I went to a social gathering with a friend of mine recently. We talked with
old friends, met some new people, and mingled, sampling conversations, mu-sic, food, and drink. As is our custom, we immediately shared our perceptions
after leaving the party. “Did you notice how casually some people were
dressed? ”my friend asked. Actually, I hadn ’t. I asked him what he thought of
a man we had both met. “Wasn ’t he the most arrogant person? ”I asked. My
friend hadn ’t seen anything to indicate so. As we continued to exchange im-
pressions, I began to wonder if my friend had been at the same party interact-
ing with the same people I had. I couldn’ t believe he hadn ’t noticed how weird
the music was or realized how ill at ease the hostess seemed. My friend didn’ t
understand how I had failed to recognize the architecture of the house or eventhe furniture I sat on. “I guess we learned one lesson, ”I said. “Never go to a
party at their house again. ”My friend stared at me in disbelief. “Are you kid-
ding?”he said. “I had a great time! ”
How can two people participate in the same situation yet leave with very
different impressions of what happened? The answer from the cognitive ap-
proach to personality is that my friend and I have very different ways of pro-cessing information. Whereas I was attending to and processing information
about the weirdness of the music and the arrogance of the guests, my friend
entered the party prepared to notice clothing styles and furniture. Because we
attended to different features of the party, we had very different perceptions
of it and very different experiences. These different perceptions no doubt af-
fected how we acted that night and how we will respond to future invitations.
The cognitive approach explains differences in personality as differences
in the way people process information. Because I have developed relativelystable ways of processing information in social settings, I probably respond
to parties and other social gatherings in a similar way most of the time. Other
people respond differently than I do because they consistently see something
different from what I see.
Cognitive models of personality have become popular in recent years, but
they are not entirely new. An early predecessor can be found in Kurt Lewin ’s
(1938) field theory of behavior. Lewin described the mental representationswe form of the important elements in our lives and how we organize those
cognitive elements within our “life space. ”A more recent and, for the pur-
poses of this book, more important cognitive personality theory was devel-
oped by George Kelly. Since the publication of his book The Psychology of
Personal Constructs in 1955, Kelly ’s work has evolved into a rich source of
ideas for personality researchers and psychotherapists (Fransella, 2003,2005). It is interesting that Kelly did not think of himself as a cognitive psy-
chologist. “I have been so puzzled over the early labeling of [my] theory as
cognitive, ”he wrote, “that several years ago I set out to write another short
book to make it clear that I wanted no part of cognitive theory ”(1969,
p. 216). Despite his protests, Kelly ’s writings have become the starting point
for many of the approaches to personality we now identify as “cognitive.”The Cognitive Approach 411