This week your main job is to complete the Personality packet, which is the first written assignment in the course. It is due on Sunday at 11:55 PM so make sure to get it submitted through Canvas before that time. If you have not submitted assignments through Canvas before then you should not wait until the last few minutes. Leave yourself a little time cushion so that you don’t miss the deadline.
Remember that the three big written assignments you will do this semester together count for a lot of your course average, so it is very important to read the directions for the assignment carefully and complete all parts so that you can earn full credit for your work. Students who follow the directions fully almost always receive full credit for the assignment, but students who do not read them closely often end up losing some credit by not completing all the requirements.
The assignment has two parts which you should complete on the same word document or pdf file, which you will then attach as a file and submit it on the last page of this module here on our Canvas site. In the first part you will simply take the personality tests linked on the next module page and then answer the questions about your score that are found in the assignment directions (which are linked below). The second part of the assignment is more in-depth. You will need to read the section in the textbook on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (focusing especially on his concept of self-actualization), then watch the video clips that I provide on the next module page that further explain self-actualization, and finally follow the directions closely to interview two individuals discussing the questions I provided in the assignment directions.
The most common question I get about this assignment is whether it should be in paragraph form or not. The first part should be answered like a worksheet, just numbering 1-5 and putting your answers to each of those questions. Then in the 2nd part as you will see in the directions you will switch to essay form and write a 1-2 page paper where you summarize the interviews and your thoughts about them. If you read the directions carefully it should all make sense.
To get started read the directions linked below to get a full understanding of what the project entails. Then you can begin working on part one and part two. Remember to make sure to watch the video clips that I have linked on the next module page before doing your interviews in part two so that you fully understand the theory that the interview is supposed to be about.
EXTRA RESOURCES ON SELF-ACTUALIZATION
Here are 2 Extra Resources on Humanism and Self-Actualization for those who are interested. These are not required for students, but feel free to check them out if you want to learn more about Maslow’s ideas.
The first one is a link to a recent conversation put out by Sam Harris, a neuroscientist who explores philosophical topics with a range of diverse guests on his podcast, and Scott Kaufman, a humanistic psychologist who currently does research and works in the field. The link gives you access to roughly the first hour of their conversation. In their talk they explore concepts such as :
intelligence and creativity, wisdom and transcendence, the history of humanistic psychology, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the connection between well-being and ethics, self-esteem, psychedelics and meditation, peak and plateau experiences, mortality salience, the pre-trans fallacy, fear of uncertainty, work and meaning, intrinsic vs. extrinsic rewards, pathological altruism, intimacy vs. belonging, two aspects of self-transcendence, and other topics.
https://samharris.org/podcasts/209-a-good-life/Links to an external site.
Below is a different link to Maslow’s well known book where he lays out his ideas about peak experiences and self-actualization. This is not required reading for this course (it is more something you would encounter in graduate school if you were studying this branch of psychology), but I wanted to post the link just for any students who wanted to explore his writing a bit. When this book came out his research into these aspects of human nature was a radical shift away from psychology’s focus on the negative aspects of human nature. After Maslow retired and American culture shifted it once again became uncommon for psychologists to research these type of concepts, but in the last few decades momentum has been building in this direction again with a movement within the field called positive psychology that focuses on studying happiness. This is now something you can get a graduate degree in! The most prominent name in this area is Martin Seligman up at the University of Pennsylvania.
http://www.bahaistudies.net/asma/peak_experiences.pdfLinks to an external site.