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After reading this article you will learn about the classification of human behaviour or activity.
Human activity or behaviour has been traditionally classified under three broad categories; cognitive, affective and conative. Cognitive activities are those which are primarily involved in making an individual aware of stimuli from the outside world or from inside interpreting them and organising them so that he can react and make suitable adjustments or adaptations.
“Schematically viewed, therefore, in any organised sequence of activities, the cognitive process occurs first, then follows the affective activity and finally the conative activity.” Of course, sometimes, these three can go together in a parallel manner though cognitive activities always occur first.
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The term ‘affective activities’ is used to describe those responses and reactions which arise in the individual as a result of the impact of the cognitive activities, namely emotions and feelings. Conative activities refer to actions initiated by the individual in response to the newly received cognitions and also his own affective reactions. We may clarify this point with an example.
A young man who is in search of a job is walking on a main road. Suddenly he notices a board and reads the message “Wanted an Executive Trainee”. Being a management graduate, he is attracted by the board and starts reading the complete matter. He finds that the job description suits his own background.
He feels happy, reads the notice again and as indicated in the notice starts preparing for a walk-in-interview on a particular day. In this example, it may be seen that the first act in the whole sequence is the noticing of the board. This is what we may call the sensory response. He goes near and reads the heading-Wanted an Executive Trainee.
He then starts reading the board carefully. This is what we call a selective process of attending. If the board did not relate to a vacancy of an Executive Trainee, probably, our young man would not have continued reading it. Then after reading the board he goes home and starts preparing. In the meantime, he also feels happy on seeing that the notification suits his background. This happiness is an affective activity.
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His subsequent preparation and attending the interview is a conative activity. It may, therefore, be seen that any adaptive act involves an integration of cognitive processes, affective process and conative process usually in this order. But, this may be a very simple schematic representation.
In fact, we can see that this single episode is only an insignificant part in the young man’s life. While we may say that cognitive processes occur first in an isolated event, nevertheless they are influenced by affective processes, earlier cognitions and earlier conative acts. Thus, in our given example if our young man was already happily employed, he would not have reacted in this manner to the notice board; he might have ignored it and continued to walk. On the other hand, if he had previous disappointing experiences with interviews, his reaction might have been different.
He might not have been very enthusiastic about preparing for the interview. In fact, he may even be wondering whether he should go for the interview at all. So, we may say that while in general, cognitive processes or acts initiate a sequence of activities involving affective responses and also conative acts, they in turn are influenced by a number of factors, including past experience, needs, the present affective state and many more.
Cognitive process or cognition, again involves a series of stages. The first stage in the above example is the youth becoming aware of a notice board. The board meets his eye. This is a stage of mere awareness and is a pure visual experience. This may be called the sensory stage. At the next stage he stops, goes to the board and sees the heading. He is attracted.
This may be called the stage of attention or attending stage. He reads the board and comes to know that it is an employment notice and that he fits into the specifications. This is what may be called a perceptual stage. Finally he comes to the conclusion that he has many of the requirements and learns that he can be a suitable candidate.
This is called the learning stage. Thus, we may see four different stages-sensation, attention, perception and learning. It is not necessary that every cognitive act should go through all these stages in the sequence. Further it also does not mean that one stage follows on the completion of the other.
For example in the above illustration if instead of an unemployed person we had an elderly retired person, he might have just become aware of the board, perhaps even gone and looked at it. Thus, the first two stages are sensation and attention. But beyond that, he may go away and not continue to read the board.
Similarly cognitive process may stop at any of the stages. Every cognitive act need not result in learning. Again the perceptual process and learning process may go on together. The distinction of the four steps or stages is rather schematic. Sometimes it may not be possible to separate the four stages. In fact, this is an issue where there was prolonged controversy in the field of psychology.
Early associationistic psychologists held that the four stages were independent and one followed the other. But the gestalt psychologists refuted this and said one cannot separate cognitive process into separate compartments and that all the four types of activities are integral parts of the same activity.
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Human behaviour or activity arises whenever organisms are confronted by certain changes in the environment either outside or inside the organism. It becomes aware of changes such as noise, a change in the illumination, an increase in temperature, an empty stomach, dryness in the mouth, or for that matter anything. Whenever we become aware of such changes we experience what are known as sensations.
Sensations, thus are the points of first contact between organisms and changes in the environment and these are followed by more complex interactions and responses. Sensations are, therefore, often described as gateways to knowledge.
They represent the first stage in our awareness of the external world and also our own internal world. They constitute the basic raw material of all forms of experience. It is because of their basic importance that early psychologists were primarily concerned with the study of the nature and characteristics of sensations.
Since then, however, it has been realized that though sensations constitute the basic elements of human behaviour, we rarely experience pure sensation. The process of perception, though based on sensation, is more complicated and depends on a number of factors.