Individual

Differences
Individuality
 The biological and psychological Processes, consciousness, perception,
learning, emotion—are basically the same for all of us.

 Every Person is different from every other person. Each of us has a

distinctive pattern of abilities, beliefs, attitudes ,motivations, emotions,
and Personality traits that makes us unique.

 It is this individuality that shows that every person is unique and different
Importance of assessment

 Tests for assessing interests, attitudes, and personality traits are

familiar to most of us to make career choices

 In selecting individuals for high level positions, employers often seek

to assess a candidate‟s interactional Styles, ability to handle stress,
and so on

 Decisions about which treatment and intervention is best for an

emotionally disturbed client require objective assessment
Characteristics of a good test

 Because tests and other assessment instruments play important practical

and scientific roles, it is essential that they measure accurately what they
are intended to measure.

 Specifically, they must have reliability and validity.

Reliability

 If a test or method of assessment is reliable, it will give reproducible

and consistent results
 If a test yielded different results when it was administered on
different occasions or scored by different people, it would be
unreliable.
 A simple analogy is a rubber yardstick. If we did not know how
much it stretched each time we took a measurement: the results
would be unreliable
test-retest reliability or temporal
stability
 Reliability is typically assessed by correlating two sets of scores.
 For example, the same test is given on two occasions.
 If the test is reliable, their scores on the first occasion should
correlate highly with their scores on the second occasion.
 If they do, then the test is said to have test-retest reliability or
temporal stability.
internal consistency

 Another common measure of reliability is internal consistency, the

degree to which the separate questions or items on a test are all
measuring the same thing.
 This can be assessed by correlating the scores obtained by a group
of individuals on each item with their total scores. Any item that
does not correlate with the total score is an unreliable item;
 it is failing to contribute to what thetest is measuring.
Validity

 Reliability assesses the degree to which a test is measuring

something, but high reliability does not guarantee that the test is
measuring what it is intended to measure;

 For example, if the final examination in your psychology course

contained especially difficult vocabulary words, it might be a test of
your verbal ability or test sophistication rather than of the material
learned in the course. Such an examination might be reliable—but it
would not be a valid test of achievement for the course.
criterion or empirical validity

 In some instances the validity of a test can be assessed by

correlating the test score with some external criterion. This
correlation is called a validity coefficient.
 For example, the relatively strong positive correlation between
scores on the SAT and freshman grades in college indicates that the
test has reasonable validity.

 This kind of validity is called criterion or empirical validity.

criterion or empirical validity:
Example
 For example:
 A job applicant takes a performance test during the interview
process. If this test accurately predicts how well the employee will
perform on the job, the test is said to have criterion validity.
 A graduate student takes the GRE. The GRE has been shown as an
effective tool (i.e. it has criterion validity) for predicting how well a
student will perform in graduate studies.
construct validity

 A special kind of validity, which applies specifically to tests used in

personality research is called construct validity.
 Construct validity refers to whether a scale or test measures the
construct adequately.
 If a researcher is designing a test to measure some concept or
construct that is part of a theory, it is not possible to compute a
coefficient for its criterion validity be cause that wont be clear.
 This is done through the Process of research itself. The researcher
uses his or her theory both to construct the test and to generate
predictions from the theory. Studies using the test are then
conducted to test those several predictions.
construct validity: Example

 For example, you might try to find out if an educational program

increases emotional maturity in elementary school age children.
Construct validity would measure if your research is actually
measuring emotional maturity.
ASSESSMENT OF INTELLECTUAL
ABILITIES
The first person to attempt to develop tests of intellectual ability was Sir
Francis Galton a century ago. A naturalist and mathematician.

Galton administered a battery of tests Measuring such Variables as

head size, reaction time, visual acuity, auditory thresholds and memory

Although his test did not prove very useful, Galton invented the
Correlation coefficient which—as we have already seen—plays
important an role in Psychology.
First intelligence test

 The first tests that approximated intelligence tests were devised by

the French Psychologist the Alfred Binet.

 In 1881, French government passed a Law, making school

attendance compulsory, for all children.

 Previously, slow learners were been kept at home; now teachers

had to cope a wide range of individual differences.

 The government that asked Binet to create a test that would detect
children who were too slow intellectually to benefit from a regular
school Curriculum.
 Binet reasoned that a slow or dull child was like a normal child-retarded in mental growth.
 On tests, the slow child would perform like a normal child of younger age.
 whereas the mental abilities of a bright child were characteristic of older children.

