Morphological assessments: From the head to the body

1
Morphological assessments From the head to the
body

• Phrenology (Gall, early 1800s) skull shape
  personality
• Sheldons body types (1950)
• Based on photographs of all incoming freshmen at
  Ivy league schools in the 1930s
• Endomorph jolly/happy, lazy
• Mesomorph dominant, athletic
• Ectomorph smart, shy
• Body type and criminality (Lombroso)

2
Current Assessment

• Clinical settings
• Psychodynamic methods word association, TAT,
  Rorschach, etc.
• MMPI - developed in 1940 using an empirical
  approach, revised in 1989 (MMPI-2) and has 567
  T/F items
• Most widely used inventory in clinical settings
• items generally lack face validity (not obvious)
• validity scales (lie, defensiveness, infrequency)
• Assesses m/f, Si, Hs, Pa, etc. (psychopathology
  personality)

3
Assessment - continued

• Non-clinical settings
• NEO-PI developed for use in the non-clinical
  population
• Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to new
  experience, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness
• What does it mean to be neurotic?
• Consequences of having internal control beliefs
  on health and happiness (old age home studies)

4
Intelligence - what is it?

• Cognitive abilities such as memory, vocabulary,
  reasoning, general knowledge, speed of
  responding, etc.
• Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-III)
• Verbal and Performance IQ
• Mean IQ 100, SD 15
• Like all IQ measures, it is considered to be
  culturally biased (no such thing as a culture
  free test)

5
Alternatives to traditional intelligence

• Gould Intelligence does not IQ does not
  reflect innate skills, nor is intelligence
  unchangeable (video)
• Broader definitions of intelligence Gardners
  multiple intelligences (e.g.., abilities in
  music, art, language, social skills,
  coordination, etc.)
• Creativity - a way to assess alternative forms of
  intelligence (flexibility in how one thinks about
  a problem- allows for novel responses and
  divergent thinking example items for the
  consequences test)

6
Stunted intellectual development

• Associated with several developmental disorders
  including
• Autism extremely low IQ, minimal verbalizations,
  isolative, repetitious (rocking) and sometimes
  self-damaging (head banging) behavior (Overall 1
  in 10,000)
• More common in males, but females are more severe
  cases
• Savant syndrome
• Very rare (only 1 of all autistic individuals
  Overall 1 in a million)
• An extraordinary ability (either in absolute or
  relative to daily functioning), severe cognitive
  deficits, over attention
• Stimulus over-selectivity over attention to
  only one aspect of a stimulus (can explain both
  autism and savant syndrome)

7
Biases and heuristics in judgment

• General rules we apply in reasoning to be
  efficient (can result in erroneous conclusions
  when improperly applied)
• What percentage of crimes are considered violent
  crimes?
• The availability heuristic
• Who is most likely to be a quiet individual who
  likes classical music and cognac? The chair of
  the UNC music dept or a taxi driver?
• The representative heuristic (ignores base rates)
• What is your chance of getting AIDS in the next
  two years? What is the chance of someone of the
  same age/gender as you getting AIDS in the next 2
  years?
• Overconfidence bias

8
Biases and heuristics in judgment cont.

• What are the next three numbers (2,4,6, _,_,_)?
• Confirmation bias
• The odds of winning at black jack are 50.
  Assuming you have just lost 10 hands in a row,
  what are your odds of winning the next one?
• Gamblers fallacy (luck will change) in
  reality, these are random and unrelated events.
  Luck doesnt change.
• All-star team vs. a regular team, who should win?
  
• Fallacy of composition (the whole is sum of
  its parts)
• Buying beef with 25 fat or 75 fat free?
• Framing effects context provides information
  that results in different conclusions