Psychology - Cognitive approach - Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths

1. Important contributions

The cognitive approach has influenced many areas of psychology. As well as being usefully applied in therapy, such as in CBT to successfully treat disorders such as depression, it has also been applied to the field of development psychology. For example, theories about how children's thinking develops have guided teaching pracitces in schools. Piaget (1970), developed one such theory, suggesting that children's thinking is not the same as that of adults. For example, children aged around eight or nine years old cannot think in problem, they need to see it in concrete form, such as manipulating couting sticks. Piaget's ideas had a major realised it was important to use concrete examples with younger children.

Additionally, within social psychology, much of the thinking is 'cognitive' in nature, as it involves looking at the mental processes involved in understanding the social world and people around us. For example, why we form certain stereotypes, and why attributional biases occur.

2. Scientific approach

Like many of the approaches, another strength of the cognitive approach is that it lends itself to scientific research. For example, the various attribution theories clear predictions that can be…