Carl Rogers' Theory of Personality

Since the study of personality began, personality theories have offered a wide variety of explanations for behavior and what constitutes the person. This essay offers a closer look at the humanistic personality theory of Carl Rogers. Rogers' theory of personality evolved out of his work as a clinical psychologist and developed as an offshoot of his theory of client-centered (later called person-centered) therapy (Rogers, 1959). He was first and foremost a therapist, with an abiding respect for the dignity of persons and an interest in persons as subjects rather than objects. Rogers approach to the study of persons is phenomenological and idiographic. His view of human behavior is that it is "exquisitely rational". Furthermore, in his opinion: "the core of man's nature is essentially positive" and he is a "trustworthy organism". These beliefs are reflected in his theory of personality. To examine this theory more closely, a summary of the key features follows, with subsequent exploration of Rogers' view of self, his view of the human condition and his rationale for improvement of this condition. A brief overall assessment will conclude the discussion. While Rogers' humanistic conception of personality has both strengths and weaknesses, it is a valuable contribution to the study of persons, recognizing agency, free will and the importance of the self.

Actualizing Tendency
Rogers (1959) maintains that the human "organism" has an underlying "actualizing tendency", which aims to develop all capacities in ways that maintain or enhance the organism and move it toward autonomy. This tendency is directional, constructive and present in all living things. The actualizing tendency can be suppressed but can never be destroyed without the destruction of the organism. The concept of the actualizing tendency is the only motive force in the theory. It encompasses all motivations; tension, need, or drive reductions; and creative as well as pleasureseeking tendencies. Only the organism as a whole has this tendency, parts of it (such as the self) do not. Maddi (1996) describes it as a "biological pressure to fulfill the genetic blueprint" .Each person thus has a fundamental mandate to fulfill their potential.

Self
The human organism's "phenomenal field" includes all experiences available at a given moment, both conscious and unconscious. As development occurs, a portion of this field becomes differentiated and this becomes the person's "self". The "self" is a central construct in this theory. It develops through interactions with others and involves awareness of being and functioning. The self-concept is "the organized set of characteristics that the individual perceives as peculiar to himself/herself". It is based largely on the social evaluations he/she has experienced.

Self-Actualizing Tendency
A distinctly psychological form of the actualizing tendency related to this "self" is the "self-actualizing tendency". It involves the actualization of that portion of experience symbolized in the self. It can be seen as a push to experience oneself in a way that is consistent with one's conscious view of what one is (Maddi, 1996). Connected to the development of the self-concept and self-actualization are secondary needs (assumed to likely be learned in childhood): the "need for positive regard from others" and "the need for positive self-regard", an internalized version of the previous. These lead to the favoring of behavior that is consistent with the person's self-concept.

Organismic Valuing and Conditions of Worth

When significant others in the person's world (usually parents) provide positive regard that is conditional, rather than unconditional, the person introjects the desired values, making them his/her own, and acquires "conditions of worth".The self-concept then becomes based on these standards of value rather than on organismic evaluation. These conditions of worth disturb the "organismic valuing process", which is a fluid, ongoing process whereby experiences are accurately symbolized and valued according to optimal enhancement of the organism and self. The need for positive self-regard leads to a selective perception of experience in terms of the conditions of worth that now exist. Those experiences in accordance with these conditions are perceived and symbolized accurately in awareness, while those that are not are distorted or denied into awareness. This leads to an "incongruence" between the self as perceived and the actual experience of the organism, resulting in possible confusion, tension, and maladaptive behavior (Rogers, 1959). Such estrangement is the common human condition. Experiences can be perceived as threatening without conscious awareness via "subception", a form of discrimination without awareness that can result in anxiety.

Fully Functioning Person and the Self

Theoretically, an individual may develop optimally and avoid the previously described outcomes if they experience only "unconditional positive regard" and no conditions of worth develop. The needs for positive regard from others and positive self-regard would match organismic evaluation and there would be congruence between self and experience, with full psychological adjustment as a result (Rogers, 1959). This ideal human condition is embodied in the "fully functioning person" who is open to experience able to live existentially, is trusting in his/her own organism, expresses feelings freely, acts independently, is creative and lives a richer life; "the good life" (Rogers, 1961). It should be noted that; "The good life is a process not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination. For the vast majority of persons who do not have an optimal childhood there is hope for change and development toward psychological maturity via therapy, in which the aim is to dissolve the conditions of worth, achieve a self-congruent with experience and restore the organismic valuing process.

