Chapter 11
Self-Actualization and Self-Determination
Modified: 2022-07-31 5:56 pm
This chapter covers what some call psychology's third force: humanism. A related movement, existential psychology is also covered. Both approaches emphasize phenomenology. Humanism is more positive and optimistic while existential psychology is more realistic and dour.
- Learning Objectives:
•11.1 Analyze the intrinsic tendency toward self-actualization
•11.2 Contrast self-determined behavior and the behavior that is controlled in some manner
•11.3 Analyze how a disorganization in the sense of self can be reduced by two kinds of defenses
•11.4 Relate Maslow's hierarchy of needs to the principles that the hierarchy follows
•11.5 Identify the key principle of the existential psychology
•11.6 Examine the use of a Q-sort in assessment
•11.7 Outline the logic behind the client-centered therapy as a solution to problems
•11.8 Evaluate the strengths and the weaknesses of the approaches of self-actualization and self-determination
- 11.1 Self-Actualization (p. 165)
- Humanistic psychology and phenomenology highlight this chapter
- Carl Rogers was an important humanistic psychologist
- His concept of actualization:
- Was the tendency to develop capabilities that maintained or enhanced the organism
- They could be physical
- They could be psychological
- Example: self-actualization
- Fully functioning individuals:
- Were open to experiencing their feelings (all of them)
- Not threatened by their feelings
- Lived lives full of meaning, challenge, and excitement
- Were willing to risk pain
- He believed anyone could choose to be actualized
- 11.1.1 The Need for Positive Regard
- Rogers believed that conditions of worth inhibited self-actualization
- Conditions of worth:
- Could come from others
- Could come from oneself
- Were always coercive
- Are driven by the need for positive regard
- 11.1.2 Contingent Self-Worth
- Occurs when individuals only accept themselves in the light of some kind of performance
- Examples: Academic, Appearance
- Such contigencies can be costly
- They can also lead to loss of motivation when they fail
- They also focus people on one particular condition of worth instead of allowing themselves to grow freely
- 11.2 Self-Determination (p. 166)
- Deci and Ryan's theory of self determination:
- Has three needs:
- Autonomy
- Competence
- Relatedness
- It also has two kinds of behavior:
- Self-determined
- People are more motivated by self-determined activities than they are by rewards
- Controlled
- People work less hard and for shorter periods when they believe someone else or themselves are making them do something
- When people feel that their work is motivated autonomously they are better adjusted
- 11.2.1 Introjection and Identification (See Figure 11.1 below)
- Deci and Ryan identified different types of control:
- External regulation
- Introjected regulation
- "I should" or "I ought" to avoid guilt or to gain self-approval
- Want to be accepted by others or want to avoid sense of guilt
- Could disrupt self-actualization
- Identified regulation
- Personally meaningful and valuable
- Integrated regulation
- Applications:
- Reasons for wanting financial success could be good or bad
- Reasons for wanting community involvement could be good or bad
- For Deci and Ryan, personal autonomy is good and self-reinforcing
- 11.2.2 Need for Relatedness
- Deci and Ryan define autonomy as having the sense of free self-determination (even within relationships)
- So, autonomy and relatedness:
- Need not conflict
- Are complementary
- Are each related to wellbeing independently
- Use relationship-maintaining coping strategies
- Discussed relationships positively
- Were less defensive and more understanding
- Had better and richer relationships
- Did not interfere with self-actualization
- Relatedness is genuine and unconditional
- Might be called: unconditional regard
- 11.2.3 Self-Concordance
- Concordant goals are consistent with core values
- Concordant goals:
- Provide more overall benefit
- Make you try harder to achieve them
- Lead to more satisfying experiences
- Promote more motivation for future concordant goals
- 11.2.4 Free Will
- Whether humans have free will is deep philosphical problem
- No one can really say whether or not we have free will
- Rogers maintains:
- People are free to self-actualize OR accept conditions of worth
- Deci and Ryan believe people may act with free will when they act in self-determination
- Reactance when people believe a freedom is being restricted so they attempt to regain it
- At the World War II monument in Washington, DC there are signs telling people not to dip their feet in the (inviting) fountain. Guess what? People do dip their feet. They show reactance. (See news story)
- Remember people telling you about "reverse psychology?" That's a kind of reactance.
- Box 11.1 How Can You Manage Two Kinds of Congruence Simultaneously?
