Week 6 Personal Control Beliefs & The Self and its Strivings

This weeks topics were personal control beliefs (chapter 9) and the self and its personal strivings (chapter 10).  Personal control beliefs covered topics such as motivation to exercise personal control, self efficacy, personal control beliefs and reactance theory.

The most interesting aspect that I found of this weeks topic in personal control is the learned helplessness.  This was demonstrated in a study with dogs that were put in harnesses and shocked in comparison to dogs that were also put into harnesses but could stop the shock.  This study found that the dogs that could not control the shock ie turn it off with their nose, when put into a box they were again shocked and could easily move to another area of the box they did not.  This is an interesting concept as it can be applied to women who are in violent relationships, or even verbally abusive relationships.  Even though they could easily leave the relationship they do not as they loose a sense of control of their environment amongst losing a sense of self.

I also find the concept of helplessness and depression interesting, as stated in Reeve (2009) depressed people may become depressed because they have an accurate judgement of how much control over their environment they actually have, in comparison to mentally healthy individuals who may misperceive or inflate the amount of control they have.  I think that most people, at some point of time in their lives, will feel out of control, especially in circumstances where there is uncertainty.  For example those who are unemployed, or have just lost their job.  They may feel a sense of uneasiness as to when they will receive money again and when they will find a stable/decent job again.  As weeks go on and the individual has sent out many applications to a range of jobs and many have been declined the person will feel as though they have no control over the world, which if a job doesn’t arrive soon may lead to feeling helpless.

Another topic covered was self efficacy.  Self efficacy is the self perception of how well one will cope with a situation, given the skills one possess and the circumstances one faces. 

Self efficacy beliefs can arise from four sources:

Ones personal history

Observation of others performing task

Verbal persuasions and

Physiological states

I think having a good sense of self efficacy starts at a young age, particularly from schooling.  When I was in high school I would write essays for English and always get a bad grade. I did not know why I was continually getting bad grades and was never taught how to write correctly.  From this constant negative feedback I felt as though I wouldn’t be able to achieve much in an academic sense after school and so I did not bother trying to get into university and ended with a low UAI score.  After school finished this changed so I did a course called UC connect which taught me how to write essays the correct way, I was receiving positive feedback and my writing skills consistently improved.  Hence my self efficacy went up.  I think that its important, especially in teenagers, to focus on and build up skill sets which are critical in the work place such as analysing, writing and communication.

Week 5 Intrinsic & Extrinsic Motivation and Goal Setting

This week’s lecture covered two topics, these being Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation and Goal Setting.  As I was sitting in the lecture I remembered a time of when I went to a job interview for a managers job.  I was asked the question, as some of the tasks within the store are very monotonous, how would I go about motivating my staff?  At the time I was unsure of how to answer this question. The first thing that came to mind was by offering incentives and giving praise.  This would have been effective enough but as I now have a deeper understanding of extrinsic motivations which is summarised below

Motivation

There are two types of motivation Intrinsic and Extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is a spontaneous activity, which is done purely out of self-interest.  Intrinsic motivation is the best type of motivation as it leads to persistence, creativity, deeper processing and finally optimal functioning and well-being.  Extrinsic Motivation is an activity undertaken as the result of a form of incentive such as going to work to get paid.

There are three factors that influence extrinsic behaviour these being incentives, consequences and rewards

Incentives precede behaviour and excite or inhibit behaviour, such as saying to an employee they can leave early if they finish off their task.

Consequences follow behaviour to either increase or decrease behaviour and can be either reinforcers or punishers

Reinforcers work by offering something after behaviour to increase the frequency of that behaviour, such as telling an employee that they have done a good job after they have done a certain task to promote more of that work. However, reinforcement varies greatly as there are six characteristics of reinforcers that must be taken into consideration, which are strictly subjective, these being,

• Quality
• Immediacy
• Person/reinforcer fit
• The recipients need for that particular reward
• Its intensity and
• The recipients value of the reinforcer

Reinforcers can be either positive or negative. Positive reinforcement is the addition of something to increase behaviour, such as giving compliments or rewards where as negative reinforcement is the avoidance of something which increases behaviour, such as the presence of the manager initiates workers to look busy to avoid getting into trouble.

Punishers are the opposite of reinforcers as they decrease an undesired behaviour, such as being warned about improper use of the Internet in the workplace, which will hopefully decrease the amount or type of internet surfing.

Rewards is the offering from one person to another in exchange for service or achievement such as offering a prize for participating in a contest.  A distinction to be made about rewards is that all positive reinforcers are rewards but not all rewards are positive enforcers this is because not all rewards act at increasing behaviour.

Dopamine is released and the behavioural activation system is activated when we receive rewards, however this only occurs if the reward is unexpected. – this makes me think of a the other day when I went to the bank. I checked my account and found that I had $3000 in there, this was a shock to me as I had not deposited the money myself, but then realised that my tax return had come in. As this was unexpected I was very excited and felt a buzz sensation run through me.

Punishers are ineffective at motivating behaviour especially spanking. Spanking has adverse short and long term effects such as aggression from observation learning, strained parent-child relationship, poor mental health and poor moral internalisation which ultimately leads into adulthood – I find this very interesting considering that many speakers particularly psychologists that come on the morning shows such as Today tend to say that its ok to spank your child when as matter of fact it would not have any positive effect on the child’s behavioural outcome.

Rewards can be effective but also come at a “Hidden Cost”.  If extrinsic rewards are given for behaviour that was intrinsic then the there will be a decline in the intrinsic behaviour.  They also interfere with learning as the reward interferes with the deeper processing of the information.

Week 4 - Psychological Needs

Vitality - the–noun, plural -ties.

1.exuberant physical strength or mental vigor: a person of great vitality.

2.capacity for survival or for the continuation of a meaningful or purposeful existence: the vitality of an institution.

3.power to live or grow: the vitality of a language.

4.vital force or principle.

The organismic approach to motivation really resonates with me.  I find this theory to be quite psychologically holistic and all encompassing.  It is based around the concept that the survival of an organism depends on the environment and the fact that the environment is constantly changing and so the organism must develop and adapt with the environment.  It is most certainly a very biological based concept which has been transferred to a psychological perspective.  There are three key ingredients required for a full behavioural, emotional and cognitive engagement.  These are autonomy, competence and relatedness.  When the three are satisfied one will experience vitality and in my mind, full contentment within the world.

Autonomy is the perception that an individual has control over their behaviour.  It is a concept that is so simple yet so many people seem to get it wrong especially parents! Having the correct balance of autonomy in your life leads to satisfaction, happiness and intrinsic motivation.  This makes me think of when I was growing up, I had a friend who had authoritarian parents who were very controlling.  This led to my friend experiencing great psychological distress, which presented itself as an eating disorder, something she could control.  Further down the line she stopped talking to her parents and moved out at a young age.  All because they were trying to control her every action and not let her do things that she wanted to do.

Competence is the ability to interact effectively with the environment, such as work, school, relationships and other activities.  More specifically when we reach a state of flow we will feel enjoyment in our lives.  Flow is the point at which challenge matches skill. Whilst reading this I was thinking about myself working out at the gym.  I go to the gym almost on a daily basis and to ensure that I don’t get bored I constantly push myself a little bit further.  I put heavier weights on the bar, or do more reps or go faster on the treadmill for longer.  This makes things challenging enough that I enjoy it but not so challenging that it is above my skill level and thus I reach a state of flow.

Relatedness is the need to have close emotional bonds with other people; furthermore they need to involve caring, liking, accepting and valuing.  It is not enough to just have quantity, they need to involve quality as well.  A person needs to feel as though they are truly accepted as individuals, can be themselves and still liked by others.  A sense of belonging acts as a buffer to many psychological problems, especially depression. 

I truly believe that if people work at finding these elements they will be able to feel a positive satisfaction in their lives and in therapy these elements should be emphasised.

Week 3

After further thoughts on which text book chapter topic to create I have decided to go with Sexual Motivation.  The primary reason behind this is because I have recently read a book on sexual differences between males and females called Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love by Allan & Barbara Pease http://www.peaseinternational.com/shopexd.asp?id=53.  Although its a pop psychology book, an extremely humorous one at that, it goes into some great details about research (with an extensive reference list) on the biological, physiological and psychological stages of lust, love and sex, more importantly it distinguishes the differences between the sexes and why we behave the way we do.  This will be a good starting ground for topics and journal articles.

This week was our first tutorial for this subject.  I found it to be very worth while as we formed groups that we will be using to help brain storm for ideas and comments on the progress of our text book chapter.  Sexual Motivation is a very interesting topic and has sprung interesting conversations with a few of my friends such as Why are some men more promiscuous than others? Further more why are we more attracted to some people, or so it seems the same type of people and not others?  I hope to shed some light on these questions in my chapter.

From reading the chapter on needs I think that its interesting to note that they classify sex as a need along side food and water when as matter of fact we do not NEED sex to survive, if we went on without food and water we would die, but if we went on without sex we would still live. Although Im pretty sure some men would beg to differ on that last point..  Furthermore what is interesting is why do two sexes of the same species vary so differently in their mating physiological regulation? As outlined by Basson (2001) men and women react completely differently to sexual arousal.  The correlation between mens physiological arousal and psychological desire is high where as in females it is low (Reeve, 2009) .  In a nut shell women need intimacy and men do not.  I will be analysing this further from an evolutionary perspective in my text book chapter.

Traditional Sexual Response Cycle 

Basson, R. (2001). Female sexual response: the role of drugs in the management of sexual dysfunction. Obstet Gyneco. 98:350-353.


Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion. United States of America, USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.