This activity is to be completed after studying the presentation, Turning Your Review of the Literature into a Draft Answer, and its accompanying discussion questions.
For this activity, you will evaluate a sample response to the discussion question with which you worked earlier. Please read the sample response below and then follow the directions to evaluate the response.
Humanistic Psychology is also called Third-Force Psychology. Discuss the change that Humanistic Psychology brought, and how this affected psychologists' ways of understanding human behavior. Also, address the ways in which Humanistic Psychology asked questions and conducted research, and analyze how they differed from Behaviorism. Provide at least two peer-reviewed articles to support your ideas.
In this response, there will be four main points. They are, first, the change that humanistic psychology brought; second, how that change affected psychologists' understanding of human nature; third, ways the humanistic psychologists asked their questions and conducted their research; and fourth, how those methods differed from behaviorists' ways of doing so.
Abraham Maslow, considered the founder of third force or humanistic psychology, wrote in 1969 that he found it necessary to avoid being “anti-Freudian” or “anti-behaviorist,” and to adopt—even if it meant taking serious intellectual risks—an untested attitude; namely, to view human beings from the perspective of psychological health and potential rather than otherwise. He wrote that it was time for psychology to concern itself with understanding what human beings could do if properly nourished and nurtured (what was their potential?), rather than trying to elucidate merely their behavioral functioning or their mental illnesses. He advocated a key change in psychologists’ view of science, as he had written in his earlier Psychology of Science (1966): to consider human beings as free and autonomous persons and to shift psychology as a science away from the idea that our goal is prediction and control of human beings. In his words, “Do we ourselves want to be predicted and predictable? Controlled and controllable?” (1966, p.729). These ideas—looking at human healthiness and potential, treating humans as free and autonomous persons, and viewing our science as a science of spontaneity and of the real concerns of real people living in their real worlds—formed the central core of the new third force in psychology, which deliberately separated itself from the older dominating schools of thought, behaviorism and psychoanalysis.
How did these ideas affect psychologists’ understanding of human nature? In their fascinating review of George Kelly’s view of the human person—personal construct psychology—Franz Epting and Mark Paris (2006) wrote that Kelly’s use of the term “constructive” embraced four related but quite distinct meanings. The first contrasts “constructive” with “regressive”—a constructive attitude looks ahead, is progress-oriented, not looking back or regressing. The second meaning is that of “something being positive, wise, or good” (p. 22). Third, borrowing a term from architecture, constructive signifies a kind of ornamentation which is integral to the building rather than being merely decorative, and thus, in terms of psychological attitudes about human beings, a constructive view sees humans as having integrity in all their parts, none being merely decorative. Finally, there is the sense of constructive as making meaning and giving interpretation. Human being is constructive—progressive and oriented to health and life, wise or good, integral, and meaning-making. These ideas, which Epting and Paris insisted are at the heart of humanistic psychology, of which George Kelly (they maintain) was clearly a member, signify in 2006 how strongly the original humanistic philosophy has affected psychologists’ view of human nature. There is a strong emphasis within many schools on human potential rather than human frailty, on wisdom rather than on prediction and control, and on human freedom and the contradictions that freedom brings in an implacable world.
Despite its influence, humanistic psychology does not dominate psychology, especially in the United States, where the emphasis on evidence-based practice is increasingly widespread (Goodheart, 2011). Goodheart proposes a sweeping reconstruction of psychology’s house, with new “essential building blocks: evidence-based practice, treatment guidelines, technology, classifications of function, diagnostic systems, outcomes measurement, and integrated health care” (p. 339). This clearly is a call for the kind of prediction and control mentality that dominated the view of science and human nature among the behaviorists and among many of the psychodynamically oriented clinicians. Humanistic psychology is hardly a third force, given the simple numbers of published articles. A search of PsycINFO for the years 2005–2011 on the terms “humanis* psycholog*” yielded 187 articles. The same search on the term “behavior* psycholog* yielded 1694 articles. This is not substantive evidence of the relative importance of each school of thought, but it offers at least a glimpse of the imbalance.
The third and fourth points of this response deal with how humanists and behaviorists frame their research questions and conduct their research. As we have seen in this course (Hergenhahn, 2009), the behaviorists insist on strict observation of observable behavior. Anything that cannot be measured cannot be studied. Consciousness is out as an object of study (Skinner, 1987). In a fascinating reply to Skinner published in the American Psychologist, on the other hand, thirteen humanistic psychologists (Krippner, et al.), faculty members at Saybrook Institute, argued that humanists conduct research based on the three quite different principles. Their words are eloquent:
“The humanistic psychologies accord a central position to (a) the human beings who behave (behavior is not excluded but human beings are not reduced to behavior), (b) a human science that adapts the method to the subject matter rather than the reverse, and (c) a praxis that calls for the real-world extension of the conceptual structures created by our efforts” (p. 819).
To conclude, four points were discussed in this posting: the change that third force psychology brought to the field; how that change affect psychologists' views of human beings; how the humanistic psychologists approach their research; and how this contrasts with behaviorists' approaches.
Epting, F. R., & Paris, M. E. (2006). A constructive understanding of the person: George Kelly and humanistic psychology. The Humanistic Psychologist, 34(1),21–37.
Goodheart, C. D. (2011). Psychology practice: A design for tomorrow. American Psychologist, 66(5), 339–347.
Hergenhahn, B. R. (2009). An introduction to the history of psychology (6th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Maslow, A. (1969). Toward a humanistic biology. American Psychologist, 24(8), 724–735.
Skinner, B. E. (1987). Whatever happened to psychology as the science of behavior? American Psychologist, 42(8), 780–786.
After you have read the sample response:
The answers should be written in a Word document, using correct APA format and style. The answer does not need to have a title page, abstract, or table of contents. Begin with a brief introduction explaining the main points of the paper. In the main body, identify the answer being given with a correctly formatted section heading, using Level 1 headings. A conclusion should follow the main body. Include a reference list for any sources used, which should also be correctly cited in the paper.
Doc. reference: phd_t1_psy_u06a1_h05_evaldisc.html