Week 14 - The End

This will be my last blog for this semester.   Over the past 14 weeks I have shared with you what aspects of motivation and emotion I found most enjoyable and my progress and thought processes for conducting my assignments, the key one being our text book chapter.   When reading over my weekly blogs, it is evident that I have an interest in what motivates someone to think positively and how positive aspects play a role in motivating the individual.  This was originally seen in Week 1 where I picked my text book chapter Positive thinking and Motivation.  This was then seen in Week 3 where I discussed the effects of dopamine release and the positive effects this has on the body, motivating the individual to seek out environments that result in this chemical release.  

In Week 4 I focused on the Self Determination Theory and how the three fundamental psychological needs, autonomy, competence and relatedness all need to be satisfied in order to reach optimum psychological growth.  In Week 5, I discussed intrinsic motivation and the benefits this creates in performance, reaching goals and increasing well-being. Week 6 focused on the idea of helplessness and how if an individual feels that they are unable to overcome a negative situation that this results in greater self perceived inadequacy unlike those with a positive outlook. Week 7 introduced me to the father of Positive Psychology, Martin E. P. Seligman and his research in the area, opening up a whole array of information for me to sort through (which I really enjoyed reading)!  Week 9 saw me go a little off track however I really did enjoy researching robots that can convey emotional expression!  In Week 10 I had a lot of fun sorting through emotions within our tutorials, however what I found sad, was the fact that we have so many negative emotions and descriptions for how we are feeling and not so many positive ones.

The notion of the positive thinker was again brought up in Week 11.  This week focused on the idea of happiness and how being more extravert and less neurotic predicts how happy the individual actually is. Week 12 was my least favourite week, however I did enjoy the psychodynamic theory’s concepts of repression and suppression (something I can relate to experiencing)! Finally, Week 13 was definitely my favourite as it focused on Positive Psychology and covered much of the information that I wrote about in my text book chapter and more.  I most probably found it more enjoyable and interesting because of this.

As you can see, I have actually leant a lot in this unit.  Not only have I learned about differing theories and various aspects of motivation and emotion, I have also gained a few IT skills along the way! This was the first time in my undergraduate degree that I have had to write a blog, a text book chapter and create a multimedia presentation on the internet for everyone to see.  This will also have practical applications for the future, because I am sure that one day all books will be electronic, meetings will always take place via the internet and everyone will most probably work at home as a result.  This will mean that most forms of communication will end up being in electronic form.   The downside was that it did take a very long time and each of these assessment items were very time consuming, in the end however, it is something that we can all be proud of and will be able to look back on in the future.  It was also a nice way to finish off the year by combining the work of each student.  We have all become close friends over the past three years and to be able to keep something we have all worked hard on together will be a nice keepsake as we finish our undergraduate degree in Psychology.

If I take anything away from this learning experience, it would be to try and follow Seligman’s stance on Positive Psychology and attempt to be a more optimistic person.  Not only will this see me being open to new experiences and not be overwhelmed by the obstacles I face, it will also see me create greater connections with others, be more successful and be physically and mentally healthier. I guess overall, this subject has given me the intrinsic motivation I need to try and live a more optimistic life J

I hope you have enjoyed reading about my learning experience and hopefully you have learnt something too!

The End!

Week 13 - Growth Motivation and Positive Psychology

I really enjoyed the topic this week which was growth motivation and Positive Pychology, in fact, I think it was my favourite subject.  I think I especially enjoyed it because it covered a lot of the same topics that I wrote about in my text book chapter, but it also went over subjects that I did not include which I found quite engaging as well.  Perhaps some of the other information in a future chapter could be incorporated, combination of the two would make for a very informative chapter.

Positive Psychology focuses on prevention of mental illness. In doing so, it aims to build individual’s strengths and help them to maintain a more positive outlook on life (Reeve, 2009).  As I touched on in my text book chapter and previous blogs, Martin E. P. Seligman is renowned for promoting Positive Psychology.  He has written numerous books and articles relating to the topic and I found these especially helpful when writing my text book chapter to get ideas and to decide what information I would like to include.  I have provided links in my previous blogs to some of his work. 

I myself like the idea of creating a more positive person and believe that if this type of angle is implemented into the modern world, the one of prevention rather than cure, individuals would have a more positive outlook on life and learn to deal with negative events in a more positive manner.  The teachings in positive therapy are really not that hard to incorporate into someone’s daily life, it is really just a matter of the individual changing their thinking style and inevitably living a more happy life and increasing their well-being. As James mentioned in the last lecture, by just having one person that believes in you and your ability to overcome negative events or achieve your goals, this is seen as extremely beneficial to someone’s motivation to overcome and achieve these things (Neill, 2010a).  It does not take much to create a happy person.  To live in a positive mindset is really quite simple, but it is sad that people find this so hard to achieve.

In this week’s lecture, James also mentioned the term nirvana (Neill, 2010b).  Within my text book chapter I discussed the different way that easterners view obstacles in life.  Unlike the majority of the western world, easterners see obstacles in life as a challenge.  In doing so, they attempt to solve the problem in order to seek triumph and find meaning in the negative events within their lives.  Easterners seek to live fulfilling lives in order to receive rewards in the afterlife (Snyder & Lopez, 2007).  This term ‘nirvana’ is referred to in Buddhism. Buddhists aim to reach a state of inner peace.  In order to reach this goal, Buddhists must overcome desire and obtain the virtues of love, joy and compassion.  Once desire has disappeared from an individual’s life, this is nirvana and the individual is free.  Even if someone does not believe in the after life or eastern religions, I think there are some very important lessons to be learnt for everyday living.  To live happier, care free and more fulfilling lives I think it would be beneficial to incorporate these thinking styles into everyday life (Snyder & Lopez, 2007).  By seeing obstacles as challenges, being content with what one has and being open to love and showing compassion would improve anyone’s view on the world, others and most importantly themselves.

