SUMMARY
1. The cognitive approach to personality describes consistent behavior pat-
terns in terms of the way people process information. George Kelly was
an early pioneer in this approach with his personal construct theory.
Kelly maintained that we are motivated to make sense out of our world.
He compared people to scientists, always striving for better predictions
about what will happen to them. Kelly described the cognitive structures
we use in this regard as personal constructs. He maintained that psycho-
logical problems stem from anxiety, which results from a person ’s inabil-
ity to predict events.
2. Psychologists have described a number of cognitive structures to help
explain individual differences and intrapersonal processes. Schemas arecognitive structures that help us perceive, organize, and store
information.
3. Perhaps the most important cognitive structures for personality psy-
chologists are the cognitive representations we have for our selves.
Much research in this area is concerned with self-schemas. Studies
demonstrate that we perceive information more readily and recall itbetter when it is relevant to our self-schemas. Researchers also find that
cognitive representations of future selves guide our behavior, but that
discrepancies between different self-concepts can result in negative
emotions.
4. Cognitive approaches to psychotherapy have become increasingly popu-
lar in the last few decades. These therapies focus on changing the clients ’
thoughts. Albert Ellis, an early advocate of this approach, argued that
people have emotional problems when they use irrational beliefs.
Rational emotive therapy helps clients see how they use these beliefs
and how to replace them with more rational ones.
5. Kelly introduced the Repertory Grid Technique to measure individual
differences in personal constructs. In one example, test takers typicallydevelop a list of people in their lives and then divide these people into
various categories. This procedure helps therapists see the constructs
clients use to make sense of the world. Kelly acknowledged severalassumptions behind this approach, including that people can adequately
communicate the constructs they use.
6. Among the strengths of the cognitive approach is its strong empirical
background. The cognitive approach also fits nicely with the current
trend in psychology toward cogniti ve explanations of behavior. Some
critics of the cognitive approach have complained that many of the
concepts used by cognitive theor ists are too abstract. Others have
questioned whether it is always neces sary to introduce cognitions to
explain behavior. The cognitive approach also suffers from the lack ofa general model to organize all of the work that falls under this
approach.Summary 433