Chapter 6

1. Chapter 6 THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE: APPLICATIONS, RELATED THEORIES, AND RECENT RESEARCH

2. QUESTIONS TO BE ADDRESSED IN THIS CHAPTER • According to Rogers, how do psychological distress and pathology develop and what therapeutic factors are necessary to bring about their resolution? • How did the human potential movement add to Rogers’ view of personality? • What does positive psychology say about personality and human potential? • What is existentialism? How does existentialism relate to the work of Rogers? • What are the implications of contemporary research - including cross-cultural research on self-concept, motivation, and personality – for person-centered theory?

3. CLINICAL APPLICATIONS PSYCHOPATHOLOGY • Self-Experience Incongruence • Where does psychological distress come from? • Healthy people experience congruence between self-perceptions and organismic experience • Neurotic persons deny or distort awareness of organismic experience that conflicts with self-perceptions • Denial and distortion result in a discrepancy between self-perceptions and organismic experience, referred to as incongruence • Organismic experience that is incongruent with self-perceptions is perceived below the level of awareness (subception)

4. CLINICAL APPLICATIONS THERAPEUTIC CONDITIONS NEEDED FOR CHANGE • Genuineness • The therapist selectively, but authentically, shares thoughts and feelings with the client, even negative ones • Unconditional positive regard (acceptance) • The therapist non-judgmentally prizes the client, which allows the client to explore experience without denying or distorting it • Empathic understanding (warmth) • The therapist strives to understand the feelings and meaning of events from the client’s point of view

5. CLINICAL APPLICATIONS OUTCOMES OF CLIENT-CENTERED THERAPY • Butler & Haigh (1954) – client-centered therapy should produce greater consistency between actual and ideal selves • Participants completed a Q-sort to rate their actual self and a second Q-sort to rate their ideal self • Actual and ideal selves were measured before and after 31 sessions of client-centered therapy (pretest-posttest design) • Before therapy, the relationship between actual and ideal selves was low (r = 0.00) • After therapy, consistency between actual and ideal selves increased significantly (r = 0.34)

6. CLINICAL APPLICATIONS OUTCOMES OF CLIENT-CENTERED THERAPY • Were the effects of therapy long-lasting? • Butler & Haigh (1954) conducted a 6-month follow-up of the outcome of client-centered therapy • At follow-up, the actual–ideal correlation remained about the same as that at posttest: r = 0.31

7. RELATED THEORIES THE HUMAN POTENTIAL MOVEMENT • Abraham H. Maslow proposed a framework for human motivation that distinguishes biological needs (hunger, thirst, and sleep) from psychological needs (safety, belonging, and esteem) • Maslow believed there was no need to restrict research to • Normal personality functioning • Breakdowns in normal functioning that result in psychopathology • Psychologists should study people who are exceptionally high-functioning, that is, self-actualizing individuals

9. RELATED THEORIES THE HUMAN POTENTIAL MOVEMENT • Maslow proposed that self-actualizing people possess qualities that inform researchers and clinicians about human potentials • Features of self-actualizing people include the capacity to • Accept oneself and others for who they are • Recognize the needs and desires of others • Respond to unique situations and the uniqueness of others • Form intimate relationships with a few special others • Be spontaneous and creative • Resist conformity and assert oneself

10. RELATED THEORIES POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY • Sometimes called the human strengths movement • Psychologists have tended to • Examine individuals suffering from distress • Develop theories that emphasize dysfunction while overlooking human strengths • To rectify this, contemporary psychologists seek to identify and understand human strengths and virtues

11. RELATED THEORIES POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY • The Virtues of Positive Emotions • Fredrickson’s (2001) broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions • Positive emotions “broaden” thought and action by widening the range of • Ideas that come to mind • Actions that individuals pursue • Interests lead people to pursue novel activities • Pride motivates people to continue activities • Positive emotions, then, can enhance human competencies and the fulfillment of meaningful goals

12. RELATED THEORIES POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY • The Virtues of Positive Emotions • Tugade & Fredrickson (2004) • Participants were told they had to give a public speech that would be videotaped • Investigators measured 3 variables: • Resilience • Physiological indications of stress (heart rate) • Positive emotions during the speech

13. RELATED THEORIES POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY • The Virtues of Positive Emotions • Tugade & Fredrickson (2004) found that • Participants with higher scores on resilience experienced fewer and weaker signs of cardio stress • Participants who experienced positive emotions during the study experienced less cardio stress • Positive emotions mediated the relationship between individual differences in resilience and cardio stress • Positive emotions appear to counteract some of the distress elicited by threatening situations

14. RELATED THEORIES POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY MOVEMENT • Flow • Csikszentmihalyi describes a dimension of conscious experience characterized by • A perceived match between personal skills and environmental challenge • A sense of intrinsic enjoyment in the activity • A high level of focused attention • Involvement in an activity such that time seems to pass quickly and irrelevant thoughts and distractions do not enter into awareness • A temporary loss of self-consciousness in which one is unaware of functioning or regulating activity

15. RELATED THEORIES EXISTENTIALISM • Søren Kierkegaard, like Rogers, was concerned with the nature of human existence and universal sources of psychological distress • Distinguished different forms of despair, including feelings that result from • Not being true to one’s essential self (incongruence, choosing to be inauthentic) • Not fulfilling one’s potential (avoiding one’s freedom and responsibility to self-actualize) • Questioning whether one has a meaningful life and future, that is, an enduring self

