Essay Example on I will be considering four main topics within Psychology

Introduction Within this essay I will be considering four main topics within Psychology which are Memory Context Intelligence Personality Each of these areas are important when looking at Psychology within the workplace due to the impact that they can have on the way that act or the type of training that they need The two areas that I will be discussing further are intelligence and personality the reason that I have chosen to focus on these two are because I think that they are the two that could have the biggest effect on the way that people work and the type of careers that they initially choose for themselves 2 Intelligence 2 1 What is Intelligence There are many ways that intelligence can be defined Sternberg 2004 p 72 states that intelligence is is the capacity to learn from experience and adaptation to one's environment however there are some important implications with this definition which are that people need to pay attention to cultural differences In order for this definition to work it means that people need to be able to adapt from one environment to another successfully There are two ways that culture can be distinguished which are Individualistic cultures e g United Kingdom and the USA which focuses more on individuals been responsible for their own behaviours and actions Eysenck 2016 Collective cultures e g Asian and African cultures which emphasise on an entire group rather than a specific individual Eysenck 2016 

However due to most of these correlations been fairly low which means that the data cannot be accounted for in terms of the general factor He also argued that there are certain specific factors associated with each test However others did not agree with this one of which was Thurstone 1938 didn't believe that there was a need to assume that there was a general factor He did however identify seven factors which he referred to as primary mental abilities which are Inductive reasoning Verbal meaning Numerical ability Spatial ability Perceptual speed Memory And verbal fluency Each of these abilities correlate positively with one another Due to the factor analysis of Thurstone's seven factors present a general factor which is ignored by Thurstone Sternberg 1985 Other theoretical approaches into intelligence are that it is organized hierarchically The most influential hierarchical theorist in Carroll 1993 who argued that both Spearman and Thurstone should be combined Due to the evidence that he collected from over 460 data sets collected over 60 years from 130 000 people Figure 2 shows the three level hierarchy which are A general factor G this is the main factor used in IQ testing A various general factor which is used when coping with novel problems and situations And finally there is specific factors associated with one item or small number of tests The final theory of intelligence I will be discussing is multiple intelligences which was developed by Howard Gardener 1983 He strongly argued that most intelligence tests and theories of intelligence are based entirely on a narrow view of the nature of intelligence He argued that there are seven separate intelligences but there is no single general factor Figure 3 show Gardner's seven factors Eysenck 2016