Personality, Individual Differences And Psychometrics

Question 1

Justice sensitivity

Answer 1

• there are individual differences in the extent to which we perceive an event as unjust.
• we also differ in perceiving an event as unjust for the self or others
• people can be more sensitive to particular injustices than others eg social, equity, courtesy etc
• people higher on justice sensitivity ( JS) tend to perceive injustice more frequently, ruminate on it more and have stronger emotional reactions to it.
• people learn about injustice from early trust- betrayal experiences
• JS has been differentiated from frustration tolerance, low trust, trait anger, anger expression styles.

Question 2

Four ways of measuring JS

Answer 2

• JS victim ( I am sensitive to others messing with me)
• JS observer ( I am sensitive to others being messed with)
• JS perpetrator ( I am sensitive to me messing with others)
• JS beneficiary ( I am sensitive to me gaining from others’ injustice)
• all well correlated with each other

Question 3

JS and personality

Answer 3

• JS victim associated with: machiavellianism, paranoia, vengeance, suspiciousness, jealousy, distrust. Negatively correlated with big 5 agreeableness. Negatively associated with empathy, perspective taking, social responsibility.
• JS observer/ beneficiary: positively related to those socially desirable traits above, negatively associated with negative/ vengeance traits.
• JS in general positively related to big 5 neuroticism
• JS beneficiary: positively associated with big 5 agreeableness
• JS observer: positively related to openness
• otherwise JS is NOT related to big 5, suggesting JS is a separate, individual differences construct.

Question 4

Effects of JS on wellbeing and social relations

Answer 4

high on JS victim more likely to:
-have emotional and behavioural problems in childhood and adolescence including aggression
- interpret neutral and hostile faces as untrustworthy and uncooperative
-be egotistical and antisocial
- deny responsibility for helping disadvantaged groups
- report lower life satisfaction and less likely to keep trying to find work when unemployed.
High JS observer: react more compassionately to disadvantaged groups, more likely to behave co-operatively, exhibit more other- orientated, socially desirable, traits and behaviours.
JS victim exhibit more negative traits and more reactive, less pro social behaviour. Helps you be more aware of the possibility of exploitation BUT means you are less trusting of others.

Question 5

Just World Beliefs ( BJW)

Answer 5

• Important to human beings for making sense of our world, especially negative events.
• Lerner(1965) we need to believe that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. “ I deserve what I get, I get what I deserve”. Strong BJW sees logic and predictability in the world.
• BJW develops in childhood, we learn through interaction that we need to compromise, follow rules etc.
• men are slightly more likely to think the world is just ( Sutton et al 2008)
• people who grow up disadvantaged tend to have low BJW, tends to be westernised.

Question 6

BJW self and other

Answer 6

• BJW self: psychological buffer against negative events such as accidents, poverty, rape etc and contribute highly to interpersonal skills such as forgiveness and understanding. Empowers confidence to invest in future and down play how bad an event is “ if I don’t see the event as severe, I don’t hurt so much”
• BJW others: people high in BJW for others will blame the victims when they see injustice. They tend to have harsh social attitudes, by victim blaming they restore logic and meaning to their view of the world.
• NB: if I can help, identify with the victim and have responsibility information that absolves the victim, I am less likely to victim blame.

Question 7

BJW & forgiveness

Answer 7

Strelan & Sutton 2011

• BJW self correlates ( small) with positive responding
• BJW self correlates weakly with negative responding.
• high BJW affected by seriousness of transgression more than low BJW
• there is a limit to which a person can be forgiving but for “ not sweating the small stuff” high BJW is useful.

Question 8

BJW & personality

Answer 8

• BJW self and other often measured as one construct
• high BJW related to: conservative social attitudes, Protestant work ethic, deference to authority, conformity to social rules, security.
• BJW positively related to: extraversion, openness, conscientiousness.
• some evidence it is negatively related to neuroticism.

Question 9

Imminent justice

“ what goes around comes around”

Answer 9

• no discernible logic
• the belief that actions bring about deserved outcomes even when there is no logically plausible link between action and outcome.
• less prominent with age, people differ in extent they hold onto imminent justice reasoning into adulthood.
• intuitive reasoning process can hijack rational thought ie bad also = immoral.
• socialisation: bad behaviour equals bad person, ie if something bad happens to someone they must have deserved it. ( bad guy always gets what he deserves in movies)
• some people are simply less rational and more superstitious.
• adults capable of multi focused thinking, even non religious people find comfort in superstition (eg heaven) when tragedy occurs.
• imminent justice reasoning helps us maintain our belief that the world is just place.

