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Psychology Paper 2 > Humanistic Approach > Flashcards

Humanistic Approach Flashcards

1
Q

What is Humanistic Psychology?

A
  • Approach that rejects the deterministic outlook of the behaviourist and psychodynamic approaches.
  • Views Human beings as self determining and free to make choices.
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2
Q

Assumptions - Idiographic

A
  • Must focus on conscious experience and personal responsibility and not behaviour.
  • Recognises how we perceive and understand the world around us is unique to everyone.
  • All different - differences within each group.
  • Ideographic - to see individual person and their experiences as unique.
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3
Q

Assumptions - Free Will

A
  • We are autonomous and not constrained by internal or external forces.
  • We have conscious control.
  • Not to say we can choose all behaviour as we are constrained by our biology and societal forces
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4
Q

Assumptions - Holism

A
  • No point in looking at just one aspect of an individual.
  • If only look at one aspect we may miss what is actually affecting behaviour.
  • Do not agree with focusing on childhood in therapy.
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5
Q

Assumptions - Subjective

A
  • Rejects scientific methods.
  • Seek to understand personal experiences that make us unique.
  • Methods allow us to explain our own point of view. - Thoughts and feelings.
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6
Q

Self Actualisation

A
  • Capacity for healthy personal growth toward reaching our full potential.
  • Can’t be tested.
  • Not permanent
  • Ultimate feeling of well-being and satisfaction.
  • Innate drive but we don’t all achieve it.
  • Research has shown that their is a link between an individual’s level of self actualisation and their psychological health.
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7
Q

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

A
  • Pyramid
  • In the hierarchy, it shows how humans can become fulfilled by achieving certain needs. If not met can not reach self actualisation.
  • If all 5 needs to not remain in place then an individual can move out of the state until the meeds are once again met.
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8
Q

The Hierarchy of Needs

A
  1. Bottom=Physiological (food, water, shelter, clothes)
  2. Safety (Security of body, employment, health, property)
  3. Love/Belonging (Friends, Family, intimacy)
  4. Esteem (Confidence, achievement, respect)
  5. Top=Self Actualisation (morality, creativity, spontaeity, acceptance.
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9
Q

Rogers theory of personality development

A
  • Focuses on the selves and identifies how these need to integrate to achieve self-actualisation.
  • Self-concept - how we perceive ourselves. Self you feel you are. Can often be distorted.
  • Ideal Self - who we want to be. Aiming towards. Who we wish we were.
  • Real self - person actually is, subjective as everyone perceives people differently.
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10
Q

What is Congruence?

A
  • When self-concept and ideal self are similar to each other.
  • Very difficult to achieve.
  • Must be achieved to reach self-actualization.
  • If selves are incongruent then personal growth is not possible.
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11
Q

Conditions of worth

A
  • Reason why me might not self actualise.
  • Significant others can help or hinder our personal growth.
  • Love and acceptance can be given either conditionally or unconditionally
  • UPR- when others love and accept us without judgement and without placing conditions of what they want us to be.
  • CPR - when love and acceptance comes at a price. Cannot be ourselves or acceptance is wirhdrawn. Only feel a sense of self acceptance if they meet the expectations.
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12
Q

Influence on Counselling Psychology

A
  • Rogers took ideas of humanistic theory and applied it to therapeutic settings.
  • Developed client-centered therapy.
  • Emotional problems adults face such as low self esteem stem from the gap between their actual and ideal self - often established in childhood as a result of cpr from parents.
  • Therapy involves providing unconditional positive regard the client did not get as a child.
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13
Q

Role of Therapist in client centered therapy

A
  • To provide genuineness - honesty
  • Empathy - seeing world from clients view point.
  • Unconditional Positive Regard - interacting without judgement and placing no demands on the client
  • Non directive therapy - therapists do not tell client the solution to their problems.
  • Ultimate aim is for client to close the gap on their actual and ideal selves and gain congruence so that they are able to steer their life towards growth and self actualisation.
  • Outcome is change.
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14
Q

Evaluation - Free Will

A
  • Takes a positive view of the human condition and brings human back to psychology.
  • Humans are free and seek to do good to achieve our potential.
  • Freud’s approach haves us believing we are doomed to despair and destruction. This approach believes we have individual freedom and control.
  • Strength - offers a more optimistic and refreshing alternative to other deterministic approaches.
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15
Q

However - Free Will

A
  • Contradicts itself.
  • Rogers say we have an innate tendency to achieve our full potential. Means we have no choice.
  • Maslow’s Hierarchy insists that deficiency needs must be met before growth needs. Suggests our behaviour is determined by forces we cannot change.
  • Within humanistic counselling there is the acceptance that we are controlled by social forces and relationships with significant others.
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16
Q

Evaluation - Holism

A
  • Rejects any attempt to reduce behaviour and experience into smaller components.
  • Behaviourism see behaviour in terms of simple stimulus response.
  • Freud describes the whole personality as a conflict between the id, ego and superego. Biological psychologists reduce behaviour to basic biological processes.
  • Cognitive approach sees humans as being information processing machines.
  • Humanistic Psychologists, however, advocate holism.
  • Strength - may have more validity as it considers meaningful human behaviour in real life contexts.
17
Q

