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
