He believed that people develop constructs as internal ideas of reality to help them understand the world around them and that the way the world is viewed is based on individual experiences, interpretations and observations. This essay will also look closely at the work from Hans Eysenck and Stanley Rachman on Trait Theory (1965) and Phillida Salmon (2003) who developed George Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory further by relating it to teaching. It will also discuss the interrogative themes of Power Relations, Situation Knowledge and Agency Structure. The strengths and weaknesses of both approaches will be critically compared along with looking at the contrasts of both hoping to offer an explanation to the above statement ‘The traits that we think we find in others represent our personal construction of them’ (Butt, 2012, p.53). Theories of personality were developed around a century ago in three different strands known as clinical, psychometric and experimental traditions, although all separate they seek to explain behaviour and the individual differences in the way people react to the same situation.
Cognitive psychologists believe that mental processes and stored representations of the world determine behaviour and are central to human experience. Psychologists see the mind as a complex machine – where they believe that it is useful to model mental processes using an information-processing approach whereby: Information is examined from the outside world is received and encoded, Storage and representation of this information to ourselves, Ways in which this information is manipulated and used by the individual, And how we output information back into the world to be received by others. Many
Behaviourism and Humanism Learning Perspectives The two perspectives of adolescent learning this essay will discuss are behaviourism and humanism. Both of these perspectives search for the reasons humans do things however the contrasts between the two are rather extreme. The behaviourist school of thought considers observed physical behaviour and believes behaviour can be predicted and controlled (O’Donnell et al, 2012, p. 230). Skinner and Watson are the most well known developers of this theory, and in the early stages of behaviourism animal behaviour was studied. Humanism came about as a response to behaviourism; with humanists looking at the whole person and their experience, believing that learning is a part of natural human growth.
In this essay, I will compare and contrast the theories of Piaget and Vygotsky, who both influenced the more scientific approach to analysing the cognitive development process of the child active construction of knowledge, (Flanagan 1996). Both Vygotsky and Piaget were regarded as constructivists in the field of cognitive development, meaning that cognition is the result of mental construction (Davison, 2006). According to constructivists, a person’s ability to learn is affected by the context in which the person is taught, as well as their personal beliefs and attitudes.
Describe and evaluate the psychodynamic approach Psychodynamic psychologists assume that our behaviour is determined by unconscious forces of which we are unaware. Each manifest (surface) thought, utterance or behaviour hides a latent(hidden) motive or intention. The latent motives for our behaviour reflect our instinctive biological drives and our early experiences, particularly before the age of five. Most particularly, it is the way we are treated by our parents as children that shapes our adult behaviour. Sigmund Freud developed an approach on abnormality that highlighted how human personality and psychosexual development in childhood can cause abnormality.
As a result there are a variety of theories of personality which try to describe the cause and effect of the human personality. This essay will briefly compare and contrast two of these theories which include the psychoanalytic and humanistic theories of personality. It is important to have an in-depth understanding of the various types of theories with respect to personality because such a discourse enables psychologists to discover more about social behaviours in daily life (Fiske et al, 2010; 365). Both theoretical viewpoints, while being substantially different from each other, do share some common comparisons as we shall examine below. Psychoanalytical theories of personality stress the individual’s unconscious motivations which can be identified through dreams, slips of the tongue and fantasies (McCrae & Costa, 2003; 21).
Behaviourists want results, by which they can check measure and observe on the stimulus and the reacted response. McLeod, (2007) suggests humanistic, humanism and humanist are terms in psychology relating to an approach which studies the whole person, and the uniqueness of each individual. Essentially, these terms refer the same approach in psychology. This relates to the belief on genetics and the experiences we go through in life are different from each other. Through ‘ethics’
a.) View of Human Nature Like these two theories, I believe that people are not just a product of their environment, but they are born with the ability to make their own decisions and learn from their mistakes. Behavioral therapy is consistent with my view because it is grounded on a belief that “humans are not a mere product of their sociocultural conditioning…the person is the producer and the product of his or her environment.” (Corey). Behavioral Therapists give control to the client and give them the freedom to make their own choices. Cognitive behavior therapy is based on the belief that people are born with the ability to have rational and irrational thinking, and it helps clients to accept themselves and their mistakes.
Teleological school is based on the consequences, i.e. the effect that certain actions have on others. Deontological school focuses on the motivational aspects that lead each individual’s conduct. Based on the above, it would be logical to refer that as the values, past history and motivations constitutes the morals of an individual, then the history and evolution of societies will then form the ethical principles that will determine a comunity customary rules by which theirs people will act, and this is what will shape then the culture of this particular society. The collective nature of morality then implies that those acts called "good " or "bad” vary dramatically depending on the culture in which it occurs.
PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES & KEY CONCEPTS Aaron T. Beck developed his approach known as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy as a result of his work and observations with depressed clients. C.B.T. is based on fundamental assumptions that our thoughts can and do determine how we feel and behave in relation to events in our everyday lives and our environment. Beck contends that psychological problems or dysfunctional behaviour can occur as a result of faulty or distorted thinking and through engaging and employing C.B.T. techniques we can change or modify the way we think, to cause us to feel and act better even if our external situations and events do not change.