Psychcology today Flashcards
How did Galton measure intelligence?
things like sensory acuity, brain (head) size
How did Binet measure intelligence?
- used a range of tasks- psychological, verbal
- empirically validated at different ages
- different epistemology - rationalist
- practical not theoretical
what did William Stern do?
- developed IQ
- coined and calculated measure of intelligence
What did Witmer do?
- Instituted the first psychology clinic to treat educational needs
- idea of change environment to improve behaviour
- also influenced the development of personality psychology
what did Elton Mayo do at the Hawthorne factory? (Hawthorne effect)
- Originally looked at effect of lighting on workers productivity in factory
- Any changes in environment caused increase productivity
- Often interpreted as how activity changes behaviour by managers, psychologists
- Criticisms of approach (Bramel & Friend, 1981) suggest findings may be impossibly flawed.
what is an example of mass psychometric testing?
- World War 1
- Psychometric testing for officer selection (Walter Scott)
- Mass intelligence testing of military personnel (alpha and beta tests, done on ppl who applied to join the army) – Yerkes – Galtonian approach
what some implication of psychometric testing?
- Eugenics, societal deterioration, segregation.
- Yerkes (1920) published these, suggesting many (47.3% or 30.3%) of white males were morons (IQ 51-70)
- And 79-89% of black people were morons
- Sparked a range of concerns about the fitness and intellectual capacity of the average American – more eugenics
- used to restrict immigration from certain countries
What did Alan Turing propose?
complex operations can be generated from binary operations (1’s and0’s)
what are the developments in measurement of brain activity?
- EEG developed in 1920s
- MRI in the 1970s
- fMRI in the 1990s
what is the general purpose of brain scans?
- Meant that brain activity could be recorded when doing psychological tasks
- Used to make inferences about locations/networks related to psychological functions and processes
what did Floyd Allport study?
- group behaviour
- and studied attitudes
- mostly the influence of groups on individuals e.g. social influence
what type of post-war group behaviours were studied?
- cognitive dissonance (Festinger)
- Milgram
- Zimbardo
- Prosocial behaviour
sociobiological approach
- looks for ultimate (evolutionary) causesof behaviour and mind
- evolutionary biology explains all behaviour
-natural and sexual selection guide behaviour - instinctive and cultural evolution of behaviour
- phylogenetic continuity - difference of degree
criticisms of evolutionary psychology
biological basis for gender differences and maintaining existing social structures, potentially unfalsifiable
quantitative research - basic principles
- data collected as numbers e.g. response speed, accuracy, decision making in experiments
- using questionnaires in this method is controversial for example counting of observations and converting them into numbers
- aggregation across many respondents, or lots of measurements repeatedly of same group
