Humanism- Chapter 15

Humanism

looking at humans as individuals and people

• theory is not a school of thought

• not identified with a certain place

humanistic psychology

third force that competed between behaviorism and psychoanalysis

• looked at people completely differently(versus other schools of thought)

Roots idea that humanism reacted against to build theory

industrialization, depersonalization, and urbanization

Behaviorism Just looks at behavior, psychoanalysis just looks at our past

-The behaviorist say that the environment determines our behavior

-Psychoanalysis says the unconscious determine our behavior

-Humanism says that we(or “us”) determine our behaviors

People’s ideas that lead to humanism

Plato, St. Augustine, William James

plato says

emphasized the eternal experience (most interested in what’s going on within our heads

st augustine says

-The freedom of human beings to transcend their environmental circumstances

-We can rise above our environment and circumstances

william james

-Contradictory because in one chapter he said psychology empirical if it strayed to far away experience(can be behavior or internal experience)

-Also had a chapter on stream of consciousness(it tries to mimic the ways our minds work)

the goals of humanistic psychology

-Wanted a holistic rather than atomistic (breaking things down to its parts). The whole person’s past present and future

-Purposive (humans have goals), rather than simple mechanical(behaviorism that sees use like a machine)

-Dynamic rather than casual

founders of humanism

Abraham Maslow, Gordon Allport, Carl Rogers

Abraham Maslow

•Criticize behaviorism as to narrow in its methodology and subject matter

•Formulate a wholestic system of psychology deeply sensitive the unique human experiences

•Problem centered rather than means centered

mean v. problem center

-Means center- emphasizes the methodology(how are we conducting research)

-Problems center – psychology needs to study problems which actually matters in the world. Problems should be placed in a higher place than methods

gordon allport

• prejudice of religion(religious paradox)

• book individual and his religion

• idiographic and nomothetic approaches

allports prejuidce of religion based on the religious paradox

the people who were more religious were more prejudice. However, he said wait “we are looking at religion based on church attendance. There are so many reasons why you can attend church, other than strictly on faith”

The individual and his religion(book) talked about

Extrinsic rewards- people go for the external reward

Intrinsic rewards- going because of your internal beliefs

• found a curve(people in the middle were the most prejudice)

allport argued idiographic and nomothetic

  idiographic (looking at individuals/ case studies- we need to know how something effects the person) and nomothetic approaches(big scale study with large samples, we need those to see the overall results).

 

carl rogers

went through a process of trying to change the way that people looked at therapy.

• Wanted to create a way to solve problems on your own, not going back to the therapist every time that you have a problem

• lead to three approaches(improved upon each time)- nondirective thearpy, second therapy approach, people centered approach

non directive therapy

when the patient comes to tell the therapist a problem, the therapist will not tell them what to do. The goal was to help them find their own way

second therapy approach

The client is not a patient (A patient refers to someone who is “below” a doctor. A client pays you, so you aren’t above them).

• Client centered

• However, he saw this as money based

people centered approach

the focus is on the individual as a person

• One has been trained the other hasn’t

• one isn’t better than the other

carl rogers also came up with

phenomenological field, positive regard, incongruence v. congruence, self worth

phenomenological field

the same thing as Kut Lewin’s life space.

• Everything going on in the world effects them

• A therapy that only looks at a small part of a person’s life may look like we need to work on

positive regard

argued for unconditional love- coming into the world wanted the be affirmed/ loved

• can have a positive and negative impact

• can come at the expense of good character

self worth

opinion of yourself

incongruence v. congruence

• incongruence- self is different than the person who want to be

• congruence- describe yourself as the same/ similar to who you want to be

Jerome Bruner

looked at cognitive development and developmental psychology

• scaffolding learning- starting with someones prior knowledge and building on it

• looked at interverision and how we are born with it. Also looked at genetic aspects of development and learning

Ulric Neisser

* artificial intelligence

* learning how human process so we can learn how try humans process to we can teach it to computurs

*flashbulb memories- things that happen fast, but stay in your memory

Herman Ebbs

Found serial position effect:

·      the fact that we presented with a list(primary effect), we are more likely to remember the first and last things on the list(recency effect)  

Forgetting(memory) curve- anything that you remember at the two week mark is most likely to stay with you(study things after the two week mark)

Nonsense syllabus- are 3 letter syllabus/ no meaning that don’t mean anything. This is a pure test of memory

George Miller

The magic number- we can remember 7 Plus or minus two items. Must do more with short term memory