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 self-actualizing.

Read Abraham Maslow

• Label items from bell ringer based on Maslow’s pyramid

Abraham MaslowStudied 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

NeurosisIf 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 weapons-Safety

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 self-indulgence, 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