Humanistic Personality Theories

692 Words3 Pages
Describe the four major theories of personality (psychodynamic, trait or five-factor model, humanistic, and social-cognitive) and identify advantages and disadvantages of each theory. The psychodynamic theory of personality revolves around Sigmund Freud’s findings. He believed that the mental processes of the brain were unconscious and that people had three levels of awareness; the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. The unconscious, being the most important, contains thoughts, feelings, memories, and desires that have influence over the day-to-day aspects of people’s lives without them being aware of it. The personalities of people were also split into three sections; the Id, Ego, and Superego. The Id is described to be like a newborn…show more content…
This theory was first developed by Abraham Maslow. He described that self-actualizing people share such things like awareness and acceptance of themselves and lean towards spontaneity and openness and are very positive people in general. Maslow believed that the highest personal need was that of self-actualization. Later, Carl Rogers introduced conditions of worth where in the effort to gain positive regard from others, people will deny their true selves to meet expectations. An advantage of this theory is that it drives parents to encourage their children at a young age to build up a large self-esteem; their sense of self-worth. A disadvantage of this theory is that the theories have been considered naïve and optimistic as it disregards the darker aspects of human nature. Like psychodynamic theories, humanistic theories are difficult to scientifically…show more content…
In debates between trait theorists vs. social-cognitive theorists, it is argued that above traits, situations are more important in determining a personality than traits. According to Albert Bandura; internal, environmental, and behavioral variables interact to influence personality as displayed by model of reciprocal determinism. Because social cognitive theory is so broad, it has been criticized for lacking any one unifying principle or structure. Social cognitive theory largely ignores the influence of hormones on one's behavior. Hormones can affect one's decision- making abilities and therefore change one's
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