Individual Differences Evaluation

Question 1

Principles of Individual Differences Area

Answer 1

Individual differences area looks at how people are unique and different, differ in their personality, behaviour
eg, Baron-Cohen found people with autism lack theory of mind

Possible to measure individual differences
> Hancock measured psychopathic traits + how psychopaths use langauge

Question 2

Strengths + Weaknesses of Individual Differences Area

Answer 2

+ Practical Applications
> understand disorders eg. psychoanalysis

+Both quantitaitve & qualitative data used

> Hancock interview transcript > text-analysis

Question 3

Weaknesses of Individual Differences

Answer 3

• ethical issues
  > working with vulnerable groups so they may not be able to fully give informed consent
• sometimes subjecyive
  > freud + little hans

Question 4

Similarities between Freud + Baron Cohen

Answer 4

Both help us understand disorders so they can be used by therapists to help people with disorders

Freud = unconscious reasons why Little Hans had phobia of horses

Baron Cohen = people with AS lack theory of mind + have problems identifying emotions from looking at eyes

Question 5

Differences between Baron Cohen and Freud

Answer 5

RESEARCH METHOD
Freud = case study
Baron Cohen = quasi experiment

TYPE OF DATA
Freud = qualitative (fears+fantisies)
Baron Cohen = quantitative (score out of 25 in eyes task)

SAMPLE
Freud = one boy in austria
Baron Cohen = 16 Austism, 50 normal, 10 tourettes

Question 6

Similarities between Gould and Hancock

Answer 6

QUANTITATIVE DATA
gould = how yerkes used Army IQ tests to produce intelligence scores
Hancock = psychopathy scores (psychometric test)
= text analysis to measure langauge eg. number of subordinating conjuctions

Question 7

Differences between Gould & Hancock

Answer 7

SAMPLING METHOD
Gould - opportunity sampling used by yerks
Hancock - self selected sampling

RESEARCH METHOD
Gould - review of Yerks research
Hancock- psychometric test (PCL-R)
- interviews