Determinants of Intelligence Test Scores

Psychology has aims to define, explain, and predict behavior. The field of Psychology has seen the many remarkable theoretician and practitioners. Carl Jung developed the theory on personality types. Meyers Briggs expanded those theories into an assessment known as the he Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). MBTI consists of four dichotomies that include Extraversion/Introversion, Sensing/Intuitive, Thinking/Feeling, and Judgment/Perception.

Burger (2008), says that there are many theories of personality and psychologists try to explain it with their own approaches. Discussed here will be the psychoanalytic approach, the trait approach, the biological approach the humanistic approach, the behavioural/social learning approach and the cognitive approach. They were devised to search for specific patterns in behaviour and ways of thinking about these

Personality and how we behave have been of much interest to psychologists for a long time now and because of this there have been many theories and theorists that have been developed. Personality is defined as consistent behavior patterns and intrapersonal processes originating within and individual (Fritzley, 2012, p. 10). There are six main approaches to personality psychology they include: biological approach, humanistic approach, behaviorist approach, trait approach, psychoanalytic approach and cognitive approach. Each approach shines a little light onto why we behave the way we do and how our personalities are formed, the approaches contain many different theories from

The personality theory that I have chosen to focus on will be Identity Theory. It was developed by Erik Erikson in the nineteen hundreds. Erik Erikson believed that every individual goes through a certain number of stages to reach his or her full development or potential (Erikson, 1994). He theorized that a human being goes through eight different stages ranging from birth to death (Erikson, 1994). Identity Theory focuses on eight psychosocial stages of development, and an epigenetic principle of maturation (Schultz, 2008). The stages of development are

Traits get passed down from one generation to the next through Meiosis (cell division), where each parent gives you one Gene for each trait.

In psychology, there are four major theories of personality: psychodynamic, trait or five-factor model, humanistic, and social-cognitive. The psychodynamic theory primarily focuses on the role of the unconscious mind. The social cognitive theory focuses on the effect of the environment on behavior and is based on theories of learning. Whereas, the humanistic theory emphasizes conscious life experiences and choices. The trait or five-factor model focuses on characteristics themselves and not the roots of personality.

Personality is looked at everyday purposely and accidently. Whether you are judging how your new professor for the semester will be, or if you are studying your best friend for a project, personality is studied abundantly. While there are many ways to define personality, there is not a worldwide definition around. Personality is the unique combination of patterns that influence behavior, thought, motivation, and emotion in a human being (boundless.com). That is one of many ways of defining personality. When examining personality, there are four main approachable theories including: The Psychodynamic Approach, The Trait Approach, The Social-Cognitive Approach, and The Humanistic Approach.

Funder discusses on how personality psychology formulates around numerous basic approaches. One approach Funder talks about is the biological approach, which addresses the mental process on our behavior including anatomy, physiology, genetics, and evolution. This approach analyses our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors through our mind. Another approach that Funder discusses is the trait approach, which is basically the study of human personality; the trait approach concentrates on the way an individual differs in emotion, thought, and behavior and how those differences are measured. These two approaches complement each other because the trait approach focuses on routine patterns of an individual that are behaviors, feelings, and thoughts which those

The issue of cultural bias in intelligence tests sparks debates every time the latter is created or administered, resulting to many researches into how the reliability and validity of an ability test may differ when assessed on groups from different cultural-linguistic backgrounds. The aim of this study is to test the reliability and validity of the PSYGAT Verbal IQ Test on university students from English-speaking backgrounds (ESB) and non-English speaking backgrounds (NESB) in relation to the Queendom Verbal IQ Test and Cultural Fair IQ Test. 445 third year psychology students aged 19 to 62 were involved in this

A person’s personality says much about who he or she is. People define personality in different ways. Researcher after researcher has tried to come up with the best definition for what personality truly means. Case studies, correlational studies, and experimental designs are some of the most commonly used methods of research. These methods help better define personality. The advantages and disadvantages of each method differ and can be helpful or hurtful to the research of an individual’s personality.

Genetics is the study of heredity, which is the process of passing traits/ genes down.

Inheritance. Some traits are consistently passed on from parent to offspring. Such traits are heritable, whereas other traits are strongly influenced by environmental conditions and show weak heritability.

While this assumption is accepted by a majority of geneticists and behavioral scientists, there is great disagreement on the degree of influence each contributes. Arguments for environmental influences are compelling; at the same time there is growing evidence that genetic influence on intelligence is significant and substantial (Eyesenck, 1998; Mackintosh, 1998; Plomin, 1994; Steen, 1996). The purpose of this paper is to explore the question: "How is intelligence influenced by heredity and environment?"

Heredity – the transmission of traits from one generation to another, from parents to offspring; the protoplasmic continuity between parents and offspring

Since the beginning of mankind, there have been attempts to figure out how and why people differ. People who study personality traits tend to focus on various aspects of human behaviors such as, social interactions, development, learning, and culture. In addition, they study physiology, genetics, and pathology. They look at all aspects of being human and try to classify, organize, and understand them. Historically