Important Concepts Flashcards
What does MAB stand for?
Multidimensional Aptitude Battery
What does the MAB consist of?
Measures in:
- Vocabulary
- Arithmetic
- Spatial
- Picture Arrangement
People with high IQ don’t have larger or more connected brains, but they have more … brains.
Efficient - Requiring less glucose for mental activity
What is the heritability factor of IQ and how does it change throughout life?
~ 0,5
Low in childhood, high in adulthood
How is EQ related to different Big5 traits?
Negatively related to Neuroticism
Positively related to Extraversion and Conscientiousness
Describe the Flynn effect
More recent generations have much higher IQ scores than past generations. (Even measured on the same test)
-> Effect is much stronger on tasks that involve fluid intelligence whereas it was very small on learnt knowledge domains.
What is fluid intelligence?
General intelligence and the ability to apply concepts broadly to different scenarios.
How do you define Spearman’s G-Factor?
An intelligence task, that correlates highly with other measurements has a high g-loading -> related to construct validity
What is a point of criticism against Spearman’s G-Factor?
Thurstone: There is more than one g-factor
How many kinds of intelligence are there in Gardener’s Multiple Intelligence Theory?
8
How does Gardener criticise general intelligence tests?
He says, they give an advantage to people with high verbal ability.
What are core aspects of Sternberg’s Triarchic theory of intelligence?
Proposes 3 fundamental aspects of intelligence:
- Analytic
- Creative
- Practical
- > Evidence shows that these are not independent from another.
What is a 19th Century precursor to modern personality assessment?
Gall & Spurzheim - Phrenology
What is Projective Assessment of Personality and what are examples?
- Using an ambiguous stimuli and analyzing the subjects response
- TAT - Thematic Apperception Test: Series of pictures and the participant has to make up a story around them
- Rohrschach: Interpreting ambiguous images (inkblot)
What are criticised aspects of projective assessment?
- Low reliability and validity (highly subjective)
Name the different approaches of constructing a personality inventory. (4)
- Factor-Analytic Approach
- Lexical Approach
- Rational Method
- Empirically Derived Measures
Explain the procedure of the Factor-Analytic approach.
- Start with large, diverse pool that is tested on a large sample
- Analyte the results and find groups of items, that correlate with another and measure different traits.
What are important remarks about the Factor-Analytic Approach?
- Resulting scales tend to be narrowly defined
- The trait that is being assessed is not pre-defined
- Pool of items is important
Describe the Lexical Procedure
Use dictionary as source for items
- > People will want to talk about personality, so there should be words describing them.
- Apply factor analysis to determine which terms correlate with another
What is an advantage of the lexical approach?
Has a more objective way of finding items for the test as they are not made up by the scientist.
Describe the procedure of Empirically Derived personality measures.
- An indicator for the desired personality trait is found
- correlation between this arbitrary indicator and the items on the test is calculated
- Highly correlated items are chosen for the test
What are weaknesses of the empirical procedure?
- Indicator might be poorly chosen, confining the entire test
- content of the items can be unrelated, as only statistical correlation is regarded (-> Face validity)
Name one advantage of the empirical procedure
Hard to fake on tests that used this approach.
Explain the rational strategy for constructing PIs
- Items are written specifically for the trait they are supposed to measure
- Administer all items to a pool of test-subjects and find the set of items that is most strongly correlated to the set of items overall
What are limitations of the rational strategy?
- Quality depends on the items that the researchers came up with
- Subject might easily fake results
What was the core of Eysenck’s Theory?
- 3 major domains of personality:
1. Extraversion
2. Neuroticism
3. Psychoticism - Sensitivity in different systems of the brain: If the system is sensitive, it gets overloaded easily, thus sensitivity and the trait are typically negatively correlated.
Gray’s Reinforcement Sensitivity Hypothesis:
- About Structure-Personality interaction
- Modification of Eysenck’s Theory
- Parts:
1. Behavioral Activation System - > The more active, the more reward-driven the person
2. Behavioral Inhibition System - > The more sensitive/active, the more risk-avoiding the person will be.
3. Fight or Flight System
Name the neurotransmitters associated with the Big5
- Extraversion: Dopamine - fMRI - OFC, NAc, Amygdala, Striatum
- Neuroticism: More Cortisol, lower serotonin
- Conscientiousness: More Serotonin (in PFC)
- Agreeableness: More Serotonin
According to Cloninger, what effect does Dopamine have on personality?
Facilitates response to rewarding stimuli -> Is positively correlated with personality traits that belong to “novelty-seeking”
According to Cloninger, what effect does Serotonin have on personality?
Inhibits response to unpleasant stimuli -> Negatively correlated with neurotic/harm-avoidant personality characteristics
According to Cloninger, what effect does Norepinephrine have on personality?
Negatively correlated with traits like sentimentalism / dependence
- This correlation postulated by Cloninger has the most scientific support
What are main hormones contributing to personality?
Testosterone and Cortisol
What is the effect of testosterone?
Positively correlated with dominance and aggression
As the difference in testosterone levels between men and women is much larger than their difference in behavior, we can’t attribute changing behavior to a single hormone.
What are characteristics of cortisol?
- Released by adrenal cortex (above the kidneys)
- Triggered by stress -> Prepares the body (Higher levels of blood pressure, blood sugar, suppression of immune system)
- Cortisol is related to personality characteristics, but never for both genders.
What is the effect of Oxytocin(Neuropeptide)?
Facilitates emotional bonding and trust
Has large effects on the brain due to long half-life time and the ability to be distributed in extracellular space
What is the difference between additive and non-additive genetic effects?
Additive Effects: When the level of a trait is determined linearly by the amount of genes present
Non-Additive Effects: When genes interact and moderate each other
What is the genetic influence on Big5 traits?
The genetic influence is between 40 and 50 % and non-additive effects are present.
What are limitations of twin-adoption studies?
- Difficult to find subjects
- Assumption of representativeness: Assumption that adopted children reflect the population
- Selective Placement: Usually, children aren’t adopted by random families - the adopting family might be similar to the biological family, confounding the results.