Abraham Maslow Theory of Personality

One of the many interesting things Maslow noticed while he worked with monkeys early in his career, was that some needs take precedence over others. For example, if you are hungry and thirsty, you will tend to try to take care of the thirst first. After all, you can do without food for weeks, but you can only do without water for a couple of days! Thirst is a stronger need than hunger.

Maslow took this idea and created his now famous hierarchy of needs. Beyond the details of air, water, food, and sex, he laid out five broader layers: the physiological needs, the needs for safety and security, the needs for love and belonging, the needs for esteem, and the need to actualize the self, in that order. 1. The physiological needs. These include the needs we have for oxygen, water, protein, salt, sugar, calcium, and other minerals and vitamins. They also include the need to maintain a pH balance (getting too acidic or base will kill you) and temperature (98.6 or near to it). Also, theres the needs to be active, to rest, to sleep, to get rid of wastes (CO2, sweat, urine, and feces), to avoid pain, and to have sex. Quite a collection! Maslow believed, and research supports him, that these are in fact individual needs, and that a lack of, say, vitamin C, will lead to a very specific hunger for things which have in the past provided that vitamin C -- e.g. orange juice. I guess the cravings that some pregnant women have, and the way in which babies eat the most foul tasting baby food, support the idea anecdotally. 2. The safety and security needs. When the physiological needs are largely taken care of, this second layer of needs comes into play. You will become increasingly interested in finding safe circumstances, stability, protection. You might develop a need for structure, for order, some limits. Looking at it negatively, you become concerned, not with needs like hunger and thirst, but with your fears and anxieties. In the ordinary American adult, this set of needs manifest themselves in the form of our urges to have a home in a safe neighborhood, a little job security and a nest egg, a good retirement plan and a bit of insurance, and so on. 3. The love and belonging needs. When physiological needs and safety needs are, by and large, taken care of, a third layer starts to show up. You begin to feel the need for friends, a

sweetheart, children; affectionate relationships in general, even a sense of community. Looked at negatively, you become increasing susceptible to loneliness and social anxieties. In our day-to-day life, we exhibit these needs in our desires to marry, have a family, be a part of a community, a member of a church, a brother in the fraternity, a part of a gang or a bowling club. It is also a part of what we look for in a career. 4. The esteem needs. Next, we begin to look for a little self-esteem. Maslow noted two versions of esteem needs, a lower one and a higher one. The lower one is the need for the respect of others, the need for status, fame, glory, recognition, attention, reputation, appreciation, dignity, even dominance. The higher form involves the need for self-respect, including such feelings as confidence, competence, achievement, mastery, independence, and freedom.

Metaneeds and metapathologies

Truth, rather than dishonesty. Goodness, rather than evil. Beauty, not ugliness or vulgarity. Unity, wholeness, and transcendence of opposites, not arbitrariness or forced choices. Aliveness, not deadness or the mechanization of life. Uniqueness, not bland uniformity. Perfection and necessity, not sloppiness, inconsistency, or accident. Completion, rather than incompleteness. Justice and order, not injustice and lawlessness. Simplicity, not unnecessary complexity. Richness, not environmental impoverishment. Effortlessness, not strain. Playfulness, not grim, humorless, drudgery. Self-sufficiency, not dependency. Meaningfulness, rather than senselessness. At first glance, you might think that everyone obviously needs these. But think: If you are living through an economic depression or a war, or are living in a ghetto or in rural poverty, do you worry about these issues, or do you worry about getting enough to eat and a roof over your head? In fact, Maslow believes that much of the what is wrong with the world comes down to the fact

that very few people really are interested in these values -- not because they are bad people, but because they havent even had their basic needs taken care of! When a self-actualizer doesnt get these needs fulfilled, they respond with metapathologies -- a list of problems as long as the list of metaneeds! Let me summarize it by saying that, when forced to live without these values, the self-actualizer develops depression, despair, disgust,alienation, and a degree of cynicism. Maslow hoped that his efforts at describing the self-actualizing person would eventually lead to a periodic table of the kinds of qualities, problems, pathologies, and even solutions characteristic of higher levels of human potential. Over time, he devoted increasing attention, not to his own theory, but to humanistic psychology and the human potentials movement.

