How does humanistic psychology explain behaviour?
Humanistic psychology: free will, self-actualisation and Maslow's hierarchy of needs, focus on the self, congruence, the role of conditions of worth. The influence on counselling psychology.
Covers AQA 4.5 humanistic psychology: free will, Maslow's hierarchy of needs and self-actualisation, the self, congruence, conditions of worth and the influence on counselling.
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What this dot point is asking
AQA wants you to describe humanistic psychology: free will, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, self-actualisation, the self, congruence, conditions of worth and the influence on counselling. The recurring exam skill is to connect the abstract concepts (congruence, conditions of worth) to the practical therapy they produced, and to recognise that humanism is the one approach defined by free will and holism.
Free will, the hierarchy and self-actualisation
Humanistic psychology rejects the scientific, deterministic model of the other approaches and insists that people are active agents able to determine their own development. This is why it is sometimes called the "third force", set against behaviourism and psychoanalysis. Maslow's hierarchy of needs gives this a structure: motivation flows from the bottom up, so deficiency needs (physiological, then safety, then love and belonging, then esteem) must be largely met before a person can pursue the growth need of self-actualisation. Self-actualisation is the innate drive to become everything one is capable of becoming, and Maslow argued that few people reach it because environmental and social barriers (or unmet lower needs) get in the way. The hierarchy is useful in exams because it links humanism to motivation and to applications in education and the workplace, where meeting basic needs is a precondition for higher achievement.
The self, congruence and conditions of worth
Rogers placed the self at the centre of his account. For a person to grow (to self-actualise), their self-concept must be broadly congruent with their ideal self. When the gap is too large, the person experiences incongruence, which lowers self-worth and is associated with psychological distress. Rogers traced incongruence back to childhood: parents who offer only conditional positive regard impose conditions of worth, teaching the child that they are valued only when they behave in certain ways. These internalised conditions then warp the developing self-concept. The therapeutic solution follows directly from the theory. In client-centred (person-centred) therapy, the counsellor provides unconditional positive regard, empathy and genuineness, creating the conditions for the client to dissolve their conditions of worth and move towards congruence. This focus on subjective experience and personal growth had an enormous influence on modern counselling psychology, which is the approach's clearest real-world application and a strong evaluative point.
Exam-style practice questions
Practice questions written in the style of AQA exam questions on this dot point, with worked answer explainers. The year tag is the paper they imitate, not the source.
AQA 20184 marksOutline Maslow's hierarchy of needs.Show worked answer →
A 4-mark AO1 description item on Paper 2. Markers want the levels in the correct order with the key idea that lower needs are met first.
Maslow proposed a five-level hierarchy, usually drawn as a pyramid. From the bottom: physiological needs (food, water, sleep), safety and security, love and belonging, esteem, and at the top, self-actualisation. The central principle is that lower, more basic (deficiency) needs must be largely satisfied before a person is motivated by higher needs, and only when all lower needs are met can the person pursue self-actualisation, the realisation of their full potential.
A full-mark answer names all five levels in order and states the principle that needs are met from the bottom up, ending in self-actualisation. Naming the levels out of order or omitting the bottom-up principle loses marks.
AQA 20216 marksExplain how conditions of worth and congruence are used in the humanistic explanation of psychological health.Show worked answer →
A 6-mark item (about 4 AO1, 2 application or evaluation).
Rogers argued that psychological health depends on congruence, a close match between the self-concept (how a person sees themselves) and the ideal self (who they want to be). A large gap produces incongruence and is linked to low self-worth. Conditions of worth are the limits a parent or other places on their positive regard, of the form "I will value you only if...". A child who experiences conditional positive regard internalises these conditions, which constrains the self-concept and creates incongruence later in life.
The application is that Rogers' client-centred therapy provides unconditional positive regard to dissolve the conditions of worth, allowing the self-concept and ideal self to move back into congruence. Markers reward defining congruence, explaining how conditions of worth cause incongruence, and linking to therapy.
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Sources & how we know this
- AQA A-level Psychology (7182) specification — AQA (2015)