Mental rotation is the ability to mentally represent the hypothetical view of an object rotated away from its actual viewpoint. It can be experimentally tested by a paradigm in which participants judge whether two stimuli are identical or not. The two stimuli are rotated and the size of angle between the two determines how long participants will take to come to a decision. This suggests that mental rotation is a mental process analogous to real rotation. This finding has been of importance for mental imagery research more broadly because (a) it illustrated that, unlike in behavioristic thinking, it is possible to research mental processes in a scientific way, and (b) because it was the foundation of many experiments supporting the similarities between mental imagery and perception, both in terms of brain activation and in terms of computational models.
Article
Christine Smith
When individuals decide to work together to complete a task, they often do so in the belief that the product of their collective effort will exceed that which could be accomplished alone. Task-performing groups are resource-rich entities in that members have access to one another’s uniquely possessed knowledge, skills, and abilities and can, in many instances, reduce each individual’s workload by dividing the labor among themselves. However, faulty interaction processes often hinder a group’s ability to utilize maximally the resources available to them, resulting in a performance that falls short of the group’s potential. For example, coordination loss occurs when group members fail to combine their efforts in an optimal manner. This type of loss is especially likely when the group task requires a high level of precision or has heavy cognitive demands. For example, coordination loss is especially problematic in the context of brainstorming groups, because group members are often asked to interact with one another while simultaneously generating ideas and processing the ideas generated by others. Motivation loss occurs when individual group members fail to give their best effort to the group’s endeavor. This type of loss, called social loafing, is especially likely to occur when individual group members believe that their contributions cannot be identified or evaluated. Alternatively, free-riding occurs when group members believe that their contributions to the group product are ultimately dispensable. Finally, group interaction can result in a performance that exceeds what is expected from a simple pooling of individual group members’ efforts, although instances of such are less frequently addressed and documented within the group performance literature. Synergistic or assembly bonus effects are likely when collective work conditions emphasize strong associations between individual effort and highly desirable outcomes, as in the case of Köhler motivation gains. Furthermore, synergistic effects have been documented in instances where groups have used their increased capacity to process information to identify patterns or draw conclusions that individuals alone would find challenging.
Article
John C. Gibbs
Males and females differ—but only moderately—in moral judgment and morally relevant social behavior such as caring for others and aggression. Females more frequently use care-related concerns in their moral judgment. Research has to some extent supported traditional stereotypes of males as more assertive or independent (agency) and females as more relational or affiliative (communion). Males are on average more aggressive than females even after relational aggression is taken into account. In the expression of empathy and prosocial behavior, situational context plays a larger role for males than females. Males’ gender tendencies have been characterized as instrumental (“report talk,” object oriented, etc.) and females’ as socially and emotionally expressive (“rapport talk,” people oriented, etc.). In social relationships, adolescent girls generally engage in more intimate self-disclosure and active listening, provide more emotional support to one another, and emphasize affiliation and collaboration. Both biological and social experiential or cultural factors are involved in the formation of these morally relevant gender differences.
Although average gender-linked differences in emphasis remain evident, a blend of instrumental and expressive characteristics may contribute to optimal morality for both genders. Sandra Bem termed the mixture of expressive (traditionally feminine) and instrumental (traditionally masculine) attributes in gender style “androgyny.” Highly androgynous adolescents and adults of both genders evidence more mature moral judgment and more adequate mental health.
Article
Michael J. Zickar
Personnel and vocational testing has made a huge impact in public and private organizations by helping organizations choose the best employees for a particular job (personnel testing) and helping individuals choose occupations for which they are best suited (vocational testing). The history of personnel and vocational testing is one in which scientific advances were influenced by historical and technological developments.
The first systematic efforts at personnel and vocational testing began during World War I when the US military needed techniques to sort through a large number of applicants in a short amount of time. Techniques of psychological testing had just begun to be developed at around the turn of the 20th century and those techniques were quickly applied to the US military effort. After the war, intelligence and personality tests were used by business organizations to help choose applicants most likely to succeed in their organizations. In addition, when the Great Depression occurred, vocational interest tests were used by government organizations to help the unemployed choose occupations that they might best succeed in.
