Lecture XXII: Growth Motivation and Positive Psychology

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
If not now, when?
Hillel the elder

I. Humanistic Psychology, Holism, and motivation
- The key question: Do you know what is good for you?
  - and, if so, How do you know?
- Is there a general, “master” motivation for growth?
  - Psychological I (humanistic, holistic, Plato): Yes! (Maslow, Rogers, Deci & Ryan, our author)
  - Biological: Kind of: survival and reproduction. (Damasio, LeDoux, Panksepp)
  - Psychological II (cognitive, social learning therory): No, not really. (Feldman-Barrett, Skinner, Rotter, Bandura)
- Self-actualization
  - “a developmental striving” (p. 368), “leaving behind timidity, defensiveness, and a dependence on others that is paired with moving toward the courage to create, to view life realistically, and to achieve autonomous self-regulartion” (p. 368)
  - “an underlying flow of movement toward constructive fulfillment of inherent possibilities” (Rogers)
  - “ever-fuller realization of one’s talents, capacities, and potentialities (Maslow)
- Reeve: “The two fundamental directions that characterize self-actualization as a developmental process are autonomy and openness to experience.” (p. 369)
  - “Autonomy means moving away from heteronomy and toward an ever-increasing capacity to depend on one’s self and to regulate one’s own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (Deci & Ryan, 1991).” (p. 369)
    - Heteronomy: law or rule by another, opposite of autonomy
  - “Openness means receiving information (including feelings) such that it is neither repressed, ignored, or filtered, nor distorted by wishes, fears, or past experiences (Mittelman, 1991).” (p. 369)
    - Dr. Ken Newton, a clinical psychology professor at the University of Tennessee was once explaining self-actualization to graduate students, your professor suggested there was a word for this type of behavior: “autism”, the suggestion was not well received.
    - Dr. Harold Bloom, a religion professor at the University of Oregon once contrasted the philosophies of Taoism and Zen Buddhism (very similar in many respects) by commenting that he was attracted to the compassion for life in the later.
- Maslow’s hierarchy
  - Kurt Goldstein “self-actualization”
  - Deficiency needs and growth needs (Being needs or B needs)
  - Self-actualization: “It is actually a master motive that coalesces the following 14 ‘metaneeds’ or ‘B-values’: wholeness, truth, beauty, spontaneity, justice, simplicity, humor, transcendence, uniqueness, perfection, completion, richness or totality, effortlessness, and autonomy (Maslow 1971).” (p. 370)
  - Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: A very popular idea with little empirical support
  - Revised hierarchy: only deficiency and growth needs
II. The actualizing tendency
- Rogers’ (1951) quote: “The organism has one basic tendency and striving—to actualize, maintain, and enhance the experiencing self.”
  - Innate
    - Organismic valuing process (intrinsic goals)
    - the self
      - need for positive regard, acceptance, love from others
      - conditions of worth: conditional valuing process
        
        physical pain
        
        anterior cingular cortex (ACC) (linking evolutionary older emotion control centers with the more recent, high-level information processing cortex)
        
        insular (value judgments about situations, linking to bodily sensations: heart racing, upset stomach, sweaty palms)
        
        social pain: same systems involved: existing motivational systems utilized to drive social connections as had developed to avoid physical pain
        
        Cyberball research by Matthew Lieberman & Naomi Eisenberger at social cognitive neuroscience lab at UCLA
        
        Interpreted to reflect importance of social networks to our historical survival as a species
        
        Critique of Harrington, Block, & Block (1987), page 376:
        
        A correlational study (status is measured, not manipulated)
        
        Assumes children were equal in important ways to begin with
        
        Assumes unidirectional influence (parents affect children)
        
        Alternative interpretation: more oppositional children generate more parental control and have less creative potential (low positive correlation between child intelligence and easy temperament and creativity)
        
        The point is not to prove an alternative hypothesis, the whole purpose of research designs is to rule out alternative explanations of the data found
        
        Contrast Roger’s view of self with that of Buddhist philosophy (and psychology) that the self a construct generated by our brain and is somewhat of an illusion (in the sense that there is an abiding, independent process)
        
        Congruence: denial or acceptance of, “the full range of his or her personal characteristics” (p. 377)
        
        The full functioning person
        
        “people possess an inherent, proactive tendency toward personal differentiation (greater complexity), integration (greater wholeness or unity) and personal growth.” (p. 379)
        
