User:KmpH
Here is the link to my Chapter on Flow: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Motivation_and_emotion/Textbook/Motivation/Flow_theory
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This user is a participant in the Motivation and emotion unit, 2010. See also: Textbook |
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This page is an e-portfolio. Also see other participants' pages. |
E-Portfolio
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Introduction to Motivation and Emotion[edit | edit source]Welcome and thankyou for taking a looking of my E-portfolio for my class in Motivation & Emotion. This journal documents a whole unit's and a whole semester's worth of learning. I have included many notes on what I've learnt (I feel that taking notes as I go along, allows me to retain the information better). I have also included notes on what I learnt during tutorial classes and what my personal summary of the whole unit was. Thankyou for taking an interest on my page.
Themes in Motivation:
Reeve, page 1; “What does motivation and emotion mean to you?”. I see motivation as being a personal desire to achieve a particular goal. Of course the strength of desire and the goal itself would differ widely according to individual differences. Emotion I think is even easier to define, as it is a sensation everyone knows. It is simply a ‘feeling’ that may override common sense and thought when greatly heightened. As it has also been localized to certain areas of the brain, the existence of emotion further appears a reality, in comparison to that of motivation. I feel though that trying to define these concepts in so few words is rather futile, and this is exemplified by the size of the book I am looking at... Fourteen motivational reasons to exercise (Table 1.1). Makes me feel guilty that my number of reasons to exercise is well 0. It’s interesting though to imagine how many different possibilities and sources of motivation can exist for such a simple example. “Motivation and emotion influence more than just behaviour. They also influence our thoughts, our feelings, and our dreams and aspirations.”(pg 6, Reeve). I really quite like this quote. Sounds very mystic and inspirational. It emphasizes just how important the study of motivation and emotion is. “Motives are internal experiences- needs, cognitions, and emotions- that energize the individual’s approach and avoidance tendencies. External events are environmental, social, and cultural offerings that attract or repel the individual to engage or not engage in a particular course of action.” (pg.8, Reeve). This quote nicely collaborates the four sources of motivation and demonstrates how internal sources appear to 'energize' us towards motives, whereas external sources are rather presented to us, and we react accordingly. We are all hedonists (approach pleasure, avoid pain). I think this may be debatable, however I admire the ways in which motivation research aims to identify commonalities between people regardless of their culture or age. I believe that common goals between people help bring people closer together and help bring respect to one another. To flourish, motivation needs supportive conditions. I find this remark very interesting and I would like to learn more about it. Coming from a single parent, family of five, I believe I have always had more motivation that what might be typical for someone having grown up in my circumstance. Also the youngest, I believe family order and parental influence on motivation would be interesting topics of research. Historical & Contemporary Perspectives[edit | edit source]The Will- as defined by Descartes, it involves the acts of choosing, striving and resisting. Although contemporary psychologists prefer concrete psychological process (i.e strategies, goals), I believe the term of 'willpower' is here to stay in the english language. Instinct- I believe instinct is particularly disregarded (having completed quite a bit of environmental studies I have examined many examples of instinctual behaviour in animals). I think it might still exist in humans, just that is overpowered by alternative processes of the complex human mind. However, I do believe McDougalls remark that 'without instincts human would imitate no action' is a bit absurd. Drive Theory- Gotta love the popularity of this Theory. In regards to the exclamation that bodily deficits resulted in the motivation to restore equilibrium, and hence this was the result of all behaviour, was overassumed. For example, rats still learn when rewarded with saccharin (no nutritive effects). A quite admire the contemporary research of multiple perspectives (mini-theories) despite the belief that grand theories may present themselves again. I believe the mind is so complex, especially in such a broad domain as motivation and emotion and therefore mini-theories are needed in order to explain all such possibilites... How to use Wikiversity[edit | edit source]Tutorial 1[edit | edit source]Define: Motivation. A source of energy that directs us towards a need or goal. Emotion: Internal sensation that affects our cognitive thoughts and behaviours. What areas of motivation and emotion are you most curious about?
What needs to be considered for the textbook chapter: The structure can include:
Learning activities:
I have chosen "Flow theory" for my textbook chapter. Unfortunately, all my original topic interests were taken, but after having done some research I came across the flow theory and decided it sounded quite interesting. Also, I believe it will be interesting to study such a mysterious sounding concept, especially as it is so greatly connected with motivation. I am actually looking forward to studying and formulating the research for my textbook chapter.
Brain & Physiological needs[edit | edit source]This week we studied the motivated and emotional brain. This research included studying the various physiological properties and particular anatomical structures of the brain involved in motivation and emotion. Also examined were the physiological needs people must satisfy in order to enjoy a healthy and satisfying well-being. I was looking forward to studying these areas because I find certain aspects of the physiological processes involved in psychology quite interesting. Especially such areas involved with hormones and neurotransmitters. As I am doing human biology as my major within psychology, I believe I can appreciate how complicated some of this research is (although I'm sure it's much more complex than even what I understand). I also enjoy the physiological research found within psychology that isn't ever mentioned in human biology such as research on the BAS/BIS system.
The cerebral cortex and its functions are intrinsically involved in generating and regulating motivation and emotional states. The limbic system is the part of the brain that is intrinsically involved in motivation and emotion. They key limbic structures include the hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus, septal area, ventral tegmental area, and the fibers that connect these structures into the communication network. There are three limbic structures that are approach orientated (hypothalamus, medial forebrain bundle, and orbito-frontal cortex) and two which are avoidance orientated (amygdala and hippocampus). The prefrontal cortex is associated with both approach and avoidance motivation while the reticular formation is associated with arousal. I have always admired the limbic system as it is so underappreciated and overlooked by those who have not studied it and believe it is only the cerebral cortex that has any use in human intelligence. The limbic system itself has evolved from simpler origins; it develops from the area of the brain known as the rhinencephalon which is involved with olfaction (smell). This is perhaps why odors often trigger emotional reactions and memories. Furthermore, it is believed it may have evolved to manage flight or fight circuitry, which is essential to animal survival (and which also explains the basic emotions of anger and fear).
The 3 approach orientated structures:
The 2 avoidance orientated structures:
Both approach and avoidance orientated:
Arousal generating:
Physiological Needs[edit | edit source]Need: A need is any condition within the person that is essential and necessary for life, growth, and well-being. Motivational states therefore provide the impetus to act before damage occurs to psychological and bodily well-being.
Physiologists endorse a ‘double depletion’ model of thirst activation. When intracellular fluids diminish, osmometric thirst arises. When extracellular fluids diminish, volumetric thirst arises.
More complex than thirst. Hunger regulation involves both short term daily processes operating under homeostatic regulation and long term processes operating under metabolic regulation and stored energy. Also affected by cognitive, social, and environmental influences.
Rooted in glucostatic hypothesis that blood sugar levels are critical to hunger. Liver monitors glucose- sends signal to lateral hypothalamus which generates hunger. If stimulated continually, obesity will occur. The ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH) is involved in termination of meals without VMH, animals become chronic overeaters. Gets stimulated by high glucose from liver among other factors.
 Environmental influences
Dieter attemps to bring eating under cognitive rather than physiological control.
Influenced, but not determined by hormones. Men and women experience sexual desire differently. In men, correlation between physiological arousal and psychological desire is high. Men show triphasic sexual response cycle: desire, arousal, orgasm. In women, the correlation is low. Instead, secual desire is highly responsive to relationship factors, such as emotional intimacy. Sex begins with intimacy needs, and sexual desire leads to and enhances long term relationship intimacy.
One’s mental representation of the step-by-step sequence of events that occur during a typical sexual episode. When couples fail to coordinate their sexual scripts, sexual episodes will likely be fraught with distress, conflict and anxiety. People also have sexual schemas which may contain postitive or negative elements which affect sexual desire and arousal. Sexual arousal is always a product of competing excitatory (desire) and inhibitory (anxiety) tendencies.
One third of adolescents have participated in at least one homosexual act (with more boys having done so). Genetic/environmental/prenatal hormonal.
