March 11
Personality and Motivation
Topics: What is motivation? Influential models of motivation in the workplace. The links between personality and motivation. Why motives cannot successfully be created. Motivating yourself and others without resorting to manipulation. The myth of the "unmotivated".
(Class will begin with a self-perception exercise that will be explained during the course of the class session.)
Theories of motivation
Psychologists define the field of motivation is the study of the "why" of behavior... why people choose to act as they do. As we'll see, not all people are motivated in the same way, or by the same things. (The fancy psychological term for this is that motivation needs to be studied "idiographically".) Let's look a quick, nontechnical look at some influential theories of motivation.
Keirsey's temperament theory
According to this model, it is not meaningful to think of all human beings as having the same core motive. Different people find their lives oriented around different motives, goals, or non-negotiable objectives (and corresponding lifestyles). While recognizing that his model is in many ways an oversimplification, Keirsey believes that there are four major motivational structures and, in essence, four basic temperaments or types of people, which he styles Guardians, Artisans, Rationals, and Idealists. (His theory can be linked to the currently influential Big Five model of human personality that we discussed on March 4.) While many people may not fit perfectly and exclusively into one single group, Keirsey maintains that there are distinct, empirically observable behavioral and motivational differences among the four groups. (We'll be dividing into these four groups in class to see whether -- based on your own observations -- he was right or not.)
Guardians (called Commanders in some of the Web links found elsewhere on this site) are motivated by duty, responsibility, security, and the maintenance of order and tradition. Theirs is the "Structured Way". Guardians are careful, linear, stepwise, "bottom up" learners who like to build a solid foundation of facts and details. They thrive on structure, certainty, and predictability. They have a concrete-linear mental style.
Artisans (called Adventurers in some of the Web links found on this site) are motivated by fun, adventure, excitement, and life in the present moment. Theirs is the "Active Way". Artisans are practical, application-oriented, hands-on, experiential learners who like to jump right into things and learn by doing. They thrive on activity, results, and immediacy. They have a concrete-nonlinear mental style.
Rationals (called Systematizers in some of the Web links found on this site) are motivated by competence, challenge, mastery, and intellectuality. Theirs is the "Strategic Way". Rationals are conceptual, logical, analytical, "top down" learners who like to fit new ideas into a mental context or cognitive map. They thrive on complexity, impersonal logic, and mental planning. They have an abstract-linear mental style.
Idealists (called Harmonizers in some of the Web links found on this site) are motivated by uniqueness, authenticity, self-actualization, and the expression of deeply held personal values. Theirs is the "Caring Way". Idealists are creative, innovative, relational, oceanic learners who like to connect unrelated ideas in a self-directed, free-flowing, autonomous way. They thrive on connections, significance, values, and intuition. They have an abstract-nonlinear mental style.
For a link to a self-assessment tool to help with the identification of your temperament, click here. (Thjs will take you outside the UWMC Psychology Web, so you may have to navigate back using the Back arrow on your browser. I wouldn't trust the returning hyperlink if I were you.)
Maslow's hierarchy of needs
Motives, in this model, can be classified as either viscerogenic (related to a physiological need-state) or psychogenic (nonphysiological in nature). They can further be classified as either deficit motives (related to or caused by a lack, need, or state of deprivation) or growth motives (unrelated to a lack of some needed state or condition). In Maslow's model, motives are arranged in a hierarchy of decreasing intrusivity. Intrusivity means the inability to ignore a motive. There are six levels, from the most to the least intrusive:
1. Physiological motives (e.g., hunger, thirst, sex, the need for oxygen)
2. Safety/security motives (e.g., need for stability, certainty, freedom from anxiety, freedom from physical or psychological harm)
3. Love/belongingness motives (e.g., need to belong, to fit in, to have a niche or place, to be valued or cared about by someone)
4. Esteem/achievement motives (e.g., need to succeed, to climb the ladder of achievement, to obtain a social status marker)
5. Actualization motives (e.g., to enjoy creativity for its own sake, to fulfill one's potential regardless of how others may evaluate such activities)
6. Exterocentric/altruistic motives (e.g., to help others or make a difference in the lives of others, not for motives related to levels 1-5)
The intrusivity concept indicates (in Maslow's view) that a person cannot seriously and consistently address higher (less intrusive) needs unless lower (more intrusive) needs have already been substantially met. However, as with other underlying assumptions of Maslow's model, this is quite subject to debate.
Weiner's attributional model
An attribution is a mental (cognitive) explanation for an observed event. Attributions do not have to be accurate to influence behavior. Attributions can be classified along three independent dimensions:
1. Attributions are either internal/dispositional or external/situational. With an internal disposition, a person's behavior is explained in terms of "the kind of person they are" or something about them as a person (their interests, motivations, personality traits, qualities, attitudes). With an external attribution, a person's behavior is explained in terms of "the kind of circumstances they are in" or something about their environment, situation, or social context. For instance, "I failed the exam because I'm stupid" is an internal attribution (something about me); "I failed the exam because it was too hard" is an external attribution (something about the situation, in this case, the exam).
2. Attributions are either stable or unstable. With a stable attribution, the perceived cause is something fixed and unchanging, something that will remain constant over time. With an unstable attribution, the perceived cause is something temporary and changeable, something that is likely to alter with time. For instance, "I failed the exam because I'm stupid" is a stable attribution (I've always been that way, and I always will be), while "I failed the exam because I didn't study" is an unstable attribution (next time, maybe I will study harder).
