1. PowerPoint® Presentation by Jim Foley
Chapter 11
Motivation and Work
PowerPoint® Presentation
by Jim Foley
© 2013 Worth Publishers

2. Motivation: Chapter Overview
Does motivation work in humans by way of drives, incentives, and optimizing arousal, or by following a hierarchy of motives?
Some strong human drives we will examine include:
hunger, with an application to obesity.
sex, especially in relation to adolescents, orientation, and values.
belonging, relating to ostracism and networking.
Work motivation and organizational psychology
Click to reveal bullets.

3. Motivation
Motivation refers to a need or desire that energizes behavior and directs it towards a goal.
For example, Aron Ralston found the motivation to cut off his own arm when trapped on a cliff in Utah in What motivated him to do this? Hunger? The drive to survive? The drive to reproduce?
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The drive to survive might seem more obvious, but see if students can guess why the drive to reproduce is listed here. Ralston, after thinking he had no way to survive, had a dream of a one-armed man picking up a young boy. Maybe this stirred up his desire to live to be a father someday. [His first child, Leo, was born in 2010.]

4. Perspectives on Motivation
There are different ways of thinking of the way motivation works, all of which relate to the “push” of biological processes and the “pull” of culture, social forces, and ideals.
Instinct Theory  Evolutionary Perspective
Drive-Reduction Theory
Arousal [Optimization] Theory
Hierarchy of Needs/Motives
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5. Do Instincts Direct Human Behavior?
An instinct is a fixed (rigid and predictable) pattern of behavior that is not acquired by learning and is likely to be rooted in genes and the body.
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Humans may have a general nesting “instinct,” but the specific behavior is less predictable. The bird can only build one kind of nest, but humans may decorate a baby’s room in a variety of ways, or use this general “instinct” to simply buy and repair a home.
Human “nesting” behavior
Instinctual nesting

6. Instincts  Evolutionary Perspective
Other species have genetically programmed instincts “motivating” their actions.
Do humans?
Human babies show certain reflexes, but in general, our behavior is less prescribed by genetics than other animals.
We may, however, have general patterns of behavior which can be explained as emerging through natural selection.
Instinct theory has given way to evolutionary theory in explaining human behavior.
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7. Drive Reduction
A drive is an aroused/tense state related to a physical need such as hunger or thirst.
Drive-reduction theory refers to the idea that humans are motivated to reduce these drives, such as eating to reduce the feeling of hunger. This restores homeostasis, a steady internal state.
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8. Drives “Push” and Incentives “Pull”
Drives are based on inner needs and can be seen as a force “pushing” from inside of us.
Incentives are external stimuli that either appeal to our needs or trigger our aversive feelings, and can be used to “pull” us in our actions.
Automatic animation for first half. Click to reveal example.
For example:
we have a drive to have food, or money we can exchange for food.
employers can use the prospect of a raise in (or elimination of) salary as an incentive for us to follow employer goals and policies.

9. Seeking Optimum Arousal
Some behavior cannot be easily connected to a biological need, and instead seems driven by a need to either increase or decrease our physiological arousal level.
Curiosity, as with kids and these monkeys, may be a way of increasing stimulation to reach an optimum arousal level.
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It seems that curiosity can be considered a basic need or drive to get to know one’s environment to improve the chances of survival. However, in this model, curiosity is seen as a way of seeking an optimum arousal level.
People with ADHD seem to seek stimulation for this reason; it increases dopamine levels almost as well as Ritalin, although the pursuit of such stimulation, even by fidgeting, can be disruptive.
It is not clear that the curiosity of scientists, though, serves to increase physiological arousal.

