The humanistic approach

Question 1

What are the assumptions of the humanistic approach

Answer 1

• free will and that humans are self determining
• active agents who can determine their own development
• Rogers and Maslow reject scientific methods and the aim to establish general laws of behaviour
• Focus on subjective experience, person - centered approach

Question 3

What is free will?

Answer 3

• the humanistic approach claims humans have free will and can determine their own development

Question 4

What is Maslows hierarchy of needs?

Answer 4

• he developed a hierachy of needs that motivate us
• in order to meet our goal of self actualisation, other deficiencies should be met
• Only can progress through the hierarchy if they are all met

Question 5

What is the hierarchy of needs in order?

Answer 5

list:
psychological needs,
safety and security,
love and belongingness,
self-esteem,
self actualisation

Question 6

What is self actualisation?

Answer 6

• the fufilling of our potential and becoming the best you can possibly be
• personal growth is essential
• this is concerned with changing and becoming more developed as a person and becoming fufilled, satisfied and goal - orientated

Question 7

What is self, congruence and conditions of worth

Answer 7

• Rogers came up with ones self must have congruence to their ideal self’s.
  If there is too much of a gap, a person will experience incogurence and self actualisation is not possible due to negative feelings that arise due to incogurence
• rogers developed client- centered therapy to change conditions of worth to counteract low self esteem.

Question 8

What is client centered therapy?

Answer 8

• helps people cope with everyday living
• low self esteem and worthlessness can be explained by a lack of unconditioned positive regard
• a parent who has conditions of worth gives psychological problems for that child

Question 9

What is a strength?

Answer 9

• it rejects attempts to break behaviour into smaller components
• behaviourist = stimulus and response & cognitive = thinking machines
• Humantistic psychologists focus on holism and that we should consider the whole person.
• Therefore this is more meaningful to understand human behaviour in its real world context

C = reductionist approaches may be more scientific as they reduce behaviour to dependent and independent variables, this provides empirical evidence which the humanistic approach lacks

Question 10

What is another strength?

Answer 10

• it is optimistic
• brings the person back into psychology, Freud saw us as in between ‘ common unhappiness and absolute despair ‘
• This shows the humanists believe all people are basically good, free to work towards achieving their full potential and control their lives

Question 11

What is a limitation?

Answer 11

• it is culturally biased
• individual freedom, autonomy and personal growth
  are all inidvidualistic
• collectivist countries emphasize the importance of interdepenence and the needs of the group
• therefore the ideals of humanistic psychology may not be as important in all cultures. Does not apply universally and is the product of the cultural context in which it was developed