DAWN OF THE HUMANS Humanism arose as a response to the focus on unconscious drives and conflicts of Freud and the mechanistic view of behaviorism → humanism put humans in control of their destiny, recognizing unique human qualities, and focusing on how people strive for self-determination and self-realization

ROGERS PUTS THE PERSON IN THE CENTER Influential humanist Carl Rogers on our subjective self- concept: all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves in answer to the question “Who am I?” → because it is subjective, our self-concept may be different than our experience, creating an incongruence

ROGERS PUTS THE PERSON IN THE CENTER → a close relationship between reality and self-concept results in congruence, but we all have some degree of incongruence

ROGERS PUTS THE PERSON IN THE CENTER Like Freud, Rogers used client therapy to understand personality and placed importance on childhood experiences → children who received unconditional love from their parents were more likely to develop congruence than those whose parents made affection conditional → the more off-base your self-concept is, the more incongruence you’ll experience, and thus more anxiety and defensive behavior

SELF TO MASLOW, “ACTUALIZE” Maslow arranged human motives into a so-called hierarchy of needs: expressed as a pyramid, basic needs form the bottom levels → once our basic needs are met we begin moving up the pyramid to satisfy higher- level needs

SELF TO MASLOW, “ACTUALIZE” At the highest level is our need for self-actualization (self- transcendence in later models) in which we attempt to fulfill our potential → modern evolutionary theorists have proposed that the top three levels of Maslow’s HoN should be focused on reproduction

SELF TO MASLOW, “ACTUALIZE” Maslow’s ideal self-actualizing person exhibits multiple trait characteristics: self-awareness and self-acceptance; they are open, spontaneous, loving and caring; unconcerned w/others opinions, secure and with problem- centered interests, not self-centered; engaged in a few deep relationships rather than many and moved by spiritual/personal peak experiences

HUMAN(ISM) STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES Humanists have been widely influential with their emphasis on growth potential and optimism → their focus on people’s subjective views has become more widely accepted, but the subjective nature of its concepts has come under fire

BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE: EYSENCK Hans Eysenck claimed personality derived from just three higher-order traits - extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism (egocentrism, impulsive, antisocial) – that are learned through conditioning → our conditioning is based on inherited physiological responses: for example, introverts experience higher arousal and more readily learn inhibitions

MODERN RESEARCH: NARCISSISM Recent studies describe someone who scores high in narcissism (excessive self-love/absorption) as having positive, but easily threatened self-concepts with a high need for approval → based on Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) results, evidence suggests it is becoming more prevalent

MODERN RESEARCH: TERROR MANAGEMENT THEORY Terror management theory explores the relationship between our understanding of our own death and our need for self-esteem → TM theory posits that self-esteem functions as an anxiety- buffer; it is generated by our ability to live up to our cultural worldview and its answer to the ‘big’ questions

PERSONALITY TESTS Once category of personality tests is self-report inventories: a series of questions regarding characteristic behavior answered by the person being assessed → the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is the most common, measuring ten traits to identify disorders

PERSONALITY TESTS * Self-report data can be effective/objective using comparative data, but are subject to deliberate false answers, social desirability bias and response sets (all ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers)

PERSONALITY TESTS Another type is the projective test, which requires participants to respond in open-ended fashion to ambiguous stimuli, thus revealing their true nature → Rorshach and Thematic Apperception Tests (TAT) are common examples; despite common use, they lack scientific validation