1 Psychology 305: Theories of Personality Lecture 18

2 Announcements 1. Please note that grades for the second exam are now available on the course website. The mean score on the exam was 68% (SD = 18%, range=0-100%). As indicated in the circulated on Friday, Sabrina held a review session for the midterm exam today. If you were unable to attend the session and would like to review your exam, please contact Sabrina to schedule an appointment to meet. Sabrina’s office hour will be cancelled on Thursday, July 21 st.

3 2.Please note that course evaluations are available online. If you have not received an directing you to the evaluations for this course, you may provide your evaluation at: Course evaluations will be available until July 26 th. Your feedback is extremely valuable—both to the Psychology Department and to me.

4 1. What therapeutic approach did Rogers develop to help people become fully functioning? (continued) 2. How effective is client-centered therapy? 3. What are the goals of the cognitive self-regulation perspective on personality? 4. What is the schematic view of cognitive processing? 5.What is the connectionist view of cognitive processing? Lecture 18 The Phenomenological and Cognitive Self-Regulation Perspectives

5 6. Do we process information at two levels? 7. Can personality be described in terms of “cognitive styles?”

By the end of today’s class, you should be able to: 3. compare and contrast the schematic and connectionist views of cognitive processing discuss Rogers’ therapeutic conditions and process of therapeutic change, as illustrated in the film “Three Approaches to Psychotherapy.” 2. distinguish between a schema, an exemplar, a prototype, and a fuzzy set.

7 5. define Mischel’s cognitive-social learning person variables. 4. discuss dual-processing models of cognitive processing.

8 Rogers maintained that a therapist must satisfy 3 conditions in order to create an environment in which a patient can solve her or his own problem: 1. Therapist congruence 2. Unconditional positive regard 3. Empathetic understanding What therapeutic approach did Rogers develop to help people become fully functioning? (continued)

9 Rogers identified 7 stages that characterize the process of therapeutic change: 1. The patient is unwilling to communicate about him- or herself, refuses to own his or her feelings, and is rigid and resistant to change. 2. The patient is able to discuss external events and other people. However, the patient continues to refuse to own his or her feelings. 3. The patient is able to discuss his or her feelings but only in the past or future tense. S/he avoids discussing present feelings.

10 5. The patient is able to express feelings in the present, without hesitation. The patient begins to trust his or her own judgments and make new discoveries about him- or herself. 4. The patient begins to express feelings in the present. However, s/he does so with hesitation, distrust, and fear. The patient begins to recognize incongruities between his or her self-concept and experience.

11 7. The patient is able to generalize in-therapy experiences to the world beyond the therapeutic setting. At this stage, the patient becomes fully functioning. 6. The patient is able to allow into awareness those experiences that were previously denied or distorted. The patient begins to develop unconditional positive self-regard. A “physiological loosening” is observed.

12 How effective is client-centered therapy? Rogers was an empiricist who continually sought empirical support for his theory and therapeutic approach. Among the studies that he conducted to assess the effectiveness of his therapeutic approach was the “Chicago Study” (Rogers and Dymond, 1954).

13 Hypotheses: Following client-centered therapy, (a) patients experience smaller discrepancies between their “actual” and “desired” selves. (b) patients assimilate into their self-concept experiences that were previously denied or distorted. (c) patients’ exhibit greater social concern and emotional maturity.

14 Method: (a)Measures: Q-Sort (Each patient sorted 100 self-referent cards into groups to describe the self, the desired self, and the ordinary person). The Self-Other Attitude Scale. The Willoughby Emotional Maturity Scale.

15 Therapy6-12 Month Follow-Up Design (simplified): Control group: “Normal” individuals who volunteered to take part in a personality study. Testing Points Therapy group: Individuals who sought therapy.

16 Major Findings: (a) Patients in the therapy group showed smaller discrepancies between their actual and desired selves after therapy than before. Participants in the control group showed almost no change at follow-up. (b) Patients in the therapy group showed significant changes in their self-concept (i.e., self-beliefs) after therapy. They showed little change in their perception of the ordinary person after therapy.

17 (c) Patients in the therapy group rated themselves as more socially-concerned and emotionally mature after therapy than before. Participants in the control group did not report significant changes at follow-up. (d) Even after therapy, patients in the therapy group did not attain levels of psychological adjustment comparable to those exhibited by participants in the control group.

18 General Conclusion: In general, people receiving client-centered therapy show some improvement. However, this improvement tends to fall short of the optimal. The typical person receiving client-centered therapy does not appear to approach Stage 7 (i.e., become fully functioning). Instead, the typical patient appears to advance to Stage 3 or 4 of the process of therapeutic change.

19 Other researchers have assessed the effectiveness of client-centered therapy. In general, their findings have been consistent with those produced by the Chicago Study. E.g., Butler and Haigh (1954): Used the Q-sort procedure to assess participants’ actual and desired selves. A therapy group and a control group were assesed, each comprised of 25 participants.

20  r between actual and desired self at Time 2 (after therapy):.34  r between actual and desired self at Time 1 (before therapy):.01 Therapy group: Control group:  r between actual and desired self at Time 1:.58  r between actual and desired self at Time 2:.59

21 What are the goals of the cognitive self-regulation perspective on personality? The cognitive self-regulation perspective on personality has two primary goals: 1. to describe how the mind processes information (i.e., cognitive processing). 2. to relate individual differences in cognitive processing to personality.

