Chapter 15 Flashcards
How does the Cognitive approach explain Differences in personality?
differences in the way people process information
What your idea of the world is (your expectations are compared with real life)
But! everyone has different templates and expectations?
Where do templates come from?
Your experiences with the world
What is Kurt Lewin’s Field theory of behavior?
Life space (LS) behavior (B) is a function of the person (p) and their cultural environment (e)
B= f(LS) B = f(p,e)
Basically it helps predict someones behaviour
What is Kurt Lewin’s Psychological field?
The total sum of all forces and influences that can impact a person’s behavior. It incorporates situational, cultural, and social elements
- Everyone is in a psychological field, including life space. This causes behaviour. (we are all in different life spaces)
What is Kurt Lewin’s Life space?
This represents a person’s unique experience and reality. It includes their feelings, thoughts, perceptions, goals, and experience
Who is George Kelly and what theory did he propose?
Psychology of Personal Construct.
He was a psycho-therapist.
What is Personal Construct Theory?
Saw each person as a scientists
- Each person followed a sort of scientific method:
*Observe
*Explain
*Predict
*Control
From this people build constructs
- He thought constructs were bi-polar (one or the other)
- Ex. Friendly - unfriendly
Intelligent - unintelligent
What are personal constructs in Personal Construct Theory?
Cognitive structures people use to interpret and predict events
*People do not use identical personal constructs
*Individuals do not organize constructs in an identical manner
*Bipolar: *Friendly–unfriendly (one construct)
*Intelligent–unintelligent
Basically frameworks
Are the constructs always bipolar?
People who you know, and people who get alone better doesn’t have to be bipolar. More grey
How are constructs layered?
ex.
Friendly–unfriendly
Helpful
Talented
(basically a hierarchy of constructs. You go further down, the more you know about the person)
What does Kelly emphasize about people?
We don’t just react to environment, be we are active and creative
We also represent our environments (our constructs are cumulations of all our experiences)
How do constructs work?
- patterns that we create in our mind and attempt to fit over the realities of the world
- Modify constructs when they don’t fit the world (and increase how many constructs we have)
- test our constructs for the ability to predict what will happen in our lives.
With sufficient time and experience, and if we are willing to learn from our mistakes, we can evaluate all of our interpretations of the world in which we live
Explain Kelly’s fundamental postulate?
Fundamental postulate
“a person’s processes are psychologically channelized by the ways in which he anticipates events
Basically: we act in a way with how we expect the situation to be based on past events.
What are collalaries?
What the template / construct does
Explain Kelly’s Individuality and Organization corollaries:
*Individuality: Corollary Persons differ from each other in their construction of events.
*Two people cannot play the same role in a situation.
*They will therefore interpret the event differently
*Organization Corollary
*When faced with conflict, there may be solutions that contradict one another. *Which do we choose?
- First thing you choose is top of personal hierarchy
*E.g., stupid might work but we choose smart
What causes: Differences in personality?
result from differences in the way people “construe the world”
*Initial thoughts of people to make sense of others and their behavior
*Individuals may use the same constructs and construe the world differently (maybe different experiences)
According to personal construct theory why do people suffer from psychological problems?
defects in their construct systems
*Past traumatic experiences are not the cause of the problems *People become anxious when personal constructs fail to make sense of the events in their lives
*People frequently generate a new construct to replace the inadequate one
What are Cognitive Personality Variables?
*Elements between the stimulus and response
*Constitute to individual differences in people
*Referred as cognitive-affective units
*Part of a complex system that links situations people encounter with their behaviour
Explain the cognitive-affective units?
-Encodings
- Expectations and beliefs
-Affects
-Goals and Values
-Competencies and Self-Regulatory Plans
-Encodings
Categories (constructs) for encoding information about one’s self, other people, events, and situations
- Expectations and beliefs
Expectations for what will happen in certain situations, for outcomes for certain behaviors, and for one’s personal efficacy
-Affects
Feelings, emotions, and emotional response
-Goals and Values
Individual goals and values, and life projects
-Competencies and Self-Regulatory Plans
Perceived abilities, plans, and strategies for changing and maintaining one’s behavior and internal state
What is the way Cognitive Personality varies?
-> Individual differences in cognitive framework is due to difference in mental representations of people
- Individuals differ in the manner they access stored information
*People react to the same situation differently
What is the Cognitive Representations of the Self?
Mental representations are unique to individual
What is the Self-concept?
Cognitive representation of oneself
*Relatively stable over time
*Play a central role in the way people process information
What are Self-Schemas?
*Cognitive representations of oneself that one uses to organize and process personal relevant information
*Consists of the important behaviors and attributes (ex. religion, artist, school)
What would the schema and self concept be in terms of the body?
Self-concept: Body
Schema: Bones, blood, organs (the finer more detailed plan)
What are Trait concepts?
Part of self-schema
*People behave differently due to individual differences in self-schemas
*Provide a framework for organizing and storing information
What is the Self-reference effect?
*Easy remembering of self-referent words as they are processed through self-schemas
- Study on this (ppl remembered personally relevant traits more then rhymable words etc)
What are Possible Selves?
*Cognitive representations of the kind of person we might become someday
*Behavior is influenced by cognitive representations of present and future self
*Provide incentives for future behavior
*Helps to interpret the meaning of behavior and events in our lives
What is the current self?
Cognitive representation of them as they are now
What is the idealized self?
Representation of themself, as they’d like to be
Researchers use possible selves to study varied behaviors, what was the result?
It is difficult to improve if you cannot imagine it:
ex.
*Binge drinking, academic performance
*Weight loss, adherence to an exercise program
- If your possible self doesn’t include stopping drinking, or doing well in school, it will be harder to acheive
What does Cognitive Psychotherapy do? (Note: Kelly is very similar)
*Helps recognize inappropriate thoughts and replace them with appropriate ones
*Cognitive psychologists teach clients how to deal with future and recurring problems
*Limited to psychological problems that are based in irrational and self-defeating thinking
Who created Rational Emotive Therapy?
Albert Ellis
What is Rational Emotive Therapy?
People become depressed, anxious, and upset due to faulty reasoning and reliance on irrational beliefs
Explain the ABC process of Rational Emotive Therapy?
Three steps in distress:
*Activating experience (dumped)
*Irrational belief (never find love again!)
*Emotional consequence (Cry and sad)
Goal of rational emotive therapy?
*Clients must see their irrational beliefs and identify the fault in reasoning
*To replace irrational beliefs with rational one
