Cognitive Perspective

Question 1

The cognitive approach

Answer 1

Explains differences in personality as differences in the way people process information

Question 2

Cognitive assumptions

Answer 2

Sees the human being as a complex but orderly information processing system
We integrate, organise, store, and retrieve information
We develop characteristics patterns of thinking

Question 3

Cognitive organisation is good

Answer 3

It saves mental resources

Allows us to understand events using small pieces of information

Question 4

Cognitive organisation can be bad

Answer 4

Eg in unusual circumstances

Eg stuck in ‘negative’ perceptions

Question 5

Our thoughts influence our actions in 3 ways

Answer 5

The way we perceive and interpret the world
The way we regard ourselves
The way we set goals and plan to achieve these goals

Question 6

Schemas

Answer 6

Mental organisations or categorisations of knowledge based on experience
Impose order on perception - they are the glue that holds together ‘order’ in the chaos of information

Question 7

Self-schema

Answer 7

Cognitive representations of ourselves that we use to organise and process self-relevant information.
Your self-scheme consists of the behaviours and attributes that are most important to you.
Once we have developed a scheme about ourselves there is a strong tendency for that scheme to be maintained by a bias in what we attend to, a bias in what we remember, and a bias in what we are prepared to accept as true about ourselves: self-perpetuating (easier to encode and recall information that is consistent with self-schemas)

Question 8

Possible selves

Answer 8

Are cognitive representations of the kind of person we might become someday
Include roles and occupations we aspire to, and roles we fear we might fall into.
Also include the attributes we think we might possess in the future.
Two functions:
Provide incentives for future behaviour
Help us interpret the meaning of our behaviour and the events in our lives

Question 9

George Kelly: personal constructs

Answer 9

The cognitive structures we use to interpret and predict events.
We have our own construction of reality
Anticipations/expectations; test expectations; adjust understandings; develop a way of interacting with the world.
Personal vision of reality
Mental representations: based on perceptions of past experiences; used as bias for future perceptions, interpretations, and behaviours.

Question 10

Personal constructs: predictive efficiency

Answer 10

Constructs maintained if they have predictive efficiency
Similar constructs -> basis for friendship
Chronically accessible constructs
Personality constructs change and evolve over time, depending on if they are able to predict things

Question 11

Personally constructs: structure

Answer 11

Personal constructs are bipolar dimensions (eg good vs bad, tall vs short, friendly vs unfriendly) which allows for constructive alternativism
Organisation of constructs are hierarchical

Question 12

Kelly: Corollaries

Answer 12

Our personal constructs develop due to the operation of particular interpretive processes (called corollaries)
Kelly identified 11 corollaries (like rules for organisation of personal constructs)

Question 13

Organisation corollary

Answer 13

The hierarchical organisation of constructs for a given individual

Question 14

Dichotomy corollary

Answer 14

Bipolarity of constructs

Question 15

Experience corollary

Answer 15

We may change constructs, based on experience

Evolving constructs

Question 16

Communality corollary

Answer 16

People with similar personal constructs will behave in similar ways/share similar views

Question 17

Range of convenience corollary

Answer 17

Some constructs are applicable to many situations, but others are more narrow
How widely we apply our constructs is unique to an individual

Question 18

Kelly: personality assessment

Answer 18

Kelly developed the Repertory Grid Technique for assessing personality
This generally invokes:
Creating a list of people you know, then people are compared in the list to elicit an understanding of an individual’s personal construct system
Provides an indication of how someone views the world

Question 19

Issues with Repertory Grid Technique: Kelly

Answer 19

No standard way of scoring it
Does not yield a score to interpret
Reliant on the ability of someone to describe the constructs they use
People can interpret words differently

Question 20

Cognitive therapy: Kelly

Answer 20

In Kelly’s model, people experiencing psychological problems are not constructing the world around them accurately
The therapist needs to make the client aware of the problems in their personal construct system and then they can be changed
Therapist must understand the client’s subjective worldview
Controlled elaboration: challenge maladaptive constructs and replace them with new ones

Question 21

Cognitive therapy: Ellis

Answer 21

An important early advocate of cognitive therapy was Albert Ellis.
Believed people who have emotional problems (eg anxiety, depression) have irrational beliefs that guide their interpretation of events.
Used Rational Emotive Therapy to help clients change these demanding irrational beliefs and replace them with more rational ones

Question 22

The basic model of rational emotive behaviour therapy

Answer 22

A: activation event (actual event, clients immediate interpretation of event)
B: beliefs (evaluations, rational/irrational eg I am going to fail)
C: consequences (emotions, behaviours)

D: disputation (evidence?)
E: education
F: feeling (new feeling)

Question 23

Ellis: psychological disturbance

Answer 23

Failure to accept that we are fallible (can't always be right/perfect)
'Musterbarion' (we must be good, must do this...)
Ego disturbance (if we can't meet our own demands we get upset)
Discomfort disturbance (believe life should be easy so upset when it isn't)

Question 24

Cognitive therapy: Beck’s therapeutic approach

Answer 24

Developed from the work of both Kelly and Ellis
Cognitive restructuring or reframing
Cast aside faulty schemas and build new ones
Negative cognitive triad = negative thinking about the self, world, and the future

Question 25

Hostile cognition

Answer 25

Aggressive responses are more likely when a situation activate hostile thoughts and emotions
When hostile cognition are highly accessible, the likelihood of acting aggressively increases
Boys with a history of reacting to minor events aggressively tend to interpret unintentional acts as deliberate and hostile

Question 26

Recall of information in women vs men

Answer 26

Women are better able to recall emotional memories than men
Men develop independent self-construals (self-concepts are relatively unrelated to the cognitive representations they have of others)
Women develop interdependent self-construals (self-concepts highly related to the cognitive representations they have of others and their relationships with those people)

Question 27

Negative schemas

Answer 27

A cognitive structure containing memories about and associations with depressing events and thoughts
Attend to negative information, ignore positive information, and interpret ambiguous information in depressing ways

Question 28

Negative cognitive style

Answer 28

How we interpret negative life experiences

Tend to attribute their problems to stable (enduring) and global (widespread) causes