The Cognitive Approach:

1. The Cognitive Approach: Explaining an individual’s personality by emphasizing the way that individual thinks…

2. Consider this quote… • “If you want to be someone else, change your mind.” • Ken Block of “Sister Hazel”

3. Do you agree? • Is it “your mind” that makes you the person you are. • If you “change your mind” (or how you think about things), in what way might that make you someone else? How?

4. A reminder of some things we’ve already learned…. • The behavioral approach emphasizes how our environment influences us. • According to the behavioral approach, people could be seen as lumps of clay being shaped & molded by their experiences & the people around them. • The behaviorists were criticized for underestimating the role of conscious thought & choice.

5. Think about this…. • Have you ever known of two people who have gone through similar experiences but responded to them in very different ways? • Have you ever known anyone who had a difficult experience but found a way to make the best out of it? • Have you ever known anyone who always sees the worst in everything & everyone?

6. Over time, many behaviorists began to consider the possibility that in addition to being shaped by our environment, we also are active in shaping our environment…

7. How are we active in shaping our environment? • Different people choose different environments (e.g., we choose our friends, where we will live, in what sort of place we want to work, etc.,) Our choices are shaped by who we are (and then in turn, continue to shape us.) • By choosing to come to this college, for example, you have chosen a certain environment, and that environment now influences you.

8. We are active in shaping our environment…. • In addition, our attitudes, behaviors, etc. influence how other people respond to us. • In other words, we “provoke” different responses from our environments. • If we are easily irritated, we may show our irritation & act in ways that result in others being more likely to get angry at us. • If we are friendly toward others, we may end up with lots of friends. If we are not, we may end up isolated. • Etc.

9. Reciprocal Determinism • The environment determines (or in other words, influences or shapes) who we are. • Who we are determines (or influences or shapes) our environment • The direction of influence goes both ways. It’s reciprocal. • So this is is called….

10. Reciprocal determinism • This new way of understanding the influence of environment came to be referred to as the Social Learning Approach. • Albert Bandura (who also studied the influence of modeling on aggression) was one of the leading proponents of reciprocal determinism and came to be known as a social learning theorist. • In recent times, Bandura has also termed his own approach the Social Cognitive approach. (This is the term used in our textbook.)

11. Cognitive psychologists focus on how our cognitions influence our experience of the events that occur in our environment. Cognitions are thoughts.

12. We differ in how we interpret & react to events. • These differences in how we interpret things—in how we think about things (our cognitions)—are seen by the cognitive approach as forming the basis for our personalities.

13. The Cognitive Approach • Psychologists who take a cognitive approach have a lot in common with Social Cognitive Theorists, but they may focus exclusively on cognitive variables rather than emphasizing the interaction between environment & cognitive variables that’s emphasized in your textbook.

14. What sorts of variables do cognitive psychologists study? • Locus of control is one example of a cognitive variable. • Our textbook talks about Julian Rotter’s work examining a variable he called locus of control. • Rotter said that people can have either an internal or an external locus of control. People with an internal locus of control see themselves as having control over the events that happen to them in their lives. People who have an external locus of control believe that forces beyond their control (e.g., other people or circumstances) are the cause of what happens to them.

15. Locus of Control • Review the information about locus of control on p. 503 of our textbook. • What influence does one’s locus of control have on other things, like school achievement and physical & mental health?

16. Locus of Control • Note that the locus of control variable isn’t referring to whether events are, in reality, controlled by internal or external factors. • Instead, the locus of control variable focuses on how we interpret events or what we believeabout what controls the events of our life. • In particular, it focuses on the tendencies we have to interpret events in certain ways regardless of what is really the cause of the events.

17. How do we explain the events that we experience? • Notice that “locus of control” talks about the tendencies we have to make certain attributions. Attributions are discussed in your textbook on p. 600 • Lots of folks got interested in studying locus of control… • One of them was a psychologist named Martin Seligman

18. Martin Seligman’s explanatory style (aka attributional style) • Seligman agreed with Rotter that people have a tendency to interpret events in certain sorts of ways. • He called this tendency an individual’s explanatory style or attributional style.

