• Humanistic psychology: studies persistent motive within individuals to become competent in dealing w/environment
    • Successful completion of task causes task to lose some of its value so that new and more difficult challenges are taken
    • Explained by Rogers as an attempt to become a fully functioning individual and explained by Maslow as movement toward self-actualization
  • Most theorists take the point of view that human behaviour cannot be fully understood without reference to actualization and fully functioning

Carl Rogers and Positive Regard

  • Rogers is best known for development of client-centered therapy firmly based on his humanistic ideas about individuals’ motives
  • Actualizing tendency: striving to become fully functioning; never complete b/c we change as we grow; innate
  • Only motive is toward growth: maintain, enhance, reproduce
  • Environment and interaction w/others is very important in helping or hindering growth
  • Actualizing tendency: striving to become fully functioning; never complete b/c we change as we grow; innate o Creates a need for positive regard (comes from others and self) and positive-self regard (comes from interaction w/parents)
  • Unconditional positive regard: love someone regardless of behaviour o Person’s own self-concept is consistent w/feedback from others  person is non-defensive and open to change and growth
  • Conditional positive regard: to be loved to if behaviour is correct o = Anxiety = defensive/self-defense (deny/distort cognition b/c they are inconsistent w/self-concept)  maladaptive behaviours
  • Fully functioning individuals: have unconditional positive regard so that we can let down our defenses and allow self to change and grow

Characteristics of the Fully Functioning Individual

  1. More open to experience: they do not have to defend themselves against certain experiences, so their perceptions of evens are less distorted

o More emotional, experience wider range of emotions and experience emotions more intensely

  1. Existential living: live life to fullest in the moment (vs. past and future) = healthy personality
  2. Trust in one’s own organism: does what feels right vs. what seems intellectually right o Open and in touch w/innermost experiences
  3. Sense of freedom: see selves as in control of lives vs. controlled by random events o b/c they are free from denial and distortion that create rigid behaviour
  4. More creativity: b/c of ability to adapt to change in environment

– Fully functioning person is in “process” of continual striving to enhance self vs. in a “state”

Criticisms of Roger’s Approach

  1. Many terms used are not operationally defined o e. what is self-actualizing tendency in operational terms?
  2. Unclear which environmental conditions will enhance growth and which will hinder it o Clearer distinction between situations that lead to unconditional vs. conditional positive regard would help clarify role of environment in motivation
  3. Implies “me first” psychology o Says little about how feelings toward other lead to growth
  4. Does not emphasize to any great extent the goals toward which an individual may be striving o Emphasized striving but ignored end products of that striving as determinants of behaviour

– Summary: Roger’s theory is empirically weak: he did not specify components of his theory enough in order to be tested –

Abraham Maslow and Self-Actualization

  • Self-actualization: striving for perfection; ultimate purpose of behaviour o Emphasized need to strive for perfection, but includes additional motives
  • Ultimate goals: we must seek to understand these vs. superficial or apparent goals b/c superficial or apparent goal for an observed behaviour may be diff from ultimate goal o Thus, motivation for behaviour and needs are unconscious (like Freud), but in a positive way (unlike Freud)
  • Hierarchy of needs: lower needs are stronger and must be satisfied before higher
    • When lower needs are met, next need on hierarchy becomes dominant force in controlling and directing behaviour
    • Not rigid: we can partly satisfy lower needs to that higher needs can be partly active
    • Satisfaction of needs in hierarchy are probabilistic i.e. if lower need is being satisfied most of time (i.e. 80%), that need will have little influence on behaviour vs. higher, less satisfied needs have larger influence on behaviour

Hierarchy of Needs

  1. Physiological needs: mostly met for people in our society; if not met, then person is in emergency situation
  2. Safety needs: includes people’s preference for familiar surroundings, secure jobs, etc.

