Humanistic psychologists sometimes assessed personality by asking people to fill out questionnaires that would evaluate their self-concept. One questionnaire, inspired by Carl Rogers, asked people to describe themselves both as they would ideally like to be and as they actually are. When the ideal and the actual self are nearly alike, said Rogers, the self-concept is positive. Assessing his clients’ personal growth during therapy, he looked for successively closer ratings of actual and ideal selves.
Some humanistic psychologists believed that any standardized assessment of personality, even a questionnaire, is depersonalizing. Rather than forcing the person to respond to narrow categories, these humanistic psychologists presumed that interviews and intimate conversation would provide a better understanding of each person’s unique experiences. Some researchers believe our identity may be revealed using the life story approach—collecting a rich narrative detailing each person’s unique life history (Adler et al., 2016; McAdams & Guo, 2015). A lifetime of stories can show more of a person’s complete identity than can the responses to a few questions.