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Defensive Pessimism
Defensive pessimism is a cognitive strategy identified by Nancy Cantor and her students in the mid-1980s.Norem, J.K. (2001)Defensive pessimism, optimism, and pessimism In Chang, Edward (Ed). ''Optimism & pessimism: Implication for theory, research, and practice'' (pp. 77–100). Washington DC: American Psychological Association. Individuals use defensive pessimism as a strategy to prepare for anxiety-provoking events or performances. When implementing defensive pessimism, individuals set low expectations for their performance, regardless of how well they have done in the past. Defensive pessimists then think through specific negative events and setbacks that could adversely influence their goal pursuits. By envisioning possible negative outcomes, defensive pessimists can take action to avoid or prepare for them.Norem, J. K. (2008). Defensive pessimism, anxiety, and the complexity of evaluating self-regulation. ''Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2,'' 121-134. Using this stra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cognitive Strategy
Cognitive strategies are the specific methods that people use to Problem solving, solve problems and/or exploit opportunities, including all sorts of reasoning, planning, arithmetic, etc. Importantly, a cognitive strategy need not be all "in the head", but will almost always interact with various aspects of what might be called the "execution context". A specific cognitive strategy would be implemented via a set of ordered and overlapping logic. Each logical aspect of a cognitive strategy is either taught or learned and needs to be remembered as situation foreknowledge. These cognitive strategies are memorized for future utilization. They can be thought of as consciously written and remembered "programs" or as the "software" that guides future brain-neuron processing. Each logic process helps to "add up" to a specific decision and resulting action. Examples A commonly used and elegant example of cognitive strategies comes from small-number addition. There are numerous different way ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nancy Cantor
Nancy Ellen Cantor (born April 2, 1952) is an American academic administrator and the chancellor of Rutgers University-Newark, in Newark, New Jersey. A social psychologist, Cantor is recognized for her scholarly contributions to the understanding of how individuals perceive and think about their social worlds, pursue personal goals, and how they regulate their behavior to adapt to life's most challenging social environments. Cantor was the first female chancellor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She previously served as chancellor at Syracuse University, and provost at the University of Michigan. Early life and education Cantor was born in New York City. She received her A.B. in 1974 from Sarah Lawrence College and her Ph.D. in psychology in 1978 from Stanford University. At Stanford, Cantor initiated a program of research on person prototypes with Walter Mischel inspired by the categorization research of Eleanor Rosch and Carolyn Mervis. Career Cantor is w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Public Speaking
Public speaking, also called oratory or oration, has traditionally meant the act of speaking face to face to a live audience. Today it includes any form of speaking (formally and informally) to an audience, including pre-recorded speech delivered over great distance by means of technology. Confucius, one of many scholars associated with public speaking, once taught that if a speech was considered to be a good speech, it would impact the individuals' lives whether they listened to it directly or not. His idea was that the words and actions of someone of power can influence the world. Public speaking is used for many different purposes, but usually as some mixture of teaching, persuasion, or entertaining. Each of these calls upon slightly different approaches and techniques. Public speaking was developed as a primary sphere of knowledge in Greece and Rome, where prominent thinkers codified it as a central part of rhetoric. Today, the art of public speaking has been transformed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Prefactual Thought Experiment
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with pronouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of pronoun ''thee'') when followed by a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anticipation
Anticipation is an emotion involving pleasure or anxiety in considering or awaiting an expected event. Anticipatory emotions include fear, anxiety, hope and trust. When the anticipated event fails to occur, it results in disappointment (if positive event) or relief (if negative event). As a defence mechanism Robin Skynner considered anticipation as one of "the mature ways of dealing with real stress.... You reduce the stress of some difficult challenge by anticipating what it will be like and preparing for how you are going to deal with it". There is evidence that "the use of mature defenses ( sublimation, anticipation) tended to increase with age", yet anticipation of negative events itself tends to decrease with age. Desire "Anticipation is the central ingredient in sexual desire." As "sex has a major cognitive component — the most important element for desire is positive anticipation". One name for pleasurable anticipation is excitement. More broadly, anticipation is a c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thought Experiment
A thought experiment is a hypothetical situation in which a hypothesis, theory, or principle is laid out for the purpose of thinking through its consequences. History The ancient Greek ''deiknymi'' (), or thought experiment, "was the most ancient pattern of mathematical proof", and existed before Euclidean mathematics, where the emphasis was on the conceptual, rather than on the experimental part of a thought-experiment. Johann Witt-Hansen established that Hans Christian Ørsted was the first to use the German term ' (lit. thought experiment) circa 1812. Ørsted was also the first to use the equivalent term ' in 1820. By 1883 Ernst Mach used the term ' in a different way, to denote exclusively the conduct of a experiment that would be subsequently performed as a by his students. Physical and mental experimentation could then be contrasted: Mach asked his students to provide him with explanations whenever the results from their subsequent, real, physical experiment differed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neuroticism
