Chapter 11 Self-Actualization and Self-Determination Flashcards

Question

Actual Self

Answer 1

*what you think you’re really like

Answer 2

*Self-actualizing: promote congruence- “fitting together” -Actual and ideal selves- one kind of congruence =As self-actualization occurs -> closer fit between actual and ideal -> become more like the self you want to be -Actual self and experience -> second kind of congruence =Self-actualization should tend to promote a closer congruence here, as well

Answer 3

* once people have a picture of what they’re like, they want to have that self-concept confirmed by other people’s reactions to them. - Self-vertification tendency influences the kind of information they focus on

Answer 4

*Built-in conflict between self-verification and self-protection -Self-verification: trying not to have incongruity between self and experience -Self-protection: trying not to be aware of incongruity between one’s desired self and actual self -Attempts to diminish these two incongruities can pull a person in opposite directions -Self-protection and self-enhancement tendencies seem to influence where you look (and where you don’t look) when you consider the relationship between your actual and desired selves. -Swann: both of these forces operate in everyone =Which force dominates at a given moment depends on your options =Most people would prefer to learn about something they view as desirable- fits with self-protection tendency =People also tend to seek unfavorable information

Answer 5

* disorganization, a fraying of the unitary sense of self - Don’t always know it consciously, but organismic valuing process senses it - Rogers: either perceiving a gap between real and ideal or experiencing something that doesn’t fit your self-image- leads to anxiety - Between actual and ideal selves -> underestimate how much their significant others care for them -> react poorly to their partners , feel pessimistic about the relationship and may act in ways that aren’t genuine -> relationship is less likely to flourish - Rogers: people defend themselves against even the perception of incongruence, to avoid the anxiety it creates.

Answer 6

*Distortion of experience -Rationalization: creating a plausible but untrue explanation for why something is the way it is -Seeing an event as being different from how it really is *Preventing threatening experiences from reaching awareness -Denial: refusing to admit to yourself that a situation exists or an experience took place *You can also prevent an experience from reaching awareness indirectly by not letting yourself be in a situation in which the experience would be possible- prevent its access to consciousness *Defenses act to maintain and enhance the congruity or integrity of the self. Protect and enhance self-esteem

Answer 7

* An event must be attributable to the person - Events that’s outside your control is not relevant to you * The event must be good or bad, thereby having a potential connotation for the person’s self-esteem. - Not relevant- when it’s bad - Relevant- when it’s good

Answer 8

* acting to create the very conditions that tend to produce a failure - Failing to attain a goal threatens self-esteem - Your can’t really fail, though, if success is prevented by circumstances beyond your control. - No one could do well in those conditions, so it wasn’t really a failure. - People self-handcap more when they expect bad outcomes. - Prevents awareness of failuring - Unaware that you’re using it - Cope poorly with stress - If people think you’re self-handcapping, they react negatively to you. - Self-handcapping helps create the very failure it was intended to protect against.

Answer 9

*Claude Steele *Some groups are stereotyped in ways that lead to expectations of poor performance of some sort -Members of these groups can be threatened by being viewed through the stereotype, rather than as individuals. -The sense of being prejudged occupies the person’s mind and promotes negative thinking. -The person begins to disidentify with the domain in which the threat is occurring- to stop caring about it. =Protects self-esteem by denying that the experience is relevant to the self. =Failure doesn’t matter if the test isn’t important.

Answer 10

*Human needs = forming a hierarchy, *Needs vary in their immediacy and power *Physiological needs: base of the pyramid, primitiva, basic, and demanding, fundamental, necessary for survival *Safety and physical security needs: necessary for survival but less demanding, less basic because they require satisfaction less frequently *Love and belongingness: companionship, affection, acceptance from others (need for positive regard), satisfied through interaction with other people. *Esteem needs: needs bearing on evaluation and self-evaluation, need for a sense of mastery and power and a sense of appreciation from others Acceptance may not be evaulated but appreciation is. *Self-actualization: tendency to become whatever you’re capable of becoming, to extend yourself to the limits of your capacities *Low-level needs are more primitive and more demanding than needs higher on the hierarchy *The power of the motive force weakens as you move up the pyramid *As you move up, the needs are also more distinctly human and less animalistic *We have needs that make us different from other creatures- less powerful when they’re unsatisfied than the needs we share with other creatures *If a need begins to develop at a lower level while you’re trying to satisfy a higher, the lower-level need can cause you to be pulled away from the higher-level one. *How people move up through this of needs -Freeing of your mind from the demands of low-level needs that lets you be attuned to the very quiet voice of self-actualization

