Motivation and emotion/Tutorials/Growth psychology

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Tutorial 06: Growth psychology

Resource type: this resource contains a tutorial or tutorial notes.

This is the sixth and final tutorial for the Motivation and emotion unit of study.

Growth psychology assumptions

To what extent do you agree with the underlying assumptions of growth psychology? Not sure? Consider these questions (do a class line-up (as per the first tutorial for each and discuss):

  1. In general, do you think that evil:
    • resides in human nature?
    • is a product of a sick culture?
  2. If a child expresses a somewhat socially undesirable temperament, would you recommend raising the child:
    • to conform to the more socially-desirable temperament?
    • in his or her natural temperament?
  3. How does learning best occur? Does learning follows from:
    • teaching?
    • having one’s interests identified, facilitated, and supported?
  4. Does psychological therapy work best by:
    • fixing what is broken?
    • nurturing what is best?
  5. Which answers correspond to growth psychology paradigms? (the 2nd answer in each case)
  6. What other assumptions are made by humanistic psychology, growth motivation, and positive psychology?

Self-actualisation

  1. Self-actualising is the process of fulfilling your potential.
  2. Complete this Self-evaluation of self-actualisation
  3. Review your answers and highlight:
    1. What are you doing best that brings you towards self-actualisation?
    2. What could you do more of towards self-actualisation?
    3. Who does or could serve as an inspiration for you, towards self-actualisation? (Bearing in mind that Maslow claimed that only 1% of people self-actualise).
  4. Review your self-ratings in terms of what you see as your strengths and weaknesses in moving towards being a self-actualising person.
  5. What are the strongest aspects of your self-actualising? What is it that allows this to be so strong for you?
  6. What are the weakest aspects which may be holding you back from self-actualising? What could you do change/improve in this area?

Happiness

Ask the class to identify and explain the components of these two conceptions of happiness:

  1. Martin Seligman suggests three components of 'happiness':
    1. The pleasant life: Dealing with the past, optimism about the future, happiness in the present (hedonic pleasure and the skills to amplify pleasure)
    2. The good life: Engagement (flow, absorption)
    3. The meaningful life (higher purpose)
  2. Dan Gilbert suggestions two components of 'happiness' in this video which explores the (somewhat surprising) ingredients for happiness according to psychology studies (Why are we happy? (Dan Gilbert, 2004, 21:20, TED talk)):
    1. Natural happiness
    2. Synthetic happiness

Meaning and coherence

  1. Two key psychological theorists about the importance of meaning, historically have been:
    1. Viktor Frankl, sense of meaning and logotherapy. Frankl survived a German concentration camp during WWII and observed that those with a reason to live beyond the camp were more likely to survive.
    2. Aaron Antonovsky, salutogenesis (the opposite of pathogensis) and sense of coherence (SOC). Antonovsky investigated the long-term health impacts for German concentration camp survivors. Whilst there considerable health issues, he was struck that some survivors were relatively healthy and investigated further. Those who emerged relatively health appeared to have, what he termed, a sense of coherence.
  2. According to Antonovksy, SOC is “The extent to which one has a pervasive, enduring though dynamic, feeling of confidence that one’s environment is predictable and that things will work out as well as can reasonably be expected.” It has three components:
    1. A sense of comprehensibility:
      1. Do you feel that you can understand things, that things make sense and are not confusing?
      2. Do you feel that things are predictable or can be expected? In other words, do you feel like you know what’s going to happen next, or that you know what’s coming?
    2. A sense of manageability:
      1. Do you feel that things are manageable or within your control, that things can be handled or taken care of?
      2. Do you feel you have the skills or ability, the support, the help, or the resources necessary to take care of things?
    3. A sense of meaningfulness:
      1. Do you feel that things are interesting or fascinating, a source of pleasure or satisfaction?
      2. Do you feel that things are really worth it, that there is good reason or purpose to care about what happens?
  3. Complete the SOC13 and compare with UC student item means (SOC29, Abou-Abou-Hamdan, 2008, N = 355):
Scale M SD Skew Kurtosis
Overall SOC 4.19 0.78 -0.36 0.29
Comprehensibility 3.96 0.90 -0.02 -0.19
Manageability 4.71 0.94 -0.38 -0.10
Meaningfulness 5.01 1.06 -0.62 0.22

Note that in scoring the SOC-13, reverse the scoring for Items 1, 2, 3, 7, 10, then add the items for each factor and work out the means.

Pearls of wisdom - Nuggets of truth

This exercise seeks to crystallise and share "pearls of wisdom" or "nuggets of truth" or "take-home messages" arising from engagement with Motivation and emotion content and/or learning activities.

What pearl(s) of wisdom or nuggets of truth have occurred to you through this unit?

  1. Write each pearl of wisdom on a separate post-it note (generate as many as possible) - place these nuggets upside down in a collective pile. Sources may include:
    1. What was the key message of the book chapter you worked on?
    2. What has been the single most valuable theoretical or practical insight you gained from the unit?
  2. Take turns to pick up a random nugget, read it out to the class, explain what you think the author means, then then select a location for the nugget on the wall (organise around themes)
  3. Based on these nuggets of truth, what meta-themes have emerged from this unit?

See also Interventionsy and conclusion (Final lecture).

See also

References

    Antonovsky A. (1979). Health, stress and coping. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

    Antonovsky A. (1987). Unraveling the mystery of health: How people manage stress and stay well. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

    Antonovsky A. (1993). The structure and properties of the sense of coherence scale. Social Science & Medicine, 36, 725-733.

    Fredrickson, B. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56, 218-226.

    Peterson, C. (2006). What is positive psychology? In A primer in positive psychology (pp. 3-24).

    Seligman, M. E. P., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology: An introduction. American Psychologist, 55, 5-14.

    Seligman, M. E. P., Rashid, T., & Parks, A. C. (2006). Positive psychotherapy. American Psychologist, 61, 774-788.

    External links

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