● DISPOSITIONAL/BIOLOGICAL

○ Eysenck’s Biologically based Factor theory

■ Hans Eysenck’s Theory of Personality
● Biological makeup determines personality more than any actions
by parents
■ Overview of the biologically based trait theory
●
■ Eysenck’s Factor Theory
● Believed that personality dimensions arrived through factor
analysis was useless unless backed with biological
evidences
● Criteria for identifying factors
○ Multivariate, dimension reduction
○ Psychometric evidence for the factor’s existence must be
established
■ Other scientists must be able to find the same
factor
○ Heritability
○ Make sense from theoretical view
○ Must possess social relevance
○ Self reports, deductive method,
● Hierarchy of Behavior organization
○ He divided elements of personality hierarchically:
■ Specific response level
■ Habitual Response
■ Trait
■ Supertrait
○ Lowest: specific acts or cognitions:
■ Individual behaviors
○ Habitual actions/cognitions
■ Recurring responses in similar conditions
○ Trait
■ Combination of many habitual actions
■ Defined in terms of significant correlations between
different habitual behaviors
○ Types/superfactors
■ Dimensions of personality
● derived only 3 dimensions of personality (extraversion-
introversion, neuroticism-stability, psychoticism-superego)
● All are bipolar
● E AND N consistent in most aspects
● They all have biological evidences, A C in OCEAN doesnt daw
● Theoretically makes sense
○ Jung — introvert and extrovert
○ Freud— N
○ Maslow— P
● They relate to current social issues
● EXTRAVERSION:
○ Sociability and impulsiveness; outgoing, impulsive, many
social contact, group activities
○ Introvert - quiet, introspective, reserved, distant
○ Traits that are rewards when associated with others
○ Differences are biological in nature
■ Differences in cortical arousal level
● Extravert -- lower level of cortical arousal
than introvert; they seek high arousal social
behavior
● However research has also shown however
that introverts are more sensitive to
stimulation
● EXTRO-tend to have lower
● So they want to stimulated more (high
sensory threshold)
● Introverts are the opposite
● NEUROTICISM
○ Neurotic traits: anxiety, hysteria, OCD
○ Neuroticism - tendency to respond emotionally
○ Tend to “overreact”
○ Eysenck accepted the diathesis-stress model of
psychiatric illness: people are vulnerable to illness bc
they have a genetic/acquired weakness that predisposes
the illness.
■ Diathesis interacts with stress
■ High in N means lower stress necessary to trigger
illness
● Psychoticism
○ Psychoticism and superego
○ Psychoticism - egocentric, aggressive, impersonal, cold
○ HIGH P = egocentric, cold, nonconforming, impulsive,
○ Also diathesis-stress model of psychiatric illness:
■ High p, high stress == sick as
● Biological basis for personality
■ Genetics play a role in determining personality
dimension
 ● Estimated about ¾ of variance of all three
dimensions accounted by heredity and ¼
environmental
○ Researchers have found nearly
identical factors among people in diff
parts of world
○ Individuals tend to maintain their
position on diff dimensions of
personality
■ Consistency of E-I over time
○ High concordance between twins
compared to similar situation
siblings.
○ Differences in E and N -- Physiological differences:
Stimulation Sensitivity and Behavioral systems
■ Jeoffrey Gray: (see pic)
● Behavioral approach system and behavioral
inhibition system
● Highly active BAS -- motivated to seek out
and achieve pleasurable goals; they also
experience more anger and frustration when
not reaching pleasure
● Highly active BIS -- more apprehensive;
constantly looking out for signs of danger,
quick to retreat from a situation, anxiety
prone
○ BAS == EXTRAVERT ;; BIS ==
NEUROTICISM
○ Temperament
■ People are born with broad dispositions toward
certain behaviors called Temperaments
■ Prenatal environment is important in shaping
personality
■ Temperament and personality:
● One model divides temperament into 3
dimensions:
○ Emotionality
■ Intensity of emotional
reactions
○ Activity
■ Level of energy
○ Sociability
■ Tendency to affiliate and
interact
 ● Sexual/gender differences of temp.
○ Girls more likely to exert effortful
control
■ Ability to focus attention and
exercise control over impulse
○ Boy are more likely to employ
surgency
■ High levels of sociability and
activity
■ Adult personalities are
determined by both inherited
temperament and
environment
● Inhibited and uninhibited children
○ Inhibited children are controlled and
gentle
■ Slow to explore a new
environment
○ Uninhibited
■ Just the opposite
○ Inhibited children are cautious about
anxiety of novelty
■ Fear of the unfamiliar
● Negative evaluation from other is a source
of anxiety
● Some researchers say that this is inherited
from our ancestors
○ This is the evolutionary approach
■ Uses the theory of natural
selection
○ Behavioral genetics
■ Heritability
● Twin adoptation studies
● Gene by environment studies
○ Brain imaging techniques
■ EEG (electroencephalography)
■ fMRI
■ Measuring Personality
● Maudsley personality inventory (MPI)
○ Only E and N and some correlation between two
● Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI)
○ Included L lying
● Eysenck Personality questionnaire
○ Included P scale
■ Natural selection and psychological mechanisms
● Natural selection
○ According to evolution theory, physical features evolve
because they help the species survive the challenges of
the environment and reproduce new members of the
species.
