individual differences

• Freud's theory of personality (background)

  Adult personality is shaped through childhood events
• Phallic stage (freud background)

  • Child's focus on genitals
  • Boys experience the Oedipus complex: 1) Desire for mother 2) See father as rival 3) Resolved by identifying with father
• Ego defence mechanisms (freud background)

  Psychological strategies unconsciously used to protect the individual from anxiety and unacceptable impulses
• Repression (freud background)

  Blocking unacceptable feelings/memories from consciousness
• Psychoanalysis (freud background)

  Therapy which aims to help people become consciously aware of their unconscious
• aim of freud- to use the case study to support his ideas about

  • child development and the oedipus complex
  • the origins of mental disorders such as phobias
  • the value of psychoanalysis for treating mental disorders
• method of freud - case study, longitudinal, 2 years
• sample of freud- one boy “little hans” 3 years-5 years
• research techniques in freud- data collected from conversations between the father and son. recorded by the father. interviews and self-report. the father also recorded events in little hans’ life.
• procedure of freud- father became concerned about hans fear of horses and discussed with freud. father sent regular reports to freud about the case. the final account of the case was published by freud: factual record of the events in the family’s life (birth of sister and man warn daughter about touching a white horse). observations made of hans behaviour (touching his widdler and conversations between hans and his father). analysis was made (horse=father). freud met hans and again later on in life.
• results of freud-

  p1 early life - he experienced oedipus complex - ‘widdler’ fascination (phallic stage). he feared castration because his mother said she would have his widdler chopped off.

  p2 analysis - fear of horses can be explained in terms of ego defences.

  “penis cut off“ anxiety repressed, so this anxiety was projected onto horses may bite you if you touch them.

  day dream about giraffes=attraction to his mother (feature of oedipus complex).
• conclusions of freud- the study further shows how a mental disorder such as a phobia can develop as a means of expressing repressed anxieties.
• baron cohen back ground - autistic spectrum disorder, asperger syndrome. lack of emotional and social skills. theory of mind.
• aim of baron cohen- to see if high functioning adults with ASD (autistic spectrum disorder) did have a theory of mind by using the eyes task.
• method of baron cohen - quasi experiment, matched pairs design (age and intelligence match), snapshot study.
• sample of baron cohen-

  group 1: austism/AS, normal intelligence, 13 males, 3 females.

  group 2: 50 ‘normal’ adults, 25 male, 25 female.

  group 3: tourettes, 8 male, 2 female
• materials used in baron cohen- photographs of eyes of 25 faces (male and female) black and white
• Baron Cohen procedure - Task A (Eyes task)

  1. Participants shown 25 pairs of faces

  2. Faces shown for three seconds each

  3. Participants had to select between two mental state terms: 'basic' = sad/happy/concerned, 'complex' = fascinating/nervous about you/interested in you

  4. Participants were tested on their own, in their own home

  5. Research is clinical research is laboratory (Cambridge University) in a quiet room
• Baron Cohen procedure - Task B (Strange stories task)

  1. Groups 1 and 3 were tested

  2. They answered questions on what the characters were thinking
• Baron Cohen procedure - Task C (Gender recognition)

  1. Group 1 (AS) identify basic emotions in whole faces

  2. 4 tasks presented in a random order
• Baron Cohen procedure- Task D (basic emotion recognition) - group 1 (AS) identified the basic emotions in whole faces.
• results of baron cohen:

  task A (eyes task) - autism/AS group did least well (mean 16.3/25)

  task B (strange stories task) group 1 (AS) had more difficulty than group 3- supports validity of the eyes task as a test for autism
• conclusion of baron cohen - adults with autism/AS may lack a theory of mind
• background of gould - Robert Yerkes promoting psychology is a science and saw an opportunity within mental testing. Yerkes provided numerical objective tests.
• aim of gould - to document yerkes‘ work and criticise the mental tests, they had far reaching social consequences
• sample of gould - 1.75 million american army recruits, male, culturally mixed
• materials used in gould - army alpha tests, army beta tests, individual examination
• procedure of gould - the tests were produced by Yerkes. alpha and beta tests took less than an hour. literate recruits would do alpha (written). illiterates who failed alpha would do beta. men who failed beta would do individual spoken examination. army psychologists would grade each person from A-E. but there were too many illiterate recruits which meant the criteria for alpha was lowered. people who failed alpha could not retake the test. the poor scores were not because they were ‘dumb’ it was because they were illiterate.
• results of gould -

  systematic bias: a consequence for the problems when administering the tests was that there was an artificially low mean score for illiterate immigrants and ‘negroes‘.

  facts from data: the average mental age for a white american army recruit was the equivalent to a ‘moron’ (under 13 yrs old)
• conclusion of gould- both tests were culturally biased because they received culturally based knowledge and skills. this, rather than genetics would explain the inferior score of negroes and immigrants
• background of hancock- language as diagnosis - words you choose reveal your inner thoughts. language of psychopaths - are psychopaths cohesive/not cohesive?
• aim of hancock - to use text analysis to analyse the language characteristics of psychopaths in describing their violent crimes. they looked at instrumental/ predatory world view, unique socioeconomical needs, poverty of affect.
• method of hancock - quasi experiment, independent measures design, data collected using semi- structured interviews, DV= measures of language from the text analysis
• sample of hancock - 52 make murderers in canadian correctional facilities. 14 psychopaths, 38 non-psychopaths
• materials used in hancock - the assessment of psychopath. it has 20 criterias scored from 0-2. the assessment (PCL-R) looks at 1. affective/interpersonal traits, 2. impulsive/antisocial traits. 25 and above would indicate psychopath.

  text analysis - 2 methods: W matrix to classify types of words, dictionary of affect in language (DAL) to classify emotional content.
• Procedure of Hancock


  1. P's were tested for psychopathy (PCL-R)

  2. P's classed as a psychopath if the score was more than 25

  3. Assessments done by trained prison psychologists (for 39 p's) or by researcher (13 p's)

  4. P's asked to recall the murder

  5. P's interviewed by 2 senior psychology graduate students and 1 research assistant

  6. Interviews were semi-structured, involving asking them to recall in as much detail, then follow up questions

  7. Interviews lasted 25 minutes

  8. Interviews put into written form and audio tapes

  9. Text analysed using W matrix which classifies the words in the text into: parts of speech (nouns/verbs), semantic categories (e.g. money), major discourse fields (e.g. language/social actions)

  10. DAL used to assign scores for pleasantness and intensity of emotional language
• results of hancock -

  psychopaths produced more subordinating conjunctions (because, so that) and less fluent (um) than non psychopaths

  psychopaths used more past tense verbs than non psychopaths
• conclusion of hancock - there are some significant differences jn the language used by psychopaths and non psychopaths. psychopaths operate in a primitive but rational manor