Human Motivation

1. Human Motivation Chapter 13 The Need for Control and Competence

2. Competence • Being able to successfully deal with threats • Being able to successfully interact with the environment • Being able to set goals • Being able to see oneself as capable of going where no other person has gone before Human needs that pertain to development of competence: • Need to control • Need to achieve • Need to become competent o

3. The Need for Predictability and Control • Need to control fundamental human need; essential for survival; linked to need for predictability • Personal control provides the cognitive basis for experiencing optimism and hope; linked to health • Control is critical variable in psychological health and well-being; people with greater perceived control tend to live longer. • Without control, people lose ability to cope effectively; lack of control implicated in stress, depression, anxiety, drug addiction, and eating disorders; low perceive control might suppress immune function.

4. The Biological Component: Genetics account for about 30% variance associated with personal control and with how responsible people felt for misfortunes in their lives. There is a genetic basis for feelings of personal control. Although, humans do reach higher/lower levels of either external/internal control as a result of learning and cognition The Need for Predictability and Control

5. The Need for Predictability and Control The Learned Component: • Distinction between internal/external personality types has roots in reinforcement theory. • Internal locus associated with perceiving control produces certain desired results. • External locus associated with perceiving the control does not produce results, results occur outside of personal control. • Attitudes about control issues are shaped by how our parents thought/acted, by how they trained us to think/act, and by how our cultures taught us to act.

6. The Need for Predictability and Control The Cognitive Component: • Individuals react very differently to situations involving issues of control; some people realize that they can control some situations and not others. • High need to control might try to control the uncontrollable; lead to stress; low need to control may not attempt to control a situation that is actually controllable. • People who feel helpless fail to take control; this may lead to anxiety or depression. • An internal locus orientation is more likely to result in depression, while an external orientation could be a defense against depression.

7. Linking Control and Competence • Believing that we have control is an essential component of developing competence. • People will not be motivated to develop competence unless they believe that their behavior will effect some desired outcome. • Competence: a condition or quality of effectiveness, ability, sufficiency, or success.

8. Competence and Achievement Motivation • Need to achieve: desire to overcome obstacles, to exercise power, to strive to do something difficult as well as and as quickly as possible. • Pleasure of achievement comes in developing and exercising skills; provides motivation for achievement. • People select/work towards goals because they have an underlying need to achieve and a need to avoid failure. • Competence arises from the early behaviors motivated by curiosity and exploratory needs. • Efficacy: Individual comes to understand or know that he or she is able to affect the environment; these feelings can act as a reward.

9. Competence and Achievement Motivation The Biological Component: • Development of competence has its roots in the dynamic interplay of two basic biological systems (BAS/BIS) • BIS activated by the unknown dangers associated with new environment; will subside in the absence of threats/danger. • BIS is more active in some children (timid or anxious child); competence is significantly reduced. • Developed competence is linked to the development of executive areas of the brain

10. Competence and Achievement Motivation The Learned Component: • Children learn from their observation of adults that one way to get what they want from life is to gain knowledge and develop skills. • Modeling and imitation are process by which individuals secure what they want from life. • Motivation is provided by money, social approval, etc. Four Parenting Styles that Facilitate Achievement: • Involvement, structure, nurturing autonomy, and taking a process-vs-person focus.

11. Competence and Achievement Motivation The Cognitive Component: • Beliefs have a profound influence on the development of competence and success. • Entity theory: intelligence is fixed; goals selected to indicate intelligence and goals avoided that provide evidence for lack of intelligence. • Incremental theory: intelligence is changeable; goals selected to increase competence and maximize learning. • How persistent we are is linked to our beliefs about whether we can learn and develop.

12. Goal Orientation • Mastery goal orientation: focus on gaining competence • Master approach goal: focus on development of competence and task mastery. • Mastery avoidance goal: focus on avoidance of the possibility of negative judgment of competence. • Performance goal orientation: focus on demonstration of competence to avoid unfavorable judgments. • Performance goal approach: focus on attainment of favorable judgments and competence. • Performance avoidance approach: focus on avoidance of unfavorable judgments of competence.

13. Self-Regulation of Competence Development • Developing competence has to do with learning how to self-regulate the learning process • Set difficult but attainable goals. • Identify task strategies. • Make us of imagery. • Carefully manage time. • Structure the environment. Self-Regulatory Processes: Seek help when needed. Learn to self-monitor. Learn to self-evaluate. Learn to create positive outcomes.

14. Basic Elements of Self-Regulation • Self-observation (self-monitoring): monitoring behavior in order to become aware and change it. • Self-evaluation (self-judgment): decide if what we are doing is congruent with what we want or our personal standards. • Self-reaction (self-incentive): self-judgments are often accompanied by affective reactions, which can lead us to higher goals or to abandon a goal.

15. Theories and Principles of Goal Setting • Without goals, we have no direction and no impetus to achieve. • Goals arouse effort, give rise to persistence, provide directions, and motivate strategy development. • Proximal goals: relate to immediate future. • Distal goals: aspirations; long-term goals; sustain motivation; keep us on course. • We should set difficult, but attainable goals. • If a goal is not sufficiently difficult, it will fail to motivate. If a goal is perceived an unattainable, we will not put forth effort.

16. Theories and Principles of Goal Setting • People do not like to be viewed as lacking competence; some people set easy goals for themselves. • Feedback is essential if motivation is to be maintained at a high level; determines how well we are doing. • Self-set goals tend to produce greater motivation than assigned goals- we are in better position to create optimal goal and we tend to be more committed to decisions we made ourselves. • Individuals told to do their best do no better than those with no goals.

17. Self-Efficacy and Goal Setting Self-Efficacy: • the conviction that one can successfully execute the behavior; • stable across time but not stable across situations; • will be affected by outcome expectations. Goal setting: • Individual assesses whether the distal goal will provide some desired reward or satisfaction (outcome expectation); if outcome expectations are high enough, the individual will assess whether he/she can mobilize the necessary resources.

18. Imagination in the Pursuit of Goals • Positive fantasies (imagining how you might think or feel when you achieve your goal) are not effective motivators. • Mental stimulation: the representation of some event or series of events; creating images. • Effective by addressing self-regulation (coping of emotions) and coping (ability to plan/solve problems) • Works when it is used to simulate process of achieving goal.