Cognitive Complexity

Cognitive Complexity, as it relates to the Communication Theory of Constructivism can be defined as: the level of one’s ability to distinguish (and mentally organize) the subtle personality and behavioral differences among people. It’s one's ability to “read” people and the situations in which they are communicating in.

These mental organizations are called constructs which is basically just a fancy word for how one organizes people and their personalities. People studying communication measure cognitive complexity by the number of constructs that are said to be in one’s head.

Take the test!

(Shortened version of actual test done by scientists studying this topic) Think of someone you like, one of your favorite people, and use as many words as you can to describe their personality – exclude physical characteristics.

...

It is stated that if you can name a lot of advanced traits about person- beyond words such as nice and funny – your cognitive complexity is higher than someone who was less able to come up with as many or as complex words. (The actual scoring rubric for this test is more intricate, but generally speaking, anything >25 would represent a high level of cognitive complexity).

Why is cognitive complexity relevant to communication?

The more constructs you possess à the more cognitive complexity you have à the better you are a creating person-centered messages à the better ability you have to communicate skillfully and successfully with others (or “communication competence”)

Person-centered messages are messages that a cognitively complex person has the ability to craft and tailor to a specific individual and context as to effectively convey their message. It is also the communicator’s ability to anticipate the response of the individual to which they are communicating with and constantly adjust their message accordingly to be effective throughout a conversation.

A simple example of this is the saying that, “You wouldn’t talk to your grandma the way you talk to your friends”. You would craft your message for the person, your grandma, differently than you would if you were trying to convey it to a friend.

Even at a young age we start to develop these constructs to categorize personalities and context in which we are communicating in in order to send the appropriate message.

The level of schooling and interaction we got as children can potentially affect our individual level of cognitive complexity. This goes hand in hand with the variety of interactions that we have with the people that surround us growing up along with the environments in which we communicated in. All these factors play a role in the potential that an individual has to increase their cognitive complexity.

How to increase your cognitive complexity:

Even just hearing,reading about, and understanding  this term helps you to be more cognitively complex because you can focus on and start to improve your ability to better mentally categorize people by their behavioral and personality traits.

You can become more cognitively complex by increasing your exposure and interaction with varying types of people in all different kinds of situations. The more you understand and practice communication the better you will be able to effectively communicate.