Answer 11

* motives low on the pyramid - Arise from deprivation - Escaping unpleasant condition

Answer 12

* high on the pyramid - Avoiding an unpleasant state - Seeking of growth

Answer 13

* Rogers emphasized two motives: self-actualizing tendency and the need for positive regard (affection and acceptance) - Focus on social needs which for Maslow begin at the third level (Love/Belonging) * Bottom two levels of Maslow’s pyramid (Physiological and Safety) refers to needs that Roger ignored. * Maslow believed, as Rogers, that the need for accpetance could be more demanding than the need for self-actualization. * The structure of the pyramid clearly implied that people can be distracted form self-actualization by the need of positive regard. * Maslow’s pramid- esteem needs - can be viewed as an elaboration on the need for positive regard - Seem similar, in many ways, to Roger’s conditions of worth. - To Rogers, bowing to conditions of worth is bad. - To Maslow, esteem needs are part of human, although less important than the need for self-actualization - The two agreed, that esteem needs can get in the way of self-actualization.

Answer 14

* Everyone has the potential to self-actualize, and everyone has an intrinsic desire to become more and more the person he or she is capable of being. - Self-actualization is so diffuse a quality, it can appear in virtually any kind of behavior. - It’s any person who’s in the process of becoming more congruent, more integrated, more complete as a person. - Some people self-actualize more than others

Answer 15

* Self-actualizers are efficient in thier perception of reality - Their experience is an extra-sharp focus - Self-actualizers can spot the confused perceptions of others and cut through the tangles. * More accepting - Accept both themselves and others - Realize they’re not perfect - Accept the frailties of the people around them as a part of who those people are * Mental spontaneity - Creativity without artificiality - Having a fresh appreiation of life, an excitement in the process of living * Problem centered - Problem: enduring questions of philosophy or ethics - Take a wide view, consider universal issues - Independent from their culture and immediate environment - Know relationships require effort- they have deep ties because relationships matter to them, but the ites are often limited to a very few others

Answer 16

* so invested in self-actualization that it becomes the most precious aspect of their lives - More consciously motivated by universal values or goals outside themselves - More holistic about the world, seeing the integration of all its elements - Self-actualization almost becomes “universe=actualization” - See themselves as the tools by which capabilities are expressed, rather than as the owners of the capabilities.

Answer 17

* a moment of intense self-actualization * Has a sense of being connected with the elements of his or her surroundings- perceptions * There’s also a loss of the sense of time as the experience flows by * Include awe, wonder, and even ecstasy * Tends to take you outside yourself * You aren’t thinking about yourself but rather are experiencing whatever you’re experiencing as fully as possible * Can occur in a passive way- usually occur when people are acting * What’s important isn’t what is being done but rather how it’s taking place. * If you’re completely immersed in it and it’s stretching you as a human being, it can be a peak experience * Happen more during work than during leisure * Similar to flow

Answer 18

* so immersed in an activity that it seems to “become” him or her.

Answer 19

* Existence is all anyone has * Each person is alone in an unfathomable universe * Stresses that each person must take responsibility of his or her choices. * Fits the phenomenological orientation in emphasizing the importance of the individual’s unique experience of reality.

Answer 20

* a concept that’s central to the existentialist view * A German word= “being-in-the-world” * The totality of a person’s experience of the self as an autonomous, separate, and evolving entity * Emphasizes that people have no existence apart from the world and that the world has no meaning apart from the people in it

Answer 21

*life inevitably ends in death, which can come at any time. *Death is the event no one escapes, no matter how self-actualizing his or her experiences are. *Awareness of the inevitability of death provokes angst- dread, anguish far deeper than anxiety over incongruity. *Being and not being- polarity between them *How should you resond to this realization? -Retreating into nothingness or having the courage to be -Whether or not to commit suicide (choose nothingness), thus avoiding the absurdity of a life that will end in death anyway =Less extreme ways of choosing nothingness: choose not to actu authentically, not to commit themselves to the goals and responsibilities that are part of who they are; drift or go along with some crowd =When people fail to take responsibility for their live -> Choosing nothingness -Choose to be =Assign meaning to his or her existence =By acting authentically, by being who you are -Often easiet to let other people decide what’s right and just go along -Existential psychologists believe that we are all responsible for making the most of every moment of our existence and fulfilling that existence to the best of our ability- inescapable responsibility