19. Explanatory style • In describing the tendencies people have to interpret events, Martin Seligman went beyond the internal vs. external locus of control variable and suggested that our attributions (or explanations of events) also vary along two additional dimensions. • These additional dimensions are: • Stable vs. unstable, and • Global vs. specific

20. Stable vs. unstable attributions • When we attribute events to causes that can not be changed, we are making stable attributions. • When we attribute events to causes that can be changed, we are making unstable attributions. • For example, a person who is unemployed & is having trouble finding a job might think • “The economy is just bad right now. I just have to hang on until it gets better.” Seligman would refer to this as an unstable attribution because the person sees the cause of their lack of success in job hunting as something that is likely to change. • OR they might think: “My degree is worthless because of changes that have occurred in our society.” Assuming that the person believes that these societal changes are probably permanent, this is a more stable attribution.

21. Caution! • Make sure you notice that the terms “stable” or “unstable” don’t refer to the person making the attribution! Instead, they refer to whether the assumed “cause” is one that is likely to change or one that is likely to remain stable. • Actually making an unstable attribution for a negative event is often a healthier way of understanding things! (If you don’t understand why after hearing in a bit about pessimistic explanatory styles, then be sure to ask me about this!)

22. Global vs. specific attributions • The causes to which we attribute events may also differ in terms of how broad of an implication they have for our lives. • For example, a student who fails a history test might think: • “I’m no good” This is a global attribution because it has implications for the whole of the student’s life. • “I must not be any good at history.” This is a specific attribution because it’s implications are much more limited.

23. Global vs. specific attributions • A student who fails a history test might also think: • “I am not smart enough to make it in college.” • This attribution is somewhere around the midpoint on the stable vs. global dimension continuum because the “cause” may affect the whole of the student’s academic life, but not necessarily to other areas of her life like relationships or sports or artistic endeavors.

24. Explaining events…. • As noted earlier, Seligman suggested that people have a tendency to interpret events in certain sorts of ways, i.e., we have a tendency to favor some attributions over others. • Seligman also suggested that the way we look at events in terms of all these dimensions (internal vs. external; stable vs. unstable; & global vs. specific) depends upon whether the event that we are explaining is a positive event or is a negative event

25. Explaining events…. • Seligman spent a lot of time studying the way that people explain the negative things that happen to them. • According to Seligman, the way that we explain the negative events that happen to us can very much determine the ways that those events influence us. • For example, Seligman described some people as having a pessimistic explanatory style.

26. A pessimistic explanatory style is…. • A tendency to attribute the negative events of our lives to: • Internal, • Stable, and • Global causes. • Can you guess why Seligman called this style of explaining events pessimistic?

27. A tendency to attribute negative events to internal, stable & global causes is called a pessimistic explanatory style because…. • If the cause of a negative event is internal, this means that we are to blame for it. • If the cause of a negative event is stable, this means that whatever’s causing the negative event is unlikely to change), and finally • If the cause of a negative event is global this means that it may also have an impact on a number of other areas of our lives!!!

28. Pessimistic explanatory style… • So an internal, stable & global explanation for something negative suggests that • we are to blame, • there’s not a way to change whatever it is about us that we think is causing the problem, and • it’s something that is likely to affect multiple areas in our lives. • This is the most pessimistic way to explain a negative event.

29. Pessimistic explanatory style… • Seligman & others have studied the ways that a pessimistic explanatory style might make persons more susceptible to depression. • Conversely, Seligman and his colleagues have worked at studying the impact of more optimistic ways of perceiving the world. Should you ever want to read more about this, you could read Learned Optimism, an interesting and readable book written by Seligman about this topic.

30. Explanatory style • You can get a sense of your own explanatory style by looking at how your answers on the questionnaire I gave out in class…. • An interpretative guide is posted on the class website under “handouts”

31. Explanatory style • Can you see how the way that we decide to interpret events is a big part of our personality? • It shapes how we think about those events, how we think about ourselves, how we think about others, and how we think about our future.

32. What sorts of variables do cognitive psychologists study? • Locus of control & Explanatory Style are just two examples of the sorts of variables that cognitive psychologists study. • Cognitive psychologists are interested in how our ways of organizing our perceptions of the world (sometimes called schemas) may contribute to lots of personality and behavioral variables such as depression, anxiety, creativity, the development of prejudice, sexism, aggression, etc. So we have just “skimmed the surface” in terms of looking at the sorts of variables that cognitive psychologists study. But maybe its been enough to at least give you a “taste” of this perspective.

33. Reflect: • What do you think about the cognitive approach to personality? • In what ways might your life have been impacted by the way you think about things? • Are there ways that you might want to “be somebody else” by changing your mind?