The cognitive approach to explaining depression
Key terms
- Cognitive approach: the term ‘cognitive’ has come to mean ‘mental processes’, so this
approach is focused on how our mental processes (e.g. thoughts, perceptions, attention)
affect behaviour
- Negative triad: Beck proposed that there were three kinds of negative thinking that
contributed to becoming depressed: negative views of the world, the future and the self.
Such negative views lead a person to interpret their experiences in a negative way and
so make them more vulnerable to depression
- ABC model: Ellis proposed that depression occurs when an activating event (A) triggers
an irrational belief (B) which in turns produces a consequence (C), i.e. an emotional
response like depression. The key to this process is the irrational belief
Beck’s cognitive theory of depression
American psychologist Aaron Beck (1967) suggested a cognitive approach to explaining why
some people are more vulnerable to depression than others
- In particular, it is a person’s cognitions that create this vulnerability, i.e. the way they
think
Beck suggested three parts to this cognitive vulnerability
Faulty information processing
When depressed, we attend to the negative aspects of a situation and ignore the positives
- We also tend to blow small problems out of proportion and think in ‘black and white’
terms
Negative self-schemas
A schema is a ‘package’ of ideas and information developed through experience; they act as a
mental framework for the interpretation of sensory information
- A self-schema is the package of information we have about ourselves
- We used schemas to interpret the world, so if we have a negative self-schema, we
interpret all information about ourselves in a negative way
The negative triad
A person develops a dysfunctional view of themselves because of three types of negative
thinking that occur automatically, regardless of the reality of what is happening at the time
- These three elements are called the negative triad: negative views about the world, the
future and the self
Negative view of the world
- An example would be ‘the world is a cold, hard place’, which creates the impression that
there is no hope anywhere
Negative view of the future
Key terms
- Cognitive approach: the term ‘cognitive’ has come to mean ‘mental processes’, so this
approach is focused on how our mental processes (e.g. thoughts, perceptions, attention)
affect behaviour
- Negative triad: Beck proposed that there were three kinds of negative thinking that
contributed to becoming depressed: negative views of the world, the future and the self.
Such negative views lead a person to interpret their experiences in a negative way and
so make them more vulnerable to depression
- ABC model: Ellis proposed that depression occurs when an activating event (A) triggers
an irrational belief (B) which in turns produces a consequence (C), i.e. an emotional
response like depression. The key to this process is the irrational belief
Beck’s cognitive theory of depression
American psychologist Aaron Beck (1967) suggested a cognitive approach to explaining why
some people are more vulnerable to depression than others
- In particular, it is a person’s cognitions that create this vulnerability, i.e. the way they
think
Beck suggested three parts to this cognitive vulnerability
Faulty information processing
When depressed, we attend to the negative aspects of a situation and ignore the positives
- We also tend to blow small problems out of proportion and think in ‘black and white’
terms
Negative self-schemas
A schema is a ‘package’ of ideas and information developed through experience; they act as a
mental framework for the interpretation of sensory information
- A self-schema is the package of information we have about ourselves
- We used schemas to interpret the world, so if we have a negative self-schema, we
interpret all information about ourselves in a negative way
The negative triad
A person develops a dysfunctional view of themselves because of three types of negative
thinking that occur automatically, regardless of the reality of what is happening at the time
- These three elements are called the negative triad: negative views about the world, the
future and the self
Negative view of the world
- An example would be ‘the world is a cold, hard place’, which creates the impression that
there is no hope anywhere
Negative view of the future
