PSYC 2600 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Field Dependence, Herman Witkin, Hyperfocus
19 Jun 2018
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Week 8 Notes: Cognitive Topics in Personality
- The cognitive domain tells us how people differ in how they sense, perceive and
interpret the world
- Sensation, perception, and interpretation
Class Activity
Human cognition vs. computer cognition
- They both have organized networks where they store information (memory)
- Humans are information processing systems
- Both have input and output
- Humans have a brain, computers have processors
- Both computers and humans can learn
- The main difference is our human cognitions are affected by our emotions and moods
How much are we driven by our mental activities?
Example: picture of Obama
- Everyone perceives the picture differently
- The way you process information makes you unique
Introduction
Cognitive approaches to personality: the different ways that people process information
Cognition: how aware we are of the world, how we perceive information, how we sense
information, how we remember information, whether or not we believe certain information,
and anticipating information
- Optimistic vs. pessimistic style of personality
Information processing model: the differences in cognition, everyone has a different
information processing model
The Dress
Perception: people perceived the colours of the dress differently, there are biases in perception
- Why do people care that we perceive things differently? Where does this fascination
come from?
Interpretation: there are biases in interpretation, what you have learned in the past effects
your interpretation
Conscious Goals: people have different goals and standards that affect behaviour
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Intelligence: added fourth domain
The Video
- Our brain assumes we see everything at eye level
- Optical allusions
- Our brains are designed to pick up certain perceptual cues, so we can interpret things
Personality Revealed Through Perception
Field Dependence-Independence: do we look at things in the big picture, or do we look at
specific parts?
- We all have mental representations of stimuli, but how we interpret the information
differs
- There are no facts in the way we perceive things, there are differences
- Personality is revealed in how we perceive the environment
Pain Tolerance and Sensation Reducing Augmenting: people differ in their pain thresholds
Field Dependence-Independence
- Herman Witkin
- He noticed that some people have the ability to hyper-focus on details in the
environment despite noise
Field Independent: People who have this ability to hyper focus
- Focuses first on the stimulus and then on the context
Field Dependent: they are attuned to everything and they try to make connections to make
sense of the environment
- Focuses first on context and then the stimulus
There are two tests that measure field dependence-independent:
1. Rod and Frame Test
- Participants are put in a dark room, and are blindfolded
- The blindfold is removed, and they see a glowing frame and a glowing rod
- The experimenter can manipulate the rod, the participant is supposed to make a
decision based on how the rod is manipulated
- People who are field independent ignored the external stimuli, and adjusted the rod
based on the clues that were given to them by their own bodies (sitting straight,
forward), they were not affected by the position of the frame
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- Field dependent people tilted the rod according to the position of the frame, they based
their decision on the context
- A field independent person would be quicker to see the shadow of the dolphin in the
rose picture than field dependent people
2. Embedded Figures Test:
- Participants are given a picture and they have to find hidden images in the picture
- They are timed
Field Dependence-Independence
FI:
- Better at attending to cues in the environment to solve the task
- Less distracted by noise
- They are more task-oriented, more analytical in problem solving
- Show a preference for non-social situations
FD:
- Don’t perform as well as FI people in new situations, situations without structure
because they depend on the environment to solve tasks
They might take longer to get used to new environments
- More social, more reliant on information from other people rather than information
they learn themselves
- They gravitate more towards social situations with large groups of people, they get
along well with others, they tend to ask for people’s opinions more frequently
Education and Life Choices:
- FI: tend to gravitate towards the natural sciences, math, engineering
Careers that will allow them to operate independently
- FD: careers that allow them to act more with people, humanities, social services
Interpersonal Relations:
- FI: more detached, prefer working alone than in groups
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
The cognitive domain tells us how people differ in how they sense, perceive and interpret the world. They both have organized networks where they store information (memory) Humans have a brain, computers have processors. The main difference is our human cognitions are affected by our emotions and moods. The way you process information makes you unique. Cognitive approaches to personality: the different ways that people process information. Cognition: how aware we are of the world, how we perceive information, how we sense information, how we remember information, whether or not we believe certain information, and anticipating information. Information processing model: the differences in cognition, everyone has a different information processing model. Perception: people perceived the colours of the dress differently, there are biases in perception. Interpretation: there are biases in interpretation, what you have learned in the past effects your interpretation. Conscious goals: people have different goals and standards that affect behaviour.
