A-LEVEL PSYCHOLOGY: APPROACHES (HUMANISM)

Describe and evaluate the humanistic approach. (16 marks)

The humanistic approach views all humans as self-determining and claims that we all have
free-will. The approach believes we can control all aspects of our behaviour and we are
capable of making our own decisions. This does not mean that we cannot be influenced by
internal and external influences, though.

The approach has three main assumptions. It is idiographic, which means it focuses on how
we perceive and interpret the world. The concept of free-will is mentioned frequently, which
emphasises that we have conscious control over our behaviour and decisions. And the
approach is heavily subjective with humanistic psychologists rejecting scientific, objective
methods for preferred self-report, qualitative data.

Maslow is a humanistic psychologist that presented the hierarchy of needs; he suggested

that humans reach fulfilment when all needs are met. This results in self-actualisation being
achieved – this is our innate need to be the best that we possibly can be. Basic physiological
needs, safety needs, love, belonging, and self-esteem need to be met before self-
actualisation can occur.

Rogers is another humanistic psychologist that said we all have the tendency to grow and if
we are placed in a good environment, we will gain growth. This growth can only happen if
there is congruence between a person’s self and ideal self. Incongruence means self-
actualisation cannot be reached. Rogers says that problems like worthlessness and self-
esteem struggles come from our childhood and stem from a concept called ‘conditions of
worth’. An unconditional positive regard is when people accept us for who we are, but
conditional positive regard is when people accept us for who they want us to be. Self-
actualisation requires having an unconditional positive regard. With this idea in mind,
Rogers developed ‘client centred therapy’ which focused on providing unconditional positive
regard, genuineness, and empathy. This therapy helps people gain congruence and to
develop unconditional positive regard that they may not have been given as a child.

A strength of the humanistic approach is that it is not deterministic. Unlike other

approaches, humanism focuses predominantly on the fact that we have free-will to do what
we want. However, this strength can be criticised with Rogers’s idea that we all have an
innate tendency to reach our full potential. This creates the idea that we cannot control
whether we want to reach our full potential – this contradicts the free-will argument.

Another strength is that the approach is not reductionist. Approaches like the biological
approach, focus on sections of a person to explain behaviour – like the biological processes
for the biological approach. However, humanistic psychologists advocate a holistic view.
They view a whole person when researching and making conclusions about human
behaviour. This adds validity to their research. Though this can be questioned as the
approach is also seen as narrow. This is because it only focuses on our two innate qualities:
free will and our basic goodness. It brings forward the question, is the approach completely
holistic?
A-LEVEL PSYCHOLOGY: APPROACHES (HUMANISM)

A weakness of the approach is that is has little real-life application. It is recognised as an

approach that is not heavily adopted into mainstream psychology. This suggests the
approach is lacking in several areas and is not trusted enough. However, this is not entirely
true as client-centred therapy is still used today. This therapy has proven to be effective for
some patients and has given them relief in thew problems they face. Therefore although not
entirely popular, it is not excluded.

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