Introduction
In the following investigation we will provide information on human needs and behaviors, covering the theories of different exponents such as Frederic Skinner, Abraham Maslow and Douglas Mc Gregor analyzing their theories, to understand and know the objectives of each theory.
The following information was compiled from true bibliographic sources, which help us provide more complete information on these topics. In order to analyze and understand the different situations, needs and behaviors of the members of a work team.
Justification
With the following research and the fundamentals used for the development of the research, he was carrying out with the aim of acquiring new knowledge to develop them in the workplace. Therefore we can identify what type of person you consider yourself according to the needs and behaviors. It is important to identify what type of person we are or what type of people are my work team and analyze what theory to apply so that they can give us a good functioning in the work team.
Since in an organization, there will always be different types of people who have to be identified to place them in a work group which can develop their needs, behaviors and attitudes in order to achieve their personal goals and that of the organization. organization.
Overall objective
Analyze the different theories of the factors, behaviors and needs that complete it to identify and apply the knowledge obtained in the workplace in the management of high-performance teams.
Specific goal
- Carry out different investigations and highlight the important points of these.Analyze the theories of Son Frederic Skinner, Abraham Maslow and Douglas Mc Gregor to be able to identify the different types of behaviors that exist in each person.Identify the differences and characteristics that exist in each theory.Make one final conclusion on theories for the development of learning.
Fundamentals
Philosophical origins of motivational concepts
Ancient Greece. Motivation as a hierarchically arranged tripartite psyche. The higher aspects regulate the lower ones.
| Plato | Appetitive Competitive Calculator | Appetites and bodily desires (hunger, sex…) Social reference standards (feeling honored, ashamed…) Decision-making capacities (reason and choice) |
| Aristotle | Nutritious Sensitive Rational | Body impulses necessary to sustain life Body impulses that regulate pleasure and pain Characterized by will, maximum level of the soul |
Dualism. Motivational dichotomies: passion vs reason, body vs mind. The hierarchical nature of motivation is maintained.
| T. Aquino | Irrational impulses based on pleasure (body) Rational impulses based on will (mind) |
| Discards | Body: nutritional needs, mechanistic response. Mind: thinking entity with deliberate will. Passive Aspects
Active Aspects Body: passive mechanical agent Active immaterial agent will |
Philosophical origins of motivational concepts
Discards
- The ultimate motivational force was will: it initiates and directs action. Understanding Will, Understanding Motivation Bodily needs, passions, pleasures, and pains created impulses for action, but these only excited the will. By assigning exclusive powers of motivation to the will, Descartes gave it his first Great theory of motivation Great theory: global theory that seeks to explain the full range of motivated action.
Grand Theories: Will
Descartes: understanding motivation was reduced to understanding the will (which initiated and directed action)
Acts of will
- Choice: decide whether to act or not Effort: create the urge to act Resistance: sacrifice or resistance to temptation
Faculty of the mind that arose from an accumulation of innate capacities, environmental sensations, life experiences and reflections about itself and its ideas. As difficult to explain as the very motivation that it supposedly explained.
Specific psychological processes (strategies, goals…), and not abstract willpower, explain behaviors and their effective functioning.
Grand Theories: Instinct
Darwin. Biological Determinism. Mechanistic and genetic motivational concepts. Abandonment of the man-animal dualism. Instinct arises from genetic inheritance and explains adaptive behavior (innate, automated). Faced with the appropriate E, instinct is expressed through inherited physiological reflexes.
William James. Physical and mental instincts. To translate an instinct into goal-oriented (motivated) behavior, only the appropriate E is needed, which activates a set of inherited reflexes that generate impulses for specific (adaptive) actions.
McDougall. Irrational and impulsive motivational force that orients to particular goals. Without instincts, no action would be initiated (primary motivators).
The logic behind the instinct theory was circular in nature.
Grand Theories: Drive (1)
Freud's drive theory
All behavior is motivated. Its purpose is to satisfy the bodily needs. Biological impulses: constant and unavoidable recurring conditions that produce accumulations of energy within the SN.
Anxiety (drive) warns of the need to act and guarantees that the behavior (at the service of bodily needs) happens at the time and in the way necessary.
Criticisms: Overestimation of the contribution of biological forces. Dependency on data taken from case studies. Ideas not scientifically verifiable.
Hull's drive theory
Grand Theories: Drive (2)
Hull's drive theory
Reserve energy source composed of the deficiencies-alterations of the body. Sum of particular needs to constitute a total bodily need.
Motivation can be predicted: the drive is an increasing monotonic function of total body need, which is a monotonic function of the hours of deprivation.
Beginning of the scientific study of motivation: Knowing the environmental conditions that cause motivation allows manipulating and predicting motivational states.
Responses that reduce the drive reinforce the habit (learning). The drive energized behavior and habit directed it.