● Psychological mechanisms
○ characteristically human functions that allow us to deal
effectively with common human problems or needs.
Through the process of natural selection, mechanisms that
increased the chances of human survival and reproduction
have been retained
■ Anxiety and social exclusion
■ psychologists have argued that one of the primary
causes of anxiety is social exclusion
■ We have the strong need to belong and be in
relationships
■ any information that suggests we might be
excluded socially or that we are no longer attractive
to other people is threatening to our need to
belong.
■ what we call “human nature” can be thought of as a
large number of psychological mechanisms that
have allowed humankind to survive as long as we
have.
■ Application: Children’s Temperament and School
● One important difference between teaching then and teaching
now is an awareness that not all children approach learning the
same way. Because children are born with different
temperaments, some jump right in and begin participating in
lessons, but others are slow to warm up to new tasks.
● three basic temperament patterns among elementary school
children
○ easy child, who eagerly approaches new situations, is
adaptive, and generally experiences a positive mood
○ difficult child. These children tend to withdraw rather than
approach new situations, have difficulty adapting to new
environments, and are often in a negative mood
○ slow-to-warm-up child. These children are similar to the
inhibited children. They tend to withdraw from unfamiliar
situations and are slow to adapt to new academic tasks
and new activities.
● Temperament and academic performance
 ○ some temperaments are probably more compatible with
the requirements of the typical classroom than others.
○ students’ behavior evokes responses from the teacher.
○ teachers sometimes misinterpret temperamental
differences in their students
● Goodness of Fit model
○ “What kind of environment and procedures are most
conducive to learning for this student, given his or her
temperament?”
○ According to the model, how well a child does in school is
partly a function of how well the learning environment
matches the child’s “capabilities, characteristics, and style
of behaving”
○ words, not all children come to school with the same
learning styles or abilities. We can’t do much to change a
child’s temperament, but an optimal amount of learning
can take place if lessons and assignments are presented
in a way that matches the child’s learning style.
○ Children who do poorly in school begin to blame
themselves. These feelings are often reinforced by parents
and teachers who accuse the child of not trying or
communicate to the child in various ways that he or she
simply may not have the ability to keep up with classmates.
The resulting decline in self-esteem may add to the child’s
academic difficulties, which can create a downward spiral
effect
○ Trait approach
■ Personality as trait dimensions
● Trait continuum used to show range of trait from one pole to
another
○ Everyone represents a plot on the range; if everyone is
plotted the graph should approx. a normal distribution
● Trait is a dimension of personality used to categorize people to the
degree to which they manifest a particular characteristic
○ They are stable over time; consistent in different situations
■ Features of the trait approach
● Used to describe and predict; compare people;
■ Criticism of trait approach
● Key decisions was being made with just a couple of tests
○ Overinterpretation of scores
● Trait measures do not predict behavior well
● Person by situation approach
○ Looking at traits behaviors and situations
● Biases when looking at behaviors
 ○ We tend to generalize behavior based on what we know
about the situation
■ In defense of trait theory
● Measuring behavior
○ We should consider measuring behavior because
personality is not random
○ Lol why not just hire anyone we want to measure
objectively personality of people fit for a position
● Identifying relevant traits
● Importance of 10% variance
●
○ Allport: Psychology of the Individual
■ Overview of Allport’s Psychology
● Emphasis on uniqueness
● Objected trait and factor theories that reduce individual behaviors
to traits
● Father of psychology
● Nomothetic: people can be described on a single dimension (used
by other psychologists); get many individual’s measure their traits
and correlate
● Idiographic/Morphogenic: identify unique combination of traits; get
many traits from single individuals
● Central traits are 5-10 traits that best describe an individual
○ Pinakadominating of the central traits — cardinal
■ What is personality
● “the dynamic organization within the individual of those
psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to
his environment” “that determine his characteristic behavior and
thought”
■ What is the role of conscious motivation
● Healthy individuals know what they are doing and why they are
doing it
○ Implication: Importance of self-reports at face value
● Still did not forget importance of unconscious processing
■ Characteristics of a Healthy person
● Some general assumptions:
○ Characterized by proactive behavior -- capable of acting
on their environment
○ More likely to be motivated by conscious processes
(conscious motivation)
● Criteria
○ Extension of the sense of self
■ Continually seek to identify w/ and participate in
events outside themselves
 ○ Warm relating of self to others
■ Capacity to love others
○ Emotional security or self-acceptance
■ Accepting own self -- Emotional poise
○ Possess a realistic perception of their environment
○ Insight and humor
○ Unifying philosophy of life
■ Purpose in life
■ Structure of personality
● Personal dispositions
○ Common traits:
■ general characteristics held in common by many
people
■ Can get from factor analysis
○ Personal dispositions
■ Permit studying of a single individual
■ Not shared (like common traits)
■ Uniqueness
■ Levels of personal dispositions
● Cardinal dispositions
○ Eminent characteristics or ruling
passion that dominates person’s life
● Central dispositions
○ 5-10 most outstanding
characteristics
● Secondary dispositions
○ Responsible for much of specific
behavior; more regular
○ Personal dispositions have motivational power
■ Personal dispositions that aren’t intensely
experienced are called stylistic dispositions that
guide action whereas motivational dispositions
initiate action
■ Motivational (initiate action) vs Stylistic (guide
action)
○ Proprium
■ those behaviors and characteristics that people
regard as warm, central, and important in their
lives.
