Motivation and Work Objectives
Define achievement motivation, and explain why organizations would employ an I/O psychologist to help motivate employees and foster employee satisfaction.
Achievement motivation is the desire for significant accomplishment; for mastery of things, people, or ideas; and for attaining a high standard. Organizations turn to I/O psychologist because research shows the most productive and engaged workers are those working in satisfying environments. Employee satisfaction also tends to translate into higher profits, higher productivity, lower turnover, and more loyal customers.
Discuss some of the forces that influence teen pregnancy and teen attitudes toward contraception.
Adolescents' physical maturation fosters a sexual dimension to their emerging identity, but rates of teen intercource vary from culture to culture. In the twentieth century, increase teen sexual activity in north america was reflected in increased rates of adolescent pregnancies. Factors contributing to teen pregnancy include ignorance of the potential consequences of sexual activity; guilt related to sexual activity; minimal communication about contraception with parents, partner, and peers; alcohol use; and mass media norms of unprotected promiscuity.
Describe the physiological determinants of hunger.
Describe the physiological determinants of hunger. Washburn and Cannon showed that hunger's inner push corresponds to the stomach's contractions, but hunger has other causes. Variation in the body chemistry that influence our feeling hunger include those of: insulin (secreted by the pancreas; controls blood glucose), leptin (secreted by fat cells; signals brain to increase metabolism and decrease hunger), orexin(secreted by the hypothalamus; triggers hunger), ghrelin (secreted by empty stomach, sends hunger signal to brain, and PYY (secreted by digestive tract; sends not-hungry signals to the brain). All this information is integrated in two areas of the hypothalamus, which regulates the body's weight by affecting our feelings of hunger and satiety. Researchers differ on whether the body has a: precise set point ( a biologically fixed tendency to maintain an optimum weight) or a settling point (an environmentally and biologically influenced level at which weight settles in response to a caloric intake and output).
Explain how drive-reduction theory views human motivation.
Drive-reduction theory proposes that physiological needs (hunger,thirst) create arouses psychological states that drive us (motivates us) to reduce or satisfy those needs ( by eating, drinking). The psychological aim of drive reduction is internal stability, or homeostasis. We are strongly driven when pushed by our needs to reduce a drive (such as satisfying hunger), and also pulled by an external incentive ( the smell of cooking food, for example). Depending on our personal and cultural histories, we will respond more to some stimuli ( for example, raw oysters) than to others.
Describe some effective management and techniques.
Effective managers focus their training on people's strengths, rather than on weak areas that may ever advance to the point where they can contribute to the organization's success. They attempt to "catch the employee doing something right" and reward that behavior.Effective managers also work with employees to set specific, challenging and measurable objectives and to outline detailed paths to achieving those goals. Leadership style should be appropriate for the people and goals involved. Task leadership sets standards, organizes work, and focuses attention on goals. Social leadership builds teamwork, meditates conflict and offers support. Manager's personalities do not matter and some may be better suited to one's leadership style than to the other, or to a combination of the two.
Discuss the role of external stimuli and fantasies on sexual motivation and behavior.
Erotic material and other external stimuli can trigger sexual arousal in both men and women, although the activated brain areas differ somewhat. Sexually explicit material may lead people to perceive their partners as comparatively less appealing and to devalue their relationships. Sexually coercive material tend to increase viewer's acceptance of rape and violence towards women. In combination with the internal hormonal push and the external pull of sexual stimuli, fantasies influence sexual arousal.
Explain how the eating disorders anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa demonstrate the influence of psychological forces on physiologically motivated behaviors.
Explain how the eating disorders anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa demonstrate the influence of psychological forces on physiologically motivated behaviors. In the past half-century, a dramatic increase in poor body image has coincided with a rise in eating disorders among women in Western cultures. In both anorexia and bulimia, psychological factors, such as challenging family settings and weight-obsessed societal pressures, apparently overwhelm and homeostatic drive to maintain a balanced internal state. People with anorexia nervosa (usually adolescent females ) starve themselves but continue to diet because they view themselves as fat; those with bulimia nervosa (primarily females in their teens and twenties) binge and purge in secret. In addition to cultural pressures, low self-esteem and negative emotions seem to interact with stressful life experiences to produce these disorders. Twin research also indicates, however, that these eating disorders may have a genetic component.
Discuss the similarities and differences between instinct theory and the evolutionary perspective.
Instincts are rigidly patterned, complex behaviors found throughout a species, such as the nest-building behaviors of species of birds. Early instinct theorist, influenced by Darwin's theory of natural selection, tried to classify human haviors as though they were propelled by such instincts. When it became clear that they were naming, not explaining, behaviors, this approach fell into disfavor. The underlying idea - that genes predispose species-typical behavior- is, however, still influential in evolutionary psychology, which studies behaviors in search of their adaptive functions.
Describe Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs proposes a pyramid-shaped sequence in which lower-level needs, such as hunger and thirst are more compelling than higher-level needs, such as the need to love, belong, or to be respected. Although critics note that Maslow's sequence of needs is not universal, his hierarchy provides a framework for thinking about motivated behaviors.
Describe the human sexual response cycle, and discuss some causes of sexual disorders.
