Personality

Front 1

What was the specific method and equation through which Binet calculated IQ? What is a weakness of this method?

Back 1

First, Binet had large numbers of students take his IQ test, in order to establish mean test scores for each age group. In order to assess IQ, Binet then compared the test scores of test-takers with these averages. Binet used an IQ equation to calculate IQ: the level at which the test-taker performs on the IQ test (e.g., 6-year-old level) was divided by the test-taker’s actual age (e.g., 8-years-old) and multiplied by 100. This dividing-by-age part is why IQ is a “quotient.” Or was when things were calculated that way.

A major flaw of this approach is that it assumes that intelligence increases linearly with age.

Front 2

What commonsense evidence suggests intelligence is general? What commonsense evidence suggests intelligence is specialized?

Back 2

Many individuals you know are probably generally intelligent, in the way some people are generally athletic. For example, no matter what the sport, some individuals have a basic athletic knack. They have general coordination, reactions and reflexes that make them “athletic.” Likewise, many individuals seem to have general intelligence. They are all-around good thinkers and good students.

Commonsense evidence for specialized intelligence derives from another observation: often individuals’ abilities cluster together. There are many students who excel more in math and science than they do in the arts, or vice versa. This clustering suggests that some types of intelligence are more closely related than others, suggesting that specialized intelligence may exist as well. These sorts of informal observations have been backed up by rigorous study of how abilities cluster together.

Front 3

What was the marshmallow test and what did it predict?

Back 3

The marshmallow test was a task designed by Walter Mischel to measure students’ self-control. In the test, children were told by a confederate that they could either eat one marshmallow immediately, or wait a designated period of time for a second marshmallow. Students were then left alone with one marshmallow and needed to exert willpower in order to wait for two marshmallows instead of eating the one marshmallow immediately.

Ten years after the marshmallow experiment, children who waited for the second marshmallow were rated by their parents as more intelligent, more competent, better at concentrating and better at sticking to plans and activities. They were also more tolerant of frustration and better at handling stress. Finally, students who waited for the second marshmallow had higher SAT Verbal and Math scores.

Front 4

What were some of the techniques that helped or hurt students’ wait time during the marshmallow task?

Back 4

Students who thought about how much they loved marshmallows were less likely to be able to wait. This apparently made the present marshmallow harder to resist than it made the second marshmallow worth waiting for.

Successful strategies included looking away, blocking the marshmallow from view, and imagining the marshmallow to be something it was not. Some students, for example, pictured the marshmallow as a sheep, or a white fluffy cloud. Such strategies allowed them to wait longer.

Front 5

In Duckworth & Seligman’s study, what did willpower predict among 8th grade students at Masterman? What did willpower predict in the New Zealand study?

Back 5

Among 8th graders at Masterman, willpower (e.g., self-control) was predictive of final GPA, above and beyond IQ. In the New Zealand study, childhood self-control predicted health, drug-use, SES, income and criminal convictions at age 32. Heightened self-control led to desirable outcomes (e.g., good health, fewer criminal convictions).

Front 6

Based on what you learned in class, if a teacher approached you and told you that she was very conscious of teaching each of her students according to their “learning styles,” what would you think? Why might you be skeptical?

Back 6

You would say that the evidence doesn’t really support the notion that individuals have different learning styles. Very few research studies have examined this question, and (according to Pashler and colleagues) those that have, have generally come up short. The theory has a very thin empirical base.

A further reason to be skeptical is because attributing learning differences to “learning styles” removes the onus of responsibility from the student, to some degree, and places it on the teacher. Instead of taking responsibility for one’s own poor school performance, it allows a student to claim that the material was not taught in a way that was conducive to his/her learning style. Again, this doesn’t itself make it false, of course. But the plausibility of the intuition doesn’t make the intuition true either.

Front 7

What is a major difference between the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Big Five Personality Test? Why would we expect this to make the Myers-Briggs test being less reliable?

Back 7

One major difference between these tests is that whereas the Myers-Briggs test categorizes test-takers into one of sixteen categories, the Big Five Personality test places students along personality dimensions. Instead of telling test-takers that they either are or are not extroverted, the Big Five Personality test places each respondent on a continuum which ranges from, for example, extroverted to introverted.

The fact that the Myers-Brigg test simply classifies respondents (yes/no) makes the test less reliable because individuals who are borderline are nevertheless classified as discrete yes/no’s. Someone on the border of one category today may be either inside or outside the category tomorrow, leading the yes/no indication to be unreliable for many participants.

Front 8

What were the main differences between the “bump” reactions of northerners and southerners in the research study of Cohen, Nisbett, Bowdle & Schwartz, 1996? How were these cultural differences explained?

Back 8

Northerners were more likely to show amusement as opposed to anger and they were less likely to finish the sleazeball* party story with a violent ending. Southerners were more likely to show a rise in cortisol and testosterone levels, they were less likely to step aside in deference to a large individual passing by, and were more likely to give a power grip handshake.

One cultural explanation for these findings is that in the historical South, individuals had to take self-defense into their own hands. In the South there were less police around and herders had livestock susceptible to theft. As a result, individuals in these southern, herding cultures needed to stand up for themselves and defend their own land against others. Thus it is possible that the study results can be attributed to a cultural difference between a Southern, herding culture versus a Northern, farming/industrial one. (For those interested: this hypothesis involves more than just this set of experiments.