Download 09 Motivation and Work

Motivation and Work
Motivational Concepts
• Motivation is the energizing and directing of
behavior, the force behind our yearning for food,
our longing for sexual intimacy, our need to
belong, and our desire to achieve.
• The instinct/evolutionary perspective explores
genetic influences on complex behaviors. Drivereduction theory explores how physiological
needs create aroused tension states (drives) that
direct us to satisfy those needs.
Same motive, different wiring
• The more complex the nervous system, the more
adaptable the organism. Both the people and the weaver
bird satisfy their need for shelter in ways that reflect their
inherited capacities. The people’s behavior is flexible; they
can learn whatever skills they need to build a house.
• The bird’s behavior pattern is fixed; it can build only this
kind of nest.
Instincts and Evolutionary Psychology
• Under Darwin’s influence, early theorists
viewed behavior as controlled by biological
forces, such as specific instincts. When it
became clear that people were naming, not
explaining, various behaviors by calling them
instincts, this approach fell into disfavor.
• The underlying idea—that genes predispose
species-typical behavior—is, however, still
influential in evolutionary psychology.
Drive-reduction theory
• Drive-reduction motivation arises from
homeostasis—an organism’s natural tendency to
maintain a steady internal state.
• Thus, if we are water deprived, our thirst drives
us to drink and to restore the body’s normal
state.
Drives and Incentives
• Drive reduction theory states that most
physiological needs create aroused psychological
states, driving us to reduce or satisfy those needs.
The aim of drive reduction is internal stability, or
homeostasis. Thus, drive reduction motivates
survival behaviors, such as eating and drinking.
• Not only are we pushed by our internal drives, we
are also pulled by external incentives. Depending
on our personal experiences, some stimuli (for
example, certain foods) will arouse our desires.
Driven by curiosity
• Baby monkeys and young children are fascinated
by things they’ve never handled before.
• Their drive to explore the relatively unfamiliar is
one of several motives that do not fill any
immediate physiological need.
Optimum Arousal
• Human motivation aims not to eliminate arousal but to
seek optimum levels of arousal. Having all our
biological needs satisfied, we feel driven to experience
stimulation and we hunger for information. We are
“infovores,” say neuroscientists Irving Biederman and
Edward Vessel, after identifying brain mechanisms that
reward us for acquiring information.
• Lacking stimulation, we feel bored and look for a way
to increase arousal to some optimum level. However,
with too much stimulation comes stress, and we then
look for a way to decrease arousal.
A Hierarchy of Motives
• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs expresses the idea that, until
satisfied, some motives are more compelling than others. It
indicates that physiological needs must first be met, then
safety, followed by the need for belongingness and love,
and finally, esteem needs. Once all of these are met, a
person is motivated to meet the need for self-actualization.
This order of needs is not universally fixed but it provides a
framework for thinking about motivation.
• Some needs take priority over others. At this moment, with
your needs for air and water hopefully satisfied, other
motives—such as your desire to achieve (discussed later in
this chapter)—are energizing and directing your behavior.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs Once
our lower-level needs are met, we are
prompted to satisfy our higher-level needs.
For survivors
of the
disastrous
2007
Bangladeshi
flood, such
as this man
carefully
carrying his
precious
load of clean
water,
satisfying
very basic
needs for
water, food,
and safety
become top
priority.
Hunger
• After dropping rapidly, their body weights
eventually stabilized at about 25 percent below
their starting weights. Especially dramatic were
the psychological effects. Consistent with
Maslow’s idea of a needs hierarchy, the men
became food-obsessed.
• They talked food. They daydreamed food. They
collected recipes, read cookbooks, and feasted
their eyes on delectable forbidden foods.
Preoccupied with their unfulfilled basic need,
they lost interest in sex and social activities.
Monitoring stomach contractions
• Using this procedure, Washburn showed that
stomach contractions (transmitted by the
stomach balloon) accompany our feelings of
hunger (indicated by a key press).
The Physiology of Hunger
• The impact of psychological factors, such as challenging
family settings and weight-obsessed societal pressures,
on eating behavior is dramatic in people with anorexia
nervosa, who keep themselves on near-starvation
rations, and in those with bulimia nervosa, who binge
and purge in secret. In the past half-century a dramatic
increase in poor body image has coincided with a rise
in eating disorders among women in Western cultures.
• In addition to cultural pressures, low self-esteem and
negative emotions (with a possible genetic component)
seem to interact with stressful life experiences to
produce anorexia and bulimia.
The hypothalamus
• The hypothalamus
(colored red) performs
various body
maintenance functions,
including control of
hunger. Blood vessels
supply the
hypothalamus, enabling
it to respond to our
current blood chemistry
as well as to incoming
neural information
about the body’s state.
Eating Disorders
• • Anorexia nervosa typically begins as a weight-loss
diet. People with anorexia—usually adolescents and 3
out of 4 times females—drop significantly (typically 15
percent or more) below normal weight. Yet they feel
fat, fear gaining weight, and remain obsessed with
losing weight. About half of those with anorexia display
a binge-purge-depression cycle.
