Chapter 12 The Humanistic Approach: Relevant Research

1. Chapter 12The Humanistic Approach:Relevant Research

2. Self-Disclosure

3. Self-disclosure and Sidney Jourard’s (1971) concept of The Transparent Self • Jourard argued that being “transparent” to others is a good thing. • He believed that open and full self-disclosure enables us to understand ourselves better, to be more self-accepting, and to become more self-actualized. • He believed that the causal arrow between self-disclosure and well-being runs both ways. • His ideas were very much in the idealistic tradition of the humanistic psychology movement of the 1970s, but his emphasis on being “transparent” to others seems somewhat naïve today.

4. Disclosure reciprocity • The “strangers on the train” phenomenon violates society’s most important implicit rule about self-disclosure. • This rule calls for reciprocity in the amount and intimacy of self-disclosure between strangers and acquaintances. • Jourard referred to this reciprocity or “matching” of self-disclosure as the dyadic effect. • Evidence for the dyadic effect has been found in laboratory studies such as the one by Davis (1976).

5. Progression of intimacy during initial dyadic conversations (Davis, 1976)

6. Disclosure reciprocity • When we reciprocate disclosure intimacy with another person, feelings of mutual attraction, trust, and liking typically develop. • These feelings can rapidly change to ones of anger and dislike, however, if the other person betrays our confidences. • The dyadic effect can be so powerful that we find ourselves disclosing more than we should (or than we want to) to someone who has just disclosed to us.

7. Self-disclosure among friends and romantic partners • In general, friends and romantic partners disclose more to each other than strangers and acquaintances do. • However, strangers and acquaintances are more likely to follow the reciprocity norm for disclosure than friends and romantic partners do. • Studies of recorded phone conversations reveal several differences between the conversations of intimates and those of non-intimates (use of familiar terms, laughing at similar points, coordinating speech, etc.) • In married couples, the amount of self-disclosure is a strong predictor of reported marital satisfaction. • However, it is not the case that people who disclose a lot (and indiscriminately) have more success at romance. Instead, such success is more likely when two people choose to intimately disclose only to each other.

8. Disclosing men and disclosing women • Researchers typically find that women disclose more intimately and to more people than men do. • In one study, a person who was described as being highly disclosing about personal problems was rated more favorably when the person was thought to be a woman rather than a man. • Members of both genders are liked more and are seen as better adjusted when they disclose within their respective societal gender roles. • These findings are consistent with the observation that American men have learned to be friendly but to avoid intimacy.

9. Disclosing traumatic experiences • James Pennebaker and his colleagues have studied the health implications of disclosing traumatic experiences. • In their studies, people are randomly assigned to disclose about something trivial or something traumatic that they have experienced. • Physiological measures are recorded before the self-disclosure to establish personal baselines. • The effect of the self-disclosure on the physiological measures and on subsequent measures of health status is then assessed.

10. Some findings from the study of disclosing traumatic experiences • The general finding is that keeping traumatic experiences bottled up inside (repressed) may be hazardous to our heath. • For example, Pennebaker and O’Heeron (1984) found that people whose spouse had died unexpectedly reported fewer health problems the more they had discussed this traumatic event with others. • Pennebaker and Bell (1986) found that SMU students who disclosed about traumatic (as opposed to trivial) experiences over four consecutive nights reported more stress and more negative moods immediately after the disclosures. • However, these same students were less likely to visit the campus health center during the next six months.

11. Mean number of visits to the health center as a function of experimental condition

12. Some findings from the study of disclosing traumatic experiences • Pennebaker, Colder, and Sharp (1990) found similar results when they asked SMU freshmen to write about the problems and emotions they experienced after leaving home and trying to adjust to college life. • Cameron and Nicholls (1998) extended these results to show that the same kind of self-disclosure also resulted in higher first-semester GPAs. • Lepore (1997) found that college students were less emotionally upset about taking the GRE after first expressing their concerns in writing. • On the other hand, researchers have found that people who typically conceal unpleasant information about themselves also experience more distress and a lower sense of well-being (Kahn & Hessling, 2001; Larsen & Chastain, 1990).

