Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

2020 Edition
| Editors: Virgil Zeigler-Hill, Todd K. Shackelford

Cognitive Perspective

Reference work entry
First Online:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_966
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Definition

Cognitive perspective in the study of individual differences amounts to analyzing human traits in terms of underlying cognitive processes. The way in which we perceive the world, attend to the external stimuli, store information in short-term and long-term memory, or solve problems via the process of thinking defines what we are like. The cognitive perspective allows integration of the psychology of individual differences with the experimental cognitive psychology.

General Issues

Cognitive analysis of individual differences is a relatively new approach in psychological science. Contemporary cognitive psychology evolved in the 1950s and 1960s as a continuation of the traditional experimental psychology, whereas the psychology of individual differences developed from the so-called correlational psychology (Cronbach 1957), also known as the differential psychology. These two disciplines of scientific psychology used to differ in basic theoretical and methodological...

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Notes

Acknowledgments

Preparation of this contribution was supported by the Polish National Centre of Science (NCN), grant No. DEC-2013/08/A/HS6/00045.

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Copyright information

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Institute of PsychologyJagiellonian UniversityKrakówPoland

Section editors and affiliations

  • Mariangely Melendez-Torres
    • 1
  1. 1.University of Southern MississippiHattiesburgUSA