Republic of the Philippines

State Universities and Colleges

GUIMARAS STATE COLLEGE
Mc Lain, Buenavista, Guimaras

GRADUATE SCHOOL
ED 224: THEORIES PERSONALITY AND MENTAL HYGIENE

UNIT 8: THE COGNITIVE APPROACH: THEORY,

APPLICATION, AND ASSESSMENT

 Personal Construct Theory

 Cognitive Personality Variables
 Cognitive Representation of the Self
 Application: (Behavior) Psychotherapy
 Assessment: Repertory Grid Technique
 Strengths and Criticisms of the Cognitive Approach

MARIA ROGIE B. CONCEPTION

IRYN S. DAPATNAPO
NEVA JEAN H. SUMAGPAO
ALNE AMOR C. TURIAGA MARIBETH SUMALDE

Discussants Professor

1. Personal Construct Theory

 George Alexander Kelly was an American psychologist, therapist, educator and
personality theorist. He is considered the father of cognitive clinical psychology
and is best known for his theory of personality, personal construct psychology.
 Cognitive approach explains differences in personality are differences in the way
people process information.
 Cognitive models of personality have become popular. An early predecessor can
be found in Kurt Lewin’s field theory of behavior (1938). He described the
mental representations we form of the important elements in our lives and how
we organize those cognitive elements within our “life space”.
 Kelly’s approach to personality begins with a unique conception of humankind.
He called it a man-the-scientist perspective.
 Personal constructs are cognitive structures people use to interpret and predict
events.
 Individuals do not organize constructs in an identical manner
 Bipolar
—Friendly–unfriendly
—Intelligent–unintelligent
 Application of first construct is followed by other bipolar constructs
—Determines the extent of the blackness or whiteness
 Differences in personality result from differences in the way people interpret the
world
 Initial thoughts of people to make sense of others and their behavior
 Individuals may use the same constructs and construe the world differently
 People suffer from psychological problems due to defects in their construct
systems.Past traumatic experiences are not the cause of the problems. People
become anxious when personal constructs fail to make sense of the events in their
lives
 People frequently generate a new construct to replace the inadequate one.

2. Cognitive Personality Variables

 Elements between the stimulus and response
 Constitute to individual differences in people
 Referred as cognitive-affective units
 Part of a complex system that links situations people encounter with their
behavior
 Individual differences in cognitive framework is due to difference in mental
representations of people
 Individuals differ in the manner they access stored information
 People react to the same situation differently

Table 15.1 - Cognitive-Affective Units

Figure 15.1 - Cognitive Model of Personality

 Cognitive variables are means people use every day to process

information. These variables are used to describe why one person is lacking
in artistic ability, yet exhibits high competence in a specific area,
  The cognitive process came about more than twenty-three centuries ago,
beginning with Aristotle and his interest in the inner workings of the mind
and how they affect the human experience. Centuries later, as psychology
became a blooming other scientists like : Wilhelm Wundt, Herman
Ebbinghaus, Mary Whiton Calkins, and William James.
 Some functions of Cognitive Variable, such as :
• Metacognition as knowledge of ways to thinking, thought structures and the
capacity to control and modify cognitive learning process
• Understanding the language of science and the humanities
• Development of imagination to stimulate objects and processes
• Capacity to formulate problems and take decisions to solve them
• Capacity to search for and process information

 There are three of main cognitive variable

• Memory • Intelligence • Aptitude
 Memory is the storage of information and past experiences for the purpose of
present day application or use.
There are two kinds of memory, such as :
 • Semantic memory - an individual relies on schemes to order his memories
so as to make sense of himself and others. This occurs through language,
which gives memories meaning or semantic importance.
• Episodic memory - refers to events in a person's life that are retold as
narratives. Episodic memories coalesce to form semantic memories. For
instance, one's college career may be related in a series of episodes that are
synthesized into a semantic whole, or meaning.

 Intelligence is often measured in terms of the Intelligence Quotient, or IQ. IQ

is a measure of your ability to solve problems and understand concepts. There
is a strong correlation between having a high IQ and academic success.

  Aptitude generally refers to an individual's verbal, numerical or abstract

reasoning skills. For the sake of practical application, aptitude refers to a
person's ability to learn or adapt certain new skills.
 Cognitive Style
People have different ways in which they acquire and process information,
methods collectively called cognitive style. Cognitive style is considered a
stable part of a person's personality, as it forms the basis of how he interacts
with his world, both in thought and action.

 Cognitive learning refers to the ability to solve problems by learning,

thinking, and memorizing and is commonly thought of as being part of one's
personality.

There are four basics cognitive learning styles:

• Multiple intelligence
• Mental self-government
• Modalities
• Mind style
 To keep cognitive ability from diminishing we need to make our brain work.
• Stay creative by do some research to get ideas and then be proactive and
make it happen.
• Do brain exercise to improve cognitive function.
• Read and write daily if possible, both of these tasks work the mind and help
keep cognitive ability from slipping away.
• Lastly, eat healthy and add more brain foods to your diet. Consume foods
rich in antioxidants and foods that contain vitamins A, C, E and B complex.

