Human Personality and Computer Information Processing: A Comparative View

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Human Personality and Computer Information Processing: A Comparative View

Psychology of Personality · Chapter 9: Cognitive Theories of PersonalitySection 9.6 · lesson 58 of 838 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

The most productive metaphor of the cognitive era, and the four places it stops being true.

  • Outline the stages of the information-processing model
  • Explain how the analogy describes personality as software
  • Name the ways human memory differs from computer storage
  • Say when the comparison is useful and when it misleads

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Transcript

Everything said in the video, section by section (1,053 words). Read along, or search it.

Cognitive Theories of Personality

The Mind as Information Processor

In the nineteen fifties and sixties, psychology acquired a new way of talking about the mind. The mind takes in data, encodes it, stores it, and retrieves it to guide a response. That vocabulary came straight from the digital computer. It was enormously productive, and it is still in use. It is also wrong in at least four specific places. This section covers what the analogy gave personality research. And exactly where it stops being true. Because a metaphor that is never questioned quietly becomes a claim.

The Metaphor

Why the Computer Was So Useful

One of the most productive metaphors of the cognitive era likens the mind to a computer. Its usefulness was practical rather than philosophical. Consider the alternative that existed before it. Saying that the mind interprets experience is true, and almost impossible to make precise. Encoding, storage and retrieval are different. They are steps you can propose, test, and be wrong about. That is why the analogy produced research rather than argument. A metaphor earns its place by generating claims that can fail. Keep that standard in mind, because it also tells you when to abandon one.

The Model

Input to Output

The model itself is a sequence of five stages. Input. Data is taken in through the senses. Encoding. That input is converted into a form that can be stored. Storage. The encoded information is retained over time. Retrieval. It is accessed again when needed. And output. The retrieved information guides the response. Notice how much of the interesting work happens at encoding. What is not encoded cannot be stored, and cannot be retrieved later. Which means attention, upstream of all this, sets the limits on everything downstream.

Borrowed Terms

What the Analogy Supplied

The analogy supplied a whole vocabulary, and the terms are worth holding precisely. Encoding is converting input into a form that can be stored. Storage is retaining encoded information over time. Retrieval is accessing stored information for use. A capacity limit is the restricted amount of information processed at once. And automatic processing is fast, effortless cognition outside awareness. Parallel processing comes from the same source. Each of these gave personality researchers something they had not had. Precise tools for describing how people handle social and self-relevant information.

The Move

Personality as Software, Not Hardware

Applied to personality, the analogy makes an interesting move. It suggests individual differences can be described as differences in software. Rather than in fixed hardware. The software, in this picture, is what a person runs. Their schemas, meaning organised beliefs that guide how information is processed. Their scripts, meaning stored sequences that guide behavior in familiar situations. And their processing strategies for handling what arrives. There is a consequence here that people notice before they notice the theory. Software can be rewritten. Casting differences as processing, rather than as fixed structure. That makes them the kind of thing that could, in principle, change.

The Yield

What It Let Researchers Actually Model

This reframing was not decorative. It let researchers model three specific things. Attention biases. Which information a person selects out of everything available. Memory for self-relevant material. How information about the self is stored and retrieved differently. And rapid, automatic interpretations. The fast readings that shape characteristic emotional and behavioral patterns. Notice what all three have in common. Each one is a mechanism, not a quantity. And that is the shift this whole chapter has been tracking. Away from how much of a trait a person has. Toward what the person does with what arrives.

The Break

Four Places the Analogy Stops

Now the limits, and they are not minor caveats. The analogy is powerful, but imperfect. Computers and minds both process information, and they differ in crucial ways. Emotion is pervasive in human cognition, and absent in the machine. Motivation differs too. Humans set their own goals; a computer's goals are set externally. Embodiment matters. Cognition is shaped by the body and its states. And social context shapes what information even means. None of those four has a clean computer equivalent. And unlike a machine following fixed code, humans interpret meaning. They set their own goals, and they are aware of themselves as agents. None of that is a slower or messier version of computation.

The Sharpest Case

Memory Is Rebuilt, Not Retrieved

The sharpest break is in memory, and it is worth dwelling on. People do not store exact copies of experience. Memory is reconstructive and biased. It is rebuilt at the moment of retrieval, and possibly altered in the process. This is the point where the metaphor's own vocabulary betrays it. The word retrieval implies fetching something intact from where it was left. That is precisely what human memory does not do. There is a general lesson here about metaphors in science. The words you borrow carry assumptions with them. And those assumptions keep working long after the analogy has stopped applying.

Side by Side

Five Points of Difference

Set the two systems side by side, aspect by aspect. On input, a computer has a keyboard and sensors. A human has senses that are already shaped by attention. On memory, a computer has exact, stable storage. A human has reconstructive, biased memory. On processing, a computer runs fixed programmed code. A human is flexible, and driven by meaning. On emotion, the computer has none. In humans it is a pervasive influence. And on goals, a computer's are externally set. A human generates their own. That last row is the deepest difference of the five.

In Practice

Two Witnesses, One Event

One example makes the memory point unmistakable. Two witnesses to the same event later recall conflicting details. A hard drive returning the same file twice returns the same file. That is what exact storage means. The witnesses' memories, by contrast, were reconstructed. And shaped by expectation as they were rebuilt. Neither witness is lying. Neither one is malfunctioning. This is where the computer analogy breaks down, and it breaks down usefully. The disagreement is not a failure of the memory system. It is what a reconstructive memory system produces when it is working normally.

Consolidate

A Tool for Insight, Not a Description

Recognising these limits is exactly what keeps the analogy useful. Rather than misleading. The information-processing view remains valuable for modeling specific mechanisms. Attention. Encoding. Retrieval. But a complete account of personality has to add something further. The emotional, motivational and social dimensions that distinguish a person from a processor. So the working rule is a sequence, not a choice. Use the analogy to model the processing steps. Then add emotion, motivation and context on top of it. The comparison is a tool for insight. It is not a literal description of a mind.

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Human Personality and Computer Information Processing: A Comparative View

What is the information processing model of the mind?
The information processing model likens the mind to a computer that handles information in five stages: input, encoding, storage, retrieval, and output. Data enter through the senses, are converted into a storable form, retained over time, accessed when needed, and used to guide a response. Because information that is never encoded cannot be stored or retrieved, attention sets limits on everything that follows.
How does the computer analogy describe personality differences?
The computer analogy describes personality differences as differences in software rather than fixed hardware. The software includes schemas, organized beliefs that guide processing; scripts, stored sequences that guide behavior in familiar situations; and processing strategies. This framing let researchers model attention biases, memory for self-relevant information, and rapid automatic interpretations, and it implied that such differences could, in principle, change.
How is human memory different from computer memory?
Human memory is reconstructive and biased, while computer memory stores exact, stable copies. People rebuild memories at the moment of recall, and expectations can alter them in the process. Two witnesses to the same event can therefore remember conflicting details without either one lying or malfunctioning. The word retrieval, borrowed from computing, misleadingly suggests fetching an intact file from where it was left.
What are the limitations of the computer analogy of the mind?
The computer analogy leaves out emotion, self-generated motivation, embodiment, and social context, all of which shape human thought. Emotion pervades human cognition, people set their own goals while a computer's are set externally, cognition is shaped by the body, and social context shapes what information means. The analogy remains useful for modeling attention, encoding, and retrieval, but a full account of personality must add these dimensions.

About the Psychology of Personality course

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Psychology of Personality (Psychology 300) carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
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