Individual Differences

- individuals differ in their behaviour and personal qualities so no one is average

- everyone is genetically unique and this uniqueness is displayed theough their behaviour. So everyone behaves differently

- all behaviour can be measures

- understanding disorders:

     - Freud: Phobias

     - Baron-Cohen: Autism

- Measuring Differences:

     - Gould: IQ

     - Hancock: Psychopaths

- able to learn more about human behaviors because all behaviours are studied

- able to measures differences between individuals in qualities such as personality, intelligence, memory etc

- studies are often high in ecological validity as they often take place in real life envionments

- allows both quantitative and qualitative data to be gathered

- research methods used may not be objective, so open to bias lowering the external validity

- it creates divisions between people because some are seen as 'different'

- it is difficut to define and measure things such as personality, intelligence etc

- ethics - protection from psychological harm (being called different)