Weeks 5 & 6

Week 5

Intrinsic-extrinsic motivation

I had never really contemplated where intrinsic motivations come from.  Looking into these questions is part of the more interesting side of psychology for me.  This information is obviously important in a practical sense, as there are many ways it can be used in daily life.  Of particular interest is the notion that intrinsic motivation shall lead to higher levels of creativity and persistence, amongst other things.  As a university student who struggles with procrastination, understanding intrinsic motivation is highly relevant to me, and I can understand the implications of such things in the workplace.  Basically intrinsic motives are the things that lead us to engage in activitites of interest to us, and to develop our abilities in different areas.  Our intrinsic motivations come from our psychological need for satisfaction.  This need is seperated further into three subcategories; autonomy, competence and relatedness.

Extrinsic motivations are a much simpler topic, and are contemplated by every individual daily.  Our entire society is built on the extrinsic motivator of money.  Without extrinsic motivators, it is unlikely that any person would engage in the manual labours of employment.  Extrinsic motivators are created by the environment around an individual.  These can come in differing forms, incentives, consequences and rewards.  There can be problems with extrinsic awards; if individuals know that an extrinsic award is present it will interfere with the inherent drive to fulfill the learning portions of intrinsic motivation.  Punishment, another external motivator, has been found to be unsuccessful as a motivational tactic; punishment shall lead to negative emotions, a strained relationship between the parties involved and bad modeling for dealing with unwanted behaviour.  It seems bizarre that there are so many problems with punishment as a way to reduce unwanted behaviour, yet it is still the most widely used method in this area.  I suppose it is not really possible to suggest to a misbehaving child that they should review their behaviour in relation to their intrinsic motives; part of the study of motivation is looking for ways to change what does not work in our society, and I am hopeful that something is being done in this area.  There are benefits to extrinsic rewards though; if the task is something that is uninteresting to begin with, and there is no intrinsic motivation, then these tasks are more likely to be fulfilled. The problems still arisel, even in this case.  The learning capabilities and autonomy of an individual are blocked, and there is still the realisation that someone is being led into performing an untiresting task.  This come back to my example of money.  If there was no monetary gain to be had from the task, is it likely that there would be as many labourers, or cleaners, or hospitality staff in the world?  As humans we are no forced to accept the extrinsic reward of money as a given.


Goal setting and Striving
It was interesting for me to look at the way goal setting regulates behaviour.  It would seem that almost all of my own goals are incentive-based.  The fact that feedback is the best predictor of whether an individual shall achieve or not is intriguing, though there is still a high need for quality instruction.  This information is very useful for those that are in any kind of management or teaching position.  Even in small groups striving together for a goal, knowing that feedback will help others is important to keep in mind.  It is also important to be careful with the feedback given, as feedback can be damaging to an individual.  Of course it is always important to keep in mind the other areas that can effect the acceptance of a goal, such as those assigning the goal and any extrinsic rewards or punishments that may be present.  The idea of turning long-term goals into a series of short-term goals should be observed by everyone.  This can lead to a much better process of achievement for people as they strive to reach their goals.


Week 6


Personal Control Beliefs
On the whole, self control beliefs can begin with two differing types of expectancies.  Efficacy expectations revolve around ones belief that they shall be able to perform in a situation that shall lead to them successfully dealing with a given situation; outcome expectations are the belief that these behaviours shall lead to an outcome which is positive for the individual.  When these two combine together they lead to an individual being motivated to exercise self-control.

Self-efficacy
Self-efficacy is the judgement that an individual makes on how they shall perform on a current task, after taking into account the skills the individual has.  This will then lead to the individual either making a decision to pursue a goal, or to be too anxious and avoid participating for risk of failure.  Self-efficacy, when put together with knowledge and skill, can lead to empowerment, where an individual can choose to take control of their own life.

There are two different forms of motivational orientation, these of mastery and helplessness.  A mastery orientation leads to resistance during and after failure, and an ability to take on board negative feedback to help with later tasks.  A helpless orientation will lead to a more fragile opinion of oneself, and taking negative feedback as a personal failure, instead of failure at a particular task.

If an individual believes that their own life is out of their control, it can lead to learned helplessness.  When an individual suffers from learned helplessness their motivation is lowered (because they see no point in trying to achieve when it is out of their control), and also emotional and learning problems; depression and apathy shall set in, and the individual will not attempt to learn in new ways.

The Self
Self-schemas are an important part of self concept.  Self-schemas are basically the way people think of themselves.  As most people know, different situations lead us to act in different ways, and these combined self-schemas from different areas is what leads to self-concept.  Having a good understanding of your own self-schemas is a useful thing, as it leads to an ability to guess ones behaviour in specific situations, amongst other things.  Self-schemas will motivate us to engage in behaviour that relates to that schema, so that we can avoid dissonance between our beliefs about ourselves and how we actually act; also self-schemas motivate us to move towards the self that we would like to be in the future.

Cognitive dissonance is what happens when we act in a way that is counter to our own self-schemas.  This means that when we have an idea about ourselves, such as that we are good football players, yet we are then beaten in a game of football, there will be a certain feeling of anxiety as we have failed to achieve one of our self-schemas.  Humans cope with this dissonance in a few different ways, either by removing the old belief, reduce the importance of the belief, creating a new belief that is relevant to the situation, or increasing the importance of a consonant belief.  So in the example of a football match, the person can decide they aren't good at football, they can decide football is not that important to them, make the belief that they were injured or handicapped in some way, or that it was more important that they can study not play football well.