W1 - intro and origins Flashcards
What are the four domains of differences?
- Cognitions
- Behaviours
- Motivations
- Affect - feelings/emotions
What is differential Psychology?
The study of how and why people differ
What did Hippocrates believe? (460-370BC)
- Founder of modern medicine
- Believed in physical cause of illness over spiritual causes
- noticed some coped better than others
- Illness caused by an imbalance in 4 bodily substances
What are the four bodily substances suggested by Hippocrates?
- blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile
- correct proportions = healthy
- imbalanced = unhealthy
What did Gallen believe? (130-210 AD)
- based on Hippocrates created the 4 humours
- Matched bodily fluids to 4 specific temperaments
What were the 4 temperaments?
Choleric = yellow bile Phlegmatic = phlegm Sanguine = Blood Melancholic = Black bile
What personality traits are assorted to the 4 temperaments?
Melancholic = anxious, reserved, pessimistic, unsocial, introverts and emotionally unstable Choleric = aggressive, excitable, changeable, impulsive, emotionally unstable and extraverted Sanguine = sociable, outgoing, talkative etc, extraverted and emotionally stable Phlegmatic = Passive, careful, thoughtful etc, introverted and emotionally stable
What did Plato believe? (427-347 BC)
“no two persons are born exactly the alike; but each differs from the other…”
- recognised everyone id different
What is Platos allegory of the cave?
- Prisoners in a cave, can only see a wall and the silhouettes of guards through the flames on the wall
- this is all they know
- some will just watch the shadows others will notice patterns etc
What does Platos Cave mean for individual differences?
- Links to latent variables
- observe shadows but origin is unknown
- infer reality from observations of the shadows but interpretation may differ
What is Platos Tripartite soul?
- gave personality aspects a part of the body - bio basis
Head = rational/logical, seeks truth and is swayed by facts and arguments Heart = spirited/emotional, how feelings fuel your actions Liver = appetitive/physical desires, drives you to eat, have sex and protect yourself
How does Platos Tripartite soul link to Freud?
Link to Freud’s structure of personality that involves three parts; ID, EGO and SUPERGEGO
What did Theophrastus believe? (327-287 BCE)
Confused about how so many people had similar environments but very different personality
- observed different kinds of characters
- most were negative
What did Theophrastus find?
- Many different character types
- mostly negative
- each type had a paragraph with it
- used a very lexical approach
- meaning use of words that are present in our language should be expected to have a meaning
What did Rene Descartes believe? (1596-1650)
- Advocate for mind-body dualism
- beloved that mind and body are separate
- body = physical so can study
- Mind = spiritual so cannot observe
What did Thomas Hobbes believe? 1588-169
- Against dualism
- MONISM
- Mind and brain are the same things
- mind is located in the brain
What did John Locke believe? (1632-1704)
- Mind is a blank slate at birth = tabula rasa
- born without innate ideas
- knowledge only gained through experience
- experience gives us our differences
What did Charles Darwin believe? (1822-1911)
- produced ideas on evolution and belief in genetics
- survival of fittest leads to change of characteristics
Francis Galton ideas?
- Influenced by cousin Darwin
- Interested in Eugenics and genetics
- beloved that under social control racial qualities could be improved for further generations
- produced ideas on selective breeding or certain classes, higher status and rich people
What are implicit personality theories?
- intuitively based theories about human behaviour that allow us to understand and both ours and others
- these can be used to explain behaviour
- this process occurs without us realising
- make observations and then we infer cause and effect = making causal inferences
What are problems with implicit theories?
- don’t check theory fully and so evaluation may be flawed
- based on causal and non random observation
- only use small amounts of info
- not scientific
Psychological definitions of personality
- Allport 1961 = ‘a dynamic organisation, inside the person, of psychophysical systems that create the persons characteristic patterns of behaviour, thoughts and feelings”
What is the idiographic approach to studying personality?
- Focus on uniqueness of individuals
- in depth focus on individuals
- Qualitative methods
- produce case studies
- use interviews, diaries, narratives
- difficult to make generalisations
What us the nomothetic approach to studying personality?
- looks at similarities between groups of individuals
- quantitive methods
- self report questionnaires used mostly
- look to find general principles - have a predictive function
What are population norms?
represent the mean scores that particular groups of individuals score on a specific test
What are 5 subdivisions of personality?
Openness to new experience conscientiousness extraversion agreeableness neuroticism
What criteria should a theory of personality satisfy?
- explanation
- empirical validity
- testable concepts
- comprehensiveness
- parsimony
- heuristic value
- applied value