10. Hierarchy of Needs/Motives
In 1943, Abraham Maslow proposed that humans strive to ensure that basic needs are satisfied before they find motivation to pursue goals that are higher on this hierarchy.
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11. Violating the Hierarchy?
Do hunger strikers and mystics feel secure enough in meeting their needs that they can do without food temporarily to pursue a higher goal?
Soldiers sacrifice safety, but could they be seen as fighting for safety, both indirectly (protecting the country) and directly (defeating the people shooting at them)?
Violating the Hierarchy?
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12. A closer look at one need/motive: Hunger
Research on hunger is consistent with Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy:
In one study, men whose food intake had been cut in half became obsessed with food.
Hunger even changes our motivations as we plan for the future.
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13. Physiology of Hunger
Experiments and other investigations show a complex relationship among the stomach, hormones, and different parts of the brain.
Feeling hungry causes stomach contractions, but the feeling can happen even if the stomach is removed or filled with a balloon.
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14. The Hypothalamus and Hunger
Receptors throughout the digestive system monitor levels of glucose and send signals to the hypothalamus in the brain.
The hypothalamus then can send out appetite-stimulating hormones, and later, after eating, appetite-suppressing hormones.
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15. The Body Talks Back to the Brain
Hormones travel from various organs of the body to the brain (the hypothalamus) to convey messages that increase or decrease appetite.
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16. Regulating Weight
When a person’s weight drops or increases, the body responds by adjusting hunger and energy use to bring weight back to its initial stable amount.
Most mammals, without consciously regulating, have a stable weight to which they keep returning. This is also known as their set point.
A person’s set point might rise with age, or change with economic or cultural conditions. Therefore, this “set point” of stable weight is more of a current but temporary “settling point.”
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17. Which foods to eat? Taste Preferences
Some taste preferences are universal. Carbohydrates temporarily raise levels of serotonin, reducing stress and depression.
Other tastes are acquired and become favorites through exposure, culture, and conditioning.
Different cultures encourage different tastes.
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Some cultures find these foods to be delicious: reindeer fat and berries, or roasted guinea pig.

18. Biology, Evolution, and Taste Preferences
Differences in taste preferences are not arbitrary. Personal and cultural experience, influenced by biology, play a role.
We can acquire a food aversion after just one incident of getting sick after tasting a food.
It is adaptive in warm climates to develop a taste for salt and spice, which preserve food.
Disliking new tastes may have helped to protect our ancestors.
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Instructor: after the third bullet point, you can add that forcing children to try new foods multiple times might make sense. Their first aversion to a food is a biologically protective reaction but it does not predict whether they will eventually like it.

19. How much do we eat? Eating depends in part on situational influences.
Social facilitation: the presence of others accentuates our typical eating habits
Unit bias: we may eat only one serving/unit (scoop, plateful, bun-full) of food, but will eat more if the serving size is larger
Buffet effect: we eat more if more options are available
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Instructor: the buffet effect (not an official term; I just made it up here) can be explained in evolutionary terms. See if students can guess or recall from the reading that our ancestors stored fat and nutrients during bountiful times, when more variety was available. For example, humans prepared for possible winter famines in early fall when more kinds of plants were bearing fruit and animals were storing fat.

20. Influences on Eating Behavior
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Instructor: here, you can try to bring the eating topic back to the chapter topic of motivation by showing how complex the idea of “motivation” can be when it comes to the case of a desire to eat a particular food. This may highlight the idea that food addictions and disorders are [now] missing from this chapter, so I’ve added a slide next that fills in a gap and connects to the next topic.

21. Variations from the Norm of Body Weight
In some cases, the set point of a person’s body weight drifts from a healthy weight.
Psychological disorders of eating can override this set point, ignore biological signals, and lead to extreme weight loss.
In other cases, the set point seems to drift upward. Biological tendencies can lead to increased weight that is hard to lose, leading to obesity.
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Instructor: I have added this introduction to the next topic to put it in context. Eating disorders used to be in this chapter and have been moved to the “Psychological Disorders” chapter, but I felt that an acknowledgement of them here would help show how these topics relate. Students may bring them up anyway, or at least may be interested in debating the relative role in obesity of biology, psychological factors, culture, and the idea that it’s just about choosing to eat more or less.

