Aspiration Levels and Well-being

Motivation

• Motivation starts, guides, and sustains goal-oriented actions
• Includes biological, emotional, social, and cognitive factors
• It explains why people do what they do and drives their behavior

Meaning of Motivation

• Encourages people to perform their best and achieve company goals
• Positive motivation increases employee output, while negative motivation decreases it
• Motivation is key in personnel management

Definitions of Motivation

• Berelson and Steiner: An inner state that energizes, activates, moves, and directs behavior
• Lillis: The stimulation of emotion or desire that acts on one's will
• Dubin: The complex forces that start and keep someone working
• Vance: Any emotion or desire that conditions one's will, leading to action

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

• Argues that motivation comes from trying to meet five basic needs:
  • Physiological
  • Safety
  • Social
  • Esteem
  • Self-actualization
• Managers use different methods to keep employees motivated
• Understanding psychological processes helps managers guide employees toward company goals
• People are motivated by unmet needs, and these can vary in strength

Physiological Needs

• Basic for human survival: air, food, water, shelter, clothing, and sleep
• Managers can address these by providing comfortable conditions, reasonable hours, and breaks

Safety Needs

• Provide a sense of security and well-being: personal, financial, health, and protection from harm
• Managers ensure safety by providing safe conditions, secure pay, and job security

Social Needs

• Also known as love and belonging
• Refer to needing a sense of belonging and acceptance
• Managers promote social needs by helping employees know each other, encouraging teamwork, and being a kind supervisor

Esteem Needs

• Refer to the need for self-esteem and respect
• Self-respect is more important than admiration from others
• Managers can help with esteem needs by offering praise, recognition, promotions and additional responsibility

Self-Actualization Needs

• Describe the need to reach one's full potential, which is highly personal
• Managers can support this by offering challenging work and autonomy

Progression and Deficit Principles

• Maslow believed needs are hierarchical: lower-level needs must be met first
• Deficit principle: a satisfied need is no longer a motivator

Level of Aspiration

• The level at which a person sets significant goals and aspires to perform
• It affects personality and self-image
• Most people set goals slightly higher than what they can achieve

Impact of Success and Failure

• Repeated success increases aspiration levels
• Infrequent failures may lower aspiration or slow its rise
• Continuous failure can lead to setting goals too low or high to avoid feeling like a failure

Group Influence

• Group performance influences individual aspiration levels
• People compare themselves to select groups
• Students who scored below high school students raised their level of aspiration, while those who scored higher than graduate students lowered their estimates most

Learning Theories

• Explain what happens during learning
• Learning theories give us vocabulary and frameworks for interpreting learning examples
• Tell us where to look for solutions to practical problems

Categories of Learning Theories

• Behavioral: Focuses on observable aspects
• Cognitive: Explains brain-based learning
• Constructivism: Views learning as active construction of new ideas

Types of Behavioral Theories

• S-R (Stimulus-Response) theory with reinforcement
• S-R (Stimulus-Response) theory without reinforcement

S-R Theory with Reinforcement

• E.L. Thorndike: Trial and Error theory
• B.F. Skinner: Operant Conditioning

S-R Theory without Reinforcement

• Pavlov: Classical Conditioning

Thorndike's Trial and Error Learning

• Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949) was the first American psychologist
• Learning occurs through bond formation between stimulus and response
• Learning happens through approximation and correction
• Thorndike's puzzle box experiment:
  • A hungry cat was placed in a puzzle box with a fish outside
  • The cat made random movements to escape and get food
  • Over time, the cat learned to manipulate the latch faster

Laws of Learning

• Based on Trial and Error Learning:
  • Law of Readiness: Learning happens when the learner is ready
    • For a conduction unit ready to conduct, to conduct is satisfying
    • For a conduction unit ready to conduct, not to conduct is annoying
    • For a conduction unit not ready to conduct, to conduct is annoying
  • Law of Exercise: Practice makes learning efficient
    • Law of Use: Connections between stimulus and response are strengthened by exercise
    • Law of Disuse: Connections weaken when not practiced over time
• Law of Effect: Connections are strengthened with satisfying states and weakened with annoying ones Then he focused more on rewards than punishment

Educational Implications of Thorndike's Laws

• Law of Readiness: Teacher must consider the child's motivation and psycho-biological readiness
• Law of Exercise: Practice is important, but must be followed by reward
• Law of Effect: Learning trials should have satisfying consequences; use rewards more than punishment

Skinner's Operant Conditioning

• Learning through rewards and punishments for behavior
• B.F. Skinner coined the term operant conditioning
• Also referred to as Skinnerian conditioning or instrumental conditioning
• Focused on external causes of behavior, not internal thoughts
• Operant: Active behavior that affects the environment
• Based on Thorndike's law of effect, Behavior that is reinforced tends to be repeated, behavior that is not reinforced tends to disappear
• Conducted experiments with animals in a "Skinner Box"
• Skinner Box Example
  • An animal (rat or pigeon) is placed in a sealed box with a lever
  • Pressing lever releases food. The rat presses more because it gets food
  • Lever pressing is an operant behavior

Reinforcement

• A reward is something with value to the giver
• A reinforcer benefits the receiver and increases the behavior

Types of Responses

• Neutral Operants: Neither increase nor decrease behavior probability
• Reinforcers: Strengthen or increase the behavior
  • Positive Reinforcers: Favorable events presented after behavior
  • Negative Reinforcers: Removing unfavorable events after behavior
• Punishment: Decreases the behavior
  • Positive Punishment: Presenting an unfavorable event
  • Negative Punishment: Removing a favorable event

Schedules of Reinforcement

• Intermittent Reinforcement: Only part of the time
• Continuous Reinforcement: Every time
• Ratio Reinforcement: Pre-determined responses
  • Fixed Ratio Reinforcement: Given on a regular ratio
  • Variable (Random) Fixed Reinforcement: Given randomly

