Needs and Behavior Discussion Essay
Discuss how various “needs” discussed by Maslow and McClellan d influence you. At what level of Maslow’s hierarchy do you currently feel you are now? Why? Are your behaviors influenced more by a need for affiliation? A need for power? A need for achievement? What “triggers” your emotional feelings of self-efficacy and self-esteem in positive ways? In negative ways? Include one example of how you might think differently about a “trigger” that you identified as “negative” for you after being in this class.Needs and Behavior Discussion Essay
Remember – your response must be a minimum of 300 words, and you must post two responses (a minimum of 150 words each) to two other students’ blog responses. Follow APA formatting for in-text citations and References and write in a scholarly fashion.
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.Needs and Behavior Discussion Essay
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
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Basic Human Needs, the Brain and Behavior
Two difficulties often mentioned by those who teach in after-school settings are (1) finding something to engage the students, especially those who are there because someone perceives it either as a baby-sitting service or thinks students just need more time doing what they do all day and (2) behavior issues. The two are actually linked because students who are interested and engaged seldom have behavior issues. Whether the program is configured as a tutoring service, an enrichment time or even a test preparation venue, its activities take place in a social context that can produce both positive and negative interactions. The challenge is how to create a social environment that is positive and contributes to high levels of engagement.Needs and Behavior Discussion Essay
Researchers Conn ell and Well born conclude that “student engagement is optimized when the social context fulfills children’s basic psychological needs.” The basic human psychological needs include a sense of competence; being related to other people, feeling part of a group; and having some autonomy. These needs apply to students in school or out of school and actually span all ages. The lack of attention drives children to act out, join gangs or find inappropriate ways to prove they are competent at something.
In recent years we have learned that people’s perceptions of themselves in relation to these areas are affected by brain chemistry but there are things we can do in classrooms to boost the potential for the right chemistry to happen and to foster competence.
- Spengler notes that strong emotions, especially fear or threat, take precedence over reasoning, logic and all other memory. It is incumbent to establish a safe environment for those in our programs.
- Knowledge, memory and positive feelings of self are strengthened by the presence of serotonin, a chemical produced by the brain. Serotonin levels can be increased by simple acts such as movement or dance. Smiles and pats on the back can release other helpful chemicals.
- Affirming gestures help students feel related and part of the group. So does teaming.Needs and Behavior Discussion Essay
- A sense of autonomy can be fostered by intentionally seeking out student interests, allowing multiple ways to approach work, and giving students some choice in what they might do, even it is from a menu of preplanned activities.
INSTINCTS AND NEEDS
In the mainstream of Darwinian evolutionary theory, certain behavioral tendencies are innately built into organisms for survival of the individual and thus the species. William James (1890) and William McDougall (1923) made lists of instincts that were seem as mainsprings of all kinds of behaviors, simple and complex. Later, Murray(1937) made another classification of human needs. Murray, however, distinguished a directional aspect and an arousal component that actually kicks the behavior off and that can be motivated in a number of ways. Needs, in Murray’s concepts, are hypothetical constructs directing behavior toward certain goals, or end states. Classifications of needs, as provided by McDougall or Murray look similar to classifications of elements in chemistry, but lack their strictly defined structure and usefulness. A structural principle is needed to explain the dynamic interactions of needs and their fulfillments.
MASLOW’S NEED HIERARCHY
Abraham Maslow (1965) postulates that needs are hierarchically structured and that needs low in the hierarchy must be fulfilled before need higher in the hierarchy become salient. Interrelationships between needs are specified, which are missing in McDougall’s and Murray’s systems. According to Maslow, the physiological needs (e.g., hunger, thirst) come first, followed by security needs, social needs (affiliation), self-esteem needs (recognition), and finally self-actualization needs. Recently, the need to know and to understand, and aesthetic needs are added to the list (Maslow, 1970). The need to know and to understand is comparable to Berlyne’s (1963) epistemic behavior.Needs and Behavior Discussion Essay
Maslow’s basic needs (Maslow, 1943, 1965, 1970) are thought to be structured in such a way that the satisfaction or gratification of the lower-order needs leads to the activation of the next higher-order need in the hierarchy. This is the gratification/activation principle. The other principle is the deprivation/domination principle, which states that the most deficient need is the most important need. A distinction is sometimes made between deficiency and growth needs. Needs for belongingness, love, and self-actualization are referred to as growth needs; the others are deficiency needs. To achieve growth needs, deficiency needs must first be satisfied. This may be compared with Herzberg’s (1966) hygienic and motivating factors in his job satisfaction theory. A deficiency in the hygienic factors creates dissatisfaction, while fulfillment of these factors does not create satisfaction. The motivating factors, when fulfilled, give rise to job satisfaction. Job satisfaction, and probably also consumer satisfaction, is not measurable on a simple bipolar scale but consists of two more or less independent (sets of) factors. In consumer research, we may distinguish between necessary product attributes (hygienic factors) and motivating product attributes. Absence of necessary attributes gives rise to dissatisfaction, while the presence of motivating attributes leads to satisfaction.