Obviously I could continue to just keep going on and on about this topic, I really enjoyed each aspect of the chapter and lecture.  Maybe there should be a unit in the future that just focuses on Positive Psychology! If I could take anything away from the teachings of Positive Psychology in particular, it would be to believe in myself and my ability to overcome obstacles, achieve goals, be happy, content and grateful for all of the good things in my life and most of all to enjoy whatever 'good' comes my way J  I have also completed my multimedia presentation for my text book chapter, click here to view it!

References

Neill, J. (2010, November 3). [Growth Motivation and Positive Psychology Lecture].  Lecture presented at the University of Canberra, ACT. [Lecture notes]. Retrieved from http://learnonline.canberra.edu.au/course/view.php?id=4208&topic=4

Neill, J. (2010, November 10). [Growth Motivation and Positive Psychology Lecture].  Lecture presented at the University of Canberra, ACT. [Lecture notes]. Retrieved from http://learnonline.canberra.edu.au/course/view.php?id=4208&topic=3

Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion. United States of America,  USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Snyder, C. R. & Lopez, S. J. (2007) Positive psychology the scientific and practical explorations of human strengths. London, UK: Sage.

Week 12 - Unconscious Motivation

Finally, the text book chapter is finished! If you would like to read it, click here. I am quite happy with what I have achieved, I actually enjoyed researching and writing about this topic.  As it was on positive thinking and motivation I learnt a lot about the benefits of thinking positively and have been trying to increase my well being and mental health by ‘attempting’ to adopt a more positive thinking style.  Despite the fact that I feel that I should have spent more time on it, this really would not have been possible with all of the other assessment I have had due throughout this semester.  Overall though I think I am more glad that I have finished it and was able to figure out how to do the coding on Wikiversity! It is not over yet though, my task over the next week will be to create a multimedia presentation which summarises the main points of my chapter using a program on the Internet called Screenr.  In today’s lecture James taught us how to use this program, it seems relatively easy to use which will be nice, as this will enable me to spend more time writing my presentation rather than figuring out how to actually record it! 

This week however, we have focused on the topic of unconscious motivation.  I did not find this week as enjoyable as the others, however the subject I found most interesting was that of Psychodynamics. Freud believed that motivation is an intricate occurrence because individuals often engage in behaviours that they do not want to do. Freud stated that all people have wills and ideas.  However he also states that the conscious will fights against the unconscious counterwill and that this fight never sees a victor (Reeve 2009).

The most prevalent concept in Freud’s Psychodynamic theory is that of repression. Repression is an unconscious act that sees the individual forget information unconsciously (Reeve, 2009).  Repression undergoes the act of analysing each thought and determining whether it qualifies to enter the public domain. As many of these motivations stay in the unconscious as a result of the act of repression, many individuals are not aware of their unconscious motivations. This act of repression occurs as these motivations do not fit in with an individuals own self view or the opinions that others and the outer society have of these desires.   When these thoughts begin to emerge, anxiety overtakes this situation and this cases repression to occur yet again (Reeve, 2009). 

Suppression on the other hand is something that I know I have definitely engaged in. Suppression is when an individual deliberately and consciously stops a thought from entering their mind. However as people have very little control over their thoughts, this act does have a high failure rate as suppressed thoughts do not remain that way forever. We use repression when we do not want to think, do, want or remember something.  The following example relates to me over the past week:

            Think: I should really be doing that assignment

            Do: Don’t go out tonight!

            Want: Try not to eat Maltesers!

            Remember: Try to forget about what I did last time I was out…

It is apparent that individuals use suppression for their inner good, it is a private experience that we all struggle with in order to keep a secret, overcome fear, pain and to control our behaviours (Reeve, 2009).  This unwanted thought however can actually become an obsession, because the more the individual tries to not think about something, the more they actually begin to think about it!  I find I continually do this when I do not want to do an assignment.  I watch TV, go out, go on Facebook and do everything but the assignment.  However, no matter how much I try not to think about the assignment (what I should be doing) I just keep thinking about it more and more.  So in the end, it is clearly more beneficial to just do the assignment and have fun later! That concludes my blog for this week.  I will start my multimedia presentation this week and provide a link in my blog next week so you can view it!

References

Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion. United States of America, USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Week 11 - Personality Motivation and Emotion

I enjoyed this week’s topic on personality, motivation and emotion.  Now that we have discussed both emotion and motivation in detail, this week has looked at the connection between the two and integrated previous topics we have covered throughout our psychology degree by incorporating our understanding of personality. I guess it makes you realise just how much all subject areas of psychology are connected. What I found most interesting however, was how both motivation and emotion when influenced by personality can cause happiness or unhappiness, which is related to my text book chapter on positive thinking.

