individual differences year 2

Question 1

what are psychometric tests?

Answer 1

a test that expresses a psychological construct in a numerical form (eg an IQ test)

Question 2

what was the aim of Yerkes?

Answer 2

during WW1, Yerkes wanted the APA to get involved in contributing psychological expertise to the war to demonstrate the scientific nature of Psychology

he formed a committee which designed tests to measure intelligence

the aim was to identify army recruits to match them to positions within the army

Question 3

what was the aim of Gould?

Answer 3

to critically evaluate the cultural bias and validity of Yerkes’ intelligence tests using a review article

Question 4

sample of Yerkes?

Answer 4

1.75 million US army recruits during WW1

white and Black Americans and European immigrants

Question 5

what was the army alpha test in yerkes?

Answer 5

this test was designed for literate recruits and could be given to large groups

an 8 part test which included analogies, number sequences, multiple choice questions and other IQ questions

Question 6

what was the Army Beta Test?

Answer 6

for illiterate recruits or for people who failed the Army Alpha Test

had 7 parts and consisted of picture completion tasks/ maze running

the instructions were written in English– 3 parts of the test required written answers, which is not exactly suitable for illiterate people

Question 7

what was the individual examination in yerkes?

Answer 7

if recruits failed the other two tests, they were supposed to be given an individual spoken examination. This however rarely happened

Question 8

how were the tests in yerkes scored

Answer 8

recruits were given a grade from A+ to E- which indicated their suitability for the army

men scoring below a C were not suitable to be an officer in the US Army and were described as having ‘low average intelligence’

Question 9

what were the findings of Yerkes?

Answer 9

average mental ages found:

• white americans = 13 (just above the level of a moron)
• russians = 11.34
• Black Americans = 10.4

Question 10

what was the impact of yerkes’ intelligence tests?

Answer 10

the Immigration Restriction Act was passed in 1924

people from countries which had scored poorly on the intelligence tests were no longer welcome in the USA

it is estimated that around 6 million people were banned from entering the US between the end of these tests and before WW2

many people would have wanted to leave Europe and move to the US once the Nazi governments enacted policies of ‘racial purity’

Question 11

what were gould’s criticisms of Yerkes’ intelligence tests?

Answer 11

said the recruits may have been in fear

the tests were culturally biased. immigrants were instantly disadvantaged

the Beta test required the use of a pencil– many of the men had never even held a pencil before

many of the black men had been segregated in school or recently moved to the USA

Question 12

conclusions of Gould?

Answer 12

yerkes IQ tests did not measure intelligence

the tests themselves did not produce valid results

race does not affect intelligence. it is likely down to both nature and nurture but not race (Van Leeuwen’s heritability estimate was thought to be 67%)

Question 13

what was the research method of gould?

Answer 13

review article

Question 14

what is psychopathy?

Answer 14

psychopaths make up about 1% of the general population

they do not respond to emotional cues in the same way as the rest of us

emotional deficit

appear selfish

manipulative– can fake emotions

little to no conscience

no deficits in intelligence

Question 15

how is psychopathy measured?

Answer 15

by using a checklist devised by Robert Hare

Called the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R)

has been used over the last 20 years

uses 20 criteria, each scored from 0 to 2 for a maximum score of 40

there are 2 categories, known as factors

the clinical diagnostic cut-off for psychopaths is a score of 30 or above

Question 16

how is hancock linked to maslow’s hierachy of needs?

Answer 16

psychopaths focus on basic needs like the physiological needs, rather than the higher level needs

Question 17

aim of hancock?

Answer 17

to use statistical text analysis to examine the features of crime narratives provided by psychopathic homicide offenders

Question 18

sample of hancock?

Answer 18

a total of 52 murderers from Canadian prisons volunteered to participate. they had all admitted their homicide.

14 psychopaths, 38 nonpsychopaths

all male

mean age of psychopaths 39,71, non psychopaths 39.91

time since homicide in psychopaths = 11.87, 9.82 in nonpsychopaths

Question 19

how were the ps in hancock assessed for psychopathy?

Answer 19

all participants gave consent

prison psychologists had already completed the PCL-R on a majority of ps (39). A well-trained researcher coded the remaining 13 men

A second trained graduate also coded 10 random files to check the coding was reliable. Results showed a high level of consistency in the coding (94%)

a cut off score of 25 was used to determine which participants were psychopaths and which were non-psychopaths. This is lower than the official clinical score of 30

Question 20

interview procedure of hancock?

Answer 20

open ended interviews were used using the stepwise interview technique, which is a semi structured interview that starts with open ended questions, then asks more specific questions

the interviews were led by 2 senior psychology graduate students and one research assistant. The interviewers were all blind to the psychopathy scores

participants were audio taped and were asked to describe their crime in as much detail as possible

the interviews lasted about 25 minutes

the narratives were transcribed which included any disfluencies. they were also checked to ensure the spelling errors were corrected and all interviewer comments deleted

Question 21

what was the wmatrix in hancock

Answer 21

a computer analysis program that merged the psychopath’s speech together and separately, the non-psychopath’s corpora

program identifies nouns, adjectives, verbs etc

also identifies subordinating conjunctions

categories words under headings eg ‘cash’ and ‘dollar’ would come under ‘money’

Question 22

what was the Dictionary of Affect in Language (DAL) in Hancock?

Answer 22

used to examine the affective (emotional) tone of the words

it assesses the emotional properties of words

assigns a score of pleasantness and intensity of language

Question 23

results of hancock regarding subordinating conjunctions?

Answer 23

psychopaths produced significantly more subordinating conjunctions than the nonpsychopaths

these made up 1.82% of the words used by psychopaths and 1.54% of words used by nonpsychopaths

Question 24

results of hancock regarding hierachy of needs?

Answer 24

psychopaths used approximately 2 times as many words related to basic physiological needs such as eating, drinking and monetary resources

non-psychopaths used more language relating to social needs like family and religion

Question 25

results of hancock regarding disfluencies?

Answer 25

psychopaths used 33% more disfluencies

Question 26

results of hancock regarding past tense and articles?

Answer 26

more past tense verbs such as ‘stabbed’ instead of ‘stab’ and more articles such as ‘a’ and ‘the’

Question 27

conclusions for Hancock?

Answer 27

psychopaths use different language to non psychopaths

psychopaths are more likely than non to describe cause and effect relationships when describing their murdeer

psychopaths are more likely to focus on physiological needs than higher level social needs

psychopaths are more psychologically distant from their crime compared to non psychopaths