Self Determination Theory: Self-Actualization Person

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Everyone thinks at a certain age or time in their life that they “become complete” or “reach their full potential.” But how do you determine that? That was the question many theorists, particularly Abraham Maslow, wanted to find out. Maslow came up with the idea of “the self- actualization person. A self- actualization person is someone who is first free from psychological disturbances, has progressed through the hierarchy of needs, embraced their B-value such as beauty, justice, simplicity, humor, etc., and finally self- actualizing individuals fulfilled the needs to grow, to develop, and to increasingly become what they were capable of becoming (Feist, Feist, & Roberts, 2013). This brings us to the assigned article Self Determination Theory …show more content…
A particular attribute of SDT is that they tend to use the term “full functioning” instead of “self-actualizing” (Deci, Ryan, & Guay, 2013). It goes on to describe three types of autonomous behaviors or behaviors endorsed by one’s self, which are important for full functioning. They are intrinsically motivated behaviors, extrinsically motivated behaviors, and emotion motivated behaviors (Deci, Ryan, & Guay, 2013). It also describes the necessities for the development of a healthy self which are competence, autonomy, and relatedness; a lot shorter than Maslow’s 15 tentative qualities that characterize self-actualizing people. What I found most interesting was discussed in the middle of the article about how when people psychological needs are inhibited, they display negative consequences such as ill being, diminished engagement, and poorer performance. They even sometimes convince themselves that they do not want or need …show more content…
I’m a “number’s girl”, so when I saw the statistics in this article I had to use it. There was a study done of both male and female high students and the correlation between their parents’ religious behavior, emotional relations among the family and their self-actualization. The results from the test should that 1.2% of the students had low self-actualization, 17.15 had average, and 81.5 of them had high self-actualization (Alavi & Poorsheikhali, 2015). What did this ultimately show? That there is no significant positive correlation between self-actualization, emotional relations or religious behaviors among the families (Alavi & Poorsheikhali, 2015). Maslow himself stated that self-actualizing people maintain their feelings of self-esteem when rejected and dismissed by other people (Feist, Feist, & Roberts, 2013). It didn’t matter the lack of emotional support or their religious beliefs, the students were able to hold themselves to their own

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