Abstract:

The idea that people differ in the quality of their internal representation of themselves and of other important figures in their lives is common to a variety of approaches. These representations have been characterized in a number of ways, especially in terms of schema theory. The term of cognitive complexity refers to the system of personal representations, as number and diversity. Researches demonstrated that the way in which people represents reality influences the interpersonal perception, the communication and the decisional behavior. For assessment the role of cognitive complexity and thinking styles in process of reasoning, we applied three tasks: the modified repertory grid elaborated by Bieri for evaluating the personal representations, the thinking styles inventory worked out by Sternberg and four problems of deductive inference evaluating originality, correctness and logical thinking. We found that:

- the way in which the subject draws conclusions depends on the way of knowledge representation;

- associated with his/her nucleus of privileged representations, the subject will prefer a certain alternative;

- the error in reasoning appears so much the easier as person has a grid of reality based on one single criteria.

Keywords: representations, complexity, thinking style