Intelligence
•Intelligence: Mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and adapt to the environment
•Intelligence Test: A method for assessing one’s mental abilities and comparing them to others
•General Intelligence(g): Spearman underlies specific factors measured by every task on the intelligence test
•Factor Analysis: A statistical procedure that identifies clusters of items used to identify different dimensions of performance
•Gardner’s Eight Intelligences
•Linguistic: T.S. Elliot
•Logical-Mathematical: Einstein
•Musical: Igor Stravinksy
•Spatial: Picasso
•Bodily-Kinesthetic: Martha Graham
•Intrapersonal (self): Freud
•Interpersonal (others): Ghandi
•Naturalist: Darwin
Sternberg’s Three Intelligences
•Analytical-Ability to problem solve
•Creative-Ability to adapt to and generate novel ideas
•Practical-Ability to use for everyday tasks
•Savant Syndrome: Individuals who score low on intelligence testing but have a specialized skill
Thurstone’s Primary Mental Abilities
•Seven Factors: word fluency, verbal comprehension, spatial ability, perceptual speed, numerical ability, inductive reasoning, & memory.
•Emotional Intelligence: the ability to perceive, understand, manage and use emotions
Intelligence Testing
•Mental Age: (Devised by Binet): the chronological age that most likely corresponds to a level of performance as measured by school. 3rd graders usually have a mental age of 8.
•Stanford-Binet: A test originally developed by Binet which was revised by Terman at Stanford to test kids as young as 2.
•IQ: ma/ca X 100
•Achievement vs. Aptitude
•-Achievement: Assesses what has already been learned
•-Aptitude: Predicts a person’s future performance
Average IQ: 90-110; Direct Average-100
Gifted: 132; Highly Gifted: 140;
Mental Retardation: 70 & Below
Mild MR: 50-70: 6th grade level; 85%
Moderate MR: 35-50: 2nd grade level; 10%
Severe MR: 20-35: K level: 3%
Profound MR: Below 20: 0 level: 2%
Test Construction
•Standardization: Defining meaningful scores by comparing with the performance of a pretested group
•Normal Curve: The symmetrical bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of scores
•Mean: Average of the scores found by adding the scores and dividing by the ‘n’
•Median: Average of the scores found by lining up the scores from low to high and taking the middle score or middle 2 scores average
•Mode: Score that shows up the most (Bi-modal has 2 scores that show up the most)
•Range: High score – Low score
•Standard Deviation: The distribution of scores as either being a narrow, average, or wide curve
•68% of scores fall within 1 SD of the mean
•95% of scores fall within 2 SD of the mean
•99% of scores fall within 3 SD of the mean
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•Positive Skew: (Few in the Skew): Many low scores and few high scores – pulls the mean up over the median (mean follows the skew).
•Negative Skew: (Few in the Skew): Many high scores and a few low scores—pulls the mean down below the median (mean follows the skew).
•Reliability: Consistency over time
•Validity: Accurately measuring or predicting what is supposed to be measured
-Content Validity: test taps the pertinent behavior or criterion
-Criterion Validity: test taps future performance
•Reliability may or may not guarantee validity
•Validity guarantees reliability
Stereotype threat: African American students taking IQ tests in threatening conditions scored lower than in non-threatening conditions
•Motivation: A need or desire that energizes behavior and directs it towards a goal
•Instinct: A complex, species-specific behavior that is rigidly patterned and unlearned
•Drive-Reduction Theory: The idea that a physiological need creates an aroused tension state (drive) that motivates the organism to satisfy the need
•Need (food, water) satisfies Drive (hunger, thirst), creating Drive Reducing Behavior (eat, drink)
•Homeostasis: Tendency to maintain a balanced or constant internal state
•Incentive: A positive or negative environmental stimulus that motivates behavior
•Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: The pyramid of needs begins with lower level needs that must be satisfied before higher level needs are met
•Physiology of hunger:
•Glucose: form of sugar that circulates in the blood and provides energy. Low levels create hunger.
•Set Point: A “weight thermostat” which the body is set at. When body falls below set point, we feel hunger
•Basal Metabolic Rate: Body’s resting rate of energy expenditure (metabolism)
•Anorexia Nervosa: Eating disorder, 15% below normal body weight, in which person still feels fat and starves
•Bulimia Nervosa: Eating disorder characterized by overeating, vomiting, excessive exercise, & laxative use.
