Individual differences Flashcards
What is personality?
The distinctive and relatively enduring ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that characterise a personâs responses to life situations
What is a personality trait?
What are traits important in?
Can traits be observed?
- Relatively stable cognitive, emotional, and behavioural characteristics of people
- These traits help establish their individual identities and distinguish them from others
- A trait is a continuum along which individuals vary, like nervousness or speed of reaction
- We canât observe traits but infer from behaviour
What is Eysenckâs 2 factor model?
Eysenckâs personality theory has two main factors:
- Neuroticism (the tendency to experience negative emotions) or stability
- Extraversion (the degree to which a person is outgoing and seeks stimulation) or intraversion
What is the 5 factor model of personality?
- Openness: this refers to left-field experience
- Conscientiousness: c
- Extroversion: about stimulation seeking
- Agreeableness: about warmth and empathy
- Neuroticism: the tendency to experience negative shifts in emotion
Assessed with questionnaire, remember using OCEAN
How was the five factor model of personality devised?
This model was arrived at by a statistical technique called factor analysis. This allows the model to cluster aspects of someone that may correlate.
What is Eysenckâs biological explanation for personality traits?
- Extroversion and introversion are based on differences in customary levels of cortical arousal
- Introverts are over-aroused; extraverts are under-aroused
- Neuroticism: suddenness of shifts in arousal
- Unstable (neurotic) people show large, sudden shifts in limbic system arousal; stable people donât
How do we know that personality has genetic influencers?
What study was done on this and what did the results find?
- People who are related tend to have similar personalities to a degree
- 123 pairs of identical twins and 127 pairs of fraternal twins
- Measured on âBig Fiveâ personality dimensions
- Results suggest that personality differences in the population are approximately 50% genetically determined
Out of the âbig 5â personality traits what is most strongly associated with positive health?
conscientiousness
What is conscientiousness?
Being orderly, efficient and well-organised
Why does conscientiousness improve health outcomes?
How many years does it add to life span?
- Adds 7. 5 years to lifespan
- Less likely to engage in harmful behaviours, more likely to engage in healthy behaviours
- Medical engagement and adherence: more frequent contact and careful compliance
What is intelligence?
The ability to acquire knowledge, to think and reason effectively, and to deal adaptively with the environment
Who developed the first intelligence test? And why?
Pioneered by Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon
- They developed the first intelligence test to identify French children that might have difficulty in school
- All children follow the same course of mental development, but at different paces
- The Binet-Simon Scale measures mental age
How is IQ distributed in the population?
What is an average IQ score?
- Normally
- 100
What was Charles Spearmanâs theory of intelligence?
Charles Spearman believed that intellectual activity involves a general factor (g) and specific factor (s). Factor analysis suggests that people who do well on one task (e.g. numerical) tend to do well on others (e.g. language).
What is the Wais IV?
- This is the most common intelligence test that is used in many settings
- It is made up of a general ability score (may be considered as the equivalent to an IQ score
- Within that, there are cognitive domains, in which there are specific tasks to test the domain. E.g. verbal comprehension, working memory, processing speed
What is the Wechsler test?
The child version of the Wais IV test. It assesses a range of different abilities (verbal and non-verbal)
What are some problems with intelligence tests?
- These tests are quite narrow
- The ability to survive in harsh conditions may be more adaptive and useful
- Averaging
What are Garderâs multiple intelligences?
- Linguistic Intelligence: e.g. Shakespeare
- Logical-Mathematic Intelligence: e.g. Einstein
- Spatial Intelligence: e.g. Gaudi
- Musical Intelligence: e.g. Lennon
- Bodily-Kinaesthetic Intelligence: e.g. Messi
- Intrapersonal Intelligence: e.g. Socrates
- Interpersonal functioning: e.g. Freud
What is a problem with averaging for IQ scores?
- In clinical applications it isnât useful e.g. if someone has a stroke they may have a low score in one place but
high elsewhere and an average will eliminate this
What is the psychometric approach?
