A Cognitive Perspective for Understanding and Training Assertiveness

• Autor(a) principal: Vagos, Paula
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Outros Autores: Pereira, Anabela
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10316/46772; https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000250
• topic: Assertiveness; Cognitive model; Assertive training; Social information processing

Assertiveness has for long been considered an optimal way of expressing oneself whilst at the same time maintaining and/or enhancing social rewards, leading to the conclusion that it should be promoted as an intra and interpersonal protective factor. Yet, little research has tried to provide a comprehensive model on assertiveness, which may better sustain why and how to train it. We propose a cognitive model for explaining how assertiveness comes to be enacted and maintained, considering the activation of previous individual schemas, how they influence the processing of social cues, which in turn influence the interactive activation of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral assertive products. The assertive behavior in turn prompts reactions from the interaction partner. This interpersonal exchange will serve to confirm previous schemas and make them more accessible when facing future social events. We further review findings that sustain the several assumptions involved in this model and proposed how it can sustain cognitive-behavioral approaches to assertive training, building on the premises that the interpersonal psychological functioning is manifested in interpersonal observed behaviors. Subsequently, new directions for the study and training of assertiveness are discussed, based on a social information processing framework and considering the current social challenges and contexts that we, as human beings, must face.