Chapter 1: Variations in Psychological Attributes
Individual Differences in Human Functioning:
➔ Variability is a fact of nature
➔ For psychologists, individual differences, refers to distinctiveness and variations
among people’s characteristics and behaviour patterns
➔ Situationalism, refers to a view which states that situations and circumstances in which
one is placed influences one’s behaviour.
Assessment of Psychological Attributes:
➔ Assessment is the first step in understanding a psychological attribute. It refers to the
measurement of psychological attributes of individuals and their evaluation, often using
multiple methods in terms of standards of comparison
➔ Two types of assessment:
- Formal Assessment is objective, standardised and organised
- Informal Assessment varies from case to case and from one accessor to
another and therefore, is open to subjective interpretations
➔ Some domains of Psychological Attributes:
- Psychological attributes are not linear or unidimensional
- They are complex and are expressed in terms of dimension
- These attributes are categorised on the basis of varieties of tests used in
psychological literature:
1. Intelligence is the global capacity to understand the world, think rationally,
and use available resources effectively when faced with challenges.
2. Aptitude refers to an individual’s underlying potential for acquiring skills.
3. Interest is an individual’s preference or engaging in one or more specific
activities relative to others.
4. Personality refers to a relatively enduring characteristic of a person that
makes her or him distinct from others.
5. Values are enduring beliefs about an ideal mode of behaviour.
➔ Assessment Methods:
- Psychological Test is an objective and standardised measure of individual’s
mental and/or behavioural characteristics
- Interview involves seeking information from a person on a one-to-one basis.
- Case study is an in-depth study of the individual in terms of his/her history in the
context of his/her psychosocial and physical environment
- Observation involves employing systematic, organised, and objective procedures
to record behavioural phenomena occurring naturally in real time.
- Self-report is a method in which a person provides factual information about
herself/himself and/or opinions, beliefs, etc.
Intelligence:
➔ Power of perceiving, learning, understanding and knowing
➔ The ability to judge well, understand well and reason well
➔ Global and aggregate capacity of an individual to think rationally, act purposefully
with his/her environment
➔ Theories of Intelligence:
- The psychometric approach considers intelligence as an aggregate of
abilities. It expresses the individual’s performance in terms of a single
index of cognitive abilities.
- Information-processing approach describes the processes people use
in intellectual reasoning and problem solving. Major focus of this
approach is on how an intelligent person acts.
- Alfred Binet was the first psychologist who tried to formalise the concept
of intelligence in terms of mental operations
- His theory of intelligence is called Uni or one factor theory
- He conceptualised intelligence as consisting of one similar set of abilities
which can be used for solving any or every problem in an individual’s
environment
- In 1927, Charles Spearman proposed a two-factor theory of intelligence
employing a statistical method called factor analysis
- He showed that intelligence consisted of a general factor (g-factor) and
some specific factors (s-factors)
- G-factor includes mental operations which are primary and common to all
performances
- In addition to g-factor, there are also some specific abilities. These are
contained in what is called the s-factor
- Louis Thurstone proposed the theory of primary mental abilities
- It states that intelligence consists of 7 primary abilities, each of which is
independent of the others:
1. Verbal Comprehension: grasping meaning of words, concepts,
and ideas
2. Numerical Abilities: speed and accuracy in numerical and
computation skills
3. Spatial Relations: Visualising patterns and forms
4. Perceptual Speed: speed in perceiving details
5. Word Fluency: fluency and flexibility in using words
6. Memory: accuracy in recalling information
7. Inductive Reasoning: deriving general rules from presented
facts
- Arthur Jensen proposed a hierarchical model of intelligence consisting of
abilities operating at 2 levels:
1. Level I: is the associative learning in which output is more or less
similar to the input (e.g. rote learning and memory)
2. Level II: called cognitive competence, involves higher-order skills
as the transform the input to produce an effective output
- J.P. Guilford proposed the structure-of-intellectual model which classifies
intellectual traits among three dimensions: operations (what the
respondent does such as memory recording, cognition, memory
retention,ectc.), contents (nature of materials or information on which
intellectual operations are performed) and products (refers to the form in
which information is processed by the respondent.)
- Theory of Multiple Intelligence:
● Howard Gardner proposed the theory of multiple intelligences
● Intelligence is not a single entity
● Distinct types of intelligences exist
● Described eight types of intelligence:
1. Linguistic: capacity to use language fluently and flexibly
to express one’s thinking and understand others
2. Logical-Mathematical: ability to think logically and
critically, and solve problems
3. Spatial: ability to form visual images and patterns
4. Musical: an ability to produce and manipulate musical
rhythms and patterns
5. Bodily-Kinaesthetic: an ability to use whole or portions of
the body flexibly and creatively
6. Intrapersonal: ability to understand one’s own feelings,
motives and desires
7. Interpersonal: ability to understand subtle aspects of
others’ behaviours
8. Naturalistic: an ability to identify the features of the
natural world
- Triarchic Theory of Intelligence:
● Proposed by Robert Sternberg
● Views intelligence as the ability to adapt, to shape and select
environment to accomplish one’s goals and those of one’s society
and culture
● 3 basic types of intelligence:
1. Componential Intelligence: is the analysis of information
to solve problems. Consists of metacomponents,
performance components and knowledge acquisition
components
2. Experiential Intelligence: involves using past experiences
creatively to solve novel problems
3. Contextual Intelligence: involves the ability to deal with
environmental demands encountered on a daily basis
- PASS Model of Intelligence:
● Planning, Attention-arousal and Simultaneous-Successive Model
● Developed by JP Das, Jack Naglieri, and Kirby
● Intellectual activity involves the interdependent functioning of 3
neurological systems called the functional units of brain
● These units are responsible for arousal/attention, coding or
processing and planning respectively
● Arousal forces you to focus your attention on reading, learning and
revising the contents of the chapters
● In Simultaneous-Successive Processing, you perceive relations
among the various concepts and integrate them into a meaningful
pattern
● Planning is an essential feature of intelligence. It allows us to think
of possible courses of action, implement them, etc.