Answer 22

* over failing to fulfill your possibilities * Strongest when a person who’s free to choose fails to do so * But people who are aware are never completely free of existential guilt, because it’s impossible to fulfill every possibility * Inescapable- part of the cost of being

Answer 23

* People have lost faith in values * Many people no longer have a sense of worth and dignity, partly because they have found themselves powerless to influence forces such as government and big business. * When people lose their commitment to a set of values, they experience a sense of emptiness and meaninglessness -> turn to others for answers -> answers aren’t there because the problem is really within the person * You must be responsible for your own actions and that truth can come only from within and from your actions.

Answer 24

*Begins with the idea that an awareness of one’s eventual death creates existential angst, or terror. *People respond to the terror by trying to live lives of meaning and value *People often don’t define the meaning of life on their own They use a process of social and cultural consensus -Group identity- how people affirm the value of their lives -Mortality -> more protective of their own cultural values -By weaving themselves into a meaningful cultural fabric- a fabric that will last long after they’re gone- they affirm their own value as human beings -Making people aware of their mortality -> more favorale toward those who uphold their worldview and more negative toward those who don’t. -Mortality salience -> makes people adhere more to cultural norms themselves; make people act more altruistically -Threats to your worldview -> thoughts about death -Remind of mortality -> higher identity seeking; intending to work at projects that were more self-consistent *Terror management is the reason people view themselves as separate from other animals. -Think of yourself as animal= reminded of your death because all animals die *Sex= reminder of your animal nature -Reminds them of their mortality -Ascribe aestheic vale to the sex act- romance, cultural standards of beauty -Animal is transformed to the spiritual *Propping up self-esteem can establish a sense of one’s value and stave off existential angst *Confronting mortality motivates people to form close relationships *The push toward affiliation may be even more important than the affirmation of cultural values

Answer 25

*Self theorist such as Rogers: assessment is a process of finding out what the person is like. *Offers maximum flexibility *Lets the person being assessed say whatever comes up *Lets the interviewer follow stray thoughts and ask questions that might not otherwise occur Lets the interviewer get a subjective sense of what that person is like from interacting with him or her. *Requires empathy -Enter the other person’s private world -Requires sensitivity to small changes -Interviewer must repeatedly check the accuracy of your sensing to be sure you haven’t taken a wrong turn -Important to doing therapy and to being a fully functioning person *An extensive interview produces a lot of information. *Problems: hard to compare one with another

Answer 26

*grouping the person’s statements in some way and seeing how many statements fall into each group.

Answer 27

*Rogerts for assessing self-concept -Many variations but the same basic process -Always involves giving the person a large set of items printed on cards -The items often are self-evaluative statements, can be phrases, words, or other things -Asked to sort the cards into piles (one end are most like you and the other end are least like you) -The piles between two extremes represent graduations and thus contain more cards -Rules about how many cards can go in a given pile =People start by sorting very generally =Look hard at the statements and decide which one or two are most and least descriptive- is forced into self-evaluation by comparing qualities

Answer 28

*Measure the degree to which people have characteristics of frequent self-actualization *Consists of paired statements *People choose the one from each pair that they agree with more. *Has two scales -Time Competence: the degree to which the person lives in the present, as opposed to being distracted by the past and future. =Time-competent people: effectively link the past and future with the present; sense continuity -Inner directed in the search fo values and meaning =Self-actualizers: have a stronger tendency toward inner direction in determining their values than people who are less self-actualizing

Answer 29

* Rogers: lack of congruity within the self creates psychological problems - Incongruity between experience and self-concept or within the self-concept -> anxiety - Anxiety= signal of disorganization from the organismic valuing process; especially likely to arise if the person focuses too much on condition of worth and acts in ways that interfere with self-actualization * When the holistic self is threatened by uncertainty, the person becomes not only more distressed but also more rigid -> hold onto the self that existed before - Incongruity in one aspect -> stress certainty about other things -> compensate for what’s been threatened - More zealous or extreme in their beliefs and personal values

