Chapter 14 - The Humanistic Perspective

Question 1

The Humanistic Perspective

Carl Roger’s Self Theory

Answer 1

• believed that or bevaviour is not a reaction to unconscious conflicts but a response to our environment
• the forces that direct behaviour are within us and that, when they are not distorted or blocked by our environment, they can be trusted to direct us toward self-actualization

Question 2

The Humanistic Perspective

Self-actualization

Answer 2

the total realization of one’s human potential

Question 3

The Humanistic Perspective

Carl Roger’s Self Theory

The self

Answer 3

• an organized, consistent set of perceptions of and beliefs about oneself
  
  • Must have self-consistency (absence of conflict among self-perceptions) and congruency (consistency between self-perceptions and experiences) to maintain self-concept
  • Experiences that are inconsistent with self-concept evokes threat and anxiety

Question 4

The Humanistic Perspective

Carl Roger’s Self Theory

The Need of Positive Regard

Answer 4

Believed that we are born with an innate need for positive regard

• That is, for acceptance, sympathy, and love from others.
• It is essential for healthy development

Question 5

The Humanistic Perspective

Carl Roger’s Self Theory

The Need for Positive Regard

Unconditional positive regard

Answer 5

• positive regard received from the parents in unconditional, that is, independent of how the child behaves
• It communicates that the child is inherently worthy of love.

Question 6

The Humanistic Perspective

Carl Roger’s Self Theory

The Need for Positive Regard

Conditional positive regard

Answer 6

• It is dependent on how the child behaves
• In the extreme case, love and acceptance are given to the child only when the child behaves as the parents want.

Question 7

The Humanistic Perspective

Carl Roger’s Self Theory

The Need for Positive Regard

Need for positive self-regard

Answer 7

• People need positive regard not only from others but also from themselves. Therefore, a need for positive self-regard also develops

Question 8

The Humanistic Perspective

Carl Roger’s Self Theory

The Need for Positive Regard

Conditions of worth

Answer 8

• Lack of unconditional positive regard leafs to belief that they are worthy of love only when standards are met.
  
  • this fosters development of conditions of worth that dictate when we approve or disapprove of ourselves

Question 9

The Humanistic Perspective

Carl Roger’s Self Theory

Fully Functioning Persons

Answer 9

self-actualized people who are free from unrealistic conditions of worth and who exhibit congruence, spontaneity, creativity, and a desire to develop further.

Question 10

The Humanistic Perspective

Research on the Self

Answer 10

the two topics of research on the self-concept are

1. the development of self-esteem and its effects on behaviour
2. the roles played by self-enhancement and self-consistency motivates

Question 11

The Humanistic Perspective

Research on the Self

Self-Esteem

Answer 11

• how positively or negatively we feel about ourselves
  
  • Children develop high self-esteem when parents communicate unconditional acceptance and love, establish clear guidelines for behaviour, and reinforce compliance while giving the child freedom to make decisions
• High self-esteem: people are happier and there are fewer interpersonal problems
• Low self-esteem: Prone to psychological and physiological ailments. There are problems with social relationships and underacheivement.

Question 12

The Humanistic Perspective

Research on the Self

Self-verification and Self-enhancement

Self-verification

Answer 12

• Self-verification – a need to preserve self-concept by maintaining self-consistency and congruency
• Self-verification needs are also expressed in people’s tendency to seek out self-confirming relationships

Question 13

The Humanistic Perspective

Research on the Self

Self-Verification and Self-Enhancement

Self-enhacement

Answer 13

• Self-enhancement – processes whereby one enhances positive self-regard
• People show a marked tendency to attribute their successes to their own abilities and effort, but to attribute their failures to environmental factors.

Question 14

The Humanistic Perspective

Research on the Self

Culture, Gender, and the Self

Culture

Answer 14

• Provides a learning context in which that self developes.
• Individualistic cultures (North America, Northern Europe) place an emphasis on independence and personal attainment
• collectivistic cultures (Asia, Africa, South America) emphazise connectedness between people and the achievement of group goals

Question 15

The Humanistic Perspective

Research on the Self

Culture, Gender, and the Self

Gender Schemas

Answer 15

• organized mental structures that contain our understanding of the attributes and behaviours that are appropriate and expected for both genders

Question 16

The Humanistic Perspective

Evaluating Humanistic Theories

Theorists

Answer 16

• Humanistic theorists focus on the individual’s subjective experiences. What matters most is how people view themselves and the world

Question 17

The Humanistic Perspective

Evaluating Humanistic Theories

Critics

Answer 17

• Believe that hte humanistic view relies too much on individual’s reports of their personal experiences
• some believe that it is impossible to define an individual’s actualizing tendency except in terms of the behaviour that it supposedly produces

Question 18

Frontiers:

Stressed By Success

Answer 18

• Wood, Heimpel, Newby-Clark, and Ross proposed that individuals who are low in self-esteem do not enjoy success the way that those high in self-esteem enjoy success.
  
  • it will generate self-doubt and anxiety among those low in self-esteem
• In response to failure, participants with low self-esteem were less likely to express a desire to improve their mood than were participants with high self-esteem.
• After experiencing a positive event in their own lives, people with low self-esteem reported more dampening of their good mood.

Question 19

The Humanistic Perspective:

Bugental and Margenau’s Thoughts

Answer 19

• Bugental (1967; 7) “Humanistic psychology has as its ultimate goal the preparation of a complete description of what it means to be alive as a human being.”
• Margenau (1950; 295) “Reality does change as discovery proceeds. I can see nothing basically wrong with a real world which undergoes modification along with the flux of experience.”

Question 20

The Humanistic Perspective

Bugental’s Reaction

Answer 20

• Recognizing this Bugental (1967) confessed that the goal was unlikely to ever be achieved as “ the very process of describing the human experience changes that experience and that the more such a description approaches completeness, the more it is apt to be a basis for change in the very experience it describes. “
• Thus a major aspect of Humanistic psychology has been the recognition that “Man’s awareness about himself acts as a constantly ‘recycling’ agency to produce changes in himself” (Bugental (1967; 7)

Question 21

The Humanistic Perspective

Bugental’s Six Points of Humanistic Psychology

Answer 21

1. Disavows as inadequate and even misleading descriptions of human functioning and experience based wholly or in large part on subhuman species
2. Insists that meaning is more important than method in choosing problems for study, in designing and executing the studies, and in interpreting their results
3. Gives primary concern to man’s subjective experience and secondary concern to his actions, insisting that this primacy of the subjective is fundamental in any human endeavor
4. Sees a constant interaction between ‘science’ and ‘application’ such that each constantly contributes to the other and the attempt to ridgidly separate them is recognized as handicapping to both.
5. Is concerned with the individual, the exceptional, and the unpredicted rather than seeking only to study the regular, the universal, and the conforming.
6. Seeks that which may expand or enrich man’s experience and rejects the paralyzing perspective of nothing-but thinking

Question 22

The Humanistic Perspective

humanistic Psychology:

Hadley Cantril

Answer 22

• Human beings have the capacity to make choices and the desire to exercise this capacity
• Human beings require the freedom to exercise the choices they are capable of making
• Human beings want to experience their own identity and integrity
• People want to experience a sense of their own worthwhileness
• Human beings seek some value or system of beliefs to which they can commit themselves
• Human beings want a sense of surety and confidence that the society of which they are a part holds out a fair degree of hope that their aspirations will be fulfilled.

Question 23

The Humanistic Perspective:

Humanistic Theory:

Maslow

Answer 23

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs