Allport's Theory of Traits

In 1936, psychologist Gordon Allport found that one English-language dictionary alone contained more than 4,000 words describing different personality traits. He firmly believes that traits are real and exist within the person. He means that the traits make behavior consistent and that a trait is still there even if there is no one around to see it. Allport explains how every person’s traits are unique to the individual. He categorized these traits into three levels:

·        Cardinal Traits: These are traits that dominate an individual’s whole life, often to the point that the person becomes known specifically for these traits. People with such personalities often become so known for these traits that their names are often synonymous with these qualities. Consider the origin and meaning of the following descriptive terms: Freudian, Machiavellian, narcissistic, Don Juan, Christ-like, etc. Allport suggested that cardinal traits are rare and tend to develop later in life.

·        Central Traits: These are the general characteristics that form the basic foundations of personality. These central traits, while n ot as dominating as cardinal traits, are the major characteristics you might use to describe another person. Terms such as intelligent,honest, shy and anxious are considered central traits.

·        Secondary Traits: These are the traits that are sometimes related to attitudes or preferences and often appear only in certain situations or under specific circumstances. Some examples would be getting anxious when speaking to a group or impatient while waiting in line.

·        common traits are traits that are shared among many persons within a culture. They are measurable on a scale; it is important to be able to measure traits and compare individuals, and Allport therefore prefers to keep the common trait as an important factor of personality.

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intelligence quotient or IQ

IQ is a measure of relative intelligence determined by a standardized test. The first intelligence test was created in 1905 by Alfred Binet and Simon to determine which French school children were too slow to benefit from regular instruction.

Mental Age/Chronological Age X 100 = Intelligence Quotient

The majority of people have an IQ between 85 and 115.

I.Q. (intelligence quotient) in general, is an assessment of your ability to think and reason. IQ score is a standardized way of comparing this ability with the majority of people the same age as you are. A score of 100 means that compared to these people in your general age group that you have basically an average intelligence. Most psychologists would say those scoring in a range of 95 to 105 are of a normal intelligence or have an average IQ. Actual IQ score may vary plus or minus five points since it is very difficult to get an IQ score with complete accuracy. Keep in mind, there are many outside factors that may have a negative impact on your score. For instance, if you are not feeling well at the time of taking the test. Or perhaps you are distracted by something on that particular day.

IQ scores are used as predictors of educational achievement, special needs, job performance, and income. They are also used to study IQ distributions in populations and the correlations between IQ and other variables.

There are a variety of individually administered IQ tests in use in the English-speaking world. The most commonly used individual IQ test series is the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale for adults and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children for school-age test-takers. Other commonly used individual IQ tests include the current versions of the Stanford-Binet, Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities, the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children, the Cognitive Assessment System, and the Differential Ability Scales.

Reliability and validity

Psychometricians generally regard IQ tests as having high statistical reliability. A high reliability implies that—although test-takers may have varying scores when taking the same test on differing occasions, and they may have varying scores when taking different IQ tests at the same age—the scores generally agree with one another and across time.

IQ scores can differ to some degree for the same person on different IQ tests, so a person does not always belong to the same IQ score range each time the person is tested.

IQ can change to some degree over the course of childhood.

Environmental and genetic factors play a role in determining IQ. Their relative importance has been the subject of much research and debate.

Musical training in childhood has been found to correlate with higher than average IQ.

The ratio of brain weight to body weight and the size, shape and activity level of different parts of the brain, the total amount of gray matter in the brain, the overall thickness of the cortex and the glucose metabolic rate may affect IQ.

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Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory of personality

Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory of personality argued that human behavior was the result of the interaction of three component parts of the mind: the id, ego, and superego.

Id

The id according to Freud is the part of the unconscious that seeks pleasure. The id is the part of the mind, which holds all of human’s most basic and primal instincts. It is the impulsive, unconscious part of the mind that is based on desire to seek immediate satisfaction. The id does not have a grasp on any form of reality or consequence. Freud explained that the pleasure principle is controlled by the id because it makes people engage in need-satisfying behavior without any accordance to what is right or wrong.

Freud defined the id as the part of the mind "cut off from the external world, has a world of perception of its own.

Ego

In order for people to maintain a realistic sense here on earth, the ego is responsible for creating balance between pleasure and pain. It is impossible for all desires of the id to be met and the ego realizes this but continues to seek pleasure and satisfaction. Although the ego does not know the difference between right and wrong, it is aware that not all drives can be met at a given time. The reality principle is what the ego operates by in order to help satisfy the id’s demands as well as compromising according to reality. The ego takes into account ethical and cultural ideals in order to balance out the desires originating in the id.

Superego

The superego, which develops around age four or five, incorporates the morals of society. Freud believed that the superego is what allows the mind to control its impulses that are looked down upon morally. The superego can be considered to be the conscience of the mind because it has the ability to distinguish between reality as well as what is right or wrong. Without the superego Freud believed people would act out with aggression and other immoral behaviors because the mind would have no way of understanding the difference between right and wrong. The superego is considered to be the “consciousness” of a person’s personality and can override the drives from the id.

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Imagery Psychology

Imagery

Imagery is a natural, yet special, way of thinking that involves our senses. Images are thoughts you can see, hear, smell, taste or feel, and include memories, dreams and daydreams, plans and visions, and fantasies. Imagery is a type of thinking that has particularly strong effects on our emotions (imagine the face of someone you love and notice the feelings that come with the image), and our physiology (close your eyes and imagine sucking on a really sour lemon).

Imagery is a mental technique that programs the mind and body to respond optimally. Imagery is a flow of thoughts you can see, hear, feel, smell, or taste.

Guided Imagery

Guided imagery describes a process where you are asked to focus on images selected to help you achieve certain goals. Common applications include relaxation, relieving pain and other physical symptoms, reducing distress from surgery and other medical procedures, increasing creativity, enhancing confidence, stimulating healing responses in the body, and enhancing memory and learning.

Interactive Guided Imagery

In this form of imagery, a trained guide helps you discover and work with your personal imagery about your illness and your healing, clarify any issues that may be involved, and learn to use your mind to support your own healing.

Examine the image below. Check all the boxes below that apply:

            It looks like a bunny rabbit head

            It looks like an elongated horse's head

            It looks like an X-ray, especially that part near the bottom

            It looks like spilled ink that was blotted

            It looks like two distorted Eskimos playing "patty-cake"

            It looks like a giant open mouth, about to devour me

            It looks like a tunnel into another dimension, or maybe New Jersey

It looks like two double-amputees dancing

            It looks like the coast of Italy after an atom bomb attack, only mirrored

            It looks like a pair of one-legged cannibals fighting over a victim

            I love pudding

            It looks like an RLFP DNA test result, with the phenotypes split

            It looks like Satan's head, the white part in the middle (can't you see it?)

            It looks like smudges, or maybe an inkblot

It looks like the Universe exploding and coming at me

            No, you idiot, it's a butterfly that's been crushed by a bootheel

            Ha! This one is definitely an inkblot

            The dark, malevolent shapes remind me of my childhood murder-spree

            I see someone standing on someone else's head with their hands out

            It looks like something under a microscope slide or something

            It looks like someone exposing herself to me, heh heh!

Test Results

Sickness Quotient: 75%

Your "Sickness Quotient" of -----% indicates therapy may be useful.

Detailed Diagnosis

 •          Interpersonal Insights

Your friends (both of them) think you're a total clod. As long as you continue to buy the beer, however, they'll still be your pals. You are utterly incapable of meaningful relationships, which is probably a good thing since you're a horrible bore under the best of conditions.

•           Job Performance & Attitude

Rather than do a one-time job that takes ten minutes, you'd work for 5 years to automate it. Although your work can upon occasion be very good, remember that even monkeys can be trained to do what you do. And they don't call in sick.

•           Personality Insight

Your personal motto is "It's better to ask forgiveness than permission." And you would certainly know.

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Muller-Lyer illusion-how to write on Practical Note Book

Introduction

An optical illusion occurs when our perception of an object differs from physical reality. In the well-known Muller-Lyer illusion, two lines of equal length are perceived to have different lengths. The difference in perceived length occurs because the arrowheads on the two lines have different orientations. Another example of an optical illusion is the Horizontal-Vertical illusion. Lines of equal length but oriented differently can appear to have different lengths. The purpose of the experiment reported here is to study the interaction between the Muller-Lyer illusion and the Horizontal-Vertical illusion. In particular, we wondered whether it would be possible to find a combination of arrowhead angles and line angles so that the two illusions completely canceled one another.

ABSTRACT

There are three horizontal lines. Two of the lines contain a pair of "wings." The wings are drawn outward or inward from the end of the line. The illusion is that the line with the outward-drawn wings tends to look longer than the line with the inward-drawn wings. The line without wings tends to look smaller than the line with outward-drawn wings and bigger than the line with inward-drawn wings. It is an illusion because the lines are actually all the same length, which you can verify with a ruler.

METHOD

For the Müller-Lyer illusion, we will have observers compare the perception produced by a line with outward-drawn wings to the perception produced by lines with no wings. We will systematically vary the length of the line without wings to see when the perceived line lengths match. We can then look at the physical length of the matching line without wings and use that as a measure of the strength of the Müller-Lyer illusion. There are several ways to go about making such comparisons. One of the simplest and most powerful is the method of constant stimuli.

We will generate a large set of lines without wings of varying lengths and have the observer compare each one with a standard line with wings. For each comparison the observer notes whether the line without wings is perceived to be longer or shorter than the line with wings. Unlike some other psychophysical methods (like the method of adjustment), the stimuli are not changeable by the observer, thus they are constant stimuli. The observer's task is just to report on the perception.

RESULT

we will find the proportion of responses where the line without wings seemed bigger than the standard as a function of the physical length of the line without wings. With such a curve, you can often identify critical values, such as the point of subjective equality, where the line without wings seemed to be the same size as the line with wings (e.g., 50% of the time it is described as bigger and 50% of the time is described as smaller).

Two effects are clear from the data. First, as the arrow angle increases, the perceived line length increases. This is consistent with the basic Muller-Lyer illusion, since larger arrow angles represent outward pointing arrows. Second, the estimates for vertical lines are larger than those for horizontal lines, since the closed symbols generally lie above the open symbols. This is consistent with the basic Horizontal-Vertical illusion.

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