        “The basic idea is that there exists an intrinsic organizational nature to the self, and this tendency toward organismic integration can be socially energized and supported or it can be socially depleted and thwarted by social conditions and relationships.” (p. 379)
- Critiques of Roger’s theory of personality
  - The evidence for an organismic valuing process is suggestive at best
  - Roger’s (and Maslow) was primarily a clinical psychologist and much of his professional experience was based on work with college students, a very atypical sample (YAVIS: young, attractive, verbal, intelligent, successful) in the United States (paradigmatic individualist culture) mid 20th century (inhibited [vs. disinhibited] clinical presentations dominate the clinical population seen professionally) [parenthetically: with this population Roger’s client-centered (and later person-centered) psychotherapy tends to serve very well (lead to positive outcomes)].

Humanistic Motivational Constructs

Causality Orientations:
- “A developmentally acquired mindset with respect to exercising autonomy in one’s daily life or attending to social controls.” (p. 379)
  - Autonomy Causality Orientation: habitually rely on internal guides (needs, interests)
    - related concepts are Internal Locus of Control; Origin status
  - Control Causality Orientation: habitually relies on external guides (social cues)
    - Related concepts are External Locus of Control, Pawn status
  - Critique of text: Should we be surprised that a university professor would think that choosing vocational interest over money was a good choice? Tends to use pejorative language in discussing these choices. A problem with this discussion if the focus on only the consequences for the individual (very “Western cultural attitudes”): a person might choose job with salary and benefits because of family needs.
- Growth-seeking versus Validation Seeing: “another way of expressing Maslow’s distinction between deficiency and growth needs” (p. 381)

The problem of evil

“Evil’s cause seems to have its origins in enculturation, rather than in human nature.” (Reeve, 2018, p. 384)
- Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778): humankind is good by nature but is corrupted by society
- Contrast this with Freud’s view (and to some extent Thomas Hobbes [1588-1679]) that civilization is necessary to impose control on the base instincts of human kind
- An existentialist psychotherapist (e.g., May) would not see the outcome of self-determination as necessarily positive: “under another set of conditions, the actualizing tendency pairs itself with malicious values and leads to cruelty and destructive behavior (May, 1982).” (p. 383) “The recent study of suicide terrorists shows that these individuals were petty much normal people who were intensely committed to a cause and a set of values that they see as greater than themselves (Atran, 2003).” (p. 383)
dark traits, the dark factor of personality (D) (Moshagen, Hilbig, & Zettle, 2018)
- Moshagen and colleagues have discussed “dark traits” as an umbrella term to subsume subclinical personality traits linked to ethically, morally, and socially questionable behavior (Moshagen, Hilbig, & Zetter, 2018, p. 656). They argue for a conceptualization of a general dispositional tendency underlying different dark traits: Dark Factor of Personality (D): “the general tendency to maximize one’s individual utility—disregarding, accepting, or malevolently provoking disutility for others–, accompanied by beliefs that serve as justifications.” (p. 657)
  - Individuals with high levels of D will generally aim to maximize the individual utility at the costs of others
  - Will generally disregard, accept or malevolently provoke disutility for others
  - Individuals with high levels of D will hold beliefs that serve as justifications for individual utility at the expense of others
- Dark trait factors:
  - Egoism
  - Machiavellianism
  - Moral Disengagement
  - Narcissism
  - Psychological Entitlement
  - Psychopathy
  - Sadism
  - Self-Interest
  - Spitefulness
- Their studies examine the relationship between D and the FFM (McCrae & Costa, 2008) and the HEXACO model (Ashton & Lee, 2007). In both instances, besides associations, they conclude the D, “comprises behaviorally meaningful variance that lies outside the personality space spanned by the FFM dimensions” (p. 682) and “comprises a different array of behaviors and thus cannot be thought of merely reflecting the negative pole of the Honesty-Humility.” (p. 682”; “D is not well suited for including in a more general model of personality dimensions akin to the FFM or HEXACO model.” They suggest that D is a fluid concept (like g) that does not depend on particular indicator variables.
Perhaps asked “good or evil” is the wrong question. Again, it assumes that there is a “human nature” that is independent of our learning history. I tend to agree with Dr. Sapolsky who says that: “’doing the right thing’ is always context dependent” (p. 673)