Psychological & Social needs[edit | edit source]Psychological Needs[edit | edit source]organismic approach to motivation
Autonomy
The conundrum of choice Not all choices are the same and not all choices promote autonomy. autonomy satisfying choices leads to positive post-choice functioning in terms of enhanced functioning in terms of enhanced intrinsic motivation, effort, creativity, preference for challenge, and performance. supporting autonomy Environments, relationships, social contexts, and cultures influence autonomy. When they interfere with autonomy there are referred to as controlling. Autonomy vs. Controlling motivating style
Competence Everyone wants and strives to be competent. Everyone desires to interact effectively with their surroundings. We all want to develop skills and improve our capacities, talents, and potential. "Competence is the psychological need to be effective in interactions with the environment, and it reflects the desire to exercise one's capacities and skills and, in doing so, to seek out and master optimal challenges" They key environmental conditions that involves our need for competence are optimal challenge, clear and helpful structure, and high failure tolerance from others, and the key environmental condition that satisfies our need for competence is positive feedback and the perception of progress. Optimal challenge and flow Please see my chapter on Flow Theory for more information
Flow theory demonstrates that given optimal challenge, any activity can be enjoyed.
Confrontation of an activity might invite challenge but a person does not experience challenge until they receive feedback. structure The amount and clarity of information about what the environment expects the person to do to achieve desired outcomes. A highly structured environment nurtures the need for competence when it offers clear goals, and guidance, and consistent, sensitive, and responsive feedback. failure tolerance Optimal challenge and highly structured environments provide equal success of success but also failure. The dread of failure can squash the competence need involving qualities of optimal challenge. Dread can even motivate avoidance behaviours.
Supporting competence is largely a function of offering informational feedback when people make progress and creating opportunities for people to enjoy the pleasure of optimal challenge. positive feedback feedback comes from:
When these sources of information converge on an interpretation of a job well done, we experience positive feedback that satisfies competence. Pleasure of optimal challenge and positive feedback.
Relatedness is the psychological need to establish close emotional bonds and attachments with other people and it reflects the desire to be emotionally connected to and interpersonally involved in warm relationships. We gravitate towards people who we trust to care for our well being .
Interaction with others is the primary condition for relatedness, at least to the extent that those interactions promise warmth, care, and mutual concern.
To be satisfying, that social bond needs to be perceived that 1) they care about my welfare and 2) that they like me. But even more than these, the relationship that deeply satisfies relatedness is one where one's "true self" has been shown and deemed important by that other person.
communal and exchange relationships
process through which an individual transforms a formerly externally prescribed regulation or value into an internally endorsed one. Internalization reflects the individual's tendency to voluntarily adopt and integrate into the self the values and regulation of other people (or society).
vitality
Tutorial 2[edit | edit source]In the second tutorial of Motivation & Emotion we examined Needs; both physical and psychological. What are needs? I believe needs can be defined as something in the environment we crave or wish to seek in order to remove discomfort or increase a feeling of satisfaction within ourselves. Maslow defines those needs we seek to remove discomfort as deficit needs. These include physiological, safety, love/belonging and esteem needs. He views self-actualization as a growth need. Although I agree with him that we have both deficit and growth needs, I believe only physiological needs should be defined as deficit needs (because with our bodies in a state of discomfort; we are inflicted with pain or uncomfortability in order to motivate us to remove/or fix the problem causing such discomfort). I believe that all the other needs are growth needs because without them we are still going to live (although I realise this may be a little ambiguous in regards to safety needs). Little mind self-actualization, many people do not have the pleasure of even receiving safety, love/belonging or esteem needs. Once a person has fulfilled such needs I believe they feel a sense of accomplishment and growth (and therefore they should be defined as growth needs). Next, we examined the motivated and emotional brain. We received a handout showing the anatomic positions of key brain structures involved in motivation and emotion. I found this diagram a little bit confusing in regards to where the lines were actually pointing to (had to fill in the blanks) but overall it got the point across in regards to where motivation/emotion areas were found. We also received a handout describing which structures of the brain were related to approach orientations (and how they were associated to motivational/emotional experience). We discussed these handouts as a group and later, as a class. Neurotransmitters/Hormones and motivation: These two activities required identifying the motivational role of key neurotransmitters & hormones. Neurotransmitters:
Hormones:
In our own small groups we quickly reviewed and discussed the key points from both the 'Psychological needs' and 'Social needs' chapters and lecture. We then completed a questionnaire on self-determination theory. This theory is based upon fulfilling the needs of Autonomy, Competence (Control in the Q), and Relatedness (Interpersonal in the Q). If these needs are fulfilled, then a person experiences psychological growth and well-being. The results of my own questionnaire revealed I do best in situations that are involve competence, followed by relatedness and then autonomy. Although I would debate these results, all my result scores were fairly close together which leaves little point. I did however enjoy completing this questionnaire (due to the interesting situations you were 'placed within' when completing it). Although we did not have time to go over the discussion question found within the handout, I will answer this question as it relates to my textbook chapter. Question: What are your favourite "flow" experience activities? What are the subjective qualities (e.g., emotions, cognitions) of your flow states? Discuss with your group, identifying the skill level and challenge level for these activities? Do you think your experience is consistence with the "flow theory" (optimal balancing of skill and challenge). The first scenario that pops to my mind when I think of entering a Flow experience is through skiing. Growing up, I used to be a skiier, often driving down to the snow each weekend, and in highschool, entering the snowsports team. Having had so much experience I felt a great deal of competence but I also felt there were challenges still to be mastered (such as doing difficult tricks off of jumps or on the halfpipe). I remember always wanting to progress my own skills, not for anyone else, but only for myself (this is true, as I had no friends or family to show off to, and occasionally when not in class, I would practice on my own to try and progress). I also remember feeling a great deal of exhilaration and intense enjoyment after having sped down a slope or going high (getting 'air') off a jump. I believe for all these reasons I may have very well experienced Flow states. One of the reasons I chose this topic for my chapter was to understand how I could motivate myself to enjoy studying more and become a more dedicated student academically (and not just in snow school). I still find the idea of experiencing flow through study a little beyond me (I am generally a very busy person and stressed often which may hinder this), however I do find studying psychology intrinsically rewarding for me (I have often read through topics or over textbooks during the holidays, or entered various things through wikipedia just to discover what they were about). Lastly we worked on organising our textbook chapters to start thinking about how we would draft them and what we would like to include. My group each introduced which chapter they would be working on (and explaining it if others hadn't heard of it, such as my own topic on Flow). At this point, I did not have too much figured out on how I would plan my chapter. Intrinsic/Extrinsic Motivation & Goal setting[edit | edit source]Intrinsic & Extrinsic motivators[edit | edit source]
Intrinsic motivation
What is so great about intrinsic motivation?
Arises from environmental incentives and consequences. Instead of engaging in an activity to experience the inherent satisfactions it can bring, extrinsic motivation arises from consequences that are separate from the activity itself.
External regulation of motivation: Incentives, consequences, and rewards The study of extrinsic regulation of motivation revolves around operant conditioning. S:R->C
An environmental event that attracts or repels a person toward or away from initiating a particular course of action. Incentive value is learned through experience.
Any extrinsic event that increases behaviour. Each of the following has been used to explain why reinforces work to increase behaviour:
Considerations that determine a positive reinforcers effectiveness:
positive reinforcers. negative reinforcers: Escape behaviours are reactive against aversive stimuli; avoidance behaviours are proactive in preventing our encountering them again. punisher: decreases future probability of the future behaviour. Most people think of aversive punishers- however a second type is 'response cost' taking away something desirable. rewards: A reward is received in exchange for another's service. All positive reinforcers are rewards but not all rewards are positive reinforcers. Best seen as 'potential' motivators.
Do punishers work?
Hidden costs of reward "If a person is involved in an intrinsically interesting activity and begins to receive an extrinsic reward for doing it, what happens to his or her intrinsic motivation for that activity?"
4 reasons not to use extrinsic motivators, even for intrinsically uninteresting endeavours:
Cognitive Evaluation Theory
2 examples of controlling and informational events: praise & Competition:
Four types of extrinsic motivation (in order of most external to most internal):
Mostly internalized and autonomous extrinsic motivation. The person accepts the merits of a belief or behaviour because that way of thinking/behaving is seen as personally important or useful.
Involves the self-examination necessary to bring new ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving into an unconflicted congruence with the self pre-existing ways of thinking, feeling and behaving. Associated with the most positive outcomes.
Recognizing that external contingencies generally promote controlling forms of extrinsic motivation associated with poor functioning an unintended side-effects, researched have explored for other ways:
Interest is a topic-specific motivational state that arises out of attraction to a particular domain of activity. It enhances attention, effort and learning one directs towards an activity.
Goal Setting & Goal Striving[edit | edit source]Plans People have knowledge of both their present and ideal states and any perceived incongruity between the two makes people uncomfortable enough tot formulate and act on a plan of action to remove the incongruity so that the present state will change and become the ideal state. The incongruity acts as the motivational 'spring to action' ( provides energy), and the plan becomes the means of organizing our behaviour toward the pursuit of the ideal sate (provides direction).
Most researchers no longer agree with the plan -> action sequence as they are to fixed, static and mechanical. Rather, plans are adjustable and subject to revision. From this point of view, any present-ideal incongruity does not instigate an automatic discrepancy-motivate action sequence. Rather, incongruity gives rise to a more general 'corrective motivation'. Corrective motivation activates a decision making process in which the individual considers many different possible ways for reducing the present-ideal incongruity: change the plan, change behaviour, or withdraw altogether. Actually carrying out the plan also encounters problems (situational constraints, personal inadequacies).
Discrepancy is a synonym for 'incongruity'.
2 types exist:
A goal is whatever an individual is striving to accomplish. 'goal performance discrepancy' is the discrepancy between present level of accomplishment and ideal level of accomplishment.
People with goals outperform those without goals and the same person performs better when they have a goal than when they don't.
Refers to how hard a goal is to accomplish. As goals increase in difficulty, performance increases in a linear fashion. This is so because people exert effort in proportion to what the goal requires of them.
Refers to how clearly a goal informs the performer precisely what they are to do. Goal specificity is important because specific goals draw attention to what one needs to do and reduces ambiguity in thought and variability in performance. Difficult, Specific goals enhance performance.
Feedback or knowledge of results, allows people to keep track of any progress toward their goal. In other words, a performer needs both a goal and feedback to maximize performance. Without feedback, performance can be emotionally unimportant and uninvolving.
Goal acceptance is a critical variable when goal setting takes place within the context of an interpersonal relationship in which one person attempts to provide another person with a goal. Four factors determine whether an externally set goal will be accepted:
Criticisms
To accomplish a distant goal, the performer first has to attain several requisite short term goals. As for persistence, long term goals may be forfeited due to a lack of positive reinforcement along the way. Having a series of short term goals provide reinforcement and provide feedback.
The gap between goal-directed thinking and goal directed action can be a wide one. Mental simulations: focusing on action
Implementation Intention A key reason people fail to attain their goals is that they often fail to develop specific action plans for how they will attain their goals. Planning how to carry out a goal allows the performer to overcome the inevitable volitional problems associated with goal directed behaviour. Volitional problems include:
The study of implementation intentions is the study of how goals, once set, are effectively acted on. The motivational effect of an implementation intention is to link goal directed behaviour to a situational cue (time, place) so that goal directed behaviour is carried out automatically.
Frequent and consistent pairing of particular situations with particular behaviour lead to strong links between the situation and the behaviour ( Sunday-church, gym-exercise, library- study).
Implementation intentions, once set, facilitate persistence and reengagement during goal pursuit. They facilitate by helping people anticipate a forthcoming difficulty and therefore form an intention of what they will do once the difficulty arises. Putting it all together: creating an effective goal setting program Sequential steps within the goal setting process
Sequential steps within the goal striving process
Control Beliefs and the Self[edit | edit source]The Self & its Strivings[edit | edit source]The Self There are six dimensions of psychological well-being
In the relationship between self-esteem and self-functioning, self esteem is not a causal variable. Self esteem is mainly a consequence of cumulative achievement-related successes and failures. Self esteem reflects how life is going, but it is not the source of motivation that allows people to make life go well. What needs improving is not self esteem but improvement of our skills for dealing with the world.
Self concepts are individuals mental representations of themselves. The self concept is constructed from experiences and from reflections on those experiences.
Self-schemas are cognitive generalizations about the self that are domain specific and are learned from past experiences (i.e. shy). Which self schemas are involved in the definition of the self concept are those life domains that are most important to the person. Motivational Properties of Self Schemas:
Once an individual establishes a well-articulated self-schema in a particular domain, he generally acts to preserve that self-view. Once established, self-schemas become increasingly resistant to contradictory information.
People self-verify because they seek to know themselves. Following concerns, self-verification ensures that perceptions of the world are predictable and coherent. People also self-verify to avoid interactions fraught with misunderstandings and unrealistic expectations.
Self schemas sometimes change in response to social feedback, however a more likely cause is through a deliberate effort to advance the present self toward a desired future possible self. Possible selves are mostly social in origin, as other selves are modelled by others. The Role model becomes the future 'ideal self'. This discrepancy causes the individual to make an inference that he should become like the successful role model, the 'desired self'. The motivational function of a possible self therefore operates like that of a goal (or personal striving). A possible self provides the individual with an attractive incentive for which to strive. Possible selves are mental representations of attributes, characteristics, and abilities that self does not yet possess. When the self does not have feedback on the emerging possible self, two outcomes follow. An absence of supportive evidence will lead the self to abandon the possible self. The possible self may also energize and direct action so the attributes, characteristics, and abilities of the self begin to materialize.
When beliefs about who the self is and what the self does are inconsistent, people experience a psychologically uncomfortable state referred to as 'cognitive dissonance'. When intense and uncomfortable enough, dissonance take on motivational properties, and the person begins to seek ways to eliminate, or at least reduce, the dissonance. They can do so in one of four ways:
Four dissonance-arousing circumstances:
In the face of dissonance arousing situational events, like the four above, cognitive inconsistency and dissonance motivation arise and motivate changes in ways of believing or behaving. Being psychologically uncomfortable people implement various strategies for reducing dissonance. Dissonance can be used to accomplish productive social goals too. Researchers have been successful in changing people's attitudes and behaviour toward pro-social causes. 'Saying or doing, is believing'. For ex. If you attend friend's charity run, your effort needs to be justified.
Cognitive dissonance theory argues that people develop and change their beliefs in response to a negative emotional state born in cognitive contradiction (dissonance). Self-perception theory offers the alternative interpretation that people develop and change their behaviour based simply on self-observations of their own behaviour. The difference between the two theories is that cognitive dissonance theory argues that beliefs change because of negative affect from cognitive inconsistencies, whereas self perception theory argues that we simply come to believe whatever we do and say. Research concludes both theories are correct, but each applies to a different set of circumstances. Self-perception theory applies best when people's beliefs are initially vague, ambiguous, and weak. In such cases, people do draw inferences about themselves from their behaviour. Dissonance theory apply when beliefs are initially strong, salient, and clear.
Identity is the means by which the self relates to society, as it captures the essence of who one is within a cultural context. Cultures and social groups offer identities to their individual members, and it is within this cultural or social context that people play out a culturally or socially defined role. Once a person inhabits a role, the identity directs the person to pursue some behaviours, and to avoid other behaviours.
A role consists of cultural expectation for behaviour from persons who hold a particular social position. Roles may change as a person enters different environments (student, counsellor, mother). While assuming one role rather than another, people change how they act. Individual's have many identities, and they present to others the particular identity that is most appropriate for the situation. Deciding what to say and what to do is actually quite difficult when the identities of the self and others remain in question. Sociologists refer to this process of figuring out roles as the 'definition of the situation'. Once done, social interaction can proceed to the extent both interactants agree on their identities and the definition of the situation.
Humans possess a wide range of potential behaviour, but only a subset of those are appropriate and expected in any one particular setting. This is determined by the identity the person inhabits. Identities direct behaviour, and behaviours maintain and confirm identity.
If a person behaves in an identity-inconsistent way, she can restore the original identity either through restorative behaviours or restorative emotional displays. Both provide identity-relevant information of who that person is. Emotion displays act as public identity cues such as good people who act bad should show sorrow if they are truly good pople.
The self goes deeper than cognitive structures (self-concept) and social relationships (identity). Within the self is an intrinsic motivation that gives it a quality of agency. Agency entails action. Self as Action and Development from Within Intrinsic motivation is inseparably coordinated with the active nature of the developing self. It is the source of motivation that underlies agency as it spontaneously energizes people to pursue their interests, seek out environmental challenges, exercise their skills, and develop their talents.
