Cognitive Approach to Psychology

Cognitive Approach to Psychology

1. KEY ASSUMPTIONS

   • Disorders are caused by faulty thinking.
   • Human behaviour is heavily influenced by the schemata (our core beliefs) which develop from early experiences.
     • Negative schemata can result from unhappy or traumatic childhoods.
   • Negative schemata lead to NEGATIVE AUTOMATIC THOUGHTS which are misplaced and dysfunctional because nobody can be good at everything.
     • Negative automatic thoughts are rapid and unconscious responses to situations, which produce COGNITIVE BIASES.
       • Cognitive biases prevent a person from seeing any positives in their life, reinforcing negative views.
         • EXAMPLES OF COGNITIVE BIASES
           • MINIMISATION. Crediting successes to external factors rather than yourself.
           • MAXIMISATION. Exaggerating the importance of small failures.
           • SELECTIVE ABSTRACTION. Focusing on negative aspects of life only. Ignoring the wider picture.
           • ALL OR NOTHING THINKING. Ignoring middle ground - either you think that you are a success at everything, or a success at nothing.

2. HOW FAULTY THINKING CAN CAUSE PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDERS

   • BECK'S 1979 MODEL OF DEPRESSION.
     • 3 negative schemata are needed to cause depression and this is called the negative triad.
       • Negative view of the self.
       • Negative view of the world.
       • Negative view of the future.
     • ATTRIBUTIONS are out interpretation of why things happen and they have three dimensions. Internal/external, specific/global, stable/unstable.
       • Depression = seeing negative events as internal, global & stable and positive events as external, specific & unstable.
   • ELLIS' ABC MODEL
     • Activating events (A) combine with beliefs (B) to produce particular consequences (C). Irrational beliefs (B), faulty thinking, will lead to inappropriate negative emotions (C).

3. EVALUATION OF THE COGNITIVE APPROACH

   • STRENGTHS
     • Clark, 1986, gave clear evidence that depression and anxiety disorders correlate with cognitive biases and faulty thinking.
     • Therapy based on the cognitive method (e.g. SIT) is very successful in treating depression and anxiety disorders.
     • Empowers the individual, this model places people in a far less passive position than others.
   • WEAKNESSES
     • Vagueness. The ideas of schemata and exactly how irrational thoughts should be measured lack clarity.
     • 'Faulty thinking' and negative cognitive biases could be an effect rather than a cause.
     • The emphasis put on the person's faulty thinking could lead to blame being allotted.
     • The cognitive approach does not leave room for biological factors in psychopathology, and Bunney has shown that depression has links with low levels of serotonin.