- Congruence between the ideal self and the actual self is typically similar
- But, sometimes it is not (Swann)
- Self-verification may not be confirmed by others
- People wish to self-protect themselves
- They also tend to look for evidence that supports their favorable self-aspects
- 11.3 The Self and Processes of Defense (p. 169)
- 11.2.1 Incongruity, Disorganization, and Defense
- Incongruence causes anxiety and it may:
- Cause underestimation of how much others care
- Cause relationship difficulties
- Defenses
- Similar to Freud's
- Distortion of experience (similar to rationalization)
- Preventing threatening experiences from reaching awareness (similar to denial)
- Can also do this indirectly through avoidance of anxiety arousing situations
- 11.2.2 Self-Esteem Maintenance and Enhancement
- Defenses protect and enhance self-esteem
- Concerns over self-esteem come from:
- Events attributable to a person
- Example failure can be attributed to other factors:
- Difficult tasks
- Chance
- Other people
- Lack of effort
- Events must be characterizable as good or bad
- Here, distortion can be attributed as not worth bothering over
- Example: That test was not important
- Enhancing self-esteem is usually attributed to one's abilities
- 11.2.3 Self-Handicapping
- Sometimes the fear of failure causes individuals to set up situations where they (or anyone) would be likely to fail = self-handicapping
- Must be done outside of awareness
- Protects self-esteem, but at a price: failure
- Not a good strategy
- 11.2.4 Stereotype Threat
- Some groups: are perceived stereotypically:
- African Americans and intellectual tasks
- Women and math
- Elderly and memory
- Stereotype threat occurs when such groups are viewed through the stereotype and not as individuals
- Stereotype threat can lead to:
- Disidentification
- Denying that the experience is relevant
- Both of the above lead to poor performance
- 11.4 Self-Actualization and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Motives (p. 171)
- Maslow's hierarchy of needs (See Figure 11.2 below)
- Maslow was another prominent self theorist and his ideas partially correspond with Rogers's
- He created a pyramid illustrating a hierarchy of needs:
- At the bottom were the necessary physiological needs or the things necessary for survival
- Rogers did not address these in his theorizing
- At the next level were safety and security needs: shelter and protection
- Rogers did not address these either
- The love and belongingness needs came next: companionship, affection, and acceptance from others
- Rogers's self-actualization partly corresponds with these
- Esteem needs came next: mastery, power, and appreciation from others
- These are similar to Rogers's conditions of worth
- At the top was self-actualization
- Rogers's view of self-actualization was not the same as Maslow's
- 11.4.1 Characteristics of Frequent Self-Actualizers
- Maslow's main interest was in self-actualizers
- So he tried to describe them. They were: (See Table 11.1 below for a longer list)
- Efficient perceivers of reality
- Sharply focused
- Able to spot how others were confused
- Self-accepting
- Both of their good and bad features
- Mentally spontaneous
- Creative
- Problem centered
- But for the big problems of philosophy or ethics
- Universal thinkers
- In deep but few relationships
- Late in his life, Maslow identified a second group: transcendent self actualizers
- They:
- Were highly invested in self-actualization
- Motivated by universal values: truth, beauty, unity
- Transpersonal
Table 11.1 Characteristics of self-actualizers
Self actualizing people...
•are efficient and accurate in perceiving reality
•are accepting of themselves, of other people, and of nature
•are spontaneous in thought and emotion, natural rather than artificial
•are problem centered, or concerned with eternal philosophical questions
•are independent and autonomous when it comes to satisfactions
•have a continued freshness of appreciation of ordinary events
•often experience so-called oceanic feelings, a sense of oneness with nature that transcends time and space
•identify with all of humanity and are democratic and respectful of others
•form deep ties but with only a few persons
•appreciate, for its own sake, the process of doing things
•have a philosophical, thoughtful, nonhostile sense of humor
•have a childlike and fresh creativity and inventiveness
•maintain an inner detachment from the culture in which they live
•are sufficiently strong, independent, and guided by their own inner visions that they sometimes appear temperamental and even ruthless
- 11.4.2 Peak Experiences
- Many self-actualizers experience peak experiences
- Those peak experiences:
- Connect the person with the surroundings
- Colors, sounds, and perceptions are sharper
- Time disappears
- Feelings include:
- Occur more during work than during leisure
- Are sometimes called flow
- Box 11.2 The Theorist and the Theory: Abraham Maslow's Focus on the Positive
- 11.5 Existential Psychology (p. 174)
- Phenomenological approach
- Self-actualization has a cost
- All of us are alone in the universe
- Existence is our only possession
- All must take responsibilty for their choices
- 11.5.1 The Existential Dilemma
- Dasein is "being-in-the world"
- Self as autonomous, separate, and evolving entity
- World has no meaning save for the people in it
- There is no existence outside of the world
- That life must end in death leads to two choices:
- Nothingness
- Suicide (beat the inevitability of death) is one response
- Courage to be
- Live an authentic life
- Create your own meaning
- Every moment counts
- There are no perfect choices
- One choice may lock out another
- Exitential guilt is inevitable
- 11.5.2 Emptiness
- Comes from losing faith in your values
- Being unable to fix problems, powerlessness
- Examples: Global warming, war in Ukraine, supply chain issues
- Turning to others is not a solution
- All must find their own answers
- 11.5.3 Terror Management
- Impending death causes people to:
- Be more protective of their cultural values
- Become more favorable to those with the same worldview
- Become more patriotic in their own cultural contexts
- Act more altruistically
- Self identify more
- See themselves as different from animals
- Retreat from their animal nature
- In sex, for example, making it more aesthetic, romantic, and spiritual
- Form closer relationships
- Create more personal meanings
- Box 11.3 Self-Actualization and Your Life
- Try interviewing yourself.
