Cognitive Self Theory: Class Notes

By E. Waters
Human Nature and the Self Throughout evolution humans have had to live with the fact that they are not particularly large, fast, tough, or well endowed with claws or teeth. Humans are however excellent pattern detectors. We can instantly sense similarities between past events and new situations and produce an "appraisal" that experience as positive or negative emotion. We do this automatically, almost instantly, and with no more awareness than we have of the processing that takes place in vision or hearing. Throughout history we have used our pattern matching ability to anticipate danger and avoid trouble. For humans, the trouble we handle best is the trouble that we avoid in the first place. This strategy has allowed us to explore and make a living in every part of the world. Your appraisals (your sense of what is safe or attractive and what is not) may be consistent enough or coherent enough across time and situations to be noticed by your own pattern detecting system. This would be a very basic form of "self" concept. Our pattern detecting and matching abilities served us well when our time frame was more linked to seasons than to minutes and seconds. Today, communication, transportation, and other technologies create an environment that is more complex and and changes more rapidly than anything evolution prepared us for. Still, we are evolutionarily "wired" to make sense of every novelty and every change we encounter. Two Cognitive Systems According to Cognitive Self Theory, we are equipped with two distinct cognitive systems.

Seymour Epstein Univ. Massachusetts - Amherst

The Experiential (or Intuitive) system is an automatic, pattern detecting and matching system. It contains neural representations of previous experiences and their consequences (positive or negative). Processing is carried out almost instantly and entirely outside of awareness. The output from Experiential processing is global - a general sense of good or bad, approach or avoid, safe-dangerous, big small, etc. The Experiential System does not immediately change its output when given new information. It continues working from past experience until it has encountered the new information repeatedly. The Rational System is an intentional logical reasoning system. Rational processing is entirely available to awareness. It is much slower than Experiential processing and gives very precise output - a logical conclusion, a numerical value, a specific fact. The Rational System takes new information into account immediately.

tific and at times circular, and his theory addressed only events in the mind. According to Seymour Epsteins Cognitive Self Theory, the "self" is simply a set of beliefs you have about yourself and about your relation to the world. These beliefs are not just a dusty record of what you have experienced. They are a powerful tool that is used throughout every day to understand your environment. Constructing and maintaining a self theory may be a relatively recent human habit but it serves motives and strategies that are as old as human evolution. According to Epstein, the self theory serves four key functions: (1) making sense of incoming information, (2) helping maintain a balance between pleasure and pain (or effort and rest); maintaining self esteem (or defining boundaries of meaningful effort), and (4) helping maintain relationships.
Seymour Epstein Visiting E. Waters Lab at Stony Brook (1997)

Only a "good" or valid self theory can effectively serve these goals. Self theories are not all equally "good" or valid. The goodness of a self theory can be evaluated using the same criteria you would apply to any theory in science or social science. A good theory is (1) extensive, (2) parsimonious, (3) empirically valid, (4) internally consistent, (5) testable, and (6) useful. The Structure of Self Theories A self theory is a hierarchically organized set of postulates (beliefs). Higher order postulates are (1) general, (2) normative (common to most people), (3) acquired earlier, (4) resistant to change, and (5) associated with strong positive or negative emotion when challenged or confirmed by experience. Lower order postulates are (1) more specific, (2) not normative (specific to a person's experiences), (3) acquired later, (4) less resistant to change, and (5) associated with mild emotional responses when confirmed or challenged. Self Theory Postulates and Their Relation to Behavior Challenges and confirmations of self theory postulates lead to negative or positive emotions. This provides a way to identify self theory postulates even if the person is not aware of them. Just track instances of strong positive or negative emotions and interview the person about their interpretations of the events that elicited them.

Self Theory postulates are patterns in the Experiential System. As a result we do not have direct awareness of them. We can however notice patterns in our own behavior and infer that we must believe x, y, or z. Thus we can indirectly become aware of some of our self theory postulates. The Cognitive Self Theorist Seymour Epstein suggests that there are 3 ways to change a belief in the Experiential System. These are (1) real world experience, (2) experience with the therapist, and (3) experience provided by guided imagery. Many types of therapy intentionally or unintentially provide such experiences. Cognitive Self Theory is unique in expecting that quite a few different types of therapy could be at least somewhat effective. This understanding of why therapies work can help streamline current therapies and make them more effective. The Self as a Theory Personality psychologists have invoked the concept of "self" to describe and explain (1) awareness of the self, (2) continuity of the sense of self, (3) the importance of self and tendency to interpret things in terms of self relevance, (4) why people prefer some behaviors to others, and (5) why people do anything at all. Freud used the ego for just these purposes. Unfortunately this concept of self was "too smart", his theory of motivation was unscien-

