Continuing on from week three, week four moved on to investigate the psychological and social needs.
Most immediately, what impressed me was how our lecturer defined a psychological need. It was as follows: ‘An inherent source of motivation that generates the desire to interact with the environment so as to advance personal growth, social development and psychological well-being (Neill, 2010). Indeed many of us may take this for granted, but when expanded further from this definition the why and how we do what we do begins to piece together quite accurately.
Basically, we are all inherently active and curious creatures. In my last reflection I examined the importance of biological needs to our functioning and how they can motivate our behaviours. In this sense psychological needs will inherently motivate us to seek out and engage, that is, to explore our environments and pursue challenging behaviour. I found in my last reflection that for the most part, biological needs were the result of a deficit, I am thirsty, therefore I am going to drink… However, I after week five’s lecture and set readings, I feel that psychological needs will be much better understood as Growth Needs.
As with physiological needs, our psychological needs also share a relationship with our environment. This is what is known as the Person-Environment Dialectic. For example, we all have different interests, preferences, goals and striving. I am interested in Psychology, I am striving for high grades and my goal is to graduate with a masters degree. Hence, my environment should then provide me with: interesting activities (interesting university units), learning opportunities (the opportunity/chance to study at university), rewards (a masters degree!), incentives and feedback (criticism or praise for this brilliant e-portfolio). The following picture (Figure 6.1 from Chapter 6) (Reeve, 2009) provides a good description of the Person-Environment Dialectic.
Yet, why is it that I chose these needs?? How did I determine that I wanted to study and develop these skills? A good example of how one choses why and what they pursue is suggested by Reeve in the unit’s text book. Young children move from one activity to the next, with no apparent source of motivation, other than wanting to do a task a little better than they did it the last time (a need for competence), while experimenting on their terms when what and how something is done (a need for autonomy) and determining which tasks are important based on the values and attitudes of important people (parents & friends) in their lives (a need for relatedness) (Reeve, 2009).
What strikes me as the most important out of these three psychological needs (competence, autonomy and relatedness is ‘autonomy.’ Autonomy is basically the psychological need to have freedom to make choices for ourselves. To decide what we pursue, how and when we pursue it too. That out behaviour is self-determined through our own values, beliefs and choices, rather than determined by someone else (Reeve, 2009). To put it briefly… I chose to study psychology (at this point in my life), and I value having an education as do my friends and family. However, I did not choose to study psychology under the pressure of my parents or peers, nor simply because I felt I ‘had to have a career’. So following this statement of personal choice, the question should now be asked, do I understand why I made the choices that I have??
There are three qualities that define the perceived experience of autonomy (Reeve, 2009).
1. Perceived Locus of Control (PLOC): This is an individual’s understanding of the causality of their own actions. It would also do well to be aware that there exists an internal and external PLOC. Obviously, this refers to the individual (internal) and the surrounding environment (external). For example, if the reason you chose to study ‘motivation and emotion’ is because you enjoy the study of psychology, then this was decided due to an internal PLOC, whereas, if you are only taking this class because you have to, then you are operating out of an external PLOC.
2. Volition: Is the sense of willingness one feels when engaging in certain behaviour(s) as compared to how coerced one feels to behave. For example, was it out of my own willingness that I chose to study psychology…. Or did my parents coerce me to do so? In this instance my volition is very high.
3. Perceived Choice Over One’s Actions: is the sense of choice we feel when our environments either, provide and support decisions making flexibility or when they place restrictions on it. I find the University of Canberra to be supportive and flexible in offering me hands on style of education, whereas ANU, which I hear is more research oriented, may not offer the same hands on approach.
Following on from this, the conundrum of choice is, is our choice made based on what others have chosen for us, or is it truly due to our own values and interests? I did not have free reign over the course units that I had to study, so in that sense, they were chosen for us (me and other students) so in this sense it falls into offered choice. However, at the same time, out of my own values and interests I chose to study psychology, so at the same time it falls into a true choice. Thoughts anyone??
