Week 3 (Humanistic Approaches) Flashcards
What did Maslow call the innate human tendencies that we have to strive towards healthy growth and development.
instinctoid
What are the personality traits of people who DO foster insinctoid tendencies and the people who don’t.
People who do: Honest, kind, loving, generous
People who don’t: Weak, easily overcome by environments, destructive, aggressive, unloving, self-destructive.
What are Maslow’s two distinct types of motivation?
-Deficiency motives
-Growth/Being motives
What is a deficiency (d) motive?
Negative motivational state
-E.g., hunger, thirst, need for safety/love
-Things we lack: motivated to acquire
-Lessen in intensity as met
-Drew on examples from the U.S depression of the 1930s
What is a growth/being (B) motive?
Positive motivational state
-E.g., giving love unselfishly. drive, curiosity, thirst for knowledge, skill development
-Unique to individuals
-Gain in intensity as met.
What are the five stages of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?
Bottom to top:
-Physiological needs
-Safety needs
-Love and belonging
-Esteem
-Self-actualisation
What is the Physiological needs level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?
Air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing reproduction.
What is the safety needs level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?
Personal security, employment, resources, health, property
What is the Love and belonging level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?
Friendship, intimacy, family, sense of connection
What is the esteem level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?
Respect, self-esteem, status, recognition, strength, freedom
What is self-actualisation level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?
Desire to be the most that one can be
How to identify a self actualiser?
-The frequency they have “peak experiences”, which are feelings of ecstasy, usually experienced at times of great achievement or when viewing things like sunsets or stars.
-Moments that lack wants, deficiencies, or needs.
B cognition
-Non judgemental, transient thinking
-Occurs at moments of “peak experience”
What did Carl Rogers theorise?
Self actualisation and self concept
What does Carl Rogers say about self-actualisation
-Each person has a natural tendency towards growth and self-actualisation
-As long as actualising potential is not blocked , we remain psychologically healthy
-Blocks are the cause of all problems
-For Rogers, unlike Maslow, the drive to self-actualise is our only motivator.
What does Carl Rogers say about self-concept?
-Roger distinguished between our real (organismic) self and our self-concept
-The real self is our “real organismic self”, the genetic blueprint for the person we are capable of becoming, if our developmental circumstances are favourable.
-According to rogers, we develop conditions of worth - criteria for what we must or must not do in order to gain approval.
-BUT rogers also argued that conditions of worth may interfere with personal development if our sole objective is to gain approval from others.
-Our self concept is socially constructed
Self-concept development
-Rogers believed in the importance of parent’s self-concepts, and the provision of unconditional positive regard.
-If we do not get enough, it creates conditions of worth
-Individuals with fewer “CoWs” are high functioning, more accepting and impose fewer “CoWs” on their children.
-More accepting and less judgemental.
-There are no stages or development to self actualisation, only good or bad environments to facilitate or restrict it.
Traits of a fully functioning person
-Highly conscientious
-Highly agreeable
-High in openness
-Low in neuroticism
-Extraverted?
Person-centred therapy
-Rogers therapeutic approach in which the therapist has unconditional positive regard for the client
-Helps individual recognise and untangle their feelings and return to an actualising state
-Rogers encouraged tackling incongruence which should help realisation of self.
How did Rogers measure the person-centred therapy approach?
Q sort, a list of around 100 adjectives/ short statements describing personality attributes, asked to group into 9 categories. They do this for self-concept and ideal self.
Pros of Rogers theories
-Reasonable, if simplified description of behaviours
-Concept of conditions of worth are a valuable way of describing mechanisms we use to evaluate our own behaviours
-Description of the self is innovative, and comparison of self/ideal self is valuable
-Concepts are intuitive and have high face validity.
-Attempts to engage with the world as individuals
-Much info has been taken on since than supports his theories
-His approach became more comprehensible over time
-Controversy and debate generated by his work is good for science
-Led to reflection on therapy and counselling
Cons of Rogers theories
-Not a total description of human behaviour
-Excludes what could be called “the richness of the unconscious”
-Ignores social, historical and political factors, only interested in societal and global problems.
-Reliant on individual observations and not objective measurement
-Limited support for the idea that humans know what’s best for them.
-Concepts like unconditional positive regard are difficult to measure
-Claims of non-directiveness in relation to therapy may be overstated.
-Could be said to have fundamentally too many concepts and assumptions
Pros of Maslow’s theories
-Reasonable, if simplified description of behaviour
-Good face validity
-Creative approach seeking to explain complex human behaviours
-Widely used in organisational / work psychology and other disciplines e.g. nursing, education, and management.
-Widespread acceptance amongst psychologists and others
-Lays the foundations for positive psychology
-Makes the self-concept an important construct
-Stressed the need to ask meaningful questions vs. pursuing trivial research
-Applicable to health and healthy people
Cons of Maslow’s theories
-Overly positive?
-Some inconsistencies in accepting Freudian defence mechanisms
-Little evidence of scientific value, needs (e.g, esteem, confidence) not well defined
-No discussion of genetic contributions to, e.g., disorders
-Over simplification of human needs and behaviour; lacks specifics about behaviour and rewards that satisfy needs
-Middle-class doctrine neglects the impact of social context on people’s interpretation on their needs
-Not personality ‘theory’ but about psychological adjustments
-Descriptive rather than evaluative
-Does not detail, how self-actualisation can be achieved
-Peak experience may not relate to self-actualisation.
What are the successive levels of human individuality
-Level 1: Dispositions / traits (Outline of the person)
-Level 2: Characteristic adaptations (Filling in specific details
-Level 3: Integrative life stories (What one’s life means”
