Humanism ao1

Question 1

AO1

Question 2

Point 1: Strength * Positive approach

Answer 2

Not reductionist
- Humanists reject any attempt to break up behaviour = experiences into smaller components. It is holistic
- Behaviourists explain human and animal learning into simple stimulus-response connections.
- Freud described the whole of personality as a conflict of 3 things: id, ego and superego, biological psychology reduce behaviour to its basic physiological processes + supporters of the cog approach see HB as little more than information processing ‘machines’.
- Humanistic advocates for holism, the idea that subjective experience can only be understood by considering the whole person.
This approach may have more validity than alternatives by considering meaningful human behaviour within its real life content

Question 3

Point 2: Weakness

Answer 3

Limited application
- Has relatively little real world application
- Rogerian therapy has revolutionised counselling + Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has been used to explain motivation in the workplace especially.
- It remains the case that the approach has limited impact within psychology as a whole. This can be due to it not having a sound evidence base. (Described as a loose set of abstract concepts)

Question 4

Point 3: Weakness

Answer 4

Untestable Concepts
- Includes a number of vague ideas that are abstract + difficult to test.
- Concepts such as self actualisation + congruence may be useful therapeutic tools but would prove problematic to assess under experimental conditions. Rogers tried to introduce more rigour by developing the Q-sort objective measure of process. But nevertheless, an approach that describes itself as anti-scientific, humanistic psychology is short on empirical evidence to support claims.

Question 5

Point 4: Weakness

Answer 5

Cultural bias
- Many ideas that are central to humanistic psychology, eg. individual freedom, autonomy and personal ground would be much more readily associated with individual cultures in the Western world. Collectivist cultures eg. India, which emphasises the needs of ground, community and interdependence, may not identify so easily with the ideals and values of humanistic psychology.
Therefore, it is possible this approach would not travel well and is a product of the cultural context it was developed in