Ludwig Binswanger Theory of Personality (Existential Psychology) The most positive thing about existential psychology is its insistence on sticking as closely as possible to "the lived world." In phenomenology, we have come a long way towards a rigorous method for describing life as it is lived. Theory, statistics, reductionism, and experiments are put aside, at least for the moment. First, say the existentialists, we need to know what we are talking about! This makes existential psychology naturally applied: It moved effortlessly into the realms of diagnosis and psychotherapy; it is showing its face in the realm of education; and it may well someday move into industrial and organizational psychology. It has had much less success gaining respect as a research method. There are two psychology journals that showcase phenomenological research, and a few journals in education and nursing are open to it. But most of psychology rejects it, and rather strongly. It is simply considered unscientific. Since it involves neither hypotheses nor statistics, much less independent or independent variables, or control groups or random sampling, it isn't even acceptable, at most universities, for masters or doctoral theses. Difficulties The difficulties existentialism has had gaining respect is not entirely the fault of traditional psychology, however. It sometimes seems that existentialists glory in being unacceptable to, or at least misunderstood by, mainstream English-speaking psychologists. While it is true that new ideas are hard to express and require new words and new ways of using old ones, many of existential psychology's terms are unnecessarily obscure. Many are drawn from philosophical traditions, familiar, perhaps, to philosophers, but not to many psychologists. Others are in German or French, or are poorly translated. Some seem just plain whimsical, or pretentious. What is needed is a truly talented English-speaking existentialist writer. After all, the language of the ordinary experiences of ordinary people should be ordinary language! Rollo May and Viktor Frankl have made some significant efforts in that direction, but there is much more to be done. Existentialists also tend to be rather picky, even fighting among themselves about whether one or the other has the "true" understanding of Husserl or Heidegger or whomever. They can gain a great deal, especially in making their approach acceptable to the mainstream of psychology, by paying attention to Alfred Adler, Erich Fromm, Carl

Rogers and other theorists, researchers, and practitioners who may not be exactly existentialists, but often express themselves a lot better.

The biggest danger I feel existentialists create for themselves is in their tendency to place themselves in opposition to the mainstream. It is true that psychology has two broad "cultures," the hard-core experimentalists on the one hand, and the more humanistically inclined clinicians and other applied psychologists on the other. By denigrating the experimental culture, they antagonize half of psychology!

If I seem a bit hard on the existential psychologists, it is in part because I am one. It's a little like patriotism: The more you love your country, the more you are likely to worry over its faults. Nevertheless, I feel that existential psychology has a great deal to offer. In particular, it offers a solid philosophical base where Adlerians and Rogerians and neoFreudians and others besides existentialists might gather to further develop and refine their understanding of human life.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner (Operant Reinforcement Learning Paradigm)

B. F. Skinners entire system is based on operant conditioning. The organism is in the process of operating on the environment, which in ordinary terms means it is bouncing around its world, doing what it does. During this operating, the organism encounters a special kind of stimulus, called a reinforcing stimulus, or simply a reinforcer. This special stimulus has the effect of increasing the operant -- that is, the behavior occurring just before the reinforcer. This is operant conditioning: the behavior is followed by a consequence, and the nature of the consequence modifies the organisms tendency to repeat the behavior in the future. Skinner coined the term operant conditioning; it means roughly changing of behavior by the use of reinforcement which is given after the desired response. Skinner identified three types of responses or operant that can follow behavior. Neutral operants: responses from the environment that neither increase nor decrease the probability of a behavior being repeated. Reinforcers: Responses from the environment that increase the probability of a behavior being repeated. Reinforcers can be either positive or negative. Punishers: Response from the environment that decrease the likelihood of a behavior being repeated. Punishment weakens behavior.

Reinforcement (strengthens behavior)

Skinner showed how positive reinforcement worked by placing a hungry rat in his Skinner box. The box contained a lever in the side and as the rat moved about the box it would accidentally knock the lever. Immediately it did so a food pellet would drop into a container next to the lever. The rats quickly learned to go straight to the lever after a few times of being put in the box. The consequence of receiving food if they pressed the lever ensured that they would repeat the action again and again. Positive reinforcement strengthens a behavior by providing a consequence an individual finds rewarding. For example, if your teacher gives you 5 each time you complete your homework (i.e. a reward) you are more likely to repeat this behavior in the future, thus strengthening the behavior of completing your homework.

Punishment (weakens behavior)

Punishment is defined as the opposite of reinforcement since it is designed to weaken or eliminate a response rather than increase it. Like reinforcement, punishment can work either by directly applying an unpleasant stimulus like a shock after a response or by removing a potentially rewarding stimulus, for instance, deducting someones pocket money to punish undesirable behavior.

