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COGNITIVE AND SOCIAL-COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF PERSONALITY
Cognitiveapproaches to personality view perception and cognition
as the core of
what it means to be person. The way that people interpret their
environments,
especially their social milieu, is seen as central to their
humanness, and the ways in
which people dier from one another in how they do this is seen
as central to theirindividuality.
ROOTS OF COGNITIVE APPROACHES
Charles Darwins theory of evolution expanded thinking about
human nature that
cognitive psychology could begin in earnest that is, after the
human mind came to
be seen in biological terms, scientist could begin to explore
how thinking changed
as a child developed, was in!uenced by dierent circumstances,
and was shaped by
culture.
ROOTS IN GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY
"estalt psychology was an intellectual movement that became very
in!uential in
"ermany in the #$%&s and it was brought to 'merica in the
#$(&s as many of its
foremost thinkers !ed fascism. The central tenets of "estalt
theory are) *#+ human
beings seek meaning in their environments, *%+ we organie the
sensations we
receive from the world around us into meaningful perceptions,
and *(+ complex
stimuli are not reducible to the sum of their parts. The "erman
word gestalt means
pattern or con-guration. The view from "estalt theory is that
the con-guration of a
complex stimulus is its essence *ohler, #$/0+. 1rom this
perspective, components
elements of a stimulus or experience cannot be added up to
re2create the original.
The essence of the original resides in its overall con-guration,
which is lost when
subparts are analyed separately.
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