1. Cognitive Domain
Chapters 12, 13, & 14

2. Cognitive Topics in Personality
Chapter 12
Cognitive Topics in Personality

3. Introduction
Cognitive approaches to personality focus on differences in how people process information
Cognition ________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
All these mental behaviors add up to what is called information processing – _________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

4. Introduction
Four levels of cognition of interest to personality psychologists
1. Perception
Process of imposing order on information received by our sense organs
2. Interpretation
Process of making sense of, or explaining, events in the world
3. Goals
Standards that people develop for evaluating themselves and others
4. Intelligence

5. Perception Field Dependence-Independence
Pain Tolerance and Sensation Reducing-Augmenting

6. Field Dependence-Independence
“Can’t see the trees for the forest.”
Someone cannot look into the big picture to get the details about the situation
____________________
“Can’t see the forest for the trees.”
Someone cannot look beyond the details to get the big picture about a situation
Field independent (relative to field dependent) people have the ability to focus on details despite the clutter of background information (Witkin, 1954, 1962)

7. Embedded Figures Test
Some have trouble locating simple figures embedded within the more complex surrounding figure (caught in the “forest” and cannot see the “trees”)
Field dependent
Some quickly spot many or all of the embedded figures (can see the “trees” within the “forest”)
Filed independent

8. Field Dependence-Independence
Field dependence-independence and life choices
Education:
Field independent people favor natural sciences, math, engineering, whereas field dependent people favor social sciences and education
Interpersonal relations:
Field independent people are more interpersonally detached, whereas field dependent people are attentive to social cues and oriented toward other people
____________________________________________________________________________________________________

9. Pain Tolerance and Sensation Reducing-Augmenting
Petrie’s reducer-augmenter theory of pain tolerance
People with low pain tolerance had a nervous system that amplified or augmented the subjective impact of sensory input
People with high pain tolerance had a nervous system that dampened or reduced the effects of sensory information
Reducers seek strong stimulation, perhaps in order to compensate for lower sensory reactivity
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Reducers may use substances (nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, other drugs) to artificially “lift” their arousal level

10. Interpretation Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory
Rotter’s Locus of Control
Seligman’s Learned Helplessness
*Learned Optimism

11. Personal Construct Theory
Kelly thought of each person as a scientist and an active agent in her own life
People attempt to understand, predict, and control events
The core of his approach was that ___________________ are the basic unit of personality
Kelly and post-modernism:
Post-modernism is an intellectual position grounded in the notion that reality is constructed, that every person and every culture has unique version of reality, with none having privilege

12. Personal Construct Theory
____________________________________________________
“Constructs… are used to make sense of the world, to try to predict events, and essentially to build one’s terrain map of the world and how to function within it.”
We construe our own behavior – categorizing, interpreting, labeling, and judging ourselves and the world around us
__________________________________________________________________
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To understand the individual, one has to to understand her constructs

13. Personal Construct Theory
____________________________________
A person’s construction system can vary/change based on experience
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Stated differently: An interpretation of an event is open to alternative constructions, which may lead to different courses of action
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Threat is experienced when our central constructs fail to function (e.g., major life crises and traumas)
Result is development of behavioral problems

14. Locus of Control External locus of control: Internal locus of control:
Generalized expectancies that ______________________________
________________ (one is not responsible for major life outcomes)
Internal locus of control:
____________________(one is responsible for major life outcomes)
In general, an internal locus of control is conducive to well-being (exception: situations truly out of one’s control)
People who displayed an internal locus of control:
At age 10 were found to have a reduced risk of obesity at age 30
Completed their degrees in a more timely manner
Had higher credit ratings

16. Learned helplessness
Learned helplessness – ___________________________
____________________________________________________  expectations that one is helpless and encoding the self in helpless terms (Seligman, 1992, 1994)
i.e., the tendency to fail to act to escape from a situation because of a history of repeated failures in the past
In this state one also may become apathetic and despondent, which may generalize and persist  may lead to depression

17. Learned Helplessness

18. Learned helplessness
Causal attributions are the explanations people make about the causes of events
internal causes (e.g., high ability or hard work)
external causes (e.g., the ease of the task or good luck)
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Similarly, we feel worse (e.g., “shame”) when we perceive a failure as reflecting low ability than when it is seen as due to bad luck

19. Learned helplessness Three broad categories of attributions
____________
______________

20. Learned helplessness
Learned helplessness and a depressive attributional style for negative events (also known as pessimistic explanatory style)
___________________________
Negative outcomes are one’s own fault
Believing future negative outcomes will be one’s fault
Believing negative events will disrupt many life activities
All three domains contribute to a sense of lack of perceived control over life events
Those with a pessimistic explanatory style ______________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

