Explain one psychological or social question from the cognitive perspective

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ERIKA PÄRN IB07

6. a) Explain one psychological or social question from the cognitive perspective

One psychological question, which may be explained using the cognitive approach is aggression. Aggression being the social question may be defined as any form of behavior directed towards the goal of harming or injuring another living being who is motivated to avoid such treatment. The cognitive approach is concerned with how people acquire, store, transform, and use information. Cognitive psychologists rejected behaviorist assumption that mental events or states were unsuitable for scientific research. The main assumption of this perspective is that mental processes can be investigated scientifically. Thus aggression is explained by concentrating on how cognitive processes actively organize and manipulate information received. According to the cognitive perspective humans do not merely respond passively to the environment. This may be seen as soft determinism. Thus aggression is something outside our control as it is linked to cognitive processes within the brain.

Cognitive approach sees that aggression cannot be understood without considering mental processes. One important aspect affecting our behavior is our capability of learning from others. This is tied with social learning theory. Cognitive social learning theory offers an explanation for aggression this being imitation. Imitation is the learning of behavior through observation of behavior conducted by others. Thus aggression may be learned from observations of others. Best example of imitation was seen in Bandura’s study of children’s imitation. His aim was to see how infants imitated adult behavior. Adults behaved either in an aggressive or non aggressive manner. Result indicated that children had a tendency to imitate the aggressive behavior of adult models.

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The second aspect likely to influence aggression is the notion that our ideas, thoughts and perceptions may directly influence our behavior, in a sense behavior is predetermined and is referred as soft determinism. Thus the schemata guiding the individual’s behavior affects the possibilities of aggressive behavior. The various schemas developed that influence our perception and behavior. In this sense the approach is deterministic as based on the schemas of the mind, human behavior is predetermined. Thus with the assertion of the cognitive perspective humans do not have freewill as it comes to aggression.

In conclusion the cognitive perspective ...

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