Cognitive Approach Flashcards
What is the definition of personality according to cognitive approach?
People have different ways of processing information
What did Lewin do?
Described mental representations of important elements of our lives and how we organize them within our life space
What was Lewin’s theory of behavior?
Life space is a function of the person and their cultural environment
According to Lewin, what is the psychological field?
Total sum of all forces and influences that can impact a person’s behavior.
According to Lewin, what is the life space?
Person’s unique experience and reality (feelings, thoughts, goals, experiences, etc.)
What was Kelly’s theory?
Personal construct theory
What is Kelly’s man-the-scientist approach?
People generate, test and change their hypothesis about the world
What is the personal construct theory?
Idea that we attempt to predict and control as many life events as possible through template matching, which will be replaced, and they don’t match reality
What are personal constructs?
Bipolar cognitive structures used to interpret and predicts events
According to Kelly, what cause differences in personality?
Result of different ways people construe the world
What is another way people differ in their constructs?
In the way they organize their constructs, there is a limitless number of constructs and ways to organize them
According to Kelly, what is the cause of psychological disorders?
Defect in construct systems, not traumatic past events
According to Kelly, what is the cause of most construct problem?
Anxiety
What is Kelly’s treatment for psychological issues?
Help clients try on new templates and regain ability to make sense of their world
What are cognitive-affective units?
Cognitive variables that account for individual different in the way people act?
Cognitive-affective units were created in response to what other theory?
Behaviorism viewed the elements between the stimulus and the response as a black box (unknown and useless)
What are the 5 cognitive-affective units?
- Encoding: categories for encoding information
- Expectation/belief: expectations for outcomes of behaviors and self-efficacy
- Affect: feelings and emotions
- Goals and values
- Competencies and self-regulatory plan: perceived abilities and plans for changing one’s behaviors and internal stages
Within the cognitive-affective units framework, how are individual differences explained?
Everyone possesses different set of mental representations and how easily certain information is depends on a person
What is the most important cognitive structure?
Mental representations or self-concepts
What are self-schemas?
Cognitive representation of ourselves that we use to process relevant information
How do researchers determine what someone’s self-schema is?
They look at how long it takes to process a question asking about a certain trait. The faster the response, the more likely it is to be part of self-schema
What is the self-reference effect?
It is easier to access and remember words/information that describe yourself
What are possibles selves?
Cognitive representation of the kind of person we might become someday (future occupation, attributes we might possess, dreams, fears, etc.)
What are two functions of possibles selves?
- Provide incentives for future behaviors (will this take me closer to my future self)
- Help interpret meaning of behaviors (stronger emotional reactions to events relevant to possible selves)
Possibles selves also predict?
Future behaviors, since what is within our possible selves will most likely be future decisions
What is Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy?
Therapy that identifies inappropriate thoughts as the cause of mood disorders and self-defeating behaviors
What is the goal of CBT?
Help clients recognize inappropriate thoughts and replace them with more appropriate ones
What is one limitation of CBT? One strength?
It doesn’t work on everyone and limited to problems based on irrational thinking. However, it is very effective for depression/anxiety and less likely to have relapse
What is Rational Emotive Behavior therapy?
Belief that people are depressed/anxious because of faulty reasoning and reliance on irrational beliefs?
What is the A-B-C process?
A. Activating experiences (breakup)
b. Irrational Belief (unworthy of love)
C. Emotional consequence (depression)
According to rational Emotive Behavior therapy, why does the ABC process cause problems?
Because people jump from A to C and don’t consider B as the source of negative reaction.
What are the two goals of Rational Emotive Behavior therapy?
- Clients must see how they rely on irrational beliefs and faulty reasoning.
- Therapist works with clients to replace irrational beliefs with rational one
What is repertory grid technique?
Way to measure personal constructs by creating a list of different people encountered in daily life and comparing the similarities/differences between them. This give researchers a list of main constructs
What is a limitation of the grid technique?
Large degree of interpretations and assumptions
