Lecture 18: Autonomy Flashcards
What is Deci and Ryan 2012 definition of autonomy?
Autonomy means to behave with a sense of volition, willingness and congruence, this acting according to one’s true feelings.
What is the relation between autonomy and attachment, if any, during childhood?
- For ages 1 and 2
- Measure:
- Maternal sensitivity
- Maternal autonomy support during play
- Child attachment
- Child exploration and mastery
- Note: the above relate to the type of attachment the child has.
What does McAdams think the mothers should be to the children?
Secure base and safe heaven
How do we measure autonomy in children?
Similar paradigm to Strange Situtaion
- Mom play with kids
- Mom’s behaviour is recorded and encoded as well as the child’s
How can we measure autonomy in young adults and adults?
- General Causality Orientation Scales
- Describe a situation to the participant
- Give 3 response options and the participant has to pick one
- Score responses
- In total, give 12 different scenarions
Give an example of general causality orientation scale situation.
You have been offered a new position in a company where you have worked for some time. The first question that is likely to come to mind is:
- I wonder if the new work will be interesting?
- Autonomy
- Will I make more money in this position?
- Control response
- extrinsic factors (rewards)
- What if I can’t live up to the new responsibility?
- impersonal response
What is another way to measure autonomy?
To rank how likely you are to respond a certain way.
What are the three orientations
- Autonomous
- Controlled
- Impersonal
What are the scores and category of responses?
- Autonomy response: 68
- Control responses: 62
- Impersonal responses: 40
What is the description of an autonomous behaviour?
- Initiated and regulated volitionally based on an awareness of one’s needs and integrated goals
- Unrelated to Big 5 traits
What is the description of a controlled behaviour?
- Initiated and regulated by controls in the environment:
- rewards
- how one “should” or “must” behave
- Unrelated to Big 5 traits
What is the description of an impersonal behaviour?
- Are those whose initiation and regulation are perceived to be beyond intentional control.
- Correlated with Neuroticism
- Low Social Dominance
When Krostner first started teaching at McGill, he quickly found out that not all the students were autonomous. How did he notice?
- Found 3 types of students
- 10 who had controlled behaviour
- Needed guidance in the assignment and a lot of feedback
- Wanted to know exactly what the professor wanted
- 2 autonomous
- 3 impersonal behaviour
- Didn’t submit the assignment
- Didn’t organize themselves
- 10 who had controlled behaviour
What is the hallmark of autonomy?
Integrated functioning
What is integrated functioning?
- hallmark of autonomy
- Integration of 3 areas:
- Personality
- Emotional
- Social
- It is the coherence and unity in one’s personality and experience.
What is Personality integration?
- Trait consistency
- Attitude-behaviour consistency
- Implicit/explicit motive consistency
- Autonomous since implicit and explicit motive align
What is emotional integration?
- Learn how to cope and deal with negative emotions and negative life experiences
- Learn how to integrate negative aspects of oneself
- Attachment helps deal with negative emotions/experiences
- High in autonomy they are able to recall negative and positive memories and experiences
What is Social Integration?
- High autonomy is related to:
- fit better generally
- intimate relationships
- Autonomy and social interactions are complementary
Describe the study that looked into social interactions and autonomy.
- College students record interactions with peers across 1 week
- Record interactions that last 10 min or more
- Quality
- how much was disclosed
- Honesty of you and the other(s)
- Record interactions that last 10 min or more
- Results:
- Autonomy was independent of interaction quality but a predictor of the quality of social experiences
- Conclusion:
- Autonomy neither negates nor conflicts with the human need for relatedness. Rather, it allows for more open and honest interpersonal experience.
What makes an interaction intimate?
- Self-disclosure
- But only with people that we know pretty well
What is the definition of pseudo-autonomy?
“To resist influence or coercion; to defy an authority or to seek freedom in a new place. To strive for independence.”
This is Henry’s Murray definition of autonomy.
Explain Koestner’s and Losier’s study on reactive autonomy and reflective autonomy.
- Study 1:
- 100 women, 50 men
- Results:
- Reactive and reflective are uncorrelated
- Sex differences: men more reactive
- Reactive positively correlated to Control orientation
- Reactive positively correlated to E and O. Negatively correlated to A
- Reflective no correlations with Big 5
- Study 3:
- Reflective vs Reactive + Qulity of social interactions
- Results:
- Reactive’s quality with authority -0.37
- Reflective’s quality with non-authority 0.26
Describe the results of Koestner’s study on Reactive and Reflective autonomy and their reliance on experts.
Pseudo Autonomy (Reactive) don’t want to follow when the experts really know what they are doing.
Does autonomy relate to attachment?
yes
How can we measure autonomy?
With the General Causality Orientations (autonomous, controlled, impersonal).
Is autonomy similar to:
independence?
individualism?
non-conformity?
No to all 3. Autonomy has to do with the integration of personality, emotions and social skills.
