Motivation Flashcards
The Theoretical Approaches to Psychology
- Biopsychology.
- Behaviourist
- Psychodynamic
- Humanistic
- Cognitive
- Social Constructionist
- Evolutionary
Heckhausen & Heckhausen {2018} - General attributes of theories of Motivation
- Person: needs, motives, goals.
- Situation: opportunities, possible incentives.
- Person-Situation interaction.
- Action.
- Outcome.
- Consequence: Long-term goals, Self-evaluation, Other evaluation, Material rewards.
The Biopsychological approach
The study of biological bases, or the physiological correlates, of behaviour.
Is a branch of neuroscience.
'’Biopsychologists aren’t interested in biology for its own sake, but for what it can tell them about behavior and mental {cognitive} processes’’
- Pinel, 1993
Biopsychological approach is Reductionist
Psychological processes and behavior. HUman and non-human.
Physiological structures: Interactions between Neurons and hormones.
Constituent processes in synaptic transmission and chemistry/physics.
Basic Principles and assumptions of Biopsychology
- the immediate determines of behaviour, For example, when someone treads on a thorn [a cause] and cries out in pain, soon afterwards [an effect], we know the pathways of information in the body that mediate between such causes and effects.
- We inherit genes from our parents and these genes play a role in determining the structure of our body.
- A combination of genes and environment affects the growth and maturation of our body, with the main focus being the NS and behaviour. Development of the individual is called ontogenesis.
- The assumption that humans have evolved from simpler forms, rooted in Darwin’s {1859} theory of Evolution, relates to both the physical structure of our body and our behaviour: we can gain insight into behaviour by considering how it has been shaped by evolution. Development of species is called phylogenesis.
Critique of Biopsychology
Losing sight of the whole person.
Where is the ‘psychology’?
Fails to reflect experiences.
Fails to reflect everyday interaction with other people.
Biopsycholopgy vs. Behaviourism
Behavioural psychology focuses on observable behaviour and environmental influences, while biopsychology explores the biological underpinnings and interactions between genetics, brain processes, and behaviour.
The Behaviourist approach
According to Skinner {1987}
- ‘‘Methodical behaviourists often accept the existence of feelings and states of mind, but do not deal with them because they are not public and hence statements about them are not subjective by confirmation by more than one person.’’
- Watson {1913} rejects introspection -> Behaviourist Manifesto.
Skinner says further more {1987}
- ‘‘Radical Behaviourists […] recognise the role of private events {accessible to varying degrees to self-observation and physiological research}, but contend that so-called mental activities are metaphors or explanatory fictions and that behaviour attributed to them can be more effectively explained in other ways.’’
→ Welcome to Main-Stream.
Behaviourists and Theoretical contributions - Conditioning
→ Learning and conditioning.
→ Organisation in memory.
→ Inference theory of forgetting {close to stimulus-response terms}.
→ Formation and maintenance of relationships.
→ Building onwards.
- Tolman cognitive Behaviourism.
- Bandura Social Learning theory.
Behaviourists and Practical contributions - Behaviour Therapy and Behaviour Modification
→ Behavioural Pharmacology.
→ Biofeedback.
→ Teaching machines and programmed learning [CAL - computer-assisted learning]
Critique of Behaviourism
- Behaviour is shaped by what is going on inside their [people’s] heads, and not simply by what is going on in the external environment.
- While the focus on frequency was a practical consideration, it eventually became a part of the overall conceptual framework as well - in case of research methods directing theory.
- How to explain creativity?
- How to explain novel behaviour?
The Psychodynamic Psychologists
Carl Gustav Jung.
Sigmund Freud.
Erik Erikson.
Anna Freud.
The Psychodynamic Approach
Basic Principles and Assumptions:
- The un/conscious.
- Conflict.
- Repression.
- Free association, dream interpretation, transference.
- Drive [instinct?] theory.
Psychodynamic and Further developments (exemplary)
- Psychoanalysis - S. Freud.
