Humanistic Approach

Humanistic Approach

• Psychodynamic theory reduces us to animals, leaves no room for free will or growth
• Ignores conscious experience

• Personal constructs - cognitive categories that we sort people and events into
• Personal constructs are the primary basis for differences in personality, along with the rules we use for assigning things to constructs and how we think they're related

• Behaviour is a response to immediate conscious experience of self and the environment
• Self - an organized and consistent set of beliefs about and perceptions of yourself. Guides perceptions and behaviour
• Need for self-consistency (self-perceptions are not in conflict) and congruence (consistency between our self-perceptions and experience)
• Example - Fred thinks of himself as a fun, interesting, friendly person. He meets a friend of a friend who doesn't want anything to do with him. To resolve the lack of congruence, he can modify his self-concept ("I'm likeable but not everybody's cup of tea"), or he can distort reality ("I guess that guy is just a jerk")
• Self-verification - maintaining self-consistency and congruence results in self-verification. Leads us to have better memory for self-consistent information and seek out self-confirming relationships
• Need for positive regard - acceptance, sympathy, and love from others
• Unconditional positive regard - positive regard irrespective of behaviour
• Conditional positive regard - positive regard that is dependent on particular behaviour(s)
• Ideally, child receives unconditional positive regard from parents
• Positive self-regard - positive regard for yourself
• Conditions of worth - learned standards for when we deserve positive regard. Become internalized
• Fully functioning persons - achieved self-actualization, no need to hide behind masks or adopt artificial roles. Comes with a sense of freedom, self-determination, and choice
• Self-esteem - how positive or negative you feel about yourself
• Higher self-esteem is associated with positive outcomes
• Self-enhancement - tendency and need to gain and preserve positive self-image