- What level of Maslow's hierarchy are you on?
- Think back to your junior year of high school. What were your needs then? How have they changed?
- What is your current mission in life?
- How did you get your current mission?
- What things must you do?
- How much of your time do they take?
- When will you get back to the things you really want?
- Are you in a rut?
- Are you self-actualized?
- If not, what barriers are in front of you?
- Where do those barriers come from?
- These are not easy questions.
- 11.6 Assessment from the Self-Actualization and Self-Determination Perspective (p. 177)
- 11.6.1 Interviews in Assessment
- For Rogers, assessment is discovering what the client is like
- He used empathic interviews
- Content analysis aids in teasing out satisfaction and other important variables
- But, flexible, unstructured interviews make it hard to compare people to each other
- 11.6.2 Measuring the Self-Concept by Q-Sort
- Client is given a set of cards and asked to sort them into two groups:
- Most like me
- Least like me
- The client is not allowed to put more than a few cards in each pile
- Notice that the Q-Sort prevents clients from saying all cards describe the client equally well
- 11.6.3 Measuring Self-Actualization
- The Personal Orientation Inventory (POI) measures:
- Time competence
- Does the client live in the present?
- Can client link past and future with the present effectively?
- Being Inner Directed
- Self-Actualizers are more inner directed
- 11.6.4 Measuring Self-Determination and Control
- Are clients self-determined or controlled?
- Measures have been developed for:
- Overall behavior
- Children's academic and prosocial behavior
- College students reasons for taking courses
- Religious behavior
- 11.7 Problems in Behavior, and Behavior Change, from the Self-Actualization and Self-Determination Perspective (p. 179)
- The key to Rogerian client-centered therapy is unconditional positive regard
- Unconditional positive regard requires:
- An empathic understanding of the client
- That it be given from the client's frame of reference
- Therapy consists of:
- Reintegrating a partially disorganized self
- Reversing defense processes to confront discrepancies
- Lifting conditions of worth
- Focusing on organismic valuing processes
- Clients:
- Should not be trying to satisfy a condition of worth via therapy
- Do better when they undergo therapy for autonomous reasons
- 11.7.1 Client-Centered Therapy
- Also called person-centered therapy
- Therapist displays empathy and unconditional positive regard allowing patient to escape conditions of worth
- Therapist is nondirective and nonevaluative
- Clarification of feelings
- Therapist reflects client's feelings using different words
- The idea here is to have client perceive those feelings more easily
- Restatement of content
- Therapist repeats content but uses different words
- 11.7.2 Beyond Therapy to Personal Growth
- Life and therapy are not different:
- Processes are the same
- Fully functioning person:
- Always growing
- Genuine
- Open
- Empathic
- Unconditional positive regard
- Similar to self-actualization
- Life is not a goal, it's a process
- 11.8 Problems and Prospects for the Self-Actualization and Self-Determination Perspective (p. 180)
- Humanistic Psychology
- Highly accessible approach to personality
- Optimistic and positive view of human nature
- Not a universal view, however
- Formal and informal therapy abound
- But, lack of theoretical precision
- Also, worries about self-actualization
- If everyone self-actualized, chaos would result
- Existential Psychology
- Much more realistic
- Life can be painful and hard
- Existential psychologists worry about free will
- Prospects for both approaches are bright
- Points to Remember
- The theorists of this chapter emphasize that people have an intrinsic tendency toward self-actualization.
- Self-actualization is the tendency to develop your capabilities in ways that maintain or enhance the self. This tendency promotes a sense of congruence, or integration, within the person. Its effectiveness is monitored by the organismic valuing process.
- People also have a need for positive regard—acceptance and affection from others.
- Positive regard may be unconditional, or it may be conditional upon you acting in certain ways. These conditions of worth mean that the person is held worthy only if he or she is acting in a desired manner.
- Conditions of worth, which can be self-imposed as well as imposed by others, can cause you to act in ways that oppose self-actualization.
- Self-determination theory focuses on the difference between behavior that’s self-determined and behavior that’s controlled in some fashion. People enjoy activities more if they feel they’re doing them from intrinsic interest instead of extrinsic reward. People whose lives are dominated by activities that are controlled are less healthy than people whose lives are self-determined.