●
- Das and Naglieri have also developed a battery of tests known as the
Cognitive Assessment System (CAS). It consists of verbal as well as
non-verbal tasks that measure basic cognitive functions presumed to be
independent of schooling. Meant for individuals between 5 and 18 years
of age
➔ Assessment of Intelligence:
- In 1905 Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon
- Made the first successful attempt to formally measure intelligence
- They gave the concept of Mental Age
- Which is a measure of a person’s intellectual development relative to
people of her/his age group
- Concept of Chronological Age is the biological age from earth
- Retardation was defined by Binet and Simon as being two mental years
below the chronological age
- In 1912, William Stern, a German psychologist devised the concept of
Intelligent Quotient (IQ)
➔ Intelligence: Interplay of Nature and Nurture:
- The intelligence of identical twins reared together correlate almost 0.90
- Intelligence of identical twins reared in different environments correlate
0.72
- Fraternal twins reared together = 0.60
- Brothers and sisters reared together = 0.50
- Siblings reared apart = 0.25
- Role of environment: as children grow in age, their intelligence level tends
to move closer to that of their adoptive parents evidence that shows that
environmental deprivation lowers intelligence while rich nutrition, family
background and quality schooling increases intelligence
➔ Variations of Intelligence:
- Intellectual Deficiency:
● AAMD defines and views intellectual disability as “Significantly
subaverage general intellectual functioning existing concurrently
with deficits in adaptive behaviour and manifested during the
development period
● People having IQ below 70
- Intellectual Giftedness:
● Giftedness is exceptional general ability shown in superior
performance in a wide variety of areas
● Talent is a narrower term and refers to remarkable ability in a
field.
➔ Types of Intelligence Tests:
- Individual or group tests
Individual Tests Group Tests
● Administered to one ● Can be administered to a
person at a time group of people
● Require administrator to simultaneously
establish rapport with the ● Does not allow an
subject opportunity to be familiar
● Allow people to answer with the subjects’ feelings
orally or in a written form or ● Generally seek written
manipulate objects as per answers in a MCQ format
the tester’s instructions
- Verbal, Non-Verbal or Performance Tests:
Verbal Non-Verbal Performance
● Verbal ● Use pictures ● Require
responses or illustrations subjects to
either orally or as test items manipulate
in a written ● For e.g.: objects and
format Raven’s other materials
● Can be Progressive to perform a
administered Matrices Test task
to only literate ● For e.g., Kohs’
people Block Design
Test
- Culture-Fair or Culture-Biassed Test
➔ Intelligence Testing in India:
- S.M. Moshin constructed a test in hindi
- CIE Verbal Group Test of Intelligence by Uday Shankar
- Group Test of General Mental Ability by S. Jalota
- Group Test of Intelligence by Prayag Mehta
- The Bihar Test by S.M Moshin
Culture and Intelligence:
➔ Cultural environment provides a context for intelligence to develop
➔ Culture is a collective system of customs, beliefs, attitudes and achievements in art and
literature
➔ Facets of intelligence in Indian Tradition:
1. Cognitive capacity
2. Social competence
3. Emotional competence
4. Entrepreneurial competence
Emotional Intelligence:
➔ Emotional Intelligence is a set of skills that underlie accurate appraisal, expression and
regulation of emotions
➔ It is the feeling side of intelligence
➔ Ability to monitor one’s own and other’s emotions, to discriminate among them, and to
use the information to guide one’s thinking and actions
➔ Refers to the ability to process emotional information accurately and efficiently
➔ Emotional Quotient is used to express emotional intelligence
Special Abilities:
➔ Aptitude: Nature and Measurement:
- Aptitude refers to a combination of characteristics that indicates an individual’s
capacity to acquire some specific knowledge or skill after training
- Helps to predict an individual’s future performance
- Interest is a preference for a particular activity
- Aptitude is the potentiality to perform that activity
- 8 subsets of DAT (most commonly used in educational settings):
1. Verbal reasoning
2. Numerical Reasoning
3. Abstract Reasoning
4. Clerical Speed and Accuracy
5. Mechanical Reasoning
6. Space Relations
7. Spelling
8. Language usage
- 2 types of aptitude tests:
1. Independent (specialised) aptitude tests
2. Multiple (generalised) aptitude tests
Creativity:
➔ Creativity is the ability to produce ideas, objects, or problem solutions that are novel,
appropriate and useful
➔ Terman in the 1920s, found that persons with high IQ are not necessarily creative
➔ At the same time, creative ideas could come from someone who did not have a very high
IQ
