Unconditional Positive Regard In Psychology

Unconditional positive regard is a concept emphasized by humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers as a core attitude therapists should provide clients in his theory of client-centered therapy (Rogers, 1957).

It refers to the therapist’s complete and non-judgmental acceptance, caring, and support of the client, regardless of what the client says or does in the therapy session (Rogers, 1959).

Positive regard is not withdrawn if the person does something wrong or makes a mistake.

As Rogers (1959) stated, unconditional positive regard involves “caring for the [client], but not in a possessive way or in such a way as simply to satisfy the therapist’s own needs” (p. 208). It means accepting all of the client’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors without any conditions attached to that acceptance (Rogers 1957).

The attitude is meant to be truly unconditional, not dependent on the client behaving or presenting themselves in certain acceptable ways to be cared for, accepted, or valued by the therapist.

Along with therapist empathy and congruence, Rogers theorized that unconditional positive regard was a necessary facilitative attitude for therapists to provide, for positive personality change to occur in clients (Rogers, 1957).

By experiencing unconditional positive acceptance from the therapist, Rogers believed clients could overcome early “conditions of worth” in childhood, whereby love and regard were made contingent on meeting certain standards or expectations (Rogers, 1959).

As such, unconditional positive regard aims to provide clients with an experience of feeling completely cared for, valued, and prized for who they are as a person.

What Does Unconditional Positive Regard Mean in Counseling?

Examples of unconditional positive regard in counseling involve the counselor maintaining a non-judgmental stance even when the client displays behaviors that are morally wrong or harmful to their health or well-being.

The goal is not to validate or condone these behaviors, but to create a safe space for the client to express themselves and navigate toward healthier behavior patterns.

This complete acceptance and valuing of the client facilitates a positive and trusting relationship between the client and therapist, enabling the client to share openly and honestly.

Components

Unconditional positive regard is an attitude of the therapist characterized by acceptance, caring, and support towards the client rather than just discrete behaviors. It needs to be consistent over time to counteract clients’ negative self-views (Farber & Ort, 2021).

1. Empathy: Empathy communicates caring and respect, and facilitates greater self-awareness.
2. Summarizing Accurately: Accurately summarizing what clients have said shows deep attentiveness and care, validating clients’ experiences.
3. Complimenting Strengths: Compliments on client strengths as highly affirming. Explicit praise directly affirms competence.
4. Remembering Details: Remembering meaningful details clients shared conveys their story is important and worth recalling. Statements like “I recall you mentioned your brother was moving to Denver. How is that transition going?” convey client’s story is important and worth recalling.
5. Making Connections: Linking current and past client experiences helps clients see narrative themes. This facilitates insight. Statements like “It seems your reaction now is similar to how you responded in a past relationship” help clients see narrative themes, facilitating insight.
6. Reframing Weaknesses: Offering new perspectives on self-perceived weaknesses communicates therapists value clients enough to help them change. Suggestions like “Perhaps your tendency to blame yourself reflects high standards rather than deficiency” communicate therapists value clients enough to help them change.
7. Encouraging Self-Pride: Encouraging clients to recognize their own strengths facilitates self-affirmation
8. Nonverbal Cues: Body language, tone of voice, and eye contact show therapist warmth and attentiveness.
9. Laughter: Laughing with clients affirms their humor and facilitates pleasure in therapy.

However, even therapists who genuinely care about clients will experience shifts in their behaviors reflecting acceptance and caring. So positive regard varies by situation and over time, even when overall caring is present.

Examples

Therapy

1. Dealing with Trauma: When a client reveals a traumatic experience such as abuse, assault, or a disturbing, vivid memory, the natural reaction may be disbelief, pity, or discomfort. However, by employing unconditional positive regard, a therapist responds with complete empathy, understanding, and non-judgment, focusing on the client’s emotional experience. The therapist affirms the client’s courage and strength in opening up about painful memories. This provides a safe environment for the client to process trauma without fear of criticism.
2. Discussing Taboo Topics: Clients may sometimes discuss topics that go against social norms or values, such as unconventional sexuality, criminal behavior, or socially unacceptable feelings. An unconditionally positive therapist creates a space to accept these revelations without reacting with shock or discomfort. Instead, they validate the client’s perspective and facilitate open dialogue to explore the context and meaning behind taboo inclinations.
3. Addressing Harmful Behaviors: When behaviors like self-harm, substance abuse, or eating disorders arise, the natural response may be to condemn the behavior as clearly negative. However, a therapist who believes in their client’s inner wisdom and capacity for growth approaches these issues without judgment about right/wrong. They empathize with the underlying emotional motivations, maintaining that the behavior served a purpose, albeit maladaptive. They support self-insight and the client’s power to choose more constructive coping mechanisms without condoning the harm.