Note: It is not always easy to distinguish between punishment and negative reinforcement.

Operant Conditioning Summary

Psychology should be seen as a science, to be studied in a scientific manner. Skinner's study of behavior in rats was conducted under carefully controlled laboratory conditions. behaviorism is primarily concerned with observable behavior, as opposed to internal events like thinking and emotion. Note that Skinner did not say that the rats learnt to press a lever because they wanted food. He instead concentrated on describing the easily observed behavior that the rats acquired. The major influence on human behavior is learning from our environment. In the Skinner study, because food followed a particular behavior the rats learned to repeat that behavior, e.g. classical and operant conditioning. There is little difference between the learning that takes place in humans and that in other animals. Therefore research (e.g. classical conditioning) can be carried out on animals (Pavlovs dogs) as well as on humans (Little Albert). Skinner proposed that the way humans learn behavior is much the same as the way the rats learned to press a lever. So, if your layperson's idea of psychology has always been of people in laboratories wearing white coats and watching hapless rats try to negotiate mazes in order to get to their dinner, then you are probably thinking of behavioral psychology.

Behaviorism and its offshoots tend to be among the most scientific of the psychological perspectives. The emphasis of behavioral psychology is on how we learn to behave in certain ways. We are all constantly learning new behaviors and how to modify our existing behavior. Behavioral psychology is the psychological approach that focuses on how this learning takes place.

Albert Bandura (Social Learning Theory) Bandura has conducted many studies involving observational learning, or modeling. The modeling process includes several steps: 1) Attention- In order for an individual to learn anything, he or she must pay attention to the features of the modeled behavior. Many factors contribute to the amount of attention one pays to the modeled activities, such as the characteristics of both the observer and the person being observed and competing stimuli. 2) Retention- If an individual is to be influenced by observing behaviors he or she needs to remember the activities that were modeled at one time or another. Imagery and language aid in this process of retaining information. Humans store the behaviors they observe in the form of mental images or verbal descriptions, and are then able to recall the image or description later to reproduce the activity with their own behavior. 3) Reproduction- Reproduction involves converting symbolic representations into appropriate actions. Behavioral reproduction is accomplished by organizing one's own responses in accordance with the modeled pattern. A person's ability to reproduce a behavior improves with practice. 4) Motivation- To imitate a behavior, the person must have some motivating factor behind it, such as incentives that a person envisions. These imagined incentives act as reinforcers. Negative reinforcers discourage the continuation of the modeled activity.

Albert Bandura combines both behavioral and cognitive philosophies to form this theory of modeling, or observational learning. He sees the human personality as an interaction between the environment and a person's psychological processes. Bandura says that humans are able to control their behavior through a process known as self regulation. This process involves three steps: 1) Self observation- Humans look at themselves and their behavior and keep track of their actions. 2) Judgment- Humans compare these observations with standards. These standards can be rules set by society, or standards that the individual sets for him or herself. 3) Self response- If, after judging himself or herself, the person does well in comparison with the set standards, he or she will give him or her- self a rewarding self-response. If the person does poorly he or she then administers a punishing self-response to him or herself. Self regulation has been incorporated into self control therapy which has been very successful in dealing with problems such as smoking.

In one particular experiment Bandura showed a video to children in which an adult beat up on a doll, called it names, etc. Bandura divided the children into three groups, and each group watched a video with a different ending. The first video showed the adult being rewarded for his behavior, the second video showed the adult being punished for his behavior, and the third video showed no consequences for the behavior. He then studied the differences between how male children and female children reacted to this video in regard to whether they imitated the observed behavior or not. The results are shown to the left. This graph represents the number of imitative responses by males and females after observing one of the three different videos. The results show that males in all cases imitated the viewed behavior more so than females. The results also show that the children who watched the video in which the person was rewarded for his actions duplicated the behaviors more so than when the person was punished or did not receive either a punishment or reward. This was consistent in both male and female children, supporting Bandura's argument that people learn from observing others.

