AO3 - The Humanistic Approach

• A strength of humanistic psychology is that it takes a holistic approach to explaining behaviour. It takes into account how a person’s subjective experience would influence and explain their whole behaviour. Whereas reductionist approaches such as behaviourism reduce complex human behaviour to a consequence of stimulus response associations. Therefore, humanism is seen as a more valid way of understanding human behaviour in a real life context than the more reductionist alternative explanations.
• A strength of the humanistic explanation of human behaviour is that it has practical applications. This is because the principles of the theory, that individuals have the free will to choose their behaviour has revolutionised counselling techniques and has led to the treatment of Person-Centred Therapy. PCT can be used to treat abnormalities in the real world, such as depression by helping the individual to achieve congruence and self-actualise. Therefore, the humanistic explanation of human behaviour is an important part of applied psychology as it helps to treat people in the real world.
• A final strength of the humanistic approach is that it takes a more positive stance to explain human behaviour as the approach argues for free will. It is suggested that individuals can choose their behaviour and can neglect external and internal influences. For example, an individual’s choices in life affect whether they self-actualise. This is seen to be a more positive approach to understanding human nature, especially when compared to the more deterministic theories such as the biological approach that argues behaviour is controlled by internal influences such as genes.