habits of feeling
habits of thinking
habits of sensations and acting out
These three habits can be positive or negative. Therefore, there is a positive and negative side to the arena of others and also to the arena of self. The following diagram will aid is seeing how the cycle works.
As you can see, there is a red bridge between the negative and positive arena of others and a blue bridge between the negative and positive arena of self. The red bridge is used when you find yourself thinking negative thoughts about others. The following are a few prompts you can use to change your thinking about others from negative to positive.
remind yourself that retaliation hurts people including yourself and it's not good
remind yourself that aggressive behavior won't bring you what you want
think of alternative options you have available
The blue bridge is used when you find yourself thinking negative thoughts about yourself. The following are a few prompts you can use to change negative thoughts about yourself to positive thoughts.
tell yourself you don't want to be known as a cynical person
reject any idea that you don't need anyone's support or that you are self-sufficient
tell yourself you're going to feel better about yourself by switching emotional styles
If you notice, there are now four sections known as the four options. I think this is a great description because that is exactly what they are. You have the option to choose which side of the arena you want to be on. You can choose by using the bridge technique. If you find yourself on the negative side of the emotional spin cycle, then you have the option of using the bridge technique to change your thinking to positive thinking. This is the purpose of my report 2. During this report, you will see where I record myself in the threefold self for one week and then I will try to use the bridge technique during the second week. The second week I will see more about how I use my options to decide whether to remain in the negative or use the bridge to move to the positive. If you read the general instructions describing the Daily Emotional Spin Cycle in more detail, you will gain a better understanding of the Emotional Spin Cycle and how it is important in your life.
Terms related to the Daily Emotional Spin Cycle
Cognitive scripts (or schemas in relation to motivation): If we want something, we use information that we already have to help us determine how to go about getting it. The information we use is our cognitive scripts. Cognitive scripts are how we organize the information we receive and we then use this information later as a guide.
Behavioral routines (in relation to socialization or enculturation): I think of behavioral routines as being the same as habits. The way we react in a given situation is determined by our behavioral routine. We acquire these routines through what we observe from other people such as our parents. Therefore, we will often act in a way that is consistent with social expectations.
Cognitive appraisal (in relation to self-enhancing behavior): This refers to how a person views themselves and things around them. As a person becomes more aware of how they appraise a situation, they can use this information to help change to more positive behaviors.
Emotional intelligence (in relation to productivity and success): Emotional intelligence refers to how aware a person is of their own emotions and the emotions of others. It is important to be aware of the emotions of others and how your own emotions effect others. Higher emotional intelligence leads to higher rates of productivity and success.
Why are these terms important?
All of these terms are important to help in better understanding the Daily Emotional Spin Cycle. They all focus on the importance of better understanding ourselves and the impact that understanding plays on our everyday interactions with ourselves and others. You can't improve your life without understanding why you react the way you do and what you can do to change things.
Below you will find my annotated bibliography. I have found five internet sources for each of the previous terms. These sources will help explain in more detail what these terms mean and then you can use that information to help you to better understand your own Daily Emotional Spin Cycle. Hopefully, then you can learn to use the bridge technique to better your life so that you are spending more time in the positive and less in the negative.
Annotated Bibliography
Cognitive Scripts
(1) Instructor's Guide - Trainer notes: Cognitive Mapping Techniques
This site describes cognitive mapping as a way that we use our past experiences to motivate how we interpret new experiences. This can be related to the spin cycle in the fact that the cycle represents habits in our feeling, thinking, and acting. These habits develop over time from our experiences. Therefore, our cognitive map reflects these habits. Below is a sample of the text found at this site.
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This is important because decision-makers have a limited capacity for processing information so that, when dealing with complex problems like innovation, they could rarely process all the information that would be relevant. Their mental models help decision-makers to select information and to decide what actions are appropriate (Weick, 1979). Thus individuals' cognitions may shape organisational decisions, although the extent to which this will occur will depend on the socio-political context and on their ability to influence decisions in their organization.
