Abraham Maslow was an influential American psychologist who founded the school thought known as humanistic psychology. His famous hierarchy of needs describes how people are motivated by increasingly complex needs. Maslow was inspired to develop his theory by his dissatisfaction…
Have you ever gone to a circus or other event and watched animals perform amazing tricks? Do you ever wonder exactly how the trainers managed to get these animals to do things that it would never do on its own?…
Self-actualization refers to the need to fulfill one’s total potential. It represents the need for growth that people constantly strive for as they reach toward fulfilling their highest level needs. Let’s take a closer look at how the need for self-actualization…
Have you ever noticed how horoscopes tend to be so general that their predictions could apply to almost anyone? In psychology, this is an example of the Forer effect (also known as the Barnum effect), which refers to the tendency…
According to humanist psychologist Carl Rogers, human beings have an innate drive to grow as individuals and to achieve their full potential. He referred to this desire as the actualizing tendency. Self-Actualization and the Actualizing Tendency Rogers believe that the…
While there are many different psychology specialties to choose from, people tend to focus attention on some of the bigger areas such as clinical and counseling psychology. Clinical psychology is the single largest subfield within psychology, but that certainly does…
In social psychology, the scarcity principle refers to the tendency to place a higher value on things that are perceived as rare while devaluing things that are seen as common or abundant. Learn more about how marketers take advantage of…
The projection bias is a type of cognitive bias that involves overestimating the degree to which other people agree with us. People tend to assume that others think, feel, believe, and behave much like they do. They assume that their…
“Effective leadership is finding a good fit between behaviour, context, and need.” – White & Hodgson, 2003 What is it exactly that makes a leader effective? According to one theory of leadership that became prominent during the 1970s and 80s,…
In psychology, perfectionism is a term used to describe a personality trait that involves constantly striving for perfection, maintaining high (sometimes excessive) standards, and refusing to accept anything less that flawlessness. The Psychology of Perfectionism In the Corsini Encyclopedia of…