Theories_of_Personality 7th Ed Feist

Feist−Feist: Theories of

Personality, Seventh

Edition

III. Humanistic/Existential

Theories

11. Rogers:
    Person−Centered Theory

(^338) © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2009
therapy itself might cause people to get better. The other half of the therapy group,
called the no-wait group,received therapy immediately.
The second control consisted of a separate group of “normals,” who had vol-
unteered to serve as participants in a “research on personality” study. This compari-
son group allowed researchers to determine the effects of such variables as passage
of time, knowledge that one is part of an experiment (the placebo effect), and the
impact of repeated testing. The participants in this control groupwere divided into a
wait groupand a no-wait group,which corresponded to the wait and no-wait therapy
groups. Researchers tested both the therapy wait group and the control wait group
four times: at the beginning of the 60-day wait period, prior to therapy, immediately
after therapy, and after a 6- to 12-month follow-up period. They administered the no-
wait groups the same tests on the same occasions, except, of course, prior to the wait
period. The overall design of the study is shown in Figure 11.1.
Findings
The researchers found that the therapy group showed less discrepancy between self
and ideal self after therapy than before, and they retained almost all those gains
throughout the follow-up period. As expected, the “normal” controls had a higher
level of congruence than the therapy group at the beginning of the study, but in con-
trast to the therapy group, they showed almost no change in congruence between self
and self-ideal from the initial testing until the final follow-up.
In addition, the therapy group changed their self-concept more than they
changed their perception of the ordinary person. This finding suggests that, although
332 Part III Humanistic/Existential Theories
Therapy
Testing points
Wait period
60 days
Follow-up
6–12 months
Therapy 6–12 monthsFollow-up
Own-control
group
No-wait
group
60 days 6–12 months
6–12 months
Wait
group
Therapy
group
Control
group
No-wait
group
FIGURE 11.1 Design of the Chicago Study.
From C. R. Rogers and R. F. Dymond, Psychotherapy and Personality Change,1954. Copyright © 1954 The University
of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Reprinted by permission.