Cognitive Self Theory does not make much use of the concept "Self Esteem". According to Cognitive Self Theory "self esteem" refers to the positive emotions and positive expectations that are commonly experienced by someone with a coherent and empirically valid self theory. This implies that "self esteem" arises from competence and success - not the reverse. That is, raising self esteem is no way to increase school performance. Instead, better school skills will increase self esteem. Readings on Epsteins Cognitive Self Theory Catlin, G., & Epstein, S. (1992). Unforgettable experiences: The relation of life-events to basic beliefs about self and world. Social Cognition, 10, 189-209. Epstein, S. (1973). The self-concept revisited or a theory of a theory. American Psychologist, 28, 404-416. Epstein, S. (1983). The unconscious, the preconscious and the self-concept. In J. Suls & A. Greenwald (Eds.), Psychological perspectives on the self (Vol. 2, pp. 219- 247). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Epstein, S., & Erskine, N. (1983). The development of personal theories of reality. In D. Magnusson & V. Allen (Eds.), Human development: An interactional perspective (pp. 133-147). New York: Academic Press. Epstein, S. (1989). Values from the perspective of Cognitive-experiential Self-theory. In N. Eisenberg, J. Reykowski, & E. Staub (Eds.), Social and moral values (pp. 3-22). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Epstein, S. (1990). Cognitive-experiential Self-theory. In L. Pervin (Ed.), Handbook of personality theory and research: Theory and research (pp. 165-192). NY: Guilford Publications, Inc. Epstein, S. (1991). Cognitive-experiential Self-theory: An integrative theory of personality. In R. Curtis (Ed.), The relational self: Convergences in psychoanalysis and social psychology (pp. 111-137). NY: Guilford. Epstein, S. (1992). The cognitive self, the psychoanalytic self, and the forgotten selves. Comment on Drew Westen, The cognitive self and the psychoanalytic self: Can we put our selves together? Psychological Inquiry, 3, 34-37.

Epstein, S. (1993). Bereavement from the perspective of cognitive-experiential self-theory. In M. S. Stroebe, W. Stroebe, & R. O. Hansson (Eds.), Handbook of bereavement: Theory, research, and intervention (pp. 112-125). NY: Cambridge University Press. Epstein, S.(1994). Integration of the cognitive and the psychodynamic unconscious. American Psychologist, 49, 709- 724. Epstein, S. (1998). Cognitive-experiential self-theory: A dual process personality theory with implications for diagnosis and psychotherapy. In R.F. Bornstein and J. M. Masling (Eds.), Empirical research on the psychoanalytic unconscious (Vol. 7, pp. 99-140). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. Epstein, S. (1998). Cognitive-experiential self-theory. In D. Barone, M. Hersen, & V. B. VanHasselt (Eds.), Advanced Personality (pp. 211-238) NY: Plenum. Epstein, S. (1998). Personal control from the perspective of cognitive-experiential self-theory. In M. Kofta, G. Weary, & G. Sedek (Eds.), Personal control in action: Cognitive and emotional mechanisms (pp. 5-26). New York: Plenum. Epstein, S. (1999). The interpretation of dreams from the perspective of cognitive-experiential self-theory. In Singer & Salovey (Eds.), At play in the fields of consciousness: Essays in honor of Jerome L. Singer (pp.59-82) Mahway,NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Epstein, S. The rationality debate from the perspective of cognitive-experiential self-theory. Behavioral and Brain Science, 23, 671-673. Epstein, S., & Pacini, R. (1999). Some basic issues regarding dual-process theories from the perspective of Cognitive-experiential Self-theory. In S. Chaiken & Y. Trope (Eds.), Dual process theories in social psychology (pp. 462- 482). New York: Guilford Publishers. Epstein, S., & Pacini, R. (in press). A comparison of the influence of imagined and unimagined information on intuitive and analytical information processing. Imagination, Cognition, & Personality: Consciousness in Theory, Research, and Clinical Practice.

Epstein, S., Pacini, R., Denes-Raj, V., & Heier, H. Individual differences in intuitive-experiential and analytical-rational thinking styles. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 390-405. Pacini, R., & Epstein, S. (1999). The relation of rational and experiential information processing styles to personality, basic beliefs, and the ratio-bias phenomenon. Jounal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 972-987. Teglasi, H., & Epstein, S. (1998). Temperament and personality theory: The perspective of cognitive-experiential selftheory. School Psychology Review, 27, 534-550.