Cognitive theories of motivation: Kohler's insight learning

How is this counter to what behaviorists would think?

Studied chimpanzee, Sultan. Put banana on a string very high, out of reach. Sultan took days of failed attemps to try to get the banana and then one day he got it out of nowhere. "Aha!" Moment.

Counter to what behaviorists would think that he would get the right solution little by little

Founder of cognitive-behavioral perspective in US

Provided theoretical alternative to S-R Theory

Places.

Rat takes shortest route to goal, not the route learned. He thought that this was because the rat had a "map" in his head of the goal in relation to the starting point.

S-R theorists would think the opposite

Kamin's blocking exp't:

Group E: light signals food, later tone also signals food

Group C: light AND tone signal food, nothing added later

Which group responds stronger to the tone?

What does this prove?

Tolman's latent learning expt:

Group 1: Animal going thru maze, given no reward

Group 2: animals are regularly rewarded

Group 3: animals not rewarded at first, but are later rewarded at day 11

- Animals in group 3 at first just went through the maze slowly and lazily, but then went quickly when reward was presented.

How is group 3 different than S-R response?

What did this prove?

Unlike S-R because the response is not gradual, but happens all at once (like the chimp)

 Proved that the animals knew the maze, but just had no incentive to finish, until day 11

Anything that produces a satisfying state of affairs is going to be "stamped into" memory

- S-R bond

Animals will learn new responses that lead only to information about hte presentation of primary or secondary reinforcers.

ex: responses that provide info about when a primary or secondary reinforcer will be delivered.

Animals will learn responses that lead to the presentation of nevel stimuli or produce a change in stimulus complexity

ex: games, puzzles, hobbies, music are reinforcing by moving the person closer to their level of optimum arousal

Pre-Mack principle

Highly probable behaviors will reinforce less probable ones.

For example: you can't play video games until you study

Low frequency behaviors can reinforce high frequency behaviors (and vise versa)

Behavioral bliss point

All behaviors have a preferred frequency, deprivation below that frequency is aversive and organisms will work to remedy this.

Intrinsic: Doing something for fun

Extrinsic: Doing something for another reason

Ex: Playing sports for fun, then playing them for money

Theory is that when you do something for instrinsic reasons, you do it for yourself. If you are paid to do something (extrinsic) then you do it for that reason, once the pay is taken away, you don't want to do it anymore, even though you were originally doing it for no pay.

Controlling events: reduce perceived internal locus of control and thus reduce intrinsic motivation (working only to pay bills, fear of rejection)

Informational events: may not reduce perceived internal locus of control, has less effect on intrinsic motivation (pay indicates status, grades display competence)

conformity - making sure you become/stay a member of the group

obedience - because someone tells you to

social role

Conformity: Asch's line comparison exp't

Obedience: Milgram's obedience study (giving shocks in response to wrong answers)

Social Role: Zimbardo's mock prison study

Perception - saw group response as actually correct

Judgment - thought their own judgment must be in error

Action - did not want to appear different from group norm

Degree of ambiguity - unambiguous tasks reduce but do not eliminate conformity

Group size - larger group = more conformity

Group Unanimity = other nonconformists decrease conformity

1. Cognitive discrepancies occur when one perceives a difference between their current state and their ideal state.

2. People are assumed to be motivated to reduce congitive discrepancies.

1. Difficulty obtaining goals

2. Proximal (short term) vs. distal (long-term) goals

3. Availability of feedback about performance

4. Externally imposed versus self accepted goals

- directs attention to the task

- indicates effort required

- increases persistence

- enables evaluation of performance

- encourages development of new strategies

Test - check for congruity between one's present state and one's ideal state.

Operate - incongruity activates a plan of action sequence designed to remove the incongruity (attain idea state)

Test - Check for congruity between one's present state and ideal state. Was the plan effective?