•Binge-eating disorder: Binge eating followed by guilt or disgust but not followed by bulimic behavior.
•Obesity
•Sexual Response Cycle (4 Stages) developed by Masters & Johnson
•-Excitement, Plateau, Orgasm, Refractory
•Refractory: rest period after orgasm in which a male cannot achieve another orgasm
•Sexual Disorder: A problem that impairs sexual arousal or functioning:
•-males: impotence & premature ejaculation
•-females: desire & orgasm
•Estrogen: Sex hormones secreted in greater amounts by females
•Testosterone: Sex hormones secreted in greater amounts by males leading to the development of puberty in boys
•External Stimuli: Men are aroused far greater than women by seeing, hearing, or reading erotic material
•Imagined Stimuli: Can create great sexual arousal even in paralyzed people
•Sexual Orientation: Our enduring sexual attraction towards members of our own sex (homosexuality) or opposite sex (heterosexuality) or both sexes (bisexuality).
•Fraternal Birth Order Effect: Probability of homosexuality in males increases with # of older brothers, but only in right handed males.
•If passed, homosexuality is more likely to be passed from the mother’s side of the family.
•Sexual Orientation is partly determined by genetics, but more specifically by hormonal activity in the womb.
•A study was run by Atkinson & McLelland testing people’s need to belong to a group. The human bond that describes us all in South African is known as “Ubuntu.”
•McLelland tested people with a test called the TAT, Thematic Perception Test. 25 pictures that subjects told stories about.
•Industrial Organization Psychology (I.O.) studies people in the work place.
•Personnel Psychology: Applies to how we hire workers
•Organizational Psychology: Considers work environments and management styles.
•Flow: Completely involved, focused state of consciousness with diminished awareness of self & time
•Interview Illusion: Interviewers overrate their ability to screen out poor employees (Nisbett).
•Achievement Motivation: Desire for significant accomplishment, mastering skills, and attaining high standard.
•Leadership Style: Task Leadership-setting standards, organizing work and focusing on goals vs. Social Leadership-explaining decisions, mediating conflicts & building high achieving teams (aka theory x vs. theory y leaders).
•Emotions: A mix of physiological arousal, expressive behavior, conscious experience, & feelings.
•Theories of Emotion:
•-James-Lange: Physiology precedes emotion
•-Cannon-Bard: Physiology & emotion are simultaneous
•-Two-factor (Schachter-Singer): Physiology & emotion are accompanied by thought process
•Autonomic Nervous System: Arouses in crisis and calms when danger passes
•Arousal & Performance: Performance peaks at lower levels of arousal for difficult tasks but at higher levels of arousal for simple or well-learned tasks.
•Elated excitement & panicky fear can be similar such as on roller-coasters.
•Spillover Effect: Intense arousal can lead to loss of thought process and fuel anger and violence
•Lie Detection (Polygraph): Polygraphs do not always detect liars and their validity is in question. They are now inadmissible in court
•Speedy, emotional road: Thalamus to Amygdala
•Thinking road: Thalamus to Sensory Cortex to Amygdala
•Experience influences emotion: Abused children were more likely than non-abused children to perceive faces as angry.
•Angry = Male: (Becker): When a gender neutral face was given an angry expression, more people saw it as male.
•Culture & Emotion: Facial Expressions are universal; happy & sad are easiest to recognize. Anger & fear are hardest to recognize.
•Biology of Fear: Connected to the amygdala
•Fear can be learned as well.
•Catharsis: Venting anger through aggressive action or fantasy (can be good if we are not left feeling guilty or anxious).
•Feel-good, do-good phenomenon: People are more likely to be helpful when in a good mood
•Subjective well-being: Self-perceived happiness or satisfaction with life.
•Wealth: There is a minimal requirement but after that, there is no correlation between wealth & happiness
•Adaptation-level phenomenon: tendency to judge various stimuli relative to those we have previously experienced.
•Relative Deprivation: The sense that we are worse off than others with whom we compare ourselves.
•Behavioral Medicine: Psychology applied to health & disease
•Stress: A process by which we appraise & cope with environmental threats & challenges.
