According to Carl Rogers, how we think and feel about ourselves - our sense of self-worth - is fundamental both to psychological health and to the likelihood that we can achieve goals and ambitions in life. Self-worth may be seen as a continuum from very high to very low. For Rogers (1959) a person who has high self-worth - ie: they feel good about themselves - will face up to challenges in life, accept failure and unhappiness at times and is open with people. Someone with low self-worth may avoid challenges, not accept that life can be painful at times, and will be defensive and guarded with other people.

 

Rogers thought feelings of self-worth formed early in childhood from the interaction of the child with their parents. In the teenage years and into adulthood interactions with ‘significant others’ - teachers, family, friends and intimate partners - influence self-worth. Early influences on a child’s feelings of self-worth can influence how future relationships and achievements are perceived. Eg: the teenager with low self-worth who attributes exam success to an easy question paper rather than their own abilities and hard work. The consequence of this perception is that low self-worth is perpetuated.

 

Positive Regard

Positive regard is to do with how other people evaluate and judge us in social interaction. Rogers saw unconditional positive regard is where parents and significant others accept and love the person for what they are. Such regard is not withdrawn when the person  does something wrong or makes a mistake. Unconditional positive regard allows the person to try things out and make mistakes, even if that leads to problems. According to Rogers, people who can self-actualise are more likely to have received unconditional positive regard from others - especially from parents during childhood.

 

Conditional positive regard is where regard, praise and approval depend upon the child, for example, behaving in ways that the parents think appropriate. In this scenario, the child is not loved for who they are but on condition that they behave in a certain way. Someone who constantly seeks approval from others is likely to have experienced conditional positive regard as a child.

 

In reality most people will have experience both forms of positive regard during their lives and it is the relative balance between the two that is said to determine the extent of a person’s positive or negative feelings of self-worth.

 

Both types of positive regard are preferable to negative regard where someone can do nothing right from another person’s point of view.

 

Someone who has experienced significant amount of unconditional positive regard may be reluctant to form a relationship with someone showing them only conditional positive regard.

 

Self-Concept and Congruence/Incongruence

For Rogers the self-concept consists of:-

• Perceived self - how someone actually sees themself - how they would answer: “Who am I? What do I think and feel? What do I believe and value?”
• Ideal self - our conception of how we should be in all aspects of our life, work, relationships, feelings of fulfilment, etc
• Organismic self - everything we are from our biology and our experiences - including experiences of which we are not consciously aware

 

Someone’s ideal self may not be consistent with either how they perceive themselves to be  or what actually happens in their life and experiences. These discrepancies between ideal self, perceived self and organismic self bring about incongruence. Where ideal self, perceived self and organismic self are consistent or very closely aligned, a state of congruence exists. Just about everyone experiences at least some degree of incongruence. It is the job of the integrating self to maximise congruence. Sometimes this can result in denying or distorting experiences or pushing out of awareness.
 

Where there is significant incongruence, someone may suffer psychological distress and find it difficult to adjust and live a satisfying and fulfilled life. High incongruence will reflect many aspects of a person’s life differing greatly from their ideal.

 

(See Selfplex for an elaborated discussion of Rogers’ 3 selves.)

 

Locus of Control

Rogers used the idea of locus of control  to explain the difference between being free to respond to your own inner actualising tendency or being restricted by the views and beliefs of others.

 

People with an internal locus of control are controlled by their own personal values. People with an external locus of control are controlled by the desire to live up to the expectations of others. Their sense of self-worth by their perception of how well they are doing in living up to the expectations of others. They are likely to have had a significant amount of conditional positive regard in their life.

 

Linking this to Attribution Theory, people with an internal locus are much more likely to be dispositionalist while those with an external locus are more likely to be situationalist. The concept also relates to the meta-programmes of internally-referenced (internal locus) and externally-referenced (external locus).