Question 10

Ultimate justice “ what goes around comes around”

Answer 10

• ultimate justice is the belief that people eventually get what they deserve, this helps us preserve our belief that the world is just.
• Maes 1992: immanent justice beliefs= more denigration and blaming of victims; ultimate justice beliefs: less likely to denigrate victims, better able to cope with setbacks.

Question 11

Forgiveness

Answer 11

• not holding a grudge, pro social motivational change
• forgiveness is ( usually) a good idea, helps us cope and move on, restores valued relationships.
• forgiveness is both intrapersonal and interpersonal, emotional and cognitive dimensions are the most salient.

Question 12

Trait vs State forgiveness

Answer 12

• state level forgiveness: how much you forgive a particular event ( social psych)
• trait level forgiveness: how forgiving are you in general? ( our focus)
• Heartland forgiveness scale ( HFS), Yanhure Thompson et al, 2005

Question 13

Dispositional forgiveness and personality.

Answer 13

• positive relations with : agreeableness, perspective taking, empathic concern, self esteem
• negatively related to: neuroticism, trait anger, narcissism, depressive symptoms, empathic concern, self esteem.
• dispositional forgiveness is a poor predictor of behaviour
• better predictors are situation-specific variables: apology, perceived intent, state empathy, state anger, relationship satisfaction.
• religiosity and forgiveness not related, personality more influencing on forgiveness.
• offender being punished helps people forgive
• forgiveness is universal/cross cultural.

Question 14

Values

Answer 14

Values are what people consider to be important as guiding principles in their lives ( Schwartz 1992)

Question 15

Values vs traits

Answer 15

• traits are enduring characteristics, they tell us what a person is LIKE.
• values are enduring GOALS, they tell us about what motivates people, why people do and think.
• traits vary in how often they occur and in what strength
• people believe values are desirable; traits can be positive or negative
• people may explain behaviour via traits or values. Values are used to justify actions.
• eg we may value competence but not have this as our own trait, similarly, competent people may not value competence.

Question 16

Values as an individual difference variable

Answer 16

• the salience of a value depends on the situation
• eg: lecture- power, hedonism, learning, grades
• two major values dimensions: openness to change vs conservationism and self enhancement vs self transcendence.

Question 17

Values as goals ( Shwartz 1992)

Answer 17

Ten motivational goals:

- stimulation, self direction, benevolence, universalism, achievement, hedonism, power, security, conformity, tradition

Question 18

Values and attitudes

Answer 18

• self enhancing values related to self-concerned and harsher social attitudes
• self transcending values related to concern for others and issues beyond the self
• people who endorse self transcending values are likely to be concerned with threats to humanity such as nuclear war, poverty, threats to environment, less likely to worry about every day hassles.
• opposite applies to people who endorse self enhancing values.

Question 19

Values and personality traits

Answer 19

Correlates:
- agreeableness most positively with benevolence and tradition values
- openness with self direction and universalism values
- extraversion with achievement and stimulation values
- conscientiousness with achievement and conformity values
- neuroticism unrelated
( Roccas et al 2002)

Question 20

Values &self esteem

Answer 20

• self enhancement values ( power, achievement) and openness to change values ( self direction, stimulation) positively related to self esteem.
• self transcendence values ( universalism, benevolence) and conservation values ( tradition) negatively related to self esteem
  ( Longvist et al 2009)

Question 21

Values & sex differences

Answer 21

( Schwartz & Rubel 2005)

• men attribute consistently more importance than women do to power, stimulation, hedonism, achievement and self direction values
• the reverse is true for benevolence and universalism values and less consistently with security values
• the sexes do not differ on tradition and conformity
• sex differences small and explain less variance than age and much less than culture

Question 22

Values & behaviour

Answer 22

-Values are expressed in behaviours
-we need to be consistent, it’s rewarding to behave in a way that expresses our values
- Values can predict real life choices eg: university major, consumerism, counsellee behaviour style, inter group social contact, reproductive health etc
- generally, values reflect behaviour ( but not always)
- the situation can override the influence of values
- people don’t always know why they value what they do
-

Question 23

Jane and John have been in a relationship for the past two years. However, John often criticises Jane and puts her down. After each episode, John apologises and Jane forgives him.

