Lesson 7 Flashcards
What is the humanistic approach?
An approach to understanding behaviour that emphasizes the importance of subjective experience and each person’s capacity of self determination.
A01 The assumptions
- The approach emphasises the persons worth of the individual, the centrality of human values and the creative and active nature of human beings.
- Humans have free will, not all behaviour is determined.
- all individuals are unique and have an innate (inborn) drive to achieve their maximum potential.
- Psychology should study the individual case (idiographic) rather than the average performance of groups (nomothetic).
- rejects scientific methodology
What are some key points are free will?
- Humanistic psychology claims that humans are self - determining and have free will.
- This means people are not affected by external or internal influences, but they are active agents who determine their own development.
What order is the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?
self actualization
esteem
love/belonging
safety
physiological
What is the maslow’s hierarchy of needs?
- all of the levels need to be met in order to reach the stage of self actualisation.
- self actualisation is defined as the desire to grow psychologically and fufill one’s self potential.
- humanistic psychology is focused on the concept of personal growth. This is what enables the individual to become:
- fulfilled
- satisfied
- goal orientated
- unfortunately, some may experience psychological barriers which may have inhibit a person from reaching their potential.
What is the self?
the self refers to how we perceive ourselves as a person.
rogers (1951) claimed people need positive regard from other people and feeling of self worth.
self worth develops in childhood via interaction with parents.
rogers said that our feelings of self worth are important for psychological wellbeing.
The closer our self image and ideal self the greater our feelings of self - worth and thus great our psychological wellbeing.
What is congruence?
The aim of Rogerian therapy when the self concept and ideal self are seen to broadly accord or match.
What is incongruence?
the self image is different to the ideal self.
There is only a little overlap.
Here self actualization will be difficult.
What is congruence?
the self image is similar to the ideal self.
There is a more overlap.
The person can self actualise.
What are conditions of worth?
- also known as unconditional positive regard is the love and acceptance by others, this is when an individual is accepted for who they are.
- It also may be conditional, this means they are accepted only if they do what others want them to do.
- when people experience conditional positive regard they develop conditions of worth
- feelings of worthless and low self esteem is rooted in childhood.
- someone only may feel acceptance only after they have met certain expectations / criteria by others.
What are the influences of counselling psychology?
- Rogers said psychological issues were due to conditional positive regard which resulted in conditions of worth.
- Counselling psychology aims to manage and enable people to reach self actualisation by providing them with unconditional positive regard and showing empathy and acceptance of the person. They guide the person to understand and accept themselves.
- By being accepting of the person and showing unconditional positive regard the therapist aims to dissolve conditions of worth, this results in them shifting to being their true self as opposed to how they are expected to be by others.
Positive approach - strength
- humanistic approach has been seen as a positive approach.
- humanistic approach explores a range of processes such as: self actualization, the self congruence and the importance of unconditional positive regard.
- it adopts an individualistic explanation of human behaviour, it can be seen as refreshing and optimistic alternative compared to the other approaches. It adopts a perspective which enables individuals to take ownership of their lives and work towards their best potential.
- The humanistic approach provides and uplifting view of human behaviour.
Culture bias - limitation
- limitation is culture bias.
- nevis (1983) found in china belongingness was found as a more fundamental than physiological needs and self actualisation was defined more in terms of contributions to the community compared to individual development.
- central ideas of the humanistic approach e.g. individual freedom and personal growth are well versed with western world like US whereas collective cultures e.g. India would emphasise the needs of the groups, community and interdependence and so may not identify well with the ideals and value of the humanistic approach.
- therefore it would not be applicable to all cultures and is a product of cultural context within which it has developed.
Not reductionist - strength
- it is not viewed as a reductionist approach.
- behaviorist’s explain human and animal behaviour through a stimulus - response connection, biological psychologists reduce behaviour to its basic physiological processes and cognitive psychologists see human beings as little more than informative processing machines.
- in contrast, human psychologists advocate holism the idea that subjective experience can only be understood by considering the whole person.
- therefore the humanistic approach has more accurate as it considers the diff needs in order to achieve personal growth.
Untestable concepts - limitation
- untestable concepts are involved within the approach.
- for eg humanistic psychology includes several vague ideas that are abstract and difficult to test such as: self actualisation and congruence.
- critics eg behaviourist would argue that the focus should be on behaviour that can be observed, whereas humanistic psychologists focus on a person’s inner subjective world which is not observable.
- due to untestable concepts within the approach it makes it very difficult for the approach to be validated using experiments.
