Today’s Goals

  • Mini review: Self-compassion, self-esteem
  • Consider cultural differences in the self (catch-up)
  • Understand ability, interests, and drive, and how they combine to produce accomplishment
  • Understand the cognitive, personality, and environmental approaches to creativity

 

Mini-Review

  • What are some of the desirable things that correlate with self-esteem? Positive, life satisfaction
  • What are some desirable things that do not consistently correlate with self-esteem? Drug use, drinking, sex, etc.

Not consistently correlated

  • What are the three components of self-compassion?

Common humanity, treat self with kindness, take mindful approach to the negative aspects of the self

  • How is self-compassion different than self-esteem?

SE: more narcissistic, evaluation (comparison to others), times of failure are distorted, negative reaction SC: connect you with others, common humanity, gives buffer in times of failure

 

Accomplishment

  • Depends on
    • Ability/Intelligence (cognitive) o Interests (affective) o Mastery/Drive (conative)

Drive – have good plans, good energy levels, really working hard toward whatever goals

Business/academic success, art/expression, occupational attainment, income level

  • Person and Environment fit

Good fit between everything that an individual finds themselves in

 

Overall chart – ultimate goal to reach tenure (in life goals)

 

Ability

  • 3 general areas
  1. Spatial-Mechanical
  2. Verbal-Linguistic
  3. Numerical-Quantitative

‘g’: general intelligence – combination to the extent that there is one ability, one factor

As you move toward the center, complexity increases

  • Piaget, ‘Intelligence is what you use when you don’t know what to do.’
  • “General mental ability represents the complexity/ sophistication of a person’s intellectual repertoire.” Abstraction – different ways ability can be applied to different things
  • More ‘g’ predicts greater accomplishment, even at very high levels (top 1%)

Correlates of ‘g’

Educational Achievement .70-.80
Work Performance .20-.60
Income .30-.40
Criminal Behaviour -.20
SES Origin .40
SES .50-.70
Assortative Mating .50
Interests .20-.30

Correlations across the full spectrum of ability

General Intelligence: results of these tests

Strong correlation with educational achievement • Specific pattern of abilities important Seems to be important to prediction as well

  • STEM fields have especially high math ability Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine
  • ‘g’ predicts magnitude of accomplishment More ability seems good for accomplishment
  • Ability type predicts field

Tends to predict what field you’re in

Ability gradient with the STEM fields doing better on standardized tests

STEM fields find visual abilities to be much lower in comparison with the other fields, while spatial and math abilities stay much higher

 

Interests

 

Represents 2 common models

  1. 6 domains of interest
  2. 2 dimensional approach – things vs. people

 

Mastery

  • Compare this to intuitions about ‘interests’, but a distinct idea
  • Think:
    • zeal, will, grit, industriousness o drive, energy, tempo
  • Extreme accomplishment involves hard work o (and long hours)

 

Correspondence between these things is what leads to satisfaction or satisfactoriness (objectively good)

If interests fit well with that is expected of you and how you are rewarded If your abilities fit well with what abilities are required from you

 

For more thought…

  • Compare these findings to recent debates in media about standardized tests, intelligence, ‘grit’, etc.
  • What are the implications of these findings for career selection?
  • What are the implications of these findings for well-being?
    • Might it differ depending on the facet of well-being considered?
  • What about ‘creativity’?

 

  • Nov 11 –

 

Creativity

  • little c- creativity (personal) big C- Creativity (consensual) • Criteria for creativity: o originality (unique); o usefulness ;
    • surprising (not obvious, even if new) o (need some of all)
  • Cognitive, Personality, and Social approaches

 

Creativity: Cognitive

  • Divergent Thinking

Thinking about things in new/unusual ways

  • Reduced ‘latent inhibition’

Block out unusual/crazy ideas – helpful to creativity Associated with things like schizophrenia, etc.

  • Remote Associates Test

Get 3 words – job is to come up with the one common theme or one word that can be paired with those 3 o Fish/Mine/Rush o Back/Step/Screen o Cottage/Swiss/Cake

  • Unusual uses; ‘what makes sound?’

Unusual Uses Task: give participants opportunity to generate possible creative answersT o number, originality, flexibility across categories, elaboration/detail

 

Creativity: Personality

  • Link with Openness

More likely to pay attention to distracting information

  • Link with IQ & expertise
  • Link with mental illness

Link with craziness o Mad genius paradox: tend to have less average mental health issues

Individuals at the most creative end tend to experience more mental health issues (more prone to mental illness)

 

Creativity: Environment

  • Norm violation o Actual vs. vicarious experience in virtual reality o g., making breakfast as usual or not
  • Multicultural experiences o Moderated by openness

Broad cultural factors o E.g., dark ages vs. golden ages