In the study of psychology, neuroticism has been considered a fundamental personality trait. For example, in the Big Five approach to personality trait theory, individuals with high scores for neuroticism are more likely than average to be moody and to experience such feelings as anxiety, worry, fear, anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, guilt, depressed mood, and loneliness. Such people are thought to respond worse to stressors and are more likely to interpret ordinary situations, such as minor frustrations, as appearing hopelessly difficult. People with high scores on the neuroticism index are thought to be at risk of developing common mental disorders ( mood disorders, anxiety disorders, and substance use disorders have been studied), and the sorts of symptoms traditionally referred to as "neuroses". Definition Neuroticism is a trait in many models within personality theory, but there is significant disagreement on its definition. It is sometimes defined as a tendency ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Self-esteem
Self-esteem is confidence in one's own worth or abilities. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs about oneself (for example, "I am loved", "I am worthy") as well as emotional states, such as triumph, despair, pride, and shame. Smith and Mackie (2007) defined it by saying "The self-concept is what we think about the self; self-esteem, is the positive or negative evaluations of the self, as in how we feel about it." Self-esteem is an attractive psychological construct because it predicts certain outcomes, such as academic achievement, happiness, satisfaction in marriage and relationships, and criminal behavior. Self-esteem can apply to a specific attribute or globally. Psychologists usually regard self-esteem as an enduring personality characteristic (''trait self-esteem''), though normal, short-term variations (''state self-esteem'') also exist. Synonyms or near-synonyms of self-esteem include: self-worth, self-regard, self-respect, and self-integrity. History The concept of self-este ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Self-criticism
Self-criticism involves how an individual evaluates oneself. Self-criticism in psychology is typically studied and discussed as a negative personality trait in which a person has a disrupted self-identity. The opposite of self-criticism would be someone who has a coherent, comprehensive, and generally positive self-identity. Self-criticism is often associated with major depressive disorder. Some theorists define self-criticism as a mark of a certain type of depression (introjective depression), and in general people with depression tend to be more self critical than those without depression. People with depression are typically higher on self-criticism than people without depression, and even after depressive episodes they will continue to display self-critical personalities. Much of the scientific focus on self-criticism is because of its association with depression. Personality theory Sidney Blatt has proposed a theory of personality which focuses on self-criticism and depende ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pessimism
Pessimism is a negative mental attitude in which an undesirable outcome is anticipated from a given situation. Pessimists tend to focus on the negatives of life in general. A common question asked to test for pessimism is " Is the glass half empty or half full?"; in this situation, a pessimist is said to see the glass as half empty, while an optimist is said to see the glass as half full. Throughout history, the pessimistic disposition has had effects on all major areas of thinking. Etymology The term pessimism derives from the Latin word ''pessimus'' meaning 'the worst'. It was first used by Jesuit critics of Voltaire's 1759 novel ''Candide, ou l'Optimisme''. Voltaire was satirizing the philosophy of Leibniz who maintained that this was the 'best (optimum) of all possible worlds'. In their attacks on Voltaire, the Jesuits of the ''Revue de Trévoux'' accused him of ''pessimisme''. As a psychological disposition In the ancient world, psychological pessimism was associated with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Self-handicapping
Self-handicapping is a cognitive strategy by which people avoid effort in the hopes of keeping potential failure from hurting self-esteem. It was first theorized by Edward E. Jones and Steven Berglas, according to whom self-handicaps are obstacles created, or claimed, by the individual in anticipation of failing performance.Feick, D.L., & Rhodewalt, F. (1997). The Double-Edged Sword of Self-Handicapping: Discounting, Augmentation, and the Protection and Enhancement of Self-Esteem. ''Motivation and Emotion, Vol. 21, No. 2. '' Self-handicapping can be seen as a method of preserving self-esteem but it can also be used for self-enhancement and to manage the impressions of others. Rhodewalt, F., & Vohs, K. D. (2005). Defensive strategies, motivation, and the self. In A. Elliot & C. Dweck (Eds.). ''Handbook of competence and motivation''(pp. 548-565). New York: Guilford Press. This conservation or augmentation of self-esteem is due to changes in causal attributions or the attributi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Defence Mechanisms
In psychoanalytic theory, a defence mechanism (American English: defense mechanism), is an unconscious psychological operation that functions to protect a person from anxiety-producing thoughts and feelings related to internal conflicts and outer stressors. The idea of defence mechanisms comes from psychoanalytic theory, a psychological perspective of personality that sees personality as the interaction between three components: id, ego, and super-ego. These psychological strategies may help people put distance between themselves and threats or unwanted feelings, such as guilt or shame. Defence mechanisms may result in healthy or unhealthy consequences depending on the circumstances and frequency with which the mechanism is used.Utah Psych. "Defense Mechanisms" 2010. Retrieved on 05 October 2013. Defence mechanis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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