■ These non-propriate behaviors include:
● (1) basic drives and needs that are
ordinarily met and satisfied without much
difficulty;
 ● (2) tribal customs such as wearing clothes,
saying hello” to people, and driving on the
right side of the road; and
● (3) habitual behaviors, such as smoking or
brushing one’s teeth, that are performed
automatically and that are not crucial to the
person’s sense of self.
■ Functional autonomy
● Some but not all human motives are
functionally independent from original
motive responsive for behavior
○
○ MCCRAE AND COSTA 5 FACTOR TRAIT
■ Overview of trait and factor theory
● Openness, Conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness,
Neuroticism
■ Pioneer: Raymond Cattell
● Inductive method: no biases
● Development of mental tests
● Student of Wundt
● From 3 data:
○ L: life record
○ Q: self report (questipnnaire)
○ T: objective tests(IQ, EQ etc)
○ Mccrae and costa used only self reports
● Types of traits
○ Common (shared by many) vs Unique
○ Source and surface traits
○ Temperament (how person behaves);
○ Motivation (why person behaves);
○ Ability (manner of behavior)
● Multifaceted approach
○ Identified 35 traits (23 for normal ppl; 12 for sick)
■ 16 biggest (16PF)
■ 5 major
■ Overview of factor
● Correlation coefficient determines the which trait/characteristic
belong to a factor
● Factor loading refers to how much weight it gives on the factor:
how much it contributes to factor c
● Trait types:
○ Unipolar: 0- a big number (ex height weight
○ Bipolar: two sides
● Axis of relationship between factors are rotated to see relations:
 ○ 5 factor advocates prefer the orthogonal rotation
■ Search of the big 5
● There were already a ton of inventories of personality traits
available.
● Mccrae and Costa focused initially only on N and E only then later
A
● Studies have confirmed to applicability of the 5 factor model --
most ok for structure of personality
● Description of 5 factors
○ Mccrae and Costa agreed with Eysenck that personality
traits are bipolar and follow bell shaped distribution
○ Neuroticism and extraversion are strongest and
ubiquitous personality traits
■ Neuroticism: anxious, temperamental, self-pity,
self-conscious, emotional, vulnerable to stress
■ Extraversion: affectionate, talkative , fun loving
○ Openness to experience: distinguish people who prefer
variety over those who prefer closure and gain comfort with
association with family.
■ High in this: creative, imaginative, curious, liberal
■ Low: down to earth, conservative
○ Agreeableness
■ High: trusting, generous, acceptant, good-nurtured
■ Low: suspicious, unfriendly, irritable, critical
○ Conscientiousness
■ Described ordered, controlled, organized,
ambitious, achievement focused, disciplined
● Units of the Big 5 Theory
○ Core components of personality
■ Basic tendencies:
● one of the central components of
personality
● Define potential and direction -- may be
inherited, imprinted, modified, etc.
■ Characteristic adaptations
● Acquired personality structures that develop
as people adapt to environment
● Influenced by external influences as a result
of interaction with others
● All acquired skills (ex. language) is
characteristic adaptation; how quickly we
learn it is basic tendency
● These tend to fluctuate over time; varies per
culture
 ■ Self-concept
● A characteristic adaptation
● Consists of knowledge, views, evaluations
of self, personal history to identity that gives
sense of purpose
○ Peripheral Components
■ Biological bases
■ Objective biography
● Everything person does thinks feels during
his life
● Objective (what he really did) not subjective
(his view on it)
■ External influence
● How we respond to opportunities or
demands of the context is a function of two
things: characteristic adaptations and
interaction with external influences
○ Basic postulates
■ For basic tendencies
● Individuality
○ Adults have a unique set of traits
○ Each person exhibits a unique
combination of traits
● Origin
○ All personality traits are result of
internal forces (genetics, hormones,
brain structures)
● Development
○ Traits develop in childhood and
development slows down as they
age
● Structure
○ Hierarchical organization of traits
■ For characteristic adaptations
● People adapt to their environment by
acquiring patterns of thought feelings and
behavior that are consistent w their
personality traits and early adaptations
● Maladjustment
○ Responses are not always
consistent with personal
goals/values
 ● Basic traits may change over time, ex thru
therapy they can alter characteristic
adaptations
● Criticisms of big 5
○ May limit the complexity of the structure of personality
■ What does the big 5 mean exactly? Limiting
personality to what we know
○ 5 lang?
