PSYC1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 27: Unconditional Positive Regard, Job Satisfaction, Parenting
12 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
HUMANISTIC FORMULA FOR HAPPINESS
Need for Satisfaction
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Modern humanistic theory of motivation and personality
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Having control over your life and over other people
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Primarily referring to free will - doing what you want to do
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Intrinsic motivation - doing what I am interested in
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Autonomy
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Social connections
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Experience love and being well-respected
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Relatedness
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Need to be good at something
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Competence
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Proposes three universal needs
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Found that fulfillment of all three positively predicted wellbeing in Belgium, China, USA and Peru
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Chen et al. (2014)
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All these things relate together --> good at something leads to autonomy leads to positive social circles
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Self-determination Theory
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Happiness = taking personal responsibility for finding meaning and enjoyment in our ongoing experiences
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Accomplish this through "flow"
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Activity is challenging; requires skill
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One's attention is completely absorbed by the activity
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Activity has clear goals
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Clear feedback
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One can concentrate only on the task at hand
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One achieves a sense of personal control
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One loses self-consciousness
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One loses a sense of time
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Flow state
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Doing this as a job = you will breeze through life
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Flow (Wu Wei)
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Self-determination theory
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Positive psychology
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Client-centered therapy
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Promoting job satisfaction by fulfilling higher needs
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E.g. Unconditional positive regard
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Child rearing
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Humanisms lasting impact
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Can you study free will scientifically?
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But humanists say you need to "feel it" rather than measure it
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Free will vs determinism
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Poorly defined concepts
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Maslow selected "self-actualized" people based on his intuition
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Some unscientific methods
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Humanistic therapy may not work for severe mental disorders (E.g. psychopathy)
Criticisms
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Humanistic formula for Happiness
Genes and Personality traits
Trait perspectives - History and theories
10A - Personality
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
2:53 PM
PSYCH 1001 Page 1
Humanistic therapy may not work for severe mental disorders (E.g. psychopathy)
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GENES AND PERSONALITY TRAITS
Reconceptualization
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Nature (genes) prepare us for environment (nurture)
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Genes can switch on and off depending on the environment (epi-genetics)
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Studying the effects of biology on personality is more informative
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Nature vs Nurture
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Schizophrenia
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Alcoholism
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Antisocial personality
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Mental disorders
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E.g. MAOA "aggressive gene" ("warrior gene") related to aggression
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BUT - relationship between MAOA and aggressive behaviour is strongest for those who had experienced
childhood abuse (might end up in prison)
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Genes --> life path (modified by environmental encounters)
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Interactionism: Molecular Genetics
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Proposed twin studies
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Emphasis on heritability
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Rich white people --> active in navy, politics and offspring in those families, also seem to be involved in
the same way (thought must be heritable)
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"Eminence" runs in families
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Developed notion of eugenics (sterilization of people who had inferior genes)
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Racist and sexist
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Sir Francis Galton (1869)
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Twin Studies
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Monozygotic (MZ) vs Dizygotic (DZ) twins
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% of variance due to genetics
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Heritability estimate
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Take identical or fraternal twin pairs, calculate correlation --> calculate % of variance
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Before we do that, we need to ask if DZ and MZ twins are treated similarly? Nature vs Nurture influence
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15-50% of variance in personality characteristics is genetically influenced (usually much less than half)
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Twin Study Methodology
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Misinterpreted as "weak should not survive"
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Survival of the fittest
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Immigration laws limited to northern and western Europe
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Biased testing
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Encourage reproduction among genetically "advantaged"
E.g. Australia (Stolen Generation)
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Lower reproduction among genetically "disadvantaged" (e.g. sterilization, abortions)
Preservation and purification of the gene pool by the "elite" (Eugenics)
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Nazi Germany
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Ethnic and/or religious cleansing
Genocide in the name of Eugenics
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Societies/cultures compete for survival
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Social Darwinism
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Public Policy Implications (Sir Francis Galton)
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PSYCH 1001 Page 2
