humanistic

AO1

  • emphasises the importance of subjective experience and each person’s capacity for self determination, that every human has free will

  • due to this, scientific models are rejected, as humans are too unique to make general laws about

  • maslow’s hierarchy of needs

    • outlines the criteria necessary to be met before a person is able to achieve the primary goal of humans: self actualisation

    • physiological needs need to be met - hunger

    • safety and security

    • love and belongingness

    • self esteem

    • self actualisation - desire to grow psychologically and fulfil one’s potential (only 1% of the population actually achieve this)

  • rogers - idea of congruence

    • where ideal self is too stark in contrast to the individual’s concept of self

    • self actualisation not possible due to negative feelings of self worth

    • rogers developed client centred therapy to help bridge the gap between the concept of self and the ideal self - either by making the ideal self seem unreachable or boosting one’s own self concept

    • noticed that many psychological issues stem from childhoods with parents who gave conditional love so therapists should give unconditional positive regard to individuals who lacked it as children

AO3

  • one strength of this approach is that it is holistic

  • holism refers to the idea that behaviour can only be understood in the context of the whole person

  • this means that the humanistic approach does not oversimplify human behaviour and understands that the context of that person’s behaviour can result in unique behaviour

  • this approach acknowledges individual differences and rejects general laws because they clash with these differences

  • therefore, this approach may have more validity than other approaches

  • however, a limitation could be that it lacks RWA

  • it takes on a very idiographic approach, believing all humans are unique and approaching behaviour on a person-centred basis but this means it cannot help groups of people on a larger scale. nomothetic approaches hold a strength in that, by establishing general laws, they can help larger numbers of people (ie SSRIs to treat depression)

  • by contrast, the humanistic approach’s main applicability is through counselling which for many, may be inaccessible or inconvenient

  • this means that the humanistic is not the ideal method of treatment or help for many people

  • a further limitation is that it suffers from cultural bias, specifically beta bias

  • it minimises the differences between cultures because self actualisation may be accepted in western, individualist cultures like the US but in non-western, collectivist cultures there may be a stronger emphasis on interdependence. they may instead view it as self indulgent

  • therefore, maslow’s hierarchy of needs lacks validity because not every culture may strive for self actualisation. this weakens the central assumption of the approach