Humanistic Perspective

Human behavior has always being an interesting field of study to many psychologists. Human behavior is very dynamic and unique because people and culture differ to a large extent. Due to the diversity of human behavior and mental processes, different theories and explanations have been used to describe human behavior and to explain why people do the things they do. This paper examines three out of the seven modern perspectives that have been used to explain human behavior and mental processes namely cognitive, Sociocultural and Humanistic.

Cognitive Perspective:

This aspect of Psychology deals with the human ability to think, solve problems, store and retrieve information. Cognitive psychology became an interesting field of study due to dissatisfaction

Take for example two cousins that were raised in two different social cultural environments. The one raised in the United States holds to a different social-cultural belief from the one raised in Western Africa. Although their parents have the same social-cultural values, their children have opposite values because they were raised in different cultures. From my observation of student in Midland college, I have seen that students that come from cultures that place a high value on education, are more concerned about their grades and they study harder than students whose cultural do not place a high value on

Humanistic psychology would encourage the depressed person to seek out interesting and fun things to do that will make them feel happy and fulfilled. This could involve some form of therapy and focusing on the positive things in life. Another could be an individual who is bored with his job. The humanistic perspective would encourage such an individual to be creative and focus on the positive aspect of the type of employment and the resulting accomplishment. Rather than wait for others to effect a change, each individual is responsible for his or her personal happiness in life. According to humanistic psychology, each of us has free will and that freedom to choose makes us responsible for our own happiness.