•Stress Appraisal: Threat-stressed to distraction; challenge-aroused, focused
•Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS): Three Phases:
•1) Alarm: mobilize resources
•2) Resistance: cope with stressor; fight or flight
•3) Exhaustion: reserves depleted, reload.
•Coronary Heart Disease: Clogging of the vessels that nourish the heart
•Type A personality (Friedman & Rosenman): Competitive, hard-driving, impatient, aggressive, angry
•Type B personality: Easy-going, relaxed.
•Lymphocytes: White blood cells in the immune system that lower in stress
•Problem Focused Coping: Changing the stressor or the way we interact
•Emotion Focused Coping: Avoiding or ignoring a stressor and attending to the emotional needs of others.
•Exercise, Diet, Optimism, Social Support, Relaxation, Faith, & Biofeedback are all effective methods of dealing with stress
•Freud: Psychoanalysis-Focused on the unconscious (hidden mind). The unconscious is explored by Free Association (the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind in therapy). The personality is made of the Id, Ego, Superego.
•Id-Satisfies basic drives; Animalistic urges
•Ego-Mediates the Id & Superego
•Superego-Conscience, moral perspective
•Defense Mechanisms redirect anxiety by distorting reality.
•-Repression: Subconsciously pushing down painful information
•-Regression: Retreating to an earlier, more infantile stage of development
•-Reaction Formation: Doing the opposite of what one really feels
•-Projection: Disguising threatening impulses by attributing them to others (blaming others).
•Rationalization: Generating self-justifying explanations to hide from oneself (excuses).
•-Displacement: Diverting anger to a less threatening object or person
•-Denial: Rejecting facts or ignoring the truth
•-Sublimation: Taking unacceptable impulses and turning them into societally acceptable ones
•Remember that defense mechanisms protect the ego.
Alfred Adler: Emphasized birth order & education. “The individual feels at home and worthwhile as long as he is useful to others and overcomes feelings of inferiority.”
•Karen Horney: Rejected the theory of penis envy and emphasized that women are equal to men, trying to create a more balanced view of the then masculine look at psychology.
•Carl Jung: Agreed with Freud mostly but was disowned when he disagreed and changed id,ego,superego to ego, personal unconscious, collective unconscious.
•Ego: A person’s conscious memories
•Personal Unconscious: A person’s unconscious memories
•-Complex: A person’s personal experience of someone or something
•Collective Unconscious: A common reservoir of experiences derived from our species universal experiences.
•Archetypes: Shared belief through space-time
•-anima (feminine side of the male) & animus (masculine side of the female)
•-persona (mask that everyone wears)
•-shadow (evil side of humanity)
•Objective Tests: Multiple choice & True-False on personality. MMPI is an example.
•Projective Tests: Fill in or other ambiguous stimuli to measure personality:
•-TAT & Rorschach are examples.
•Terror Management Theory: Supports Freud’s theory that we defend anxiety:
•-thinking about threatening situations including mortality causes people to enhance their own self-esteem, adhere to worldviews which support spirituality, and reach out to others (9/11 as an example).
•Maslow & Rogers
•-Maslow: Self-Actualization & Pyramid of Needs
•-Rogers: All people are good and grow by being genuine & accepting.
•-Unconditional Positive Regard: An attitude of grace including knowing our failings and being empathic to others.
•-Self Concept: All our thoughts & feelings to the questions, “who am I?”
Traits: Assessing personality based on stable and enduring behaviors such as loyalty, not on unconscious motives. Traits are people’s conscious motives and behaviors.
•Bandura emphasizes interaction of our traits with our situation.
•Reciprocal Determinism: Behavior, internal personal factors, and environment all interact together in forming our personality.
•External locus of control: chance determines our fate
•Internal locus of control: we control our own destiny (generally healthier).
•Learned Helplessness (Seligman): No control over repeated bad events.
•Optimism vs. Pessimism also influences personality.
•Positive Psychology: the scientific study of optimal human functioning.
•The Self: An organizer of our thoughts, feelings, and actions
•Spotlight Effect: The belief that others are noticing us more than they really are
•Self-Esteem: A feeling of self-worth
•Self-serving Bias: A readiness to perceive oneself favorably