Deck 15: The Cognitive Approach: Theory, Application, and Assessment

Question 1

According to Kelly,individual differences in personality can be traced to all of the following sources except one.Which one?

A)The number of constructs in a person's construct system.
B)The way a person organizes the constructs in his or her construct system.
C)The person's level of motivation to make sense out of the world.
D)The kinds of constructs in a person's construct system.

Answer 1

C

Question 2

According to Kelly,personal constructs

A)consist of a number of possible classifications ranging from one extreme to another.
B)are basically the same for all people.
C)can be expressed in words.
D)are bipolar.

Answer 2

D

Question 3

According to Kelly,construct systems are never perfect. When constructs fail us as we try to predict events,

A)old constructs are selected out of the system.
B)healthy people fail to consider new information.
C)new constructs are constantly generated to replace the old ones.
D)it lessens our ability to predict what will happen the next time.

Answer 3

C

Question 4

According to Kelly,psychological problems are caused by

A)past traumatic experiences.
B)unloving parents.
C)faulty construct systems.
D)using irrational logic to explain events.

Question 5

Which of the following was advocated by George Kelly?

A)People are largely controlled by the environmental stimuli they encounter.
B)People are motivated to make sense out of all the stimuli that impinge on them.
C)People are happier when they accept that life is full of unexpected turns and surprises.
D)Most of what determines our behavior is not readily accessible to consciousness.

Question 6

According to Kelly,anxiety results when

A)people become aware of inconsistencies between the actual self and the ideal self.
B)people can't predict future events.
C)defense mechanisms fail.
D)people use faulty logic in arriving at self-defeating conclusions about themselves.

Question 7

Patsy is not sure how her teacher will react to watch she wrote on her assignment. She's unable to predict what will happen when the paper is returned. According to personal construct theory,

A)anxiety is likely to accompany Patsy's thoughts.
B)Patsy's constructs will likely fail to become impermeable.
C)Patsy's construct system matches the ideal system instead of the real system.
D)it will become impossible to modify Patsy's construct system.

Question 8

Which of the following is true about the cognitive processes that produce behavior?

A)Behaviorists argued that the situation is processed in the "black box."
B)The processing that takes place between situation and response is of little importance.
C)Cognitive-affective units are equally accessible from memory.
D)Cognitive theorists acknowledge that the situation often initiates behavior.

Question 9

Psychologist William James once referred to what the world looks like to a baby as

A)"magical objects in space."
B)a "blur of colors and faces."
C)a "bussing, blooming confusion."
D)"totally out of focus."

Question 10

Which of the following is correct about cognitive-affective units?

A)They are basically the same for everyone.
B)They are equally accessible in memory.
C)How we interpret a situation depends on which cognitive-affective units are activated.
D)Cognitive therapists try to reduce the number of cognitive-affective units in their clients.

Question 11

According to Kelly,well-adjusted people

A)have stable construct systems that they know will almost always allow them to predict events.
B)have relatively few, but very efficient, personal constructs.
C)constantly replace old, inadequate constructs with new ones.
D)can readily describe in a few words the constructs they use.

Question 12

Cognitive personality researchers have looked at each of the following kinds of cognitive-affect units except one. Which one?

A)Encodings
B)Categories
C)Reinforcement values
D)Personal constructs

Question 13

Which of the following would most likely be of interest to a theorist from the cognitive approach?

A)The impact of delaying reinforcement on responding
B)The number of words recalled from memory
C)The effect of self-concept on daily mood
D)The best techniques for uncovering unconscious thoughts

Question 14

To obtain a sense of predictability,Kelly suggests that we engage in

A)theory construction.
B)template matching.
C)scientific discovery.
D)hypothesis testing.

Question 15

Jason is experiencing anxiety and adjustment problems with his new job.According to Kelly,this is probably because Jason

A)has not yet developed constructs that will allow him to deal with the new people and situations he encounters.
B)is unable to understand the way other people construe the world.
C)has had difficulty in this type of situation before.
D)is not yet motivated enough to develop hypotheses about how things operate in this new environment.

Question 16

Cognitive personality researchers have looked at each of the following kinds of mental representations except one. Which one?

A)Self-schemas
B)Possible selves
C)Personal constructs
D)Self-efficacy

Question 17

Kelly presented a "man-as-scientist" conception of human personality,meaning that

A)no scientist can understand a person better than that person understands himself or herself.
B)the human personality can be examined through scientific methods.
C)people constantly try to predict and control the events in their lives.
D)the best way to obtain answers to our questions about human personality is to examine a single individual in depth.

