Pros And Cons Of Humanistic Psychology

Abraham Maslow is a psychologist who had developed the Hierarchy of needs model in 1940-50s, and the Hierarchy needs theory is still being used to day and for understanding the human motivation. In his hierarchy he believes that people are motivated to achieve certain needs. And when a human had fulfilled a person would seek to fulfil the next one. Maslow’s hierarchy needs is concerning the responsibility of service providers to provide a

Each person is a social being and is aware of the environment that they live in. People learn from their experiences as well as from observing others. When children learn about their environment first hand or by observing another, negative and positive behaviors are reinforcement. If a child does a behavior and receives a reward for that behavior, the rewarded behavior is reinforced. Similarly, when someone witnesses negative consequences based on their behavior, they tend to modify that behavior (Schmied & Tully, 2009, p. 9).

Unlike Freud and the psychodynamic approach that concentrated on the unconscious mind, the concern of the humanistic psychologists was to do justice to people’s conscious experience and their role in direction their own lives. The humanistic approach in psychology developed as a rebellion against what some psychologists saw as limitations of the behaviourist and psychodynamic psychology. The humanistic approach is thus often called the “third force” in psychology after psychoanalysis and behaviourism (Maslow, 1968).( Saul McLeod. (2007). Humanism. Available: http://www.simplypsychology.org/humanistic.html. Last accessed 13th Nov 2013.) Humanism rejected the assumption of the behaviourist perspective which is characterised as deterministic, focused on reinforcement of stimulus-response behaviour and heavily dependent on animal research. Humanistic psychology also rejected the psychodynamic approach because it also is deterministic, with unconscious irrational and instinctive forces determining human thought and behaviour.  Both behaviourism and psychoanalysis are regarded as dehumanizing by humanistic psychologists. (Maslow, A. H. (1943). A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370-96.) The two most prominent figures in the field of humanistic psychology are Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers. Their focus in humanistic psychology was to emphasize that which helps individuals reach

The social learning theory is the idea that observing other 's social interactions will shape the person 's behaviors. These observations can be from watching someone who is really close to you or can simply be from the media, which controls everyday life. Albert Bandura was one of the theorists who brought about this idea with his Bobo doll experiment. In this experiment, he would study the children 's behavior after they watched an adult act violently towards the Bobo doll. In the end, these children would observe these adults and would then mimic their actions in violently attacking the doll. This became the basic idea of the social

In order to have a personal theory regarding human behavior one must understand the different behaviors through the principals of psychology. Similar to a fingerprint, people are unique and their behaviors/personalities are all different. A person’s personality can have emotional impact in reference to the way they act, speak, react to different situations and the lives of people that they are involved with. Relationships can also be influenced by the way a person behaves and the personality they portray.

In regards to social cognitive theory, one is looking at the fact that people learn by observing behavioral

Social learning theory, developed by Bandura, discusses how people learn from one another through observation, modeling, and imitation bridging an individual’s attention, memory and motivation. Social learning theory identifies the importance of cognition, observable behavior, individual self-efficacy, and the extent of how the events surrounding an individual affect them; their locus of control. Social learning theory also looks at individual problem behavior being influenced by positive or negative reinforcement (Ashford & LeCroy, 2012).

Albert Bandura is considered the developer of social learning theory, which is also known as social cognitive theory (Corey, 2013; Feist et al., 2013; Thoma et al., 2015). Badura’s theory, while based upon the principles of behaviorism, departs from the traditional behavioral model and leaves room for the exploration of unobservable mental states and their influence on behavior (Corey, 2013; Thoma et al., 2015). Social Cognitive theory bases its theory of learning on two types of learning processes: observational learning and enactive learning (Feist et al., 2013). In contrast to Skinner’s belief that reinforcement is required for learning, Bandura believes that learning is possible simply by observing the behavior of others; while reinforcement facilitates learning, it is not a necessary requirement (Feist et al., 2013). Enactive learning is learning through direct experience, and is similar to the concept of operant conditioning; people determine appropriate behaviors by evaluating their behavior and the potential consequences thereof (Feist et al., 2013). Where behavioral theory adopts the ABC approach to behavior, social cognitive theory uses a BPE approach known as Triadic Reciprocal Causation. In TRC, BPE stands for behavior, person variables, and environment (Feist et al., 2013). Within the TRC, the term person encompasses many variables including memory, judging, anticipation, gender, social position, physical attributes, and planning; the belief is that

Albert Bandura’s social learning theory expresses that people learn best by viewing others. Positive reinforcement such as praise or financial reward encourages repeat behavior while negative reinforcement such as punishment or monetary fines discourages it. Because of such, when training new employees, modeling is the best form of demonstration. The training demands are best suited when observing an experienced employee and then model his or her behavior. This cost-effective method takes place right in the workplace environment.

Through the Social Learning Theory, one can absorb new behaviors from others or one can form attitudes toward something that can in turn influence behavior. The attitudes we acquire may sometimes be implicit or explicit and depending on the strength of these attitudes and environmental factors, behaviors may come about. If implicit attitudes are strong and an opposing explicit is weak, the behavior will portray the implicit attitude unconsciously.

Humanistic psychologists generally argue that a person’s subjective perception and understanding of the world is far more important than objective reality (Funder, 2012). Hence the fact that Rogers and Maslow valued scientific psychology very little. They and other humanistic psychologists typically prefer more qualitative research methods. These methods are often things such as diaries, open ended questionnaires, wholly unstructured interviews and observations. It is far more useful if the goal is not to generalize the findings to the general

Jake is experiencing anxiety due to the harder classes he is taking in his major. The school counselor diagnosed him with an anxiety disorder. However, the interpretation of the origin of his anxiety , and also how to treat Jake for his anxiety will differ when different psychological approaches are used. Psychologist could use behavioral, humanistic, or cognitive approaches when dealing with Jake’s anxiety disorder.

The Behavioral Perspective: This perspective is based on environmental rewards and punishers to encourage or discourage behaviors. This is usually notes through direct observation of the particular act in the specific environment. Social cognitive learning is used to further explain values, expectations, and intentions of the individual. This theory was the main stream behaviorist theory for over 50 years, as it focuses on precision and objectivity. It is thought to have advanced science as a whole and has given psychology some of the most accurate and detailed finding to date.

The two theories discussed here will be the Psychodynamic Theory and the Social Learning Theory. Psychodynamic theories include the wisdom of Freud and Jung. Freud discusses, defense mechanisms, understanding the ego as it relates to rational thinking and the superego in regard to mortality. Whereas the Social Learning Theory includes those works from Bandura, Watson, and Piaget among others. This theory will focus on imitation, observation and modeling another’s behavior to achieve a certain desired outcome. Although their conceptual theories differ, they both reflect, shape, and interpret the very essence of the human psyche and how we have evolved and developed over the years.

The social learning theory suggests that people learn new behaviors through observation of factors in their environment, by taking note of other’s