Introduction: Adopted at Last!

Abstract

The field of cognitive styles has been one of the orphans of modern psychological science. What, exactly, is a cognitive style? A cognitive style is a preferred way of handling a particular cognitive task (Sternberg, 1997; Witkin, 1950; Zhang & Sternberg, 2006, 2009). As such, the study of cognitive styles has been seen as falling between the fields of personality and cognition (Sternberg & Zhang, 2001; Zhang, Sternberg, & Rayner, 2012), but neither field has adopted cognitive styles as its own (Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2001). The closest any field has come to adopting cognitive styles is cultural psychology, (e.g., Berry, Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen, 1992; Nisbett, Choi, Peng, & Norenzayan, 2001), which itself has been somewhat of an orphan in psychological science more generally. The Kozhevnikov, Evans, and Kosslyn article (in press) provides the field of cognitive styles with the legitimacy it long has sought and places cognitive styles not only in the families of cognition and personality, but also in the families of organizational psychology, educational psychology, and neuropsychology as well. The article considers a wide range of available evidence regarding cognitive styles and provides a compelling case for the legitimacy of the construct. Moreover, it shows how the proliferation of different cognitive styles as proposed by different theories can be understood in terms of a comprehensive and accessible single framework. Other frameworks have been proposed (e.g., Riding & Cheema, 1991; Zhang & Sternberg, 2005, 2006), including a related one by one of the authors of this article (Kozhevnikov, 2007), so readers will have to decide for themselves which framework, if any, they prefer. Cognitive styles, the article shows, are important to understanding educational, organizational, and other practical life outcomes, including how people approach personal decisions in their lives. Psychologists and educators have tended to focus heavily on ability constructs, and part of the reason that so much variance has been unaccounted for in criterion behavior may be the lack of meaningful consideration of cognitive styles (Sternberg & Grigorenko, 1997; Sternberg, Grigorenko, & Zhang, 2008). Most important, the article does not fall prey to the confirmation bias rife in this literature of people intent on proving cognitive styles are a blessing or a bust. The field has been very contentious, with investigators aiming to either demonstrate the viability of the cognitive-styles construct (Sternberg et al., 2008; Zhang, Sternberg, & Rayner, 2012) or verify the (null) hypothesis that they do not exist in any instructionally meaningful way (Pashler, McDaniel, Rowher, & Bjork, 2009). The Kozhevnikov et al. article will be among the most important in the field of cognitive styles and also will show how investigators can take a field that has been known for its disorder and make sense of it. Most important, the field of cognitive styles is no longer an orphan. If you are a psychological scientist, you just became a parent, or perhaps a stepparent, of yet another adopted child.