Interval Reinforcement

• Given after a set time - Fixed Interval Reinforcement: Regular schedule, variable interval reinforcement on a random schedule

Impact of Reinforcement Schedules

• Continuous reinforcement increases learning rate
• Intermittent reinforcement keeps response going longer

Skinner's Applications to Education

• Goal of education is to train survival skills for society
• Teachers should reinforce behaviors that contribute to that and get rid of the ones that don't

Implications of Operatt Conditioning Theory

• Conditioning Study Behavior:
  • Effective teaching includes effective reinforcement
  • Use various incentives like prizes, medals, smiles, and praise
• Conditioning and Classroom Behavior:
  • Create a recognition, acceptance, and affection atmosphere
  • Use negative reinforcement for those that do badly, then use positive with the ones that do good
• Managing Problem Behavior:
  • Use positive contingencies like praise and encouragement
  • Avoid negative contingencies like punishment (student will run away from dreary classes)
• Dealing with Anxieties Through Conditioning:
  • Use desensitization techniques and gradually increase the stimulus strength
• Conditioning Group Behavior:
  • Reinforcement makes whole groups change behavior, breaks undesired behavior
• Conditioning and Cognitive Processes:
  • Reinforcement is given as feedback
• Shaping Complex Behavior:
  • Control smallest behavior at the start, and teach at a complex level

Classical Conditioning

• Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov
• Describes learning through experience
• Pavlov trained dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell
• It creates a condition response

Components

• Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): Anything that evokes a response automatically
• Conditioned Stimulus (CS): Created by learning
• Unconditioned Reflex/Response (UCR): Happens automatically
• Conditioned Reflex/Response (CR): What you learn to associate with something

Basic Concepts in Classical Conditioning

• Extinction: Conditioned response disappears over time
• Spontaneous Recovery: Weak appearance of an extinguished response
• Stimulus Generalization: Responding the same way to similar stimuli
• Stimulus Discrimination: Learning to discriminate between stimuli
• Higher Order Conditioning: A neutral stimulus causes the conditioned response if associated with the conditioned stimulus

Types of Classical Conditioning

• Forward Conditioning: Learning is fastest
  • Delay Conditioning: Conditioned stimulus is presented and overlaps with the unconditioned stimulus
  • Trace Conditioning: There is a pause between the condition and unconditioned stimuli
• Simultaneous Conditioning: The stimuli is presented and ended at the same time
• Backward Conditioning: The conditional stimulus immediately follows the unconditional stimulus
  • Conditional response tends to be inhibitory
• Temporal Conditioning: Unconditional stimulus is presented at regular intervals
• Unpaired Conditioning: Stimuli are not presented together
  • Used to study non-associative behavioral responses
• CS-Alone Extinction: Only the conditional stimulus is presented
  • Stimulus is presented until habituation occurs

Implications of Pavlov's Theory

• You must practice and master before you take on another
• Teachers must know how to motivate with strategies
• Positive or negative responses come through the stimuli

Piaget's Cognitive Development Theory

• Developed by Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, for humans
• Deals with human knowledge and how people learn
• Humans adapt to environments and that involves assimilation and accomodation

Assimilation

• Incorporating new objects and events into existing schemes

Accommodation

• Modifying existing schemes to meet new objects or events

Four Basic Elements in Development

• Maturation
• Experience
• Social transmission
• Equilibrium

Stages of cognitive Development

• 2 years and under: Sensory-Motor Stage
  • First few weeks consists of reflex's
• 2 to 7 years: Pre-Operational Stage
  • Cannot perform mental operations
• 7 to 11 years: Concrete Operational Stage - Concerned with integrating his systems
• 11 and up: Formal Operational Stage: - Involves logical thinking

Educational Implications of Piaget's Theory

• Understanding the child's mind is helpful in teaching
• Direct experience allows kids to understand abstract ideas
• Teachers must orient education around the child

Constructivist Theory

• John Dewey helps humans learn, think and develop
• Learn through problem solving
• Learning is active not passive
• Construct prior knowledge

History of Constructuvism

• Piaget created a analogy between development of the mind to biological development

His Four Stages

• The sensorimotor stage
• The preoperational stage
• The concrete operational stage
• The formal operational stage
• Vygotsky studied the mind through language

Dewey's Key Points

• Knowledge and ideas come from learners drawing situation
• Believed thought is practical and proceeds thought rival hypothesis

Carl Roger's Humanistic Theory

• Was a humanistic psychologist
• Supported views of Maslow and added, genuiness, and acceptance with emphathy
• Believed to reach their potential or what they want in life

Key Points

• React to stimuli with their phenomenol field
• Key factor is positive regard
• An ideal, or real self
• People should have their own goals to fulfill
• Should emanate with their experiences

Personality Development

• Based on subject experiences
• Everyone is based on their world of subjective experience
• Have their own personal motivators

The Phenomenal Feild

• Is subjective to that persons reality
• Motivators are the environment

Rogers Divides Self Into Two Categories

• Ideal, or real self
• High congruence leads to self worth
• Incongruence leads to maladjustment

The Good life

• Rogers described life in terms of principles These principles are fluid and not static stats. These people can act trusted
• Some may include
• Openness to experience-they move away from defensiveness
• Living each moment fully
• They trust their own judgment and their ability to choose behaviour that is appropriate for each moment
• Higher levels of creativity
• They can be trusted and act constructive

Critics of Roger's Theories

• Empirical evidence used in research
• Extreme focus does little to explain or to impact society

Explore how aspiration levels impact well-being and goal setting. Understand the psychological benefits of slightly exceeding achievable goals. Learn how aspiration levels change in relation to performance and self-assessment.