Cattell and Horn (1971, 1985) broke down Spearmanâs âgâ into two distinct but related subtypes:
- Crystallized Intelligence (gc): the ability to apply previously acquired knowledge to current problems
- Fluid Intelligence (gf): the ability to deal with novel problem-solving situations for which personal experience does not provide a solution.
How do fluid and crystallised intelligence chance with age?
Our fluid intelligence peaks in our early adult life, and then gradually shows a drop across the lifespan.
Crystallised intelligence increased until mid-life, and then is largely stable.
What types of cognition require fluid intelligence? When does this peak?
Which abilities peak around midlife?
- Inductive reasoning, spatial orientation and perceptual speed aspects all require a fluid-type ability that peaks quite early
- Verbal and numeric ability take a while to develop, peak around mid-life, and donât show much deterioration from this point on
- This is important when assessing elderly patients. There is no point comparing a 70-year-old patient to a 20 year old. These tests are ânormedâ on people with the same age
How does intelligence change with age?
IQ test scores are largely stable over the lifetime. Whatever is contributing to intelligence in early age is likely to remain and show in elderly life. There are also improvements.
What factors are predictive of can influence our cognitive ability?
- The higher predictive factor was ability at age 11. Everything else contributes a bit
- Sport of marginal gains makes a slight difference to our cognitive ability
- There is evidence for physical fitness, strength and respiratory function having a role
- There is little evidence for sex having a role
- The APOE gene has been linked to cognitive ability, because itâs linked to Alzheimerâs. However, on its own, there is not a huge link
Intelligence - effect of environment and genetics
- Genetic factors can influence the effects produced by the environment
- Accounts for 1/2 to 2/3 of the variation in IQ
- No single âintelligence geneâ identified
- Environment can influence how genes express themselves
- Accounts for 1/3 to 1/2 of the variation in IQ
- Both shared and unshared environmental factors are involved
- Educational experiences are very important
Are IQ tests culturally biased?
Sometimes IQ is used to compare groups in the USA. It has been historically used to separate racial groups. Tests are only as useful as who they were ânormedâ on. You cannot compare people who are entirely different.
Sex differences in intelligence
- There is not a significant difference in performance between males and females
- Gender differences in performance on certain types of intellectual tasks, not general intelligence
- There are specific areas that one sex tends to do better on
- We donât know how much of this is biologically and socially determined
- Men generally outperform women on spatial tasks, tests of target-directed skills, and mathematical reasoning
- Women generally outperform men on tests of perceptual speed, verbal fluency, mathematical calculation, and precise manual tasks
What is autism?
A lifelong, developmental disability that affects how a person communicates with and relates to other people, and how they experience the world around them.
Autism is characterised by difficulties in 3 areas, what are they?
- social and emotional difficulties (e.g. friendships)
- language and communication difficulties (e.g. jokes and sarcasm)
- difficulty with flexibility (e..g coping with change)
What is the ratio of males and females with autism and aspergerâs syndrome?
Autism has a 4:1 male: female ratio
âAspergerâs syndromeâ or High Functioning autism has a 9:1 male: female ratio
What is empathising and what is systemising?
Empathising consists of both being able to infer the thoughts and feelings of others and having an appropriate emotional reaction
Systemising is the drive to analyse or construct any kind of system i.e. identifying the rules that a govern a system, in order to predict how that system will behave
Sex differences in empathising and systemising
Females generally score higher on the empathy quotient than males and people with autism. The reverse is seen on the systemising quotient.
What are type S and E, what scores are needed to have which and which do males have more than females?
- Those that scored high in systemising and low on empathising are type S
- The opposite way around would make someone type E.
- Individuals with autism are more likely to be extreme S
- Males without a diagnosis of autism are more likely to have types S than females
What is associated with higher levels on the autism quotient?
higher levels of foetal testosterone
What is neuorsexism?
Neurosexism is a self-fulfilling by providing a framework for treating children and adults differently on the basis of gender, which causes them to behave differently, which in turn creates so-called gender differences, which in turn prop up neurosexism
Boys may be encouraged to play with mechanical toys that help them to develop systemising abilities
Girls may be encouraged to nurture their dollies, helping them to develop greater empathising ability
