The Humanistic Perspective In the 1960 s people became sick of Freud s negativity and trait psychology s objectivity. Healthy rather than Sick Individual as greater than the sum of test scores
Humanistic Theories Humanistic Theories: Personality develops from internal experiences (feelings and thoughts) and individual feelings of basic worth. Human nature is innately good (or, at worst, neutral) with a positive drive toward self-fulfillment Usually measured with self-report surveys Key Figures: Rogers and Maslow
Humanistic Theories: Maslow s Hierarchy of Needs Hierarchy of needs (Maslow s proposed basic physical necessities must be satisfied before higher-growth needs) Self-Actualization (Maslow s belief in an innate tendency toward inborn drive to develop all one s talents and capabilities)
Self-Actualized People Problem centered rather than self-centered. Focused their energies on a particular task. Few deep relationships, rather than many superficial ones.
Humanistic Theories: Maslow s Hierarchy of Needs
CARL ROGERS People are born good we naturally want to enhance ourselves People are like acorns We need genuineness, acceptance and empathy for us to grow
Carl Rogers s Person-Centered Perspective People are basically GOOD. We are like Acorns Need Water, Sun and Nutrients to Grow into a big Oak Tree. We need genuineness, acceptance and empathy for us to grow.
Genuineness: Being open with your feelings dropping your façade being transparent, self-disclosing Empathy: Listening, sharing, understanding and mirroring feelings and reflecting their meanings.
Humanistic Theories: Rogers s Key Terms Acceptance - Conditional Positive Regard (positive behavior toward a person contingent on behaving in certain ways) Unconditional Positive Regard (positive behavior toward a person with no contingencies attached)
Unconditional Positive Regard
CONDITIONAL POSITIVE REGARD
John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2007 Huffman: Psychology in Action (8e)
The self or Self-Concept Both Rogers and Maslow believed that your self-concept is at the center of your personality. If our self concept is positive. We tend to act and perceive the world positively. If our self-concept is negative. We fall short of our ideal self and feel dissatisfied and unhappy
Humanistic Theories: Rogers Key Concepts Rogers emphasized the importance of the self. Mental health is related to the degree of congruence between one s self-concept and life experiences. **If your ideal self and how you see yourself are alike, you are generally happy.
Evaluating the Humanistic Perspective 1. Humanistic psychology has a pervasive impact on counseling, education, childrearing, and management. 2. Concepts in humanistic psychology are vague and subjective and lack scientific basis. 3. Criticized for merely describing personality, not explaining it. 15
Self Esteem But does more self-esteem = better humans?
Self-esteem: A person s overall self evaluation or sense of self worth. Defensive self-esteem: Fragile Correlates with aggressive and anti-social behavior. Focuses on sustaining itself, which makes failures and criticism threatening. Secure self-esteem: Less fragile Less reliance on external evaluations. Attained by losing ourselves in relationships and purposes larger than oneself.
Self Esteem Baumeister s literature review High Self Esteem - Doesn t improve grades or career achievement - Doesn t reduce alcohol usage - Doesn t lower violence (in fact Dr. Jean Twenge studies indicates that people with high esteem may be more violent than low self-esteemers when their self esteem is threatened) - Is characteristic of people who give up faster.
Self Esteem Humans are motivated to maintain their self esteem. - Downward comparisons - Rationalization - Self-serving bias - False uniqueness effect
Who should I compare my self to? upward social comparison Vs. downward social comparison Vs. lateral comparison Vs.
Rationalization The creation of false, but justifiable, explanations for actions or events. If we can protect ourselves from blame, our self-esteem can remain high. Someone may steal because he is selfish and greedy, but he doesn t want to admit that about himself. So, he says that the people he is stealing from don t deserve the items, they can replace them later, he has no other choice, etc.
Self-serving bias If I fail, I attribute the failure to the situation. If I succeed, I attribute the success to my personality and/or abilities.
False Uniqueness Effect Falsely believing that we are better than average on a lot of positive traits.