It would make sense one should help to support ones sense of autonomy, rather than attempting to control or minimise it. We should all be aware that the external events, our environment and our social world will all vary in how they support or do not support our need for autonomy (Reeve, 2009). For example, for many people having to write this e-portfolio may be uncomfortable and they may feel that this undermines their sense of autonomy. While I am not trying to disregard this feeling, this exercise is however providing a learning opportunity and (albeit anxious and perhaps exposing) an opportunity to freely express (without strict APA, hence supporting autonomy??) what you have learnt plus your own feelings (autonomy +) on that. An important part of learning is receiving feedback, negative or positive, as that motivates us to either, lift our game or to let us know we’re on track. Personally, my sense is that as this is online, for the world to see it is therefore VERY supportive of our autonomy as anyone can provide feedback.
So how do we support autonomy and avoid using controlling behaviour? In our lecture James outlines those behaviours which support autonomy and those which are controlling (Neill, 2010).
Autonomy Supportive Vs. Controlling Behaviour:
Nurturing inner motivations – encourage initiative by listening to their interests, values and competences and help find ways which allow individuals to express these.
VS.
Controlling – Disregarding inner sources of motivation. Reliance on extrinsic sources, such as directions, consequences and deadlines.
Using Informational language – If an individual is performing poorly their behaviour are identified as a problem which can be solves, via the use of flexible and informative language. Communicating clear points for improvement and discussing progress.
VS.
Controlling – Considering the situation as something which has to be ‘taken control’ of. Using a rigid ‘YOU WILL do it NOW’ style of communication, rather than trying to make a connection.
Providing explanatory rationales – Discussion and communication of the value, worth and importance of tasks, even those that at first seem uninteresting or not important (brushing ones teeth??)
VS.
Controlling – NO explanation of the importance of any given value(s). That is, YOU will do it because I say it’s IMPORTANT!
Acknowledgment AND acceptance of negative affect – If one expresses negative affect… Listen to them! And don’t write it off, they feel it, therefore it is valid. Work with someone in order to find out what the cause of the negative effect may be.
VS.
Controlling – Ignore negative affect, its futile resistance! It has to change… to doing what I find acceptable, that is, doing what I want you to!
In the long term, supporting autonomy has a large number of positive benefits. Fostering deeper conceptual understanding, enhancing engagement and promoting positive affect, creating a greater sense of self-worth, a desire for challenge, psychological well-being, and a sense of competence and relatedness (Neill, 2010).
Competence is the need or desire to be effective in our interactions with our environments (Neill, 2010). In order to experience the feeling of competence in one’s world, I have learnt and can relate to the following conditions.
1. Flow: Flow is the feeling felt when one overcomes a task/challenge using the skills that they possess. Flow is also characterised by a deep absorption in the task at hand. However, flow occurs when skill matches the difficulty of the task. So, if one’s skill is high and their task if difficult then flow will occur. Whereas, if skill is low and the task is difficult anxiety or worry will follow. Essentially, people will seek out optimal challenges, ones that don’t under or overwhelm them.
2. Interdependence of challenge and feedback: We face challenges every day, to get out of bed for that 9 am lecture… to write an essay. But we do not feel psychologically challenged until we begin to receive feedback. For example, we may whip together an essay and feel only slightly challenged… it only took a day to write! Hence, feeling sure of a high grade, although until we receive our grade and its corresponding feedback… a scraping pass… does it become psychologically relevant… it takes a lot of work to get a HD… how challenging it really is.
3. Structure: Is the clarity of what our environment expects us to achieve. Doesn’t this step on our autonomy?? Not necessarily. In actual fact it nurtures our need for competence because it offers us clear goals to achieve and ideally provides us constructive feedback. If I want my Ba of Psychology I can simply pass my units, however, if I want to progress to honours, I have to achieve a credit average.
4. Failure tolerance: In relation to the above, while structured environments (like university) are important, the problem is that people are equally as likely to experience success and much as they are likely to experience failure. What is essential is that the environment must then be tolerant to failure and error.
Realistically, we cannot expect that ourselves and others will live our lives NEVER making an error or experiencing failure. Hence we should not take a negative perception when it does occur. It is simply part of learning.
Finally, we all have a need to belong. A desire to establish positive emotional bonds and interactions with other people, who care for and accept our values, support our needs and welfare and also to provide a rational for our own behavior.
References
Neill, J. (2010). [Psychological & Social Needs Lecture]. Lecture presented at the University of Canberra, ACT. [Lecture notes]. Retrieved from http://learnonline.canberra.edu.au/
Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion. USA: Wiley.
No comments:
Post a Comment