• • Bulimia nervosa may also be triggered by a weightloss diet, broken by gorging on forbidden foods. Bingepurge eaters—mostly women in their late teens or
early twenties—eat the way some people with alcohol
dependency drink—in spurts, sometimes influenced by
friends who are bingeing.
Evidence for the brain’s control of eating
• A lesion near the
ventromedial area
of the
hypothalamus
caused this rat’s
weight to triple.
Body Chemistry and the Brain
• Two distinct hypothalamic centers influence eating. Activity
along the sides of the hypothalamus (the lateral
hypothalamus) brings on hunger. If electrically stimulated
there, well-fed animals begin to eat. (If the area is
destroyed, even starving animals have no interest in food.)
Recent research helps explain this behavior.
• When a rat is food-deprived, its blood sugar levels wane
and the lateral hypothalamus churns out the hungertriggering hormone orexin. When given orexin, rats
become ravenously hungry. Activity in the second center—
the lower mid-hypothalamus (the ventromedial
hypothalamus)—depresses hunger. Stimulate this area and
an animal will stop eating; destroy it and the animal’s
stomach and intestines will process food more rapidly,
causing it to become extremely fat.
Obesity and Weight Control
• The lack of exercise combined with the abundance of
highcalorie food has led to increased rates of obesity,
showing the influence of environment. Twin and
adoption studies indicate that body weight is also
genetically influenced (in the number of fat cells and
basal metabolic rate). Thus, genes and environment
interact to produce obesity.
• Those wishing to lose weight are advised to make a
lifelong change in habits, minimize exposure to
tempting food cues, boost energy expenditure through
exercise, eat healthy foods, space meals throughout
the day, beware of the binge, and forgive the
occasional lapse.
The appetite
hormones
• Insulin: Secreted by pancreas;
controls blood glucose.
• Leptin: Secreted by fat cells;
when abundant, causes brain
to increase metabolism and
decrease hunger.
• Orexin: Hunger-triggering
hormone secreted by
hypothalamus.
• Ghrelin: Secreted by empty
stomach; sends “I’m hungry”
signals to the brain.
• Obestatin: Secreted by
stomach; sends out “I’m full”
signals to the brain.
• PYY: Digestive tract hormone;
sends “I’m not hungry”
signals to the brain.
Taste Preferences: Biology and Culture
• Body chemistry and environmental factors together
influence not only when we feel hungry, but also what
we hunger for—our taste preferences. When feeling
tense or depressed, do you crave starchy,
carbohydrate-laden foods? Carbohydrates help boost
levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which has
calming effects. When stressed, even rats find it extra
rewarding to scarf Oreos.
• Our preferences for sweet and salty tastes are genetic
and universal. Other taste preferences are conditioned,
as when people given highly salted foods develop a
liking for excess salt, or when people who have been
sickened by a food develop an aversion to it.
A losing battle
• Ryan Benson lost 122 pounds to win the first season of
the TV reality show, “The Biggest Loser.”
• But then, like so many, he found maintaining the loss
an even bigger challenge.
Motivation at Work
• Personnel psychologists work with organizations to
devise selection methods for new employees, recruit
and evaluate applicants, design and evaluate training
programs, identify people’s strengths, analyze job
content, and appraise individual and organizational
performance.
• Subjective interviews foster the interviewer illusion;
structured interviews pinpoint job-relevant strengths
and are better predictors of performance. Checklists,
graphic rating scales, and behavior rating scales are
useful performance appraisal methods.
360-degree feedback
• With multisource 360degree feedback, one’s
knowledge, skills, and
behaviors are rated by
self and surrounding
others. Professors, for
example, may be rated
by their department
chairs, their students,
and their colleagues.
• After receiving all these
ratings, professors
discuss the 360-degree
feedback with their
department chair.
Personnel Psychology/Harnessing
Strengths
• Personnel psychologists aim to identify people’s
strengths and to match them with organizational tasks.
Subjective interviews lead to quickly formed
impressions, but they also frequently foster an illusory
overconfidence in one’s ability to predict employee
success.
• Structured interviews, pinpointing job-relevant
strengths, enhance interview reliability and validity.
Personnel psychologists also assist organizations in
appraisal that boosts organizations, motivates
individuals, and is welcomed as fair.
Engaged employees facilitate
organizational success
• Best Buy’s 400 electronic
goods stores have nearly
identical product layout and
operations manuals. Yet some
stores have had much more
engaged employees—and
more profitable performance.
• The store with the highest
worker-engagement scores
has been in the top tenth of
stores in having profits beyond
budget. And the store with the
least-engaged employees has
been in the bottom tenth.
On the right path
• The Gallup Organization path to organizational
success
Organizational Psychology: Motivating
Achievement
• People who excel are often self-disciplined
individuals with strong achievement
motivation. To motivate employees to
achieve, smart managers aim to create an
engaged, committed, satisfied workforce.
• Effective leaders build on people’s strengths,
work with them to set specific and challenging
goals, and adapt their leadership style to their
situation.
Positive coaching
• Larry Brown, an adviser
to “The Positive
Coaching Alliance,” has
been observed during
practices to offer his
players 4 to 5 positive
comments for every
negative comment
(Insana, 2005).
• In 2004, his underdog
Detroit Pistons won the
National Basketball
Association
championship.