Answer 23

Jane continues to forgive John because:
-situational constructs account for greater variance in forgiveness than victim disposition. An apology and a desire for relationship harmony are two factors that greatly increase chance of forgiveness.
-Tripartate forgiveness typology:
1) mitigating cognitions regarding transgressions and their perpetrators. Eg: victims attitudes towards offender and offence. Sensemaking, victims consider such concepts as intent, responsibility and severity to interpret offences. Apology, may mitigate victims negative perception of their offenders (R=.42) because it serves to disassociate the offender from the action committed.
2) affect: How the victim feels will influence motivation to forgive. Eg: high empathy R=.51, high trait forgiveness helps interpret offences as forgive able, self esteem positively related to forgiveness.
3) relational and socio-moral constraints eg: victim- offender dyad, he or she holds strong ties to the other person and removal of the dyad would entail significant sacrifice. Closeness and desire for relationship satisfaction.( Fehr, Gelfand & Nag 2010).
Jane seems accepting of this behaviour because:
- dispositional factors: low self esteem, high agreeableness, high empathic concern
- high justice sensitivity, may feel she deserves to be criticised, high in imminent justice reasoning, tendency to blame the victim ( must have done something to deserve criticism), low victim sensitivity ( less likely to ruminate and experience negative emotion), high ultimate justice ( something beneficial may come from enduring criticism).
- high BJW self related to forgiveness and understanding.
Values important to Jane based on description:
- women place more importance in benevolence and universalism values( which involve forgiveness, tolerance and understanding of others)
- self transcending values ( related to concern for others)
Values important to John:
- men attribute more importance to power, stimulation, hedonism, achievement and self direction values
- valuing self enhancement is related to harsher social attitudes and self concern.

Question 24

Exploratory factor analysis

Answer 24

A family of statistical techniques for exploring patterns of correlations between test results whereby shared variance is distributed to define a relatively small number of factors.

Question 25

Confirmatory factor analysis

Answer 25

• structural modelling or path analysis
• statistical techniques for testing the adequacy of a specified model that theoretically defines relationships between latent variables determined by manifest variables.

Question 26

Spearman’s’g’

Answer 26

• “education”, general intelligence, trait, from Galton’s General ability

Question 27

Raymond Cattell: fluid and crystallised intelligence

Answer 27

• Gc, academic/ learned knowledge
• Gf, problem solving of novel puzzles, inborn ability
• investment traits influence how likely someone is to “ invest” fluid intelligence into learning in intellectual curiosity and personality factors such as openness, conscientiousness, persistence, responsibility, effort.

Question 28

CHC theory

Answer 28

• combination of the work of Catell, Horn and Carrol.
• describes the psychometric structure of human intelligence, currently widely accepted.
• Catell’s idea of gf ( inborn) and gc ( learned via application of gf)
• Horn contributed ten broad, general factors that make up intelligence.
  -Carrol, large meta analysis of most influential 20th c research, correlations for ten factors but also estimated existence of at least another ten making up 50% of variance.
  Carroll’s Three Stratum Model of Human Intelligence: General intelligence (g) fluid intelligence (Gf), crystallized intelligence (Gc), general memory and learning (Gy), broad visual perception (Gv), broad auditory perception (Gu), broad retrieval ability (Gr), broad cognitive speediness (Gs), and processing speed (Gt).

Question 29

Intellectual curiosity, academic achievement and incremental validity.

Answer 29

A test is said to have incremental validity if it increases predictive ability beyond that provided by an existing measurement. A recent study showed that though intellectual curiosity correlated with academic achievement, hierarchical regression showed no change to explained variance when added. ( Powell and Nettelbeck 2014).

Question 30

The Flynn effect.

Answer 30

The Flynn effect is the substantial and long-sustained increase in both fluid and crystallized intelligence test scores measured in many parts of the world from roughly 1930 to the present day.

• intelligence is not rising: teachers report no change in student behaviour or performance. No increase in patents over the last hundred years or so.
• implications: tests must continue to be restandardised, IQ is insufficient proxy for intelligence.

Question 31

Practical Intelligence ( Wagner 2011)

Answer 31

• practical intelligence as distinct from school education
• comprised of several forms of practical know how including improvising, everyday mathematics, tacit knowledge ( practical knowledge that is not openly expressed or taught directly)
• distinction between tacit knowledge and explicit learning : tacit knowledge is not openly taught or expressed, acquired with little or no environmental support, procedural rather than declarative, practically useful, serves a purpose.

