DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE & HUMANITIES
Variations in Psychological Attributes
Individual differences refer to distinctiveness and variations among people’s characteristics and behavioral patterns.
Situationism states that the situations and circumstances in which one is placed influence one’s behavior. Sometimes the situational influences are so powerful that people respond to them in almost identical ways. The situationist perspective views human behavior as the result of influence of external factors.
Assessment refers to the measurement of psychological attributes of individuals and their evaluation, often using multiple methods in terms of certain standards of comparison. It is the first step in understanding a psychological attribute.
• Formal assessment is objective, standardized and organized.
• Informal assessment varies from case to case and from one assessor to the other and is therefore open to subjective interpretations.Psychological assessment uses systematic testing procedures to evaluate abilities,behaviours and personal qualities of individuals. The various assessment methods are:
• Psychological Test – An objective and standardized measure of an individual’s mental and/or behavioural characteristics. Objective tests have been developed to measure all the dimensions of psychological attributes.
• Interview – Involves seeking information from a person on a one-to-one basis.
• Case study – An in-depth study of the individual in terms of her/his psychological attributes, psychological history in the context of her/his psychosocial and physical environment. They are based on data generated by different methods, for example interview or observation.
• Observation – It involves employing systematic, organized and objective procedures to record behavioural phenomena occurring naturally in time. The major problems with the observational method are that the observer has little control over the situation and the reports could suffer from personal bias.
• Self-Report – It is a method in which the person provides factual information about themselves and their open beliefs that they hold. Such information may be obtained by using an interview schedule or a questionnaire, a psychological test,etc.
Psychological attributes are multi-dimensional, and these are categorized on the basis of varieties of tests used in psychological literature.
Intelligence is the global capacity to understand the world, think rationally and use available resources effectively when faced with challenges.The Oxford dictionary explains intelligence as the power of perceiving, learning, understanding and knowing, and early intelligence theorists also used these attributes to define intelligence.
• Alfred Binet was one of the first psychologists who worked on intelligence, and defined it as the ability to judge well, understand well and reason well.
• Weschler (his intelligence tests are used most widely) understood intelligence in terms of its functionality (its value for adaptation to environment) and defined it as the global and aggregate capacity of an individual to think rationally, act purposefully and to deal effectively with his/her environment.
• Gardener and Stenberg have suggested that an intelligent individual not only
adapts to the environment, but also actively modifies or shapes it.
Theories of intelligence proposed are as follows:
Psychometric Approach considers intelligence as an aggregate of abilities. It expresses the individual’s performance in terms of a single index of cognitive abilities.
The Information-Processing Approach describes the processes people use in intellectual reasoning and problem solving, and the major focus of this approach is on how an intelligent person acts and emphasizes studying cognitive functions underlying intelligent behavior.
Alfred Binet’s Theory of Intelligence or the One Factor Theory of Intelligence was that intelligence consisted of one similar set of abilities that can be used for solving any or every problem in an individual’s environment. This theory came to be disputed when psychologists started analyzing data of individuals.
The Two Factory Theory of Intelligence was proposed in 1927 by Charles Spearman employing a statistical method called factor analysis. He showed that intelligence consisted of a general factor (g-factor) that includes mental operations which are primary and common to all performances and some specific factors (s-factors) that are specific abilities.
The Theory of Primary Mental Abilities was Louis Thurstone’s follow up to the two factor theory, where he states that intelligence consists of seven primary abilities, each of which is relatively independent of the others.
• Verbal comprehension
• Numerical abilities
• Spatial relations
• Perceptual speed (speed in perceiving details)
• Word fluency
• Memory
• Inductive reasoning (deriving general rules from presented facts)
Arthur Jensen’s Hierarchical Model of Intelligence consisted of abilities operating at two levels. Level 1 is the associative learning in which output is more or less similar to the input and Level 2 called cognitive competence involves higher-order sills as they transform the input to produce an effective output.
The Structure of Intellect Model proposed by J.P. Guilford classifies intellectual traits among three dimensions:
• Operations are what the respondent does (includes cognition, memory recording, memory retention, divergent production, etc).
• Contents refer to the nature of materials or information on which intellectual operations are performed (includes visual, auditory, semantic, symbolic and behavioural).
• Products refer to the form in which the information is processed by the respondents.
Products are classified into units, classes, relations, systems, transformations and implications. Since this classification includes 6x5x6 categories, this model of intelligence has 180 cells, and each one is expected to have at least one factor of ability, or more than one. Each factor is described in terms of all three dimensions.
Please click on below link to download CBSE Class 12 Psychology Variations In Psychological Attributes Worksheet Set A
