The humanistic lens

The lens in brief

Humanistic psychology grew in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. It called itself a "third force", an alternative to both behaviourism and psychoanalysis. Its best-known figures are Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. It sees each person as a whole human being with free will, a need for meaning and a natural drive to grow towards their potential, which Maslow called self-actualisation. It values the person's own experience of a situation, an approach called phenomenological: understanding the world as the person lives it.

Humanistic psychologists criticise research that breaks people into measurable parts. They call this reductionism. A person, they argue, is more than a set of countable behaviours.

How this lens reads the study

The missing experience. The study tells us how many times each child punched the doll. It does not tell us what any child felt or meant. Was a child excited, confused, upset at losing the toys, worried about being naughty, or proud of copying a grown-up? The same punch could mean any of these. Rogers argued in 1947 that "the primary object of study for psychologists would be the person and his world as viewed by the person himself". Without the child's view, the humanistic lens says, we do not understand the behaviour.

Is it even aggression? Maslow made a point that applies directly here: "aggression, hostility, and destructiveness are all adult words. They mean certain things to adults that they do not mean to children" (Maslow, 1970, p. 123). He also insisted on "the distinction between motivation and behavior" (p. 125). Two children can do the same thing for completely different reasons. A study that records only the behaviour cannot tell a playful punch from an angry one.

The child as a chooser. The averages hide a striking fact: children in the same condition behaved very differently. Some copied a great deal. Others copied little or nothing. The humanistic lens sees this as evidence of choice. Children did not simply absorb the model. They decided what to do with what they saw. A study built to find general laws treats these differences as "error". The humanistic lens treats them as the most interesting part.

Frustration and threat. Maslow distinguished simple deprivation from threat. Losing a toy is not harmful in itself, he argued. It becomes harmful when the loss stands for something deeper, such as respect or belonging: "Deprivation is not psychopathogenic, threat is" (1970, p. 107). The experimenter told each child that these were her best toys and that she "did not let just anyone play with them". To a four-year-old, that may sound less like "the toys are busy" and more like "you are not good enough".

How the adults treated the children. Rogers argued that people grow best in relationships that offer genuineness, empathy and unconditional positive regard, meaning acceptance that does not depend on behaving in a certain way. Look at the study from this angle. A friendly adult invited each child to play, then took away the best toys, saying they were for other children. The child was then watched secretly through a one-way mirror. Nobody asked the children what they thought or explained what had happened. From a humanistic view, the relationship between adult and child was used as a tool, not offered as care.

Control. In 1956 Rogers and B. F. Skinner held a famous public debate in the journal Science about the control of human behaviour. Skinner argued that behaviour is always controlled by the environment, so we should design that control well. Rogers argued that science should help people become more self-directing, not more controlled. The Bobo study, with its message that adults can shape children's behaviour by what they show them, sits squarely in this debate. A humanist would ask: shaped by whom, and towards what?

What this lens values in the study

It can find real value here. If children learn so readily from what adults do, then warm, respectful, non-violent adults matter enormously. Read positively, the study supports the humanistic belief that relationships and examples shape growth. Bandura's own later work moved closer to humanistic themes. His theory of self-efficacy, a person's belief that they can succeed at something, and his writing on human agency both treat people as active shapers of their own lives.

What it would question

• Reductionism. Aggression was reduced to counted acts in five-second units. The children's intentions, feelings and play were left out.
• Dignity and respect. Young children were deceived, frustrated on purpose and observed secretly. Their voices were not heard.
• Averages. Group averages describe no single child. The humanistic lens wants to understand individuals.
• Purpose. Knowledge of how to shape children's behaviour can be used to help or to control. The study does not ask who should use it, or for what.

Evidence from this tradition

Humanistic psychology has produced fewer experiments, by choice. Its main research tools are interviews and personal accounts, which have since grown into the family of qualitative methods, such as interpretative phenomenological analysis. Studies of children's own views, using drawings, play and child-friendly interviews, have become common in childhood research since the 1990s. These methods treat children as experts on their own lives. In a Bobo-style study, they would have given us the children's own explanations of what happened in the test room.

A study this lens would design

1. Explain the activity to each child in simple words and ask whether they want to take part. Respect a "no" at any point. This is called assent, the child's own agreement alongside the parent's consent.
2. Drop the deliberate frustration step.
3. Show children a short video of an adult playing with a doll, and in another version an adult who comforts a crying doll.
4. Let the children play, then talk with each child, using drawings or puppets, about what they saw, what they chose to do, and why.
5. Report individual children's stories alongside any numbers.

The aim is to learn how children make sense of adult examples and how they decide what to copy, without using them as objects of control. This study would no longer test whether children copy aggression. It trades that question for the children's own account of what they see and choose.

Try this

In an imagined replication in Pune, two children each punched the Bobo doll eight times. Afterwards, Meera says, 'The lady showed me how to play the punching game.' Kabir says, 'I was cross because she took the aeroplane.'

Why would a humanistic psychologist say the study's score of 'eight punches' misrepresents these two children?

Show the reasoning

The score treats the two children as the same, but their experiences are completely different. For Meera, punching was a game she had just been taught, so the act was playful copying. For Kabir, punching expressed anger about losing a toy, so the act was emotional. The humanistic lens says behaviour has to be understood through the meaning it has for the person.

A count of acts cannot separate play from anger, so it may combine two different things under one label, "aggression". Listening to the children would give a truer picture. (Meera and Kabir are invented examples.)