13. Why does disclosing traumatic experiences have these effects? • Actively inhibiting thoughts and feelings about traumatic experiences requires a great deal of psychological and physiological work. • The short- and long-term stress this creates takes its toll over time, in the form of stress-related illness and compromised immune system functioning. • People who watched a disturbing 14-minute presentation about the Holocaust and then had the opportunity to talk about their feelings and reactions for two minutes were less likely than control participants to have intrusive thoughts about it later (Lepore, Regan, & Jones, 2000). • Talking or writing about traumatic events may be an important step in working through the trauma, and this may be an important reason why psychotherapy works for many, if not all, clients.

14. Loneliness

16. Loneliness • Loneliness is a common experience. • 75% of freshmen students at a large university reported being lonely at the start of the school year. • More than 40% of these students described their feelings of loneliness as being moderate to severe. • Loneliness for some people might relate to their existential anxiety and their need for meaning in their lives. • For most people, however, loneliness reflects the perception that some of their most important needs (social needs, esteem needs, etc.) aren’t being met.

18. Loneliness • Loneliness is not the same as isolation. It is not the number of social contacts we have that determines our feelings of loneliness. Instead, it is our perception that our social contacts are less satisfying and less able to fulfill our needs than we desire. • Younger people tend to need more social contacts than older people to avoid feeling lonely. • Feelings of loneliness also vary by culture, and are less common in collectivist cultures, such as those of China and Japan, than in individualist cultures such as those of the United States or Western Europe. • Although there are life situations (moving to a new location, taking a new job) in which most people feel lonely, some people appear to be dispositionally lonely in that their feelings of loneliness are relatively stable over time.

19. Pathways between loneliness and health

20. The causes (or effects?) of loneliness • There is a cluster of personality traits that are characteristic of dispositionally lonely individuals: high scores on depression, social anxiety, self-consciousness, and sensitivity to rejection, and low scores on extraversion, self-esteem, assertiveness, and interpersonal trust. • There are characteristic negative expectations that lonely people bring to social situations: • In Christensen and Kashy’s (1998) study of discussions in groups of four strangers, dispositionally lonely people rated themselves less favorably than their discussion partners and expected that the other members of the group would also rate them poorly. • In fact, however, the lonely students were not evaluated less favorably by other group members and were actually perceived as being friendlier than average. • Their negative expectations may lead lonely people to selectively remember negative feedback, and to interpret ambiguous feedback as signs of rejection.

21. The causes of loneliness • There are also certain impaired social skills that are characteristic of lonely individuals. These specific social skill impairments often include: • Finding it difficult to initiate conversations with others • Expressing relatively little interest in their interaction partners (e.g., asking fewer questions and making fewer references to what the partner said) • Talking too much about themselves and introducing new topics unrelated to their partner’s interest • Adopting a “passive interpersonal role” • Selecting relatively non-intimate topics that can keep the interaction from progressing toward a greater level of mutual intimacy

22. Self-Esteem

23. Self-esteem • Whereas the term self-concept refers to your overall conception of yourself, the term self-esteem refers to your overall evaluation of yourself. • Self-esteem should also be distinguished from more temporary and situation-specific feelings of self-worth. • It is also important to distinguish between global and domain-specific self-esteem. • People differ in the importance they place on different domains of self-esteem.

24. Self-esteem and reactions to failure • In several laboratory studies, people were given false feedback about their performance on a task. Following an induced failure experience, low self-esteem people were more likely than high self-esteem people to give up on a second task when they thought they had performed poorly on the first task. • In studies of students’ reactions to their exam grades, students who had similar low scores on their first exam but who differed in their level of self-esteem, displayed similar reactions to those identified in the laboratory studies. The performance of the low self-esteem students declined significantly more than that of the high self-esteem students on their second exam.

25. Solvable versus unsolvable anagrams

26. Self-esteem and reactions to failure • In several laboratory studies, people were given false feedback about their performance on a task. Following an induced failure experience, low self-esteem people are more likely than high self-esteem people to give up on a second task when they think they have failed the first task. • In studies of students’ reactions to their exam grades, students who had similar low scores on their first exam but who differed in their level of self-esteem, displayed similar reactions to those identified in the laboratory studies. The performance of the low self-esteem students declined significantly more than that of the high self-esteem students on their second exam.