Hull's drive theory
Grand Theories: Drive (3)
Twilight of drive theory
Fundamental assumptions of both theories (Freud, Hull): the drive…
- It arose from bodily needs Energized behavior Its reduction reinforced and produced learning
but…
- Some motives arose without a corresponding biological need External (environmental) sources could energize the behavior Learning could occur without experience of reduction of drive or even experiencing an increase of it.
Reducing the drive was neither necessary nor sufficient for learning to occur. Reinterpretation of drive theory in neurophysiological and cognitive terms: environmental incentives and brain activation state as well as biological needs.
The 1950s were a very fruitful time to develop concepts about motivation. In those years, three concrete theories were formulated, which although at the time were highly attacked and are currently being questioned, they are still the best known explanations regarding employee motivation. We talk about the theory of the hierarchy of needs, the theory of X and Y, and the theory of motivation-hygiene. Even though there are now more valid explanations of motivation, it is convenient for you to know these theories, for at least two valid reasons
- They represent the foundation of contemporary theories. Active managers generally use these theories and their terminology to explain employee motivation.
Investigation Development
Burrhus Frederic Skinner Biography
(Burrhus Frederic Skinner; Susquehanna, 1904 - Cambridge, USA, 1990) American psychologist. He obtained a doctorate in psychology from Harvard University in 1931, and continued his research at the same university as a biology laboratory assistant with Professor Crozier; in 1936 he began working as a professor at the University of Minnesota, where he remained for nine years.
In 1938 Skinner published his first book, The Behaviors of Organisms, and after a brief period at Indiana University, he settled at Harvard (1948). Influenced by Pavlov's theory of conditioned reflexes and by John B. Watson's behaviorism, Skinner believed that it was possible to explain the behavior of individuals as a set of physiological responses conditioned by the environment, and he devoted himself to the study of the possibilities that offered the scientific control of the behavior by means of reinforcement techniques (reward of the desired behavior), necessarily on animals.
Among the most famous experiments of Skinner it is worth mentioning the training of pigeons to play table tennis, the so-called Skinner box, still used today for the conditioning of animals, or the design of an artificial environment specifically thought for the first years of life of people.
Burrhus Frederic Skinner Theory
Operant conditioning, also called instrumental and nowadays experimental analysis of behavior (AEC), can be defined as follows: It is the psychological theory of learning that explains the voluntary behavior of the body, in its relationship with the environment, based in an experimental method.
That is to say, that before a stimulus, a voluntary response is produced, which can be reinforced in a positive or negative way causing the operant behavior to strengthen or weaken. Skinner would argue that "operant conditioning modifies behavior in the same way that a writer molds a pile of clay", since within operant conditioning learning is simply the change of probabilities that a response will be emitted.
Influence of theory with learning
Skinner says that when students are dominated by an atmosphere of depression, what they want is to get out of trouble and not properly learn or improve. It is known that for learning to be effective, reinforcing stimuli must follow immediate responses.
Since the teacher has too many students and does not have the time to deal with their responses, one by one has to reinforce the desired behavior by taking advantage of groups of responses. Skinner considers that the purpose of psychology is to predict and control the behavior of individual organisms. In operant conditioning, teachers are seen as modelers of student behavior.
Applications and examples of the theory
Reinforcement learning: It is learning in which the behavior is new for the organism that increases its frequency of appearance after receiving some reinforcing stimulus.
Avoidance learning: It is learning where the body acquires a new behavior that ends or prevents the application of some aversive (unpleasant) stimulus, and increases the frequency of appearance of that behavior so that it does not return.
Superstitious learning: It is learning where some coincidentally reinforcing or aversive consequence increases the frequency of the appearance of some behavior.
Learning by punishment: It is learning where an organism increases the frequency of the appearance of behaviors that were not followed or that did not receive any aversive or unpleasant stimulus.
Forgetfulness: All behaviors that do not receive or that do not receive reinforcement tend to decrease their frequency of appearance and disappear.
fundamental concepts
Discriminatory Stimulus: It is one in whose presence a certain portion of behavior is highly probable, because before it was reinforcing by a stimulus.
Operative Behavior: It is what an organism has, that is, how the environment behaves.
Reinforcing Stimulus: It is a stimulus that increases the probability of a contingent response.
Generalization: It is when reinforcing a response produces an increase in another similar response.
Discrimination: It is when an organism behaves differently in the presence of two stimuli.
Extinction: It is a procedure in which an operant behavior that has been reinforced ceases to be so and that produces the end of the response.
Types of reinforcers
- Positive: Any stimulus that increases the probability that a behavior will occur. Negative: Any aversive stimulus that when withdrawn increases the probability that the behavior occurs. Extinction: It occurs when a stimulus that previously reinforced the behavior stops acting. Punishment: Like extinction, it works to reduce behavior Multiple: Application of two or more different programs Composite: Reinforcement of two or more responses with one or more programs Concurrent: Reinforcement of two or more responses with one or more programs. Punishment: It is when an aversive stimulus is used to obtain a reduction in the rate of a response.