In the textbook Reeve (2009) starts the chapter by asking the reader if they are happy.  Not only does he ask this, but he asks if someone were to follow you around all day for several days would they see someone who is always happy, experiencing positive emotions and whether it is an intense happiness or just something like contentment.  In answer to this question, Reeve (2009) goes on to say that most people are happy, however some are simply happier than others.

When answering these questions myself, I would say that I am generally happy.  I would say that I am most happy when I am spending time with my friends and family and having a bit of fun.  However, at this very point in time, with lots of assessment due and exams not too far away I guess I am not experiencing an ‘intense’ happiness.  This ‘level’ of happiness should hopefully change after this semester is finished however. Once the weather is warmer, I am not stressed, on holidays and celebrating my Birthday, Christmas and New Years I am sure my happiness will increase!

Reeve (2009) states that there are three motivational principles that are related to personality.  These are happiness, arousal and control.  These personality characteristics explain why people have varying motivational and emotional states in the same or similar situations (Reeve, 2009).  The reason that individuals have such differing experiences to the same situation is a result of how a stimulus is interpreted and experienced.  An individual’s personality traits will determine how positively someone responds to these stimuli, which in turn determines just how happy or unhappy someone is.

Two of the big five personality traits, neuroticism and extraversion are said to be predictors of happiness. Neuroticism is an indicator of how emotionally stable someone is.  Those who are high on this construct are predisposed to negative emotionality, stress, anxiety and upset.  These people tend to get stressed more easily and are subject to more negative episodes (Neill, 2010). Those low in neuroticism are deemed as emotionally stable and steady.  Extraverts tend to be more sociable, enjoying the company of others.  They are also more socially dominant and seek out stimulating environments.

Studies have concluded that extraversion is a predictor of positive happiness and neuroticism is a predictor of unhappiness (Neill, 2010).  Extraverts have more positive moods than introverts, have greater capacity to experience positive emotions and are more enticed by positive rewards that the environment has to offer. Neurotics on the other hand have a stronger behavioural inhibition system, which alerts the individual to greater threats and harm within their given environment, increasing their cautiousness. A negative event in their environment will cause them more distress and lead to negative emotions and anxiety (Reeve, 2009). As we can see, extraverts and those who are low on neuroticism are likely to seek out new experiences and be less worried about their consequences, making them a happier person.

I know that I will be a happier person once the text book chapter is out of the way.  It is due next week now, I don’t think I will touch on the idea of extraversion and neuroticism and positive thinking in my chapter due to the word count, time and the fact that emotion is also prevalent in these findings. However I will be discussing the idea of happiness, well being and the personality traits resilience and hardiness and how each of these determines how positively someone thinks.  It is good to know that James is available to help us.  However I for some reason want to have written my chapter before I put it up on the Wikiversity page.  In my next blog I will provide a link to my finished chapter.  Until then though, I better keep working on my chapter so you will have something to actually read!

References

Neill, J. (2010, October 27). [Personality Motivation and Emotion Lecture]. Lecture presented at the University of Canberra, ACT. [Lecture notes]. Retrieved from http://learnonline.canberra.edu.au/course/view.php?id=4208&topic=5

Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion. United States of America, USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Week 10 - Aspects of Emotion

This week looked deeper into biological, cognitive and socio cultural causes of emotion.  As found in one of the first tutorials, emotion is hard to define.  Not only do people have trouble identifying what an emotion is, but there is no agreement on what constitutes the criteria for core emotions. 

I can understand this dilemma.  From a naive perspective, how can we be sure that everyone experiences the same emotions? Are they experienced to the same extent? Each person is different and has varying life experiences, values and cultural norms.  Emotions are such an abstract construct that I find it hard to believe that they can even be measured. So how can we possibly identify all the emotions that people experience and say that they are the same?

Despite these questions, there are 6 basic emotions that have been identified and sadly people appear to experience more negative emotions than positive. Reeve (2009) states that fear, anger, disgust and sadness are all  basic, negative emotions and that joy and interest are basic, positive emotions.  

From a biological view point, it appears that emotions are all inherently adaptive in some way.  They have coping functions which help the individual cope with life events and social functions, to help you communicate how you are feeling with others (Reeve, 2009).  They also are able to regulate behaviour through a feedback system by prompting you do act in adaptive ways. 

The biological aspect of emotion also states that differing rates/patterns of cortical neural firing result in the experience of varying emotions (Reeve, 2009).  This happens unconsciously in the brain at any time.  Joy for instance is associated with a decrease in frequency of neural activation over time and surprise is associated with a quick activation increase (Neill, 2010).

Izard came up with 10 fundamental emotions these consist of positive, neutral and negative emotions.

(Reeve, 2009)

This theory suggests that these 10 discrete emotions prepare an person to act adaptively, this enables the individual to develop social relationships and tackle threats head on (Reeve, 2009).

What I found most interesting in the biological perspective was the facial feedback hypothesis, where just by moving the facial muscles and by the temperature changing in the face and glandular activity being altered in the skin, emotion can be created.  In our face there are 36 of 80 muscles that are involved in facial expression (Reeve, 2009).  A study looking at this found that by changing facial expressions for the five emotions rear, anger, disgust, joy and distress evoked changes in the respiratory and cardiovascular rates (Reeve, 2009).

Despite the fact that some facial behaviour is learned, some facial expressions are innate and are found across cultures throughout the world (Reeve, 2009). This suggests that some emotions are actually inherited and certain facial expressions are associated with varying emotions.

