humanistic approach - free will Flashcards
basic assumptions
Focuses on the concept of self and self-acceptance.
Looks at conscious human experience and supports the notion of free will.
Paved the way for positive psychology with its emphasis on personal growth and fulfilment.
Humanistic psychologists try to understand behaviour from the ‘actor’ themselves rather than relying on observations - they look at an individual’s subjective experience.
Each individual is unique and so psychology should focus on the experience of each individual (idiographic approach) rather than trying to identify general rules of human behaviour (nomothetic approach).
free will
The idea that we are able to have some choice in how we act and assumes that we are free to choose our behaviour - we are self-determined.
One of the key assumptions of humanistic psychology is that people have free will:
- They can make choices.
- They act as interpreters of their own world.
- They are the experts and it is their own subjective experience that matters.
- This does not mean that behaviour is random, but we are free from the causal influences of past events. According to freewill a person is responsible for their own actions.