Exit - leave the plan if congruity has been attained

Basic premises: people are motivated to maintain internal balance with respect to psychological tension. Cognitive incongruities generate psychological tension

P= person

O= some significant other person

X= some event

1. What determines how a person will resolve imbalance?

2. Does not take into account differences in the relative strengths of relationship among P, O, and X.

3. Does not specify how much imbalance is needed to trigger action.

Explain how this proves the cognitive dissonance theory: Three groups are told to tell a lie.

Group 1: Paid $20

Group 2: Paid $1

Group 3: Not paid, but told to tell the truth

Who liked it best?

Group 2 said they liked it best - this was thought to be because they were trying to reduce dissonance. Group 1 was paid enough for that to be a "reason" to lie. Group 3 told the truth, so they had nothing to justify. 

Another dissonance example: Kids were given "forbidden" toys. Group1 was told not to play with them and given a mild threat. Group2 was given a severe threat.

Which group was more likely to want to play with the toys 40 days later?

Severe threat group

The severe threat group originally did not play with the toys because they were given sufficient justification not to (a threat). The mild threat group was given insufficient justification, so their attitudes changed about the toys and why they did not play with them. 

"I didn't want to play with the toys because I was told not to" vs. "I didn't want to play with the toys because I didn't like them."

1. "I said X"

2. "I don't think X ... do I?"

3. "Why would I say X?"

4. "I must think X."

1. "I said X."

2. "I don't think X"

... dissonance created ...

3. Dissonance motivates cognitive effort

4. "I said X, so I think X."

1. Dissonance manipulation: college students asked to write a counter-attitudinal essay

2. Arousal manipulation: Subjects given placebo pill and either told nothing, that it would make them tense, or that it would make them relaxed.

3. Dependent measure: amount of agrement with the counter-attitudinal essay

Extension of dissonance theory: bystander intervention

Reduce dissonance by:

Rationalizing:

1. it's not an emergency - no help is needed

- pluralistic ignorance: can't be an emergency if no one else is helping

 2. Someone else is sure to help - my help isn't needed

- diffusion of responsibility

Dissonance produced by misdeed towards others can be reduced if one can construe the misdeed as justified (they deserved it)

ex: after watching a student being interviewed, subjects are asked to tell the student that they were boring and untrustworthy. then subjects rated how much they liked the student. outcome: group that delivered insults liked the person less than people who didn't.

1. People form a ratio of their perceived outcomes (O) over their perceived inputs (I) in a given situation.

- O = anything the person appraises as having some value

- I = anything the person believes that he or she contributes in a setting

2. People compare the value of their ratio to the perceived value of the ratio for other people.

3. If the values of the two ratios are not perceived to be equal, then tension is produced.

4. People are motivated to remove or reduce tension.

Positive: You experience positive inequity if you perceived your outcome/input ratio to be higher than that of your comparison person.

= guilt

Negative: You would experience negative inequity if you perceived your O/I ratio to be lower than the comparison person.

= resentment, anger

1. Alter one's inputs

2. Alter one's outcomes 

3. Alter other person's inputs

4. Alter other person's outcomes

5. Change object of comparison

Hammock's inequity exp't involving shock-giving

results?

Negative equity: avg shock = 6.33

equity: 4.06

Positive equity: 3.33

1. expectancy

2. value

3. motivation

Old view: Drive Theory

Behavior = Habit x Drive = Expectancy x Value

Behavior strength is a function of:

1. Effort to performance expectancies

2. Performance to outcome expectancies

3. Perceived valence of outcomes

efficacy

- ability to adapt to novel circumstances

- effectively identify and utilize resources

- self-confidence

1. direct outcome feedback

2. Social comparison

VIE = Value-Instrumentality-Expectancy

Instrumentality: outcomes have instrumentality to the extent that achieving them is viewed as stepping stones to greater achievements.

1. help students achieve the perception of high competence and avoid perceptions of incompetence

- increases efficacy expectancies

2. Provide students with the opportunity to succeed on challenging tasks of reasonable difficulty

- increase outcome expectancies

3. Explain and model the value of the work that the students are asked to do

- increase value of the outcome

LH - belief that performance does not influence the occurrence of undesirable outcomes, so why perform?