However despite this finding, many emotions can arise from social interaction.  Cultural influence also determines one’s understanding of emotion.  Reeve (2009) suggests that if you change your cultural context, the emotions that you will experience will also change.  For example, in China love is viewed as a negative emotion and in the US is it seen as a positive one.  This may be due to the fact that in China there are many arranged marriages and it is more common for people to feel depressed when they are in love because they know they cannot pursue this relationship.  This finding is depicted in the diagram below.

(Reeve, 2009)

In tutorials we explored this idea further.  We separated into our groups and were given a hand-out with a list of emotions.  We had to develop our own model of core emotions into clusters.  We were told not to be guided by previous theories, however our group decided to initially follow the basic model of emotion in the hope of expanding and changing it further, unfortunately we ran out of time.  We did however spend a lot of time sorting through the differing emotions to put them into categories (there were over 100).  This also proved difficult, as there were many words we had never even heard of before! So out came the laptop and synonyms on Word!  You can view our fabulous model below! For a closer view see Group Four's Emotion Model.

Again what I found sad was the fact that most of the emotions we decided to keep in our model were again negative.  The largest cluster we had was for sadness, closely followed by anger. Happiness was our next largest group.  We believed ours was extra special due to our artistic talent for our headings!

I guess Seligman would not be too impressed by the fact that negative emotions seem to be more prevalent and recognised within the individual. Maybe new words need to be created that reflect other positive emotions, rather than so many negative! That concludes my blog for this week, I will be continuing to work on my chapter throughout the next two weeks.  I am feeling a little stressed but hopefully I can get it finished in time!

References

Neill, J. (2010, September 22). [Control beliefs and The Self Lecture].  Lecture presented at the University of Canberra, ACT. [Lecture notes].  Retrieved from http://learnonline.canberra.edu.au/course/view.php?id=4208&cal_m=10&cal_y=2010

Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion. United States of America,  USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Week 9 - Nature of Emotion

This week we started to focus on the nature of emotion. These next few weeks are just focusing on one chapter a week, which means that there is not as much information to focus on. There are five underlying key questions which are asked in psychology in relation to emotion.

            What is an emotion?

            What causes an emotion?

            How many emotions are there?

            What good are the emotions?

            What is the difference between emotion and mood? (Reeve, 2009).

The answer to all of these questions it the same answer to most questions posed in psychology.  The answer is that none of the above questions are particularly simple to answer because emotion is a complex and multidimensional construct (Reeve, 2009).  There are many biological and environmental triggers and mechanisms for experiencing an emotion.  There is varied debate as to how many there actually are, and the function that they serve.  There is no such thing as a good or bad emotion, as they appear to serve adaptive function and would not have evolved if they did not do so.  Finally, a mood, unlike an emotion is a general sense of feeling either good or bad and is not necessarily triggered by a specific incident.  An emotion however is relatively specific, triggered, experienced and dissipated relatively fast. This then leads psychologists to ask five more questions:

            How can emotion be measured?

            What are the consequences of emotion?

            How can emotion be changed?

            How and why did emotions evolve?

            How do emotions of animals and humans vary? (Reeve, 2009)

Again there is no one straight forward answer to any of these questions.  Emotion is not able to be physically measured and psychologists must rely on self report measures and subjective experiences.  Emotion has been found to have negative consequences on health, as too much negative emotion has dire effects on both physical and mental health (Neill, 2010).  There are some emotions that both humans and animals share which represent the animalistic part of our evolution, but there are also some that humans have uniquely (Neill, 2010). 

When asked to define emotion in tutorials a few weeks ago, it was much harder to define than motivation.  Psychologists however have found four components which are continually touched upon when describing an emotion.  These are displayed in the flow chart below.

(Reeve, 2009)

I found Reeve’s view on emotion quite interesting. 

           

 Emotion as Motivation

According to Reeve (2009) the emotions you experience are motivational agents which either inhibit you from taking action or draw you towards something positive.  In this process, the emotion is the reward or punishment which then goes on to feed this cycle of behaviour.

 Emotion as readout

The readout is part of the feedback loop that tells you if you are on the right or wrong track.  Whether the emotional response is high or low it will redirect your efforts towards the goal (Reeve, 2009).  As James mentioned, without emotion we would be like a robot (Neill, 2010).  This is the most challenging part of robotics, as somehow scientists will have to create a similar feedback and reward system.  Scientists have not been able to build an emotional organic robot.

I have found this clip on You-Tube where Japanese scientists have tried to convey emotional facial expression in a robot. In doing, these scientists have been able to create 30 different facial expressions and combinations of these emotions in response to words.  Their aim is to create a flow of consciousness in robots and in doing so,  improve communications between humans and robots.  These scientists want to  convey emotion with the power of speech, however it is evident that there is still a long way to go.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLXGS0J52co.  Here is another robot which looks like Albert Einstein which has been designed to mimic facial expressions showing fear, happy, disgust and confusion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkpWCu1k0ZI&NR=1. A bit scary!  It makes me wonder if one day we will not be able to tell the difference between a human and a robot…

The one question that continues to arise in this topic is just how many emotions are there? The biological view on emotions suggests that only a small number exists. It states that there are between 2-10 universally  that continue to occur across cultures (Reeve, 2009).  These evidently have risen from biological and evolutionary processes.  The cognitive view however, suggests that there is no end to the number of emotions, it sees many  shades of gray.  There can be culturally specific emotions, as well as personal, however these can differ dramatically. For instance one person’s experience of sadness may be different to someone else’s.  There is no way of testing this, as some think that their experience of an emotion is unique to them.  Much of the complexity in this is brought about from individuals having different emotional experiences (Neill, 2010).

