psy 239 401 chapter 13 slides
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© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
The Personality PuzzleSixth Edition
by David C. Funder
Chapter 13:Experience, Existence, and the Meaning of Life: Humanistic and
Positive Psychology
Slides created byTera D. LetzringIdaho State University 1
Objectives
• Discuss the main issues of humanistic psychology
• Discuss positive psychology• Discuss the implications of phenomenology
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Humanistic Psychology
• Goal: overcome the paradox of studying humans
• Implications of self-awareness• Do people have free will? If they do, what does
this mean and how is it possible?
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Phenomenology: Awareness is Everything
• Definition of phenomenology• At the center of humanity• Central insight: Phenomenology is
psychologically more important than the world itself.– Basis of free will
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Phenomenology: Awareness is Everything
• “We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are.” –Talmud
• “It is not things in themselves that trouble us, but our opinions of them.” –Epictetus
• “I do not react to some absolute reality, but to my perception of this reality. It is this perception which for me is reality.” –Carl Rogers
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Phenomenology: Awareness is Everything
• Construal– Everyone’s is different.– Form the basis of how you live your life– Free will is achieved by choosing your construal.
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Existentialism
• A reaction against rationalism, science, and the industrial revolution
• Purpose: regain contact with the experience of being alive and aware
• Key questions: – What is the nature of existence? – How does it feel? – And what does it mean?
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Existentialism: Three Parts of Experience
• Biological experience (Umwelt)• Social experience (Mitwelt)• Psychological experience (Eigenwelt)
– Introspection
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Existentialism: Thrown-ness and Angst
• Thrown-ness– An important basis of your experience– Being thrown into modern society is particularly
difficult
• Angst– Anguish– Forlornness– Despair
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Existentialism: Bad Faith
• Our moral imperative– Requires existential courage or optimistic
toughness– This can be avoided
• Living in bad faith
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Existentialism: Bad Faith
• Creates three problems– Living a cowardly lie– Unhappiness– It is impossible
“What is not possible is not to choose. . . . If I do not choose, I am still choosing.” –Sartre
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Existentialism: Authentic Existence
• Definition• The alternative to bad faith• Will not relieve loneliness and unhappiness
– Because every person is alone and doomed– Life has no meaning beyond what you give it– The essence of the human experience:
understanding that you must die
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Existentialism: Authentic Existence
• Allows us to be aware of our freedom and this gives us dignity
• The existential challenge• Ask: What does life want from me?
– Strive to better the human condition
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Existentialism: The Eastern Alternative
• Existentialism is based on the Western focus on the individual and the difficulty of finding meaning in life.
• Existentialism is fundamentally wrong.– The self is an illusion.– This illusion is harmful.– True nature of reality– All people are interconnected.– Immortality
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Existentialism: The Eastern Alternative
• Anicca• Enlightenment
– Achieved by understanding that nothing will last forever and that the well-being of others matters as much as your own
– Leads to universal compassion
• Nirvana: a serene, selfless state
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Optimistic Humanism: Rogers and Maslow
• Began with existential assumptions– Phenomenology is central.– People have free will.
• Added another crucial idea– People are basically good.
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Optimistic Humanism: Self-Actualization
• People have one basic tendency and striving: to actualize, maintain, and enhance their own experience
• Actualization– Goal of existence is to satisfy this need
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Optimistic Humanism: The Hierarchy of Needs
• Basic assumption: The ultimate need or motive is to self-actualize.
• Hierarchy of needs: how human motivation is characterized
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Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
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Optimistic Humanism: The Hierarchy of Needs
• Practical applications– Career choice– Employee motivation– Understand happiness in different cultures
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Optimistic Humanism: The Hierarchy of Needs
• Update to Maslow’s hierarchy
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Optimistic Humanism: The Fully Functioning Person
• Definition• Be clearly aware of reality and yourself• Face the world without fear, self-doubt, or
neurotic defenses• Importance of unconditional positive regard• Conditions of worth
– Limit your freedom to act and think
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Optimistic Humanism: Psychotherapy
• Goal: help the client become a fully functioning person
• The therapist develops a genuine and caring relationship with the client and provides unconditional positive regard.
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Optimistic Humanism: Psychotherapy
• Jobs of the therapist– Help the client perceive her own thoughts and
feelings– Make the client feel appreciated
• Goals– Allow insight– Remove conditions of worth
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Optimistic Humanism: Psychotherapy
• Efficacy research– Real and ideal self-perceptions became more
closely aligned after therapy.
• Criticism of research– Both real and ideal selves change with therapy.– Having closely aligned real and ideal selves is not
always a good measure of psychological adjustment.