These are two processes inherent within agency that guide ongoing motivation and development. Differentiation expands and elaborates the self into an ever increasing complexity. Integration synthesizes that emerging complexity into a coherent whole, thereby preserving a sense of a single, cohesive self. Differentiation proceeds as the individual exercises existing interests, preferences, and capacities in such a way that a relatively general and undifferentiated self becomes specialized into several life domains. Rich differentiation manifests itself in understanding fine discriminations and unique aspects of a particular life domain. There exists a synthetic tendency to integrate the self's emerging complexity into a single sense of self, into a coherent unity. Integration is an organizational process that brings the self's differentiated parts together. Integration occurs as the self's individual parts (self schemas, identities, interests, etc) are successfully interrelated and organized as mutually complementary. The notions of agency (via intrinsic motivation), differentiation, and integration argue that the self possesses innate aspects. Psychological needs and developmental processes provide a starting point for the development of the self. As individuals mature, they gain increasing contact with the social context, and some of these aspects of the social world become assimilated and integrated into the self system. The self is a recipient of social feedback and exists within an array of social relationships, but the self also actively develops via its inherent agency.
With its inherent needs and emerging interests, preferences, potentials, and capacities, the self is poised to grow, develop, and differentiate. The need for relatedness however keeps the individual close to societal regulations, and the self therefore develops both toward autonomy as well as toward a relatedness- motivated internalization of society's values and concerns. So behaviours, emotions, and ways of thinking originate not only within the self but also within the social context and society. Intentional acts (agency) sometimes arise from the self, but intentional acts also sometimes arise from the guidance of others. The process through which individuals take in and accepts their own an externally prescribed way of thinking, feeling, or behaving is referred to as internalization. It may occur from the individual's desire to achieve meaningful relationships with others (need for relatedness) or it may occur from the individual's desire to interact effectively with the social world (need for competence). Self worth follows from being open to experience and from valuing the self for who one is. When people are open to experience, they are more honest and self disclosing during interpersonal interactions, they take more responsibility for their behaviours and are less likely to hide and distort information to deceive others, they engage in fewer activities to escape self-awareness (tv, and even work), they take fewer experience altering substances, they show less defensiveness, and they prefer interaction partners that fulfil innate needs rather than partners that promote extrinsic goals such as image/wealth. Controlling environmental conditions lead the self to ignore innate needs and instead, develop a self-structure around the goal of external validation. Hence, people who pursue external validation of a socially desirable self might choose a career for wealth or prestige. People organize their behaviour and self-worth around the needs of the core self when the environment supports autonomy and personal agency; and people organize their behaviour around external validation when the environment supports neither autonomy or personal agency and instead promotes extrinsic aspirations.
When people pursue goals that are congruent with their core self, they pursue 'self-concordant' goals.
These striving represent what an individual is characteristically aiming to accomplish in his day-to-day behaviour and over the course of his life. They are not goals per se, but instead exist as superordinate aspects of the self that organize and integrate the many different goals a persona seeks. Strivings may be positive or negative (avoidance of something). Personal Growth and Subjective Well-Being Those personal strivings that arenot endorsed by the self (i have to quit smoking) tend to generate conflict and pressure, whereas those personal strivings that cultivate self-concordant gaols, personal growth, and well-being (I want to quit smoking) are those that seek greater autonomy, competence, or relatedness in the person's life. Well-being does not depend on actually attaining one's goals or strivings, rather, it comes from the content of what one is trying to do.
Self regulation is the metacognitive monitoring and evaluating of one's ongoing effort to attain the gaols one seeks. Self-Regulation: Forethought through Reflection Self regulation is an ongoing, cyclical process. It revolves around Forethought, action, and reflection.
Self-regulatory processes need to be acquired, especially when the performer pursues a goal in an unfamiliar area. Following a history of social guidance and feedback, the novice begins to internalize the standards of excellence endorsed by the model. The person becomes self-regulating in the domain when he no longer needs the expert model and can self-regulate in terms of self-monitoring and self-evaluating.
Tutorial 3[edit | edit source]In our third tutorial we examined the self and goals. Our first task was to discuss and complete a questionnaire on university student motivation. Firstly, it was brought to the classes attention that internal and external motivations are complex and often the situations we find ourselves in life are due to a mixture of both internal and external. For example, the class pondered and discussed why students go to university. The answers to this question revealed a host of both intrinsic and extrinsic reasons and even an explanation on avoidance (go to uni to avoid having to do nothing or work fulltime). There were a variety of themes discovered as predicted in the handout. Such themes include:
We then completed the University Motivation Survey and the University Student Outcomes survey. I received fairly average overall scores with my highest motive relating to acquiring qualifications and valuable skills while my lowest motive was due to social opportunities (not surprising as none of my friends from high school /college attended UC and that I don't spend too much time on campus). Everyone plotted their marks on the whiteboard against the average results of UC students. From handout: According to a functionalist perspective on motivation, a good match between motivations and outcomes leads to satisfaction and retention (or intention to continue), whereas a poor match between motivations and outcomes leads to low satisfaction and risk of drop-out. The score between my two completed surveys was a difference of only one point, suggesting I should experience general satisfaction with my university experience after it is completed (phew!). The take home message from this exercise are:
The next part of our tutorial involved examining personal control and in particular, learned optimism. We all completed a questionnaire examining individual optimism. The results for mine suggested that I wasn't actually that optimistic (or at least less so than what I expected). I believe others in the class may have also felt this way about their results. I do question the validity of this questionnaire and whether all of the questions in it accurately measured optimism. I do acknowledge however that trying to formulate such a survey on optimism without being blatantly obvious (i.e. 'do you love life to its fullest?') may be a little difficult.... The last theoretical part of our tutorial involved examining the self, and in particular, life effectiveness. We completed a survey called the L.E.Q. From the L.E.Q: Life effectiveness is proposed to refer to a person's capacity to adapt, survive, and thrive; that is, it refers to how well one is equipped to handle the demands of life. The L.E.Q examines eight dimensions (Time Management, Social Competence, Achievement Motivation, Intellectual Flexibility, Task Leadership, Emotional Control, Active Initiative and Self Confidence). All my results were moderately high except for 'I stay calm when things go wrong' which was more towards the middle. I believe this is reflective of me, I try to do my best and manage time well and although I don't seek to be a social leader, if I am put in such a situation I can handle the role well. To finish up, we went a little bit further into detail in regards to the textbook chapter. At this stage, I have examined some research on the area of Flow and have explored how to use wikiversity and create styles and formatting. No Lecture & No Tute1[edit | edit source]Time to catch up on the textbook chapter! Mid-semester break[edit | edit source]Time to catch up on the textbook chapter! Nature of Emotion[edit | edit source]
Emotions are short-lived, feeling-arousal-purposive-expressive phenomena that help us adapt to the opportunities and challenges we face during important life events.
Emotions relate to motivation in two ways. First, they are one type of motive. Like all other motives, emotions energize and direct behaviour. Second, emotions serve as an ongoing 'readout' system to indicate how well or how poorly personal adaptation is going.
Some researchers believe emotion constitute the primary motivational system. Throughout the 100 year history of psychology, the physiological drives were considered to be primary motivators.
Emotions read out the person's ever-changing motivational state and personal adaptation status. Positive emotions signal 'all is well', and reflect the involvement and satisfaction of our motivation states. From this point of view, emotions are not necessarily motives in the same way that needs and cognitions are, but, instead, reflect the satisfied vs. Frustrated status of other motives.
When we encounter a significant life event, an emotion comes to life. Peoples mind (cognitive processes) and body (biological processes) react in adaptive ways. Understanding what causes an emotion, centres around this debate: biology vs. Cognition.
Those who argue for cognition contend that individuals cannot respond emotionally unless they first cognitive appraise the meaning and personal significance of an event. Those who argue for biology contend subcortical neural activity or spontaneous facial expressions, activate emotion.
Panksepp believes emotions arise from genetically endowed neural circuits that regulate brain activity. The rationale in supporting his perspective comes from 3 important findings:
Tutorial 4[edit | edit source]Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the tutorial during this week. Aspects of Emotion[edit | edit source]Biological Aspects of Emotion
Argued that bodily changes cause emotional experience: stimulus-> bodily reaction -> emotion. Rested on 2 assumptions:
Received some criticism:
James Lange's insight continue to guide contemporary study. Study using professional actors found distinct physiological reactions in response to different emotions. The patterns of ANS activity emerged to recruit ways of behaviour that were adaptive (but only a few emotions: anger, fear, sadness, joy & disgust.) what about joy, hope?
Specific Neural Circuits. Neuro-anatomical findings document the existence of three distinct neural circuits, each regulates a distinctive pattern of emotional behaviour. These three neural circuits underlie the 4 emotions of joy, fear, rage & anxiety.
Specific Brain Areas.
Neural Activation. Different emotions are activated by different rates of cortical neural firing at any time. Whether the rate is increasing/decreasing/constant depends on environmental events.