The development of personnel and vocational tests was greatly influenced by the developing techniques of psychometric theory as well as general statistical theory. From the 1930s onward, significant advances in reliability and validity theory provided a framework for test developers to be able to develop tests and validate them. In addition, the civil rights movement within the United States, and particularly the Civil Rights Act of 1964, forced test developers to develop standards and procedures to justify test usage. This legislation and subsequent court cases ensured that psychologists would need to be involved deeply in personnel testing. Finally, testing in the 1990s onward was greatly influenced by technological advances. Computerization helped standardize administration and scoring of tests as well as opening up the possibility for multimedia item formats. The introduction of the internet and web-based testing also provided additional challenges and opportunities.
Article
Robert J. Sternberg
Intelligence needs to be understood in the cultural contexts in which it is displayed. For one thing, people in different cultures have different conceptions (implicit theories) of what intelligence is. Asian and African cultures tend to have broader and more encompassing views of intelligence than do Western cultures. Asians and Africans place less emphasis on mental speed and more emphasis on social and emotional aspects of behavior, as well as on wisdom. These implicit theories are important because in everyday life, people’s behavior is guided not so much by scores on standardized or other tests but rather by people’s implicit theories. For example, hiring and promotion decisions are usually based on such implicit theories, not on test scores.
Studies of performances by people, especially children, in different cultures suggest that the strengths of individuals across cultures are not necessarily well represented by conventional intelligence tests. For example, in some cultures, knowledge of herbal medications used to combat parasitic illnesses, or knowledge of hunting and gathering, or knowledge of how to effectively ice fish, can be more important to assessing intelligence than scores on a standardized test. Eskimo children may know how to navigate across the frozen tundra in the winter without obvious landmarks, yet they may not be able to attain high scores on conventional intelligence tests. Some of those who would score highly on such tests would be unable to do such navigation, to their peril.
There is no such thing as a culture-free test of intelligence, and there probably is no test that is genuinely culture-fair either. At best, tests should be culture-relevant, measuring the cognitive and other skills relevant to effectively adapt to particular cultures. These skills are likely to be partially but not fully overlapping across cultures. Thus, intelligence needs to be understood in its cultural contexts, not divorced from such contexts.
Article
Igor Grossmann and Franki Kung
The concept of wisdom is ancient and deeply embedded in the cultural history of humanity. However, only since 1980s have psychologists begun to study it scientifically. Taking a culturally and philosophically informed perspective, this article integrates insights from the quantitative science of wisdom. Analysis of epistemological traditions and research on folk theories of wisdom suggest cultural similarities in the domain of cognition (e.g., wisdom as reasoning ability and knowledge). These similarities can be contrasted with cultural differences concerning folk-theoretical affective and prosocial themes of wisdom, as well as expression of various wisdom-related themes, rooted in distinct sociocultural and ecological environments. Empirical evidence indicates that wisdom is an individually and culturally malleable construct, consistent with an emerging constructionist account of wisdom and its development. Future research can benefit from integration of ecological and cultural-historical factors for the meaning of wisdom and its expression.
Article
In the literature of mainstream scientific psychology, German scholar William Stern has been known primarily (if at all) as the inventor of the intelligence quotient (IQ). In fact, however, Stern’s contributions to psychology were much greater and more consequential than this. In this all-inclusive article, I have sought to provide readers with a fuller appreciation for the breadth and depth of Stern’s work, and, in particular, for that comprehensive system of thought that he elaborated under the name “critical personalism.” Drawing frequently on translated quotations from Stern’s published works, and on his personal correspondence with the Freiburg philosopher Jonas Cohn, I have endeavored to show how Stern was much more than “the IQ guy.” During the first 20 years of his academic career, spent at the University of Breslau in what is now the Polish city of Wroclaw, Stern founded that sub-discipline of psychology that would be concentrated on the study of individual differences in various aspects of human psychological functioning. He also made major contributions to that sub-discipline referred to at the time as “child” psychology, and laid the foundations for a comprehensive system of thought that he would name “critical personalism.” After relocating to Hamburg in 1916, Stern continued his scholarly efforts in these domains, taught courses both in psychology and in philosophy at the university that opened its doors there in 1919, and played major administrative roles there in the institutional homes of both disciplines until forced to flee Nazi Germany in 1934. The present chapter highlights ways in which, over the course of his scholarly career, Stern boldly opposed certain trends within mainstream thinking that were ascendant during his time.