Personal Relationships

Unconditional positive regard (UCR) lays the foundation for deeper, more understanding connections by prioritizing mutual respect and open communication over the desire to control.

By welcoming potentially uncomfortable yet necessary conversations, couples can cultivate a balanced, compassionate partnership.

For example, if a partner disapproves of certain social plans, UPR means calmly discussing their feelings while still supporting their partner’s autonomy in the final decision.

Overall, UPR involves maturely handling any information shared, resolving disagreements without escalating fights, compromising when possible, and accepting that differences of opinion don’t have to threaten the relationship.

Essentially UPR boils down to genuinely respecting a partner’s right to their own perspectives and choices. It creates an atmosphere of trust where two unique individuals can healthily coexist.

Management Style

Infusing management practices with UPR principles can greatly improve manager-employee dynamics. Practical applications include:

• Giving recognition and praise to acknowledge efforts
• Providing supportive feedback instead of blame
• Showing empathy about performance affected by personal challenges
• Having an open-door policy so employees feel safe expressing concerns/ideas

Overall, UPR fosters a non-judgmental, understanding approach focused on employees’ needs and growth rather than just task completion. This can bolster trust, communication, and workplace culture.

Parenting

Unconditional positive regard (UCR) is often confused with unconditional love in parenting. Unconditional love provides affection without limits, while UPR entails offering non-judgmental support and a safe space for children to express themselves.

Some parents avoid UPR out of fear it replaces parental love/discipline with a “friend” dynamic. However, balanced unconditional love should be coupled with UPR’s judgment-free communication so kids feel safe confiding in parents without fear of harsh punishment or disappointment over minor missteps.

Providing this supportive outlet makes children more likely to openly discuss even major struggles. Ultimately, UPR complements unconditional affection, allowing parents to better understand their child’s inner world.

UPR profoundly benefits parenting by allowing children to develop self-esteem and personal agency. It’s not about parents conceding control but empowering kids – whether appreciating a toddler’s creative outfit or engaging positively with a teenager’s evolving perspective.

In School

Unconditional positive regard (UCR) is championed as a pivotal standard for supporting all students equitably, especially those facing personal challenges.

Rather than judging struggling students, UPR shifts the focus to compassionately understanding each child’s unique perspective and needs in order to lift them up.

Teachers employing UPR warmly welcome late students, prioritize connecting before evaluating achievements, take time to grasp students’ vantage points, give equal attention to everyone, and explore alternate teaching methods tailored to how different students learn best.

This environment centered on unconditional understanding and validation rather than just performance sets the stage for student success.

Positive Regard vs Unconditional Positive Regard

The use of the terms “positive regard” and “unconditional positive regard” has led to confusion, as Rogers himself wavered in discriminating them (Rogers, 1957, 1959).

Positive Regard

• Refers to the general affirming, caring, and supportive attitude of the therapist toward the client.
• Rogers (1959) defined it as including attitudes like warmth, liking, respect, sympathy, and acceptance.
• Tends to emphasize overt expressions of affirmation, validation, and caring.

Unconditional Positive Regard

• Originally coined by Rogers to capture the non-judgmental essence of his concept of positive regard.
• Involves caring for the client “not in a possessive way” and “as a separate person” (Rogers, 1959).
• The therapist accepts all of the client’s experiences without evaluation or conditions.

However, in research and practice, the concepts have often been blended:

• The Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory has separate Level of Regard (caring) and Unconditionality of Regard subscales (Barrett-Lennard, 1962). However, the Unconditionality subscale has had questionable validity.
• Mainstream psychotherapy research has focused more on general positive regard or therapist affirmation rather than the unconditional component specifically (Farber & Lane, 2002).
• The trend has been to emphasize the affirmation/caring aspect of Rogers’s original concept over the non-judgmental, unconditional aspect.

So, while Rogers intended the term “unconditional positive regard” to include both caring acceptance and non-judgmental acceptance, over time, “positive regard” has become the more widely used term, with less focus on unconditionality. The caring and affirming dimension is now considered most central. Still, complete non-judgment is seen as an ideal to aspire toward.