22. Obesity refers to an amount of body fat that increases the risk of health problems to the point that weight loss is a health priority.
Obesity is linked to diabetes, heart problems, arthritis, and some cancers.
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23. Is Fat Bad?
Having some body fat is normal and healthy; fat stores energy effectively for later use.
Body fat has been seen as a sign of affluence, and thus has been considered attractive.
Standards vary in different cultures, sometimes creating an unhealthy norm of being overweight or underweight.
Being mildly overweight is not considered a problem if the person is in good physical condition or exercising.
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24. Obesity and Life Expectancy
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25. Obesity and Weight Control
Physiology of Obesity
Once a person is obese, losing weight is not so easy as “just eating less.”
Fat has a lower metabolic rate then other tissue, so a person might gain weight when eating “normally.”
Eating less to lose weight slows metabolism. This prevents weight loss, and ensures weight gain when returning to a normal diet.
Even if weight loss succeeds, a formerly obese person will have to eat less than an average person just to prevent weight gain.
How does obesity develop,
and why is it hard to change?
It was adaptive for our ancestors to crave energy-rich food when available.
Problem: energy-rich ‘junk’ food is now easily available, and cheaper than healthy food
It is adaptive to slow down our burning of fat when food is scarce.
Problem: in poverty or in crash diets, our body can slow down weight loss
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Instructor: if you decide to keep the word “poverty” in the last bullet point on the left, you can prompt students by saying, “and when food is available to people in poverty living in neighborhoods with easy access only to convenient stores, what food is most easily and cheaply available?”
This is why people in poverty might be obese but it may not be a sign that they are “spoiled” or do not have a problem with adequate income.

26. Lifestyle Factors and Obesity
Social Psychology of Obesity
Discrimination based on weight has been found to be stronger than race and gender discrimination.
In one study, actors were seen as less employable when made to look heavier.
Even children are prejudiced against the overweight.
Perhaps as a result, people who are obese are more likely to be depressed or isolated.
Genetics and Obesity
Adopted siblings eating the same meals end up with a BMI/weight resembling biological parents, not people in the same household.
Identical twins have similar weights, even when raised apart with different food.
There seem to be many genes with effects on weight.
Lifestyle Factors and Obesity
People who are restless and fidgeting burn off more calories and gain less weight than others.
Inadequate sleep causes weight gain, despite increased active time, because of appetite hormones.
Having an obese friend correlates with becoming obese.
Sedentary lifestyles and fast food may be leading to increased body fat worldwide.
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27. Losing Weight: The Challenge Losing Weight: The Plan
Because of the physiological factors and perhaps due to lifestyle and peer issues:
once obese, weight loss is difficult, and permanent weight loss is even harder.
obsessive weight loss attempts can add to shame, anxiety, depression, and disordered eating habits.
Begin with an understanding of the metabolic challenges you face, so that you blame slow progress on physiology, not poor willpower.
Begin with self-acceptance and a decision to change, rather than feeling shame.
Make gradual and consistent, not drastic and varying, lifestyle changes.
Increase exercise and healthy food choices.
Get support.
Losing Weight: The Plan
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If you decide to move your body’s set point to a lower body weight:

28. Another Human Motivation: Sex
Sexual motivation may have evolved to enable creatures to pass on their genes. Issues to explore about sex:
physiological, including the response cycle (with disorders of sexual response), hormones, and stimuli
developmental, especially in adolescence
sexual orientation and its possible origins
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More about the first sentence: sexual motivation is adaptive, with those more motivated passing on the greatest number of genes. This makes male promiscuity a successful trait (out of many) for passing on genes.
The difference between hunger and ses: both are necessities for the species, but only hunger is a necessity for the individual. Many people function well with sex as a minor or non-existent motivation (or drive).

29. The Physiology of Sexual Activity
The Sexual Response Cycle
Four phases, to orgasm and back
Disorders of the Sexual Response Cycle
Problems with desire and response
Hormones and Sexual Behavior
Effects and role of testosterone and estrogen
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I have changed the title of the topic “Sexual Disorders” because there are many other sexual disorders not mentioned here that may come to the minds of students, such as fetishism, sadism, and paraphilias. Here, we’re focusing on the ones related to the sexual response cycle.

30. The Sexual Response Cycle
Beginning in the late 1950s, William Masters and Virginia Johnson observed sexual arousal and orgasm to learn about the typical pattern of human response to sexual stimulation. Their findings:
Phase
Physiological Response
Excitement
Genitals fill with blood and lubricate, ready for intercourse; breathing and pulse become rapid
Plateau
The changes related to excitement reach a peak
Orgasm
Contractions all over the body; sexual release
Resolution
Enlarged genitals release blood; male goes through refractory phase, women resolve slower
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Instructor: you could remind students that this study was based on a sample of people willing to be observed in arousal and orgasm. What adjustment might we have to make in generalizing the results to the whole population? Do students think that the era of the study or the laboratory conditions limit the applicability of the results? If so, how? How might unobserved, spontaneous sexual response be different than these phases seen in the laboratory? Given the era of the study (the initial phase was ) , do students think that results would be different now?

31. Sexual Response Disorders
Some people have a variation or impairment in some phase of the sexual response cycle. These variations are sometimes distressful or problematic enough to be seen as disorders: premature ejaculation erectile dysfunction low sexual desire lack of orgasm response
These can improve with behavioral therapy, other psychotherapy, and/or medication.
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Again, I have modified the title of the topic to narrow it (see explanation on earlier slide notes) but I left the term “disorders.” Do students see a problem (stigma, etc) using that term?
These disorders impair arousal and response; the paraphilias direct arousal and response to objects, situations, or individuals that are not part of normative response cycle. Psychologists and psychiatrists once believed homosexuality was a disturbance of normative sexual response. In 1973, homosexuality was removed from the DSM-II classification of mental disorders.

32. Hormones and Sexual Motivation
Sexual desire and response is not as tied to hormone levels in humans as it is in animals.
During ovulation, women show a rise in estrogen and also in testosterone.
As this happens, sexual desire rises in women and also in the men around them (whose testosterone level rises).
Low levels of testosterone can reduce sexual motivation.
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33. The Psychology of Sex
Like hunger, sexual desire is a function of biological factors, internal drives, external and imagined stimuli, and cultural expectations.
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34. The Effect of External Stimuli
All effects of external stimuli on sexual behavior are more common in men than in women.
The short-term effect of exposure to images of nudity and sexuality increases sexual arousal and desire.
Possible dangers include:
the distortion of our ideas of what is appropriate and effective for mutual sexual satisfaction.
the habit of finding sexual response through idealized images may lead to decreased sexual response to real-life sexual partners.
Imagined Stimuli
The brain is involved in sexuality; people with no genital sensation (e.g. spinal cord injuries) can feel sexual desire.
The brain also contains dreams, memories, and fantasies that stimulate sexual desire.
Fantasies are not just a replacement for sexual activity; they often accompany sex.
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35. Adolescent Sexual Activity
Adolescents often begin to engage in sexual activity, including intercourse. This may be related to basic drives but is mostly a function of social environment.
Sexual intercourse rates, and age of first intercourse, vary widely among cultures, families, and historical periods.
How can we tell it isn’t just a function of biology?
Sexual activity includes risks
that may be magnified in adolescence such as:
pregnancy while still in school.
sexually transmitted infections.
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I have modified the title of “Teen Pregnancy” to go beyond the obvious “adolescent sexual activity puts you at risk of teen pregnancy” to highlight the disruption of the typical path to independent or emergent adulthood.

