Lecture VIII: Historical Uses and Abuses of Intelligence Testing: Kallikaks 2/18/15Lecture IX: Personality Assessment 2/23/153/2/15Lecture XI: Neuropsychological Assessment cont. 3/4/15Lecture XII: Behavioral Assessment 3/9/15Psy 2301 1st Edition Exam # 2 Study GuideLecture VIII: Historical Uses and Abuses of Intelligence Testing: Kallikaks2/18/15I. Definitions of IntelligenceA. Ability to learnB. Ability to adapt to new environmentsC. Abstract reasoningD. Ability to solve problems quickly and accuratelyII. Henry H. Goddard (1866-1957)A. Conducted the famous/infamous investigation of the heritability of intelligence after being influenced by Gregor Mendel’s work1. 1912: The Kallikak Family: A Study in Heredity of Feeble-MindednessIII. Background: Gregor MendelA. Mendel worked with honeybees and plantsB. Performed numerous breeding experiemtns on the inheritance of certain characteristicsC. The results of his experiment established for the first time a valid set of principles of genetic inheritance 1. That is, offspring would be a blend of the parental characteristicsIV. EugenicsThe study and practice of selective breeding applied to humans, with A. the aim of improving the speciesV. How it all began...In 1897, a young girl, Deborah Kallikak, was admitted to the Vineland Institute at the age of 8. Fourteen years later (age 22), she was tested with the Binet-Simon scale and found to have a mental age of 9 years A. old, leading Goddard to classify her as a “moron”B. Henry Goddard worked at Vineland InstituteVI. Goddard’s Description of DeborahVII. Goddard’s InvestigationTraced her ancestry back to the American Revolution, when a soldier of “good family,” Martin Kallikak, Sr., had a “casual intimacy” with a feebleminded A. barmaid, which led to the birth of a boy, Martin Kallikak, Jr.After the war, Martin Sr. married a “worthy girl” from a Quaker family, and they B. had seven children (the good side). Martin Jr. was also married and had 10 children (the bad side)Goddard investigated the children of both marriages, and concluded the none ofC. the children of the Quaker woman was subnormal, while five of the children of Martin Jr.were unintelligentD. In later generations, the differences between the two sides of the families became apparently more strikingVIII. Decedents of Martin Jr. (The Bad Side)A. keepers of ill reputeB. “Riffraff of society”IX. Descendants of Martin Sr. (The Good Side)A. “Pillars of society”X. Methodological and Procedural WeaknessesA. Study took just two years – very short period of time for a study of this magnitude and detailB. Research assistants had little to no training in genealogical research or interviewing. Additionally, they knew the aims of the study and may have been biasedC. There was little objective testing of the family members, and conclusions about a person’s intelligence were often inferences form passing observations (e.g., physical appearance, occupation, standing in the community)D. Criminal behavior and feeblemindedness are often equatedE. The influence of environment was ignored, and Goddard even went so far as to describe the environments as “practically the same”F. In 1981, Stephan Jay Gould, criticized Goddard for tampering with at least five of the photographs. He reportedly added crude dark lines to accentuate the unfavorable facial features of members of the bad side of the familyXI. Unbelievably!A. Goddard eventually served on the Committee for the Heredity of the Feeble-Minded which recommended that mentally defective people be sterilized!B. Goddard described sterilization of males as being almost as simple as having a tooth pulledC. Later, Goddard was stationed at Ellis Island to pick out mentally defective individuals– these individuals were eventually denied entry into the USLecture IX: Personality Assessment 2/23/15I. What is Personality?A. Characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting B. Emerges in informal, familiar situations in which we feel unconstrainedII. Mischel vs. EpsteinA. Mischel1. Situations override concept of personality2. Therefore, we cannot measure consistent patterns of behaviora. Doesn’t believe in personalityb. Situations drive our behavior and not personality traitsc. Personality or behavior is not predictableB. Epstein (person side)1. Consistency in behavior is found if we look at it across time2. The construct is there, but we need to improve measurementsa. Consistency in our behavior over timeb. Correlation between behavior and personalityIII. Principle of aggregationPersonality is the sum of the best descriptors and predictors of our actions over A. time in a number of situationsIV. HeritabilityA. Personality is thought to have 20-50% heritability V. Assessing PersonalityA. Projective tests1. Projective hypothesisa. A person’s interpretation of an ambiguous stimulus provides us with information about his/her personality2. Rorschach Ink Blot Testa. Developed in 1920s by Swiss psychologistb. 10 inkblotsc. Widely used mid-1920s through mid-1969sd. Exner’s scoring system3. Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)a. Developed by Henry Murrayb. Card depicting ambiguous scenesc. Poor reliability and validity4. Sentence Completiona. Series of sentence stemsi. i.e., “Life is…” or “I feel scared when…”5. Draw a _______a. Person, house, family6. Conclusions – Projective Testsa. Based upon psychoanalytic tradition; difficult to studyb. Generally lacking normative datac. Best for generating hypothesesB. Objective Tests1. Definitiona. Structured and unambiguous2. Standardizationa. Administered to many to obtain norms3. Assumptionsa. Stable traitsb. Individual differencesc. Traits are measurable4. Historya. WWIi. Screening recruits for emotional instability5. Formata. T/Fb. Likert Scalei. Strongly disagree disagree neither agree strongly agreec. Scales6. MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory)a. Empirically derivedb. T/F self-report questionnairec. 575 itemsd. Minimum age = 14; 6th grade reading levele. Three main types of scalesi. Validityii. Clinicaliii. ContentLecture X: Personality Assessment cont. and Neuropsychological Assessment3/2/15I. Objective TestsA. MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory)B. MMPI: Validity Scales1. ? (Cannot say)a. Unanswered itemsi. 30 max or else ineffective2. L (Lie)a. Faking goodi. Overly positive lightii. Not good portrayal- Sometimes I lie  false3. F (Infrequency)a. Faking