Biography of Abraham Maslow
(New York, 1908 - California, 1970) American psychiatrist and psychologist. Promoter of humanistic psychology, which is based on concepts such as self-realization, higher levels of consciousness and transcendence, she created the theory of self-realization that bears her name.
In works such as Motivation and Personality (1954), Psychology of Being (1962) and The Psychology of Science (1966), Maslow postulated that each individual has hierarchical needs -physiological, affective, self-realization- that must be satisfied, and that the fundamental objective of psychotherapy must be the integration of being. Each hierarchical level dominates at each moment of achievement and the lower needs in the hierarchy (food, shelter or affection), if they are not supplied, prevent the individual from expressing or desiring needs of a higher type.
Abraham Maslow Theory
Maslow's theory of self-realization is located within holism and humanistic psychology and starts from the idea that man is an integrated and organized whole, without differentiated parts. Any reason that affects a system affects the whole person.
Maslow carried out a critique of the theories on motivation of Freud and Hull. According to Maslow, Freud's model only describes the neurotic behaviors of subjects who do not tolerate frustrations, while Hull's theory deals exclusively with organisms driven by a deficit situation.
Maslow proposes a theory of growth and development starting from the healthy man, in which the key concept for motivation is that of necessity. It describes a hierarchy of human needs where the most basic is that of growth, which governs and organizes all the others. From here there are five hierarchies or levels, from the need for survival, which is relatively strong, physiological in nature and necessary for homeostasis, to the need for growth, relatively weak and more psychological in nature.
The hierarchy of human needs ordered according to strength (physiological needs are those that have more strength or "dominance" and those of self-realization have less strength) is the following: physiological needs, protection needs, need for love and belonging, need for esteem and finally, the need for self-realization.
First level: physiological
It is the most basic level of the pyramid and refers to the physiological needs of human beings, such as: breathing, drinking water, eating, sleeping or having sex.
Second level: security
This phase arises when the physiological needs are balanced. They are the security and protection needs, such as: health, employment, income or resources.
Third level: affiliation and affection
They are related to the affective development of the individual, they are the needs of association, participation and acceptance. The human being by nature feels the need to relate, to be part of a community, to gather in families, with friends or in social organizations. These needs are: friendship, companionship, affection and love.
Fourth level: esteem
According to Maslow, there are two types of esteem needs, one high and one low. High esteem addresses the need for self-respect, and includes feelings such as confidence, competence, independence, and freedom. Low esteem includes: the need for attention, appreciation, recognition, status, dignity, fame or glory. A deficit at this level is reflected in low self-esteem and an inferiority complex.
Fifth level: self-realization
Maslow used several terms to define this level: "Growth motivation", "Need to be" and Self-realization ". They are the highest needs, and through their realization, a meaning to life is found through the potential development of an activity. It is reached when all the previous levels have been reached and completed, at least partially.
Maslow considered self-made a group of historical figures who he considered fulfilled these criteria: Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin or Newton.
Maslow also addresses the problem of what is self-realization in another way, speaking of impulsive needs, and comments on what was needed to be happy: truth, goodness, beauty, unity, integrity and transcendence of opposites, vitality, singularity, perfection and necessity, fulfillment, justice and order, simplicity, environmental richness, strength, playful sense, self-sufficiency, and search for the meaningful.
When the needs for self-realization are not met, meta-pathologies arise, the list of which is complementary and as extensive as that of meta-needs. A certain degree of cynicism, disgust, depression, emotional disability and alienation then emerge. The hierarchy of human needs ordered according to force.
Biography of Douglas Mc Gregor
Douglas Mc Gregor was born in 1906 and died in 1964 as a professor at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology during the last 10 years of his life. Their work is very close to the presentations and postulates of Rensis Likert and Arnold Tannenbaum, in their capacity as contemporaries, not to mention the initial influence that the investigations of Elton Mayo had on their formation.
He was President of a College - Antioch College - and he mentions that much of his work and conclusions about the progress of the organizations has to do with his experiences as a leader of said institution. The reader is suggested to refer on these topics to two other books: 1. the work of Victor Thompson, and 2. the book by Dr. Donald Cole and Eric Gaynor Butterfield "Professional Suicide and Organizational Murder."
Douglas Mc Gregor Theory
What is the question that Douglas Mc Gregor asks himself? For Mc Gregor, organizations work based on the assumptions that managers have regarding the human behavior of their staff. Based on these assumptions about human behavior, each manager chooses a way of relating to his subordinates, of directing them, of expecting results, and in turn that style also has to do with how the manager himself is.