27. Performance on second test as a function of self-esteem and performance on first test

28. Explaining these different reactions to failure • One possible explanation is that people are more likely to accept feedback that is consistent with their self-concepts. • A second possible explanation is that negative feedback reminds low self-esteem people of the low evaluation they have of themselves. • A third possible explanation is that failure feedback leads high self-esteem people to shift their attention to dimensions on which they value themselves highly (see, for example, the results of the study by Brown & Smart, 1991).

29. Ratings of one’s social attributes following an apparent failure experience (Brown & Smart, 1991)

30. Self-enhancement and self-protection motives • Research findings reveal that high self-esteem people are motivated by a concern for self-enhancement, whereas low self-esteem people are motivated by a concern for self-protection. • For example, in a study in which people were led to believe they would compare favorably with other people on some tasks but not on other tasks, the low self-esteem people wanted to learn how they did only on the “safe” tasks. • In another study, the confidence of high self-esteem students stayed high up to exam day, whereas the confidence of low self-esteem students declined, as did their mood. • In other studies, low self-esteem people have been shown to use self-handicapping as a strategy for protecting their self-esteem.

31. Self-esteem stability • Self-esteem stability is assessed by having people complete the same self-esteem measure at several points in time and then computing how much these self-esteem scores vary in relation to their average score. • Researchers find that people with low self-esteem stability (high variability) are very concerned with outside evaluations. • They are also more likely to make decisions with the goal of pleasing others, rather than pleasing themselves. • A single instance of positive feedback can make them feel exceptionally good about themselves, but a single instance of negative feedback can make them feel exceptionally bad. • Because they are more vulnerable to the effects of negative feedback, they are more vulnerable to depression, as evidenced by Kernis’s (1998) study of reactions to daily hassles.

32. Reported depression as a function of self-esteem stability and the number of daily hassles experienced (Kernis, 1998)

33. Self-esteem and culture • In individualistic cultures, such as the those of the US, Canada, and Australia, self-esteem is based primarily on individual accomplishment. In contrast, in collectivist cultures, such as India and China, self-esteem is based primarily on belongingness and cooperation with others. • The “Lake Wobegon effect” is commonly found in studies conducted in the US, but is much less evident when the same studies are conducted in collectivist cultures. • In one study, the self-esteem scores of Asians was found to increase with their average amount of exposure to Western culture. • Concepts like self-esteem and happiness have different meanings in different cultures (being able to pursue your own goals in your own way versus fulfilling your role in society and meeting other people’s expectations).

34. Average self-esteem scores of Asian and Asian-Canadians as a function of exposure to Western culture

35. Solitude

37. Solitude has both negative and positive aspects • When viewed in terms of personality traits such as social anxiety, shyness, and loneliness, solitude is generally regarded as a negative experience. • However, when viewed in terms of other personality traits such as introversion and avoidant attachment, solitude may actually be a positive, or at least neutral, experience. • Maslow argued that self-actualized people were comfortable being alone, and often reporting enjoying and valuing this experience. • His perspective may help us understand why people spend an increasingly greater percentage of the day alone as they get older (Larson, 1990).

38. Percentage of day spent alone as a function of age (Larson, 1990)

39. Negative and positive aspects of time alone • Negative aspects: • In general, people rate time by themselves as less pleasant than time spent with others. • Emotional difficulties often worsen when people are alone. • People who are prone to depression may become depressed when alone. • Bulemics have a particularly negative reaction to being alone. • Positive aspects: • More people report wanting more time by themselves (31%) than less time by themselves (6%). • Being alone can be restorative: short breaks, longer periods to decompress and think through problems, and extended retreats from the world • Isolation is a key aspect of religious retreats and Buddhist re-integrative therapy.

40. Individual differences in preference for solitude • People exhibit relatively stable preferences in the extent to which they seek out and enjoy time by themselves. • Research with high school students suggests that moderate levels of solitude, rather than extremely low or high levels, result in the best adjustment and overall mood. • The findings of one study revealed that college students with a high preference for solitude are not hermits. They spend much of their free time with others and enjoy that time. • However, they are more likely to make time to be alone and to enjoy this time more than students with a low preference for solitude.

41. Seven positive aspects of solitude • Problem solving • Inner peace • Self-discovery • Creativity • Anonymity • Intimacy • Spirituality