○ Which data to include?

○ Trait Approach (relevant research)

○ Personality as a predictor
■ Personality and behaviors
● It should be predictable because of cortisol arousal levels
● There is an interaction between personality dimensions and
learning styles
● Important to consider interactions between dimensions to not hold
back predictions
■ Personality and disease
■ Application: the Big 5 in the workplace
● Conscientiousness may be the best predictor of work performance
○ They take time, don’t rush work, organized, planned,
hardworking, persistent, achievement oriented.
■ Assessment: Self report inventories
● Used to investigate individual differences
● The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
○ T/F questions to measure psychological disorders
● Problems:
○ Faking
■ Presenting themselves differently
■ Filler items to throw test taker off track
○ Carelessness and Sabotage
■ Kakatamad, can’t understand, lazy
○ Response tendencies
■ Social desirability
■ Strengths and criticisms of trait approach
● Strengths
○ Made use of objective methods
○ Many applications
○ Generated research
● Criticisms
○ Cannot explain development of traits
○ Too many frameworks
○ Trait Approach (relevant research)
■ Achievement motivation
● Murray described this as the desire to accomplish something
difficult to master, manipulate or organize
○ To excel one’s self
● Two types of achievement motivation:
○ Implicit motive -- not aware of
○ Self attributed/explicit
● High achievement motivation characteristics
○ Moderate risk takers
○ Tackle work with alot of energy
○ Prefer jobs that give them personal responsibility for
outcomes
○ sales/productivity and profit provide barometers for
success
● Predicting achievement behavior
○ Parents can provide achievement motivation by providing
support and encouragement to enable a sense of
competence
● Gender, culture and achievement
○ Sexual differences in kinds of achievement they value
■ Men and women have different definitions for
achievement
● Men: prestige, honor, recognition
● Women: work, accomplishments
■ Culture dependent
● Individualistic (US) or collective rewards for
achievement
● Attributions
○ How we feel about our performance and how we perform
in similar situations in the future
○ Dimensions
■ Stability
● Stable causes (intelligence) or unstable
(luck)
■ Locus
● Amount of effort (internal) or difficulty of test
(external)
■ Control
● When we can control success/failure
○ We use these attributions to improve achievement
● Achievement goals
○ Provide targets for aspiration
○ Categories:
 ■ Mastery: developing competence; satisfied when
they understand the material and feel more
proficient
■ Performance: demonstrating accomplishments to
others
○ Mastery is usually more effective in retaining information
■ Type A, Hostility and health
● Doctors noticed personality differences with heart problem
patients -- heart attack
○ Coronary-prone behavior pattern (AKA type A)
■ Typical Type A people are stronglymotivated to
overcome obstacles and are driven to achieve.
They are attracted to competition, enjoy power and
recognition, and are easily aroused to anger
○ Type A as a personality variable
■ Higher competitive achievement
■ Work harder at achievement tasks regardless of
pressure
■ Sense of time urgency
■ Respond to frustrations with anger/hostility
○ Hostility and health
■ Scores on hostility and anger do a good job of
predicting coronary artery disease
● Type A is a list of traits
■ Anger can be eased with counseling and
psychology
■ Social Anxiety
● Anxiety related to social interactions or anticipated ones
○ Increased physiological arousal, inability to concentrate,
feeling nervous
○ Feeling awkward or nervous
○ Overly self-conscious
● Explaining social anxiety
○ Evaluation apprehension is the underlying cause of
social anxiety
■ Socially anxious people are afraid of what other
people think of them -- fear negative evaluation
■ They typically avoid social encounter to help ease
feelings
■ Emotions
● We find consistent and stable patterns of emotions
● Emotional Affectivity
○ Researchers have identified two dimensions of emotions
■ Positive affect --
 ● One end active,content,satisfied
● Other end sad,lethargic
● **related to social activity
○ It causes positive affect
■ Negative--
● One end nervous, anger, distress
● Other end, calm serene
● **related to psychological stress
● Affect intensity
○ Strength / degree to which people typically experience their
emotions
● Emotional expressiveness
○ Refers to person’s outward display of emotions
○ Sexual differences
○ More expressive, less relationship problems
○ Good for well-being
■ Optimism and Pessimism
● Dispositional optimism -- approach to life
○ Room for failure and hardship -- optimistic
○ Dealing w/ adversity
■ Optimists experience less depression/anxiety and
other health problems
■ They use different coping strategies
○ Optimism and health
○ Defensive Pessimism
■ Failure that motivates me
● Humanistic Approach
○ People are assumed to be responsible for their actions
○ Roots of Humanistic psychology
■ Existential philosophy
● Meaning of our existence
● Role of free will
● Uniqueness of humans
