Trait Approach 2 Flashcards
According to Murray, what is the need for achievement?
Desire to accomplish something difficult and attain a higher standard can be assessed with TAT
What are some characteristics of a high-need achiever?
Take moderate risks, tackle work with a lot of energy, bored with routine, enjoy personal responsibility and concrete feedbacks
Why is need for achievement not correlated with performance?
Because success/performance in business world requires delegation, which they are not good at
What is a difference between men and women’s need for achievement?
Men: externalize success by measures of prestige and recognition
Women internalize success by measure of personal accomplishment and satisfaction. Women also have different priorities, such as client happiness and family.
What is the difference between collectivist and individualistic cultures?
Collectivist cultures view success as cooperation and group works with concern about other’s well-being.
Individualistic cultures view success as personal accomplishment and competition with others
What are attributions?
The things people attribute success to, which determines how they feel about their and others’ performance
How do you increase someone’s achievement motivation? What studyt was done?
Change their attribution pattern. After a midterm, half of the students in the class were sent to attributional training session = better grades and GPA after.
What do attributions predict?
How people react to success or failure
What are the three dimensions of attributions?
- Stability dimension: explains performance by stable cause (intelligence) or unstable cause (luck)
- Locus dimension: explains performance on internal (amount of effort) or external (difficulty) attributions
- Control dimension: whether the outcome can be controlled
What achievement goal theory?
Motives vary according to the kind of goals one sets and how they support its achievement.
What are the two types of goals?
- Mastery goals: developing competences and satisfaction from sense of proficiency
- Performance goal: demonstrating achievement to others and satisfaction from receiving recognition
What are the two types of valence of goals?
- Positive/approach: desire to achieve a goal
- Negative/avoidance: avoiding negative consequences of failing a goal
Which goal is better to have?
Mastery goals are the best; people tend to retain more information, choose harder classes and do better in group work
Can performance goals be good?
They can be okay when it is approach performance goal
What is Type A vs. B?
A continuum of personality: competition, power, and recognition vs easy-going and relax
What are the three characteristics of type A?
- Higher competitive need than B
- Sense of time urgency
- More likely to express anger
Why does type A often outperform type B?
Because they set higher standard and are more competitive
How is type A related to health?
Type A is related to more hostility, which is correlated with coronary diseases
What study was done on Type A and health?
Type A who wore blood pressure monitor saw big spike in blood pressure when frustrated. Not applicable to women
What is social anxiety?
Anxiety related to social interactions which lead to physiological arousal, inability to concentrateand nervosity.
Why are people anxious?
Because of evaluative apprehension, people reduce social interaction or use self-protective strategies in social interactions, making them appear unfriendly and distant because they fear negative evaluation.
What are emotions?
Stable personal characteristics divided into: affectivity, intensity and expressiveness
What is emotional affectivity?
Extent to which one experiences positive or negative emotions. High positive emotions (active, strong, elated) vs low positive emotions (drowsy, dull) and high negative emotions (angry, nervous, fearful) vs/ low negative emotions (calm, relaxed, placid)
High positive affect predicts…?
Someone social that acts in attractive way and tends to be happy
Are positive and negative affects related?
Early research believed that both affects were independent; today however, research points to the more intuitive notion that being high in one equals being low in the other
Why do people high in negative affect experience more health issues?
Possibly difficulty dealing with stress
Is it better to be low or high in affect?
Both are good, simply different. However, they do experience happiness differently (exhilarating vs. contentment)
What is emotional expressiveness?
Someone’s outward display of emotions that is relatively stable over time
What is dispotional optimism?
Extent to which people have a positive viewpoint. Results in more effective priorization of goals and beliefs in reaching those goals.
The continuum of optimism-pessimism is…?
Stable over life, advantages optimist and related to cultures (more pessimism in collectivist cultures)
How do optimists deal with adversity?
They experience less anxiety and depression and they use more active coping strategies compared to pessimists.
