Psychology Exam 3 Flashcards
Intelligence
the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations.
Spearman’s general intelligence (g)
Charles Spearman believed that we have one general intelligence that underlies all mental abilities.
a person who is able to solve more questions on an aptitude test has a higher intelligence when compared to a person who is able to solve lesser questions
He noted that those who score high in one area typically score high in other areas as well.
General intelligence (g) according to Spearman and others, underlies all mental abilities and is therefore
measured by every task on an intelligence test.
Cattell-Horn-Carroll Theory: (GHC)
This theory affirmed a general intellectual ability factor. It affirmed the existence of Gf and Gc And it identified more specific abilities, such as reading and writing ability, memory capacity, and processing speed
The CHC theory continues to influence psychologists, because it recognizes that many abilities comprise intelligence, but that these specific abilities exist under a broader umbrella of general intelligence.
fluid intelligence
our ability to reason speedily and abstractly, as when solving novel logic problems—decreases beginning in the twenties and thirties, slowly up to age 75 or so, then more rapidly, especially after age 85
crystallized intelligence
ouraccumulated knowledge and verbal skills
•Tends to increase with age
Crystallized intelligence (Gc)—
our accumulated knowledge as reflected in vocabulary and analogies tests—increases up to old age.
Gardner’s multiple intelligence theory
Howard Gardner proposed eight relatively independent intelligences
(linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodilykinesthetic,
intrapersonal, interpersonal, and naturalist), as well as
a possible ninth (existential intelligence)
Brain damage, for example, may destroy ones ability but leave others intact.
Interpersonal
Intrapersonal
Bodily-kinesthetic
naturalistic
math
music
spatial
linguistics
*existential
Sternberg’s 3 intelligences
Creative: (trailblazing smarts) ability to generate novel ideas
Analytical: (school smarts) traditional academic problem-solving
Practical: (street smarts) skill at handling everyday tasks
Emotional intelligence
the ability to perceive, use, understand, manage, and handle emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges and defuse conflict.
Achievement tests
which are intended to reflect what you have learned. Your final exam will measure what you learned in this class.
aptitude tests
which are intended to predict what you will be
able to learn. If you took an entrance exam, it was designed to predict your ability to do college or university work.
Intelligence assessments:
An intelligence test assesses an individual’s mental aptitudes and compares them with those of others, using numerical scores
Stanford-Binet
**the widely used American revision (by Terman at Stanford University) of Binet’s original
intelligence test
Alfred Binet who tended toward an environmental explanation of intelligence differences, started the modern intelligence-testing movement in France in the early 1900s when he developed questions to help predict children’s future progress in the Paris school system. Binet hoped that determining the child’s mental age (the age that typically corresponds to a certain level of performance) would help identify appropriate school placements. Binet hoped his test, which measured children’s mental age, would improve their education but feared it might also be used to label children.
During the early twentieth century,Lewis Terman of
Stanford University revised Binet’s work for use in the United States
Terman thought his “Stanford”-Binet could help guide people toward appropriate opportunities, but his belief in an intelligence that was fixed at birth and differed among ethnic groups realized Binet’s fear that intelligence tests would be used to limit children’s opportunities.
WAIS
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale
The most widely used intelligence tests today
are the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) and Wechsler’s test for children. These tests differ from their predecessors in the way they offer an overall intelligence score as well as scores for verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory, and
processing speed.
WISC
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children
Psychologist David Wechsler created what is now the most widely used individual intelligence test, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS),
together with a version for school-age children (the
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children [WISC]), and another for preschool children.
Intelligence quotient
IQ tests : defined originally as the ratio of mental age (ma) to chronological age (ca) multiplied by
100 (thus, IQ = ma/ca × 100). On contemporary intelligence tests, the average
performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100.
Standardization
**defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group
The number of questions you answer correctly on an intelligence test would reveal almost nothing. To know how well you performed, you would need some basis for comparison. That’s why test-makers give new tests to a representative sample of people. The scores from this pretested group become the basis for future comparisons. If you then take the test following the same procedures, your score will be meaningful when compared with others. This process is called standardization.
Reliability vs. validity
For a test to be reliable, it also needs to be valid. For example, if your scale is off by 5 lbs, it reads your weight every day with an excess of 5lbs. The scale is reliable because it consistently reports the same weight every day, but it is not valid because it adds 5lbs to your true weight.
reliability
consistent results (on two halves of the test on alternative forms of the test, or on retesting)is the extent to which a test yields consistent results
validity
Is the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to A test has predictive validity if it predicts a behavior it was designed to predict**
it is assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior
A test’s validity is established in reference to a specific purpose; the test may not be valid for different purposes. For example, the test you use to make valid predictions about someone’s technical proficiency on the job may not be valid for predicting his or her leadership skills or absenteeism rate
Intellectual disability
neurological developmental disorder that is
apparent before age 18 sometimes with a known physical cause…test score of 70 or below
The common types of intellectual disabilities include
Autism
Down syndrome
Fragile x syndrome
Fetal alcohol syndrome
Prader-Willi syndrome : A genetic disorder that causes obesity, intellectual disability, and shortness in height.
Chapter 12
Basic Emotions :
Disgust
Happiness
Surprise
Contempt
Anger/Rage
Sadness
Fear
Shame
Guilt
a response of the whole organism involving:
- physiological-body arousal
- expressive-behaviors
- conscious experience resulting from one’s
interpretations.
a response of the whole organism, involving (1) physiological arousal, (2) expressive
behaviors, and, most importantly, (3) conscious experience resulting from one’s
interpretations.