Endorses the following:
Each emotion operates as a system that incorporates 2,3,4 &5. Where are other emotions (hope, love, hate etc?). Paul Ekman offers 7 explanations:
Emotion stems from:
Facial feedback does one job: emotion activation. After emotions is activated it is the emotion program that further elicits bodily participation. Facial action also changes brain temperature and breathing.
Test of the Facial Feedback Hypothesis Feedback from facial behaviour, when transformed into conscious awareness, constitutes the experience of emotion. Research has both supported and refuted FFH. One consensus is that a posed facial musculature produces reliable changes in physiological reactions, such as cardiovascular and respiratory rates. Most studies suggest there is at least a small influence on emotion.
Much facial behaviour is surely learned. The finding that people from different cultures match the same facial expressions with the same emotions is evidence that facial behaviour is cross-culturally universal. This is evidence emotion related facial behaviour has an innate, unlearned component.
Difficulty arises when you consider emotion has four aspects: feelings, arousal, purpose and expression. It is difficult to conjure an emotion. Instead, you need an exposure to an emotion0generating event. Emotions are largely reactions. If emotions are largely cognitive phenomena (as opposed to biological) then it makes sense that a good deal of emotional experience can be voluntarily controlled.
The central construct in a cognitive understanding of emotion is appraisal. All cognitive emotion theorists endorse the following interrelated beliefs.
Change the appraisal, and you change the emotion (i.e. guilt 'if only I hadn't'). Arnolds appraisal theory of emotion:
From Perception to Appraisal
Lazarus's complex appraisals. Lazarus pointed out that people evaluate whether the situation they face has personal relevance for their well-being. Given these appraisals of personal relevance, goal congruence and ego involvement, people appraise situations as harmful or beneficial. In addition, perceived coping abilities continue to alter how people interpret the situations they face. People first appraise their relationship to the life event (primary appraisal) and then appraise their coping potential (secondary appraisal). Primary Appraisal. The following are potentially at stake:
Secondary Appraisal. Involves person's assessment for coping. Coping involves the person's cognitive, emotional, and behavioural efforts to manage the benefit, harm, or threat.
Given an encounter with the environment- the person makes an appraisal considering its significance. If the event is not foreseen as a potential benefit, harm or threat it is perceived as irrelevant to well-being. Hence no ANS hyperactivity occurs, and the lack of ANS discharge signals that no coping is required. These events fail to generate an emotional episode. Activation of ANS signals coping strategies. If the coping responses are unsuccessful, ANS hyperactivity continues and the person experiences stress and anxiety.
Lazarus model only explains 15 emotions. Some cognitive theorists believe each emotion can be described by a unique pattern of compound appraisals. They also argue that there are additional dimensions of appraisal. Emotion Differentiation. The strong suit of appraisal theory is its ability to explain emotion differentiation processes (people experience different emotions to the same event). Five reasons explain why appraisal theory cannot explain emotional reaction with 100% accuracy.
The number of different emotions any one person can distinguish constitutes their emotion knowledge. Much of the diversity of of emotion experience comes from learning fine distinctions among emotions and the specific situations that cause them.
Attribution theory rests on the assumption that people want to explain why they experienced a particular life outcome. Attributions are important because the explanation we use to explain our outcome generates emotional reactions.
If you changed the culture you lived in, your emotional repertoire would also change. Chinese infants are less emotionally reactive and expressive than American infants, probably because Chinese parents emphasize emotional restraint while American parents expect emotional expression.
Other people are typically our most frequent source of day-to-day emotion. Emotions are intrinsic to interpersonal relationships. They also play a role in creating, maintaining and dissolving interpersonal relationships as they draw us together and push us apart. Other people also affect us indirectly as through emotional contagion (the tendency to mimic and synchronize expressions, postures, and movements with another). Social interaction also puts ourselves in a context that provides an opportunity to re-experience and relive past emotional experiences, a process referred to as the 'social sharing of emotion'. It is during these times of sharing our emotions that we build and maintain the relationships that are central to our lives.
Occurs as adults tell children what they ought to know about emotion. Most of what they learn falls under emotion knowledge, expression management and emotion control.
How people learn to manage their emotions can be seen in professionals who frequently and intimately work with others. I.e. Physicians. Medical students learned to manage thier emotions using these 5 strategies:
Personality, Motivation & Emotion[edit | edit source]Happiness Most people are happy, and this is true almost irrespective of their life circumstances. Those who have won the lottery of suffered an accident return to their previous happiness levels before the event. It appears that people have a happiness 'set point'. Infact there may be 2 set points, one for positive emotionality (from individual differences in extraversion) and a second for negative emotionality(individual differences in neuroticism).
Extraversion has three facets.
Extraverts are happier whether they live alone or with others. Extraverts are happier than introverts because they are more sensitive to the rewards inherent in most social situations. Because they have a greater sensitivity to positive feelings, extraverts eagerly appraoch potentially rewarding situations. This occurs because extraverts have a bigger BAS system. Studies on twins also suggest that extraversion is heritable.
Are introverts doomed to an unfulfilled emotional life? No, because there are 2 types of happiness, hedonic and eudaimonic. hedonic well-being is the totality of one's pleasurable moments (represents a pleasant life). Eudaimonic well-being concerns self-realization; it involves engaging oneself in meaningful pursuits and in doing what is worth doing. It is the actualization of the self and it is realized through personal authenticity and growth.
Neuroticism is defined as a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. Neurotics experience greater stress, more negative emotionality, and a steady stream of mood states such as anxiety, fear, and irritability. Neurotics suffer emotionally because of their greater capacity to experience negative emotions and harbour disturbed and troubling thoughts. Neurotics have a strong BIS>
When extraverts enter a situation, their BAS system makes them sensitive to its rewarding apsects and they experience positive emotions. When neurotics enter a situation, there BIS system makes them sensitive to its potentially punishing aspects and they experience negative emotions and avoidance.
Arousal governs alertness, wakefulness and activation. Four principles explain arousal's contribution to motivation:
Inverted U of arousal. When moderately aroused- alert but not tense- performance tends to be optimal. When under aroused, a person will seek out opportunities for something new, and perhaps risk taking. When Over aroused person will feel stressed, frustrated and hassled. They are attracted to something calm (i.e vacation, reading the paper).
Studies on sensory deprivation. These studies confirm the fact the brain and nervous system prefer a continual and moderate level of arousal generated by environmental stimulation.
Because stress and strain are aversive ways of feeling, people generally want to escape overstimulating environments. When unable to do so, daily functioning is characterized by negative affect, cognitive confusion, performance impairment, and health problems. Credibility of the Inverted-U Hypothesis Neiss levied criticisms against the inverted u-curve hypothesis.
Humans differ in their genetic baseline level of arousal and in their reactivity to stimuli. Reactivity refers to one's arousal reaction when exposed to external stimulation. A high sensation seeker prefers a continual external supply of brain stimulation, becomes bored with routine and is continually in searchof ways to increase arousal through exciting experiences. A low sensation seeker prefers less brain stimulation and tolerated routine relatively well. Search for New Experiences:
Risk Taking:
Biological Basis:
Affect Intensity:
Perceived control: peoples preperformance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. Desire for control: the extent to which people strive to make their own decision, influence others, assume leadership roles and enter situations in prepared ways.
In order to perceive that one has control over a given situation, one needs two things. First, the self must be capable of obtaining the available desired outcome. Second, the situation in which one attempts to exercise control needs to be at least somewhat predictable and responsive. When some barrier like task difficultly separates the person from attractive outcomes, individual differences in perceptions of control intervene, explaining when and why people willingly put forth the effort necessary to control their fate. Perceived control beliefs predict how much effort a person is willing to exert. When a person with high perceived control faces a structured situation, he seeks out and selects relatively challenging tasks & high goals. Such an engaged focus on the task leads to strong performance. When a person with low perceived control faces the situation, they pick an easy task, sets lower goals and has less fallback strategies. If things go wrong effort decreases and discouragement set in. Over time, such events lead people to become more pessimistic, to reduce expectations of future control and to quit making plans/strategies. Self-Confirming Cycles of High and Low engagement: Perceived control beliefs influence the individual's engagement, emotion, coping, and challenge-seeking. Such patterns of engagement versus disaffection are important because they predict outcomes people attain. Attained outcomes, in turn, effect performers post performance perceptions of control. Hence, engaged effort produced positive outcomes and post performance perceptions of high control. Disaffection produces negative outcomes and post performance perceptions of low control. This is the so-called self-confirming cycle of higher versus lower engagement. Over the sense of years, the self confirming cycle explains how and why some people develop strong personal control beliefs while others do not.