–     Non-satisfaction of this need can be used to understand disorders i.e. in obsessive-compulsive disorder, non-satisfaction of safety need causes individual to react as if continually in threatening situation

  1. Love or belongingness needs: i.e. affectionate relationships, sexual intimacy (vs. sexual need), marriage, job, etc.

–     Dissatisfaction of this need is most common basis for behaviour problems in our society; it leads to behavioral maladjustment and pathology

  1. Esteem needs: need for positive, high self-evaluation; 2 categories:
  2. Need for self-esteem: desire to feel worthy; motivates person to strive for achievement, strength, confidence, independence and freedom o Similar to Roger’s positive regard concept
  3. Need for esteem from others: desire for reputation, status, appreciation by others of our abilities and feeling imp
  • Deprivation motivation (D-motivation): behaviours attempted to fulfill above 4 needs
  • Most common exception to hierarchy: esteem needs precede love needs
  • For psychologically chronically deprived people, it may be sufficient enough for them to just eat and higher needs may never appear
  • People who have always had basic needs satisfied will be less influenced by these needs later if they are no longer being met i.e. martyrs
  • First 4 years of life are most imp in building resistance to later deprivation
  • Self-actualization: final level of development reached when first 4 levels are satisfied; very few people reach this level
    • Being needs (B-motivation/metamotivation): behaviour is motivated by these needs (only in self-actualization) that give meaning to person’s life i.e. trust, goodness, honesty, etc.
    • Peak experience: short but intense feeling of joy or amazement usually accompanied by sense of fulfillment, insight and oneness w/something larger than oneself
    • 2 types of self-actualizing people (only differ in peak frequencies)
  1. Transcenders/peakers: often have peak experiences; more motivated by Bvalues; may be less happy than non-transcenders b/c of their ability to see the stupidity of people more clearly and to experience a kind of cosmic sadness for the failing of others
  2. Non-transcenders/non-peakers: do not often have peak experiences

– Negative attributes of self-actualized individuals: pride in belongings, can be ruthless, impolite, and stubborn; their extreme abilities to concentrate cause them to appear absent-minded; feel guilt, anxiety and conflict b/c of their realization that they are not all they want to be – Failure to self-actualize due to:

  1. Tendency toward growth is weaker than deficiency motived  can be easily stunted by poor environment or education
  2. Western culture’s emphasis on negative nature of human motivation works against our own inner nature  our culture emphasized that inner nature is bad, which causes people to reject their inner experiences altogether
  3. Growth requires taking chances (risky) and many people choose security over growth
  4. Jonah complex: People are afraid of their own abilities, so they reject opportunities for growth

Criticisms of Self-Actualization

  1. Individuals studied by Maslow were mostly friends, acquaintance, etc. who prefer anonymity; thus, replicability was not possible to ensure accuracy (biggest criticism)
  2. Elitist theory does not describe people in general: people confined by poor education, jobs, societal expectations, etc. are unlikely to become self-actualized persons, whereas elites have higher chance
  3. Motivation toward growth is not as general as Maslow proposed: may not be present in all of us
  4. Vague language and concepts and general lack of evidence Research on Self-Actualization:

– Shostrom made inventor that discriminated between: self-actualized, normal and non-self-actualized o Self-actualized people: less restricted by social pressures or conformity o Self actualized people have time competence: can live in present + positively tie past and future events to the present and their aspirations are tied to goals that he/she is presently striving –        Privette contrasted:

  1. Peak performance: episode of superior functioning o Strong self-awareness
  2. Peak flow: intrinsically enjoyable experience

o “flow is fun”; people engage in activities that create sense of flow b/c they are enjoyable  thus, can be planned unlke other 2

  1. Peak experience: passive (not created by individual) and leads to reorganization of thoughts o Mystical transpersonal aspect
    • Common quality to all 3: absorption: individual intensely focuses attention to the exclusion of other perceptual events + they spontaneously and effortlessly experience events as they occur without truing to influence them
    • People do not report peak experiences b/c: (1) personal, (2) telling others may cause experience to be devalued, (3) not easily described in words to others
    • Study: participants were asked to recall single most personally satisfying event they experienced and then asked to rate agreement w/statements designed to measure self-actualization o Result: self-actualization was not one of concepts that was strongly related to events; however, self-esteem was strongly related to events