■ Ideas of Maslow and Rogers
○ Key elements of Humanistic approach
■ Personal responsibility
● We are responsible for what happens to us
● Behaviors present personal choices of what we want to do at a
particular relationship
● Active shapers of our own lives
■ Here and now
● You can’t fully function until you’ve learned to live life as they
happen
○ You can contemplate on past behavior but you can’t dwell
 ●You don’t need to remain shy and unassertive just because that’s
who you are
● Past is not an anchor
■ Phenomenology of the individual
● No one knows you better than yourself
● Psychologist try to understand where they are coming from
■ Personal growth
● There is more to life than simply having all your immediate needs
met
● We are motivated to continue development, positively
○ Fully functioning (Rogers) or Self actualized (maslow)
○ Until we face problems
● Process of becoming
○ Carl Rogers
■ Person-centered approach / Client centered theory
● He was more concerned with helping people than with discovering
why they behaved as they did. He was more likely to ask “How
can I help this person grow and develop?” than to ponder the
question “What caused this person to develop in this manner?”
● Basic assumptions:
○ Formative Tendency
■ There is tendency for matter of all kinds to evolve
from simple to complex forms
○ Actualizing tendency
■ Tendency within humans to move toward
completion or fulfillment of potentials
■ Tendencies to maintain and enhance organism also
under this assumption
● Called” need for maintenance -- similar to
lower steps in Maslow’s hierarchy.
■ Enhancement: need to become more, develop and
grow
● Willingness to learn
● expressed in a variety of forms, including
curiosity,playfulness, self-exploration,
friendship, and confidence that one can
achieve psychological growth.
● whenever congruence, unconditional
positive regard, and empathy are present in
a relationship, psychological growth will
invariably occur. -- necessary and sufficient
● Self and self-actualization
○ Self-actualization is the tendency to actualize the self as
perceived in awareness.
 ○ Self-concept
■ those aspects of one’s being and one’s
experiences that are perceived in awareness by
individual
■ Experiences that are inconsistent with their self-
concept usually are either denied or accepted only
in distorted forms.
■ self-concept does not make change impossible,
merely difficult.
○ Ideal Self
■ one’s view of self as one wishes to be
■ A wide gap between the ideal self and the self-
concept indicates incongruence and an unhealthy
personality.
○ Awareness
■ “the symbolic representation (not necessarily in
verbal symbols) of some portion of our experience”
■ Levels:
● Experiences that are ignored and denied
○ Background stimuli
● Experiences that are accurately symbolized
○ Such experiences are both non-
threatening and consistent with the
existing self-concept.
● Experiences that are perceived in a
distorted form
○ When our experience is not
consistent with our view of self, we
reshape or distort the experience so
that it can be assimilated into our
existing self-concept.
○ Denial of positive experiences
○ Becoming a person
■ Person makes contact with another person, and the
individual develops a need to be loved, accepted by
another person -- positive regard
■ Positive self-regard
● defined as the experience of prizing or
valuing one’s self.
● Barriers to psychological health
○ Conditions of worth
■ is, they perceive that their parents, peers, or
partners love and accept them only if they meet
those people’s expectations and approval.
 ■ Our behaviors are reinforced only when parents
approve of our behavior.
■ They are loved only when they do what their
parents want
■ As result, we people tend abandon their true
feelings and desires
■ We lose touch with our feelings and become less
fully functioning
■ external evaluations : perception of other
person’s view
○ Incongruence
■ when we do not accurately symbolize organismic
experiences into awareness because they appear
to be inconsistent with our emerging self-concept.
■ Gap bet. Self and ideal
■ Vulnerability
● The greater the incongruence between our
perceived self (self-concept) and our
organismic experience, the more vulnerable
we are.
● when they are unaware of the discrepancy
between their organismic self and their
significant experience.
■ Anxiety and Threat
● experienced as we gain awareness of such
an incongruence
● Anxiety results from coming into contact
with information that is inconsistent to how
we think
● If anxiety comes, and you’re a fully
functioning person;
○ You accept it and incorporate it into
your self concept
● However, it might be excessive and
threaten self-concept and we begin to
process it at subception
○ Defensiveness
■ protection of the self-concept against anxiety and
threat by the denial or distortion of experiences
inconsistent with it
■ The two chief defenses are distortion (we
misinterpret an experience in order to fit it into
some aspect of our self-concept) and denial (we
refuse to perceive an experience in awareness)
 ○ Disorganization
■ but sometimes defenses fail and behavior becomes
disorganized or psychotic.