 Binet devised a scale of test items with increasing difficulty.

 The higher a child could go on the scale in correctly answering items, the higher his or her
mental age (MA).
 The concept of mental age was critical in Binet‟s method;
 using this method, one could compare the MA of a child with his or her chronological age
(CA) as determined by date of birth.
STANFORD-BINET INTELLGENCE
SCALE
 The test items originally developed by Binet were adapted for
American school children by Lewis Terman at Stanford University.
 standardized the test
 developed age-level norms

 Terman retained Binet‟s concept of mental age.

 IQ = MA/CA x 100
WECHSLER INTELLIGENCE SCALES

 In. 1939, David Wechsler developed a new test because he thought

the Stanford-Binet depended too heavily on language ability and
was also not appropriate for adults.

 It is divided into two parts—

1. a verbal Scale
2. a performance scale

 as well as a full-scale 1Q
 Items on the performance scale require the manipulation or
arrangement of blocks, pictures, or other materials.
 The Wechsler scales also provide scores for each of the sub-tests, so
the examiner has a clearer picture of the individual's intellectual
strengths and weaknesses

 Both the Stanford-Binet and the Wechsler scale shows good

reliability and validity
Group Ability Tests

 Group ability tests can be administered to a large number of people

by a single examiner and are usually in pencil-and-paper form.
Definition of intelligence

 “intelligence is the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to

act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his
environment”
 Factorial approach

 Other psychologists. however, question whether there.is such a thing as “general

intelligence.” They believe that intelligence tests sample a number of mental abilities
that are relatively independent of one another.

 One method of obtaining more precise information about the kinds of abilities that
determine performance on intelligence tests is factor analysis.

 This mathematical technique !s used to determine the minimum number of „factors, or

abilities, that are required to explain the observed pattern.
general intelligence factor (called g)

 Two tests that correlate very highly with each other are probably measuring the
same underlying ability

 analysis, Charles Spearman (1904), who first Proposed that all individuals Possess
a general intelligence factor (called g) in varying amounts.

 A person could be described as generally bright or generally dull, depending

on the amount of g he or she possessed.

 According to Spearman, the g factor is the major determinant of performance

on intelligence “ of basic a test items.
Information Processing Approach

 basic idea is to try to understand intelligence in terms of the cognitive

processes that operate when we engage in intellectual activities

 The information-processing approach asks:

1. What mental processes are involved in the various tests of intelligence?

2. How rapidly and accurately are these processes carried out?
3. What types of mental representations of information do these processes
act upon?
Multiple intelligences

 In an attempt to generalize his componential approach, Sternberg

argues that current tests tap primarily “academic Intelligence” and
ignore components of practical intelligence

 An even broader critique of current tests is offered by Howard

Gardner (1983), who believes that there are at least six distinct kinds
of intelligence that are independent of one another, each
operating as a separate‟ system(or module) in the brain according
to its own rules..
Types
 These are
 (a) linguistic;
 (b) logical-mathematical;
 (c) spatial;
 (d) musical;
 (e)bodily-kinesthetic; and
 (f) personal.

 The first three are familiar components of intelligence and are measured by
standard intelligence tests.
 Gardner believes that the last three deserve comparable status
 In particular, Gardner argues thgt
 musical intelligence—which includes the ability to perceive pitch
and rhythm—has been more important than logical-mathematical
intelligence throughout most of human history:

 Rodily-kinesthetic intelligence involves the control of one‟s own

body and the ability to manipulate objects skillfully: Examples are
dancers, gymnasts. artisans, and neurosurgeons.
 Personal intelligence has two
components

 intrapersonal intelligence
 is the ability to monitor one‟s own feelings and emotions. discriminate
among them and use the information to guide one‟s actions

 Interpersonal intelligence
 is the ability to notice and understand the needs and intentions of others
and monitor their moods as a way of Predicting how they will behave.
 As we have noted conventional 1Q tests are good predictors of
college grades, but not valid for predicting later job success or
career advancement.

 Measures of other abilities, such as personal intelligence, may help

explain why some people with brillant college records fail miserably
in later life, while lesser students become charismatic leaders
ASSESSMENT OF PERSONALITY

 Personality can be defined as the distinctive characteristic pattern

patterns of thought. Emotion and behavior that define an
individual's personal style of interacting with the physical and Social
environment.
Describing Personality

 When we are asked In daily life to describe an individuals

personality, we are likely to use Personality trait terms—
 adjectives such as intelligent, extraverted, conscientious, and so
forth.