However - Holism

A
  • Could be argued that the approach presents a rather narrow view of human behaviour by focusing on 2 main innate qualities - free will and basic goodness.
  • Critics argue that their are other elements to human behaviour that could be seen as equally evident e.g. capacity for destructive behaviour.
  • Idea that all our problems stem from blocked self-actualisation and by ‘unblocking’ this innate capacity for growth we can be free is unrealistic.
  • Ignoring situational factors and environmental factors is reductionist.
18
Q

Evaluation - Little Evidence

A
  • Number of untestable concepts.
  • Many vague ideas that are abstract and difficult to test.
  • Concepts like self actualisation and congruence may be useful therapeutic tools but would prove problematic to assess under experimental conditions.
  • Difficult to measure the extent to which therapy is successful as cause and effect cannot be established.
  • Weakness - approach is short on empirical evidence to support its claims. Considered unscientific and some consider it less psychologically valuable than other approaches.
19
Q

However - Little Evidence

A
  • Evidence for the concepts and ideas used by this approach.
  • Conditional positive regard - correlated with false self-behaviour and depression.
  • Harter et al found that teenagers who believed that they had to meet certain conditions in order to gain a parental approval end up not liking themselves.
  • These teens who presented a false self reported more depression and a lost sense of their true self.
20
Q

Evaluation - Lack of Real Life Application

A
  • Little real world application.
  • May be due to the approach lacking a sound evidence base and it having described a loose set of rather abstract concepts.
  • Self actualisation and congruence to difficult to understand.
  • Weakness - may mean approach is not adopted into mainstream psychology.
21
Q

However - Lack of Real Life Application

A
  • Rogers theory has revolutionised counselling techniques through client centred therapy - applied to individual and group settings.
  • Aim is to allow the person to find their true self and get back onto the path of self actualisation. Led to happiness and fulfilment.
22
Q

Evaluation - Objective Methods

A
  • Approach is based on questionnaire and q sort data.
  • Self actualisation would prove problematic to assess under experimental conditions.
  • Rogers attempted to introduce more rigour into his work by developing the Q sort.
  • Strength - Objective measure of progress to be used in therapy.
23
Q

Evaluation - Cultural Bias and Differences

A
  • Hierarchy of needs has been criticised as lacking universal application.
  • Approach fits better with Western individualistic values that collectivistic cultural values.
  • Personal freedom, choice, growth are easier to recognise as virtues if you live in a wealthy culture with little day to day struggle for survival.
  • Individualistic cultures’ self concepts are defined in terms of social relationships.
  • Nevis found that belonging needs were more fundamental in China than physiological needs. Self actualisation was more likely to be achieved through communal activites than individual achievement.
  • Weakness - weakens the approaches fundamental position that individual potentiai is the highest goal.
24
Q

Q - Sort

A
  • Adopted by rogers to assess the personality.
  • Consists of a series of statements that the client has to sort into piles.
  • Statements might include ‘like me’ or ‘very like me’.
  • Client sorts cards twice - once into piles describing themselves as they think they are and the other time describing their ideal self.
  • Rogers used this method to measure congruence between the self concept and their ideal self.
25
Q

Evaluation of Q Sort - Subjective Measurement

A
  • Allows the client to rate their self rather than being measured by a researcher.
  • Strength - keeps with the humanistic view that the person has to discover solutions for their self and it is the subjective experience that matters.
26
Q

Evaluation of Q Sort - Practical

A
  • A practical way for the client to gain insight into their ideal and actual self.
  • Strength - will help them to find solutions to problems that are stopping them from growing and self actualising.
27
Q

Evaluation of Q Sort - Unreliable

A
  • Clients might want to believe that the gap between their ideal and actual self are narrowing and that they are becoming a truer person in their own eyes.
  • The method is often repeated during therapy to measure improvement so the expectation to see change will be strong.
28
Q

Use Of Questionnaires

A
  • Shostrum’s personal orientation inventory is used to assess features of personality.
  • Administered to a group of 74 disadvantaged students.
  • Results showed at the start of the course the group profile was typical of a non self actualised group.
  • At the end of the programme, included sections designed to improve feelings of competency and self worth, profile shifted towards normal with significant improvements in the area of self acceptance.
  • Indicates the POI appears to be measuring qualities related to self actualisation.
29
Q

Evaluation of Questionnaires - Qualitative Data

A
  • Researchers can gather rich qualitative data about Ps.
  • Strength - gains a deeper insight into their psychology.
  • Technique is ideal when we need to know what individuals think about themselves and we do not want researchers imposing their views.
30
Q

Evaluation of Questionnaires - Large Samples

A
  • Questionnaires easily administered to large groups.
  • Strength - can gather a lot of data.
  • Can generalise overall findings.
31
Q

Evaluation of Questionnaires - Lack of Validity

A
  • Internal validity is an issue.
  • Weakness - if any questions do not actually measure what they are supposed to, data will be invalid.
  • POI has paired statements which are assumed to relate to self actualisation, but the highly subjective nature means this is difficuly to verify.

Psychology Paper 2 (17 decks)

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