LL - belief that performance does not influence the occurrence of desirable outcomes, so why perform?

1. Exposure to uncontrollable/inescable aversive events

2. Training in which learning to perform a new response controls, escapes, or avoids the previously unavoidable aversive event.

3.Exposure to an uncontrollable/inescapable event interferes with subsequent learning of escapable and avoidance responses.

TRIADIC design

1. inescapable shock

2. escapable shock

3. no shock

1. cognitive deficit -- difficulty solving problems

2. lack of initiation action -- difficulty in performance

3. emotional disturbances

Hiroto and Seligman study of learned helplessness: train animals to push a button to turn off a noise but then it doesn't work, or give them an unsolvable problem.

Does instrumental test only interfere with subsequent instrumental test, or also with subsequent cognitive tests?

Special features of LH in humans

vicarious helplessness and group helplessness

1. vicarious helplessness - indicates cognitive mediation

2. group helplessness - groups can become helpless even when individuals in the group have not.

When threatened with loss of control over important outcomes.

 high -if you think you have control but then find out you don't, you tend to freak out

- Give someone lots of experience where performance to outcome is high - where they can succeed

- Immunization makes LH training less effective

Weiner's theory on causal attribution

internal vs. external locus of control

stable vs. unstable

global vs. specific 

Internal vs external locus of control

stable vs. unstable: does this always happen or is it a one time thing?

global vs. specific: I'm doing badly in this class bc my instructor is bad or I'm doing bad in all my classes bc all my instructors are bad.

According to Weiner's dimensions of causal attribution, what would be attributed to each situation?

Internal/Stable

External/Stable

Internal/Unstable

External/Unstable

Ability

Task Difficulty

Effort

Luck

Explanatory styles:

Optimistic

Pessimistic

Optimistic: bad outcomes explained with external, unstable, controllable attributions

Pessimistic: bad outcomes explained with internal, stable, uncontrollable attributions

What emotion would be associated with each, according to Weiner?

Positive outcomes - internal attribution

Negative outcomes - internal,unstable attribution

pride

shame/guilt

we have a bias toward dispositional attributions (esp about other people)

As actors, individuals attribute their own behavior to situational causes -- as observers, individuals attribute the behavior to dispositional causes

Ex: two people say the same thing about something. one you can see, one you can't. if you can see the person, you think they had more of a role in the convo than if you cant

Why? bc they are more a part of our environment, we aren't so focused on ourselves

Related effects to self-serving bias

false consensus and selective exposure effect

False consensus: False belief that others hold the same opinions as you

Selective exposure effect: we overestimate how many people share our opinions because we tend to associate only with people that hold the same opinions as we hold.

Kelley's theory on attribution

ex: John had a car accident

Attributions are based on covariation along 3 dimensions:

consensus, distinctiveness, consistency

ex: John had a car accident last night

Consensus: did other people have accidents? 

- bad weather

Distinctiveness: Did John have other kinds of accidents?

 - clumsiness

Consistency: Does John often have car accidents?

- bad driver

Contribution of mechanism: may override preceding factors ... knowledge that John was drinking last night

Jones and Davis' Correspondence (correspondent inference) theory

social desirability, non-normative behavior, non-common effects

1. Social desirability: behaviors that gain social rewards usually result in situational attributions

2. Non-normative behavior: behavior that is out of the ordinary usually result in dispositional attributions

3. Non-common effects: Actions may be attributable to several different causes

Dispositional attributions are augmented when actions appear to be unrelated to situational rewards and punishments

Ex: engaging in socially undesirable behavior is usually attributed to dispositional factors

The existence of potential situational reasons for acting discounts dispositional attributions

ex: placed oneself in jeopardy for money

The predictions of normative models of attribution may be moderated, and overturned, when observers are reminded of their personal death such that defensive needs override rational inferential processes.

intention movement

ex: stickleback fish swimming low over a small area of a sandy river bed during the breeding season may be an intention movement that heralds the digging of a pit and the buliding of a nest