Question 18

The cognitive approach to personality explains differences in personality as differences in the way people

A)respond to reinforcement.
B)process information.
C)think about their past.
D)dream.

Question 19

Kelly suggested that the better we understand another person's construct system,the better

A)chance we will have of forming a romantic relationship.
B)we will enjoy one another.
C)chance we will have for psychological health.
D)we will get along.

Question 20

Joshua classifies each person he meets as either sensitive or insensitive. A cognitive personality theorist would probably say that sensitive-insensitive is an example of a

A)personal construct.
B)prototype.
C)self-schema.
D)possible self.

Question 21

According to Ellis,people have psychological problems due to faulty reasoning based on

A)self-defeating thoughts.
B)irrational beliefs.
C)skewed personal constructs.
D)activating experiences.

Question 22

Participants in one study were asked to respond with a yes or no to questions on a series of words.When later asked to recall as many of the words as possible,participants recalled words best when they had been asked,

A)"Is the word printed in big letters?"
B)"Does it rhyme with another word?"
C)"Does it mean the same as another word?"
D)"Does it describe you?"

Question 23

Jennifer answers quickly when asked if her mother is introverted,but it takes her longer to answer when asked if her next-door neighbor is introverted.Schema researchers would interpret this to mean that

A)Jennifer has a well-developed schema for her mother.
B)Jennifer does not have a well-defined schema for introversion.
C)Introversion is probably not part of Jennifer's self-schema.
D)Jennifer's mother is probably introverted.

Question 24

Which of the following is true about the cognitive processes that produce behavior?

A)The situation often initiates behavior.
B)Processing information in a "black box" is generally considered a myth.
C)Cognitive-affective units are equally accessible from memory.
D)Behavior becomes automatic when conscious attention is focused on it.

Question 25

Schemas help us to do all of the following except one.Which one?

A)Perceive features in our environment
B)Organize information
C)Retrieve information from memory
D)Avoid stereotyping

Question 26

Which of the following is not one of the representations of self,according to self-discrepancy theory?

A)Should self
B)Ideal self
C)Actual self
D)Ought self

Question 27

In addition to allowing for rapid processing of schema-relevant information,self-schemas provide a framework for

A)organizing relevant information.
B)self-understanding.
C)processing unconscious feelings.
D)recalling life events.

Question 28

A researcher examines not only how people think of themselves today,but also the kind of person they want to become or are afraid of becoming. The researcher is probably investigating

A)stereotypes.
B)self-esteem.
C)possible selves.
D)personal constructs.

Question 29

When practicing rational emotive therapy,a therapist will typically

A)look for the childhood experiences that contributed to the current problem.
B)examine the logic the client uses that leads him or her to the emotional reaction.
C)wait for the client to discover the source of the problem rather than suggest what the source might be.
D)affirm to the client that he or she has good reasons to feel the way he or she does.

Question 30

One function served by our "possible selves" is to

A)reduce anxiety associated with our unacceptable behavior.
B)provide incentives for future behavior.
C)make sense out of all the impinging information we face daily.
D)help us find a romantic partner.

Question 31

Researchers use each of the following dependent variables except one to examine the strength of schemas.Which one?

A)How long it takes people to respond to questions about themselves.
B)How long it takes people to respond to questions about other people.
C)How many trials it takes people to correctly answer the test items.
D)How many words people recall from a task, even though they are not told they will be asked to recall the words until after the task is completed.

Question 32

Many different therapies fall within the broad cognitive approach,but each cognitive therapy identifies _________ as the cause of behavioral problems and disorders.

A)a loss of freedom
B)early childhood experiences with caregivers
C)inappropriate behaviors
D)inappropriate thoughts

Question 33

Participants in one study were divided into those with and without a well-developed "independence" schema. Later,participants were asked about their own level of independence. Compared to aschematics,participants with a strong independence schema

A)took longer to answer because they had more information to process.
B)took longer to answer because it was more important to them to give a correct answer.
C)took less time to answer.
D)took the same amount of time to answer, but were more confident of their answers.

Question 34

Albert Ellis's goal in rational emotive therapy is to

A)help clients repress negative emotion.
B)teach clients more effective social skills.
C)help clients get in touch with their true emotions.
D)replace clients' irrational beliefs with rational ones.