Reeve (2009) has identified six basic emotions.  It can be said that emotion can be reduced to clusters or factors.  These can be formed on the basis of whether these emotions are also found in animals, whether people have a similar response to the same situation or if the same physiological arousal occurs in the body. Sadly, love was not included in this model.

Fear: Is the response to the threat of harm, it has a unique cognitive and physiological response.  For instance, I had this feeling the other night when I came across a massive huntsman on the ceiling which I had to very bravely dispose of!

Anger: I  People site anger as their most memorable experiences.  Anger is experienced when something is not right, when an injustice has occurred or someone has been wrong.  If we look at this in the light of positive and negative emotions, despite anger being negative, it drives positive behaviours to make things right. 

Disgust: Drives you to be repelled from an object you do not want to be connected with.  This could be someone in a social setting, off food etc.

Sadness: Is a less energising response, it is a downstate of not being activated, being sorrowful for what you do not have.

Joy:  Has a euphoric, pleasant, positive affect. It can occur when something goes better than expected, when someone makes progress towards their goals and achieves them.  An example of this in my life was getting full marks for my speech the other day, much better than I had anticipated!

Interest: Sees an arousal of curiosity.  This is the feeling you get when you start something new, you may take a risk approach and investigate something further (Reeve, 2009).

As the flow diagram shows, these can be divided into both positive and negative emotions.   Negative emotions help us to respond to threat and prevent harm and positive emotions help you to get involved and feel satisfied when you achieve something (Neill, 2010).

Overall, I find this nature vs nurture debate to be a common theme throughout my studies.  It is again brought about in emotion.  Personally I think that emotion is a combination of the two.  It is evident that everyone appears to experience the same emotions and the fact that people show similar experiences to the same events proves this.  However as mentioned above, I also think  that everyone is different and has led different lives.  Therefore, someone’s individual emotional experience to one event may be different to someone else’s depending on whether they have or have not experienced something similar before.  Personality may also play an important factor in emotion as well, as depending on people's coping mechanisms and how they view the world, an intense emotion such as anger could be more easily brought about and higher in intensity to a rather insignificant event compared to others who would not think anything of it. 

References

Neill, J. (2010, October 13). [Nature of Emotion Lecture].  Lecture presented at the University of Canberra, ACT. [Lecture notes].

Retrieved from http://learnonline.canberra.edu.au/course/view.php?id=4208&cal_m=10&cal_y=2010

Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion. United States of America,

USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Week 7 - Personal Control and The Self

There was no lecture this week so today’s blog will just focus on the material covered in the tutorial.  This week’s tutorial covered content that I could use in my text book chapter Motivation and Positive Thinking.  What interested me the most this week was the book that James brought to class called ‘Learned Optimism’ by Martin E. P. Seligman.  Seligman is a positive psychologist who introduced new life into psychology.  Instead of focusing on the negative, he brought about the idea of Positive Psychology.  His two main contributions are that of learned optimism and goal setting.  A few of his works are available online on Google Books.  One of these that I have come across is the The Science of Optimism and Hope which builds on the research of the cognitive foundations for effective living.  It focuses on the qualities within a person that can improve well-being through optimism and hope. I have not yet looked over it in full, but I am sure that Seligman’s research and work, will contribute significantly to my text book chapter, as he is renowned for his work within positive psychology.

Templeton, the man who has sponsored Seligman to write this book in particular, discusses Seligman's outlook on life, which is very similar to the teachings of the Secret which I mentioned in Week 1. 

“What we look for in life, good or evil, problems or solutions, a measure of mental health is the disposition to find good everywhere and we can improve our lives by changing our mindset. He argues that the social sciences can teach us about the merits of these virtues and how to live more satisfying productive fulfilling lives” (Templeton as cited in Seligman, 2000, pp. 3).

While looking further into Seligman’s work I came across one of his videos on You-Tube and he calls himself ‘happierdotcom’ and actually has a wide variety of videos on there.  In these he discusses the definition of Positive Psychology, how this can be used in therapy and his view on optimism and the difference between an optimistic and pessimistic person, I have a attached a link to this particular video here (Dr. Seligman's Definition of Optimism). 

Focusing more on the tutorial material in particular, we completed the ‘Test Your Own Optimism’ test which was taken from Seligman’s (1998) book Learned Optimism.  It measured pessimism and optimism.  According the class’s results, everyone in the class was very pessimistic.  As we know, optimism predicts life satisfaction, well being, work productivity and health, so maybe everyone in our class has no hope! However optimism is learned and we can change it.  There was some argument in class as to whether the test actually measured these constructs properly as the choice of answers was limited and appeared to not differentiate between the two.  For example question 28 asks:

‘Your boss gives you too little time in which to finish a project, but you get it finished anyway.’

a.       I am good at my job

b.      I am an efficient person (Seligman, 1998).

Both answers in this question appear to be more positive in nature and it could be argued that they do not necessarily focus on the construct of pessimism, sparking concern as to whether it is an appropriate measure to have included.

