Cognition, Emotion, & Personality

Introduction

• What is cognition?• How does this apply?

• Cognitive style

• Emotion??• “Emotional style”

Outline

I. CognitionA. Personality Revealed through Perception

1. Field Dependence

2. Pain Tolerance and Sensation reducing/Augmenting

B. Personality Revealed through Interpretation (attribution)1. Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory

2. Locus of Control

C. Personality Revealed through Goals1. Personal Projects Analysis

2. Social Cognition

Outline (cont’d)

II. EmotionA. Issues in Emotion Research

1. Emotional States versus Emotional Traits

2. Categorical versus Dimensional Approach to Emotion

B. Content Versus Style of Emotional Life1. Content of Emotional Life

2. Style of Emotional Life

3. Interaction of Content and Style in Emotional Life

4. Personality and Well-being

A Story…

• Significance?• People perceive, think, and then

act.• Can happen quickly• Can happen slowly• Can happen accurately• Can happen full or errors

• Personality psychologists interested in:• How people differ from each other

in processing information.

Cognition

Cognition: Personality Revealed through Perception

• The Point?• Individual differences in personality revealed through perception

Field Dependence

• Rod and Frame Test (Witkin et al., 1954)• 1st book – Differences in Perceptual

Style

• “Can’t see the forest for the trees”• Field dependence vs. field

independence

• Differences in perceptual style.• Adjust rod = perfectly upright• Field dependent – Adjust rod

towards frame.• Field independent – Adjust rod to

upright.

Cognition: Personality Revealed through Perception

Field Dependence (cont’d)

• Witkin quest to find simpler version of RFT (rod and frame test)

• Next, please.

Cognition: Personality Revealed through Perception

Field Dependence (cont’d)Cognition: Personality Revealed through

Perception

• Correlates well with the more “cumbersome” version.

Field Dependence (cont’d)

• From lab to reality

Cognition: Personality Revealed through Perception

Pain Tolerance and Sensation Reducing/Augmenting

• Personality & experience of pain (notes)

• One way to assess…• Cold pressor task:

• Ice water as long as you can:• Hand starts to hurt – 16s (pain threshold)• Can’t take it any longer ≈ 2m• Pain tolerance = # sec in water – pain threshold

• Relation of personality to experience of pain:• Extraverts: higher in pain tolerance• Extraverts: less accurately recollected pain scores and other qualitative features of

experimentally induced pain.• Neuroticism: Positively assoc. w/ reported pain intensity

Cognition: Personality Revealed through Perception

For each pair of activities or events, circle a number that best indicates your preference:

Pain Tolerance and Sensation Reducing/Augmenting (cont’d)• Sensation reducing/augmenting

• Subjective impact of sensory stimulation

• High pain/sensory tolerance = reducer• NS (nervous system)

“damps”/”reduces” sensory stimulation

• Low pain/sensation tolerance = augmentor• NS “amplifies”/”augments” sensory

stimulation

• Findings:

• Reducers (compared to augmentors):• Drink more coffee• Smoke more• Lower threshold for boredom• Loud music • More freq. consumption psychoactive

drugs.• More minor delinquencies• Use substances – artificially

compensate reduced sensory reactivity (they need a “pick me up”)

Cognition: Personality Revealed through Perception

Kelley’s Personal Construct Theory

• Higher level of cognition – interpretation (notes)

• We seek to explain events in our lives, don’t we?• Why did he get a poor grade?• Whose fault is it that my sister can’t get along with her husband/boyfriend?• Why did the “suit” on the tube this morning give that woman a dirty look?

• Kelley’s theory:• Personal construct's = the construct’s a person routinely uses to interpret and

predict events (notes).• For Kelley, personality = diff. in the way that people construe the world

• Particularly, the social world.

• Example (notes):

Cognition: Personality Revealed through Interpretation (attribution)

Take this…, please

Locus of Control

• Def: concept describing person’s perception of responsibility for events in her/his life.

• Internal locus of control

• External locus of control

Cognition: Personality Revealed through Interpretation (attribution)

How Goals are Related to Personality

• So far: perception, interpretation…

• Now: goals…

• Focus is intention (or, intentionality)• What does someone “want” to achieve

• People differ in their goals

• How do pers. diff. affect diff. in goals?

Cognition: Personality Revealed through Goals

Personal Projects Analysis

• Personal project??• Def. Set of relevant actions intended to achieve a goal that a person has

selected.

• Little (2007) => Personal Projects Analysis• Method for assessing “personal projects”

1. Develop list of personal projects

2. Rate each project on several scales:a. Importance

b. Difficulty

c. How much they enjoy it

d. Negative/positive impact it has had in their lives

Cognition: Personality Revealed through Goals

Personal Projects Analysis (cont’d)

• lmplications for understanding personality:

• Relation between Big Five and aspects of personal projects:1. High neuroticism = rate projects as stressful, difficult, likely to end in failure,

outside of their control.• Experience difficulty & dissatisfaction accomplishing one’s personal projects.

2. Gender differences:• Men have stronger Thing orientation• Women have stronger Person orientation

3. Relation to life satisfaction & happiness:• Feeling in control of personal projects• Feeling unstressed about personal projects• Optimism about project ending successfully• Aspects predict “well-being” in an elderly sample (Lawton et al., 2002).

Cognition: Personality Revealed through Goals