● Psychotherapy
○ Rogerian therapy, therefore, can be viewed in terms of
conditions, process, and outcomes.
○ Conditions
■ conditions are necessary and sufficient.
● anxious or vulnerable client must come into
contact with a congruent therapist who also
possesses empathy and unconditional
positive regard for that client.
● client must perceive these characteristics in
the therapist.
● contact between client and therapist must
be of some duration.
● Necessary and sufficient conditions:
○ Counselor Congruence
■ exists when a person’s
organismic experiences are
matched by an awareness of
them and by an ability and
willingness to openly express
these feelings
■ they are able to match
feelings with awareness and
both with honest expression.
○ Unconditional positive regard
■ We know we will be accepted
and loved no matter what we
do.
■ With this, children are free to
experience all of themselves
and their feelings. Therapists
have unconditional positive
regard when they are
“experiencing a warm,
positive and accepting
attitude toward what is the
client”
○ Empathic listening
■ sense the feelings of their
clients and are able to
communicate these
 perceptions so that clients
know that another person
has entered their world of
feelings without prejudice,
projection, or evaluation.
○ Process
■ Stages of therapeutic change
● 7 Stages (one to seven)
○ Unwillingness stage to communicate
anything about self
○ Start to discuss external events and
other people (objective talk of self
only)
○ Talk about about self -- talk about
past/future not present to avoid to
accept emotions and distancing
○ Start to talk about deep feelings but
not present ones. Also show denial
and distortions
○ Express feelings in the present
however not fully symbolized --
discovery about self and internal
evaulations
○ Dramatic growth and feeling aware
into awareness these experiences
that were distorted or denied at first
-- develop unconditional positive
regard
○ Clients who reach stage 7 become
fully functioning persons of tomorrow
● Persons of tomorrow
○ psychologically healthy people would be more adaptable.
○ persons of tomorrow would be open to their experiences,
accurately symbolizing them in awareness rather than
denying or distorting them.
■ would be a trust in their organismic selves.
○ be a tendency to live fully in the moment.
■ tendency to live in the moment as existential living.
○ confident of their own ability to experience harmonious
relations with others.
○ would be more integrated, more whole, with no artificial
boundary between conscious processes and unconscious
ones.
 ○ persons of tomorrow would have a basic trust of human
nature.
○ They would enjoy a greater richness in life than do other
people.
○
●

● research on the “necessary and sufficient” conditions for human

psychological growth
● We naturally strive to reach an optimal sense of satisfaction with
our lives -- fully functioning
● Characteristics:
○ Open to experiences
○ Trust their feelings
○ Experience feelings more deeply and intensely than others
■ Conditions of worth and unconditional positive regard
● Most of us grew in conditional positive regard
○
● Unconditional positive regard
● Abraham Maslow
■ Holistic dynamic approach: behavior motivated by needs — try to be self-
actualized
■ Motivation and hierarchy of needs
● View of motivation:
○ Holistic: who person is motivated
○ Motivation is complex; many motivators
○ Continually being motivated
○ People experience fundamentally same basic needs
● Maslow identified two types of motives:
○ Deficiency motives
■ Result from lack of some needed object
■ Basic needs (hunger&thirst)
■ We are satisfied after getting it
○ Growth needs
■ Not satisfied once the object of need is found
■ Satisfaction comes from expressing the motive
● Five basic categories of needs (hierarchy of needs)
○ Physiological needs
■ Hunger, thirst, air, sleep are most demanding and
must be satisfied before we can move to higher
level
○ Safety needs
 ■ Need for security, stability, protection, structure,
order and freedom from fear or chaos.
■ Political and social orders in watch
■ They spend far more energy than do healthy
people trying to satisfy safety needs, and when
they are not successful in their attempts, they suffer
from what Maslow (1970) called basic anxiety.
○ Belongingness and Love
■ Hunger for affectionate relations with other people
■ Two kinds of love:
● D-love, based on a deficiency
○ Satisfy emptiness we experience
without it
● B-love is not possessive and unselfish
○ One that is experiences and enjoyed
with others
○ Esteem needs
■ include self-respect, confidence, competence, and
the knowledge that others hold them in high
esteem.
■ Types:
● Self esteem
○ is a person’s own feelings of worth
and confidence
● Reputation
○ is the perception of the prestige,
recognition, or fame a person has
achieved in the eyes of others
○ Need for self-actualization
■ We ask ourselves what we want for life; where we
are headed
■ He must be true to his own nature
■ Why some people step over the threshold from:
● Although not necessarily artistic, self-
actualizers are creative in their own ways.
to self-actualization and others do not is a
matter of whether or not they embrace the
B-values
■ Criteria for self-actualized people
● Free for psychopathology
● Self-actualized people have progressed
● Embracing b values
○ B values:
 ■ indicators of psychological
health and are opposed to
deficiency needs, which
motivate non-self-actualizers
● fulfilled their needs to grow, to develop, and
to increasingly become what they were
capable of becoming.