16. RELATED THEORIES EXPERIMENTAL EXISTENTIALISM • Experimental existential psychology addresses issues involving the meaning of life, fear of death, alienation, and freedom and responsibility • Existentialists believe that these issues, especially mortality, are central to human experience

17. RELATED THEORIESS EXPERIMENTAL EXISTENTIALISM • Psychologists have translated the general propositions found in existential theory into specific, testable hypotheses • Terror Management Theory (TMT) of Solomon et al. examines the consequences of two interacting factors • The desire to live (which people share with animals) • Awareness of the inevitability of death (which is uniquely human)

18. RELATED THEORIES EXPERIMENTAL EXISTENTIALISM • TMT posits that awareness of death makes people vulnerable to being overwhelmed by death anxiety (terror) • Social and cultural institutions protect against terror by furnishing meaning • In many cultures, religious institutions teach that there is an afterlife, a belief that insulates people from the terror of death • Other cultures emphasize that the individual is a component of a larger circle of persons - family, community, nation • Although one will die, many cultivate a sense of living on through their offspring or work

19. RELATED THEORIES EXPERIMENTAL EXISTENTIALISM • TMT’simplications • If the salience of mortality is manipulated, there should be systematic variation in how much people rely on soothing sociocultural worldviews • If sociocultural beliefs buffer the terror of death and if people are induced to think about death, they should display a stronger-than-usual need to possess - and defend - their sociocultural worldviews

20. RELATED THEORIES EXPERIMENTAL EXISTENTIALISM • Jonas & Greenberg (2004) • Asked participants in Germany to evaluate the quality of one positive and one neutral essay about the political reunification of the former East Germany with West Germany • Participants also indicated their personal attitudes toward reunification (positive or neutral)

21. RELATED THEORIESS EXPERIMENTAL EXISTENTIALISM • Jonas & Greenberg (2004) found that focusing on death and the terror of one’s own mortality influenced the strength of people’s sociocultural beliefs • When primed with thoughts of death, participants who were supportive of German reunification, defended their political beliefs (i.e., positive essays) more strongly

23. RECENT RESEARCH DISCREPANCY AMONG SELVES • Rogers - psychopathology results from incongruence between self-perceptions and organismic experience • Tory Higgins examined the relationship between components of self-concept and emotional experience • Higgins differentiated 2 aspects of the future self • Ideal self = centers on ambitions, desires, and hopes • Ought self = focuses on duties, obligations, and responsibilities

24. RECENT RESEARCH DISCREPANCY AMONG SELVES • Higgins et al. (1986) hypothesized and confirmed that • Discrepancies between real self and ideal self were associated with dejection-related emotions (e.g., depression, sadness) • Discrepancies between real self and ought self were associated with agitation-related emotions (e.g., anxiety, fear)

25. RECENT RESEARCH INTERNALLY MOTIVATED GOALS AND AUTHENTICITY • Other research spawned by Rogers’ theory focuses on authenticity = the extent to which people behave consistently with their actual self and experience • Deci & Ryan’s self-determination theory • People have an inherent need to • Act in autonomous, self-determined ways • Pursue tasks that are intrinsically meaningful, rather than being coerced or compelled

26. RECENT RESEARCH INTERNALLY MOTIVATED GOALS AND AUTHENTICITY • Research in support of self-determination theory • People display greater effort and persistence in pursuing self-determined goals than goals undertaken because of internal demands or external expectations • Pursuit of intrinsic, self-determined goals is tied to physical health and psychological well-being in contrast with the adverse effects associated with the pursuit of forced, extrinsic goals

27. RECENT RESEARCH IS POSITIVE SELF-REGARD UNIVERSAL? • Rogers believed that • All people have a need for positive self-regard • Without unconditional positive regard, the need for positive self-regard may lead to the fulfillment of self-perceptions that are incongruent with experience (maladjustment) • Is this how things operate for people the world over?

28. RECENT RESEARCH CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH ON THE SELF • The self - one’s identity, role in family and community, goals in life - is acquired socially • People develop a sense of self through interaction with others who comprise their family, community, and wider culture • Individualistic cultures tend to foster the paramount belief that each person should enhance his or her own well-being • Collectivistic cultures teach an alternative set of priorities that do not emphasize striving for positive self-regard (e.g., social harmony)

29. RECENT RESEARCH CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH ON THE SELF • Heine et al. (1999) reviewed evidence that basic patterns and functions of self-esteem vary across cultures • In the United States, most people report relatively high self-esteem • In Japan, there is no such tendency • As many Japanese report low self-esteem as report high self-esteem

31. RECENT RESEARCH CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH ON THE SELF • Japanese culture makes one prone to self-criticism, which motivates the Japanese toward self-improvement in the service of others and society • Self-criticism and discrepancies between actual and ideal selves predict depression in the United States, but are less related to depression in Japan

32. RECENT RESEARCH REGIONAL VARIATION IN WELL-BEING • Plaut et al. (2002) analyzed data from a survey of the psychological well-being of middle-aged Americans • New England and Rocky Mountain regions are typified by rugged individualism • The South is typified by grace, hospitality, and respect for tradition • Southern culture would not be hypothesized to nurture authenticity (congruence) and, therefore, might contribute to a lower sense of subjective well-being • Different cultural regions are associated with distinct patterns of psychological well-being