Final Exam
- Chapter 5, 6, 11, 12 most emphasized in exam
- Chapter 13 not so much
Chapter 12: Cognitive Motivation and Control Selected Concepts
1. Deci’s theory of intrinsic motivation: Intrinsic motivation arises out of need to control environment and feel
competent in that control. Thus, there is an intrinsic need to control and this leads to behaviours that exercise
control and the resulting feeling of competence
a. 2 kinds of control leading to competence:
i. When stimulation is low, one is intrinsically motivated to increase the stimulation and thus
control it and feel competent for doing so (and vice versa)
ii. Overcoming challenging situations leads to feelings of competence
b. Motivation triggered by cognitive representations: imagining a desired state triggers behaviour so as to
achieve that sate: imagine graduating triggers behaviour appropriate to obtaining a degree and
graduating. Awareness of what we want drives behaviour towards those goals
i. Mental representations activate our emotions (if imagine the goal, become excited by that, then
go into instrumental behaviour)
ii. What we want/desire arise from Id (energy source)
c. 3 types of rewards:
i. Extrinsic reward = some object/situation that satisfies expectation (cognitive representation)
ii. Intrinsic reward = feeling competence that I can control by completing a task (satisfies affective)
iii. Affective reward = positive emotional experience gained when goal is reached
d. As for control: perceived control induces behaviour rather than actual control. When lack of control is
perceived, there is a giving-up as noted in learned helplessness. Perceived lack of control has a
demotivating effect, while perceived control has a motivating effect
Chapter 11 (Summary)
Attribution Theory
- Study of decisions we make about the causes of events
- Attribute/assign causes to outcomes
- Need to make sense of events:
o Personal = individual (I brought about that particular outcome)
o Interpersonal = causes that arise in social interaction
o Impersonal = natural cause, something that happened in the environment
- Assign particular causes to other people’s behaviour
- Personal causation
- Situational causation
- Assigning causes accounts for motivations underlying their behaviour
- Dispositional forces
o Person’s ability, effort etc.
- Situational forces
o Difficulty of the task, good/bad luck etc.
Basic Assumptions
- Internal/external o We may succeed/fail because of factors that we believe have their origin within us or because of factors
that originate in our environment
- Stable/unstable
o Cause of success/failure may be either stable/unstable
o If we believe cause is stable, then the outcome is likely to be the same if we perform the same
behaviour on another occasion
o If it is unstable, the outcome is likely to be different on another occasion
- Controllable/uncontrollable
o The cause of the success/failure may be either controllable/uncontrollable
o A controllable factor is one which we believe we ourselves can alter if we wish to do so
o An uncontrollable factor is one that we do not believe we can easily alter
Heider’s Naïve Psychology (Folk Psychology)
- Biased towards dispositional attributions
- Tendency to attribute others’ behaviour to stable (disposition), internal (consistent) characteristics
- Fundamental attribution error = we attribute more to dispositional characteristics than situations
- Just as I believe I do, and assume others behave the same way as we do
deCharms – we do, therefore, they do!
- As we do, so will others
- Non-normative behaviour
o Socially undesirable behaviour – attributed to internal/personal characteristics
- Stigma studies
o Controllable vs. non-controllable characteristics
o Looking at characteristics or symptoms that control the individual
- Emotions
o If individual acquire a disease that is out of the persons’ control, we become more sympathetic
- Attributions about causes of success and failure influence emotion
- Mastery-oriented children maintain positive attitude when they fail
o Emphasize solutions to their failure
o Rewarding experience when succeed
- Helpless oriented attitude children more negative when they fail
o Failure is due to uncontrollable factors
o Unrewarding experience even if succeed (cant take full pleasure for their successes)
Jones & Davis Correspondence Theory
- Similarity (or correspondence) between current and past behaviour
o Internal stable dispositional attribution
- Helpful behaviour in the present, has acted in a similar manner in the past = helpful disposition
- Problems?
o Cannot empirically validate
Weiner
- Ability = internal a
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