Question

1. a) Why are Bühler, Kohlberg, Erikson, and Gilligan's approaches to development regarded as part of humanistic psychology (what makes them 'humanistic')?

b) How did Martin Seligman investigate the learned helplessness phenomenon in a two-factor avoidance conditioning experiment?

Please answer each part of the question by your thinking rather than copying the whole from the material you already post. Thus, make the answer by your own knowledge if you have a faculty of psychology to answer this question by their own thinking.

Answer 1

1. Humanistic perspective of psychology is contingent upon the working of human behavior in all of its part, that is in holistic form. It is of the belief that humans, as sentient entities, are capable of guiding their volition and have the capacity of controlling their actions (this was in response to the perspective of psychodynamic, as it stated that humans are driven by their unconscious desires and needs, which they aren't aware of). In that sense, Buhler, Gilligan, Erikson, and Kohlberg all are Humanistic psychologists as all of their theories are based on the conscious decisions making prowess of humans and their control on their thought and consequent action. Kohlberg and Gilligan speak about the moralistic behavior, and how people make decisions in such contexts. Buhler and Erikson speaks about human development and its direction and the holistic development of individuals.

2. The two factors avoidance conditioning experiment can be described as that which employs the use of conditioning (both operant and classical) in two ways. In context of Martins learned helplessness experiment the first one being adding a reinforcer (pulling of lever ) to avoid the negative effect (shock). And in the other case expectation or conditioned response (no effort to escape the shock, as taught by conditions - as the digs were not given a way to escape the shock in one group, hence learned helplessness and no effort) to the unconditioned stimulus (shock).