Reconceptualizing Unconditional Positive Regard

• Contemporary practice allows for more affirmation as part of positive regard than Rogers’s original theoretical conceptualization (Lietaer & Gundrum, 2018).
• The modifications expanding positive regard to include more affirmation and praise were likely made in response to cultural changes in the 1960s emphasizing greater emotional intimacy and appreciation of others.
• As part of these cultural shifts, Rogers himself became more flexible, using more self-disclosure, praise, and direct support of clients over time.
• There is an argument that if Rogers had stuck with the term “acceptance” rather than adopting “positive regard”, the drift toward including more active affirmation and approval as part of positive regard may not have occurred.

Critical Evaluation

There has been a debate within the person-centered community about whether confrontations and accurate feedback can be considered forms of positive regard (Lietaer, 2001), whether positive regard can be faked (Wilkins, 2000/2001), and whether positive regard has both immediate and gradual effects on clients (it likely has both; Wilkins, 2000/2001; Bauman 2001).

Critics have questioned whether unconditional positive regard is a realistic attainable ideal or not. Kensit (2000) argued that some level of evaluation and judgment is inevitable for therapists.

Rogers (1959) acknowledged that unconditionality may never be fully and consistently achieved, but should be strived for to the highest degree possible.

Others have also debated whether unconditional acceptance alone is sufficient for therapeutic change, or whether overt therapist affirmation and caring are also necessary components of providing positive regard (Farber & Lane, 2002).

Psychotherapy

Therapists have an implicit duty to maximize their ability to accept others without prejudice and see their self-determining nature. However, most therapists have limits in their capacity for unconditional positive regard stemming from their own pain, shame, values, and opinions.

The most persistent criticism is that therapists cannot unconditionally accept all client feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. This assumes therapists selectively affirm certain things and have countertransference reactions (Lietaer, 2001).

It is important for therapists to acknowledge their limits and continually work to expand them through personal therapy, self-development groups, meditation, or other practices. Evaluating attitudes and conventions of practice may reveal areas for improvement.

Most person-centered theorists argue acceptance should be of the client’s feelings/experiences, not necessarily behaviors. Therapists can accept the person while disapproving of certain behaviors (Lietaer, 2001; Mearns & Thorne, 2007).

Conveying positive regard may reinforce the client’s defensive patterns if not complemented with honest feedback and challenges. Positive regard alone may perpetuate ambivalence around change (Wachtel, 2008). However, no intervention applied singularly is ideal. Positive regard remains helpful for most clients, especially when combined with other clinical means tailored to individual needs (Gelso, 2019).

Positive regard should not be restricted to what Rogers advocated (acceptance, caring, etc.). Different clients may need different forms to heal and grow. Research shows therapists and clients endorse multiple potent ways to communicate positive regard beyond Rogers’ conception (Suzuki & Farber, 2016).

The primary aim should be invigorating clients’ actualizing tendency, and different forms of positive regard may accomplish this (Bozarth, 1998).

Treatment Outcomes

1. Early reviews of research investigating the link between therapist unconditional positive regard (UPR) and treatment outcome yielded inconsistent findings, with some showing a significant positive association and others showing null results. These early reviews suggested a modest positive relationship between UPR and outcome (Orlinsky & Howard, 1978).
2. More recent meta-analyses, including one in 2019 analyzing 64 studies with 3,528 participants, demonstrate a small-to-moderate overall positive relationship between therapist UPR and client improvement. This supports Carl Rogers’s theory that UPR is an important therapeutic attitude (Farber, Suzuki, & Lynch, 2019).
3. There are several compelling explanations for why therapist PR facilitates good treatment outcomes, including enhancing clients’ self-acceptance and self-esteem (Cain, 2010; Rogers, 1980), promoting an internal locus of evaluation (Cain, 2010; Rogers, 1959), facilitating deeper self-exploration (Lietaer, 2001), and strengthening the therapeutic relationship (Suzuki, 2018).
4. There has been very limited research on how cultural factors shape clients’ experiences and preferences regarding UPR. Emerging evidence suggests some demographic differences (Farber & Ort, 2021; Suzuki & Farber, 2016), but more research is needed on this important issue.
5. While not a panacea, research suggests therapist PR makes a meaningful contribution to positive therapy outcomes across treatment approaches (Farber, Suzuki, & Lynch, 2019; Norcross & Wampold, 2019). Efforts to help therapists convey genuine PR are thus clinically valuable.