A Revised Hierarchy of Needs

  • Kenrick revised hierarchy was made to include advancements made since its original publish
  • Like Maslow, Kenrick emphasized that diff needs are driven by diff motivational systems (i.e. motive to get status/esteem): (1) evolutionary significance, (2) development trajectory and (3) specific environmental stimuli that trigger each need at any given time
  • Kenrick extended Maslow’s ideas: (1) 5 fundamental needs  added 3 and (2) 2 needs can be active at once  overlapping circles indicate any needs can be active at any time
  • Self-actualization need is not listed b/c it is argued that is it not a fundamental human need and is part of other needs (though still imp)
  • 3 mating needs are listed b/c from evolutionary perspective, one’s ultimate goal is successful propagation of one/s genes
  • for human infants, psychological and safety needs are most important and must be satisfied before moving up the hierarchy
  • choice is an imp factor in how we satisfy our motives and thus exercises some control over our environment
  • Centrally, both Roger’s full functioning and Maslow self-actualization concepts show that individuals are free to control (competence) what happens to them

Competence

  • Competence motivation: ability to interact effectively w/your environment
  • Effectance motivation: motive that activated a striving for confidence i.e. child attempting to effectively master environment
    • Usually seen when other homeostatic motives are at low levels i.e. when child is neither cold nor thirsty, they will play to increase control over their world
    • In adult: one may consider achievement behaviour as energized by effectance motivation; control aspect in this case is to excel intellectually

Personal Causation

  • Personal causation: we can be causal agents in our environment
  • Underlying principle of all motivated behaviours (vs. being strictly a motive) since we usually describe motivation in relation to goals that a behaviour leads (i.e.

when hungry, we seek food)

Origins and Pawns

  • Origin: believes behaviour is controlled by our own choices; have strong feelings of personal causation
  • Pawn: believes we have no control over behaviour; feel powerless

Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory of Human Agency

  • Reciprocal causation: understanding is best achieved by studying interplay between behaviour (B), personal (P) cognition and environmental (E) factors
  • Takes holistic approach vs. reductionist approach

Core Features of Human Agency

    • Intentionality: proactive commitment to bring future course of action i.e. noticing attractive person that you plan to ask out
    • Forethought: action plan/anticipation of future events and their likely consequence; difficult i.e. what to wear to date? Where to go? Etc.
    • Self-reactiveness: motivation and self-regulation needed to maintain course of action and evaluate it w/respect to goals and standards i.e. what are your shortterm and long-term goals for this relationship?
    • Self-reflectiveness: ability to evaluate how effective we are at exercising capacity for human agency  result of evaluation = self-efficacy

Personal Proxy and Collective Agency –  3 modes of human agency:

    • Personal agency: concerned w/agency from perspective of individual; includes 4 features discussed earlier
    • Proxy agency: when we take advantage of each other’s areas of expertise o Advantages: (1) each specialize in own area of interest and share w/each other and (2) do not have to be responsible for decisions that we are ill-informed to make
    • Collective agency: ability of groups to accomplish more than can be done by same # of people individually o Group efficacy: feeling that group can achieve its goal = major determinant of whether goal is met or not

Applying the Social Cognitive Theory of Human Agency

  • Bandura’s efficacy component of his social cognitive theory have impact on human functioning i.e. children’s and parent’s beliefs about efficacy are predictor’s of their child’s success
  • In health care domain, feelings of personal efficacy are positively related to development and maintenance of healthy behaviours i.e. self-efficacy based treatment program resulted in reduced cholesterol level in participants

Self-Determinant Theory

  • Deci and Ryan’s theory of motivation hypothesized 3 human basic needs to satisfy:
    1. Competence: need to have control over environment (similar to Bandura’s concept of agency)
    2. Relatedness: need to feel sense of belonging w/others
    3. Autonomy: need to freely integrate our experiences w/our sense of self
  • Needs are psychological and innate (vs. learned), thus they are universal (crosscultural), but the way the needs are met may differ from culture to culture
  • All 3 need to be satisfied for healthy functioning

