Differential psychology

Differential psychology studies a ways in which individuals differ in their behavior together with the processes that underlie it. This is the discipline that develops classifications taxonomies of psychological individual differences. This is distinguished from other aspects of psychology in that although psychology is ostensibly a discussing of individuals, contemporary psychologists often explore groups, or effort to discover general psychological processes that apply to any individuals. This specific area of psychology was number one named and still maintain the realize of “differential psychology” by William Stern in his book 1900.

While prominent psychologists, including Stern, work been widely credited for the concept of individual differences, historical records show that it was Charles Darwin 1859 who first spurred the scientific interest in the study of individual differences. His interest was further pursued by his half-cousin Francis Galton in his try to quantify individual differences among people.

For example, in evaluating the effectiveness of a new therapy, the intend performance of the therapy in one treatment group might be compared to the intend effectiveness of a placebo or a well-known therapy in a second, guidance group. In this context, differences between individuals in their reaction to the experimental and control manipulations are actually treated as errors rather than as interesting phenomena to study. This approach is applied because psychological research depends upon statistical controls that are only defined upon groups of people.

Methods of research

To study individual differences, psychologists use a set of methods. The method is to compare and analyze the psychology and behaviour of individuals or groups under different environmental conditions. By correlating observed psychological and behavioral differences with so-called accompanying environments, the relative roles of different variables in psychological and behavioral coding can be probed. Psychophysiological experiments on both humans and other mammals add EEG, PET-scans, MRI, functional MRI, neurochemistry experiments with neurotransmitter and hormonal systems, caffeine and controlled drug challenges. These methods can be used for a search of biomarkers of consistent, biologically-based behavioural patterns temperament traits and symptoms of psychiatric disorders. Other sets of methods put behavioural experiments, to see how different people behave in similar settings. Behavioural experiments are often used in personality and social psychology, and include lexical and self-report methods where people are required to prepare paper-based and computer-based forms prepared by psychologists.