36. Teen Pregnancy and Contraception
American teens have higher rates of pregnancy and abortion than European teens. Possible reasons include:
inadequate communication about birth control with parents and sexual partners.
guilt about sex may make American teens less likely to plan for it and use contraception.
alcohol use may make impulsive sex more likely and impair decision making.
media portrayals in the United States make unprotected sex look common and free from consequences.
Click to reveal bullets.
Instructor: you might add the following background material: "the term “homosexual” was first used in the 1800s; were there “homosexuals” before the 1800s? The issue is politically charged and hotly disputed. Clearly there were people who engaged in homosexual acts, but saying they had a homosexual ‘identity’ may be introducing a modern view of sexuality that was alien to the times. Most premodern people viewed sexual acts as homosexual or heterosexual, but they did not classify the people performing the acts

37. Sexually Transmitted Infections
Unlike the risk of pregnancy, the risk of STIs multiplies and spreads, and condoms do not offer sufficient protection for STIs like herpes.
Sex and bad math: Herb has sex with 9 people, each of whom has 9 other partners who each have sex with 9 people. To how many people could his STI spread?
511
(Laura Brannon and Timothy Brock study estimate)
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Instructor: in case students challenge that figure, you can point out that 9 x 9 x 9 = 729. However, that total in the real world is likely to count some partners twice, so “511” may reduce the number to the likely number of separate individuals potentially contracting the STI.

38. Factors Correlating with Sexual Restraint
Participation in abstinence education programs, even when randomly assigned to participate
High intelligence test scores, thinking of consequences, and focusing on future achievement
Strong religious beliefs and involvement
Presence of father in the home
Participation in activity helping others, even when randomly assigned to participate
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39. Sexual Orientation Statistics
How many people are exclusively homosexual?
Based on a compilation of surveys:
3 percent of men and
1-2 percent of women.
Are the surveys missing anyone?
These surveys protected anonymity, BUT they defined sexual preference as sexual activity. Many do not act on their preference.
Sexual orientation refers to one’s preferences as an object of sexual attraction.
This attraction may not necessarily result in sexual activity, but may exist in the form of desires, interests, infatuations, and fantasies.
“Identity” as either heterosexual, bisexual, or exclusively homosexual, emerges in puberty.
Click to reveal bullets on left.
Sexual preference, especially if it is bisexual or homosexual, may not be revealed or acted on when one’s attractions are the subject of prejudice.
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Does protecting anonymity ensure honest answers about a stigmatized subject? People may worry about information being revealed or tracked despite the promise of anonymity, and they may not want to document a stigmatized behavior even to themselves. This is actually a problem in all self-reported surveys, such as those that ask, “how happy is your marriage,” or “how satisfied are you with your life.”

40. Sexual Orientation and Mental Health
Forty years ago, homosexuality was considered a psychological disorder.
Having a homosexual orientation in today’s society still puts one at risk for anxiety and mood disorders because of the stress of discrimination and isolation, and the difficulty in finding satisfying and loving relationships.
Click to reveal bullets.

41. Origins of Sexual Orientation
Theories suggesting that sexual preference is related to parenting behaviors or childhood abuse are not supported by evidence.
Differences appear to begin at birth. This could be genetic, or it could be caused by exposure to hormones or antigens in the womb.
The fraternal birth order effect: being born after a brother increases the likelihood of being gay.
Cause or Effect? The brain and other differences in sexual orientation
Heterosexual men have a certain cell cluster in the hypothalamus that, on average, is larger than in gay men and in women.
Gay men are more likely than straight men to be poets, fiction writers, artists, and musicians.
Click to reveal bullets and sidebar.
A comment implied in the text about these two examples: non-sexual differences between gay and straight men could be biological but could also be a function of the social experience of being gay in this society.

42. Biological and Behavioral Differences Associated with Sexual Preference
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43. Biological Differences Associated with Sexual Preference
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44. Genetics and Homosexuality
In fruit flies, a difference in one gene determined sexual orientation and behavior.
Homosexuality seems to run in families and among identical twins, but still emerges spontaneously, even in one of a pair of twins.
Genes related to homosexuality could be passed on by siblings or by people not living exclusively according to their sexual orientation.
Homosexuality and Gender
Hormones that affect gender may also affect sexual orientation.
In mammals, female fetuses exposed to extra testosterone, and male fetuses exposed to low levels of testosterone, often grow up with:
bodies, brains, and faces with traits of the opposite sex.
the sexual attraction expected of the opposite sex to one’s own sex.
Click to reveal bullets.

