"Introduction to Psychology" Notes (11) —— Differences

Lecture 13: Differences

At the root of all human differences are two main factors: personality and intelligence.



"The Big Five" personality factors: O-C-E-A-N

• Openness: open to experience versus closed to experience.
• Conscientiousness: conscientious versus not conscientious, careful versus careless, reliable versus undependable.
• Extroversion: extrovert versus introvert
• Agreeableness: agreeable which is courteous, friendly versus non agreeable which is rude, selfish.
• Neuroticism: neurotic versus stable. nutty and worrying versus calm.

2 types of test:

• Cognitive tests: measure various aspects of your mental ability.
• Personality tests:measure the noncognitive parts of human personality including interests, values, and personality traits.

Minestone in intelligence testing:

1. Alfred Binet -- French -- the first workable intelligence test in 1905 -- an individual child's performance was compared to the average score for his or her age, Test results were expressed in terms of mental age.
2. Louis Terman -- Standford -- IQ (intelligence quotient) in 1916 -- was the ratio of mental age to chronological age multiplied by 100
3. David Wexler -- 1939 -- nonverbal intelligence tests
4. Howard Gardner - Harvard - a list of seven intelligences:
   

1. linguistic
2. logical mathematical
3. musical
4. Spatial
5. bodily kinesthetic
6. Interpersonal
7. intra-intelligence (having a viable understanding of yourself, who you are, what kinds of abilities you have, what kinds of needs you have, what kinds of intelligences you have, how to use those effectively to solve problems or to make something.)

Measure and define intelligence:2 factors

• “g” = general intelligence :accounts for the similarity in test results
• “s” = specific ability :accounts for the differences in test results

Why people are different: heredity + shared environment (proportion of the variance due to environment shared by family members) + non-shared environment (proportion of all other variance like random events)

2 big findings of behavioral genetics:

• High heritability (0.3 -0.8) for almost everything: intelligence, personality, happiness, religious, political orientation, sexual orientation...
• Almost everything that's not genetic is due to non-shared environments: The behavioral genetic analyses suggest that shared environment counts for little or nothing.

Flynn effect: the rise of the average intelligence quotient (IQ) test scores over generations/time. The average rate of rise seems to be around three IQ points per decade.

Here is a list of Flynn effect potential factors:

• Media: radio, television, computer, Internet, Multimedia, ...
• Technology: sedentarisation, house healthiness, sciences, printing works, industrialization, electricity, motor vehicle, ...
• Physics: medicine, health food, hygiene, comfort, security, ...
• Pedagogy: parental attention, less incest, literacy, female education, length of study, trainings, language, national language use, ...
• Genetics: Flynn effect is not genetically linked, only social Darwinism can be counted
• Social: leisure, length of work, free education, male/female equity, end of slavery, ...