22 What is the schematic view of cognitive processing? This view maintains that cognitive processing relies upon the use of schemas. Schema: A knowledge structure that represents information about a concept, its attributes, and its relationships to other concepts.

23 Kind Warmth My grandmother My mom Mother Thoughtful Disciplinarian Stay-at-home moms June Cleaver Love Working moms Hillary Clinton Gloria Delgado- Pritchett Mother Teresa Exemplars Prototype Fuzzy set Pregnancy Mother Schema

24 Schemas serve several functions. They:  facilitate recognition.  direct attention.  enhance the encoding of information into memory.  provide “default” information to fill in gaps.  provide a framework in which to integrate new information.

25 Thus, schemas act as “cognitive filters” through which we perceive, process, and recall information.

26 Consider the following: A father and his son were involved in a car accident in which the father was killed and the son was seriously injured. The father was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident and his body was taken to a local mortuary. The son was taken by ambulance to a hospital and was immediately wheeled into an operating room. A surgeon was called. Upon seeing the patient, the attending surgeon exclaimed, “Oh my God, it’s my son!” Can you explain this?

27 Medicine Successful Surgeon Caring Admired Knowledgeable Rich Male Hardworking Educated Female Surgeon Schema

28 We have schemas for:  social groups (e.g., ethnic groups, political groups).  the sexes (e.g., females, males).  personality types (e.g., introverts vs. extraverts).  occupations (e.g., lawyer, pharmacist).  relationships.  objects (e.g., boats, houses).  our own self.

Lives in Richmond Runs 5 km daily Athletic Cultured Likes Shakespeare Returned lost wallet to owner Honest Good Kind Helped old man cross street Gave spare change to person in street Attends live theatre Self Self-Schema 29

30 Schemas may also take the form of scripts: schematic representations of temporally organized event sequences. Like other schemas, scripts act as cognitive filters. Consider the following:

31 The procedure is actually quite simple. First arrange things into different bundles depending on makeup. Don’t do too much at once. In the short run this may not seem important, however, complications easily arise. A mistake can be costly. Next, find facilities. Some people must go elsewhere for them. Manipulation of appropriate mechanisms should be self-explanatory. Remember to include all other necessary supplies. Initially the routine will overwhelm you, but soon it will become just another facet of life. Finally, rearrange everything into their initial groups. Return these to their usual places. Eventually they will be used again. Then the whole cycle will have to be repeated. (Bransford & Johnson, 1972, p. 722)

32 Schemas are stored in memory as “association networks” of nodes (i.e., units of information). In an association network, nodes are connected to one another; activation of one node increases the likelihood that associated nodes will also be activated. The stronger the association between nodes, the greater the likelihood that activating one will activate the other.

33 “Spreading Activation” in an Association Network of Nodes

34 Spreading (i.e., partial) activation is thought to account for priming effects. Examples:

35  Tools  Shelf  Book  Car  Motorcycle  Sports  Truck Is this individual male or female?

36 Bargh, Chen, & Burrows (1996) Participants completed a scrambled-sentence tasks containing words relevant to the elderly stereotype (e.g., old, careful, alone, retired, wrinkle, Florida). References to “slowness” were excluded. Timed how long participants took to walk down the corridor after exiting the lab. Participants in the elderly priming condition walked slower than participants in a neutral priming condition.

37 What is the connectionist view of cognitive This view maintains that cognitive processing relies upon networks of simple “neuron-like” processing units, rather than nodes. processing? The processing units are interconnected by links that transmit activation.

38 Example of a Connectionist Network Activation between units can be excitatory or inhibitory.

39 Patterns of activation across multiple units produce cognitive representations (e.g., perceptions, decisions). Distinct patterns of activation across multiple units are associated with distinct cognitive representations (e.g., bread, butter, basketball).

40 Do we process information at two levels? Some theorists have suggested that cognitive processing is characterized by two modes rather than one. Specifically, these theorists have proposed dual-process models of cognitive processing. The two modes of processing may be summarized as follows:

41 Conscious Processor  Symbolic (i.e., involves processing of symbols).  Effortful reasoning.  Deliberate/controlled behaviours.  Inside awareness.  “Rational system.”  Slow.  Uses rules, logic.  “Thinking.”  “Cool” processing.  Reflects explicit knowledge. Intuitive Processor  Connectionist.  Intuitive problem solving.  Automatic/reflexive behaviours.  Outside awareness.  “Experiential system.”  Quick & imprecise.  Affected by emotions.  “Reacting.”  “Hot” processing.  Reflects implicit knowledge.

42 Can personality be described in terms of “cognitive styles?” Many theorists have suggested that individual differences in “cognitive styles” or variables may be used to describe personality. Among the cognitive variables that have been used to describe personality include the following:

43 1.Cognitive-Social Learning Person Variables  Mischel (1990) suggested 5 classes of cognitive variables be used to describe personality: Encoding strategies and personal constructs (reflect “if … then” contingencies) Competencies. Expectancies. Subjective values. Self-regulatory systems and plans.

44 1. What therapeutic approach did Rogers develop to help people become fully functioning? (continued) 2. How effective is client-centered therapy? 3. What are the goals of the cognitive self-regulation perspective on personality? 4. What is the schematic view of cognitive processing? 5.What is the connectionist view of cognitive processing? Lecture 18 The Phenomenological and Cognitive Self-Regulation Perspectives

45 6. Do we process information at two levels? 7. Can personality be described in terms of “cognitive styles?”