Non-Therapeutic Relationships

In relationships, work, and online interactions outside of therapy, many similar principles of positive regard apply. As Rogers (1959) noted, the facilitative conditions he outlined operate across human relationships, though the therapeutic context allows for their unique and concerted application toward constructive personality change.

1. Fred Rogers and his children’s television work embodied many similar values and approaches to Carl Rogers and his person-centered therapy, especially unconditional positive regard. Both valued empathy, non-judgment, and accepting people for who they are (Palmer & Carr, 1991).
2. Graduate students described the most positively regarding people in their lives as honest, accepting, empathic, affirming, able to reframe weaknesses, good listeners, consistent, and interested in the whole person. Those providing little positive regard were often conditional, judgmental, invalidating, or inconsistent (Miller, 1981/1997; Simon, 1983).
3. Social media enables various forms of PR between users, including approval (likes/upvotes), endorsement (shares/retweets), expressive support (comments), and explicit connection (friend/follow requests). Factors like timing, word choice, and use of images/GIFs also communicate regard in computer-mediated communication (Baym, 2010; Derks et al., 2008; O’Sullivan et al., 2004; Suler 2004).

References

Barrett-Lennard, G. T. (1962). Dimensions of therapist response as causal factors in therapeutic change. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 76(43), 1–36.

Baym, N. K. (2010). Personal connections in the digital age. Malden, MA: Polity Press.

Bozarth, J. D. (2013). Unconditional positive regard. In M. Cooper, M. O’Hara, P. F. Schmid, & A. C. Bohart (Eds.), The handbook of person-centred psychotherapy and counselling (pp. 180–192). Palgrave Macmillan/Springer Nature.

Cain, D. J. (2010). Person-centered psychotherapies. American Psychological Association.

Derks, D., Bos, A. E., & von Grumbkow, J. (2008). Emoticons in computer-mediated communication: Social motives and social context. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 11(1), 99-101

Farber, B. A., & Lane, J. S. (2002). Positive regard. In J. C. Norcross (Ed.), Psychotherapy relationships that work: Therapist contributions and responsiveness to patients (pp. 175–194). Oxford University Press.

Ort, D., Moore, C., & Farber, B. A. (2023). Therapists’ perspectives on positive regard. Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 22(2), 139-153.

Farber, B. A., Suzuki, J. Y., & Lynch, D. A. (2019). Positive regard and psychotherapy outcome: A meta-analytic review. Psychotherapy, 56(2), 297–310.

Kensit, D. A. (2000). Rogerian theory: A critique of the effectiveness of pure client-centred therapy. Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 13(4), 345–351.

Lietaer, G. (2001). Being genuine as a therapist: Congruence and transparency. In G. Wyatt (Ed.), Rogers’ therapeutic conditions: Evolution, theory and practice (Vol. 1, pp. 89–106). PCCS Books.

Lietaer, G., & Gundrum, M. (2018). His master’s voice: Carl Rogers’ verbal response modes in therapy and demonstration sessions throughout his career. A quantitative analysis and some qualitative-clinical comments. Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 17(4), 275-333.

Norcross, J. C., & Wampold, B. E. (2019). Relationships that work: Volume 1, evidence-based relationships. Oxford University Press.

Miller, A. (1997). The drama of the gifted child: The search for the true self (R. Ward, Trans.). Basic Books. (Original work published 1981)

O’Sullivan, P. B., Hunt, S. K., & Lippert, L. R. (2004). Mediated immediacy: A language of affiliation in a technological age. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 23(4), 464–490.

Palmer, I. C., & Carr, A. B. (1991). Carl Rogers and Fred Rogers: Kindred spirits on different paths. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 31(2), 36-45.

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Rogers, C. R. (1980). A way of being. Houghton Mifflin.

Simon, P. (1983). Hearts and bones [Song]. On Hearts and bones. Warner Bros.

Suler, J. (2004). The online disinhibition effect. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 7(3), 321-326.

Suzuki, J. Y., & Farber, B. A. (2016). Toward greater specificity of the concept of positive regard. Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 15(4), 263–284.

Wilkins, P. (2000). Unconditional positive regard reconsidered. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 28(1), 23-36.