A scientific method called developmental psychology seeks to explain how people grow, evolve, and remain consistent throughout their lives. Developmental psychology examines how thoughts, feelings, and actions evolve throughout a person’s life. Since this is the time in a person’s life when the most change occurs, many theories in this field concentrate on how children develop. For a very long time, theories have been developed to help better comprehend the complicated topic of human personality. Theorists have attempted to comprehend and explain how personalities are formed, their variances, how people interact with one another and the outside world, and how they connect to various psychiatric diseases. Thus, the paper aims to discuss cognitive theory, its development, and crucial factors.
George Kelly, among others, supports the cognitive hypothesis on which this study is centered. Since thoughts influence feelings and behavior, Kelly’s cognitive theory is centered on how people think (Lester, 2019). Their ideas and feelings shape each person’s personality. As Kelly notes, a key factor in determining personality is the human cognition component (Lester, 2019). This concept serves as the basis for the language of personal constructs, which describes how people gather information and utilize it to anticipate events using their understanding. Based on the results of his forecast, the person interacts with the outside world and this interaction shapes who he is.
The impulse to compare people to scientists informs Kelly’s sharp analysis of uniqueness. He claims that there is a connection between scientists’ goals and those of other beings (Lester, 2019). He contends that humans generate theories based on their constructions and afterward use numerous ideas to anticipate occurrences, just like scientists make hypotheses and undertake studies to verify their correctness. The constructions, however, might occasionally be invalidated by an individual’s prior experiences that may not apply to their current social situation (Lester, 2021). The immutable nature of the deformed structures prevents them from holding fresh data entry; hence they cannot be utilized to forecast occurrences. People occasionally need to modify their constructs to account for information generated by new experiences since constructs are limiting in nature and cannot be used in all circumstances.
His theory’s foundation is that an individual’s processes are psychologically dictated by how he expects occurrences. The basic postulate states that people’s behaviors shape their expectations about the outside world, particularly those based on prior experiences (Lester, 2021). When a person changes his construction systems as a result of an event, which might, in turn, cause anxiety, animosity, and in certain circumstances, guilt, Kelly’s constructions of transition take the form of emotions (Lester, 2021). However, there are other prospects for reconstruction provided by the construction systems.
People experience anxiety when they find themselves in situations their constructions have not previously anticipated or faced because they understand that their conceptions are ineffectual. When one violates the frameworks he connects with, guilt becomes apparent. If one’s constructions conflict with reality, one might modify reality to conform to one’s constructs (Lester, 2021). When a person is tenacious in trying to alter reality to conform to their beliefs rather than changing their constructs, this element is known as aggressiveness and can develop into hatred (Lester, 2021). When a person refuses to rebuild, it is claimed that they have a psychological problem.
Overall, developmental psychology aims to explain how individuals change, develop, and remain the same throughout their lives. Many ideas in this discipline focus on how children develop because this is when the most change occurs in a person’s life. The purpose of this essay is to describe cognitive theory, its history, and its key elements. Because they know that their concepts are useless, people become anxious when they find themselves in circumstances they had not before predicted or confronted. When one’s constructs and reality diverge, one may attempt to change reality to fit one’s constructs. It is implied that a person has a psychological issue if they refuse to repair it.
References
Lester, D. (2019). Theories of personality: A systems approach. Routledge.
Lester, D. (2021). George Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory and the thought processes of suicidal individuals. Suicide Studies, 2(2), 32.