Summary Psychology MIDTERM
Group: Innocent
Topic I: Introduction to Psychology
The Root of Psychology
- Structuralism: Wilhelm Wundt’s approach focuses on uncovering the
fundamental mental components of consciousness, thinking and other kinds of
mental states and activities.
- Introspection: procedure used to study the structure of the mind in which
subjects are asked to describe in details what they are experiencing when they are
exposed to stimulus.
- Functionalism: an early approach that focus on what the mind does
(function of mental activity) and how behavior function (the role of behavior) in allowing
people to adapt to their environment.
Gestalt Psychology: an approach to psychology that focus on the
organization of perception and thinking in a “whole” sense rather than on the individual
elements of perception.
Today’s Perspective
Neuroscience: Views behavior from the perspective of biological
functioning.
Psychodynamic: Believes behavior is motivated by inner. Unconscious forces
over which a person has little control.
Behavioral: Focuses on observable behavior.
Cognitive: Examines how people understand and think about the world.
Humanistic: Contends that people can control their behavior and that they
naturally try to reach their full potential.
The Field of Organizational Behavior
Organization: group of people who work interdependently toward some
purposes such as company, school, university, association
Organization Behavior (OB): the study of what people think, feel and do
in the around organization.
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Individual
Group
Organization
Organizational Behavior Trends
Globalization: economic, social, and culture connectivity and
interdependence with people in other parts of world.
Workforce diversity
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Surface level of diversity: observable demographic or physiological
difference in people, such as their race, ethnicity, gender, age and
physical disabilities.
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Deep level of diversity: the difference in psychological characteristics
of employees, including personalities, belief, values, and attitudes.
Evolving Employment Relationship
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Aligning the workforce with Emerging Workforce Expectation: minimize
conflict between work and network demands .
Increasing Workforce Flexibility
o Employability: employee who can perform a variety of work.
o Contingent work: the part time job.
Virtual Work
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Virtual work: work practices whereby employees use information
technology to perform their jobs away from the traditional physical
workplace.
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Virtual team: team whose members operate across space, time, and
organizational boundaries and who are linked through information
technologies to achieve organizational goal.
Workplace Value & Ethic
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Value: stable, long lasting beliefs about what is important in a variety
of situations that guide our decision and action.
o Ethical values: study of moral principles or values that
determine whether actions are right or wrong and outcome are
good or bad
Corporate Social Responsibility: an organization’s moral obligation
toward its stakeholder.
Topic II: Sensation and Perception
Sensation: Receiving message about the world
Sense Organs: organ that receive stimuli.
Sensory Receptor Cells: cell in sense organs that translate message into
neural impulses that are sent to the brain.
Sensation: process of receiving, translating, and transmitting messages from
the outside world to the brain.
Perception: process of organizing, interpreting information received from the
outside world.
Stimulus: any aspects of the outside world that directly influence our behavior
or conscious experience.
Sensory Limits
Absolute Threshold: smallest magnitude of a stimulus that individual can be
detected
Differential Threshold: the smallest difference between two stimuli that can
be detected half the time.
Sensory adaptation: weakened magnitude of a sensation resulting from
prolonged presentation of the stimulus.
Psychophysics: specialty area of psychology that studies sensory limits,
sensory adaptation, related topics.
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Weber’s law: law stating that the amount of change in a stimulus
needed to detect a difference is in direct proportion to the intensity of
the original stimulus.
Perception: Interpreting Sensory Message
Visual Perception: is a highly important sensing system that scientist
generally understand how it work better that other systems.
Perceptual Organization
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Figure and Ground: the visual stimulus must be perceived whether the
center of attention, or the distinct background.
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Continuity: people tend to perceive lines or patterns that follow a
smooth contour as being part of a single unit.
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Proximity: things that are close together are usually perceived as
belonging together.
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Similarity: similar things are perceive as being related.
Closure: incomplete figures tend to be perceived as complete whole.
An information-Processing Model of Perception
STEP1: Selective attention/Comprehension
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Attention: being consciously aware of something or someone.
STEP2: Encoding and Simplification
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Schema: a person’s mental picture or summary of a particular event or
type of stimulus.
STEP3: Storage and retention
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Event Memory: contain information about both specific and general
events.
Semantic Memory: general knowledge about the world.
Person Memory: contain information about single individual.
STEP4: Retrieval and response
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People retrieve information from memory when they make judgments
and decisions
Managerial Implication
Hiring: Implicit cognition: ant thoughts or belief that are automatically
activated from memory without our conscious awareness.
Performance Appraisal: faulty schema about what constitutes goods
versus poor performance can lead to inaccurate perception.
Leadership: employee’s evaluations of leader are strongly influenced by their
schemata of good and bad leader.
Communication: social perception is the screening process that can distort
communication, both coming and going.
Workplace aggression and antisocial behavior: these negative
behaviors are based on employees’ perception of the workplace.
Physical and psychological well-being: negative perception of fear,
harm, and anxiety are associated with both physical and psychological problems.
Designing web page: what catches viewers’ attention on web page can
help organization to design its web page in an effectively manner.
Stereotypes: Perception about Group of People
Stereotype: an individual’s set of beliefs about the characteristics or attributes
of a group.
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Sex-role stereotypes
Age-stereotype
Racial and Ethnic stereotypes
Disability stereotype
Self Fulfilling Prophecy: The Pygmalion Effect
Self Fulfilling Prophecy: someone’s high expectation for another person
result in high performance.