3. Attributions are either global or specific. With a global attribution, the perceived cause influences many different aspects or domains of life, not just the specific behavior under question. With a specific attribution, a specific behavior or situation is influenced, but not much else. For instance, "I failed the exam because I'm stupid" is a global attribution (being stupid likely influences all aspects of your life), while "I failed the exam because psychology is a hard subject for me" is specific (I might be smart at everything else, so only this one class is affected).
Click here for examples of all eight kinds of attributions. (Use your Back browser arrow to return to this page.)
From the above examples, you can see that any attribution can be classified on all three dimensions simultaneously. Thus, "I failed the exam because I'm stupid" is an internal, stable, global attribution. But "I failed the exam because it was unusually difficult" is an external, unstable, specific attribution... do you see why?
People who persist at difficult tasks, and who are therefore more likely both to succeed frequently and to recover quickly from failure, are those who make internal, stable, global attributions for successes in their lives, but internal, unstable, specific attributions for failures... do you see why? Hence, at-risk students, employees, and so forth can be helped to change their attributional patterns and lower their risk of persistent failure as a result. This attributional therapy approach has been used in middle school settings, for instance, with great effect.
Schein's career anchors
Management theorist Edgar Schein was interested in workplace motivation specifically. His research was organized around an attempt to identify core career motivators that formed the central component of people's vocational decisions -- "non-negotiable" motivators that people would only abandon as a last resort or, as I like to say, would give up only when they were pried out from between their cold, dead fingers. Schein's work led to the identification of eight "career anchors":
Why do these matter from an employer standpoint, by the way? Because, if you pay a person in the wrong "psychological currency" for them, you may be very surprised when they quit a job precipitously, for "no apparent reason". After all, you were rewarding them handsomely -- just not in the way they wanted. Since we all take ourselves as benchmarks of normality, it's easy to reward others in the ways we ourselves would like to be rewarded, but that doesn't always work well.
(Can you identify which of the motivators above are your personal "career anchors"? In class, we'll experience one means by which you might do so. As an added bonus, it will involve the use of M & M's which can subsequently be eaten.)
Personality, self-perception, and motivation
If others don't perceive you "correctly", they can't possibly treat you as you want to be treated. But often there is a mismatch between your private or inner self and your public or outer self (your so-called persona). Worse, at times what others see or know about you is actually more accurate than your self-perceptions, as Robert Burns noted so long ago in his classic poem "To A Louse":
A, wa'd sume pow'r the giftie gie us, ta see oursel's as ithers see us!
Subtract the Scottish brogue and you'll end up with a thought-provoking remark.
Communication theorists often use the "Johari Window" to describe the contrast between private and public selves. Simply put, you can imagine the totality of your self to be divided into four quadrants (or four panes of a "window"). The panes are not necessarily of equal size:
|
The me everybody knows (public self)
|
The me others know, but
I don't
(blind self) |
|
The me only I know (private self)
|
The me nobody knows
(hidden self) |
Looking at the results of the exercise with which we began the class, characteristics that you and your partner agreed were true of you are part of your public self (or, alternatively, both of you are wrong, and your real characteristics are part of your hidden self). Characteristics about which the two of you disagreed concerning you are more controversial: if you are seeing yourself accurately, the trait is part of your private self, but if your partner is the objective one, the trait is part of your blind self. (Or could both, somehow, be true?) It's often difficult to know when to accept the accuracy of what others perceive about you, and when to dismiss it as a bias; one imperfect rule of thumb is to ask others, from many different walks of life. (As the old saying goes, if one person calls you a jackass, forget it; but if ten people call you a jackass, buy a saddle.)
Under what conditions is it desirable (or undesirable) to move information about you from the private self area to the public self area? Under what conditions does this usually occur? (In class, we'll undertake another exercise -- the "ladder of reciprocal disclosure" exercise -- to explore that question in some detail.)
Motivation in the workplace
Here are some closing thoughts about motivation.
1. Motives can't successfully be created from outside, for the same reason that (as David Keirsey puts it) a snake can't swallow itself. (If you were motivated to change your motives, you would -- by definition -- already have the changed motive.) External pressures (or incentives) cannot themselves change our existing motives; at best, they can temporarily alter the priority structure of our existing motives. (I may want a successful career, but if halfway through an important job interview I have to go the bathroom, my desire to avoid death from a burst bladder will probably take temporary precedence over my vocational ambitions. But as soon as I've completed my little exercise in fluid dynamics, what will happen? I'll kick myself for having thrown away an "ideal job" -- because changing circumstances change my motivational priority structure. There's a fancy word for this too: "post-decisional regret".) The moral? To motivate others, you have to harness their existing motives, not attempt to create new motives out of whole cloth. As the old proverb has it, "to a starving person, God would never choose to appear as anything other than bread".
2. Motives differ from one person to another, so you can't simply assume that what would motivate you would equally motivate someone else. Yet this is the most common mistake that most of us (and most business managers and leaders) make. Don't mindlessly resort to your default mode, or those who are different from you will rebel or tune out and you won't understand why.
3. Tradeoffs between short-term and long-term motives are difficult. (The "dream job vs. empty bladder" example above also illustrates this point.) The fancy word for a situation in which short-term incentives cause us to make decisions that are not in our long-term best interest is a "social trap". Social traps are why shedding bad habits or acquiring good ones is often so difficult; for instance, if I go on a 1000-calorie-a-day diet, I may like how I look someday in the future, but I have a desperate craving for a box of Hostess Twinkies right now. Those who are better able than the rest of us to defer gratification and focus on rational long-term interests are called "mature", but none of us is quite as mature as we really need to be. (If you are interested, I can share with you the three major ways that, according to research, preschoolers successfully avoid falling into social traps -- which happen to be the three major ways that may just work best for adults too.)