High DC persons approach situations by asking whether they can control what happens. They are motivated to influence life and what happens. They prefer making their own decisions, prepare for situations in advance and avoid dependence on others, and assume leadership roles in group settings. What makes desire for control differed from perceived control is that high-desire-for-control individuals want control over their fates irrespective of how much control they currently have and irrespective of how structured or responsive the situation appears to be. Desire for control relates to a variety of behaviours fundamental to personal control beliefs (learned helplessness, depression, hypnosis, stress etc. ). Establishing Control:
Losing Control:
Tutorial 5[edit | edit source]In Tutorial 5 we examined Personality, Motivation & Emotion. Students received revision tests on what we had covered in our lecture and reading material on personality. As a class, we then discussed which areas we were unsure of or just had general opinions about. One of my peers noted that the assumption that extraverts are happier than introverts is perhaps misleading (because introverts can receive pleasure and happiness from doing 'introverted activities', i.e. reading). I do see this students point- but I believe introverts may experience a happiness that is more content in nature while extroverts happiness is more excitable (and therefore they just appear 'happier'). As more on the introverted side I believe I find happiness in many things extroverts overlook- i.e. a beautiful flower by the side of a path. From knowing my extroverted friends, they appear to find the most happiness in social situations which is typically predictive of an extroverted personality.. So perhaps it's not that extroverts experience more happiness but just a different type of happiness. We then went on to discuss sensation seeking and complete the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS). The Scale had four factors:
We then discussed the scale as a class. I found my total to be quite high (with most students results being further towards the high side). Perhaps this is to do with the general young age of most of the students who are typically in their early 20's. One of the older-age students said that she probably would of been more open to experience and risk at earlier age but that after having children (responsibilities) this was no longer the case. This makes me wonder whether this scale was designed to cross the lifespan as I believe this would be the case for many people as they grew older. In regards to the reliability of the scale, one of my peers noted that the questions in regards to 'boredom susceptibility' were all to do with repetitive activities, and a discussion grew as to whether repetition is the definition of boredom or just a subsector. I do agree with my peer who noted that boredom is not just repetition because I believe you can be bored in something you've never done/studied before. I find the whole concept of sensation seeking interesting and would like to examine it further when I have the time. We then went on to review our progress made on our textbook chapters. Chapter Checklist:
Unconscious Motivation[edit | edit source]Psychodynamic Perspective Derives from biologically endowed and socially acquired impulses that determine our desires, thoughts, feelings, and behaviours whether we like it or not. Psychoanalytic Becomes Psychodynamic Psychoanalytic: practitioners who remain committed to Freud's principles Psychodynamic: Refers to the study of dynamic unconscious mental processes.
Freud saw the human body as a complex energy system organized for the purpose of increasing and decreasing its energies through behaviour. Some behaviours increased bodily energy (eating, breathing) and some depleted energy (working, playing). Some bodily energy was mental energy which it receives from the body's physical energy. The source of all psychical energy was biological drive (instinct) and was also the source of all motivation. Freud emphasized two general categories of biological drives: those are instincts for life (Eros) and instincts for death (thanatos). People did not just impulsively act on their aggressive/sexual tendencies, instead they learn from experience to direct their behaviour in need-satisfying aims. The individual learns defensive reactions for managing sexual/aggressive energies. One's learned manner of defence is what Freud meant by the ego.
Few contemporary psychoanalysts understand motivation as a function of dual-instinct theory. Contemporary psychoanalysts now propose that psychological wishes rather than drives regulate and direct human behaviour (it overcomes the contradictory evidence that sex and aggression do not function as physiological drives).
Today, four postulates define psychodynamic theory.
Freud believed the individual must express strong unconscious urges and impulses, though in a disguised form. It has been a 100 year debate, but the conclusion that much of mental life is unconscious is now largely accepted as true. The three views can be called the Freudian unconscious, the adaptive unconscious, and implicit motivation.
Conscious, preconscious, and unconscious.
Man with amnesia showed marked improvement in motor skill. The adaptive unconscious runs on automatic pilot as it carries out countless computations and innumerable adjustments during acts such as typing your shoes, etc. It performs routing activities as well, such as engaging procedural knowledge, recognizing events as familiar or not, and knowledge we gain such as remembering music. Students make accurate statement on teacher from 4 sec video and people can make accurate judgment of others emotions from a micro-second exposure without telling you how they could do so.
Implicit motivation refers to all those motives, emotions, attitudes and judgments that operate outside a person's conscious awareness and that are fundamentally distinct from self-report motives, emotions, attitudes, and judgments. 'implicit' described motivational processes that are indirect, implied, or not well understood. They are also linked to emotional experiences (needs reviewed in ch7 illustrated implicit motivations well, achievement, affiliation, intimacy and power).
To subliminally activate unconscious information, a stimulus is presented at a very weak energy level to an unsuspecting research participant. Like the 'at popcorn' and 'if you steal, you will get caught' messages, the 'I love you' subliminal messages were not processed in a way that affected thoughts or behaviours.
Freud observed that people often engaged in behaviour that they clearly did not wish to do. He reasoned motivation must be more complex than that which follows intentional volition. Conscious volition must have to wrestle with an unconscious counter will. Then the conscious (ego's) will and the unconscious (id's ) counter-will are of equal strength, an internal civil war ensues. This clashing of forces is what is mean by the term psychodynamics. Today, psychoanalysts point out that wishes, fears, goals, emotions, motivates are never in harmony and that mental conflict is inevitably constant (as in job interview, marriage proposal).
When Freud defined psychodynamics the central concept was repression. People go out of their way to remain unaware of their motivation. This is because they cannot bear to know things about themselves that contradict either their self-view or public opinion. Repression is the process of forgetting information or an experience by ways that are unconscious, unintentional, and automatic.
No one can stop a thought. Instead, people try to suppress the thought once it has already occurred. However, suppression fails. Thoughts and emotions can be suppressed for only a while. Study on white bear. Difficult to not think of bear. When allowed to think of bear it preoccupied their attention (rebound effect). These results contradict common sense. People rely on thought suppression to control their thoughts and actions in all areas of life. Self-control as in the effort to abstain from certain food or addictive substances. They rely on though suppression to keep a secret or deceive another person. They use it for self-control over pain, and fear and to avoid making public the inner workings of their mind. Continued suppression over time creates a counterforce that drives the unwanted thought to an obsession (the dieter who thinks only of food).
Electric stimulation of the brain reveals some areas are pleasure centres while others are unpleasure centres. The limbic system makes for a fair id. The neocortex qualifies as the ego (learning, memory, decision making, problem solving). Neuroscientist have confirmed that the emotion-generating amygdala is present at birth while the memory generating hippocampus matures later. So early experiences can leave an emotional memory imprint (implicit learning) without a corresponding episodic (conscious) memory.
Freud postulated that all psychical energy originated as the id. The neo-Freudians saw more. Hartmann aw the ego as a process of maturation that made it increasingly different from its id origins. Learning provided the ego with information about itself and surroundings. The mature ego was mostly autonomous from the id.
From its infantile origins the ego unfold along the following developmental trajectory
Ego development is important to motivation study in two ways. First, the ego develops to defend against anxiety. Second, the ego develops to empower the person to interact more effectively and more proactively with its surroundings.
The day-to-day existence of the ego is one of vulnerability. Through its defence mechanisms, the ego buffers consciousness against potentially overwhelming levels of anxiety originating from conflict with id impulses, superego demands, and environmental dangers. Defence mechanisms existing a hierarchical ordering from least to most mature, from least to most adaptive. Denial and fantasy are the most immature because the individual fails to recognize external reality. Second level-defence such as projection .Third level- most common defences including rationalization and reaction formation. Deal with short term anxiety but fail long-term adjustment. Level four- most adaptive and mature, include sublimation (painting, writing a poem) and humor.
Concerns the individual's competence in dealing with environmental challenges, demands, and opportunities. Effectance motivation begins during infancy as an undifferentiated source of ego energy. In the process of adapting and developing, the undifferentiated ego begins to differentiate into specific motives such as needs for achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. Thus begins development of a variety of separate ego motivation, but the core ego motivation is effectance motivation, or the desire to interact effectively with the environment. Successful effectance with the environment creates a sense of competence. The greater the effectance motivation, the stronger the desire to seek out new and challenge interactions with the environment.