End of Sample
(2) Social Cognition and Cognitive Schema
This site offers a look at three different types of cognitive scripts or schemas: Person schemas, event schemas, and role schemas.
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Person schemas- Schemas about the attributes (skills, competencies, values) of a particular individual. This often takes the form the 1 personality we attribute to that person.
Event schemas (cognitive scripts)- These are processes, practices, or ways in which we typically approach tasks and problems. They are the 1 programs we call upon when faced with a certain stimulus. These are behaviorally oriented
Role schemas- These schema contain sets of role expectations, that is, how we expect an individual occupying a certain role to behavior. They are used frequently for the following:
1. Evaluation- When we evaluate individuals occupying a certain role (e.g., doctor,
accountant, actor, artist), we compare their behavior to our culturally derived role schema for that role.2. Role playing- In assuming a certain role, the role schema often becomes our scripts as to how to behave.
3. Identification- We often identify and categorize individuals by the role they assume. We use these role schema to help us place individuals into a certain category by matching their observed behavior with our role schema.
4. Prediction- Once an individual is placed into a category (role) we tend to assume he or she will behave in accordance with the role schema and use this as basis to predict future behavior of this person.
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We often use these schemas to motivate our own thinking and behavior when we meet new people or situations.
(3) Paternal Practices, Parental Occupation and Children's Aggression
Parents are responsible for many of the cognitive scripts that children use to decide on how to behave. When a child often sees their parent get angry in a certain situation, the child is also likely to model the same behavior in the same situation. They are using cognitive scripts to determine their behavior necessary to achieve the wanted outcome. This site explains more about how parents and their parenting styles influence children and their behaviors.
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Social Cognition
Violence is learned behavior. Huesmann (1988) and Bandura (1973) argue that children learn aggressive behavior through both observational learning and enactive learning. There is a positive relationship between a child's observation of others behaving aggressively and the child behaving aggressively.End of sample
(4) The Cognitive Psychology Website
I found this an outstanding website to visit as a source of information about cognitive scripts or schemas. This site offers features that define a script.
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Following the work of Schank & Abelson, Nelson & Gruendel (1986) identified 5 features that define a script:
1. They are organised sequentially
2. They are organised around a central goal
3. They are generalised and include slots for variable elements
4. They are similar across individuals who share the same experience.
5. They are consistent across repeated experiences.End of Sample
It is important to understand that scripts are used to achieve a specific behavior. I like the way that this site shows how a script is developed for attending something such as a lecture. There are certain activities that are involved in attending a lecture usually regardless of the subject of the lecture or the person attending the lecture. Please notice that each activity mentioned is preceeded by a motivation. For example, the student is motivated to enter the room because it is necessary in order to attend the lecture. They are also motivated to find a seat because they want to be comfortable while listening to the lecturer.
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The psychological reality of scripts was demonstrated by Bower et al (1979). College students were asked to list, in order of occurrence, about 20 activities associated with visiting a doctor, attending a lecture, going shopping for food, etc. Overall, there was considerable agreement among the subjects about both the order of the activities and the activities themselves. The most frequently mentioned activities for attending a lecture were:
enter room
find seat
sit down
take out notebook
listen to lecturer
take notes
check time
leave
End of Sample
We develop schemas in order to help organize information we receive. We then use this information in our perception of later events and as a guide to determine behavior. This site explains how our schemas are not always reflected in our story telling. For example, we may listen to a speaker and find them to be very boring. But when the speaker is a friend we know and they ask us how they did, we may find that we tell them they were great. The story they are being told is inconsistent with the schema we acquired from their speaking. We don't want to hurt our friend, so we tell them a story that isn't accurate with the way we really viewed the situation.
This site describes how the unconscious mind and the conscious mind work together in forming and using schemas. The unconscious mind is shown to filter information before storing and using it as a schema. This site is interested in looking at this filtering process to understand more about what is added, left out, altered and disguised. This information would also be useful in understanding the emotional spin cycle. Schemas play a large role in the options we choose in our daily emotional spin cycle. It is important to understand how these schemas develop if we want to be more able to control our emotional spin cycle.