Psychological Needs and the Development of Intrinsic Motivation –    Intrinsic motivation: value or pleasure associated w/activity o Related to overall psychological health and functioning o Mediated by fulfillment of 3 basic needs of determination theory:

  1. Rewards reduce individual’s sense of autonomy; thus rewards weaken intrinsic motivation
  2. Also mediated by need for competency b/c we are more likely to enjoy activities we are good at
  3. Meeting one’s need for relatedness is important b/c sense of connectedness to others (i.e. when one experiences caring environment provided by parents and teacher) can foster intrinsic motivation
  • Extrinsic motivation: external goals toward which the activity is directed Moving from Extrinsic to Intrinsic Motivation
  • Behaviour that was once the result of extrinsic factors can become intrinsically motivated if external motives become internalized or integrated into one’s sense of self
  • Diff levels of internalization; more right (bottom here) = more internalized:
  1. Amotivation: individual does not engage in behaviour or does emphasize behaviour, but only “goes through the motions”
  2. External regulation: engage in behaviours to receive reward or avoid punishment controlled by others
  3. Introjection: engage in behaviours to receive reward or avoid punishment administered by the individual themselves i.e. putting yourself on a reinforcement schedule
  4. Identified regulation: we begin to see the value of activity for its own sale, but are still motivated by external factors i.e. realizing reading is good for you, but only doing it b/c its good for you and not b/c you enjoy it, but not simply doing it for the reward)
  5. Integrated regulation: individuals have identified behaviour as valuable and have integrated it into their sense of self i.e. healthy desire to read b/c you aspire to become an educated person o Similar to intrinsic motivation except in integrated regulation, you are not yet performing the behavior for its own sake

The Rise of Positive Psychology

  • Positive psychology by Seligman and Csikszentmihakyi: divert focus (but not eliminate) from treating individuals w/mental illnesses to improving functioning o people and determining how to best foster development of individuals w/exceptional abilities
  • Advantages: (1) learning processes that control positive growth can help nurture everyone and (2) much can be learned about disorders if we understand how they differ from healthy development
  • Antecedents and consequences of various aspects of human functioning:

positive emotions, positive individual traits and virtues and positive institutions

  • Seligman divided positive emotions based on their temporal sequence (past, present, future) b/c he believes each type is distinct and can be altered to change our overall happiness or well-being o e. past = satisfaction and future = hope – Emotions are divided into:
  1. Pleasures/hedonia: include bodily pleasures (i.e. sex) and higher pleasures (i.e. excitement)
  2. Gratification/eudaimonia: activities characterized by immersion, intense concentration, effortless involvement and loss of sense of time; share some characteristics w/Maslow’s peak experiences

 

Pleasures can be enhanced by depriving ourselves of stimuli that activate them of through mindfulness: focusing one’s attention on the moment rather than engaging in a pleasure-inducing activity automatically or reflexively

  • Seligman divided positive emotions based on their temporal sequence (past, present, future) b/c he believes each type is distinct and can be altered to change our overall happiness or well-being o e. past = satisfaction and future = hope
  • Seligman distinguished between virtues: universally valued aspects of human character (wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance and transcendence) vs. positive traits: list of 24 (major ones: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, transcendence)
  • Positive institutions: develop when individuals use their strengths in the service of the greater i.e. judge exercising his/her sense of fairness

Criticisms of Positive Psychology

  • Criticized on practical and theoretical grounds:
    • Theoretical standpoint: argued that PP has (1) adopted many core principle’s of their domain (i.e. well-being and optimism) without proper recognition of the roots of those ideas and (2) it as applied reductionist research methodologies to these principles, which is opposite to the humanistic approach used in humanistic psychology
    • Practical standpoint: argued that PP is prescriptive (vs. descriptive) i.e. tells us what to do when happy or sad vs. trying to understand optimism and happiness