Personality Psychology: COGNITIVE APPROACHES

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26 Terms

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Modes of explanation

  • Biological approach to personality are important but can be reductive

  • Ideally, we could also develop nonreductive psychological explanations as well

  • Some psychological approaches, such as psychoanalysis*, make some questionable assumptions

    • Instinctual drives, the Unconscious, psychosexual stages etc.

  • Can we explain personality psychologically, without falling into these problems?

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Cognitive explanations

  • Explain personality with reference to cognitive processes & structures

    • Thoughts, plans, memories, beliefs, strategies

  • Focus on ways of thinking & the construction of meaning

    • Having versus doing

    • People as active sense-makers

    • Emphasis on ‘experience-near’ phenomena

    • Motivation to understand & predict

    • Person-as-scientist model

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Cognitive theory

  • There is no single cognitive theory of personality

  • We will examine four approaches

    • Perceiving (personal constructs)

    • Explaining (attributional style)

    • Thinking (emotional intelligence)

    • Representing (the self

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Personal constructs

  • George Kelly proposed that humans are primarily driven to understand, predict & control their environment

  • We develop ‘theories’ to do so

  • He called these theories ‘personal constructs’

    • ‘Personal’ because idiosyncratic to individuals

    • We construct a sense of the world from these theories

    • We use them to construe that world

  • To Kelly, human cognition is contrastive

    • E.g., warm versus cold, honest versus untrustworthy

  • Each person has a system of constructs in terms of which they perceive the world

  • This system of constructs is the personality This is a radical approach

    • It focuses on perception versus behaviour

    • ‘Idiographic’ focus on the person’s unique

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The Repertory Grid (shortened example)

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Construct systems

  • Constructs can be analysed in many ways to generate a ‘map’ of the individual’s construct system

    • Simplicity versus complexity

    • Rigidity

    • Internal conflict

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Construct systems: Case study of a young man with psychosis

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personality range 

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Attributions

  • Constructs are about how we perceive the world

  • ‘Attributions’ are about how we explain it

  • People aim to determine the causes of events and experiences

  • Attributions differ on several dimensions

    • Internal versus external (i.e., dispositional vs situational)

    • Stable versus unstable (i.e., lasting vs transient)

    • Global versus specific (i.e., broad vs narrow)

  • Causes can vary along these dimensions

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Attributional style

  • Are there individual differences in the sorts of attributions people make?

  • Concept of attributional (or ‘explanatory’) style

  • Focus on explanations for negative events

  • e.g., “You do badly on a psychology exam. Why?”

  • Attributional style is focused on negative events

  • ‘Pessimism’ is the disposition to explain such events with Internal, Stable & Global causes

    • this sense of pessimism differs from standard sense (i.e., negative expectations for the future)

  • Pessimists may also explain positive events as External, Unstable & Specific (e.g., due to chance)

  • Both pessimism & optimism may be irrational

  • Attributional style predicts many phenomena

    • Vulnerability to depression

    • Poorer academic performance

    • Worse physical health (present + future)

    • Shorter life-span

    • Worse sales performance

    • Poorer performance (especially after bad result) among sportspeople

    • Losing US presidential elections

    • Pessimistic song lyrics precede weak economic performance

<ul><li><p>Are there individual differences in the sorts of attributions people make? </p></li><li><p>Concept of attributional (or ‘explanatory’) style </p></li><li><p>Focus on explanations for negative events </p></li><li><p>e.g., “You do badly on a psychology exam. Why?”</p></li><li><p>Attributional style is focused on negative events </p></li><li><p>‘Pessimism’ is the disposition to explain such events with Internal, Stable &amp; Global causes </p><ul><li><p>this sense of pessimism differs from standard sense (i.e., negative expectations for the future) </p></li></ul></li><li><p>Pessimists may also explain positive events as External, Unstable &amp; Specific (e.g., due to chance) </p></li><li><p>Both pessimism &amp; optimism may be irrational</p></li><li><p>Attributional style predicts many phenomena </p><ul><li><p>Vulnerability to depression </p></li><li><p>Poorer academic performance </p></li><li><p>Worse physical health (present + future) </p></li><li><p>Shorter life-span </p></li><li><p>Worse sales performance </p></li><li><p>Poorer performance (especially after bad result) among sportspeople </p></li><li><p>Losing US presidential elections </p></li><li><p>Pessimistic song lyrics precede weak economic performance</p></li></ul></li></ul><p></p>
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Emotional Intelligence (EI)