- Many theorists of this group assume people have free will.
- This is a very hard idea to test, but people do seem to think they have free will. Studies of reactance have shown that people resist threats to freedoms they expect to have.
- However, other research has questioned whether free will is illusory.
- Behavior that opposes the actualizing tendency creates disorganization in the sense of self.
- Disorganization can be reduced by two kinds of defenses. You can distort perceptions of reality to reduce the threat, or you can act in ways that prevent threatening experiences from reaching awareness (for example, by ignoring them).
- Use of these defenses is seen in the fact that people blame failures on factors outside themselves while taking credit for successes.
- People also engage in self-handicapping strategies, creating esteem-protective explanations for the possibility of failure before it even happens.
- Use of self-handicapping is paradoxical because it increases the likelihood of failure.
- Maslow elaborated on the idea of self-actualization by proposing a hierarchy of motives, ranging from physical needs (most basic) to self-actualization (at the top).
- Basic needs are more demanding than higher needs, which (being subtler) can affect you only when the lower needs are relatively satisfied.
- Maslow’s intermediate levels appear to relate to the need for positive regard, suggesting why it can be hard to ignore the desire for acceptance from others.
- Existential psychologists point out that with freedom comes the responsibility to choose for yourself what meaning your life has.
- The basic choice is to invest your life with meaning or to retreat into nothingness.
- When people are reminded of their own mortality, they try harder to connect to cultural values.
- Even if people try to find meaning, they can’t escape existential guilt. No life can reflect all the possibilities it holds because each choice rules out other possibilities.
- This view on personality uses many assessment techniques, including both interviews and self-reports.
- Regarding content, it emphasizes the self-concept, self-actualization, and self-determination.
- One way to assess self-concept is the Q-sort, in which a set of items is sorted into piles according to how much they apply to oneself.
- Different “sorts” can be compared with each other for additional information.
- From this perspective, problems derive from incongruity.
- Therapy is a process of reintegrating a partly disorganized self.
- For reintegration to occur, the client must feel a sense of unconditional positive regard.
- In client-centered therapy, people are led to refocus on their feelings about their problems.
- The (nonevaluative) therapist simply helps clients to clarify their feelings.
- In this viewpoint, the processes of therapy blend into those of ordinary living, with the goal of experiencing continued personal growth.
- KEY TERMS
- Actual self: One’s self as one presently views it.
- Actualization: The tendency to grow in ways that maintain or enhance the organism.
- Clarification of feelings: The procedure in which a therapist restates a client’s expressed feelings.
- Client-centered (person-centered) therapy: A type of therapy that removes conditions of worth and has clients examine their feelings and take personal responsibility for improvement.
- Conditional positive regard: Affection that’s given only under certain conditions.
- Conditional self-regard: Self-acceptance that’s given only under certain conditions.
- Conditions of worth: Contingencies placed on positive regard.
- Congruence: An integration within the self and a coherence between the self and one’s experiences.
- Content analysis: The grouping and counting of various categories of statements in an interview.
- Contingent self-worth: Self-acceptance that’s based on performance in some domain of life.
- Dasein: “Being-in-the-world”; the totality of one’s autonomous personal existence.
- Deficiency-based motives: Motives reflecting a lack within the person that needs to be filled.
- Existential guilt: A sense of guilt over failing to fulfill all of one’s possibilities.
- Existential psychology: The view that people are responsible for investing their lives with meaning.
- Flow: The experience of being immersed completely in an activity.
- Fully functioning person: A person who’s open to the experiences of life and who’s self-actualizing.
- Growth-based motives: Motives reflecting the desire to extend and elaborate oneself.
- Humanistic psychology: A branch of psychology emphasizing the universal capacity for personal growth.
- Ideal self: Your perception of how you’d like to be.
- Organismic valuing process: The internal signal that tells whether self-actualization is occurring.
- Peak experience: A subjective experience of intense self-actualization.
- Phenomenological: A view that emphasizes the importance of one’s own personal experiences.
- Positive regard: Acceptance and affection.
- Q-sort: An assessment technique in which descriptors are sorted according to how much they apply to oneself.
- Reactance: A motive to regain or reassert a freedom that’s been threatened.
- Restatement of content: A procedure in which a therapist rephrases the ideas expressed by a client.
- Self-actualization: A process of growing in ways that maintain or enhance the self.
- Self-concordance: Pursuing goals that are consistent with one’s core values.
- Self-determination: Deciding for oneself what to do.
- Self-handicapping: Creating situations that make it hard to succeed, thus enabling avoidance of self-blame for failure.
- Stereotype threat: Having a negative perception of the self because of feeling prejudged.
- Transcendent self-actualizers: People whose actualization goes beyond the self to become more universal.
- Unconditional positive regard: Acceptance and affection with “no strings attached.”
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