Mental Sets In Everyday Life
Mental sets are the systematic ways that individual follow to respond to situations that are contrary to their expected outcomes. People mostly go about problems in comparable ways from time to time despite the fact that they are not sure if that is a proven response. This is an example of a mental case. Solving problems using a particular trend that succeeded in the past.
How might a mental set (i.e., the tendency to approach or respond to a problem in a particular way) related to major life changes (e.g., marriage, divorce, death of a loved one), career changes, or other situations changed as you have aged?
An individual who is raised up with abusive parents might grow up to be a bad parent him or herself. Such a person misses to learn and experience positive trends in life like love, sharing, responsibility and other family virtues. A person’s way of responding to situations in life is learned in young adulthood. At this stage, an individual develops a sense of judgment, openness and neuroticism. A person raised by abusive parents may not incorporate these virtues in his personality (Crooks & Baur, 2010). Instead, this person will learn the opposites of these virtues. These are lack of trust, selfishness and mischief. This vices forms in an individual’s personality because of the circumstances under which this person is being brought up in
As the individual grows, these vices will contribute to his mental sets. They will be the guiding principles in his judgment. When this individual grows up to marry and have a family. They may face marriage challenges. The vices that infiltrated this individual’s personality have now become habits. If this person has selfish ways of approaching challenges, this will prove had in marriage as marriage requires that you deal with challenges as a family. Lack of trust will also affect the family harmony, as a family you are one and trust is key. People like this often live in more than one marriage.
However, this problem may not be permanent, as individual grow and settle in life. The pattern of personality changes. People become more open to new ideas as they age. Personality keeps changing based on the circumstances. This trend continues until between middle and old age. Openness to new ideas however improves when people are in their twenties and retards afterwards .This breaks the person’s habits and significantly influences an individual’s mental sets (Irvin & Leszcz, 2005). New experiences affect a people’s sense of judgment. Increase in life’s responsibilities also makes people to rethink their response to unfavorable situations in their lives. This can turn an individual who was ones negligent to be a more accountable citizen in society. As one age’s, there occurs a redundancy in the mental capacity hence becomes inactive.
Reference
Crooks,R & Baur, K. (2010).Our Sexuality.New York: Cengage Learning
Irvin, Y & Leszcz, M. (2005).The theory and practice of group psychotherapy. Basic Books, 2005
