Humanistic Approach

• A strength of the humanistic approach is that it is anti-reductionist.
• For example, unlike Freud's concept of the personality having three parts or biological psychologists reducing behaviour to its basic physiological processes, humanistic psychologists reject any attempt to break up behaviour and experience into smaller components.
• They advocate holism by considering the whole person (relationships, past, present and future) to thoroughly understand subjective experience.
• This strengthens both the validity and support for the humanistic approach in explaining human behaviour as it considers meaningful human behaviour within its real-life context.
• A limitation of the humanistic approach is that it includes a number of vague ideas that are abstract and difficult to test.
• For example, concepts such as self-actualisation and congruence may be useful therapeutic tools but would prove problematic to assess under experimental conditions.
• Despite Rogers' attempt to introduce more rigour by developing an objective measure of progress in therapy (Q-sort), the approach is short on empirical evidence to support its claims.
• This weakens both the reliability and support for the humanistic approach in explaining human behaviour as it describes as 'anti-scientific' and therefore lacks empirical evidence.
• Another limitation of the humanistic approach is that it may be guilty of a Western cultural bias.
• For example, many of the ideas central to humanistic psychology, such as personal growth, would be more readily associated with individualistic cultures in the Western world (e.g. USA).
• Whereas collectivist cultures (e.g. India), that emphasise the needs of the group and interdependence, may not identify so easily with the ideals and values of humanistic psychology.
• This weakens both the population validity and support for the humanistic approach in explaining human behaviour given that it's not considered a universal theory as it is a product of the cultural context within which it was developed.