The Cognition of Social Adjustment

Abstract

Over the past decade, and especially the past few years, there has been a surge of interest in interpersonal problem solving among those involved in clinical and developmental issues. This interest has been stimulated in part by our attempts to identify, measure, and enhance a set of thinking processes we all have come to call interpersonal cognitive problem-solving skills (ICPS). The purposes of this chapter are (1) to outline the theory and assumptions underlying this work, (2) to describe ICPS skills that have been or are in the process of being identified, (3) to introduce the notion of non-ICPS thought and its possible relationship to ICPS thought, and (4) to describe formal training programs and informal dialoguing techniques that have been found to enhance ICPS and subsequent behavioral adjustment.