Question 32

Fry and Hale’s cascade model for intelligence.

Answer 32

-“ cognitive developmental cascade”: sequence of processing stages within which the effectiveness of processing at the first stage has a flow on effect for the next stage, which influences the next etc.
- demonstrated marked, constant age differences across different speeded tasks in age samples matched on raw ability scores
- average mental age changes and for ability differences within age bands in processing speed, working memory, and reasoning ability.
Age->processing speed->working memory-> reasoning ability.

Question 33

Emotional Intelligence

Answer 33

Seiling et al 2015: TEIQUe-SF, good incremental validity ( predicts more than other existing measures), systematically assesses EI personality construct.

• EI overlaps with big 5 ( especially extraversion and neuroticism)
• facets: well being, self control, emotionality, sociability.
• MSCEIT:The Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) is an ability-based measure of emotional intelligence.

Question 34

Sex differences in intelligence and personality

Answer 34

General intelligence: sex differences are small and of questionable practical significance.

• females better at verbal tasks, males better at spacial tasks
• males have larger brains ( evolution?)
• sex differences in STEM lies in breadth of intrinsic interests
• males: math/ verbal asymmetrical( ie better at stem thus higher rate of males in field. Having a dominant aptitude increases likelyhood of strong self concept in that domain.
• females symmetrical( ie could choose either)
• MSCEIT, advantages in all four aspects in females emotional intelligence ( perceiving, facilitating, understanding, managing)

Question 35

Terman’s “ termites”

Answer 35

• believed high IQ only measure needed to predict life success.
• “termites” were a group of high IQ children assessed in childhood then followed up 35 years later.
• as adults, these children were healthier, socially adept and had an array of impressive accomplishments compared to average IQ children.

Question 36

Savant syndrome

Answer 36

• displays exceptional but isolated skills in the presence of low IQ
• skills limited to memory, calendrical calculation, mechanical dexterity, musical ability, maths proficiency etc
• most savant skills are not creative
• development and maintenance rely on obsessional practice

Question 37

Creativity and giftedness

Answer 37

• Rhodes: person, process, pressures, product.
• Guilford: structure of intellect model, divergent thinking
• RJ Sternberg: creative leadership theory
• Torrence test of creative thinking: fluency, flexibility, originality, elaboration.
• test of divergent thinking ( DT) assumes that childhood DT develops into adult creative achievement ( heavily criticised).
• Renzulli’s 3 ring model: above average ability + creativity + task commitment = gifted behaviour
• Feldman: high IQ+ creativity + dedication + opportunity

Question 38

Tests of divergent thinking and creativity

Answer 38

Torrance ( 1972) study: just under half variance in adult creative achievement explained by DT test scores
Criticism ( Plucker 1999):
- DT scores little evidence of predictive validity in adult achievement
- longitudinal study too short
- coaching and administration issues
- overemphasis on quantity rather than quality of achievement
- socioeconomic conditions and life events
- inadequate statistical procedures
- distribution of scores on creativity measures are not normally distributed.

Question 39

Personality, intelligence and achievement.

Answer 39

• intelligence and academic achievement strongly correlated up to 0.7
• academic/ job performance related to: openness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, intellectual curiosity ( NFC, TIE, EC)
• personality and intelligence strongest at predicting eventual job performance at point of selection.

Question 40

Collective intelligence (C)

Answer 40

• new ways to evaluate group performance
• defined as groups results on variety of tasks
• depends on members: social perceptiveness and diversity of opinions, collective interaction and distributed participation
• (c) best predictor of outcome

Question 41

IQ and health outcomes

Answer 41

• intelligence + health outcomes = cognitive epidemiology
• phenotype: observable characteristics of an individual.
  massive, cross cultural study found correlates between:
• low iq and hospitalisation for psych disorder
• low child iq & increased risk of dementia
• low iq & increased risk of unintentional injury
• low iq & increased risk of cardiovascular disease
• low iq & obesity and hypertension
  Low IQ people tend to smoke more, drink more, do less exercise, have a poor diet and generally make poor health choices.

Question 42

Psychometrics

Answer 42

Mean: summarises all of the observations in a data set
Variance: average squared deviation of the data points from their mean
Standard deviation: square root of the variance
Latent variable: eg personality constructs, variable that cannot be directly measured

Question 43

Correlation

Answer 43

Pearson correlation coefficient
A single numerical index of the degree to which two variables are related
Interval or ratio scale of measurement
Indicates magnitude and direction of linear relationship between two variables
Independent units of measurement.

