Thursday, October 29, 2020

Mentalscape- Psychology Concept

 


Mentalscape refers to the cognitions present in mind as described by a person as if they were describing what they are watching in a short video. 

In the context of a meaningful conversation, a person might ask another what they are thinking. The response reveals their mentalscape. A lengthy response might be more like the description of a video instead of a still image. Mentalscapes are more like paintings or creative videos than those taken by a camera because the person describing the scene interprets their world based on their memories, experiences, cognitive biases and so forth. Memory is dynamic. We interact with our memories. When we speak about them, they are created works albeit often, but not always, based on real life experiences.

The mentalscape reveals the patterns of thought. The patterns are schemes or schemata that organize categories of information or concepts and the relationships among them. 

In psychotherapy, a clinician may ask a client to describe an experience. That experience becomes present in the mind and becomes the current mentalscape. The memory is viewed in the present as if the client were describing a scene, but neither the clinician nor the client has direct access to the original, untouched, external event.

Memories, Mentalscape, scheme




Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Rumination in Psychology

 Rumination is a repeated negative thought or cognition about the past, which produces emotional distress. The condition is common in obsessive-compulsive and generalized anxiety disorders. The repeated negative thoughts can be difficult to control.

Although it is possible to repeat positive thoughts, the focus is usually on the problem of repeated negative thoughts. Rumination is a barrier to forgiveness when an offended person rehearses a past offense.

In the literature, articles by Nolen-Hoeksema and his colleagues explore rumination.


References- read more


Nolen-Hoeksema, S. & Morrow, J. (1991). A prospective study of depression and posttraumatic stress symptoms after a natural disaster. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 115–121.

Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Wilco, B.E. & Lyubomirsky, S. (2008). Rethinking rumination. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(5), 400–424.


Role play and Psychology

 


Role play is a technique to develop social relationship skills by having people act out different social roles. Role playing can help people learn attitudes and coping skills that may improve relationships and has wide applicability in industry, education, psychotherapy, parenting, and couple or marital enrichment.

Role playing may promote perspective taking, a component of empathy.

Perspective taking


 Perspective taking is a range of ability to understand an event from a different viewpoint. The different viewpoint may be that of another person or a cultural role.

  Role playing exercises may help people learn to take different perspectives. Perspective taking relates to the cognitive component of empathy.

A review of studies by Eyal and others (2018) suggests that perspective taking does not help us understand what others want. See Eyal 2018 in HBR.

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Empathy - Cognitive and Emotional

 

Empathy is the ability cognitively and emotionally recognize and understand the experience of another. Empathy is an important component of relationships. Empathy varies from low to high ability.

Cognitive empathy is the range of ability to understand the perspective (perspective taking) of another person and may be present with a high to low range of emotional empathy. Emotional empathy is the range of ability to feel what another feels.

Neuropsychological studies have identified brain areas related to empathy including the motor mirror system. See the APS Observer 2018.

Differences in definitions: Some writers do not include the two components of cognitive and emotional empathy. Some write as if empathy and its components are either or--that is, a person has or does not have empathy. However, in psychology, many abilities like empathy vary in degree such that a person may range from high to low on empathy or its components of cognitive and emotional empathy.

Empathy has also been studied in animals.

Example 1: a person high in psychopathy may have high cognitive empathy enabling the person to understand the thinking or viewpoint of another but also be low in emotional empathy, which can lead to taking advantage of another person without an awareness of their feelings.

Example 2: A downside of high emotional empathy can lead to personal distress. This has been called emotional contagion in some research reports.

Concepts: Cognitive empathy,   Emotional Empathy

Related concepts: perspective taking, social roles, role playing


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