 One way to begin the task of deriving a comprehensive but

manageable number of traits is to consult a dictionary.

 In the 1930s, two personality psychologists actually undertook this

task by going through the dictionary. They found approximately
18,000 words that refer to characteristics of behavior
 Personality traits

 Next, they reduced the list to about 4,500 terms by eliminating synonyms.
Finally, they organized the list into psychologically meaningful subsets
(Allport & Odbert, 1936)

 Other researchers have used trait terms to obtain personality ratings of

such individual. Peers who know the individual well are asked to rate him
or her on each trait.
 For example, a rater was asked to rate the person on the trait of
friendliness using a 7-point scale that ranges i-e “not at all friendly” to
“very friendly,”
16 factors of personality

 Raymond Cattell (1966; 1957) first condensed

the Allport-Odbert list to under 200 terms and
then obtained both peer and self-ratings.
 He then used the method of factor analysis,
which we described earlier, to determine how
many underlying personality factors could
account for the pattern of correlations among
the trait ratings.
 His analysis yielded 16 factors.
two personality factors

 A similar procedure was used by the British psychologist Hans

Eysenck to arrive at two personality factors:

 introversion-extraversion—a dimension first identified by the

psychoanalyst Carl Jung—and

 emotional instability-stability, which he calls neuroticism

 Introversion-extraversion

 Introversion-extraversion refers to the degree to which a person's basic

orientation is turned inward toward the self or outward towards the external
world.

 At the introversion end of the scale are individuals who are shy and prefer to
work alone; they tend to withdraw into themselves, particularly in times of
emotional stress or conflict.

 At the extraversion end are individuals who are sociable and prefer
occupations that permit them to work' directly with other people; in times of
stress, they seek company
Neuroticism (instability-stability)

 Neuroticism (instability. stability) is a dimension of emotionality,

 moody, anxious, temperamental, and maladjusted individuals at

the neurotic or unstable end,

 and calm, well-adjusted individuals the other.

 “Big Five
 one reasonable way to summarize them is with the acronym
OCEAN:
1. Openness to experience,
2. Conscientiousness,
3. Extraversion,
4. Agreeableness,
5. Neuroticism,
 PERSONALITY INVENTORIES

 Most personality tests - do not actually ask individuals to directly rate

themselves on personality trait dimensions. Instead, they are asked a set of
questions about how they react in certain situations.

 For example, they might be asked to indicate how much they agree or
disagree with the statement“ I often try new and foreign foods” or “I really like
most people I meet.”

 personality inventories—resemble structured interviews in that they ask the

same questions of each person, and the answers are usually given in a form
that can be easily scored, often by computer.
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality
Inventory (MMPI)
 A very different method of test construction, called the criterion-
keyed method, was used to develop one of the most popular of all
personality inventories, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality
Inventory (MMPI).

 The original MMPI was developed to provide a pencil-paper version

of a psychiatric interview
MMPI

 It consists of more than 550 statements concerning attitudes, emotional

reactions, physical and psychological symptoms, and experiences. The
subject responds to each statement by answering “true,” “false,” or “cannot
say.”
 Here are four representative items:
1. I have never done anything dangerous for the thrill of it.
2. I day dream very little.
3. My mother or father often made me obey, even when I thought it was
unreasonable.
4. At times my thoughts have raced ahead faster than I could speak them.
validity scales

 as the first major inventory to incorporate a number of validity scales

within it, These scales that attempt to determine whether the person
has answered the test items Carefully and honestly.

 If an individual‟s scores on any of these scales is too high, then his or

her scores on the content scales must be interpreted with particular
caution or disregarded altogether.
Usefulness of MMPI

 _ Overall, the MMPI has been most valuable in distinguishing in a

general way between abnormal and normal populations and can
be used to evaluate the overall severity a particular individual's
disturbance

 It has been widely used to study normal populations. But because

the MMPI does not adequately sample some of the traits useful in
describing the normal personality, the California Psychological
Inventory (CPI) was devised, using many of the same items
The California Psychological
Inventory (CPI)
 The CPI scales measure such traits as dominance, sociability, self-
acceptance, responsibility, and socialization.

 The comparison groups for some of the scales were obtained by asking high-
school and college students to designate the classmate they would rate high
or low on the trait in question.