Question 44

Test-retest reliability

Answer 44

Temporal stability of a test. The extent to which scores on a trait stay more or less constant over time.
Measured by administering the test to the same group of people on two separate occasions

Question 45

Standard error of measurement ( SEM)

Answer 45

Higher reliability = smaller SEM

If we wish to conclude that two scores are different they need to be more than two SEM apart ( NEOPIR 4 SEM)

Question 46

Factor analysis, why is it fundamental to differential psychology?

Answer 46

• differential psych focuses on the differences between individuals, aim is to describe these differences and offer an account of why and how these differences arise.
• differential psychology data is multivariate ( large samples of people giving multiple item or inventory responses.
• factor analysis is a data reduction technique. Using the correlation matrix, the goal of exploratory factor analysis is to reduce a large number of variables to a small number of factors and describe the relationships among them.
• factor analysis has a role in both the development of theories in differential psych and in the development of instruments to measure individual differences.

Question 47

Heritability of personality traits.

Answer 47

• traits are psychological constructs that describe how people generally behave.
• trait theory makes several key assumptions: that behaviour is stable over time and across situations, that traits are inside us, and that they influence behaviour.
• with genetics, an individual’s combination of alleles is their genotype whereas the observed traits are their phenotype.
• the fundamental issue of heredity in the behavioural sciences is the extent to which differences in genotype account for differences in phenotype, called heritability.
• heritability can be estimated by examining correlations from twin studies, adoption studies and from combined studies.
• estimates are made by doubling the difference between monozygotic and deutrazygotic twins ( mono = identical, share 100% DNA, deutra fraternal, 50% DNA)
• nature vs nurture argument
• big 5 traits are heritable at .4 for agreeableness/ openness and .8 for neuroticism.

Question 48

Traits & the situationist argument

Answer 48

• people are inconsistent, may behave differently in different situations
• there is a small upper limit on how well a person’s behaviour can be predicted from measurement on any aspect of their personality
• situations more important than personality traits in determining behaviour
• professional personality assessment a waste of time.

Question 49

The lexical hypothesis

Answer 49

• used to infer and measure what we consider to be personality traits
• individual differences that are most salient and socially relevant will become encoded in everyday language.
• the more important the difference, the more likely it is to become expressed as a single word.
• more synonyms= more important trait

Limitations:

• may not be sufficiently precise or inclusive
• differences across communities and time
• meanings are ambiguous, evaluative weighting?
• hierarchical nature, broad to narrow.

Question 50

Allport and Odbert 1936

Answer 50

• went through a dictionary to identify words which had the capacity to distinguish one human being from another
• adjectives and participles
• 18,000 words across 4 categories
• Cattell took from this research

Question 51

Raymond Cattell and 16pf

Answer 51

• vip in differential psych
• personality representing behaviour, the totality of our behaviour and concerned with all we do.
• only practicable source for totality of personality traits found in language
• if there is no name for something it is difficult to say it exists
• took 4500 category 1 adjectives ( Allport and Odbert)
• reduced to 171 by eliminating synonyms
• L data ( life data of behaviour like accidents or exam results), Q data ( questionnaires and self reports), T data ( objective like slow line drawing)
• narrowed categories in line with research to produce 16pf ( low internal consistency reliability)

Question 52

Costa & Macrae ( 1992) Big 5

Answer 52

• longitudinal & cross sectional studies show five factors to be enduring behavioural dispositions
• from natural language, found across age, sex, race and language groups( but not all, Tsimame people, Gurven et al 2012)
• some biological basis ( brain structure)
  Criticisms:
• may be too many or too few factors
• questionnaire factors too similar, only moderate correlations
• correlations between N& C and O & E

Question 53

WEIRD factor

Answer 53

• most personality studies conducted in this group : Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic

Question 54

Decision making

Answer 54

• broadly defined as any time a person has to select between two or more options or potential variations.
  -distinguish between judgement and decision:
• judgement: deciding which of two things is larger, more valuable etc
• decision: choice between options that commits you to a course of action and the expenditure of resources.
  Tenets of rational decision making: ( Von Neumann & Morgenstern 1944)
• completeness, transivity, independence, continuity etc
• accurate predictions under uncertainty are required for good decision making
• probability is the language of uncertainty
• uncertainty is subjective

