Psychology 6a - Individual Differences Flashcards
What is a personality trait?
- Relatively stable cognitive, emotional, and behavioural characteristics of people that help establish their individual identities and distinguish them from others
- A trait is a continuum along which individuals vary, like speed of reaction. (eg. extrovert vs introvert)
- We can’t observe traits but infer from behaviour
What is Eysnecks two factor model?
Eysenck’s personality theory has two main
factors:
- Neuroticism or stability – the tendency to experience negative emotions (and to what degree)
- Extraversion – the degree to which a person is outgoing and seeks stimulation
Describe the five factor model of personality
- Big five factors are supertraits - describe the main dimensions of personality
- Openess to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism (emotional instability)
OCEAN
Describe openness
- Open to new experience
- Likes art, open to political discussions and debate, imaginative and creative
- Rather than being more conventional
Describe conscientiousness
- Hard working
- Well organised
- Punctional
- Rather than lazy, disorganised
Describe extroversion
- Talkative, active, affectionate
- Stimulation seeking (eg. thrill seeking activities)
Describe agreeableness
- Empathy
- Trusting
- Lenient
- Soft-hearted
- Good natured
Describe neuroticism
- Worried
- Temperamental
- Self-conscious
- Emotional
What are the proposed biological foundations for personality traits?
- Differences in customary levels of cortical arousal
- Introverts are overaroused; extraverts are underaroused
- Suddenness of shifts in arousal
- Unstable (neurotic) people show large and sudden shifts
in limbic system arousal; stable people do not - Identical twins have higher correlation than fraternal twins within traits (25-50% genetically determined)
Describe impact of conscientiousness on health
- Adds 7.5 years to lifespan
- Increases likelihood of engaging in healthy behaviours
- Higher medical engagement and adherence
- Could be increased by text reminders and goal setting
Describe impact of neuroticism on health
- Increased reporting of somatic symptoms e.g. pain
- Higher rates of mental health disorders
- Higher mortality rates e.g. in cardiovascular
disease - Higher rates of healthcare usage, less adherence to healthy behaviours with higher rates of health harming behaviours
- Interventions to improve mental health can be helpful
Define intelligence
- The ability to acquire knowledge, to think and reason effectively, and to deal adaptively with
the environment - Defined by how we measure it
Describe development of intelligence testing
- First intelligence testing was to identify children having difficulty in school (all children have same course of mental development, but at different paces - mental age)
- IQ (intelligence quotient) = mental age/ chronological age x 100
- 100 is average (test takers performance relative to average performance of others the same age)
- Result plotted on normal a normal distribution
- 68% of people within 15 points of 100
- Less than 2% at the extremes (less than 70 or more than 130)
What was charles spearmans theory of intelligence?
- General intelligence factor and a specific factor
- Someone may be generally intelligent, but has varying skills in different areas (verbal, numerical, mechanical, spatial)
Describe structure of the Wechsler intelligence scale
- G (general factor) includes verbal comprehension, perceptional reasoning, working memeory, processing speed
- Use of different tests for each thing
- Measures fluid intelligence (where you cannot use learnt knowledge to solve the problem)
List gardners multiple intelligences
- Linguistic Intelligence: e.g. Shakespeare
- Logical-Mathematic Intelligence: e.g. Einstein
- Spatial Intelligence: e.g. Zaha Hadid
- Musical Intelligence: e.g. Prince (Furthermore, Gardner believes cardiologists may have this kind of
intelligence in abundance as they make diagnoses on the careful
listening to patterns of sounds.) - Bodily-Kinaesthetic Intelligence: e.g. Serena Williams
- Intrapersonal Intelligence: e.g. Dalai Lama
- Interpersonal functioning: e.g. Susie Orbach
- Naturalistic Intelligence, the ability to understand and work
effectively in the natural world e.g. Bear Grylls - Existential Intelligence the ability to ponder questions about
existence e.g. Sartre.
What are the critiques of IQ?
- Does not measure every type of intelligence (eg. linguistic, naturalistic, musical, spatial)
- In a clinical setting, there may be profound problems in one area of a patient (eg. vision), therefore taking an average of the overall function would give an normal result and not be beneficial, therefore more information than the IQ score is required
- May be culturally biased (can’t compare between cultural groups where the environment is so different)
Describe the psychometric approach of cognition (Cattell and Horn)
- Breaking down Spearmans g into two distinct but related subtypes
- Crystallised intelligence gc (ability to apply previously acquired knowledge to current problems - commonly improves with age and then stabilises)
- Fluid intelligence gf (dealing with novel problem solving situation where personal experience does not provide a solution - declines steadily in aging)
Compare influence of genetic factors and environment on IQ
Genetic factors can influence the effects produced
by the environment
- Accounts for 1/2 of the variation in IQ
- No single “intelligence gene” identified
- Most similar results from idential twins (whether together or apart)
Environment can influence how genes express
themselves
- Accounts for 1/2 of the variation in IQ
- Both shared and unshared environmental factors are involved
- Educational experiences are very important
- Unrelated individuals reared together more similar than related reared apart
Describe sex differences in intelligence
- Gender differences in performance on certain types of intellectual tasks not general intelligence
- Men are better on spatial tasks, target derived and mathematical reasoning
- Women are better on perceptual speed, verbal fluency, mathematical calculation and precise manual tasks
What is the reason for sex differences between spatial abilities?
- Men and women do the same when a group told that women are better
- However, when men are told they are better men do better, and in the control men do better. Suggests stereotyping influences development
- May be due to the toys men are given when young
List characteristics of autism
- Social and emotional aspects (difficulties with friendships, managing unstructured situations, working co-operatively)
- Language and communication (difficulty processing and retaining verbal informaiton)
- Flexibility of thought (difficulty with coping with changes, empathy and generalisation)
Describe sex differences in autism
- Autism has a 4:1 male: female ratio
- ‘Asperger’s syndrome’ or High
Functioning autism has a 9:1 male: female ratio - Suggested that this may be due to differences in cognitive styles between male and female brains
- Autism an example of the extreme male brain (systemising high but empathising low)
- Females have lowest systemising quotient but highest empathising quotient
- Autism has highest systemising quotient but lowest empathising quotient
What is empathising?
- Consists of both being able to infer
the thoughts and feelings of others (‘Theory of Mind’) and having an appropriate emotional reaction - Mind reading
- Looking at the eyes of someone and determining mood
- Low in autism
What is systemising?
- The drive to analyse or construct any kind of system i.e. identifying the rules that a govern a system, in order to predict how that
system will behave - High in males, low in females, highest in those with autism
How does foetal testosterone affect autistic traits?
- Higher fetal testosterone exposure in males
- Higher autism quotient with increasing fetal testosterone
- Higher autism quotient in males than in females, increasing with increasing fetal testosterone
- Therefore, extreme male brain may be affected by fetal testosterone
What are the issues with extreme male brain theory?
- Impossible to exclude contribution of environment and culture
- Findings of sex differences reflect bias in gender roles
- ‘Neurosexism’ is self-fulfilling: by providing a framework for treating children and adults differently on the basis of gender, which causes them to behave differently, which in turn creates so-called gender differences, which in turn prop up neurosexism