John Dollard (Learning Theory) Theory in Practice Using what he found through his work, Dollard was able to develop methods that could be used for improving clinical practice. Overall, Dollard believed in the basic tenets of psychotherapy. Even (1998) .notes that in practicing psychotherapy, Dollard did not believe that physical removal of painful stimulus would provide relief for the patient. As such Dollard believed that: "that psychotherapy must enable patients to reduce their irrational fears, abandon the harmful response of repression, and start applying their higher mental processes to their emotional problems". Even goes on to note that Dollard developed a host of therapeutic practices that he believed were best suited to meeting the needs of the client. For instance, Dollard argued that clients were more likely to respond to a therapist that was thorough and "takes his time." In addition, Dollard supported the use of free association as a means to both support the client and create an atmosphere in which the individual's overall needs could be met. Finally, Ewen notes that Dollard believed that the past history of the patient needed to be explored so that the current issues impacting the client's development could be better understood. Ewen notes that Dollard argued: "Without understanding the past, the future cannot be changed". Conclusion Overall, Dollard's work has provided theorists with notable insights into human behavior and development. Ewen notes that because of Dollard's work, the gap between behaviorism and psychoanalysis become smaller, as theorists began to recognize where these two fields of inquiry could potentially overlap. Further, Dollard's development of social learning theory and the frustration-aggression hypothesis were widely expanded by other theorists working in the field. As such, John Dollard made many notable contributions to both the psychology and counseling professions. Neal E. Miller (Learning Theory) Neal E. Miller (August 3, 1909 March 23, 2002) was an American psychologist, instrumental in the development of biofeedback. His productive career involved important studies of a variety of psychological issues. Together with John Dollard, he combined psychoanalytical theory with behaviorism, trying to scientifically explain Freudian ideas of inner drives that motivate and influence human behavior. Miller was one of Clark L. Hull's students. His early work (Dollard and Miller 1950), attempted to apply a Hullian analysis to behavioral issues derived from psychoanalytic literature. Dollard and Miller's research on frustration and psychological conflict has become classic, lending direct support to behavior modification techniques of altering an individual's behaviors and reactions to stimuli through positive and negative reinforcement such that adaptive behavior is

increased and maladaptive behavior extinguished. Turning to physiological substrates, Neal Miller made significant findings concerning the relationship between reinforcement mechanisms and the control of autonomic behavior, pioneering the field of biofeedback which today is used successfully to treat a variety of medical problems. During his early career Miller focused on research of Freudian psychoanalytical theories and the combination of psychoanalysis and behaviorism. He wanted to translate psychological analytic concepts into behavioral terms that would be more easily understood and that would be based in scientific facts. He particularly focused on studying unconscious drives, which according to Freud greatly influenced human behavior. Along with John Dollard, Miller combined Freuds ideas with learning theory. The two scientists recognized Freud's concept of anxiety and fear as secondary drives (in contrast to primary drives which are directly related to survival). As a secondary drive fear is learned, claimed Miller, it could be modified through instrumental conditioning. Miller and Dollard coined the Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis. In its original form it stated that frustration always causes aggression and aggression is always a consequence of frustration. However it was modified later into: frustration can lead to aggression, and aggression can be caused by things other than frustration. Miller proposed psychotherapy for aggression, frustration, or anxiety, in which people would learn more adaptive behaviors and unlearn maladaptive behaviors. Teaching relaxation techniques, coping skills, or effective discrimination of cues would be part of such therapy. Biofeedback Miller was among the first scientists who conducted research on rats in which he stimulated rats' brains by using electricity or chemicals to produce such sensations as hunger or anxiety. After his work on anxiety, Miller started to investigate other autonomic behaviors, trying to find out if they could also be modified through instrumental conditioning. He investigated hunger and thirst, using behavioral methodologies and neurophysiological techniques. He concluded that the autonomic nervous system could be as susceptible to classical conditioning as the voluntary nervous system. This led to his work on biofeedback. In the 1950s and 1960s, as Miller started to work on his theories of biofeedback, he also started to face significant criticism in academic community. He claimed that people could directly influence their bodily mechanisms, such as blood pressure, and that everybody could be taught to do so. The idea was so radical and novel that it bordered on scientific heresy. In his obituary in the New York Times, a 1997 statement by James S. Gordon, founder of the Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington, was quoted to remind readers of the atmosphere surrounding Millers work:

Julian Rotter (Expectancy Reinforcement Value Model) Julian Rotter was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1916. As a high school student, he became familiar with some of the writings of Freud and Adler, but he majored in chemistry rather than psychology at Brooklyn College. In 1941, he received a PhD in clinical psychology from Indiana University. After World War II, he took a position at Ohio State, where one of his students was Walter Mischel. In 1963, he moved to the University of Connecticut and has remained there since retirement. Introduction to Rotters Social Learning Theory Rotters interactionist theory is based on five basic hypotheses. First, it assumes that humans interact with their meaningful environments: that is, human behavior stems from the interaction of environmental and personal factors (Rotter). Second, human personality is learned, which suggests it can be changed or modified as long as people are capable of learning. Third, personality has a basic unity, suggesting that personality has some basic stability. Fourth, motivation is goal directed, and fifth, people are capable of anticipating events, and thus they are capable of changing their environments and their personalities. Predicting Specific Behaviors Rotter suggested four variables that must be analyzed in order to make accurate predictions in any specific situation. These variables are behavior potential, expectancy, reinforcement value, and the psychological situation. Behavior Potential Behavior potential is the possibility that a particular response will occur at a given time and place in relation to its likely reinforcement. Expectancy Peoples expectancy in any given situation is their confidence that a particular reinforcement will follow a specific behavior in a specific situation or situations. Expectancies can be either general or specific, and the overall likelihood of success is a function of both generalized and specific expectancies. Reinforcement Value Reinforcement value is a persons preference for any particular reinforcement over other reinforcements if all are equally likely to occur. Internal reinforcement is the individuals perception of an event, whereas external reinforcement refers to societys evaluation of an event. Reinforcement-reinforcement sequences suggest that the value of an event is a function of ones expectation that a particular reinforcement will lead to future reinforcements.

Psychological Situation The psychological situation is that part of the external and internal world to which a person is responding. Behavior is a function of the interaction of people with their meaningful environment. Basic Prediction Formula Hypothetically, in any specific situation, behavior can be predicted by the basic prediction formula, which states that the potential for a behavior to occur in a particular situation in relation to a given reinforcement is a function of peoples expectancy that their behavior will be followed by that reinforcement in that situation. Predicting General Behaviors The basic prediction is too specific to give clues about how a person will generally behave. Generalized Expectancies To make more general predictions of behavior, one must know peoples generalized expectancies, or their expectations based on similar past experiences that a given behavior will be reinforced. Generalized expectancies include peoples needs, that is, behaviors that move them toward a goal. Needs Needs refer to functionally related categories of behaviors. Rotter listed six broad categories of needs, with each need being related to behaviors that lead to the same or similar reinforcements: (1) recognition-status refers to the need to excel, to achieve, and to have others recognize ones worth; (2) dominance is the need to control the behavior of others, to be in charge, or to gain power over others; (3) independence is the need to be free from the domination of others; (4) protection-dependence is the need to have others take care of us and to protect us from harm; (5) love and affection are needs to be warmly accepted by others and to be held in friendly regard; and (6) physical comfort includes those behaviors aimed at securing food, good health, and physical security. Three need components are: (1) need potential, or the possible occurrences of a set of functionally related behaviors directed toward the satisfaction of similar goals; (2) freedom of movement, or a persons overall expectation of being reinforced for performing those behaviors that are directed toward satisfying some general need; and (3) need value, or the extent to which people prefer one set of reinforcements to another. Need components are analogous to the more specific concepts of behavior potential, expectancy, and reinforcement value.

General Prediction Formula The general prediction formula states that need potential is a function of freedom of movement and need value. Rotters two most famous scales for measuring generalized expectancies are the Internal-External Control Scale and the Interpersonal Trust Scale. Internal and External Control of Reinforcement The Internal-External Control Scale (popularly called locus of control scale) attempts to measure the degree to which people perceive a causal relationship between their own efforts and environmental consequences. Interpersonal Trust Scale The Interpersonal Trust Scale measures the extent to which a person expects the word or promise of another person to be true. Maladaptive Behavior Rotter defined maladaptive behavior as any persistent behavior that fails to move a person closer to a desired goal. It is usually the result of unrealistically high goals in combination with low ability to achieve them. Psychotherapy In general, the goal of Rotters therapy is to achieve harmony between a clients freedom of movement and need value. The therapist is actively involved in trying to (1) change the clients goals and (2) eliminate the clients low expectancies for success. Changing Goals Maladaptive behaviors follow from three categories of inappropriate goals: (1) conflict between goals, (2) destructive goals, and (3) unrealistically lofty goals. Eliminating Low Expectancies In helping clients change low expectancies of success, Rotter uses a variety of approaches, including reinforcing positive behaviors, ignoring inappropriate behaviors, giving advice, modeling appropriate behaviors, and pointing out the long-range consequences of both positive and negative behaviors.