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Five Factor Model Vs Cognitive Theory

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Today it is becoming more evident that personality disorders are becoming harder to diagnose. The science behind diagnosing these personality disorders to humans is ever changing with new research studies and complex theories to support the studies. Personality disorders are not easy to identify because people with personality disorders present a wide range of symptoms, and there are two widely used approaches to tackle personality disorders. The two widely used models psychologist use are the Five Factor Model and cognitive therapy. The Five Factor Model of personality and cognitive therapy has their own unique theory when trying to classify personality disorders. The Five Factor Model is an organization of personality traits summed up into …show more content…

When psychologists use the Five Factor Model, they assess the patient by administrating a questionnaire to the patient. Then their responses are then calculated by using mathematics to give the patient a score for each subgroup. This model says that many personality disorders are correlated with each subgroup. As a result, personality disorders are assumed to be a range of scores or percentiles, and personality disorders should be captured by distinct patterns of each subgroup (Moss, 2015). For cognitive therapy, the psychologist and the patient are constant interacting with each other to determine if there is a personality disorder present. The psychologist relies on self reports in most cases. Assumptions made for this theory are maladaptive behavior is caused by how the information is being processed, and that humans constantly perceive, recalling, interpreting, and storing data from the environment. Another assumption is that individuals can overcome personality disorders by using the appropriate cognitions. The last assumption is that cognition emphasizes three aspects, and those are automatic thoughts, negative self schemas, and misperceptions in logic (Pretzer & Beck, …show more content…

The Five Factor Model is particularly useful to psychologist by classifying disorders into traits and psychologist use a number system or a check yes/no sort of style. The Five Factor Model of personality does not replicate the same data in developing countries but does so in developed countries. The reason behind this is the different connotations that words have between cultures (Moss, 2015). The model is considered too complex with regards of using traits compared to other theories. Cognitive therapy is an appealing model because it focuses on human thought. Human accomplishments were based on our ability to think and it should be responsible for our problems (Pretzer & Beck n.d.). Cognitive therapy has been effective in diagnosing patients with depression, anxiety, and sexual problems. A review of fourteen meta-analysis, investigating the effectiveness of depression, was done by Beck. It concluded that 80% of adults benefited from the therapy (McLeod, 2015). This theory does have a few limitations. Cognitive theory is just one aspect of human thinking and broader issues need to be addressed. Precise roles of human thinking need to be determined, it is not clear if faulty cognition's are the cause of personality disorders or the consequences (McLeod,

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