Question

Describe a specific ability possessed by yourself or someone you know at which you or the other person is very good.   What kind of intelligence does this ability show? How does this ability help individuals adapt to their culture, and how does it help the culture survive? Describe a test that would measure the ability you indicated as a form of intelligence. Give a few examples of the type of questions or tasks your test would include, and how they would be scored. How would you standardize your test, and how would you determine its reliability and validity? Could your test still be valid if it was biased, and some groups of people scored better than others?

Describe group differences in intelligence. Are group differences in intelligence inherited? Explain why or why not. What evidence does the text cite?

Answer 1

Empathy is a strong ability that i possess and I consider this to be closely asociated with three forms of intelligence:

1. INTRAPERSONAL INTELLIGENCE- knowing oneself and expertise in self-introspection, a clearer self-concept, strong sense of self-worth, self-esteem etc.

2. INTERPERSONAL INTELLIGENCE- the ability to understand others, their emotions and to easily communiate with others

3. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE - the ability to know one's own emotions and those of other's, to think about, have a perspective, manage the emotions and control them according to situations.

I think so because knowing oneself, having a congruency with oneself is the most important ekement to be able to understand others, so that you can better relate to others, their situations, where later interpersonal and emotional intelligence help the individual to better undersatnd the state of others, grasp their emotions and be in sync with the situation altogether. It helps an individual to have better control over his/ her environment.

Culture includes all those norms that are either explicit or implicit, to get a hold of all those aspects, one necessarly needs to understand the roots, the thoughts, the history of that culture which is making a particular culture come to the shape that it is in. By being empathetic to all these aspects, one is holistically able to grasp a particular culture and it becomes easier for the person to understand why a particular set of people are behaving in a set pattern under the influence of their culture. THIS ULTIMATELY ENHANCES THE ABILITY OF A PERSON TO EMPATHISE with people belonging that culture, accept that culture, adapt to it and ultimately leads to the overall survival of that culture.

TEST- Davis' Interpersonal Reactivity Index (1994) that caters to both cognitive and affective aspects of empathy or Bar- on's EQ-i that would give an enhaced perspective on the ability pertaining to all three forms of intelligence stated above.

My test would include following questions: (scoring being based on a likert scale ranging from 1 to 5 where 1 is strongly disagree to 5 being strongly agreed)

1. I can feel the pain of the person who describes me the traumatic situation he/she was in.

2. I easily get on the verge of crying seeing a helpless poor individual.

3. When someone tells me of his/her traumatic experience I get overwhelmed. (Reverse scoring to remove response bias from 1st question)

4. I can imagine myself in the same situation while the other person i sconversing with me.

To test the reliability and validity I will conduct a pilot study on more than 100 people to find if my questions convey the exact meaning that i wanted to and find if the results over a set period of time reveal the same result for the same individuals, to test the reliability, The uniformity and consstency brought by the likert scoring, will bring to the standardizationa and uniform nature of the test.

If a particular group is constantly scoring higher than other, then the test would no longer be valid as the basic standardization would b considered to have failed as it uniformly doesnt convey the same meaning to people across the entire situation, if I do not specify the specific population I aim to target though my test.