Personality Exam I - Cognitive Issues

General terms for any or all thought processes

The process by which order is imposed upon information taken in by sensory organs

Information processing- how information (sensory input or mental representations) are manipulated, transformed, and or transmitted (computer analogy – input-output relationships)
Interpretation- what meaning is assigned to what is perceived
Schema - a way of perceiving events

1940s, Solomaon Asch and Herman WitkinExperiment dealing with field dependence-Independency

Field independent - more differentiated
Correlates:
-Career Choice: science more often
-Autonomy: more radical, less dependent on surroundings
-problem solving: on own
-hunting

Field dependent - more holistic
-Career Choice: choose social work, teacher, minister socially focused
-Autonomy: mot wanting to break social rules
-problem solving: seek help
-interpersonal: more socially focused, more friends more eye contact
-agrarian(gatherer)
-guilt vs shame: feel more guilt and shame b/c want to fit into whole/ standard

Thinking styles differ, field independent –analytical and differentiated Vs. dependent – view things in the bigger picture, more holistic Field independent requires more cognitive restructuring

Anaseth Petrie, back in the 60s
Low pain tolerance –augmenter –nervous system amplified sensory stimulation
High tolerance – nervous system dampened Reducers have lower brain electrical responses to stimuli, expands to other areas

Nontaster and supertaster
super taster has often has other intense senses

Colored words of emtions
Stronger emotions takes you longer to read.

Experiment: series of pics and asks the subject to respond to the pic with wrong orientation, but few pics before is a brutally shocking picture to induce an emotional blink of attention.

Higher attentional control = lower neurotism

Origin of attributions as a topic of study is 1950s with Julian Rotter – Worked with basic reinforcement paradigms in humans, but focused on the expectancies of reward, -noticed major differences in the subjects’ expectancies, and what they attributed the reward contingencies to. Locus of control whether one attributes responsibility internally or externally –
general expectancies-internal take charge, activeexternal- passive.

Animals- I can’t escape. Control is external, animal becomes passive. For humans, Moved to a cognitive model – What are the explanations of events (3 key factors)

Pessimistic: internal, stable, global
Optimistic: external, unstable, specific

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