Lecture 8
Cognitive experiential domain
Cognitive approaches to personality: focus on differences in how people process information
● Cognition: refers to awareness and thinking, as well as to specific mental acts
(perceiving, interpreting, remembering, believing, anticipating)
● All of these mental activities transform sensory input into mental representations
(information processing)
Personality psychologists are interested in 3 levels of cognition
1. Perception: process of imposing order on information received by our sense organs
2. Interpretation: process of making sense of or explaining events in the world
3. Conscious goals: standards and goals people develop for evaluating themselves
and others
4. Intelligence: additional domain related to cognition
Human perception: does not only describe what you see when you see the world, but also
how you process what you see in the world
Personality revealed through perception
● We all perceive reality through our own lens (mental representation)
○ Based on our sensory and perceptual systems
● Individual differences in perceptual style
1. Field dependence-independence:
● Herman Witkin
○ Field independent people see the big picture more readily than details;
more focused on surrounding context
○ Measures used to assess field dependence-independence:
■ Rod and frame test (RFT): conditions are dark room and
glowing rod, tasks to keep rod upright using dial;
manipulations: adjust tilt of rod, frame, chair;
● field independence: ignoring external sues around rod
and use body orientation as guide
● Field dependence: adjust rod in the direction of titles
frame
■ Embedded figures test (EFT)
● Look at busy picture and identify objects in it
○ Measures show this is stable over time
● Field independent people are better able to attend to task-relevant cues
○ Less distracted by extranea=ous details
○ More analytic approach to problem solving
● Field dependent people do not perform as well as field-independent people in
situations markes by unusual degrees of novelty or lack of structure
○ Strong and social skills
○ More attentive to social context
Field independence and dependence and life choices
● Education
, ○ Field independent people favor natural science, math, engineering, whereas
field dependent people favour social sciences
● Impersonal relations
○ Field independent people are more interpersonally detached, whereas field
dependent people are attentive to social cues, oriented toward other people
● Current research on diet dependence-independence
○ Field independent people are better able to screen out distracting information
and focus on a task
■ Study of police officers (field independent are better at shooting, less
susceptible to distractions)
○ Field independent students learn more effectively than field dependent
students in multimedia-based instructional environment
■ Ex: graphics, sounds, videa
■ Embedded points, selective attention
2. Pain tolerance and sensation reducing-augmenting
● Aneseth Petrie’s reducer-augmenter theory of pain tolerance:
1. People with low pain tolerance (augmenters) have a nervous system that
amplifies or augments subjective impact of sensory input
2. People with high pain tolerance (reducers) have a nervous system that
dampens or reduces effects of sensory information
a. Reducers seek strong stimulation, perhaps in order to compensate for
lower sensory reactivity (thrill seeking, parachute jumping)
b. Reducers may use substances (nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, other
drugs) to artificially lift their arousal level
Personality revealed through interpretation
● Locus of control: describes a person’s interpretation of responsibility for events in
his/her life; internally versus externally (where does the responsibility lie for your
success/failures?)
○ General expectancies
■ People base their expectations about what will happen in the new
situation based on relatively stable experiences about their ability to
influence events
Cognitive experiential domain
Cognitive approaches to personality: focus on differences in how people process information
● Cognition: refers to awareness and thinking, as well as to specific mental acts
(perceiving, interpreting, remembering, believing, anticipating)
● All of these mental activities transform sensory input into mental representations
(information processing)
Personality psychologists are interested in 3 levels of cognition
1. Perception: process of imposing order on information received by our sense organs
2. Interpretation: process of making sense of or explaining events in the world
3. Conscious goals: standards and goals people develop for evaluating themselves
and others
4. Intelligence: additional domain related to cognition
Human perception: does not only describe what you see when you see the world, but also
how you process what you see in the world
Personality revealed through perception
● We all perceive reality through our own lens (mental representation)
○ Based on our sensory and perceptual systems
● Individual differences in perceptual style
1. Field dependence-independence:
● Herman Witkin
○ Field independent people see the big picture more readily than details;
more focused on surrounding context
○ Measures used to assess field dependence-independence:
■ Rod and frame test (RFT): conditions are dark room and
glowing rod, tasks to keep rod upright using dial;
manipulations: adjust tilt of rod, frame, chair;
● field independence: ignoring external sues around rod
and use body orientation as guide
● Field dependence: adjust rod in the direction of titles
frame
■ Embedded figures test (EFT)
● Look at busy picture and identify objects in it
○ Measures show this is stable over time
● Field independent people are better able to attend to task-relevant cues
○ Less distracted by extranea=ous details
○ More analytic approach to problem solving
● Field dependent people do not perform as well as field-independent people in
situations markes by unusual degrees of novelty or lack of structure
○ Strong and social skills
○ More attentive to social context
Field independence and dependence and life choices
● Education
, ○ Field independent people favor natural science, math, engineering, whereas
field dependent people favour social sciences
● Impersonal relations
○ Field independent people are more interpersonally detached, whereas field
dependent people are attentive to social cues, oriented toward other people
● Current research on diet dependence-independence
○ Field independent people are better able to screen out distracting information
and focus on a task
■ Study of police officers (field independent are better at shooting, less
susceptible to distractions)
○ Field independent students learn more effectively than field dependent
students in multimedia-based instructional environment
■ Ex: graphics, sounds, videa
■ Embedded points, selective attention
2. Pain tolerance and sensation reducing-augmenting
● Aneseth Petrie’s reducer-augmenter theory of pain tolerance:
1. People with low pain tolerance (augmenters) have a nervous system that
amplifies or augments subjective impact of sensory input
2. People with high pain tolerance (reducers) have a nervous system that
dampens or reduces effects of sensory information
a. Reducers seek strong stimulation, perhaps in order to compensate for
lower sensory reactivity (thrill seeking, parachute jumping)
b. Reducers may use substances (nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, other
drugs) to artificially lift their arousal level
Personality revealed through interpretation
● Locus of control: describes a person’s interpretation of responsibility for events in
his/her life; internally versus externally (where does the responsibility lie for your
success/failures?)
○ General expectancies
■ People base their expectations about what will happen in the new
situation based on relatively stable experiences about their ability to
influence events