- Ego psychology - A. Freud.
- Psychosocial theory - E. Erikson.
- Analytical psychology - C.G. Jung.
- Individual Psychology - A. Adler.
- Object relationships school - R. Fairbairn, M. Klein, M. Mahler, D. Winnicott.
Psyohodynamic - Practical Contributions
- ‘Most moder therapists use techniques that were developed either Freud and his followers or dissident in explicit reaction against his therapists. Freud remains a dominating figure, for or against whom virtually all therapists feel compelled to take a stand.’ - Fancher.
- In-origin trained psychoanalysts:
→ Carl Rogers - major humanistic therapist.
→ Joseph Wolpe - systematic desensitisation.
→ Fritz Perls - founder of gestalt psychology.
Psychodynamic In the 21th century
‘Although always controversial, Freud stuck a responsive chord with his basic image of human beings as creatures in conflict, beset by incredible and often unconscious demands from within as well as without. His ideas about repression, the importance of early experience and sexuality, and the inaccessibility of much of human nature to ordinary conscious introspection have become a part of the standard western intellectual currency’ - Fancher
The Psychodynamic Approach in a nutshell
Unfalsifiable, example by Scodel.
→ Freudian prediction that ‘dependent’ men will love big-breasted women -> theory is confirmed.
– Such men prefers small-breasted women, conception of reaction formation (ego defence mechanism) -> again theory is confirmed .
– ‘Heads I will win - tales you will lose’ - following Eyesenck, Popper.
→ Mistake would be to see reaction formation as central concept - some theoretical concepts are more central, some have more supporting evidence - Kline.
→ Those theories that are richest in explanatory power, most difficult to test empirically - Zedlow.
– Newton’s second law took 100 years to be tested in quantitative way.
– Einstein’s relativity theory still untestable.
– ‘… psychoanalytic theories have inspired more research in the social and behavioural sciences than any other group of theories’ - Zeldow,
→ Popper - Critical Rationalism.
Biopsychology and Behaviourism vs. Psychodynamics and Humanism
- People have behaviour that we observe - Behaviourism + Biopsychology
- People have needs and desires - Psychodynamics
- People have the ability to choose how they act - Humanism
The Humanistic approach
Basic Principles and Assumptions.
- Maslow contacts with Wertheimer and other Gestalt psychologists -> stressing on importance of understanding the whole person, rather than, ‘bits of behaviour’.
- Freud supplied the ‘sick half’ of psychology - Rogers/Maslow stress in ‘health half’.
- A truly specific psychology must treat its subject matter as fully human.
→ Acknowledging individuals as interpreters of themselves and their world.
→ Behaviour means individual’s subjective experience {Phenomenology}.
→ Contrasts with positivists approach of natural sciences. – Based on Glassman.
- Maslows ideocratic theory against nomothetic personality theorists likewise Eysenck or Cattell.
Humanists and Theoretical Contributions
→ Hierarchy of Needs [Maslow]
– Motives shared by both (non-/humans)
– Freud’s Id represents physiological needs
– Self-actualisation at peak of hierarchy
→ Rogers ‘unique perception’ (=phenomenal field)
– Perception of external reality shapes lives (not external reality itself)
– No core/unchanging personality!
Humanists and Practical Contributions
→ CCT - Client-Centred-Psychotherapy
→ Later PCT - Person-Centred-Psychotherapy
→ Rogers
– ‘… psychotherapy is the releasing of an already existing capacity in a potentially competent individual
– Q-Sorts: research designs enabling objective measurement of the self-concept, ideal self and their relationship over therapy
– ‘lay therapy’ -> initially no MD/psychiatrists
Central role of cognitive process in the learning process
- Central role of cognitive process in the learning process
→ The Information-Processing approach
→ In relation to attention, patter recognition, and memory
→ Therefore behaviour is directed as a result of the active processing and interpretation of information
Cognitive approach - Parkin, 2000
- '’The human brain is not like other organs of the body in that looking at its structure does not reveal anything about how it functions. We can see that … the heart [acts] as a pump, and the kidney as a filter: The brain, however, is a large mass of cells and fibres which, no matter how clearly we look at it, gives no indication of how we think, speak, remember..’’