 The CPI is still one of the most widely validated personality inventories
available for use with normal populations
 Q Sort
 One special method for measuring personality traits is called the Q sort. (The Q in Q sort
was arbitrarily chosen and has no particular meaning.) In this method, a rater or sorter
describes an individual‟s personality by sorting a set of approximately 100 cards into
piles. Each card contains a personality statement (for example, “Has a wide range of
interests” and “Is self-defeating”).

 The rater sorts the cards into 9 piles, placing those cards that are least descriptive of
the individual in pile 1 on the left and those that are most descriptive in pile 9 on the
right.
 The other cards are distributed in the intermediate piles, with those that seem neither
characteristic nor uncharacteristic of the individual going into the middle pile (pile 5).
 Thus each Q item receives a score ranging from 1 to 9, with higher numbers indicating
that the item is more characteristic of the * person.
Projective Tests
 The fixed structure of personality inventories—specific questions to which the
individual must respond by selecting one of the answers presented is not well-suited
to assessing certain aspects of personality.

 personality psychologists who follow in Freud‟s psychoanalytic tradition are

particularly interested in assessing unconscious wishes, motivations, and conflicts.

 Prefer tests that resemble Freud‟s technique of free association, in which the
individual is free to say whatever comes to mind.
 For this reason, they developed projective tests.
projective tests

 A projective test presents an ambiguous stimulus to which the

person may respond as he or she wishes. Because the stimulus is
ambiguous and does not demand a specific response, it is assumed
that the individual projects his or her personality onto the stimulus
and thus reveals something about himself or herself.

 Two of the most widely used projective techniques are the

Rorschach Test and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
Rorschach Test

 The Rorschach Test, developed by the Swiss psychiatrist Hermann

Rorschach in the 1920s, consists of a series of10 cards, each
displaying a rather complex inkblot like

 Some of the blots are in color; some are black

 The subject is instructed to look at one card at a time and report

everything the blot resembles. After the subject has finished the 10
cards, the examiner usually goes back to each response, asking the
subject to explain responses and to tell what features of the blot
gave a particular impression.
Scoring Rorschach

 three main categories are

1. location (whether the response involves the whole inkblot or a part of it),
2. determinants(whether the subject responds to the shape of the blot, its color,
or differences in texture and shading),
3. and content (what the response represents).
 Most testers also score responses according to frequency of occurrence; for
example, a response is “popular” if many people assign it to the same inkblot.
 Thematic Apperception Test(TAT)
 Thematic Apperception Test(TAT), was developed at Harvard University by Henry.
Murray in the 1930s. The subject is shown as many as 20 ambiguous pictures of Persons
and scenes

 And subject is asked to make up a story out of each.

 The subject is encouraged to give free rein to his or her imagination and to tell
whatever story comes to mind, The test is intended to reveal basic themes that recur in
a Person's imaginative productions.
 Apperception is a readiness to perceive in certain ways based on prior experiences.
 People interpret ambiguous pictures according to their apperceptions and elaborate
stories
Interpreting TAT

 If particular problems are bothering the subject, they may become evident in a
number of the stories or in striking deviations from the usual theme in one or two
stories.

 In analyzing responses to the TAT cards, the psychologist looks for recurrent
themes that may reveal the individual‟s needs, motives, or characteristic way of
handling interpersonal relationships.
Problems with Projective Tests

 Many other projective tests have been devised.

 Some ask the subject to draw pictures of people, houses, trees, and so on.

 Others involve completing sentences that start with

 “ I often wish ... ,”
 “My mother... ,” or
 “I feel like quitting when they. ...”
 But most projective tests have not been subjected to enough research to
establishing personality.

 Rorschach and Tat has been extensively researched

 Reliability of Rorschach is poor and Scoring is too much dependent on clinicians

judgment
Scoring TAT

 The TAT has fared somewhat better,

 When specific scoring systems are used (for example, to measure
achievement, motives, aggressive themes), t
 he inter-scorer reliability is fairly good.
 But the relationship of TAT Scores to overt behavior is complex.
 Preoccupations are not necessarily acted on.
 A person who produces a number of stories with Set themes may
not actually behave aggressively
 Defenders of the Rorschach Test and the TAT point out that it
is not fair to expect accurate predictions based on test
responses alone; responses to inkblots and story themes are
meaningful only when considered in light of additional
information, such as the person‟s life history, other test data,
and observations of behavior.