In one of Seligman’s You-Tube videos however he talks about The Happiness Test, which is similar to this one which we completed.  Despite people being upset and thinking that their results are wrong, it could mean that everyone in the class, including myself who scored a whole -1, are actually not overly optimistic in our thinking patterns. Seligman states that “Happiness and strengths tests tell you where you are relative to people like you and how much room there is for improvement" (Seligman, 2009 b).  Maybe it would be a better option in the future for us to take a strengths test which Seligman refers to in his video.  A strengths test will tell us our 5 highest strengths and in doing so will outline what we need do more of and what we should use in everyday situations to become more optimistic (Seligman, 2009 b).  This type of test would be more helpful as it would provide our strengths and how to improve them, rather than just telling us we are pessimistic.

I found this tutorial and the material I have researched since very interesting and applicable to my text book chapter.  I am happy that James introduced me to Seligman’s work as this will really contribute to my text book chapter and my ideas.

References

Seligman, M. E. P. (1998). Learned optimism. New York, NY: Pocket Books.

Seligman, M. E. P. (2000). The science of optimism and hope. Retreived from http://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ISezR6pODo8C&oi=fnd&pg=PA415&dq=seligman+positive+psychology&ots=D-uHmj4cjH&sig=7jJcJ-7idDTOY7x0iLjbPKp8Wqg#v=onepage&q=seligman%20positive%20psychology&f=false

Seligman, M. E. P. (2009, October 4). Dr seligman's definition of optimism [Video podcast]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-rMuJW-UKg&feature=related

Seligman, M. E. P. (2009, October 4). The happiness test [Video podcast]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3dSuTA0QPbKag%26feature%3drelated&ei=UTF-8&fr=hp-pvnb

Week 6 - Control Beliefs and the Self

This week has focused on personal control beliefs and the self as well as its strivings.  As James mentioned, the topics covered this week brought together a holistic overview of all of the elements that may encroach on the psychological experience of motivation (Neill, 2010).  Reeve’s (2009) chapter nine and the first half of the lecture this week focused on personal control beliefs.  I found this topic more interesting than the self, more so because I have not touched on this area before, whereas the self I have covered in philosophy and in previous psychology units.

So what does the future have in store for me? I don’t know, no-one knows.  Despite the fact that we will never quite know what our future holds, people desire to control their personal environment.  Individuals want to create more positive outcomes for themselves rather than negative ones.  What we may expect to happen in the future however and how well we believe we can cope with what could occur can have motivational implications (Reeve, 2009).  These ‘expectancies’ (a predictor of the likelihood that an event will occur) can be broken down into two (Neill, 2010).  These are

1.      Efficacy Expectations – Can I do it? and

2.      Outcome Expectations – Will what I do work?

These expectations can be quite specific, fleeting or can come and go. However, over time there is a more cumulative, generic set of self beliefs that undermine our own set of beliefs and this is why people differ from one another from their perceived control. This notion of perceived control is developed further through the idea of self-efficacy. Self efficacy is referred to as ‘one’s judgment of how well they will cope with a situation, given the skills one possesses and the circumstances one faces (Neill, 2010).’ Albert Bandura states that we each have our own set of self efficacies, each of which is specific (Neill, 2010).  It should be stated that ability is not the same thing as self efficacy.  However, self efficacy does involve one’s abilities, as it is the skills that one possesses that help the person to perform effectively in complex situations (Reeve, 2009).

The opposite of self efficacy is self doubt.  The individual concerned may have many skills but can experience a moment of feeling unable to carry though, this comes before failure, and stops you trying or carrying through with something.  Many people, including my self, experience these feelings from time to time, in many differing situations.  This idea of remaining in control seems to relate to the individuals frame of mind.  This would be another area that I should consider looking into for my text book chapter on positive thinking.

Mastery beliefs are the ‘extent of perceived control one has over attaining desirable outcomes and preventing aversive ones (Reeve, 2010).’  When one’s personal beliefs are strong, then the individual sees a strong association between actions and outcomes.  On the other hand when they are weak, the person sees their actions as having a minimal effect on outcomes. These can be broken down into mastery motivational orientation and helpless motivational orientation. Mastery being outlined by the individual view that they are able to sustain a challenge and that failure is merely feedback of how they can improve and helplessness, the opposite, is intrinsic to the individual as they feel that they are inadequate and cannot affect the outcome of a situation.

This idea of helplessness again relates to positive thinking.  For example in one experiment, dogs were placed in three conditions.  In one, they were administered an inescapable electric shock, in the second they were administered a shock but were able to stop it by pressing a button with their nose and in the third no shock was administered.  In the second phase of the experiment these dogs were placed in an apparatus where a divider was placed in the box.  Before the shock would occur a light would turn on, signalling that the dog was about to receive a shock.  Each of the dogs could escape by jumping over this divider. Those dogs that were placed in the uncontrollable condition initially did not even bother trying to move, as they felt incapable of trying to escape.  The dogs in the second condition however, jumped over the divider and escaped from receiving an electric shock (Reeve, 2009).  This experiment has many parallels with the human world, as an individuals upbringing, environment and past experiences would all affect how an individual views themselves and acts in situations (Neill, 2010).   Again this type of experiment and behaviour could be included within my text book chapter, how one’s environment and childhood effects how they think in adulthood could be touched upon.