  • Constructs & attributions refer to perceptual and explanatory processes

  • Abilities & skills are another kind of cognitive concept

  • Most cognitive abilities are school-related

    • Verbal, mathematical & spatial abilities

  • Recent extension of the intelligence concept to include emotional & social abilities

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Components of EI

  • Perceiving emotion

  • Using emotion

  • Understanding emotion

  • Managing emotion

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Perceiving emotion

Accurate recognition of own emotions & nonverbal perception of other people’s

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Using emotion

Use of own emotions to guide & plan behaviour

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Understanding emotion

Predicting others’ emotional states & reasoning about them

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Managing emotion

Ability to control & regulate emotions

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More on EI

  • EI is distinct from general intelligence

  • It is ideally measured not by self-ratings but by performance on tests with correct & incorrect answers

  • Correlates with Openness & Agreeableness

  • Has many correlates

    • Academic performance

    • Job performance

    • Social sensitivity

    • Less antisocial behaviour

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The self

  • The self can be understood as a mental representation of one’s personal attributes

  • Two individual difference variables relevant to it

  • 1. Self-complexity

    • Degree to which the self’s structure is complex

  • 2. Self-esteem

    • Degree to which the self is positively valued

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Self-complexity

Defined as number of ‘self-aspects’ and degree of distinctness of them

<p>Defined as number of ‘self-aspects’ and degree of distinctness of them</p>
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Self-complexity

  • Early research suggested that greater self-complexity buffers people against negative life events

  • However, it also seemed to be associated with greater depression

  • If ‘complexity’ implies a fragmented, incoherent or confused self, it may have negative consequences

  • ‘Self-concept clarity’ may be more important than self-complexity

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Self-concept clarity test items

  • My beliefs about myself often conflict with one another

  • I spend a lot of time wondering what sort of person I am

  • Sometimes I feel that I am not really the person that I appear to be

  • My beliefs about myself seem to change very frequently

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Self-esteem

  • Having a positive global self-evaluation is frequently claimed to have many benefits, but …

    • Little evidence it promotes (rather than results from) academic achievement

    • Little evidence that it promotes work performance ◦ Little evidence it promotes health

    • Not associated with less antisocial behaviour ◦ Not associated with greater social sensitivity

    • May promote aggression in response to insults and when self-esteem is threatened

    • Need for positive self-view may not be cross-culturally universal

<ul><li><p>Having a positive global self-evaluation is frequently claimed to have many benefits, but … </p><ul><li><p>Little evidence it promotes (rather than results from) academic achievement </p></li><li><p>Little evidence that it promotes work performance ◦ Little evidence it promotes health </p></li><li><p>Not associated with less antisocial behaviour ◦ Not associated with greater social sensitivity </p></li><li><p>May promote aggression in response to insults and when self-esteem is threatened </p></li><li><p>Need for positive self-view may not be cross-culturally universal</p></li></ul></li></ul><p></p>
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Self esteem in Australia 

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Complexities of self-esteem

  • The stability or consistency of self-esteem may matter more than its level

    • ‘Fragile’ self-esteem fluctuates in response to life events

  • ‘Defensive’ self-esteem

    • High explicit + low implicit self-esteem

  • Narcissism

    • Sense of superiority & arrogance

    • Entitlement to special treatment

    • Need for admiration

    • Sensitivity to criticism

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Narcissism & social media

  • Social networking sites may be ideal playgrounds for narcissists, with opportunities to …

    • create self-promoting content

    • display personal appearance

    • pursue many shallow relationships

  • Study by Davenport et al. (2014) examined how Facebook & Twitter use correlates with narcissism

    • “my body is nothing special” versus “I like to look at my body”

    • “I am more capable than other people” versus “There is a lot that I can learn from other people”

  • More narcissistic people …

    • Were more active on Facebook & had more FB friends

    • Tweeted more & had more Twitter followers

    • Wanted their profiles to attract friends/followers more

    • Believed it was more important that friends/followers admired them

    • Research on Instagram shows similar findings: narcissism goes with more selfies, more time & more frequent profile picture updates (Moon et al., 2016)

    • Associations with narcissism may be larger for social media with a strong visual component

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