■ Qualities of self actualized people

● More efficient perception of reality
● Acceptance of self, others, nature
● Spontaneous, simplicity, naturalness
● Problem- centered
● Need for privacy
● Autonomy
● Continued freshness for appreciation
● Peak experience
● Gemeinschaftsgefühl
● Profound interpersonal relations
● Democratic character structure
■ Discrimination between means and ends
■ Philosophical sense of humor
■ Creativeness
■ Resistance to enculturation
○ Aesthetics needs
○ Cognitive needs
■ ave a desire to know, to solve mysteries, to
understand, and to be curious
○ Neurotic need
■ When conative needs arent fulfilled
● General discussions of needs
○ higher level needs are later on the phylogenetic or
evolutionary scale.
○ Higher levels produce higher level of happiness
○ Expressive
■ which is often unmotivated
■ Unconscious
■ include one’s gait, gestures, voice, and smile (even
when alone
■ expression include art, play, enjoyment,
appreciation, wonder, awe, and excitement.
■ Expressive behavior is usually unlearned,
spontaneous, and determined by forces within the
person rather than by the environment.
 ○ Coping
■ coping behavior is ordinarily conscious, effortful,
learned, and determined by the external
environment.
■ which is always motivated and aimed at satisfying a
need
○ Deprivation of need
■ metapathology as the absence of values, the lack
of fulfillment, and the loss of meaning in life.
○ Instinctoid
■ hypothesizes that some human needs are innately
determined even though they can be modified by
learning
■ Di ko gets
● Misconceptions about maslow’s need hierarchy
○ At any given moment, the 5 shape our behavior.
○ Any given behavior is motivated by a single need -- no
■ There are many motivations pushing us for action
● Study of psychologically healthy people
○ Self-actualized people:
■ Accept themselves for who they are
■ Admit to personal weaknesses
■ Work to improve themselves where they can
○ Less restricted by cultural norms and customs
○ Freedom for self-expression
○ They are very perceptive; understand how they are
supposed to act
○ Develop self-actualizing creativity
■ Charisma
○ They don’t have A LOT of friends but those small ones are
deep and rewarding
○ Philosophical and non hostile sense of humor
○ Tendency to have peak experiences
■ Time and place are transcended
■ Anxiety and fear disappear -- sense of unity with
the universe and feeling of power and wonder.
○ Psychology of optimal experience
■ Optimal experience
● Describing a feeling of being caught in a natural, almost effortless
movement from one step to the next.
● Experiencing the “flow”
■ Optimal experience and happiness in everyday activities
● True happiness comes when we take personal responsibility for
finding meaning and enjoyment in our ongoing experience
 ● We can approach work with this flow
○ Applications: Person-centered therapy and job satisfaction
■ Person-centered therapy
● Rogers: therapist’s job is not to change the client but to provide an
atmosphere within which clients are able to help themselves
● Therapist simply allows client to get back on positive growth track
● Make them feel unconditional positive regard
● Make client understand self through process of reflection
■ Job satisfaction and hierarchy of needs
● Important to match person’s unique talents and potential to
occupation that allows expression and development of potential
● Eupsychian management -- rearranging an organization to help
employees satisfy higher level needs
○ Assessment: Q-sorts
■ There is a limit to how many cards can be placed in each category, so
indecisive test takers are forced to select cards that are most descriptive
of them. In this manner, you provide the therapist and yourself with a
profile of your self-concept.
○ Strengths
■ Positive psychology—creativity, happiness, and sense of well-being.
■ promoting job satisfaction by taking care of employees’ higher need
○ Criticisms
■ if we accept the idea that behavior is sometimes caused by free will,
which is not subject to these laws of determination, scientific assumptions
fall apart
■ enough about self-actualization and personal growth to provide clear
definition
■ Maslow selected people for his list of “self-actualized” individuals based
on his own subjective impressions.
■ criticized for making some overly naive assumptions about human nature.
● Innate goodness
● Everyone's desire to fulfil potential
● Rollo May (Existential Approach)
○ people as living in the world of present experiences and ultimately being
responsible for who they are
○ Many people, May believed, lack the courage to face their destiny, and in the
process of fleeing from it, they give up much of their freedom. Having negated
their freedom, they likewise run away from their responsibility. Not being willing to
make choices, they lose sight of who they are and develop a sense of
insignificance and alienation.
○ Existentialism
■ What is it
● existence takes precedence over essence.
 ○ Existence means to emerge or to become; essence implies
a static immutable substance.
○ Existence suggests process; essence refers to a product.
Existence is associated with growth and change; essence
signifies stagnation and finality.
● existentialism opposes the split between subject and object.