These were the aspects that I found most interesting in this week’s topics. As we continue to cover other topics throughout the semester, I am gaining more and more ideas as to what I will include in my text book chapter.  I feel that every week I am learning something which is relevant to my topic and am looking forward to finishing the assessment I have due before the chapter so I can get started.  I personally think I am feeling a bit of a lack of self efficacy at the moment in relation to using Wikiversity, but hopefully once I actually start fiddling around with it, I will figure it out and not be so scared of failure! I am now glad that I have found the motivation to complete another blog, bye for now J

References

Neill, J. (2010, September 22). [Control beliefs and The Self Lecture].  Lecture presented at the University of Canberra, ACT. [Lecture notes].  Retrieved from http://learnonline.canberra.edu.au/course/view.php?id=4208

Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion. United States of America,  USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Week 5 - Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation and Goal Setting

Week five has focused on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and goal setting.  I found a lot of the information quite helpful as it can be applied in a practical way to my current assignment for my learning unit. The aim of the assignment is to change the binge drinking behaviours of university students through operant conditioning, where some sort of reinforcement is given to increase a desired behaviour.  It was interesting to note that by just giving external rewards (external motivation) this will not necessarily accomplish a long term fix, as it is an individual’s internal motivation that would inevitably stop binge drinking.

Intrinsic motivation is “The inherent desire to engage in one’s interests and to exercise and develop one’s capacities.” (Reeve 2009, pp. 111).  In other words, it is the inherent desire to do and achieve something that you are interested in.  An individual is intrinsically motivated when they engage in a behaviour because they find it rewarding on its own, not due to the prospect of an external reward.  Despite this fact, an individual can be engaged in a behaviour which may not be 100% intrinsic or extrinsic in motivation.  For instance, in this weeks lecture, students would have extrinsic motivation to achieve high grades, but the intrinsic motivation would come from those who actually chose to complete and be in this course in the first place.

Intrinsic motivation also has significant performance benefits over extrinsic motivation.  An individuals output is greater, their depth of engagement and learning processes are improved and they are likely to persist with something for a longer period of time (Reeve, 2009).  This can be applied to the learning environment.  Intrinsically motivated students retain higher class attendance, they focus more on activity at hand and are not easily distracted by external rewards.  As a result, deep quality learning is undertaken, leading to more creative responses and positive emotions, increasing individual well being (Neill, 2010).  As intrinsic motivation increases positive feelings in one's life decreasing stress and anxiety, this will be an important aspect to touch upon in my text book chapter positive thinking. More so because the questions I will attempt to answer are what motivates someone to want to think positively? And in turn how does thinking positively motivate the individual? Both of which would link to intrinsic motivation.

Extrinsic motivation is “An environmentally created reason to engage in an action or activity (Neill, 2010).” It is the motivation to engage in a behaviour because an environmental event will result.  This could come about from the prospect of money, praise, consequences or even to avoid a negative consequence.  An individual is extrinsically motivated to get something for themselves from the outside environment, not to reward themselves internally.  In my learning assignment, I am outlining a research proposal to regulate the behaviour of university students to stop binge drinking.  This will be completed by using external contingencies to change student’s behaviour using operant conditioning.  This is where a reward in the form of a punishment or reinforcement will be administered once the desired behaviour is achieved. Despite this, it should also be noted that not all rewards serve as a reinforcer to everyone.  This is because in order for a reward to be successful, an individual must see it as valuable, otherwise motivation to engage in the desired behaviour will not take place.

Again, extrinsic motivation is yet another aspect that I will be able to touch upon within my text book chapter.  Extrinsic rewards create positive emotion and assist in behaviour as there is the prospect of personal gain. The pleasurable feeling that one receives from getting a reward is a result of dopamine release, which motivates an individual to continue to pursue that behaviour. Despite this, it is also evident that by simply relying on extrinsic motivators to behave, this does not contribute to the psychological growth and development in an authoritative person, decreasing psychological well being (Neill, 2010).

The second half of the lecture focused on goal setting and striving.  In this chapter of the text book Reeve (2009) began to focus on the cognitive aspects of personal control and self related constructs.  “A goal is whatever an individual is trying to accomplish (Neill, 2010).” Reeve (2009) proposed a Plans: Discrepancy model, outlining how we get from our present state to our ideal state.  The present state represents the individuals current status, this is different to our ideal or desired state which is the goal the person wishes to reach.  The size of the discrepancy between the present state to the desired state is what motivates us to behave and act.  By continually analysing how far we are away from our ideal state, this provides feedback as to how far we have to go.  By acting until we resolve the incongruity between the ideal state and current state, we can become closer to achieving our ideal state (Neill, 2010).

The combination of the challenging goal (which increases effort and persistence) and the specific goal (which increases planning) are qualities that drive and enhance performance.  As mentioned above, goals and feedback go hand in hand, there is not much point setting a goal if feedback is not constantly given which tells someone how close they are to a goal and if they have achieved it.  If feedback is better than expected, people are pleasantly surprised.  If it is on target, then this motivates the individual to continue to do what they have been doing.  If it is below target however, this means that an increase in effort is needed.  When someone reaches a goal, they feel more competent and confident, leading to them being more inclined to set another, higher goal (Neill, 2010).

Tutorials this week covered content which was touched on in both Week 4 and Week 5.  Again, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs was raised.  However, rather than just taking it at face value, James brought up the question as to whether you really have to have satisfied the lower level needs before you consider those above? (Neill, 2010). The class discussion focused on the hierarchy’s fuzzy boundaries, and one interesting point that was brought up was the fact that in other cultural and situational environments, other needs take priority whilst others are gone without.  For instance, in some cultures, the pathway to self actualisation may mean depriving oneself of lower level needs. 