Some of the characteristics of managers are oriented to establish direction through the criterion of unity of command (see Henry Fayol) with a rather strict supervision (Taylor and also Fayol). As there is someone who thinks (the manager) about what others should do (the subordinate), the implicit assumptions regarding human motivation show the following characteristics that are grouped under what Mc Gregor calls
Theory X
Those basic assumptions suggest that:
- Most people have no interest in working and would rather not. People who fall within point 1. Above are not prone to take initiative. These organizational members need a strong “top” presence to give them direction their activities and also establish methods of control over them. Superiors must determine the output levels they expect from their subordinates. Superiors must continually emphasize the need to orient subordinates' tasks towards performance, expecting improvements in productivity. achieve these levels of productivity in accordance with the scheme established by management,financial incentives should be given in return (very close to the scientific management of Frederick Taylor) The manager's job does not include the role of coach, taking into account that most people are not happy with working should be adopted - from the point of view superior's view - a system of coercion, where subordinate behaviors are parameterized and threatened and punished for deviations outside these parameters Most people feel comfortable receiving directives from their superiors Most people do not they want to be responsible for their work and even less to be "responsible" Most people prefer to live many years during their work under the practice of "the bottle".They have no ambition for the most part, and those who eventually have ambition do not want to put in the effort necessary to achieve what they are ambitious.
According to Douglas Mc Gregor the organization under the Theory X model has prevailed for a long time and has been under many situations very effective in the past, being able to explain the human behavior of only some people who are members of organizations. In any case, the transition from a model X to a model Y is not easy, where the staff is characterized by a greater degree of autonomy as the managers have very different basic assumptions from those mentioned above. A very important point for Mc Gregor lies in the existence and way of operating of the staff groups. To the extent that the staff groups are oriented to provide services to all managerial levels (as opposed to being at the service of the top management of the company).Unfortunately, most of the time the staff functions - and their respective members - prefer to respond and relate directly to the top of the organization and do not provide services to others; when exceptionally they are related to other line units, they do so under Theory X practices as auditors, controllers or inspectors.
Mc Gregor suggests that there are also other mechanisms to which the organization can turn in order to transform the company from X to Y, such as personnel evaluations, promotion systems, training and qualification, among others. In any case, if the organization as a whole is not transformed, these mechanisms must produce changes in the short term that will not be sustained over time.
Theory Y
The postulates of Theory Y are characterized by having these basic assumptions:
- Most people are not disinterested in working; Depending on the conditions, they may see work as a source of satisfaction or punishment People who are within point 1. Above mentioned are prone to take initiative as long as they are committed to the objectives to be achieved These organizational members do not need a strong "superior" presence that gives direction to their activities and also establishes control methods over them. Superiors do not need to determine the output levels they expect from their subordinates; they can work together to set higher goals that are within the acceptable range.Superiors do not need to permanently emphasize in their subordinates the importance of productivity and other quantitative aspects over qualitative indicators.To achieve high levels of productivity of organizational participants, managers must strengthen their relationship with subordinates taking into account the different needs of these, giving incentives of a different nature in addition to economic incentives The manager's work must take into account the role of coach. Most people feel comfortable working autonomously when they receive support from their superiors in situations Non-repetitive in their work. Most people have an interest in taking responsibility for their actions.Most people prefer not to lean on the backs of others; have personal ambitions and are willing to make the necessary efforts to achieve what they aspire to. People have needs for self-realization and these are of immense value many times over and above economic rewards. Organizational members of the entire organization company are in a position to make contributions and contributions, above those that can be made by the directive and management team. Very few people within an organization reach levels of productivity close to their real potential.People have needs for self-fulfillment and these are of immense value many times above the economic rewards. The organizational members of the entire company are in a position to make contributions and contributions, above those that can be made the directive and managerial team. Very few people within an organization reach levels of productivity close to their real potential.People have needs for self-fulfillment and these are of immense value many times above the economic rewards. The organizational members of the entire company are in a position to make contributions and contributions, above those that can be made the directive and managerial team. Very few people within an organization reach levels of productivity close to their real potential.
conclusion
In conclusion, the presented research helps us understand the types of existing theories. That is why these theories are not based on the present, but rather that since very remote times, human beings have certain needs and behaviors for mutual development. So much so that if we didn't have needs, we wouldn't have the technology that we now have.
This work was very helpful to understand and know a little about the authors who speak of theories about needs and especially human behavior in a work area, now we can identify and know the different behaviors and needs of people.
Annexes
Chamber of operational conditioning. Skinner's Box and Hierarchy of Needs
Image 1 Operational conditioning chamber. Skinner's box
Image 2 Hierarchy of needs
Comparison of assumptions of theory X and Y
Image 3 Comparison of assumptions of theory X and Y
Herzberg theory
Bibliography
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