Cognitive Psychologists are:
→ Forced to seek analogies and metaphors seeking explanations within the brain (brain works gets compared with processes we already understand)
→ Internal mental abilities are information processing systems (e.g. coding/channel capacity/serial parallel processing)
Practical Contributions - Cognitive Approach
- Ellis rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT, previously just RET)
→ Following Rorer (1998) -> ‘‘cognitive revolution started with publication of book Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy’’
→ Emphasis is on primacy of cognition in psychopathology
→ ‘‘REBT attempts directly and actively to get clients to dispute their irrational and unscientific beliefs, and replace them with rational beliefs, which are less likely to be associated with extremely negative emotional states or maladaptive behaviours’’ - Gross, 2020 - ’‘… people have enormous power to think about their thinking, to use rationality and the scientific method, and to radically control and change their emotional destiny - providing they really work at doing so.’’ - Ellis, 1987
The Social Constructionist approach
‘We are born into a world where the conceptual frameworks and categories used by the people of our culture already exists … Concepts and categories are acquired by each person as they develop the use of language and are thus reproduced every day by everyone who shares a culture and language. This means that the way a person thinks, the very categories and concepts that provide a framework of meaning for them, are provided by the language that they use. Language therefore is a necessary pre-condition for though as we know it.’’ - Burr, 2003
.
‘‘Knowledge is therefore seen not as something that a person has or doesn’t have, but as something that people do together…’’
Basic Principles and Assumptions - S.C.A.
- Speaking about ‘‘key attitudes’’ (proposed by Gergen, 1985)
→ A critical stance towards taken-for-granted knowledge - ‘‘anti-essentialism’’
→ Historical and cultural specificity
→ Knowledge is situated by social process
→ Knowledge and social action go together
The Social Constructionist Approach In a nutshell
All knowledge -> Incl. Psychological knowledge -> Specific in history, culture,.. -> individual -> social -> political
The Evolutionary approach - Basic Principles and Assumptions
(Neo-Darwinism)
- Workman and Reader (2008)
→ Human mind is the product of evolution (just like any other bodily organ)
– Gain better understanding by examining evolutionary pressure shaping it
→ Evolutionary Adaptedness/Adaptation (EEA)
→ Acknowledging debt to sociology
– Criticising that overseen role of mind in mediating links between genes and behaviour
→ Traditional psychology
– Tried to identify proximate mechanisms (e.g. individual’s goals, knowledge…)
→ EP asks
– Ultimate questions
- Not: ‘‘Why are some people more prejudiced than other?’’
- But: ‘‘Why is prejudice present in human being at all?’’ … e.g. what evolutionary benefit does prejudice to human beings?
E.P. rejects ‘‘Standard social sciences Model’’
- SSSM has several broad assumptions about human beings, EP differs/rejects therefore the following (Workman&Reader 2008)
.
a. Humans are born as blank slates: knowledge, personality traits and cultural values are acquired from the cultural environment. There’s not such thing as, ‘human nature’.
b. Human behaviour is infinitely malleable: there are no biological constraints on how people develop
c. Culture is an autonomous force and exists independently of people
d. Human behaviour is determined by a process of learning, socialisation or indoctrination
e. Learning processes are general: they can be applied to a verity of phenomena
Evolutionary theory - what about it?
- EP is, in general, about universal features of the mind
- In so far as individual differences exist, the default assumption is that they’re expressions of the same universal human nature as it encounters different environments
- Gender is the curtail exception to this rule. Natural selection has constructed the mental modules of men and woman in very different ways as a result of their fivergent reproductive roles (sexual dimorphism).
Incentive
something that incites or has a tendency to incite to determination or action.
positive or negative outcome to a situation.
Motivates behavior.
