keeping track of one thing while doing another)
- Speed of simple processing (identifying symbols, reaction times)
- Ability to visualise transformation of shapes
- IQ
- Brain volume
- Speed of neural transmission
- Working memory capacity
What are the problems with methods of measurement for intelligence?
- Intimidating situations - questions posed by trained assessors, paper-pencil presentations, computer presentations
- Those with less confidence likely to be more intimidated - too much stress hinders performance
What are the benefits of measurements of intelligence?
They predict:
– Educational achievement and attainment
– Job performance
– Attained social class and socioeconomic status
– Income and financial resources
– Health
– Unemployment, divorce, out-of-wedlock birth,
incarceration, public benefit receipt, school dropout
What is the ‘drop in from the sky’ (Hunt, 2011) method of measuring intelligence? (1 sentence)
An examiner poses a set of questions to the examinee, out of context of the examinee’s normal life, and in a limited time.
What are the drawbacks of the ‘drop in from the sky’ method of measuring intelligence? (3 points)
- No time for participant to evaluate, ponder
- Artifical, limited context
- Inevitably dependent on prior experience with related material (school, culture, social class)
What behaviours do ‘drop in from the sky’ tests fail to measure? (7 behaviours)
- Ability to understand others’ perspectives
- Creativity
- Ability to carry out practical tasks
- Self insight
- Decision-making quality
- Wisdom
- Depth of understanding
What was Raymond Cattell’s (1971)investment theory about? (2 points)
- humans have biologically fixed but ‘fluid’ cognitive capacities that can be applied in any direction
- investing capacity in acquiring knowledge and skills become fixed: ‘crystallized’
What is ‘fluid intelligence’ and how is it measured? (1 sentence each)
The biologically limited capacity for processing information
Figural tests
What is ‘crystallized intelligence’ and how is it measured? (1 sentence each)
The accuracy and amount of information available for processing perceptions
Verbal tests
What is the definition of personality? (1 sentence)
An individual’s characteristic style of behaving, thinking, and feeling affected by the development of an individual
How is personality measured? (2 points)
Personality inventories
- self-reports/reports of close others of how well presented statements/adjectives apply
Projective techniques
- free-form reactions/responses to stimuli/situations to reveal emotions/internal conflicts
How good are measures of personality such as self-reports and responses to stimuli? (few points for inventory, 1 for projective-test)
Inventory:
- many items implicitly reflect social desirability
- people can fake good
- lack of self-insight
- subjective interpretation of questions
- close others cannot see targets in all situations
Projective test responses:
- interpretations are highly subjective, speculative
What do personality scale scores tell us? (2 points)
- reflect personality ‘traits’ (tendencies to behave consistently in biologically coherent ways)
- generate descriptions of behavioural generalities, motivations vary
(varies with situations and circumstances)
What were the 5 stages of studies starting in 1936 that led to the Five-Factor Model in 1985?
- Allport and Odbert (1936) started ‘lexical hypothesis’ dynasty: selected 4,504 adjectives describing people
- Cattell whittled down to 171, factor-analysed to 16
- Tubes and Christal (1961) claimed only 5 were relevant
- Goldberg, Digman et al (1980) reviewed models, concluded Tubes and Christal model = best
- Costa and McCrae (1985) based Five-Factor NEO on Tubes and Christal model
What are the Five Factor Model (Costa and McCrae, 1985) Traits OCEAN and what do they show overall?
Behavioural descriptions / not adjectives
Articulated personality theory
- Openness to experience (art, culture, curiosity, imagination)
- Conscientiousness (self-discipline, impulses, orderliness, responsibility)
- Extraversion (breadth of activities, engagement with world, socialising, enthusiasm, assertiveness)
- Agreeableness (social harmony, optimism, considerate, kind, generous)
- Neuroticism (tendency to anger, worry, emotionally reactive, vulnerable to stress)
What is the Five-Factor Theory (Costa and McCrae, 1985)? (5 points)
- Five independent traits
- Biological contributions are stable after age 30
- Traits exert causal influences on behaviour / environment causes short-term variance
- Seeds of traits present from birth
- Model can incorporate all aspects of personality if we construct hierarchy of measurement detail
What is missing from the Five-Factory Model? (6 points)
- Anti-social behaviours e.g aggression, manipulation, cruelty, greed
- Social dominance, competitiveness, ambition (risk-taking, thrill-seeking)
- Morality, spirituality, religosity
- Enjoyment of solitude
- Distinction between positive / negative emotion
- Psychopathology
What ‘grounds’ can we accept the Five Factor Model on? (3 points)
- Factor analysis supports five = right number
- ## Similar statistics in samples with wide ranges of ages, cultures languages
What are the main issues with the Five Factor Model? (4 points)
Derived without underlying theory
Derived using subjective methods
Saturated with social desirability
Has broad trait definitions = lack of consensus
What has the Five Factor Model predicted in outcomes? (4 points) And how does it compare to intelligence? (1 point)
- High Neuroticism + low Agreeableness = psychopathology
- High Conscientiousness, Openness and low Neuroticism = educational achievement + attainment + work performance
- Low Agreeableness = higher income
- High Conscientiousness = health
BUT correlations are lower than those with
intelligence