Question 55

Subjective probability

Answer 55

• we learn probability theory using objective examples eg coins, dice
• we learn to apply it to frequency based examples: eg if 75% of men are less than 183 cm tall what is the probability that one of three randomly selected men will be 183cm or taller
• neither of these makes sense for predictive, one of future events

Question 56

Tversky & Kahneman 1974

Answer 56

• vip in decision making
• heuristics and biases
• heuristics: decision rules rather than rationality
• bias: effects that cause us to make errors in predictions, values and thus decisions
• motivational biases: from desire to be informative, make ourselves look better, undermine someone else etc ( conscious)
• cognitive bias: resulting from the way our brains naturally work ( unconscious)

Question 57

Anchoring and adjustment

Answer 57

• describes a heuristic commonly used by people when estimating values
• use any number given in the question as a starting point ( anchor) and adjust from there to reach estimate
  -over reliance on the anchor: people will afford random anchors the same weight as meaningful ones
• insufficient adjustment: generally people adjust too little so their estimates cluster near the anchor rather than close to true value
• psychology of anchoring:
• priming: sets the region of values that will be considered
• confirmation bias: people seek reasons the anchoring value could be relevant or even correct
• adjustment: away from the anchor stops when a number is reached within the region considered possible.
  Avoid anchoring:
  -adjust further: consider the possibility that the true value lies further from the anchor than your initial estimates
• consider the opposite: consider the possibility that the true value is on the other side of the anchor than your initial estimate
  -consider multiple anchors ( simpler method)

Question 58

Overconfidence Bias

Answer 58

• majority of people overconfident
• even when warned about this bias most people cannot compensate for it
  Psychology of overconfidence
• starting with a best guess can lead to priming, confirmation and adjustment
  -informativeness: tension between our desire to be well calibrated and informative
• motivational effects: narrower forecasts are associated with greater expertise.
  Reducing overconfidence
  -expertise in probability assignment ( Murphy & Winkler 1977)
  -elicitation format changes
• elicit end points separately
• evaluate rather than generate ranges
• elicitation tools eg more or less elicitation (MOLE)

Question 59

Framing

Answer 59

• loss or gain? Question sets a subjective zero point for a person
• positive and negative framing influences decision making
  Avoiding framing bias:
• reversing the frame: rewrite gains as losses and vice versa and see if this would change your decision
• get a second opinion on the reversed decision to avoid hindsight bias ( predict after the fact that we would have made the right decision to begin with)

Question 60

Availability

Answer 60

• describes the tendency people have to base estimates of frequencies on how many events of a particular type they can remember ie. How many instances are available to memory
• more available events are judged more likely

Question 61

Planning fallacy

Answer 61

• tendency of people to underestimate completion times for complex tasks
• can be caused by a specific type of availability bias
• eg Sydney opera house: predicted cost $7mil, actual cost $102mil, predicted completion 1963, actual completion 1973.

Question 62

Unpacking effect

Answer 62

• out of sight is out of mind
• explicitly stating an option makes it available and therefore increases its estimated likelyhood.
• unpacking a general category into specific subcategories increases the total likelihood assigned to that category despite the two being logically equivalent .
  Avoiding unpacking bias:
  -break broad categories into finer ones before attaching estimates to them ie time, cost, probabilities and percentages
  -Caveat: too many categories or too fine a breakdown could be counter productive ( leading to too much weight being assigned to very low probability events

Question 63

When are heuristics not biases?

Answer 63

Gigarenzer
Argues that heuristics often lead to better decisions than rational DM
-eg: availability heuristic: judging frequency by number of instances available to memory is good DM method in a natural environment.

Question 64

The recognition heuristic

Answer 64

• people choose the option they have heard of in preference to one they have not
• does not require search for information beyond that already available
• requires very little effort
• still produces correct answers
• matches environmental information structure ( big cities more likely to be recognised eg)

Question 65

Theory-less DM

Answer 65

• H&B approach labels us all irrational when it isn’t actually feasible to be rational
• research into JDM fails to precisely define heuristics
• used to explain a wide variety of observed biases ( but being vaguely defined, it is hard to generate a falsifiable hypothesis about representativeness.

