Thursday, October 31, 2013

"The Dark Side" of Cognitive Complexity


Cognitive complexity is often looked at from a positive light, the more complex an individual, the better they are at effectively communicating their message. It makes sense then to rephrase this statement as “More cognitive complexity is equivalent to an advantage over others who have less mental structures and therefore less cognitive complexity.” Think about how this advanced complexity could be used negatively. While researching this topic I came across a research article that studied “The Dark Side of Cognitive Complexity”:

[See below post for definition of Cognitive Complexity]

“The current study provides tentative evidence that in situations where the communicative objective is to hurt one's romantic partner, cognitively complex individuals generate messages that are evaluated by nave actors as being more hurtful and more sophisticated than those generated by relatively less complex persons.”


I thought it was very interesting to think of how cognitive complexity can be beneficial to someone through both positive and negative messages. Either way, more cognitive complexity gives you the upper hand in conveying messages and effectively communicating.


I'm the oddball in my family; both my mother and brother are hot heads with a raging temper that often seems to cloud their judgment and fuel their anger. I'm the exact opposite, when something provokes me I sit and quietly contemplate my revenge and plan my comeback to any of the responses I think I might get during the confrontation. I can talk circles around my family when we get upset at one another. I use my cognitive complexity to win the argument.

No comments:

Post a Comment