45. Sexual Orientation: Acceptance
Whatever the level of evidence accumulates that sexual orientation becomes part of one’s identity because of biology:
it is possible to accept another person’s sexual orientation and behavior.
This acceptance seems to be growing, at least in the acceptance of homosexual life commitment in the form of marriage.
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As more people are open about their sexual orientation, acceptance may spread thanks to the mere exposure effect. However, the acceptance of gay and lesbian friends and family members does not always translate into general acceptance and vice versa.

46. Human Values and Sex Research
As psychologists write about sexual activity, most attempt to be non-judgmental and value-free in discussing various sexual behaviors.
Some suggest that people should be reminded of the consequences of their actions.
Others note that sex should be associated with love (this is not just a romantic ideal; sex in a love relationship has been found to be more emotionally and sexually satisfying).
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Instructor: “consequences of their actions” refers to teen pregnancy, STIs, and the quote in the text from a 1982 child-rearing expert: “Promiscuous recreational sex poses certain psychological, social, health, and moral problems that must be faced realistically.”

47. Another Motivation: “To Belong”
What do people need besides food and sex?
Aristotle: friends
Alfred Adler: community
In Middle English, to be wretched [wrecche] means to “be without kin nearby”
Roy Baumeister, Mark Leary, and Abraham Maslow:
“To Belong.”
Click to reveal bullets and definition.
Belonging refers to being connected to others; part of a group or family or community.

48. Why do we have a need to belong?
Evolutionary psychology perspective: seeking bonds with others aids survival in many ways
Keeping children close to caregivers
Mutual protection in a group
Cooperation in hunting and sharing food
Division of labor to allow growing food
Emotional support to get through crises
Why do we have a need to belong?
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49. Balancing Bonding with Other Needs
The need to bond with others is so strong that we can feel lost without close relationships.
However, we also seem to need autonomy and a sense of personal competence/efficacy.
There a tension between “me” and “us,” but these goals can work together.
 Belonging builds self-esteem, and prepares us for confident autonomy.
Click to reveal bullets.

50. The Need to Belong Leads to:
loyalty to friends, teams, groups, and families.
However, the need to belong also leads to:
changing our appearance to win acceptance.
staying in abusive relationships.
joining gangs, nationalist groups, and violent organizations.
Click to reveal text box.
Abusive relationships typically undermine our autonomy and our sense of self-efficacy/competence. Ironically, this makes us less likely to leave an abusive relationship.

51. Disrupted Bonds, New Beginnings
Children repeatedly moved away from primary caretakers in childhood may have difficulty forming deep attachments in adulthood.
People losing a loved one or moving away from a hometown can feel grief.
Being ostracized, cut off from social contact or excluded, can lead to real physical pain.
And yet people can find resilience and relief from pain by building social connections.
Click to reveal bullets.

52. Social Networking = Social Connection?
Connecting online can be seen as taking turns reading brief words about each other, or as an experience of connection and/or belonging.
Portrayal of one’s self online is often close to one’s actual sense of self.
Use of social networking can become a compulsion, sacrificing face-to-face interaction and in-depth conversation.
Click to reveal bullets.
Regarding the face-to-face interaction: I suggest pointing out here that something called “Facebook” may have reduced our exposure to both faces and books.

53. Another Area of Motivation: Work
Why do we work…only for money and other incentives?
The income from work can indirectly satisfy the drive for food and shelter.
Some are driven by achievement motivation.
In rare cases, the goals and activities of work can feel like a calling, a fulfilling and socially useful activity. Some people may seek the optimal work experience called “flow.”
“The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times … the best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”
From Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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feeling purposefully engaged, deeply immersed, and challenged