Central to the object relations theory are the infant's need for attachment to the caregiver and the adults subsequent interpersonal connectedness to the important people in his or her life. Object relations theory studies how people relate to objects (others) to satisfy that emotional and psychological need for relatedness. It focuses on the nature and development of mental representations of the self and others and on the affective process (wishes, fear) associated with these representations. In particular, it focuses on how childhood mental representations of one's caretakers are captured within the personality and persist into adulthood. Object relations often stress the impact that parental abuse or neglect has on the infant's emerging representations of the self and others. Positive mental models of one's self predict adult levels of self-reliance, social confidence, and self-esteem. According to object relations theory, the quality of any one's mental representations of relationships can be categorized by 3 dimensions:
Freud's psychoanalytic contribution to the study of human motivation is plagued by at least two criticisms:
Growth Psychology[edit | edit source]Research on Positive Psychology ads that inner guides like meaning, authenticity, and the passion to learn add reservoirs of strength and wellness and, further, that it is the effort to develop these personal strengths, rather than the effort to realize cultural priorities, that makes us happy.
Along with existentialism and gestalt psychology, holism asserts that a human being is best understood as an integrated, organized whole rather than as a series of differentiated parts. Holism values a top-down approach to viewing an individual.
Holism derives its name from ‘whole’ or ‘wholeness’ and therefore concerns itself with the study of what is healthy or unbroken. Humanistic psychology is about discovering human potential and encouraging its development. To accomplish this, the humanistic perspective concerns striving 1) toward growth and self-realization, 2) away from façade, self-concealment, and the pleasing and fulfilling of the expectations of others.
The goal is to show what actions lead to experiences of well-being, to the development of positive individuals who are optimistic and resilient, and to the creation of nurturing and thriving institutions and communities. What sets positive psychology apart from humanistic psychology is its rigorous empirical testing. Positive Psychology looks at a person and asks ‘what could be?’ Mostly, however, it devotes attention to the proactive building of personal strengths and competencies.
Self Actualization is a striving. It is “an underlying flow of movement toward constructive fulfillment of its inherent possibilities” (Rogers, 1980). The two fundamental directions that characterize self actualization as a process are autonomy and openness to experience. Through openness, one leaves behind timidity and defensive appraisals and moves toward greater mindfulness, the courage to create, and realistic appraisals. Through autonomy, one leaves behind a dependence on others and moves toward self-realization.
Maslow’s understanding of motivation is that it can be organized into five clusters. The first set contain physiological needs where as all other clusters are psychological needs. It also conveys three themes:
Deficiency Needs:
Growth Needs:
Research on the Need Hierarchy:
Maslow estimated that only 1% of people reached self actualization. Like Maslow, all humanistic thinkers continue to emphasize that the process of self-emergence is an inherently stressful and anxiety-provoking process, because it always makes the person face the insecurities of personal responsibility. Maslow offered six every-day behaviors to encourage self-actualization:
“The organism has one basic tendency and striving- to actualize, maintain, and enhance the experiencing self”. Fulfillment of physiological needs maintains and enhances the organism, as does the fulfillment of needs for belongingness and social status. Furthermore, a motive such as curiosity enhances the person via greater learning and new interests.
The most important motivational implication of the emergence of the self is that the actualizing tendency begins to express itself in part toward that portion of the organism conceptualized as the self. This means the individual gains a second major motivational force in addition to the actualizing tendency, namely the self-actualizing tendency. Conditions of Worth:
Conditional Regard as a Socialization Strategy:
Congruence and incongruence describe the extent to which the individual denies and rejects (incongruence) or accepts (congruence) the full range of his or her personal characteristics, abilities, desires and beliefs. When people move toward identifying with external conditions of worth, they adopt facades (social mask a person wears, i.e. the unauthentic smile).
When fully functioning, the individual lives in close and confident relationship to the organismic valuation process, trusting inner direction as well as congruence. Furthermore, the individual spontaneously communicates inner impulses both verbally and nonverbally.
Some people adopt an orientation that their inner guides and self-determined forces regulate their behavior (autonomy causality orientation) while others believe that social guides and environmental incentives regulate their behavior (control causality orientation). Causality orientations reflect self-determination in the personality. When people seek to change their behavior, they typically rely on either internal guides or external guides to do so. ON study of weight loss it was found that the more autonomy orientated the participants were, the more these participants relied on relatively autonomous reasons for losing weight such as identified regulation ('it is important to my health').
When people identify with and internalize societal conditions of worth, they do more than just adopt socially desirable facades. Quasi-needs emerge. A Quasi-need emerges to the extent that the individual needs social approval during social interaction. That is, valuing oneself along the lines of societal conditions of worth leads people into processes of validation-seeking. For the person who needs the approval of others to feel good about their self, fulfilling others' conditions of worth leads to validation.
The extent to which individuals develop toward congruence and adjustment depends greatly on the quality of their interpersonal relationships. Relationships may take on a controlling tone or at the other extreme a supportive tone which promotes autonomy and the actualizing tendency. A client moves toward health when his therapist brings warmth, genuineness, empathy, interpersonal acceptance, and confirmation of the other person's capacity for self-determination (that the other person is competent and capable). Within a humanistic framework, these 5 characteristics reflect the quality of interpersonal relationship. Helping Others:
Relatedness to Others:
Relatedness refers to need-satisfying experience in which one feels emotionally connected to, interpersonally involved with, liked by, respected by, and valued by another person. In addition the relatedness but be one of unconditional worth to satisfy the need of autonomy (especially in child-caretaker relations). Freedom to Learn:
Self-Definition and Social Definition:
In contrast, Socially defined women prefer to work with and depend on others. They prefer traditional female roles both at home and work. Decisions and experience flow not from the self, but instead from the social support of others.
Much of humanistic psychology follows the assumption that 'human nature is inherently good'. Freedom and self-determination are fine if human nature is benevolent, cooperative and warmhearted, but what if it is not?
The fundamental assertion on what positive psychology rests is that good mental health requires more than the absence of mental illness. Many people simply feel empty- not ill but floundering more than flourishing. Table on pg 441 describes human strengths yielding positive psychology. The building of the strengths yield two outcomes: 1) fostering personal growth and well-being and 2) preventing human sickness from ever taking root within the personality. For insight on how this might be so consider optimism, meaning, and eudaimonic well-being.