3. Cognitive Representations of the Self

 Mental representations are unique to individuals
 Mental representations - is a hypothetical internal cognitive symbol that
represents external reality.
- is a mental imagery of things that are not actually present to the senses. It is
one of the prevailing ways of explaining and describing the nature of ideas and
concepts.
 Self-concept - Cognitive representation of oneself
 Relatively stable over time
 Play a central role in the way people process information
  Is a collection of beliefs about oneself that includes elements such as
academic performance, gender roles, sexuality, and racial identity.
Generally, self-concept embodies the answer to “Who am I?”
 Image that we have of our selves
 Relatively stable over time
 Play a central role in the way people process information
 Self-Schemas
 Cognitive representations of oneself that one uses to organize and process
self-relevant information
 Consists of the important behaviors and attributes
Figure 15.2 - Example of a Self-Schema Diagram

 Trait concepts - Part of self-schema

-People behave differently due to individual differences in self-schemas
 Provide a framework for organizing and storing information
 Self-reference effect
 Easy remembering of self-referent words as they are processed through
self-schemas

 Possible Selves
 Cognitive representations of the kind of person we might become someday
 Behavior is influenced by cognitive representations of present and future
self
-Provide incentives for future behavior
-Helps to interpret the meaning of behavior and events in our lives
 Researchers use possible selves to study varied behaviors
-Binge drinking, academic performance
-Weight loss, adherence to an exercise program
 Researches indicate gender differences in the possible selves of young men
and women
 Self Discrepancies
 Self-discrepancy theory proposes cognitive representations of the self
-Actual self - Contains the information you have about the kind of
person you are
-Ideal self - Mental image of the kind of person you would like to be
-Ought self - Person you believe you should be
 Discrepancies between actual and ideal self result in disappointment,
dejection, and sadness
  Discrepancies between actual and ought self lead to agitation, anxiety, and
guilt
 Comparison takes place outside of conscious awareness

4. Application: (Behavior) Psychotherapy

 The art of psychotherapy is the effort to apply the findings of personality
theory in ways that will assist individuals and meet human goals.
 The word therapy comes from the Greek therapeia, which means
“attending” and “healing”; however, psychotherapists are not interested only
in healing sick people. They are also interested in understanding “normal”
people, learning how they function, and helping them to function more
creatively.
 According to George Kelly (1955), psychological disorders arise when a
person clings to and continues to use personal constructs in spite of the fact
that subsequent experience fails to validate them. Such a person has
difficulty anticipating and predicting events and is unable to learn from
experiences.
 Kelly conceived of his therapeutic methods as “reconstruction” rather than
psychotherapy. He sought to help his patient reconstrue the world in a
manner that would foster better predictions and control.
 The first step in his therapy is usually that of “elaborating the complaint.” In
this step, the therapist seeks to identify the problem,discover when and under
what conditions it first arose, indicate what changes have occurred in the
problem, discover any corrective measures that the client may have already
taken, and find out under what conditions the problem is most and least
noticeable.
 Kelly conceived of a second step as that of elaborating the construct system
itself. Such elaboration gives a fuller picture of the elements encompassed in
the complaint, allows more alternatives to arise, broadens the base of the
relationship between therapist and client, and reveals the conceptual
framework that created and sustained the symptoms.
 Cognitive psychologists teach clients how to deal with future and recurring
problems. One cause of recurring problems is self- defeating thinking.
 A man who suffers from shyness probably approaches a party with thoughts
“ I don’t know why I’m going to this dumb party. No one ever wants to talk
with me.”This man has set himself to fail. He already concluded that things
are going as poorly as anticipated. All the nervousness and embarrassment
he dreaded re likely to follow.
 A cognitive therapist might try to replace these self- defeating thoughts with
more appropriate, positive ones. This is not to say the man should
unrealistically expect everything will go well but rather he should be
prepared for some disappointments and failures and learn to interpret in
appropriate ways.
 Rational Emotive (Behavior) Therapy was developed by Albert Ellis.
According to him, people become depressed, anxious, and upset due to
faulty reasoning and reliance on irrational beliefs.
 In A-B-C Process, A stands for activating experience B for irrational belief
and C emotional consequence .
  The goals of rational emotive therapy are; a. clients must see their irrational
beliefs and identify the fault reasoning and b. to replace irrational beliefs
with rational ones.

5. Assessment: Repertory Grid Technique

 The repertory grid was developed technique was developed by psychologist
George Kelly.
 The repertory grid is a way of carrying out an interview in a highly structured
manner, using the interviewee's own language and setting out their responses in
the form of a grid

 The main components of the repertory grid are:

 The topic – what the interview is about.

 Elements – these are examples that illustrate the topic. They can be people,
objects, experiences, events, according to the topic. The elements can either be
chosen by the interviewee, or they can be pre selected.
 Constructs – the most important component of the repertory grid. This is
where the elements are compared with one another to produce a series of
statements which describe what the interviewee thinks about the topic.
 Ratings – once the main constructs and elements are in place, they are entered
on a grid with the elements on top and the constructs down the side. The
interviewee then rates each element against each construct according to a rating
scale, usually of 1-5.
 This is the Repertory Grid Sample

 Because of its ability to capture good data, the repertory grid is used in a wide
range of contexts. Below is a non-exhaustive list:
 human resources (for example performance appraisals, job analysis, training
needs analysis, staff and organizational development),
 psychology (for example, psychological tests or counselling type interviews),
 brand analysis and consumer behaviour,
 team development and organizational studies,
  information retrieval studies and systems analysis, for example mental
modelling.

6. Strengths and Criticisms of the Cognitive Approach

 Strengths of the Cognitive Approach
 Ideas developed through empirical findings
 Subjected to extensive investigation in controlled laboratory experiments
 Fits well with the current mood of psychology
 Therapists from other approaches incorporate aspects of cognitive therapy in
their practice

 Criticisms of the Cognitive Approach

 Concepts are too abstract for empirical research
 Indecisive to introduce cognitive concepts to account for individual
differences in behaviour
 No single model to organize and guide theory and research