54. The Psychology of the Workplace:
Industrial- Organizational [I/O]Psychology
I/O psychology includes three different areas of focus
Personnel psychology:
hiring and evaluating
Organizational psychology:
management, supervision, leadership, and teamwork
Human factors psychology:
how workers interface with machines and the environment
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55. Personnel psychology:
hiring and evaluating
Selecting and placing employees
Training and developing employees
Appraising performance
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56. Selecting, Hiring and Placing Employees
Which employees will do the job well?
Personnel psychologists can help find the right person for the right job. This involves:
analyzing the content of the job to be filled.
developing tools and procedures for assessing potential employees, and for selecting the ones that fit the job.
helping to optimize worker placement and promotion.
Strengths refer to enduring qualities that can be productively applied.
Personnel psychologists such as Mary Tenopyr have done research to find which strengths predict success at various jobs.
This research can be used to develop procedures for selecting applicants that have the right strengths for a job.
Click to reveal bullets and text box.

57. How do we select the right applicants?
aptitude tests
job knowledge tests
work samples
past job performance
To get the information which would predict future job performance, personnel psychologists recommend:
Still, employers rely on an informal interview to get a “feel” for the applicant.
Interviewers overestimate their ability to “read” people because of four errors:
valuing intentions rather than habits.
neglecting to recall bad “reads” such as past interviewees who failed or quit.
seeing interview behavior as a predictor of job behavior.
using prejudgments to interpret interviewee behavior.
The interviewer illusion/ fallacy
Click to reveal bullets.
Interviewer illusion/fallacy: You can ask students, “which common human thinking error does this slide topic remind you of?”
The concept that “Interviewers overestimate their ability...” is a classic case of the overconfidence error.
“How about error #2 above?” [Students might say the availability heuristic, hindsight bias, or confirmation bias, any of which could be justified (the availability heuristic fits best).
Error #3 is a type of error they probably haven’t learned about yet. It is known as the fundamental attribution error, that is, seeing the interviewee’s friendly behavior as a sign of his/her personality rather than as a function of the situation.
Error #4 is simply prejudice; if you like the interviewee, you may see an error as a sign of humility rather than as a disqualification.

58. The Structured Interview
A structured Interview is not just a conversation with general questions, but an objective, systematic strategy of assessing strengths (attitudes, behaviors, knowledge, and skills).
Example: testing how the applicant would handle a job- specific situation
The interviewer sticks to the uniform list of questions, and takes careful notes.
This makes the interview more valid and reliable as a way of managing candidates to positions.
Click to reveal example

59. Training and Developing Employees
Personnel psychologists can help organizations develop improved and new talents and knowledge in their employees. This involves:
identifying which individual and organizational improvements would be useful.
designing and evaluating training programs.
Click to reveal bullets.

60. Appraising/Evaluating Performance
Tools for Performance Appraisal
Checklists of specific work behaviors observed
Graphic rating scales such as a five-point scale to rate the employee on frequency of a behavior or strength of a trait
Behavior scales; instead of using a numbered scale, each valued trait comes with a range of behaviors that best describes the employee
Personnel psychologists can help employers assess the performance and value of employees. This involves:
developing criteria for good performance.
comparing individual and organizational performance to these criteria.
Goal: employee improvement and retention, and helping determine salary and promotion
Click to reveal bullets and sidebar.
Sleeps - Sits - Stands - Walks - Runs - Sprints
( c i r c l e o n e )

61. 360 Degree Feedback
Input from many sources can make an evaluation more honest, reliable, and complete.
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62. Leniency or Severity Errors:
Errors in Performance Appraisal
Halo Errors
Leniency or Severity Errors:
Recency Error:
When one’s overall impression of an employee biases the ratings of specific behaviors; good people can have weak areas
When one’s appraisal of an employee is too generous, or too harsh, on all evaluations
Focusing only on easily remembered recent incidents rather than on a full year of performance
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63. Personnel Psychologists’ Work
All of the below are potential areas of research and consultation for personnel psychologists.
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64. Organizational Psychology
Goals of Organizational Psychology Research
Organizational psychology: studying and consulting about how worker productivity and motivation is affected by different patterns of worker- management engagement, leadership, and teamwork
Maximizing worker motivation, satisfaction, and productivity
Understanding organizational structures and dynamics
Facilitating organizational change
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Improving teamwork and leadership

