Cognitive Approach

Cognitive Approach Halesowen College Psychology John Nordstrom

Objectives • By the end of the course you should be able to: • Outline two assumptions of the cognitive approach • Be able to outline and describe the attribution theory • Be able to evaluate two strengths and two weaknesses of the cognitive approach • Compare and contrast similarities and differences of two approaches of which cognitive approach may be used • Outline and evaluate the methodology used by cognitive approach

Assumptions • Emphasis on internal processes of the mind • Uses the study of the brain to understand the mental processes that are happening in the brain • Cognitive psychologists are concerned with understanding the full range of mental processes

The full range of mental processes include the following: • Perception: the process that takes in and makes sense of our environment • Attention: the processes where we focus on sources of information rather than others and maintain this focus over time • Memory: the process involved with retaining and recalling information

Language: the use of mental symbols to represent information in our mind (the shape of letters makes a particular sound, when we place some letters together it makes a word that represents something on its own, when putting these words together they form sentences that have meaning) • Thinking: process of manipulating information in the mind in order to reason, solve problems, make decisions and judgements

That ends the first assumption • Condensed version: the cognitive approach places a high emphasis on the processes within the mind that are involved with receiving, processing and retaining data for future use and has useful properties in the thinking, understanding and decision making processes.

Importance of information processing • Once we have learned a wide range of information from our environment, the cognitive processes perception, attention, memory and others can be seen as a processing system • Working together they are able to make sense of our environment

When we look at this object we can tell that it is: • Round • Orange • Fruit • Healthy • Juicy (well maybe) • We may analyse it • We might even eat it!

End of second assumption • Condensed version: the cognitive approach considers the range of methods in processing data as a series of processing systems that work together to make sense of the world and respond to it appropriately

Third assumption • The computer analogy • Cognitive psychologists find it useful making comparisons between humans and computers • Computers receive data much like humans do • Computers process data much like humans do • Humans are slower at processing data in comparison to computers, but were better guessers that they are

End of third assumption • Condensed version: cognitive psychologists like to make comparisons between humans and computers. Humans process data in several ways and are able to complete more that one process at a time. While we as humans operate a litter slower, we are better guessers than computers

Theory • Attribution • When we interact with others we process information about their behaviour • One of the key things research looks to find out is why people behave the way they do • Cognitive processes where we judge why behave a certain way is called attribution • It is a general term used to describe a group of explanations for how we make attributions

Questions that are asked in the process • To what extent are the person’s actions a direct result of their character • To what extent are they a consequence of the situation

Internal attribution • Causality is assigned to an inside factor, agent or force • Inside factors fall inside your own control • You can choose to behave in a particular way or not • So your behaviour is not influenced, limited or even completely determined by influences outside your control • Therefore you feel responsible. A typical example is your own intelligence

External Attribution • Causality is assigned to an outside factor, agent or force • Outside factors fall outside your control • You perceive you have no choice • So your behaviour is influenced, limited or even completely determined by influences outside your control • Therefore you feel not responsible • A generic example is the weather

Correspondent Inference Theory • Sometimes we can make inferences about someone’s character (internal attribution) • This process is called correspondent inference theory (making a judgement) • This is because we are making an inference that the behaviour corresponds to the persons character

Support from research • Jones & Davis (1965) • In order to make an internal attribution 3 items must exist: 1. The behaviour must be deliberate • Accidental behaviour cannot be used for judgement purposes • The behaviour must have distinctive effects • If a behaviour has several possible consequences, the it becomes unclear why it has been done • The behaviour should be low in social desirability • Behaviour which is similar to social norms reveals little about a person's character

Evaluation of correspondent inference theory • There is some support from Jones’ and Davis’s research, however, more recent support considers other factors • Group membership has been considered as a factor as to whether we consider someone to be of the same social group as ourselves

Vonk & Konst (1998) • Tested 149 employees in organisation • Colleague read out descriptions of socially acceptable and unacceptable behaviour • The descriptions were associated with suggestions that those behaviours were influenced by character or situation

Findings • People who were considered an in-group member • they were more likely to make external attributions for socially unacceptable behaviour • Internal attributions for positive behaviour • Findings were the opposite for people who were considered and out-group members

What does that tell us? • We make excuses for poor behaviour for those who share our group membership • We are more critical of those who have poor behaviour when they are not one of us

Another way we categorise ourselves is by gender • Workman and Freeburg (1999) • Read 638 students a story about date rape • Showed them pictures of the victim • Asked them to attribute responsibility to the victim, the perpetrator or the situation • What do you think was the outcome between the genders?

They found that men were more likely to attribute responsibility to the victim and that women were more likely to attribute responsibility to blame the man

Limitations of theory • Fails to take into account cultural differences • Stander et al (2001) • Studied attributions by husbands and wives of American and Chinese couples toward one another • Chinese couples made more internal attributions for positive behaviour and external attributions for negative behaviour than their American counterparts • It was a single study and difficult to generalise to gender differences or cultural differences

Covariation theory • Correspondent theory provided a partial explanation for internal attributions • When we deal with people we know, we can make use of more information than just a single behaviour

Kelley (1967) proposed a model of how we make attributions to peoples behaviour when we have a model of other peoples behaviour to compare it to in the same situation • With this extra information we can judge how an action covaries with their own and others behaviour

Kelley based it on three criteria- • Consensus : whether other people act the same way in the same situation • Consistency : whether the person we are judging always acts the same way in the same situation • Distinctiveness : whether the person behaves similarly across a range of behaviours

What do you recognise about the differences in internal and external attributions?

Consistency has to be high before any attributions can be made • We cannot use behaviour that is irregular or unpredictable to make judgements • Where consensus and distinctiveness are low, we can make internal attributions

Real life example - look at your chart • Teachers and attributions • If Sandy is always late (high consistency) • to all lessons (low distinctiveness) • and other students are on time (low consensus) • then a teacher is likely to attribute their behaviour to their character

Evaluation of covariation theory • Using the chart with the student late to class can provide some explanations about judgements in real life situations • It has important practical applications

McKnight & Sutton (1994) • Used covariation principle to better understand causes of suicide by young offenders in institutions • Where consensus and distinctiveness were high, it was possible to attribute suicide to the environment

Where consensus and distinctiveness were low, only one attempt was made • Was it more likely related to personality and not the environment? • They had a history of this type of behaviour and more likely to be attributed to personality and less so about the environment

There is also evidence from Ahn et al’s research that although we make use of covariation information when it is provided, this is not actually the sort of information we seek when looking to make an attribution

Ahn et al (1995) • Given fictional story of Kim who was involved in a car crash the night before • They asked them what information they wanted in order to make sense of the situation • The covariation theory would predict they would ask questions about consistency, consensus and distinctiveness

Examples • Does Kim often have accidents? • Were there many accidents last night? • Instead, what do you think they asked? • Scribble out a couple questions before the next slide

Did any match up? • Was Kim drunk? • Was the road icy? • Did his tire blow out? • Was the other driver drunk? • Was there anything in the road?

Ahn & Bailenson (1996) suggest that we are more interested in basing our judgements on the details of what happened than on background information • They call this a mechanisms approach to attribution

Further reading • Mechanisms approach • Fundamental attribution • Actor-observer effect

Cognitive Approach