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Think About It
• If a psychotherapist is treating a murderer, do you think the therapist should give the client unconditional positive regard? Why or why not?
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Personal Constructs: Kelly
• Personal constructs– Based on how one’s cognitive system assembles
various construals of the world– Help to determine how new experiences are
construed– Each person has a unique set
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Personal Constructs: Kelly
• Role Construct Repertory Test (Rep)– Identify three important people and how two of
them are similar and different from the third– Repeat with ideas, traits, etc.
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• Chronically accessible constructs• Sources of constructs• Sociality corollary
Personal Constructs: Kelly
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Personal Constructs: Kelly
• Constructs and reality– Constructive alternativism– Implications for science
• Scientific paradigms are frameworks for construing the meaning of data
• Researchers choose which paradigm to use• Important to be aware that other paradigms
exist and are equally plausible
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Personal Constructs: Kelly
• Maximizers vs. satisficers“How you choose to see the world will affect everything
in your life.” (p. 459)
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Flow: Csikszentmihalyi
• Optimal experience• Autotelic activities• Flow
– Tremendous concentration, total lack of distractibility, and thoughts concerning only the activity at hand
– Mood that is slightly elevated– Time seems to pass very quickly.
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Flow: Csikszentmihalyi
• The secret for enhancing your quality of life• Would you spend the majority of your life in a
state of flow if you could?
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Hardiness: Maddi
• Stress is not always bad.– Without stress, life would be boring and
meaningless.
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Hardiness: Maddi
• Many people seek to avoid stress by developing a conformist lifestyle.– Likely to lead to existential psychological
pathology and a false sense of self– Vegetativeness– Nihilism– Desire for extreme thrills
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Hardiness: Maddi
• Hardiness• Stressful and challenging experiences can
bring learning, growth, and wisdom.– Important for giving meaning to life– Related to happiness and adjustment– Purpose of life
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Self-Determination Theory: Deci and Ryan
• Based on distinction between two ways of seeking happiness– Hedonia– Eudaimonia
• Hedonia is dangerous• Extrinsic vs. intrinsic goals
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Self-Determination Theory: Deci and Ryan
• Three central intrinsic goals– Autonomy– Competence– Relatedness
• Research support for advantages of following intrinsic goals
• Claim of universality
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Positive Psychology
• Health means more than the absence of disease.
• Traditional psychology overemphasizes psychopathology and malfunction and ignores the question of the meaning of life.
• The focus is on positive phenomenon.
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Positive Psychology
• Goal: improve quality of life and prevent pathologies
• True happiness comes from overcoming important challenges– Investigates the traits, processes, and social
institutions that promote a happy and meaningful life
– Factors that contribute to happiness and subjective well-being
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Positive Psychology
• Optimism has advantages and disadvantages.• Virtues: courage, justice, humanity
(compassion), temperance, wisdom, transcendence– Difficult to identify virtues for everyone– May be evolutionarily based– But not everyone has them all
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Positive Psychology
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Positive Psychology
• Not the complete rebirth of humanism– It does not say much about existential anxiety or
the difficult dilemmas that arise from free will.– Focuses on subjective well-being
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The Implications of Phenomenology: The Mystery of Experience
• Conscious experience cannot be explained by science and is difficult to describe in words.
• Problems– Assuming conscious awareness is not important
and proceeding as if it did not exist– Treating conscious experience as a form of
information processing done by a computer
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The Implications of Phenomenology: The Mystery of Experience
• Cognitive theories: consciousness is a higher-order cognitive process that organizes thoughts and allows flexible decision making– Consciousness is a feeling.
• What does it feel like to be alive and aware? How could you tell whether a computer had this feeling?
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The Implications of Phenomenology: Understanding Others
• To understand another person, you must understand his construals.
• Discourages judgmental attitudes• Consequence: cultural and moral relativism • Do not judge the values and practices of other
cultures from the perspective of your own.
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Clicker Question #1
The alternative to bad faith isa)living an authentic existence.b)being connected with others and happiness.c)achieving nirvana.d)experiencing thrown-ness.
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Clicker Question #2
According to optimistic humanism, the goal of life is toa) understand other people.b) self-actualize, or maintain and enhance life.c) enhance one’s social experience, or Mitwelt.d) achieve enlightenment.
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Clicker Question #3
Which of the following is true about flow, or autotelic experience?a)People who spend more time in flow tend to be depressed.b)During flow, time seems to pass very slowly.c)People experience a very positive state during flow.d)In order to experience flow, a person’s skills must meet the challenge of the activity.
50© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
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