 The skilled clinician uses the results of projective tests to make

tentative interpretations about the individual‟s personality
and then verifies or discards them, depending on further
information. The tests are helpful in suggesting possible areas
of conflict to be explored.
INTERACTION BETWEEN NATURE
AND NURTURE
 If you were asked why one person is taller than another, you would
probably give nature explanation: The taller person has inherited
taller height genes from parents

 However another explanation might that health and nutrition also

effects a persons growth

 If, however, you were asked why one person prefers classical music
to jazz but another person has the reverse preference.
 you would be much more inclined to five “nurture” (environmental)
explanation.
Sourcés OF VARIANCE

 Theoretically. we could test for any other potential sources of

variance in the same way If we think that having a good breakfast”
might affect students‟ scores, then we feed all the students the
same breakfast or deny breakfast to all the students) or observe
whether we reduce the variance as a result.

 In general, holding constant in any variable that “makes a

difference” will reduce the variance of the scores.
 In the extreme Case, if we held all the relevant variables Constant
the variance would diminish to zero; Every student would obtain the
same score.
HERITABILITY

 To what extent do some students do better than others on the exam

because they are genetically more capable than others?
 Put more technically, what proportion of the variance in exam
scores is accounted for by genetic differences among the students?
trait‟s heritability

 In general, the proportion of variance in any trait accounted for by

genetic differences among the individuals in a population is called
the trait‟s heritability,
 a number that ranges from 0 to: 1:
 The more individual differences ‟on a trait are due to genetic
differences, the closer the heritability is to 1.
 For example, the heritability of height, which is heavily influenced by
genetics, ranges from about.85 to .95 across different studies.
 Similar studies have examined the heritability of personality traits.
One large Swedish study assessed the traits of extraversion
(sociability) and emotional. stability in a sample of more than 12,000
pairs of adult twins. . On both traits, there were correlations of 5 ~
between members of identical-twin pairs and _ 2 between
members of fraternal-twin pairs,
 For the most part, the correlations found in the Minnesota studies are
in accord with results from many other twin studies. In general, the-
highest heritabilities are found in measures of abilities and
intelligence (.6-.7); the next highest heritabilities are typically found
in: measures of personality (about .3); and the smallest heritabilities
are found for religious and political beliefs and vocational interests
PERSONALITY-ENVIRONMENT
INTERACTIONS
 Genorvpe-ExviroxmenT Correarion In shaping an individual's
personality, genetic and environmental influences are intertwined
from the moment ofbirth. Parents give their biological offspring both
their genes and a home -environment, and both are functions of
the parents‟ own genes. As a result, there isa builtin correlation
between the child‟s inherited characteristics (genotype) and the
environmentin which he orsheis raised.
 For example, because general intelligence is partially heritable,
parents with h:ghintelligence are likely to have children wi?” high
intelligence. But parents with high irwelligence are also likely to
provide an intellectually stimulating environmentfor their children—
both through their own interactions with them and through the
books, music lessons, trips to museums, and otherintellectual
experiences that are likely to be a part of their home.
forms of interaction:

 a child‟s genotype also shapes the environment itself, the

environment shapes a child's personality through these forms of
interaction:
1. Reactive
2. evocative
3. proactive.
Reactive Interaction

 Different individuals posed to the same environment interpret it

experience it, and react to it differently,

 An extraverted child will attend to people and events around her;

her introverted brother will ignore them.

 In other words, each child‟s personality extracts a Subjective

meanings from the surroundings, and it is that subjective meanings
that shapes subsequent personality development.
Evocative Interaction

 Every individual‟s personality evokes distinctive responses from

others.

 An infant who squirms and fusses when picked up will evoke less
nurturance from a parent than one who likes to be cuddled.

 the child's personality can shape the parents‟ child rearing style,
which further shapes his/her personality
PROACTIVE INTERACTION

 As children get older, they move beyond the environments imposed

by their parents and begin to select and environments of their own,
This further Shape their Personality

 A social child would like to go out and his Sociable personality

prompts her to select an environment- that further supports her
Sociability,
SHARED VERSUS NONSHARED
ENVIRONMENTS
 Surprisingly, differences due to the shared aspects of the
environment seem to account for almost none of the environmental
variation:
 After their genetic similarities are subtracted out, two children from
the same family seem to be no more alike than two children chosen
randomly from the population
 This implies that the kinds of variables that psychologists typically
study (such as child- . rearing practices, socioeconomic class of the‟
family, parents‟ education) are contributing virtually nothing to
individual differences in personality.
 How can this be so?
 One possible explanation might be that the reactive, evocative,
and proactive processes _.act to diminish the differences between
environments as long as those environments permit some flexibility of
response.