Chapter 10 Flashcards
Mental states which cause people to engage in behavior directed toward achieving some goal or satisfying a need or desire (purposive behavior). They initiate actions, direct them toward the desired goal, and help the person sustain the necessary effort to attain the goal.
Motivation
When a person experiences conflicting emotions or motivations—being “of two minds” about something.
Ambivalence
An innate, automatic behavior tendency that will occur reliably in all normally developed members of a species in response to a releasing stimulus, or cue, from the environment. Because of past difficulties in identifying them, more often than not the term fixed-action pattern is used instead of the term.
Instinct
A theory initially proposed by Clark Hull in 1943 which proposed that behavior is motivated primarily by the desire to reduce unpleasant conditions of arousal which have resulted from basic physiological needs.
Drive Theory
The desire to reduce unpleasant arousal states resulting from basic psychological needs.
Drive
Literally meaning “to stay the same,” the term is used to describe a steady regulated state where various physiological processes (e.g., water intake, blood sugar, body temperature) are maintained at appropriate levels.
Homeostasis
A theory proposed in reaction to problems with drive theory, theory states that people seek to maintain an optimal level of arousal. this could mean reducing levels of arousal from unpleasantly high levels, as described in drive theory, but it could also mean increasing levels of arousal from unpleasantly low levels, as in states of boredom or excessive rest.
Optimal Arousal Theory
Any rewarding condition that provides a motive for some behavior.
Incentives
A category of motivation which compels a person to engage in a behavior is rewarding for its own sake, rather than providing some sort of additional external incentive or reward.
Intrinsic Motivation
A category of motivation which compels a person to engage in a behavior for an external reward that the behavior might bring.
Extrinsic Motivation
An internal state of tension that motivates a person to perform some action.
Need
Mental forces which determine the form, direction, intensity, and persistence of each person’s work-related activities.
Work Motivation
The study of psychology in the context of work.
Industrial and Organizational Psychology (I/O Psychology)
Relatively stable, enduring personal characteristics, attributes, and motives for behavior.
Traits
Albert Bandura’s term to describe one’s core beliefs about ability to produce change or accomplish a specific task through one’s own effort. Although some people may be higher than others across many domains, perceived self-efficacy is not a trait in which a person can be globally high or low. It always refers to specific tasks, and a person high in perceived self-efficacy on one task can be quite low on another.
Perceived Self-Efficacy
An important theory of work motivation devised by Edwin Locke and Gary Latham. According to this theory, work motivation and performance are enhanced when specific and difficult (but not impossible) goals are set. Setting specific and difficult goals directs attention toward appropriate activities to reach goals, increases effort to achieve goals, and increases persistence in working toward goals.
Goal-Setting Theory