Question 35

Participants in one study recalled words better when they had been asked first whether or not the word described them (rather than,for example,if the word had been printed in large letters).Researchers interpret this to mean that

A)the participants had to think about the word more when asked if it described them.
B)the self-description questions generated more interest for the participants than the other questions.
C)the self-description questions generated a stronger emotional reaction for the participants than the other questions.
D)the participants processed the information for the self-description questions through a self-schema.

Question 36

The approach of self-discrepancy theory proposes

A)the actual self is different from one's self-concept.
B)there are three different representations of the self.
C)the internal self and external self are the same.
D)all of these

Question 37

When cognitive psychotherapists teach clients how to handle recurring problems,it is often an attempt to eliminate

A)emotional consequences.
B)the ideal self.
C)self-defeating thinking.
D)negative personal constructs.

Question 38

Your self-schema consists of those aspects of your behavior that are

A)innate.
B)most important to you.
C)similar to your parents.
D)unique to you alone.

Question 39

One study of the self-schema presented students with 40 questions for which they pressed yes or no. Researchers found that participants were more likely to remember the information when

A)the words had the ability to generate emotions.
B)participants were asked about a rhyme.
C)a self-referent question was difficult to answer.
D)the question was processed about the participants themselves.

Question 40

Albert Ellis describes an A-B-C reasoning process that creates unnecessary emotional problems.Which step in this reasoning process does he draw to the client's attention during rational emotive therapy?

A)The activating experience, such as failing a test.
B)The unstated belief, such as "I should be good at everything I do."
C)The emotional consequence, such as depression.
D)The childhood experiences that made the person vulnerable to emotional problems.

Question 41

One of the criticisms of the cognitive approach to personality is that many of the concepts introduced by cognitive theorists may not be necessary to explain human behavior.This criticism refers to the

A)need to limit science to observable behaviors.
B)lack of evidence for consistency in personality over time and across situations.
C)law of parsimony.
D)need for empirical evidence to support hypotheses derived from theory.

Question 42

All of the following techniques are methods used by Kelly in psychotherapy except one. Which one?

A)Asking people about their personal constructs
B)Asking people to describe their ideal selves
C)Asking people to define their personal constructs
D)Forcing people to attend to their process of construing the world

Question 43

One of the goals of Kelly's Rep Test is to obtain a _________ of how clients construe the world.

A)diagnosis
B)visual map
C)personal construct
D)level of achievement

Question 44

Which of the following assumptions is made by a therapist using the Rep Test?

A)The constructs listed by the clients are unique to the testing situation.
B)The constructs listed by the clients are limited to the set of people used in the test.
C)All healthy people use basically the same constructs.
D)People are able to adequately describe the constructs they use.

Question 45

The cognitive approach has been criticized in which of the following ways?

A)It does not fit well with current trends in psychology.
B)The research has given it little support.
C)It is too specific and needs more abstraction.
D)It is not needed to explain individual differences in behavior.

Question 46

Contrast cognitive psychotherapy with Rogers's approach. Discuss the application of personal construct theory to psychological problems such as anxiety. Explain the significance of self-defeating thinking in typical cognitive therapy.

Question 47

Kelly suggested that the better we understand another person's construct system,the better we will get along.

Question 48

Compare Kelly's conception of human personality with Freud's view. Discuss the basic tenets and structure of Kelly's personal construct theory.

Question 49

A strength of the cognitive approach is that it fits well with

A)modern artificial intelligence research.
B)the psychoanalytic perspective.
C)current trends in the field of psychology
D)the behavioral/social learning approach.

Question 50

Which part of the A-B-C process would be saying to yourself,"It is necessary that I get perfect grades in school."?

A)Activating experience
B)Irrational Belief
C)Emotional Consequence
D)Self-defeating thinking

Question 51

According to Ellis,people have psychological problems because of faulty reasoning due to unconscious impulses.

Question 52

The cognitive approach to personality explains differences in personality as differences in the way people respond to stress.

Question 53

Discuss Albert Ellis's rational-emotive therapy and highlight two goals of this cognitive approach to psychotherapy. Explain what is meant by the A-B-C process with an example of your own. According to Ellis's approach to psychotherapy,identify the A,B,and C elements in your experience.

Question 54

Ideal selves represent our dreams and aspirations as well as our fears and anxieties.

Question 55

In effect,the Rep Test was designed to measure

A)personal constructs.
B)possible selves.
C)self-schemas.
D)the use of irrational beliefs.

Question 56

Describe each of the major cognitive representations of the self and how each fits into a larger theory of personality. How are these representations measured? Give an example of your own self-schema.

Question 57

According to Kelly,people want to understand the world so that they can predict and control what happens to them.