Open AccessSTYLE IN THE ORGANIZATION AND DEFENSE OF COGNITION
Author(s) -
Messick Samuel
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
ets research report series
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.235
H-Index - 5
ISSN - 2330-8516
DOI - 10.1002/j.2333-8504.1998.tb01759.x
Subject(s) - psychology , cognition , cognitive style , cognitive psychology , focus (optics) , control (management) , anxiety , feeling , stroop effect , style (visual arts) , social psychology , computer science , neuroscience , artificial intelligence , physics , psychiatry , optics , archaeology , history
Cognitive styles bear on the organization and control of attention, thought, feelings, and motives in cognitive processing. Highlighted here are two attentional cognitive styles of sharp‐focus versus broad‐focus scanning and serial scanning for signal detection versus parallel‐process scanning that apprehends incidental information. Defensive styles bear on the organization and control of intrusive affects in cognition; they represent consistent modes of accommodating anxiety and conflict so as to maintain reasonably adaptive cognitive functioning. Because the four major defensive styles associated with obsessive‐compulsive, paranoid, hysterical, and impulsive neuroses are distinguished by differential modes of attentional scanning, the two attentional cognitive styles offer a heuristic means of organizing these defensive styles in behavioral expression.