Understanding Motivation and Empowerment for Positive Change

Psy 352 - Motivation Chapter 17 Interventions/Conclusion

What have you learned? How can I motivate myself? How can I motivate my friend? Do I offer a monetary incentive? Talk about school or work? Explore my/their interests or goals or competence? What is the quality of the relationships in my life or their life? Motivation produces ?????

Understanding and Applying Motivation Can you explain motivation? Can you explain why we do what we do? Can you explain why we want what we want and fear what we fear? Can you predict changes? Can you forecast the conditions of your motivation level? Can you apply principles of motivation to what you ve learned in class? Can you help empower yourself or others? Explaining Motivation: Why we do what we do To explain the reasons for behavior, we need to understand the source of motivation Motivation theories provide a means of understanding and explaining why we do what we do and why we want what we want

Understanding & Applying Motivation, continued Predicting Motivation: Identifying Antecedents Understanding motivation and emotion includes the ability to predict what effect various conditions have on us Antecedent examples what predictions can you make from the following: A genuine friend listens to you You will be given a large amount of money to complete a task You are given negative feedback on a paper

Applying Motivation: Solving Problems In order to solve problems you need to empower yourself or others toward optimal experiences, healthy development and positive functioning; and away from defenses, avoidance, and negative emotions Amplify strengths Examples: What can you do to promote this motivational state in yourself or others: Develop personal autonomy Set difficult, specific goals Encourage learning over performance goals What can you do to overcome the pathology in yourself Pessimistic expectancies Identify immature defense mechanisms

Motivating Self Motivating Self How do you motivate initiative in yourself? Competence over failure Self-efficacy beliefs, mastery goals, and an optimistic explanatory style over avoidance and pessimism Interest and hope over fear and anger Optimal challenges and incentives over threats and boredom The effort to motivating the self is to examine and diagnose potentials and deficits in your own current needs, cognitions, emotions, environment, and interpersonal relationships

Motivating Others Motivating Others Who you motivate will react passively, aggressively, or constructively Most attempts to motivate others take place within the context of a relationship that has a power differential If you productively motivate someone, then focus on the quality of the relationship Feedback on how the effort to motivate self and others is going Clue into the person s motivational energy Pay attention to your and other s overt behavior

Designing Motivational Interventions Final Class Activity Choose one of the five case studies on page 457 (or page 500 in 6thedition). As a group discuss how you would motivate the person utilizing concepts learned in this class. What do you expect the outcome to be. Final thoughts Create an intention to act Set specific, difficult goals Monitor ways in which your environment is helpful or interferes with your success Set implementation intentions so you can learn to specify a time and a place to pursue your goals Goals should reflect your personal interests and values Motivation is often rooted in interpersonal relationships with others Good luck achieving all of your goals in life!!!!!