Strengths and Weaknesses of Cognitive Approach

Strengths and Weaknesses of Cognitive Approach

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  • Created by: Charlotte
  • Created on: 02-04-13 14:48

Strengths and Weaknesses of Cognative Approach

Advantages

  • Looks at thought processes which were ignored by other psychologists, especially behaviourists. Processes such as memory, attention and perception have been studied as they have an effect on our behaviour.
  • Its theories have been applied to cognitive therapies such as Rational Emotive Therapy. This therapy has been successful in changing irrational thoughts into rational thoughts so that behaviour improves.

Disadvantages

  • It is reductionist. An example of this is that it reduces human behaviour down to individual processes such as memory and attention. This is a weakness because the human is a product of all the processes working together and not just individual parts.
  • It is too mechanical, it compares the human to computers in that they have similar processes. This is a weakness as humans are more complex than computers, for example emotions can affect a humans' output.

Evaluation

Despite the Cognitive approach taking into account something as important as thought processes it is still weaker than the other theories as it is too reductionist as many other things have been proven to cause mental illnesses.

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