Answer 30

* Rogers: therapy is essentially one of reintegrating a partially disorganized self. * Reversing the processes of defense to confront the discrepancies between the elements of the person’s experience * The conditions of worth that distorted the person’s behavior in the past must be lifted. * The person still needs positive regard, but it must be unconditional -> feel able to confront the discrepancies * Removing the conditions of worth -> allow the person to focus more fully on the organismic valuing process, the inner voice that knows what’s good and bad for you -> allows reintegration of the self * People are less defensive when they’re accepted for who they are than when they’re accepted in an evaluative, conditional way. * Unconditional positive regard= key to therapy - Must be given from the person’s own frame of reference- acceptance for who you think you are - Empathy is necessary to get an adequate sense of what the client is like- provide meaningful acceptance -> show unconditional positive regard -> facilitate reintegration of his or her personality * Sometimes, people undertake therapy to satisfy a condition of worth. - People who are trying to change for self-determined reasons will do better than people who are trying to make similar changes to satisfy conditions of worth.

Answer 31

* the client takes responsibility for his or her own improvement * If people with problems can be put in a situation in which conditions of worth are removed, they should naturally reintegrate themselves. * Therapist displays empathy and unconditional positive regard -> lets the clinet escape temporarily from conditions of worth and begin exploring aspects of experience that are incongruent with the self. * Therapist remains nondirective and nonevaluative, showing no emotion and giving no advice * Therapist: remove the pressure of conditions of worth - By avoiding evaluative comments -> avoids imposing additional conditions of worth - Tries to help clients gain clear perspective one thier own feelings and experiences - Reflecting back to the client, in slightly different ways, things the client is saying, so the client can re-examine them from a different angle.

Answer 32

* Clarification of feelings | * Restatement of content

Answer 33

* express feelings about things, either directly in words or indirectly in other ways - Therapist repeats the expressions in different words -> make the client more aware of what his or her true feelings are, simply being reminded of the feelings can help this to happen -> allows the nature and the intensity of the feelings to become more obvious to the client -> puts the client into closer touch with the experience

Answer 34

* more intellectual and less emotional | * Ideas in the client’s statements- the cognitive content of what he or she says

Answer 35

* Humanistic psychologists: therapy isn’t a special process of fixing something that’s wrong and then forgetting about it - It’s on a continuum with other life experiences - A person who’s living life to the fullest should always engage in more or less the same processes as occur in therapy - Provide a way for people who have average lives- or even very good lives- to further enrich their experiences and to self-actualize even more completely * Rogers- fully funtioning person: ideal way of life - Personal growth throughout life should be a goal for every requires that the people with whom you interact be genuine and open, with no holding back and no putting up false fronts. - Requires empathic understanding together with unconditional positive regard - Similar to Maslow’s view on self-actualization: growht isn’t a goal that’s reached once and then cast aside. It’s a way of living to be pursued throughout your lifetime.

Answer 36

* Represents an optimistic and positive view of human nature - People are intrinsically good-naturally motivated to be the best they can be - That motive will be expressed in everyone, as long as other circumstances don’t interfere too much * Practical virtue of the humanistic view - Emphasizes the importance of fully appreciating your own life and maintaining close contact with your own feelings - Provides a strategy for living that many people have used to enrich their lives

Answer 37

*Lack of precision -Hard to generate research from the theories -It might be necessary to study as many types of behavior as there are people being studied *Quality that was just described as a virtue: its optimistic, positive view of human nature -Arbitrary, naive, sentimental, and romantic -Has no basis other than the theorists’ belief that people are inherently good *Idea that everyone’s self-actualization should be encouraged -If this principle were carried to its extreme, it would require that everyone live life to the fullest, regardless of the consequences for anyone else. -Result of such unrestrained self-expression would be chaos. =Create serious conflict whenever one person’s self-actualization interfered with someone else’s self-actualization *The optimistic overtones that permeate so much of humanistic psychology are largely missing from the writings of the existentialists -Humanists such as Rogers and Maslow: fulfilling quality that can come from making your own way in the world -Existentialists: doing this is hard and can be painful =Living honestly- confronting harsh realities and absurdities and rising above them =Can be difficult to reconcile the warm, glowing optimism of the one view with the darkness and angst of the other *Concept of free will -Theorists who emphasize self-actualization and self-determination- assume that people can decide for themselves what to do at any point in their lives -Others regard this conception of free will as a convenient fiction, an illusion that is misleading at best