PSYC 4520 1st Edition Lecture 20Outline of Last Lecture I. The Psychology of Optimal ExperienceA. What makes people happy?B. Optimal experienceC. Optimal experience and happiness in everyday activitiesII. Application: Person-Centered Therapy and Job SatisfactionA. Person-centered therapyOutline of Current Lecture I. Assessment: The Q-Sort TechniqueA. The Q-sort techniqueII. Strengths and Criticisms of the Humanistic ApproachA. StrengthsB. CriticismsCurrent LectureI. Assessment: The Q-Sort TechniqueA. The Q-Sort techniquei. Rogers felt that there must be empirical evidence of therapeutic change to determine the effectiveness of treatment. He asked how a humanistic These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.psychologist can show that clients are more fully functioning/self-actualized after therapy.ii. One tool that for this is the Q-Sort procedure, which is used to assess many psychological concepts (i.e. parent-child attachment, defense mechanisms, temperament, and strength of romantic relationships). Rogers felt that it fit with his approach as well.iii. One Q-Sort procedure used by humanistic therapists is the California Q-Sort. Materials include a deck of 100 cards, each of which contains a self-descriptive phrase (i.e. “is a talkative individual” or “seeks reassurance”). As a client, you must read the cards and sort them into categories; on the first sort, you would place the cards into 9 categories according to how much you believe the description applies to you. The 9 categories represent points on a normal distribution, with the categories on the extreme ends representing traits most descriptive of you (category 9) and least descriptive of you (category 1). This is like surveys that ask people tosay if something is “very characteristic,” “fairly characteristic,” “neutral,” “quite uncharacteristic,” or “very uncharacteristic” of them.iv. Imagine that the description on the first card is “is a talkative individual.” If this describes you well, you would place it in category 8 or 9. If it describes you slightly, you would place it in category 6. If you think you are very quiet, you would place it in category 1 or 2. There is a limit to how many cards can be placed in each category, so indecisive test takers must select cards that are most descriptive of them. Thus, you would provide the therapist and yourself with a profile of your self-concept. v. After recording which cards you placed into which categories, you would shuffle the deck and take the test again. However, this time you would distribute the cards according to your “ideal” self. Thus, if “is a talkative individual” does not describe you well, but you want to become more talkative, you would move this card to a higher category than before. After laying out descriptions of your “real” and “ideal” selves, you and thetherapist can control the two profiles. vi. The Q-Sort fits with Rogers’ technique for many reasons. Clients describe themselves however they please; of course, a perceptive therapist may not always agree with a client’s placement of the cards and should thus help the client come to see him- or herself more realistically.vii. By assigning each card a number from 1-9 according to its category, we can find a correlation coefficient between a client’s real and ideal self. For a psychologically healthy person, the 2 should be similar. If category values are identical for both profiles, a perfect 1 correlation would be obtained. The further the correlation is from 1, the less accepting people are of themselves and the less fully functioning. Clients whose real and ideal selves are unrelated would have a 0 correlation, and profiles can be negatively correlated if their real and ideal selves are at opposite sides of the distribution on many descriptions. A high correlation between a person’s real and ideal self is related to positive well-being.viii. Real-ideal self correlations increase through client-centered therapy. For example, one of Rogers’ clients was a 40-year-old woman with problems including an unhappy marriage and guilt about her daughter’s psychological problems. She attended 40 therapy sessions over 5.5 months and returned a few months later for additional sessions. She completed the real and ideal self Q-Sorts at the beginning and at various stages during treatment and also at 2 follow-up sessions (7 and 12 months after therapy). After each session, the correlation increased.ix. Many changes occurred in the way the woman viewed her real and ideal self during treatment. The similarity between the two increased over timeand grew even after she discontinued sessions. At the beginning of treatment, her real and ideal self Q-Sorts correlated at.21; she did not seeherself at all as the person she wanted to be. As therapy progressed, the 2 descriptions became more alike; she changed how she viewed herself. By exploring her feelings in person-centered sessions, she came to see herself in different and presumably more accurate terms.x. There were also less dramatic changes in how the woman described her ideal self. She may have come to realize through therapy that the goals she set were far too ideal; many clients expect perfection of themselves. Rogers’ therapy, however, brought her real and ideal selves closer.II. Strengths and Criticisms of the Humanistic ApproachA. Strengthsi. The humanistic approach is positive. One contribution of humanistic psychology is its emphasis on the healthy side of personality. Moreresearchers are turning their attention to topics like creativity, happiness, and a sense of well-being (positive psychology).ii. The impact of humanistic psychology has not been limited to psychology and psychotherapy. Students in education, communication, and business are often introduced to Rogers’ and Maslow’s writings. B. Criticismsi. Humanistic psychology relies on free will to explain behavior. Some psychologists argue that this renders this approach unfit for scientific study, as science relies on the idea that events are determined by other events and psychology on the idea that behavior is determined and predictable; if we accept the idea that behavior is caused by free will, which is not subject to these laws of determination, the assumption falls apart. Because we can explain any behavior as caused by