Question 66

Individual differences in DM

Answer 66

• within JDM literature, these are the main points of contention:
• whether people should be described as biased or not
• if heuristics are adequately defined
• or whether individuals differ in their DM ability
• deep division within psychology

Question 67

Experimental vs psychometric psychology

Answer 67

• Cronbach ( 1957) noted two distinct disciplines in scientific psychology:
• experimental: where the experimenter limits external factors by matching groups and manipulating single factors
• correlational: where the researcher examines pre-existing differences on different traits and looks for the relationship amongst them.
• experimental-> cognitive psychology :
• if you see an effect explain it in terms of a relationship between the manipulation and the result
• relying on randomisation or matching to eliminate individual differences
• looking for things people have in common
• Correlational -> psychometrics
• look at pre existing variation within a population ( or predicting differences)
  -explain it in terms of differences in other parameters
• looking for how and why people differ from one another
  Example: people become risk seeking when questions are negatively framed BUT:
• 20% of people were still risk seeking when the question was positively framed
  -ie there are individual differences in responses
• these are often ignored when DM research is discussed ( because they aren’t part of the experimental manipulation)
• true for a lot of experimental work
• Y= Bx+ c + E, E being individual differences.
• DM research started as experimental with Tversky and Kahneman 1974, heuristics we all use and biases we all share.

Question 68

Delay discounting ( individual trait differences in decision making example) & The Stanford Marshmallow experiment.

Answer 68

-Delay discounting: given a choice between $500 now or $ 1000 delayed, most discount the value of delayed money more than economics suggests they should.
- in general, people prefer certainty: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush
- people differ in the amount they are willing to lose to gain certainty
- trait related to impulsivity; the more impulsive the less willing to delay reward
Stanford Marshmallow Experiment
-Mischel et al 1972 offered children a choice of one marshmallow now or two after a delay.
- longitudinal study
- delay time correlated moderately with match and verbal SAT scores, less drug abuse and better adjusted adolescents
-“smart” people show less discounting delay ie smart kids put off eating the marshmallow
BUT: causation could be backwards, ie good impulse control in childhood leads to smarter adults rather than inherently smarter people making better decisions
- Duckworth et al 2013: weak correlation between IQ and delay, delay related to conscientiousness.

Question 69

Intelligence and decision making

Answer 69

• 2 system theory of decision making, eg Kahneman 2011:
• System 1: intuitive, automatic, heuristic based
• System 2: rational, reflective, logical
  What causes people to use one or the other? Intelligence? Meta cognitive abilities like attention?
• intelligence correlates positively with performance on a variety of decision making tasks ( Stanovich & West 2008) including reasoning, biases, Bayesian reasoning. All weak to moderate.
• however, Kahneman notes that most of these are within subjects designs, allowing smarter people to learn the tasks as they go along.
• Welsh et al 2014: anchoring NOT related to cognitive ability, weakly related to numerical ability, people learned the probabilities associated with the task.
• between subjects results ( Stanovich & West 2008) : intelligence and decision making ability largely unrelated.

Question 70

Intelligence, DM and truncation of range

Answer 70

• using predominantly college samples for studies limits the range of intelligence observed.
• this is not important if we are interested in predicting DM ability for personal selection in industry as this population is similarly truncated.
• it does matter if we are interested in DM in the whole population.
• low predictive power of intelligence may be due to range truncation
• better choices of measurement may yield improvements

Question 71

Expertise and DM

Answer 71

• Shanteau et al 2002: two ( but insufficient) criteria
• discrimination: ability to discriminate between similar but not identical cases
• consistency: ability to make the same decision in the same circumstances repeatedly
• Zsambock & Klein 1997
• expert decision making in ‘ naturalistic’ environments ( eg military, firefighting etc): high uncertainty, high consequence, time sensitive
• experts did NOT use constrained optimisation ( consider and compare multiple options)
• situational awareness ( Klein): single, intuitive option presenting itself, implement if satisfactory discard if not.
• ’ satisficing: heuristic search strategy, search stops as soon as possible answer reached
• NDM differs from industry decisions in that there is no time pressure in industry
• NDM concludes intuition is good, HB concludes intuition is bad. The difference is the environment, the predictability and feedback provided in DM situation.

Question 72

Domain expertise

Answer 72

• anchoring: knowing more can equate to less effect of anchors ( still impacted but not as much )
• overconfidence: some papers have shown experts being better, some worse, some the same. In most cases the experts remain overconfident.
  Eg: marked overconfidence in medical decision making: adding complexity to options increases “ power of default” ie likelihood doctor will choose default treatment option.