EVALUATION OF MASLOW’S NEED HIERARCHY
Despite its vagueness and lack of adequate empirical support (Wahba and Bridwell, 1976), Maslow’s need hierarchy has influenced the work of numerous psychologists (Argyris, 1964; Clark, 1960; Dichter, 1964; Leavitt, 1964; McGregor, 1960; Schein, 1965). Nonetheless, the findings remain largely controversial; and an evaluation of interdisciplinary approaches is rare (Jacoby, 1976). A number of factors seem to have favored the appeal of Maslow’s need hierarchy, while the lack of foresight among researchers and the absence of standardized measurement techniques seem to have forestalled the comprehensive evaluation of the interdisciplinary approaches. 1.Needs and Behavior Discussion Essay Maslow’s approach is a theory of motivation, in that it links basic needs-motives to general behavior (Wahba and Bridwell, 1976). In other words, the basic needs/motives are linked to behavior through a theory of motivation which asserts that (i) deprivation is followed by gratification; (ii) less potent needs emerge upon the gratification of the more preponderant ones (Maslow, 1970); (iii) and it is a dynamic process where deprivation is hypothesized to lead to domination, which leads to gratification that culminates in the activation of the next higher order need in the echelon. 2. At times, the findings have been used to support two apparently contradictory hypotheses. For instance, Maslow (1965) postulated that (i) gratification of the self-actualization need results in an increase of its importance rather than a decrease, and also that (ii) a long-time deprivation of a need may create a fixation for that need. Maslow noted the exception to his model; that, it is possible for higher-order needs to emerge not after gratification of the next-lower need, but after long-time deprivation (Maslow, 1970). The state of affairs remains that Maslow’s need hierarchy, and his propositions regarding gratification and activation, especially in the self-actualization stage, remain controversial. His need hierarchy is by no means definitive, and is rather out of focus in comparison with the role of learning, perception, values, and expectations in human behavior (Atkinson, 1964).
Alderfer (1972) points out that satisfaction with regard to some environmental and job characteristics are studied rather than satisfaction with the postulated needs. Maslow initially postulated that high satisfaction or dissatisfaction is given high ranked importance (Maslow, 1965). Contrary to what is postulated by Maslow, high job satisfaction rather than deprivation is correlated with importance (Dachler and Hulin, 1969). In another study, again, contrary to what Maslow hypothesized, Mobley and Locke (1970) concluded that extreme satisfaction and dissatisfaction depend on the importance attached to them, and not importance determining satisfaction and dissatisfaction.Needs and Behavior Discussion Essay
Some support has been found for Maslow’s (1965) deficiency and growth needs in studies that compared executives and workers in an organization. In these studies higher-order (growth, actualizing) needs are judged to be more important for top executives than for underprivileged workers (Davis, 1946; Pellegrin and Coates, 1957). In a deprived environment, lower-order needs (existence hygienic) needs seem to be more important than higher order need, (Cofer and Appley, 1964; Porter, 1961, 1962; Porter and Mitchell, 1967). By implication, the rating of importance of job satisfaction seems to be positively related to the level of the job one holds (Porter, 1961; Porter and Mitchell, 1967) or “that the deprivation domination principle may only be operative in the case of the deprivation of the lower-order needs, especially physiological needs” (Wahba & Bridwell, 1976, p. 231).
Notwithstanding the above conclusions, the concept of deprivation/domination seems to have little or no effect on the behavior of consumers in relatively affluent societies for a number of reasons. (1) The daily purchases are mostly over and above what is (basically) needed. (2) Until the time that the law of diminishing returns sets in or depleting raw material resources make “abundant” consumption difficult, there is a “need” to buy and possess more. Instead, consumption is influenced by relative deprivation compared with “relevant other consumers”. This relative deprivation may trigger the dominance of the desire “to keep up” with the reference group.Needs and Behavior Discussion Essay
SATISFACTION/DISSATISFACTION
Consumer satisfaction/dissatisfaction studies will benefit from the two-factor need theories (Maslow, 1965; Alderfer, 1969; Herzberg, 1966). Brands possess two types of attributes. The first type of attributes (inhibitors) give rise to dissatisfaction, if their level is below a certain threshold. A car that is insufficiently safe causes dissatisfaction, while no satisfaction is derived from a car that is sufficiently safe. The second type of attributes (facilitators) give rise to satisfaction, is their level is above a certain threshold. Similar to the deprivation/domination principle, the presence of inhibitors causes dissatisfaction and (extending the above principle) this dissatisfaction cannot be compensated for by facilitators. If no inhibitors are present, a “zero point” has been reached. Consumer satisfaction can only be obtained through the absence of inhibitors and the presence of facilitators.Needs and Behavior Discussion Essay
The distinction between inhibitors and facilitators has its analogy in consumer decision making. In terms of decision rules, the first type of attributes (inhibitors) elicit the conjunctive decision rule to eliminate brands with inhibiting (below threshold) values on certain attributes. The second type of attributes (facilitators) elicit the disjunctive decision rule to select brands with facilitating (above threshold) values on other attributes. The conjunctive rule must occur before the disjunctive rule.
Jacoby (1976) emphasizes the applicability of Herzberg’s (1966) two-factor model for the study of consumer satisfaction, which may be compared to a simple choice heuristic: the sequence of conjunctive and disjunctive information processing (Van Raaij, 1977, p. 23-26). Some problems exist, however, in applying Herzberg’s (1966) two-factor model in consumer satisfaction research:Needs and Behavior Discussion Essay
1. In the decision process the consumer will avoid brands that give rise to dissatisfaction through the application of the conjunctive decision rule. Dissatisfaction may only occur after an incorrect application of the conjunctive rule, or after using incomplete or deceptive information.
2. As Jacoby (1976) points out, Herzberg’s propositions as well as the findings cited before are involved with the determinants of satisfaction/dissatisfaction and not with performance. Therefore, they cannot be directly extended to a purchase situation that involves a combination of dichotomies involving purchase behavior-satisfaction and purchase behavior-dissatisfaction. As a solution, he proposes another behavior-satisfaction dimension orthogonal to the facilitator-inhibitor dimension (Jacoby, 1971).Needs and Behavior Discussion Essay