Tutorial 6[edit | edit source]Whoa, the final tutorial has arrived, and it seems like no time has passed at all. Today, we're discussing Growth and Positive Psychology which I feel is a good way to end the unit. To start with we had some problems for discussion. • Do you know a self-actualised and/or fully functioning individual? What gives you this impression? • Do you know someone in whom the actualisation tendency is particularly weak? (e.g., someone who consistently pursue external validation and adopts a facade when interacting with others?) What gives you this impression? • In general, does evil reside in human nature or is it a product of a sick culture? • As a parent raising a child who expresses a somewhat socially undesirable temperament, which option would you recommend - Explain/defend your answer: o raise the child in his or her natural temperament or o raise the child to conform to the more socially-desirable temperament? • Do you mostly agree or mostly disagree with the following statement by Rogers: Learning does not follow from teaching. Rather, learning follows having one’s interests identified, facilitated, and supported. • Explain the following concepts: o growth-seeking and validation-seeking. o Maslow’s distinction between growth and deficiency needs. o Rogers’ distinction between congruence and incongruence. o Autonomy and control causality orientations. • Discuss what types of social interactions o support growth-seeking, growth needs, congruence, and an autonomy causality orientation? o lead to validation-seeking, deficiency needs, facades, and a control causality orientation. Positive Psychology sees human nature as being inherently good - that all people are not born bad or with bad desires. This put us on the discussion about the concept of evil and whether people are born inherently good as positive psychology attains or whether someone can be born evil- Examples were brought up such as the two children in England who murdered a younger toddler. I find the whole concept of inherently born evil quite disturbing (as I'm sure anyone does). Next, we went on to discuss Maslow and his theory on Self-actualization. The following is a list of what a self-actualized person may possess. They do not require to have them all, just the general majority. A. Priority of values like truth, love, and happiness
B. Internally controlled
C. High involvement, productivity, and happiness
D. High quality interpersonal relationships
Now that we all clearly understood what a self-actualized person may possess, James asked us if we knew anyone who may suit such criteria. Presuming that 1/100 people are self-actualized most people should know someone who is. No one in the class spoke of knowing a person who may be considered self-actualized however. As for myself, I once knew someone who could possibly be self-actualized or if he isn't may someday will be (as age may possibly be a limiting factor; as we grew older we become better at accepting our selves- I'm only 21, but compared to when I was a teenager I no longer believe I'm even the same person due to the drastic amount I've changed). As a class, we then compared and contrasted Maslow's characteristics of self-actualization with Carl Rogers' the fully functioning person. I believe if I remember correctly that the general consensus was that more people were comfortable with Rogers Theory. Perhaps this is because his model of the fully functioning person isn't as specific as Maslow's and is applicable to more people. I especially like how Rodger's theory examines development across the lifespan and how everyone aims to actualize themselves (nice and positive). Next, we spoke on a sense of meaning as well as coherence. There was a book passed around class, written by Viktor Frankl who speaks on the topic of meaning (I haven't read the book myself, but as someone who loves reading, I'll see if I can pick it up from the library/UC during the holidays to have a look). On the topic of meaning however, I do believe it's important that everyone has meaning. Although this may be religion for some people, for others (as myself) I believe meaning can be generated by ourselves. In essence, I believe I have my very own religion; my religion consists of my own values and meanings. The only thing I would stress however, is that people don't overuse meaning (everything in moderation, like diet, is generally a good key). For example thinking about the meaning of life just generally gives someone a headache. But I think having meaning, especially in tough circumstances is a great tool to possess. Moving on to Coherence, we were introduced to a man named Antonovsky and his sense of coherence (SOC). SOC is “The extent to which one has a pervasive, enduring though dynamic, feeling of confidence that one’s environment is predictable and that things will work out as well as can reasonably be expected.” It has three components – comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness. • A sense of comprehensibility:
I scored close to average in regards to comprehensibility which sounds about right. • A sense of manageability:
I scored below average in regards to manageability. Although sometimes I feel stressed I always seem to manage everything in the end and generally complete all tasks I set my mind to (so I'm surprised I wasn't closer to average). • A sense of meaningfulness:
Again, I scored below average in regards to meaningfulness, and again I'm a little surprised at this result. At the time I completed this questionnaire I had a lot of things due and was very stressed. So I wouldn't be surprised if this was affecting my ability to feel pleasure/satisfaction (I'm the type of person who is quite vulnerable to stress; in fact on a couple of occasions I have become sick after stressful periods which I am almost certain were due to stress; I generally have a very good immune system). To finish up, we were asked to do a practical exercise for homework. I decided to do mine on "The three good things in life".
Summary & Conclusion[edit | edit source]Understanding and Applying Motivation Explaining Motivation:
Predicting Motivation: Identifying Antecedents:
Applying Motivation:
We want to promote effort, achievement, challenge seeking, and excellence in self, and we want to promote these same outcomes for those who are important to use. We also want to help self and others reverse and overcome pessimism, anxiety, doubt, worry, hesitancy, and helplessness.
In terms of needs, energy and direction might arise from a perception of competence or a need for achievement but might fall from a perception of incompetence and the fear of failure. In terms of cognition, energy and direction might arise from self-efficacy beliefs, mastery goals, or an optimistic explanatory style but fall from doubt, a performance-avoidance goal, and a pessimistic explanatory style. In terms of emotions, energy and direction might arise from interest, joy, and hope but fall from fear, sadness and embarrassment. Cultivating inner motivational resources involves the developmental effort to build reflectance motivation, strong and resilient self-efficacy beliefs, a mastery motivation orientation, robust personal control beliefs, achievement strivings, a healthy sense of self and identity, sense of competence, an autonomy causality orientation, mature defence mechanisms, foal-setting capacities, self regulation abilities, interests and preferences, an optimistic explanatory style, and build and broaden one's capacity for positive affect. Developing inner motivational resources means growing optimistic, engagement-fostering and approach orientated needs, cognitions and emotions. The more one cultivates and develops strong, resilient, and productive inner motivational resources over the life span, the more frequently he or she will experience strong, resilient, and productive motivational states in a given situation.
As one person attempts to motivate another, the person being motivated reacts in one of three prototypical ways- passively, aggressively, or constructively. With the third outcome, the person learns how to solve his or her own motivational problem, how to build his or her own skills, how to originate and initiate his or her own actions, but he or she does so with the help and guidance of another. In this way, he learns personal causation. Manifestations of passivity or aggressive reactivity are tell-tale signs the relationship is making the problem worse, not better.
It is helpful to ask 2 questions when motivating others.
While it is crucial for a successful intervention to be well grounded within a theoretical framework, it is still true that designing effective motivational interventions typically takes the same amount and quality of time and effort as did the original theoretical development that preceded it. Four case studies:
Four success stories:
The effort to support students motivational development was a success, as shown by the children's greater personal causation, achievement motivation, attendance, and academic achievement. More of the students with participating students graduated high school. This story shows that motivation is often rooted in interpersonal relationships with others, and that researchers can translate their knowledge on hot to motivate others.
My own personal summary[edit | edit source]What I learnt from this class: I feel as though I learnt so much over the semester, it's hard to know where to start. I believe I learnt the most about motivation compared to emotion. Not only did there seem to be much more material in this area, my textbook chapter was also within motivation so I went through it quite a bit. At the start of the chapter we studied the motivated/emotional brain as well as physiological needs. This was probably the area I learnt the least in having already studied a lot of it (not only through biology classes but these areas have also come up quite a bit in other psychology classes). In regards to intrinsic & extrinsic motivators, like before, we've covered them in other classes, however in this case, I enjoyed examining them from a practical purpose as to how they could actually be applied (especially intrinsic motivation) through life. The week on Psychological/Social Needs I found quite interesting, in fact it was possibly one of my favourite parts. I had heard of all the needs before but I didn't understand much about them so I learnt a lot here. I also liked that I felt as though I could apply a lot of the knowledge learnt here to not only others, but myself as well. Next we studied control beliefs and the self- I think in this area, I enjoyed learning about goal setting the most because I've always liked to know how I can achieve more of my goals (in fact I think this unit has encouraged me to create more goals, I already have a few goals for the holidays). In the next half of the semester we moved on to emotions. I found the reading very interesting however I don't feel as though I have retained as much of the information (perhaps something to go over again for myself). I believe I also felt the theories and research in this area weren't as well ground as that of motivation. I think I would have also liked to have seen more on 'abnormal emotions' i.e. that of clinical depression. I'm also interested in why many people seem to vary in emotional intensity (neuroticism). I find neuroticism to be very negative towards emotion however I admire the way artists can capture such emotion to create beautiful art. I did however find the area on arousal and sensation seeking interesting. Next we studied unconscious motivation. I was surprised here because although I've read up on Freud and psychodynamics before I still learnt more. I hadn't actually heard of object relations theory before (although I've heard of others such as attachment). In the final piece of the unit we looked at growth & positive psychology. I've always enjoyed looking at positive psychology (partly the reason why I chose the topic of Flow for my textbook chapter), and again, I thoroughly enjoyed studying this area. I especially enjoyed the debate in class whether people can be born evil. In conclusion, this paragraph hardly sums how much I have actually learnt and how much studying this material has encouraged me more to become more of a motivated person. What I enjoyed about this class: I'm sure other people will agree with me when I say that although some of the learning curves for the assessment in this unit were tough, overall it was such a great way to study and learn. The textbook chapter was challenging due to all the extra learning of wikiversity required. However, I think it was a great tool, learning how to put our own material on the web and I believe that was very valuable to learn. The same for this E-portfolio, I think it was a great way to gather what we learnt and what our opinions were on what we learnt (which makes learning all the more enjoyable and more intrinsically rewarding). The video on our chapter overview I found a little intimidating and that it actually required more effort than what I imagined. However I also found this was a great tool to learn how to use, and screenr was nice and easy. In fact I think I will use it again in the future for just practising basic class speeches. I found James as a teacher very good, from the Flow perspective I thought he definitely fit the criteria of promoting intrinsic motivation and Flow very well. He allowed the students to develop their own autonomy in every assessment piece. Learning all the new tools involved with wikiversity also increased my competency (now I'm not so afraid of web-based publishing). I believe the textbook chapter in particular allowed everyone to feel as though they were contributing towards something individually (compared to essays where many people repeat the same topic), so once again, this is to do with autonomy and promoting intrinsic motivation. Overall, I found this one of the most challenging but rewarding classes I have done. --124.176.57.150 20:30, 22 November 2010 (UTC) |