Question 73

Calibration expertise

Answer 73

Example: meteorologists, perfect calibration, no overconfidence
- experts in probability assessment ie not expertise in their field but in setting the probabilities
- meteorologists make these assessments every day and receive regular feedback the following day
- this rare in other disciplines and shows that calibration is a learnable skill
Conclusion on calibration expertise:
- need to make regular predictions across a range of possibilities and receive regular, fast feedback
- need to adjust calibration in response to feedback ie know what 80% calibration feels like

Question 74

Meta cognitive abilities

Answer 74

• executive control ( umbrella term)
• task switching
• planning
• inhibition of impulse/intuition
• attentiveness
• overlaps with working memory’s ‘ central executive’
• online confidence

Question 75

Cognitive reflection

Answer 75

• Frederick 2005: people have preference for going with their gut versus checking their initial answer
• the CRT ( cognitive reflection test) seems to be measuring meta cognitive traits:
• requires error checking
• inhibition of incorrect, intuitive answers
• activation of system two problem solving
• Frederich describes his construct as a decision style unrelated to intelligence.

Question 76

Decision styles

Answer 76

• akin to VARK ( visual, aural, read/write, kinaesthetic) learning styles
• the idea that people have preferred learning modes unrelated to intelligence
• decision style: a person’s preference for making judgements/ decisions in particular ways
• NFC( need for cognition): measures the degree to which a person wants/ needs cognitive challenge ( Cacioppo & Petty 1982)
• REI ( rational experiential inventory): ( Epstein et al 1996) Four measures: rational ability/ engagement, experiential ability/engagement.
• NFCC( need for cognitive closure) ( Webster & Kruglanski 1994): measures a person’s tolerance for ambiguity/ uncertainty
• high NFCC will give an answer quickly in order to avoid ambiguity

Question 77

Decision styles and trait correlates

Answer 77

Decision styles:
- correlate weak to moderate with intelligence
- strongly with openness
- moderately with conscientiousness
NFC:
- people with high NFC engage in more system two thinking, engage in more metacognition ( thinking about their thoughts), less stereotyping and smaller halo effects ( the expectation that positive traits cluster together)
- people with low NFC engage in more system one thinking, less biases resulting from effortful thought ( eg false memory creation), generate fewer thoughts and think about them less, more stereotyping and greater halo effects
NFCC:
- people high in NFCC give narrower ranges in overconfidence tasks
CRT
- loads on the intelligence factor
- highest correlation with numerical ability
- some variance not explained
- executive functioning not captured
- CRT & SART did not correlate
- primarily measures cognitive ability
-shares small variance with styles like NFC
- missing “ error checking drive”
- measures numerical ability rather than cognitive reflection

Question 78

Personality & decision making

Answer 78

• openness: contributes to NFC and REI, is related to rationality and ( weakly) to intelligence
• protects against a variety of biases
  BUT: more ‘ open’ people are more affected by anchors ( McElroy & Dowd 2007)
• Conscientiousness:
• contributes to NFC and REI
• related to rationality
• protects against a variety of biases
  BUT: increases hindsight bias ( possibly because more conscientious people put more effort into constructing an explanation of the causes ( Musch 2003)

Question 79

Conclusions on DM

Answer 79

• significant work remains to explain differences in decision making ability
• individual differences in DM remains a minor field
• intelligence, metacognition and personality traits all have some predictive power.
• decision styles seem to be a composite of these
• general, domain experience does not reduce bias but elicitation training can ( for experts operating in a learnable environment).

Question 80

Gardner’s multiple intelligences

Answer 80

• 60% of variance in academic achievement is not accounted for by IQ.
• eight categories: linguistic, logical/mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily/ kinaesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalist.
• draws attention to abilities other than classroom success
• criticism: strong loadings on a factor of general intelligence, by undervaluing g it is insufficient as an account for intelligence.

Question 81

Flynn’s pre-theory concept of intelligence

Answer 81

• habits of mind
• attitudes
• knowledge & information
• memory
• speed of information processing
• mental acuity

Question 82

Architecture of intelligence

Answer 82

• processing speed, working memory, long term memory and fluid abilities all correlate and all improve during childhood.
• working memory is the key to common variance among ability domains, mediates the relationship between processing speed and gf.
• processing speed important to working memory which in turn is central to intelligence.