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19 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Individual Differences
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- Common psychological aspects on which individuals differ
- Described as types or continuum - Enduring, stable aspects of individuals - Psychological not physical - Latent (hidden) rather than directly observable |
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Individual Differences Research Goals
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- Develop valid and reliable tools for assessing individual differences
- Identify common psychological aspects on which individuals differ - Explain how and why individual differences arise - Predict future outcomes from measures of individual differences - Which individual differences are abnormal? |
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Bell Curve Controversy
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- Poverty consequence of IQ differences NOT cause
- Implications for social policy - But what about the role of education? State? Father? - Core scientific data and claims endorsed by 52 leading intelligence researchers - But: claim that ‘the research findings neither dictate nor preclude social policy’ |
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Personality
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- Individual differences
- Psychological - Non-intellectual - Enduring (not transient moods) - Broad relevance (not just specific habits or attitudes) |
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Nomothetic Approach
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- Individual diffs described and explained in terms of
predefined attributes - i.e. extraversion, brain area x - Opposite of idiographic |
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Idiographic Approach
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- People can't be described using same concepts (so unique)
- Opposite of nomothetic |
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Dispositional Approach
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- Personality consistent, internal dispositions to think/act/feel similar ways
- Independent of situation |
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Situational Approach
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- Personality primarily determined by situational factors
- No core essence captured |
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Four Temperaments
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- Hippocrates/Galen
- Rooted in descriptions of physical and mental disturbance - Balance of bodily fluids - Contribution: notion of personality types, influenced modern theories, link with biology |
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Eysenck's PEN Theory
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- Psychoticism, extraversion, neuroticism
- Orthogonal dimensions - Normal distribution (except P) - Biological |
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Reticulo-Cortical System
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- ARAS modulates amount of electrical activity in cortex
- Extraverts: lower levels of arousal, seek out external stimulation - Introverts: higher levels of arousal, avoid external stimulation - Gale (1983) review: mixed evidence, methodology issues |
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Limbic System
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- Amygdala, hippocampus etc
- Involved with emotional processing - Different activity levels explains neuroticism |
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Gray's BAS/BIS Theory
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- Alternative to Eysenck, based on non-human animals (biological)
- Behavioural Activation System: approach behaviour, rewards, impulsive, conditioned responses positive events - Behavioural Inhibition System: costs/risks, anxiety, inhibits behaviours associated with negative events |
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Psychodynamic
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- Personality a dynamic conflict between conscious and
unconscious psychological forces - Freud |
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Lexical Hypothesis
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- All aspects of individual personality can
be described from single words used in language - Allport and Odbert (1936): collected all personality words = 4500 traits? |
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Factor Analysis
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- Multivariate data reduction technique
- Looks for set of ‘latent variables’ (factors) that best account for pattern of correlation within dataset |
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Raymond Cattell (1905-1998)
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- Took 4500 words, grouped into synonyms and pairs of antonyms
- Selected examplar for each = 171 - 100 people rated others on 171 terms - Correlations showed 60 clusters, reduced to 35 bipolar dimensions - Factor analysed to get 45 surface traits - Eventually = 16 personality traits |
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Cattell’s 16 Personality Factors
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- Scales, listed in order of importance
- Too many factors - Subjective/arbitrary - Failure to replicate - Factors not independent (correlation) - Basis of Big Five |
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Five Factor Model
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- Costa and McCrae (1985)
- Neuroticism - Extraversion - Openness to Experience - Agreeableness - Conscientiousness |
