Experimental research on cognitive structures and cognitive processes has important implications for the practice of cognitive-behavior modification. The purpose of this paper was to examine some of the concepts being studied by social and cognitive p...
Experimental research on cognitive structures and cognitive processes has important implications for the practice of cognitive-behavior modification. The purpose of this paper was to examine some of the concepts being studied by social and cognitive psychologists in light of their potential application to counseling psychology and the practice of cognitive-behavior modification.
In the information-processing perspective, the concepts of cognitive structures and cognitive processes have been examined. The concept of schemata , particularly self-schemata, was introduced. Schemata are knowledge structures that guide cognitive processing. Self-schemata are particularly important in the development and maintenance of maladaptive behavior patterns, and related to the construct of self-efficacy. The cognitive processes include cognitive strategies and excusive functioning, which may lead to the biases in judging or decision making.
For counselee and counselor, various cognitive processes, particularly some shortcomings in human judgment arising from cognitive structures were presented. These include selective attention, confirmatory biases and prototype matching, use of availability and representativeness heuristics, and problems with egocentric biases and illusory correlation. Particularly, These shortcomings might affect the judgment of counselors in clinical decision making.
Finally, some ways in which the counselor can minimize the bias effects of cognitive structures and resulting cognitive processes were suggested. If we can agree that counselors may be more or less biased in their clinical judgment, then the most important future step is to design research studies that can evaluate the efficacy of different inferential approaches in clinical practice. It was our intention in this paper to foster renewed interest into the nature of the problem of biases in clinical inference and judgment ; however, as our behavioral colleagues continually remind us, insight is insufficient if it does not lead to behavioral change. The time has come for the counselor to stop defensively avoiding these issues and the researcher to stop wagging a condescending finger at the hapless counselor. Rather, we need to develop and examine programs that may improve clinical judgment.