Snapshots and Cognitive Schemas (assumptions made, cues picked up?) p.467
NOTES:
1. Schemas are cognitive structures for screening, coding, and evaluating experiences. Their content consists of unconditional core beliefs (e.g., “I’m no good”; “Others can’t be trusted”; “Effort does not pay off”) that are derived from previous experience. Schemas typically operate outside of the individual’s awareness and often are not clearly verbalized.
2. For a detailed discussion of methods for identifying dysfunctional cognitions, see Beck (1995, Ch. 6).
The individual’s construction of a particular situation may be likened to taking a snapshot. In taking a photograph, the individual scans the relevant environment and then focuses on specific aspects of the situation. The photograph reduces a three-dimensional situation to two dimensions and consequently sacrifices a great deal of information; it also may introduce a certain amount of distortion. Similarly, in perceiving a particular event, the cognitive set influences the “picture” obtained by an individual. Whether the mental image or conception is broad or narrow, clear or blurred, accurate or distorted depends on the characteristics of the existing cognitive set. The individual’s cognitive set automatically determines which aspects are to be magnified, which minimized, and which excluded.
It is probable that a person takes a series of “pictures” before reaching a final conceptualization. The first “shot” of an event provides a very basic appraisal of the situation—whether it is likely to be pleasant, neutral, or noxious and whether it directly affects the individual’s vital interests. This first “shot” provides feedback that either reinforces or modifies the preexisting cognitive set.
If the initial appraisal is that the situation affects the individual’s vital interests, he or she shows a “critical response.” One type of critical response is the “emergency response.” This response is activated when the individual perceives a threat to his or her survival, domain, individuality, functioning, status, or attachments—that is, attack, depreciation, encroachment, thwarting, abandonment, rejection, or deprivation. Another type of critical response occurs when the individual perceives an event as increasing or facilitating self-enhancement—the attainment of personal goals, exhibitionism, or receiving admiration.
An essential feature of the critical response is that it is egocentric. The situation is conceptualized in terms of “How does it affect me?” The immediate interests of the individual are central in the conceptualization, and the details are selected and molded (or distorted) to focus solely on self-interest. The critical response tends to be simplistic and to focus on situations that were of central importance in more primitive times—physical danger, predation, social bonding, and so forth. Generally, the critical response tends to be overly inclusive. Events that actually are not related to issues of personal identity, survival, or self-enhancement may be perceived as though they are relevant to these issues.
For our present purpose, let us assume that the individual’s first impression of a situation is that it is noxious. This appraisal activates a particular mode (assembly of schemas), which is used to refine the classification of the stimulus situation. The initial impression of a situation fits into the category of “primary appraisal” (Lazarus, 1966). If the primary appraisal is that the situation is noxious, successive “reappraisals” are made to provide immediate answers to a series of questions:
1. Is the noxious stimulus a threat to the individual or his or her interests?
2. Is the threat concrete and immediate or abstract, symbolic, and remote?
3. What is the content and magnitude of the threat?
a. Does it involve possible physical damage to the individual?
b. Is the threat of a psychosocial nature—for example, disparagement or devaluation?
c. Does the threat involve violation of some rules that the individual relies on to
protect his or her integrity or interest?
At the same time that the nature of the threat is being evaluated, the individual is assessing his or her resources for dealing with it.
This assessment, labeled “secondary appraisal” by Lazarus (1966), aims to provide concrete information regarding the individual’s coping mechanisms and ability to absorb the impact of any assault. The final picture or construction of the noxious situation is based on an equation that takes into account the amount and the probabilities of damage inherent in the threat as opposed to the individual’s capacity to deal with it (the “risk–resources equation”). These assessments are not cool, deliberate computations but to a large degree are automatic. The equation is based on highly subjective evaluations that are prone to considerable error; two individuals with similar coping capacities might respond in a vastly different manner to the same threatening situation.
If the risk is judged to be high in relation to the coping resources available, the individual is mobilized to reduce the degree of threat through avoidance or escape (“flight reaction”), preparing for defense, or self-inhibition (“freezing”). If the individual judges the threat to be low in relation to available coping mechanisms, he or she is mobilized to eliminate or deflect the threat (“fight reaction”).
Another type of critical response, as noted earlier, occurs when the stimulus situation is perceived as potentially self-enhancing. For example, a person is challenged or invited to compete for a prize. The person then makes rapid evaluations of the desirability of the goal, his or her capacity for reaching it, and the costs to him or her in terms of expenditure of time, energy, and sacrifice of other goals. These factors may be reduced to a cost– benefit ratio analogous to the risk–resources ratio. The final construction of the stimulus situation determines whether or not the person accepts the challenge or invitation and, consequently, whether or not the person becomes mobilized to attain the goal.
The processes involved in the critical response are automatic, involuntary, and typically not within awareness. Because of the exclusionary and categorical nature of thinking at this primitive level, critical responses are typically based on a one-sided, exaggerated view of the stimulus situation.
As pointed out by Bowlby (1981), current studies of human perception show that before a person is aware of seeing or hearing a stimulus, the sensory inflow coming through the eyes or ears has already passed through many stages of selection, interpretation, and appraisal. This processing is done at extraordinary speeds, almost all of it is outside awareness, and it is quite selective. Many potentially relevant aspects of the stimulus situation are excluded in the course of this initial processing. The criteria applied to sensory inflow that determine what information is to be accepted and what is to be excluded reflect what appears to be in the person’s best interests at any one time. Thus, when a person is hungry, information regarding food is given priority, whereas other information that might ordinarily be useful is excluded. However, some aspects of the situation take precedence over others. Bowlby (1981) writes that, should the individual perceive danger, priorities would immediately change so that input concerned with issues of danger and safety would take precedence and input concerned with food would temporarily be excluded. He asserts that this change regarding which inputs are accepted and which are excluded is effected by systems that are central to cognitive organizations. Of course, not all stimuli are interpreted as noxious, and not all psychophysiological reactions are “fight” or “flight.”
Depending on the kind of appraisal, a host of different reactions may be stimulated by a given situation. These reactions may range from a wish to engage in some recreational activity to a desire to undertake a dangerous mission. They have a common theme, however: The individual is mobilized to engage in some kind of action. For a variety of reasons, he or she may not yield to the desire, wish, or drive; nonetheless, the mobilization has a powerful effect. Recent writings have emphasized the emotional response to a stressful stimulus but have largely neglected the importance of the motivated response.