21. *Learned Optimism
Learned optimism – __________________________________
________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
Optimism is associated with a wide range of positive outcomes
Effective functioning and work success
Fewer physical symptoms
Researchers have found that most psychologically healthy people have somewhat unrealistically positive self-views, whereas those who perceive themselves more accurately tend to be less mentally healthy

22. Goals Cognitive Social Learning Theory Bandura’s Self-Efficacy
*Bandura’s Observational Learning
Dweck’s Mastery Orientation
Higgins’ Regulatory Focus

23. Self-efficacy
Bandura (trained in classical behavioral psychology) argued that people have intentions and forethought; they are reflective and can anticipate future events; they monitor their behavior and evaluate their own progress; and they learn by observing others (i.e., observational learning)
Helped start the social-cognitive movement

24. Self-efficacy
Self-efficacy – _______________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
i.e., guides and directs one’s behavior
The greater our perceived self-efficacy, the higher the goals we choose and the stronger commitment and perseverance (i.e., motivation) in pursuing them
Those who view themselves as lacking self-efficacy are more vulnerable to anxiety and depression
Low self-efficacy results in low motivation to set goals and low perseverance when faced with adversity
Self-efficacy can also be influenced by ____________, by seeing others engage in the performance with positive results

25. Observational learning
Bandura showed that much of social learning occurs cognitively through observation without any direct reinforcement administered to the learner
Observational learning (modeling) – _________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Humans learn from what others say and do, and what they see, hear, and read, whether it is intended to be taught or not
Other people act as “models” from whom we learn
Our (efficacy) expectations about the outcomes of a particular course of action depend not only on what had happened to us in the past, but also on what we have observed happening to others

26. Mastery orientation
Some students persist in the face of failure, whereas others quit as soon as they encounter difficulties or their first failure (Dweck, 1978, 1980)
Students’ implicit beliefs about the nature of intelligence had a significant impact on the way they approach challenging intellectual tasks
Students who view their intelligence as an unchangeable and fixed internal characteristic (“________________”) ____________ __________________________________________________________
Students who believe that their intelligence can be increased through effort and persistence (“______________________”) __________________________________________________________

27. Regulatory focus
People regulate their goal-directed behaviors in two distinct ways that serve two different needs
Promotion focus – ________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
Prevention focus – ________________________________________________
Promotion focus correlates with extraversion and behavioral activation
Motivated to not miss possible opportunities at the expense of making mistakes
Prevention focus correlates with neuroticism, harm avoidance, and impulsivity (negatively)
Motivated to not make mistakes at the expense of missing possible opportunities

28. Intelligence
Achievement intelligence – _________________________________
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Aptitude intelligence – ______________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Traditional measures of intelligence (i.e., IQ tests)
Used to predict school performance and educational selection
General intelligence (“g”) versus domain-specific intelligences
Widely accepted definition of intelligence (Gardner, 1983):
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Cultural context of intelligence – views intelligence as being those skills valued in a particular culture

29. Intelligence Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory
Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences
Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence

30. Triarchic Theory
__________________________ – ability to process information at the metacomponent, performance, and knowledge-acquisition levels; ability to think abstractly and process information effectively
Analytical/Conventional Intelligence (“_________________”)
__________________________ – relationship between experience and intelligence; ability to formulate new ideas and new solutions to problems; ability to combine new information
_______________________
__________________________ – contextually bound; ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions and to shape the environment; ability to understand people
Practical Intelligence (“____________________”)

31. Triarchic Theory

33. Multiple intelligences
Any set of adult competencies that are valued in a culture merit consideration as a potential intelligence
9 relatively independent “frames of mind”
Verbal-Linguistic
Logical-Mathematical
____________________
Visual-Spatial
Naturalist
Existential
Not much research to support this theory; some research shows that separate abilities are correlated with each other

35. Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence was proposed to explain why some people with a lot of academic intelligence do not appear to have a lot of practical intelligence, people skills, or “street smarts”
See Goldman’s (1995) book “Emotional Intelligence”
Emotional intelligence includes a set of five specific abilities:
1. ______________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
2. Ability to regulate emotions, especially negative emotions, and to manage stress
3. Ability to control one’s impulses, direct attention and effort, delay gratification, and stay on task toward goals
4. ______________________________________________________________
5. Ability to influence and guide others without incurring anger, resentment; elicit cooperation; negotiation and conflict resolution

36. Emotional intelligence
Traditional measures of intelligence predict school performance, but not outcomes later in life, such as occupational attainment, salary, professional status, and quality of marriage
Emotion intelligence is a better predictor of these life outcomes

37. Summary and Evaluation
Cognitive approaches to personality focus on differences in how people process information
People differ in how they think, perceive, interpret, remember, believe, desire, and anticipate events in their lives.
Personality psychologists are interested in these differences as well as characteristics of cognition that all humans share