65. Grit: Motivation to Achieve and Self-Discipline to Succeed
Achievement in most fields of work may seem like a function of talent; however, Thomas Edison noted that, “genius is 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration.”
Talent itself can be a result of perseverance. According to the “ten year rule,” it takes about ten years of hard work to become a skilled expert in a field.
Success in work is predicted more by self-discipline than by intelligence test scores.
Organizational psychologists work in part to maximize motivation and put it to use for employers.
Grit refers to a combination of desire for achievement and the ability/willingness to persist at hard work.
Click to reveal text boxes.
Implication: this topic is in the organizational psychology section, but it can apply also to hiring decisions. Employers, when hiring, should look for “grit”, that is, an applicant’s evidence of self-discipline and motivation, more than current level of expertise.
Success in careers and organizations may be caused in part by people with grit, who stick to a goal when others would have quit.

66. Satisfaction & Engagement
Employees who are satisfied in an organization are likely to stay longer.
Employees who are more engaged (connected, passionate, and energetic) get more work done.
Because a happy worker is a productive worker, organizational psychologists study factors related to employee satisfaction, such as whether a worker:
feels that they personally matter to the organization and to other people.
feels a sense that effort pays off in the quality of the work and in rewards such as salary and benefits.
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67. Employee Engagement: Three Levels
Many employees are engaged (connected, passionate, and energetic about the companies/organizations they work for).
Organizational psychologists find that people are most engaged in work when they:
know what is expected of them.
have the materials they need to do the work.
have opportunities to excel.
feel fulfilled.
feel part of something important.
have opportunities to grow/develop in the job.
Some are not engaged; they show up and get tasks done but show little passion or energy.
Click to reveal text boxes and bullets.
With some items, such as “feeling fulfilled,” it is not clear whether items on this list cause engagement, or vice versa, or whether engagement and fulfillment are two parts of the same experience.
Others are actively disengaged; they are unhappy, alienated, and not invested, even undermining what people are trying to accomplish.

68. Managing Employees Well
Identifying and harnessing employee talents
Setting specific goals
Task leadership
Social leadership
Being positive: A good coach
tries to offer players four or five positive
comments for every negative one.
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69. Utilizing Employee Strengths
Harnessing employee strengths includes:
selecting the right people.
learning about those people’s talents.
adjusting jobs to fit the talents.
developing talents into strengths, and then:
Click to reveal bullets and diagram.
This slide, like the text, covers two different models. The first few points are from Buckingham, and the flow chart is from Fleming. The models overlap just enough to weave them together.

70. Managing Well: Rewards and Goals
Effective managers reward good work behaviors and also reward people for achieving goals.
Useful goals:
are specific.
are challenging.
have immediate, short-term objectives.
can be stated as an action plan.
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71. Leadership Styles and Types Transformational leadership
Task leadership
Setting standards, organizing work, and focusing on completing goals
Social leadership
Building teams, encouraging participation in decisions, mediating conflicts, and building unity
Click to reveal a description of each.
Transformational leadership
Inspiring people to transcend self-interest to work for a collective vision

72. Human Factors: Work that Fits People
The psychology of human factors: taking the design of the body and the functioning of the mind into account when designing products and processes.
No animation.

73. Human Factors in Product Design
This measuring cup adjusts for a human factor.  When we hold a cup by the handle, our eyes are above the cup, so it’s hard to read the scales on the side. How does this cup adjust to the human factor?
No animation.
Instructor: this item is intended to show how designers take the human body into account when creating a product.

74. Human Factors in Work Processes
Pilots need instruments to judge altitude because human perception, unlike a bird’s, isn’t very good from up in the sky.
No animation.
Letting human perception guide a landing would result in a crash in this simulation.

75. Summary
Areas of human motivation include eating, sex, bonding/belonging, and work.
In each of these activities, there are internal drives and external rewards.
Understanding motivations is part of understanding the way people engage with the world.
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