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In everyday life, people rely on cognitive models, maps or schemas of how the world works, to organize their perception of events and determine how to act. These models make up much of the structure of the unconscious mind, on which our conscious thinking and decisions are based. They tell us what everyday objects are; how to identify situations; the kinds of people and roles we encounter, and the roles we are expected to perform. In the largest sense, these are models of the physical, social and psychological world we live in, and our place in it, as physical and psychological beings and members of society.*
As we go about the business of everyday life, we identify each situation by seeing which of these schemas it fits into. One might say we are perpetually creating a second, more specific kind of schema of individual events and how they relate to the more general model. We have a schema for what a politician who is evading answering questions looks like and when we see something that fits it well enough, we create an implicit model in our minds of the specific event as an instance of a politician in cover-up mode. There are undoubtedly instances in which we tack back and forth between the specific instance and the general model, when we are unsure what we are perceiving, to see how the former fits the latter. But, more commonly, the process of identification, of fitting the particular into the general model, is automatic and instantaneous.
End of Sample
Behavioral Routines
(6) Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology: Socialization
This article does a great job of explaining what socialization is and the role it plays in our lives. Socialization is a process that involves personal and environmental factors. Many people have questioned if nature or nuture or both together are responsible for how people feel, think, and act. This article shows how both nature and nurture are important factors in the socialization process. Both factors are seen as influencing the behavioral routines that individual use in their lives every day.
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The family is the most influential socialization force. Parents, grandparents, and siblings all transmit to infants and young children what they consider to be important values, behavior, skills, and attitudes. Household rules govern behavior, interpersonal behavior serves as a model for interactions with outside people, and socially valued qualities such as generosity and caring are learned through example within the home and in the culture. As children grow and interact more with the environment outside the family home, others begin to play important roles in the socialization process. Friends, institutions such as church and school, the media (particularly television) and co-workers all become important factors in shaping a person's attitudes and behavior.
Researchers have theorized that socialization is a complex process that involves both personal and environmental factors. For example, studies of aggressive tendencies in children have pointed out that certain children are more influenced than others when exposed to television violence or aggressive behavior by authority figures in the home. Some blind and deaf children display aggressive behavior such as stamping feet or yelling even though they have never had the opportunity to see or hear such displays of temper. Thus, it has been concluded that genetic factors must also be considered part of the socialization process.
End of Sample
Socialization begins at birth and continues throughout an individual's life. Family is seen as being very influential in a child's socialization. During a child's socialization, they observe the behaviors of their parents and also are taught many values from their parents. These teachings and observations are used by the child to develop behavioral routines. As a child, my mother taught me to say "thank you" when someone does something nice for me. When I was still young and learning this behavior, my mother would often have to remind me to say "thank you". Eventually, I no longer needed a reminder. I had developed the habit or behavioral routine to say "thank you" automatically without a reminder.
When looking at the emotional spin cycle, there are different options people can choose throughout their daily lives. They have the choice to be on the positive side of the cycle or the negative side of the cycle. It is important to understand that the behavioral routines learned throughout life will lead someone to initially choose one option over the other. If these routines or habits are causing someone to choose the negative options, it is important to understand that it is possible to change these habits. It is hard work but can be done by recognizing the habit and making changes to learn new and improved habits.
My Emotional Spin Cycle--
The Four Options and the Two Bridges:
Annotated Bibliography
by Nicole Reaves
Date: 3/12/02
See the Instructions for this Report
Introduction
The purpose of this Report 1 is to introduce you to a concept designed by my instructor, Dr. James. This concept is referred to as the Daily Emotional Spin Cycle. Every moment of our lives we have two arenas to function in. We function in the arena of others and the arena of self. Within each arena we find that there is something known as the threefold self. The threefold self helps us to understand how our socialization effects three areas of functioning. These three areas are known as: