CARL ROGERS- THE CHOSEN THEORIST

Carl Rogers- The chosen Theorist

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Carl Rogers- The chosen Theorist

Most people use the term "personality" to identify the most obvious characteristic of a person, or to refer to a person's social skills. Personality theories try to explain why we think and what we think. Albert Bandura's Social-Learning Theory, Walter Mischel's Cognitive-Affective Theory and Carl Roger's Humanistic Personality Theory suggest reasons that try to explain our overall behavior. These personality theories help explain some psychological disorders as well as psychotherapies and other treatments. (Demetriou, 1998).

The social learning theory of Bandura emphasizes the importance of observing and modeling the behaviors, attitudes and emotional reactions of others. One of his primary components is simply learning through observation. By observing models (any person) one can perform a response for which he or she is rewarded, and learning will occur. The most common examples of social learning situation are television commercials. Commercials suggest that drinking a certain beverage will make us popular and win the admiration of attractive people. One models the behavior shown in the commercial and buys the product being advertised. Bandura also suggests that environment causes behavior, true; but behavior causes environment as well. He labels this concept reciprocal determinism. The world and a person's behavior cause each other. Bandura also stresses the effect of an individual's perceived abilities on his or her behavior, self-efficacy. An individual can believe that a certain course of action will produce certain outcomes but feel unsure as to his own ability to perform those actions. The less confident he is in his abilities, the less likely he is to engage in the behavior. Another personality theorist, Walter Mischel developed the Cognitive-Affective Personality Theory. Mischel states that "trait theories do not predict behavior well and people do not behave consistently across diverse situations". Mischel added the notion of five cognitive-affective units; (1) encoding, how one categorizes information about self, others and the environment, (2) expectations and beliefs, what one expects will happen with a situation, also with own behavior, (3) affects, feelings, emotions, and affective responses (including physiological reactions), (4) goals and values, individual goals and values (short-term and life-long), (5) competencies and self-regulatory plans, perceived abilities, plans and strategies for changing one's behavior and internal states. Mischel emphasizes that an individual's behavior is determined by the specific situation in which he or she finds herself.

A humanistic personality theorist, Carl Rogers assumes that we each possess an inherited urge or need for self-actualization. This is thought to be a tendency to develop and utilize all of our potential. Self-actualization is a single goal toward which we all strive. A term in Roger's concept is termed unconditional positive regard. It causes us to seek acceptance, warmth and love from the valued people in our life. If we don't get it, we are not advancing. Humans need positive regard not from only those around it, but also from the self. One of the most social ...