Psychopathology - cognitive approach Flashcards
According to the cognitive explanation, what is abnormality caused by?
Irrational and negative thought processes i.e. faulty information processing. How people perceive, reason and judge the world around them can be the root of many disorders, especially depression
What 2 cognitive explanations are there?
Beck’s negative triad - negative thinking
Ellis’s ABC model
What does Beck’s negative triad suggest?
Beck suggested people with depression become trapped in a cycle of negative thoughts. Beck proposed that depressed people tend to selectively attend to he negative aspects of a situation and ignore the positive aspects. They have a tendency to view themselves, the world, and the future in pessimistic wats - the triad of impairment
What are the three aspects of the cognitive triad?
Negative view os the self - i am incompetent and undeserving
Negative view of the future - problems will not disappear , there will always be emotional pain
Negative view of the world - it’s a hostile, cold, hard place
What is it believed that the negative thinking in Becks negative triad stems from?
According to Beck, it stems from negative self-schemas. A self-schema is a package of ideas that we have about ourselves People who have become depressed have developed negative self-schemas and become depressed have developed negative self-schemas and therefore they interpret all the information about themselves in a negative way
What are the two types of negative schemas suggested in Beck’s negative triad?
Ineptness schema - an expectation of failure
Self-blame schema - a feeling of responsibility for all misfortunes
How are negative schemas maintained?
By cognitive biases - which cause a misperception of reality.
Arbitrary interference: conclusions drawn without uridine’s evidence e.g. a host at a dinner party forgets to put salt in the dinner and now assumes they are worthless and cancels the party.
Minimisation: minimalising any positive events in life
How does the negative schemas and cognitive distortions affect individuals?
Feeds into an individuals own self-perception and views about their place in the world, which can potentially lead to depression
What did Ellis propose in the ABC model?
that depression was mainly the result of irrational beliefs about external events. To explain this he proposed a simple concept known as the ABC model. Ellis claimed depression was not really the result of the activating event, but more based on the accompanying beliefs about the event
What are the two cognitive biases suggested by Beck’s negative triad?
Arbitrary interference
Minimisation
What do the letters ABC stand for?
Activation event
Beliefs (about A)
Consequences (of b, not A)
During activation what may lead to depression?
Irrational beliefs
During activation was does not lead to depression?
rational beliefs
During the beliefs stage of Ellis’s ABC model, what would and wouldn’t lead to depression
Depression = undesirable thought ad emotions
No depression = desirable emotions and thoughts
During the consequence stage of Ellis’s ABC model what would and wouldn’t lead to depression?
Depression = undesirable behaviour
No depression = desirable behaviour
What are the added letters to Ellis’s ABC model and what do they stand for? What where they added for?
D - disupting (irrational beliefs) - pragmatic disputing / empirical disputing
E - Effects
Added for treating of CBT
What 2 examples of irrational beliefs did Ellis also identify?
Utopianism - dreams and nightmares that concern the ways in which people arrange their lives
Musterbationary thinking - a type of irrational thinking that involves rigid and unrealistic expectations for oneself or others
what are three strengths of the cognitive explanations of depression?
Practical applications
Supporting evidence by The Temple Wisconsin study
Takes into account other aspects such as genes and environment
What are two weaknesses of the cognitive explanations of depression?
doesn’t fully outline the steps and processes for how the sufferer came to think in this way in much detail
Some psychologists believe faulty info processing is causally an ‘effect’ of depression as opposed to a ‘cause’
What practical applications come from the cognitive explanations for depression?
CBT specifically REBT - the high success rate of CBT validates the cognitive theories
What supporting evidence is there for the cognitive explanations of depression and what did it find?
The Temple Wisconsin trudy of cognitive vulnerability to depression studied university students, none of which were suffering with depression, and were assessed every few months for 2 years. Results for the first. years showed 17% f those with high scores of negative thinking went on to experience a period of severe depression compared to 1% of those with low scores
while the cognitive explanations aren’t holistic, how do they still take into account other aspects?
Beck and Ellis both suggest that aspects of the environment contribute to the development of depression and negative thinking. Ellis discusses activating events whereas beck suggests people develop negative outlooks in life because of rejection in childhood
Why do some psychologists believe that faulty information processing is actually an ‘effect’ of depression as opposed to a ‘cause’?
depressed people undoubtedly have negative thoughts but do the negative thoughts help cause depression, or do they merely occur as a result of being depressed which could be due to biological/chemical imbalances in the brain
