Download Humanistic Psychology

EQ: What do humanists and
Rogers believe?
Bell Ringer
• Do you believe that people can change
their personalities?
• Can people become better throughout
their lives? What causes this?
• Describe someone that you know
personally or know of (read about, movie,
etc) that has become a better person over
time-describe them
Discuss Bell ringer with group
• Class discussion
Read and annotate Humanism
Intro.
• With groups-come up with a 5 sentence
summary of the main ideas of Humanism
• Discuss and write your opinion of this
personality theory
Humanistic Psychology
• Late 1950s-early 1960’s
– “make love, not war” era beginning.
• Focus on “healthy” people and how to
help them strive to “be all that they can
be”.
• Rejected idea that unconscious mind
determines behavior
• People have free will to consciously
make decisions and can change
personalities throughout life
Self-Concept
• Both Rogers and Maslow believed that
your self-concept is at the center of your
personality.
•If our self concept is positive….
We tend to act and perceive the world
positively.
•If our self-concept is negative….
We fall short of our “ideal self” and feel
dissatisfied and unhappy
Make a T-chart
• On left side write about who who want to
be in 5 years (or who you think you should
be)-at least 10 items
• Where do you want to be/how do you want
to be living?
• What do you want to be doing?
• What kind of person do you want to be?
• How do you want to be viewed by other
people?
• What qualities will you have?
On the right side
• For each item on the left write who your
parents, grand parents, authority figures
(counselors/teachers) want you to be in 5
years
• Can be same as what you want or
different
Rogers: People are motivated
to achieve potential if
given….
• Unconditional
Positive Regard:
Unquestioning love
and acceptance
genuineness,
acceptance and
empathy
Genuineness
• Being open with
your own feelings.
•Dropping your
facade.
•Being transparent
and self-disclosing.
Empathy
• Listening, sharing,
understanding and
mirroring feelings
and reflecting their
meanings.
Conditioned Positive Regard (CPR)
- “I am proud of
you if….”
- Causes us to
focus on what
others think we
should be or
who we want
to be because
of others 
“ideal self”
... And lose
touch with
who we
really are 
“real self”
Partners
• Think of an example of real vs. ideal self
Real vs Ideal Self Example
• Amira is great at art and wants to go to
Columbia to pursue a career in fine arts.
Her parents are both lawyers and don’t
feel this would not benefit her future. They
pressure her into going to college for
business. She starts taking math electives
her senior year.
Real self
Ideal self
Look at your T-Charts and put
stars next to the ones that don’t
match up
• Which are your “real-self” and which
aspects are your “ideal-self”?
• Label real and ideal on your chart
• Incongruence-real and ideal self don’t
match up
• Congruence-real and ideal self do match
up
The discrepancy causes…
• Neurosis
– “I’m not good
enough”
– “No one likes me
for who I am”
– “I have to pretend
to be someone
else”
The way to cure
neurosis is…
…Unconditional Positive Regard
(UPR)
Client-centered therapy
• Developed by Carl
Rogers
• Therapist offers UPR
(genuineness,
acceptance, and
empathy).
• Active listening
• Non-directive
• Patient gets in touch
with “real self” and is
happy.
Unconditional Positive Regard
Reflection
• Do you think the people in your lives offer
you unconditional or conditional positive
regard? How do you think this effects your
personality. Explain
• Do you think your real self and ideal self
are congruent or incongruent? How could
you make them more congruent?
• Discuss with group/class discussion
Homework
• Unconditional Positive regard assignment
EQ: What are Maslow’s beliefs?
• Bell Ringer
• You are condemned to live on a desert
island. List and rank the 10 items/things
you would take with you
Put the slips in order of
importance
Abraham Maslow’s
Hierarchy of Needs
According to
Maslow, only
2-3% of
people are
truly selfactualizing.
Read Abraham Maslow
• Label items from bell ringer based on
Maslow’s pyramid
Abraham Maslow
Studied healthy, creative people (not
troubled people)
Found in them a desire to self-actualize
(fulfill their potential).
Self-actualizing people are: self aware,
caring, open, spontaneous, loving, secure,
problem-centered, have a few deep
relationships, moved by peak experiences
Peak experience= sudden feelings of
intense happiness and well-being, and
possibly the awareness of "ultimate truth"
and the unity of all things.
Self Actualizing inventory
• Add up score
• Answer questions in notes
Neurosis
If you have
significant difficulty
fulfilling a need at
some point in your
life you may “fixate”
at that level and
develop neuroses.
Meredith Gray was abandoned by her father and raised by
an emotionally cold mother, causing her to fixate at the
belongingness stage. Now, she has difficulty accepting love
from others.
Maslow’s Hierarchy In our world
• With your group create Maslow’s hierarchy with
headlines from newspapers
• Choose headlines that are about people and
places all around the world and that show
positive and negative events
• Draw the pyramid with labels for each stage
and glue the headline next to the stage that the
people are trying to achieve
• EX: North Korea threatening Nuclear weaponsSafety
Is there evidence for humanism?
Some. Self-knowledge helps: Research shows that we
perform better if we take time to set clear goals for ourselves.
Correlational studies show that people who feel good about
themselves have fewer sleepless nights, resist pressure to
conform, are less likely to use drugs, are more persistent at
difficult tasks, are less shy and lonely, and are happier.(does
high self-esteem causes these or is it the other way around?)
Experimental research has shown that low-self esteem can
CAUSE people to act thin-skinned, judgmental, more
prejudiced, and excessively critical.
Criticisms of Humanism
• Concepts are vague
and subjective
• Can lead to selfindulgence,
selfishness, and
erosion of morals
• Fails to appreciate
the human capacity
for evil.
Self-Serving Bias
• A readiness to
perceive oneself
favorable.
•People accept more
responsibility for
successes than
failures.
•Appears to be adaptive as it wards off
extreme depression.
Does culture play a part in our
personality (according to humanistic
psychologists)?
• Individualism: giving priority to one’s own
goals over group goals. Defining your identity in
terms of yourself.
– More privacy, more accepting of different lifestyles,
people feel free to switch jobs, churches, and homes.
• Collectivism: giving priority to the goals of a
group and defining your identity as part of that
group.
– Less divorce, homicide, stress-related disease, and
loneliness