Behaviorism

1. Behaviorism • Though Freud was famous and exalted with his theory dominating much of psychology an undercurrent of behaviorism was also developing • Avoiding hypothetical constructs and focusing on behavior led to many areas of discovery • Still, studying personality required more than just what behavior wrists could focus on so out shoots of other lines of thinking proliferated during the 40’s 50’s &60’s

2. Humanistic • One of the offshoots was a reaction, perhaps compensation, to the mechanical and inhumane approach to studying people • Humanistic psychology is considered the “third force” in the history of psych • Abraham Maslow is given credit for this third force moniker but has an interesting history

3. Maslow • Began studying classical conditioning, having swallowed the kool aid of john Watson that pronounced everything could be explained by classical conditioning • Why did he move away from behaviorism? • He was exposed to a psychologist named Harlow, who studied monkeys and attachment. • And his daughter was born, at which point he realized behaviorism was simply too simple.

4. Hierarchy of needs • Maslow incorporated behaviorism but recognize that it was on a lower level of explanation and the grand scheme of things • He proposed a hierarchy of needs that stated lower needs must first be satisfied before attempting to satisfy higher needs • Maslow recognized if somebody was starving moral behavior would be less important.

5. Maslow, Rogers • Peak experiences • Deficiency orientation • B values • Carl Rogers wrote a well known book titled becoming a person • He is given credit for humanistic psychotherapy

6. Rogers • Actualizing tendency • Think of this as a motivational explanation (be all you can be) • Conditions of worth • Hurdles which must be overcome in order to obtain love and approval • Unconditional Positive Regard (AKA love) • Acceptance of a person without judgment on basic worth • Self concept and integration • Common elements of an integrated person fully functioning person

7. Fully Functioning person (Rogers 1961) • A growing openness to experience – they move away from defensiveness and have no need for subception (a perceptual defense that involves unconsciously applying strategies to prevent a troubling stimulus from entering consciousness). • An increasingly existential lifestyle – living each moment fully – not distorting the moment to fit personality or self concept but allowing personality and self concept to emanate from the experience. This results in excitement, daring, adaptability, tolerance, spontaneity, and a lack of rigidity and suggests a foundation of trust.

8. Fully Functioning cont’ • Increasing organismic trust – they trust their own judgment and their ability to choose behavior that is appropriate for each moment. They do not rely on existing codes and social norms but trust that as they are open to experiences they will be able to trust their own sense of right and wrong. • Freedom of choice – not being shackled by the restrictions that influence an incongruent individual, they are able to make a wider range of choices more fluently. They believe that they play a role in determining their own behavior and so feel responsible for their own behavior. • Creativity – it follows that they will feel more free to be creative. They will also be more creative in the way they adapt to their own circumstances without feeling a need to conform.

9. Fully Functioning cont’ • Reliability and constructiveness – they can be trusted to act constructively. An individual who is open to all their needs will be able to maintain a balance between them. Even aggressive needs will be matched and balanced by intrinsic goodness in congruent individuals. • A rich full life – he describes the life of the fully functioning individual as rich, full and exciting and suggests that they experience joy and pain, love and heartbreak, fear and courage more intensely. Rogers' description of the good life: “This process of the good life is not, I am convinced, a life for the faint-hearted. It involves the stretching and growing of becoming more and more of one's potentialities. It involves the courage to be. It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life.” (Rogers 1961)

10. Existential • A branch of the humanistic psychology • Humanism may be criticized for being too naïve or warm and fuzzy • Existentialism has many of the same assumptions as humanistic psychology but embraces the dark side of humanity • This branch stems from existential philosophy which originates in Europe a bit before Freud

11. Existential • There are many existential psychologists • Irvin Yalom is one who basically said psychoanalysis is right about a lot of things except what causes anxiety: existential threat • The following are unconsciously processed threats to existence: • We will die • We are fundamentally alone • Life has no inherent meaning without choice • We have freedom to choose

12. Existential • So, our defense mechanisms still work by preventing us being aware of these existential truths • Yalom Worked with terminally ill patients in applied psychoanalysis induce existential context to help people within weeks rather than years

13. Trait approach • Trait theory developed in parallel with other theories • Some basic assumptions: • Traits are stable across time • Traits are stable across situations • People have more or less of a trait • Basically, traits can be thought as simple as adjectives describing behavior, or as complex as indicating the existence of some internal causal mechanism

14. Big 5 • This approach is a recently discovered phenomenon • It is based on a statistical technique called factor analysis and before powerful computing we could not calculate all of the necessary calculations for it to work • Essentially, hundreds of questionnaires had their individual items correlated with all of the other items

15. Big 5 • Imagine a massively large spreadsheet where the columns represent questions in questionnaires while the rows represent individual subjects • Factor analysis combines groups of correlated questions to find the fewest number of these groupings, with possible tweaking based on theoretical predictions

16. Big 5 • What they found is that five factors stood out, at which point they looked at the questions themselves to see the content. • The five factors are named: • Openness to experience • Conscientiousness • Extroversion/introversion • Agreeableness • Neuroticism

17. Big five/traits • Trait theories are good at description • Some can be used in explanation but most trait theories have a weakness in explanations • Combining trait theories with genetics, one can have a nice synergy; traits describe, DNA explains