Humanistic Theory, Identity and Free Will
The Humanistic Theory of Self
Carl Rogers (1951) argued that every person has one basic drive: self-actualisation. This idea is at the heart of the humanistic theory of self. Rogers believed people are naturally good and will grow towards their potential if they receive the right kind of care from others, especially parents.
Rogers said children receive two kinds of care. Unconditional positive regard means a parent loves and accepts a child no matter what they do. Conditional positive regard means love is only given when the child meets certain standards, such as good grades or good behaviour.
When love is conditional, children develop conditions of worth. They begin to value only the parts of themselves that win approval, creating a gap between their real self and ideal self. Rogers called this gap incongruence. When self-image and ideal self match closely, this is called congruence, and Rogers believed this leads to better mental health.
A strength of Rogers’s theory is that it takes a positive, holistic view of people and has influenced person-centred counselling, which is still used to treat low self-esteem today. A weakness is that concepts such as self-actualisation and congruence are abstract and hard to measure objectively, which makes the theory difficult to test scientifically.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Abraham Maslow (1943) extended humanistic theory with his hierarchy of needs. He arranged human needs into five levels, shaped like a pyramid. The lower, more basic needs must be satisfied before a person can move up and focus on the needs above them.
From the bottom of the pyramid: physiological needs (food, water, sleep), safety needs (shelter, security), love and belonging (friendship, family, intimacy), esteem needs (achievement, respect, confidence), and self-actualisation at the very top (fulfilling one’s full potential). Maslow argued a person struggles to focus on self-actualisation while they are hungry or unsafe.
A strength of Maslow’s hierarchy is that it explains why people struggling with basic needs, such as poverty or unsafe housing, may find personal growth harder to pursue. A weakness is that not everyone follows the levels in this order — some people chase creative or spiritual goals even when basic needs are unmet, which the theory struggles to explain.
Identity and Free Will
Erik Erikson (1959) proposed that identity develops across a person’s entire life, not just childhood. He described eight stages, each built around a conflict that must be resolved before moving to the next stage. Successfully resolving each conflict builds a stronger, more stable identity.
Erikson’s eight stages run from infancy to old age, each centred on a conflict: trust vs mistrust (infancy), autonomy vs shame (early childhood), initiative vs guilt (play age), industry vs inferiority (school age), identity vs role confusion (adolescence), intimacy vs isolation (young adulthood), generativity vs stagnation (middle adulthood), and integrity vs despair (old age). A weakness of this theory is that it is difficult to test scientifically, because the stages describe internal psychological experiences rather than easily observable behaviour.
Roy Baumeister (2008) explored what happens when people stop believing in free will and start believing in determinism instead. He found that weakening a person’s belief in free will can reduce their sense of responsibility for their own actions, which can increase selfish and dishonest behaviour.
Baumeister argued this matters for identity because a strong sense of free will supports self-control and moral behaviour. If people believe their actions are entirely determined by outside forces, they may feel less accountable, which can weaken self-regulation and change how they see their own identity.
The Study: Vohs and Schooler (2008)
Vohs and Schooler (2008) tested Baumeister’s idea directly. Participants read one of two passages: one argued that behaviour is determined and free will is an illusion, while the other was a neutral passage that did not mention free will. Participants then completed a maths test on a computer that gave them the opportunity to cheat by not switching off a screen that revealed the answers.
Participants who read the deterministic passage cheated more than participants who read the neutral passage. Vohs and Schooler concluded that encouraging belief in determinism increases dishonest behaviour, supporting the idea that belief in free will helps people behave morally.
A strength of this study is that it used a controlled laboratory procedure, so the passage read was the only variable that differed between groups, giving it good internal validity. A weakness is that the sample was likely made up of university students completing a short maths task, which limits generalisability to real-world moral decisions such as crime or long-term honesty.