Humanistic approach eval Flashcards
Advantages
- Links to economic development
- Research supports for conditions of worth
Disadvantages
- Humanistic research methods to not establish causality
- The humanistic approach is unrealistic
- Cultural differences in the hierarchy of needs
Links to economic development
Research suggests that Maslow’s hierarchy of needs may have relevance of a much larger stage than individual growth
Hagerty (1999) looked at the relationship between economic growth and measures of Maslow’s levels in 88 countries over a 34 year period. Countries in the early stages of economic development were characterised by lower level needs (eg. physiological needs such as access to food and safety needs)
As would be predicted by Maslow’s model, it was only in the advanced stages of economic development that self actualisation became important (eg. using levels of educational enrollment as a measure of people’s desire to better themselves)
Research supports for conditions of worth
Research with adolescents has shown evidence consistent with Roger’s view
Individuals who experience conditional positive regard are likely to display more ‘false self behaviour’ - doing things to meet other’s expectations even when they clash with their own values. Harter et al. (1996) discovered that teenagers who feel that they have to fulfill certain conditions in order to gain their parents’ approval frequently end up not liking themselves
Consistent with Roger’s predictions, adolescents who created a ‘false self’ pretending to be the kind of person his or her parents would love were more likely to develop depression and a tendency to lose touch with their true self
Humanistic research methods do not establish causality
Evaluating the humanistic approach scientifically is difficult because most of the evidence used to support this approach fails to establish a causal relationship between variables
Rogers in particular was an advocate of non-experimental research methods, arguing that the requirements of experimental methods make it impossible to verify the results of counselling. Most psychologists would argue that, without experimental evidence, evaluation of a therapy, or the theory that underlies it, becomes very difficult
Although some studies have shown personal growth while receiving humanistic counselling, these do not show that the therapy caused the changes, a fundemental of scientific psychology
The humanistic approach is unrealistic
Humanistic psychology represents an overly idealised and unrealistic view of human nature
Critics argue that people are not as inherently good and ‘growth oriented’ as humanistic theorists suggest, and the approach does not adequately recognise people’s capacity for pessimism and self-destructive behaviour. The view that personality development is directed only by an innate potential for growth is seen as an oversimplification, as is the humanistic assumption that all problems arise from blocked self-actualisation
This suggests that encouraging people to focus on their own self-development rather than on situational forces may be neither realistic nor appropriate in modern society
Cultural differences in the hierarchy of needs
In a later development to his theory Maslow did acknowledge that, for some people, needs may appear in a different order or may even be absent altogether
This is borne out by cross-cultural evidence. For example, a study carried out in China (Nevis, 1983) found that belongingness needs were seen as more fundemental than physiological needs and that self actualisation was defined in terms of contribution to the community in terms of individual development
Consistent with this view, many stidies have confirmed that Europeans and Americans focus more on personal identity in defining their self-concept, whereas Chinese, Japanese and Koreans define self-concept more in terms of social relationships