Article
Irina A. Mironenko
Ananiev’s approach shares the Activity Theory (AT) paradigm, dominant in Soviet psychology. Ananiev builds on the main fundamentals of the AT paradigm, considering psyche as a special procreation of the matter, engendered by the active interaction of the individual with the environment. The unique feature of his approach to AT is that he turned it “toward the inside,” focusing on the relation of the human individual to his own physicality, to his own bodily substrate. Ananiev sought by his intention to keep a holistic vision of a human being, considering the latter in the context of his real life, that is, the bodily substrate in its biological specificity in context of the concrete sociohistorical life course of the personality. Like no other psychologist, Ananiev did not limit his research to the sphere of narrowly defined mental phenomena. He conducted a special kind of research, labeled as “complex,” in the course of which characteristics of the same subjects: sociological, socio-psychological, mental, physiological, and psychophysiological indicators—life events of the subjects—were monitored for many years. He focused on ontogenetic development in adulthood, which he, ahead of his time, considered as a period of dynamic changes and differentiated development of functions. The focus of his attention was on individual differences in the ontogenetic development of mental and psycho-physiological functions, especially those deviations from general regularities that resulted from the impact of the life course of the individual. Individualization, the increase of individual singularity, is the main effect of human development and its measure for Ananiev.
Ananiev developed a number of theoretical models and concepts. The best-known of Ananiev’s heritage is his theoretical model of human development, often named the “individuality concept.” According to this model, humans do not have any preassigned “structure of personality” or “initial harmony.” The starting point of human development is a combination of potentials—resources and reserves, biological and social. The human creates himself in the process of interaction with the world. Specialization, individually specific development of functions, appears here not as a distortion of the pre-set harmony of the whole but as the way of self-determining progressive human development. The most important practical task of psychology he viewed as psychological support and provision in the process of developing a harmonious individuality, based on the individual potentials.
Article
Sara J. Czaja and Chin Chin Lee
The expanding power of computers and the growth of information technologies such as the Internet have made it possible for large numbers of people to have direct access to an increasingly wide array of information sources and services. Use of technology has become an integral component of work, education, communication, entertainment, and health care. Moreover, home appliances, security systems, and other communication devices are becoming more integrated with network resources providing faster and more powerful interactive services. Older adults represent an increasing large proportion of the population and will need to be active users of technology to function independently and receive the potential benefits of technology. Thus, it is critically important to understand how older adults respond to and adopt new information technologies. Technology offers many potential benefits for older people such as enhanced access to information and resources and health-care services, as well as opportunities for cognitive and social engagement. Unfortunately, because of a number of factors many older people confront challenges and barriers when attempting to access and use technology systems.
Article
Eric S. Cerino and Karen Hooker
Intraindividual variability (IIV) refers to short-term fluctuations that may be more rapid, and are often conceptualized as more reversible, than developmental change that unfolds over a longer period of time, such as years. As a feature of longitudinal data collected on micro timescales (i.e., seconds, minutes, days, or weeks), IIV can describe people, contexts, or general processes characterizing human development. In contrast to approaches that pool information across individuals and assess interindividual variability in a population (i.e., between-person variability), IIV is the focus of person-centered studies addressing how and when individuals change over time (i.e., within-person variability). Developmental psychologists interested in change and how and when it occurs, have devised research methods designed to examine intraindividual change (IIC) and interindividual differences in IIC. Dispersion, variability, inconsistency, time-structured IIV, and net IIV are distinct operationalizations of IIV that, depending on the number of measures, occasions, and time of measurement, reflect unique information about IIV in lifespan developmental domains of interest. Microlongitudinal and measurement-burst designs are two methodological approaches with intensive repeated measurement that provide a means by which various operationalizations of IIV can be accurately observed over an appropriate temporal frame to garner clearer understanding of the dynamic phenomenon under investigation. When methodological approaches are theoretically informed and the temporal frame and number of assessments align with the dynamic lifespan developmental phenomenon of interest, researchers gain greater precision in their observations of within-person variability and the extent to which these meaningful short-term fluctuations influence important domains of health and well-being. With technological advancements fueling enhanced methodologies and analytic approaches, IIV research will continue to be at the vanguard of pioneering designs for elucidating developmental change at the individual level and scaling it up to generalize to populations of interest.