○ people are more than mere cogs in the machinery of an
industrialized society, but they are also more than
subjective thinking beings living passively through armchair
speculation.
● people search for some meaning to their lives.
● existentialists hold that ultimately each of us is responsible for who
we are and what we become.
● existentialists are basically anti theoretical.
■ Basic concepts
● Being-in-the-world
○ Understanding world from our personal perspectives
○ Dasein: unity of self and world
○ When scientists study people, they are referred in third
person
○ Causes alienation from others and oneself
■ Manifests in 3 areas
● Separation from nature
● Lack of meaningful interpersonal relations
● Alienation from one’s authentic self
■ Modes of being in the world
● Umwelt (environment around us)
○ World that exists outside peoples
awareness
○ Natural instincts and shit
● Mitwelt (relations w/ others)
○ Ex. Sex (umwelt) vs love (mitwelt)
● Eigenwelt (w/ self)
● Non-being
○ Nothingness
○ Our nonbeing can also be expressed as blind conformity to
society’s expectations or as generalized hostility that
pervades our relations to others.
■ When we do not courageously confront our
nonbeing by contemplating death we nevertheless
will experience nonbeing in other forms, including
addiction to alcohol other drugs, promiscuous
sexual activity, and other compulsive behaviors.
● Anxiety
 ○ People experience anxiety when they become aware that
existence or value identified with is destroyed
○ Anxiety arises when people are faced with the problem of
fulfilling their potentialities.
○ Normal Anxiety
■ “which is proportionate to the threat, does not
involve repression, and can be confronted
constructively on the conscious level”
○ Neurotic Anxiety
■ “a reaction which is disproportionate to the threat,
involves repression and other forms of intrapsychic
conflict, and is managed by various kinds of
blocking-off of activity and awareness”
● Guilt
○ Arises when people deny potentialities, fail to accuretely
perceive the needs of fellow humans or remain oblivious to
dependence on natural world
○ Three forms that arise from three modes of awareness
■ Separation guilt
● Refers to when we get alienation from
Umwelt (nature)
● Ex. other people making our food and shit;
transportation
■ Cannot see the world of others
● Mitwelt
● Inescapable bc thats how we see the world
■ Associated w/ denial of our potentialities and fail to
fulfill them
● Jonah complex : fear of being or doing ones
best
● Intentionality
○ Meaning to experience and allows people to make
decisions about the future
○ Action = intention
●
○
● Humanistic approach: Relevant research
○ Summary of approach:
■ Cannot generalize people into numbers
■ Attending to the human element lost in number-crunching
○ Self-disclosure
■ When they reveal intimate information about themselves to other people
■ Tells us about level of psychological health
■ Helps us better understand nature of true self — psychotherapy
 ■ Positive relationship and trust
○ Disclosure reciprocity
■ According to this rule, people involved in a get-acquainted conversation
reveal information about themselves at roughly the same level of intimacy
■ Why?
● self-disclosure leads to feelings of attraction and trust
○ Self disclosure among friends and romantic partners
■ Di ko gets
○ Disclosing men and disclosing women
■ Women disclose more intimately
■ Men grow up to avoid talking about their true feelings and fear of ridicule.
○ Disclosing traumatic experiences
■ Measures of blood pressure and self-reported mood indicated that writing
about a traumatic experience led to more stress and a more negative
mood immediately after the disclosure.
■ We experience less emotional stress after disclosure
■ We are able to see it and understand how to cope
● Loneliness
○ Not having anyone to discuss important matters with
○ Alienation of self in society
○ Defining and measuring loneliness
■ “Loneliness occurs when a person’s network of social relationships is
smaller or less satisfying than the person desires”
■ The causes and consequences of loneliness also vary as a function of
culture
○ Chronically lonely people
■ High scores on loneliness scales are related to high scores on social
anxiety and self-consciousness and low levels of self-esteem and
assertiveness
■ Lonely people are more likely to be introverted, anxious, and sensitive to
rejection
■ lonely people often have poorer health habits than non lonely people.
Most noteworthy, they tend to be less active physically
■ People who suffer from chronic loneliness tend to experience stress in
more areas of their lives
○ Causes of loneliness
■ Very low expectations for self and others
■ negative expectations may also lead lonely people to interpret any small
sign as rejection.
● Solitude
○ People that are warm to friends or others people but can still spend lots of time
alone
○ Positive desire to spend tym by self
○ Aspects
 ■ Problem solving
■ Inner peace
■ Self discovery
■ Creativity
■ Anonymity
■ Intimacy
■ Spirituality
● Self Esteem
○ How people feel about themselves
○ Appreciating the self for who they are
○ Contingencies of self worth (domains of our life that we deem important, where
we evaluate ourselves)
○ Contingencies of self worth for college students: competencies, competition,
approval from generalized others, family support, appearance, god’s love, virtue
○ D