The Cognitive Model
Essay Preview: The Cognitive Model
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The cognitive model assumes that cognition, behavior, and biochemistry are important components of depressive disorders. According to essay #12, many cognitions central to depressive processes are our perceptions, attributions, beliefs, values, and expectations. Our attributions refer to events that have already occurred; expectations refer to our opinions about events in the near and distance future. Attributions may or may not contribute to the formulation of expectations, but is it the expected that produces the affect and behavior that follows.
In accordance with essay #12, Hollon and Garber refer to perceptions to include identifying, discriminating, recognizing, and judging events. One often recognizes contingencies between classes of events, and is affected by paired stimulation that are correlated. According to lecture, an example of correlations in peoples mind is “If I am not perfect, I am worthless.” Beck states that when “arbitrary inferences” are made, people draw conclusions that are contrary to the objective evidence in a situation. “Selective abstraction” is when one draws the inference based on only one part of the information involved in a situation. “Magnification” is the tendency to exaggerate the importance of the event. Overstressing imperfections eventually engulfs the whole self in a depressive state. “Minimization” is the tendency to underestimate the importance of positive events. According to lecture, people who engage in this are not able to “disidentify” with inconsistent information. According to lecture, Claude Steele describes the “self-affirmation theory” and how people feel when faced with negative feedback about oneself in a particular domain. A non-depressive person would try to bolster other aspects of herself in order to protect self-esteem. Bill Swann expresses peoples need for consistency by explaining the self-verification theory.” This states that people look for consistent information from others because it makes them feel good. They also express themselves consistently, and want others to look at them consistently across situations. We seek friends who support the image of ourselves. Depressed people also tend to “overgeneralize.” For example, if one is home on a Saturday night, he convinces himself that he will be alone his whole life. Some people tend to “disqualify the positive,” This is when they act as if a positive experience that should give them a reason to think more positively, doesnt count because they are already “doomed.” Depressed people usually use “should statements” and constantly amplifying self-discrepancies.
These are all qualities of people who feel they are helpless. “Learned helplessness” is caused by a perceived uncontrollability of ones life (Seligman). One feels that she doesnt have control of the [bad] things that are happening to her. The reformulated learned helplessness model (Abramson, et al.) explains that the way in which one interprets why bad things are happening to her (attributions). According to essay #11, Abramson states that attributions can be categorized in 3 dimensions: internality, stability, and globality. For example, when a person who values school is faced with dealing with a failing grade in math, she may choose to explain it internally (“Im stupid”) or externally (“the test was impossible”). She may also choose to explain it by saying “I will fail every math test now” (stable explanation) or “It was just a bad day. Ill do better next time” (unstable explanation). Globality is also important when discussing attributional factors. A global explanation would be “I will now fail all the tests in school because I am incapable of succeeding in anything.” A specific explanation would be “It is just one test and wont affect my life.”
Roy Baumesotor stated that depressed people experience an escape from the self. According to lecture, self-awareness is problematic; it causes one to focus on negativity. Nolen-Hoeksema wrote literature on the depressive tendency for “rumination”–thinking too much about everythings meaning and future in hopes to find a solution. This causes attentional resources to decrease which leads one to be distracted by negative thoughts, without tending to positive things. Non-depressed people, on the other hand, have the mental capacity to strategically switch their attention to something else that is positive (ex. Disidentification).
According to lecture, predictive research by Lewinsohn questioned contingencies between the accuracy of depressed people vs. non-depressed people. Depressed people were put in a room with a controlled set of people. They engaged with each other in a task that involved social interaction. The outsiders were asked to observe them. Later, depressed people were asked what the others thought about them. They expected depressed people to underestimate how other regarded them. This proved to be false. In fact, the depressed group accurately estimated how others viewed them while non-depressed people wildly overestimated what others thought about them. Depressive people use thought as a heuristic for truth. They use “emotional reasoning” to evaluate the nature of their thought and how seriously they take them. They think that because they feel it, it must be true. According to the textbook, in a study involving dice-throwing, non-depressed participants felt that they would have greater control when throwing the dice themselves than when someone else did it for them (Fleming &Darley, 1986). The opposite state is found in depressed people, who have a more realistic perception of the amount of control they have in chance situations. Therefore, depressed people tend to be more accurate when predicting the future, while non-depressed people display an “unrealistic optimism” (Alloy & Ahrens, 1987).
Control is a factor that alleviates stress and anxiety. According to essay #10, control is desired by individuals because having control improves an aversive outcome. Similar to the way depression was induced in dogs, experimenters induced anxiety in rats. According to the text, a dog was placed in a cage where he had no control to do anything or escape an electric shock that was delivered to his feet through an electrified grid. Later he just sat passively and endured the shocks even though he was given the freedom to escape them. The dog experienced learned helplessness. According to lecture, “experimental neurosis” focused research on giving electric shocks to rats at unpredictable intervals. This way increased anxiety and tension causing a phenomena called “sudden