What I found amusing in tutorials was all of us trying to label the parts of a brain.  Despite the fact that myself, along with others have learnt this numerous times, none of us could remember which parts were what (we must have been extrinsically motivated to pass physiology, as a deeper level of learning clearly did not take place)! Even James admitted to having the same problem, making us all feel a bit better about ourselves! I have included a link to a diagram of the brain if anyone wishes to try and memorise its parts.

This week we also got into our small groups to discuss our chapter drafts.  I discussed with the group my two key questions that I would like to answer within my chapter.

1.      What motivates someone to think positively? And

2.      How can positive thinking motivate the person?

Within my chapter I will discuss the biological aspects of thinking positively, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, goal setting and the self determination theory.  I found by exchanging ideas and asking the other group members for their opinion very helpful, it was also interesting to hear about their research and what they had found on their topics.  As a result, I was informed of a therapy that promotes positive thinking, this is referred to as solution focused therapy , this is another topic I could include within my text book chapter.  Overall I quite enjoyed the topics covered this week and had a very positive learning experience within the tutorial.

References

Looi, S. (2010). Brain Health and Puzzles. Retrieved from http://www.brainhealthandpuzzles.com/diagram_of_brain.html

Neill, J. (2010, September 15). [Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation and Goal Setting Lecture].  Lecture presented at the University of Canberra, ACT. [Lecture notes]. Retrieved from http://learnonline.canberra.edu.au/course/view.php?id=4208

Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion. United States of America, USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Wikipedia (2008). Solution focused brief therapy. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solution_focused_brief_therapy

Week 4 - Psychological and Social Needs

This was the final week of looking at the concept of ‘needs’ in the context of motivation.  This week’s chapters were six and seven and focused on the Self Determination Theory.  Chapter six focused on psychological needs.  The three psychological needs which were focused on in the chapter are also known as organismic psychological needs. James touched on the Self Determination Theory, a general framework used for thinking about these psychological needs.  This theory has two assumptions.

1. That people are inherently active and
2. Person-Environment dialectic

Unlike earlier theories that emphasised a static relationship between the person and the environment (the environment creates the stimulation) this theory suggests that the person shapes the environment in an interactive and dynamic relationship.  People do not just sit around and do nothing, rather, individuals are always involved and engaged in a goal directed activity, despite the fact that this goal may not always be obvious. 

The second assumption, the Person-environment dialectic, suggests that the relationship between the person and the environment is reciprocal (Reeve, 2009). It describes the individual as seeking out an environment which expresses their individuality, they have a desire to interact within it and the environment can assist in an individual’s development. On the other hand, the environment can also upset the inner resources, creating an un-nurturing and less productive environment for the individual.  The diagram below shows this in more detail.

(Reeve, 2009)

Deci and Ryan’s Self Determination Theory suggests that there are three fundamental psychological needs, autonomy, competence and relatedness.  If each of these needs are satisfied then an individual is gaining the nutrients needed for psychological growth.  However, it should be noted that being satisfied in only one of these needs will not result in psychological health.  Autonomy focuses on one having control over their choices and how the environment operates and rewards you.  A behaviour is autonomous when it is a person’s interests and wants that guide their decision to engage in a particular behaviour.  Competence focuses on being and feeling capable in a particular environment and Relatedness refers to the needs and wants to be engaged in reciprocal, respectful and warm relationships (Reeve, 2009)

Chapter seven and the second half of the lecture focused on Social needs.

‘An acquired psychological process that grows out of one’s socialisation history that activates emotional responses to a particular need relevant incentive.’ (Neill, 2010).

Reeve (2009) focused on McClelland’s four social needs which were the main focus of social needs within the lecture as well. These are stated below.

(Reeve,2009)

I would have to say that the content covered in the lecture relating to each of the three needs in the Self Determination Theory as well as the content covered on social needs was extremely interesting.  I think I especially enjoyed it as I am not only completing a bachelor in Psychology but a bachelor in Management as well and it was nice to see a cross over between the two subjects.  This was due to the fact that these needs and theories related to many workplace scenarios and ideas that I have touched on in my Management units. I really enjoyed the practical side of how the content can be related to the workplace in terms of managing individuals.  On another note, I can use what I have learnt as a further example the next time someone asks me ‘Psychology and Management? How do they relate?’ Rather than just stating the obvious!

Before the next tutorial session, I will need to have completed or be in the process of drafting a plan for my text book chapter on Motivation and Positive Thinking.  Currently I am finding it hard to accomplish what I think needs to be completed each week in order to finish the chapter.  Despite this, I am confident that once I start putting more time and effort into completing the task, the reservations I am experiencing about starting the chapter will hopefully disappear.  James has provided us with the link to a text book chapter that someone has written on Hunger.  Personally, I find having a finished product to compare my own work to very helpful in knowing what standard I need to meet.  This example in particular will guide me as to how my text book chapter should be set out, the tone it should be written in and how much effort will need to go in to complete it.  I am sure it will help in constructing my draft as well. 

References

Neill, J. (2010, September 8). [Psychological & Social Needs].  Lecture presented at the University of Canberra, ACT. [Lecture notes]. Retrieved from http://learnonline.canberra.edu.au/course/view.php?id=4208

Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion. United States of America,

USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.