Anger fear disgust sadness and happiness
Physiological arousal
body arousal- heart pounding. escalations in blood pressure and rate of respiration and lessened activity of the gastrointestinal system.
Expressive behaviors
Quickened pace
Conscious Experiences
conscious experience (Is this a kidnapping?) and feelings (panic, fear, joy).resulting from ones interpretations
Anger
anger triggers fight each at times an adaptive behavior. Angry outbursts
that temporarily calm us may also become reinforcing and therefore
habit forming.
Anger can harm us, especially when it is chronic. Anger boosts our heart rate increases inflammation** weakening our defenses against disease—and raises our testosterone levels
Anger is not always wrong. Used wisely, it communicates strength and competence Anger also motivates people to act courageously and achieve goals. Controlled expressions of anger are more adaptive than either hostile outbursts or pent-up angry feelings. When angered,
people do often react assertively rather than hurtfully
Happiness
feel-good, do-good phenomenon people’s tendency to be helpful when in a good mood Our state of happiness or unhappiness colors
everything. Happy people perceive the world as safer. Their eyes are drawn toward emotionally positive information. They are more confident and decisive, and they cooperate more easily. They experience more career success They rate job applicants more favorably, savor their positive past experiences without dwelling on the negative, and are more socially connected. They live healthier and more energized and satisfied lives And they are more generous
Evidence-based suggestions for a happier life
Take control of your time
Act happy.
Seek work and leisure that engage your skills.
Buy experiences rather than things
Join the “movement” movement
Give your body the sleep it wants
Give priority to close relationships
Focus and find meaning beyond self
Challenge your negative thinking
Count your blessings and record your gratitude.
Nurture your spiritual self
How does stress make us more vulnerable to disease?
Stress tends to reduce our immune system’s ability to function properly, so that higher stress generally leads to greater risk of physical illness.
Define stress, appraisal, response
The events of our lives flow through a psychological filter.
How we appraise an event influences how much stress we experience and how effectively we respond.
stress the process by which we perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors, that
we appraise as threatening or challenging
Type A personality
Friedman and Rosenman’s term for competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone people
Most reactive, competitive, hard-driving, impatient, time-conscious, super-motivated, verbally aggressive, and easily angered
Type A individuals frequently experience negative emotions
(anger, impatience), during which the sympathetic nervous
system diverts blood away from the liver. This leaves fat and
cholesterol circulating in the bloodstream for deposit near the
heart and other organs, increasing the risk of heart disease and
other health problems Thus, Type A individuals actually harm
themselves by directing anger at others
a pattern of behavior and personality associated with high achievement, competitiveness, and impatience
Type B personality
Friedman and Rosenman’s term for easygoing, relaxed people.
Problem-focused coping
Addressing the problem directly as a way to eliminate it problem-focused coping attempting to alleviate stress directly—by changing the stressor or the way we interact with that stressor
Example: establish health boundaries
emotion-focused coping
Managing your emotional response to a situation instead of trying to solve the problem itself. attempting to alleviate stress by avoiding or ignoring a stressorand attending to emotional needs related to our stress reaction. example: getting drunk
Internal locus of control
Believe they control their own destiny. In study after study, the “internals” have achieved more in school and work, acted more independently, enjoyed better health, and felt less depressed than did the “externals”
Internal locus of control means that control comes from within. You have personal control over your own behavior. When you have an internal locus of control, you believe you have personal agency over your own life and actions. Because of this, these people tend to have more self-efficacy. believe that they control their own success or failure; that success or failure is not the result of chance or fate. Individuals with an internal locus of control are believed to be more successful in business and life.
External locus of control
the perception that outside forces beyond our personal control determine our fate defined as the belief or expectation that one’s behavior will not lead to valued reinforcement that is available in one’s environment; rather, the occurrence of reinforcement is a function of factors out of one’s control such as luck, chance, or randomness. Having a high external locus of control would mean that one attributes success or failure to factors outside of their control. External locus of control is correlated with being less goal-oriented, being more prone to learned helplessness, and ultimately achieving less success.
Promoting good health:
Having a sense of control, developing more optimistic thinking, and building social support can help us experience less stress and thus improve our health. Optimism, social support, aerobic exercise, meditation
Chapter 14
Freud Sexual Stages
Psychosexual stages
the childhood stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) during which, according to Freud, the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones.
DEFENSE MECHANISM
regression, reaction formation, projection, rationalization, displacement, denial in psychoanalytic theory, the ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.
The ego copes by using unconscious defense mechanisms, such as repression, which he viewed as the basic mechanism underlying and enabling all the others.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and self-actualization
self-actualization, which is the highest level or stage in his model of human motivation: the ‘Hierarchy of Needs’. According to the hierarchy of needs, self-actualization represents the highest-order motivations, which drive us to realize our true potential and achieve our ‘ideal self’.
Self-actualization needs: Self-actualization describes the fulfillment of your full potential as a person. Sometimes called self-fulfillment needs, self-actualization needs occupy the highest spot on Maslow’s
Example: Extrapolating from this quote, we can see self-actualization in examples like: An artist who has never made a profit on his art, but he still paints because it is fulfilling and makes him happy. A woman who finds joy in achieving mastery in a niche hobby.
Stressors
Catastrophes: large-scale disasters (e.g., hurricanes, earthquakes)
Significant life changes: personal events or lite transitions (e.g, having a loved one die, divorce, getting married, graduating)
Daily hassles: day-to-day challenges (e.g.,
workplace stress, unreliable childcare,
aggravating housemates)