Masters and Johnson describe four stages in the human sexual response cycle: excitement, plateau, orgasm (which seems to involve similar feelings and the brain activity in males and females), and resolution. During the resolution phase, males experience a refractory period, when renewed arousal and orgasm are impossible. Sexual disorders (problems that consistently impair sexual arousal or functioning, such as premature ejaculation, female orgasmic disorder, and erectile disorder) are being successfully treated by behaviorally oriented therapy, which assumes that people learn and can modify their sexual response, or with drug therapy.
Discuss the contributions of arousal theory to the study of motivation.
Not all behaviors reduce immediate psychological needs or tension states. Arousal theory helps explain the motivation for these behaviors. Curiosity-driven behaviors, for example, suggest that too little as well as too much stimulation can motivate people to seek an optimum level of arousal.
Discuss psychological and cultural influences on hunger.
Our hunger is influence not only by our physical state but also by our memory of when we last ate and our expectation of when we should eat again. And although we humans as a species prefer certain taste ( such as sweet or salty), we learn to satisfy those preferences with specific foods eating in the context of our families and our culture. Some of our taste preferences, such as avoidance of new foods or of foods that have made us ill, have survival value.
Describe the adaptive value of social attachment, and identify both healthy and unhealthy consequences of our need to belong.
Our need to affiliate-to feel connected and identified with others-boosted our ancestors' chances for survival, which may explain why humans in every society live in groups. The need to belong appears when people seek social acceptance, work to maintain relationships (or mourn their loss), and feel the joy of love(or the gloom of loneliness). Ostracized- excluded or shunned by others- people suffer from stress and depression- a real pain that increases activity in the same brain areas that respond to physical pain. When socially secure in their friendships, families, or marriages, people tend to be healthier and to have lower levels of depression , suicide, and early death. When socially excluded, they may engage in self-defeating behaviors (performing below their ability) or in antisocial behaviors.
Discussed the importance of flow, and identify the three subfields of industrial-organizational psychology.
People may view their work as a job, career, or a calling. Those in the last group report the highest satisfaction- a feeling consistent with flow, the involved focused state of consciousness in which we have a diminished awareness of ourselves and of passing time. Industrial-organizational (I/O) psychology studies behaviors in the workplace through the three subfields of personnel psychology, organizational psychology, and human factors psychology.
Describe how personnel psychologist help organization with employee selection, work placement, and performance appraisal.
Personnel psychologist work with organization to devise selection methods for new employees, recruit and evaluate applicants, design and evaluate training programs, identify people's strength, analyze job content, and appraise individual and organizational performance. Subjective interviews lead to quickly formed impressions, but they tend to foster the interviewer illusion- a feeling of overconfidence in one's intuitive ability to predict employee success. Structured interviews (which pinpoint job-relevant strengths) are better predictors because they reduce interviewer's memory distortion and biases. Checklist, graphic rating scales, and behavior rating scales are useful performance appraisal methods. Forms of bias that can affect performances appraisal are halo errors (judgment based on personal qualities rather than on-the-job behavior), leniency or severity errors(blanket judgement treating everyone too kindly or harshly), and recency errors (judgements based on easily remembered recent behavior).
Define motivation as a psychologists use the term today, and name four perspectives useful for studying motivated behaviors.
Psychologist define motivation as the energizing and directing behavior. The four perspectives discussed in this chapter as the instinct/evolutionary, drive-reduction, arousal, and hierarchy of needs perspective.
Describe trends in the spread of sexually transmitted infections
STIs- sexually transmitted infections, such as the human papilloma virus, AIDS, and others have spread rapidly. People under the age of 25 account for two-thirds of such infections, and teen girls seem especially vulnerable because of their less mature bodies and lower levels of protective antibodies. Attempts to protect teens through comprehensive sex-education programs include a greater emphasis on teen abstinence. High intelligence, religiosity, father presence and participation in service learning programs to to be a predictor of teen sexual restraint.
Discuss the place of values in sex research.
Scientific research on sexual motivation does not attempt to define the personal meaning of ex in our lives, but sex research and education are not value-free. Some say that researchers and educators should therefore opening acknowledge their sex-related values, recognizing the emotional significance of sexual expression.
Summarize current views on the number of people whose sexual orientation is homosexual, and discuss the research on environmental and biological influences on sexual orientation.
Studies indicate that about 3 or 4 percent of men and 1 or 2 percent of women are homosexual, and that sexual orientation is enduring. Research does not support cuase-effect links between homsexuality and any of the following: a child's relationship with parents, father-absent homes, fear or hatred of people the other gender, childhood sexual experiences, peer relationships, or dating experiences. Evidence supporting the likelihood of a biological component of homosexuality is found in studies of the same-sex behavior in several hundred species, straight-gay differences in body and brain characteristics, genetic studies of family members and twins, and the effects of exposure to certain hormones during critical periods of prenatal development. The increasing public perception that sexual orientation is biologically influences is reflected in increasing acceptance of gays and lesbians and their relationships.
Discuss the impact of hormones on sexual motivation and behavior.
The sex hormones testosterone and estrogen are present in both males and females, but males have higher levels of testosterone and females a higher level of estrogen. These hormones help our bodies develop and function as either male or female. In nonhuman animals, they also help stimulate sexual activity. Assuming a normal level is present, hormones have a looser influence on human sexual behavior, though desire does rise slightly at ovulation among women with mates. Unlike other mammalian females, women's sexuality is more responsive to testosterone level than to estrogen level. Short-term shifts in testosterone level are normal in men.