Galatea effect: occur when an individual’s high self-expectation for him or
herself lead to high performance.
Commonly Found Perceptual Error
Halo: a rater forms an overall impression about person or object and the uses
that impression to bias rating about the person or object.
Leniency: a personal characteristic that lead an individual to consistently
evaluate other people or objects in an extremely positive fashion.
Central tendency: the tendency to avoid all extreme judgments and rate
people and objects as average or neutral.
Recency Effect: the tendency to remember recent information.
Contrast Effect: the tendency to evaluate people or objects by comparing
them with characteristics of recently observed people or objects
Causal Attribution
Internal Factors: personal characteristic that cause behavior.
External Factors: environmental characteristics that cause behavior.
Kelley’s Model of Attribution
Consensus: involve comparison of an individual’s behavior with that of his or
her peers
Distinctiveness: determined by comparing a person’s behavior on one task
with his or her behavior on other tasks
Consistency: determined by judging if the person’s performance on a given
task is consistent over time.
Consensus
Consistency
Distinctiveness
Low
High
Low
Internal
High
Low
High
External
Attribution Tendencies
Fundamental attribution bias: attribution another person’s behavior to his
or her personal characteristics as opposed to situational factors.
Self-serving bias: individual will attribute their success to internal factors and
their failures to uncontrollable external factors.
Topic III: Personality Theories and Assessment
Trait Theory: Describing the Consistency of Personality
Traits: relatively enduring patterns of behavior (thinking, acting, and feeling)
that are relatively consistent across the situations.
Allport’s Personality Trait Theory: to understand people and predict how
they will behave in the future is to find out what they want they value.
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Cardinal Traits: traits that dominate a person’s life.
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Central Traits: traits that influence and organize much of our
behavior.
Secondary Traits: traits that are much more specific and much less
important to a comprehensive of person’s behavior.
Big Five Factors Model of Personality
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Neuroticism
Extraversion
Openness
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
Human Diversity: Personality and Culture
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Individualistic Culture: emphasize the rights and characteristics of
the individual person.
Collectivistic Culture: emphasize the rights and characteristics of
the being the member of the group.
Psychoanalytic Theory: Sigmund Freud
Freud’s Mind: Three levels of conscious mind
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Conscious Mind: the part of the mind of which one is presently
awareness
Preconscious Mind: the part of the mind containing information
that is not presently conscious but can be easily brought into
consciousness
Unconscious Mind: the part of the mind of which we can never
directly aware
Freud’s Mind: Id, Ego, and Superego
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Id: the inborn part of unconscious mind that use the primitive drive
to satisfy its needs and that acts according to the pleasure
principle.
Ego: part of mind that uses the reality principle.
Superego: part of mind that opposes the desires of the id by
enforcing moral restriction and by striving to attain perfection.
Displacement and Identification: Becoming a Member of
society
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Displacement: the defense mechanism in which the individual
directs aggressive or sexual feeling away from the primary object
to someone or something safe.
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Sublimation: socially desirable goal is substituted for a
socially harmful goal.
Identification: tendency to base one’s identity and actions on
individuals who are successful in gaining satisfaction from life.
Social Learning Theory: Albert Bandura
the most important parts of our behavior are learned from other persons in
society
Role of Cognition in personality: the learned cognition are the prime
determinant of our behavior
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Self-efficacy: the perception of being capable of achieving one’s
goal.
Self-regulation: the process of cognitively reinforcing and punishing
our own behavior, depending on whether it meet our standard or
not.
Situationalism and interactionism:
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Situationalism: the view that behavior is not consistent but is
strongly influenced by different situations.
Person x Situation interaction: the process of cognitively reinforcing
and punishing our own behavior, depending on whether it meet
our standard or not
Humanistic Theory: Maslow and Roger
Psychological view that human being possess an innate tendency to improve
and to determine their live through the decisions they make.
Inner-Directedness and Subjectivity
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Inner-directedness: A force that humanist believe all people
possess that internally leads them to grow and improve.
Subjective reality: each person’s unique perception of reality that,
according to humanist, play a key role in organizing our
personalities.
The self-concept: our subjective perception of who we are and what we are
like.
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Self: the person think he/she is.
Ideal Self: the person wish he/she were.
Symbolization: the process of representing experience, thought, or
feeling in mental symbols of which we are aware.
Condition of worth: the standard used by others or ourselves in
judging our worth.
Self-Actualization: the seldom reached full result of the inner-directed drive
of humans to grow, improve, and use their potential to the fullest. More concern about
welfare of friend, loved ones, and humanity than self and usually committed to cause or
task rather than money. Open, honest and courage to act on their conviction, not
interest in fad, fashion and social custom, enjoy friends but not depend on their
company or approval, prefer independent and privacy. View of life are accurate rather
than romanticized, however they positive about life. Life is always challenge and fresh.
Topic IV: Value, Attitude, and Job Satisfaction
Personal Values
Value: the desired ways of behaving or desired end states.
Value system: and enduring organization of beliefs concerning preferable
modes of conduct or end-states of existence along the continuum of relatively important.
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Terminal Value: personally preferred end-states of existence.
Instrumental Value: personally preferred ways of behaving.
Value Conflict
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Intrapersonal Value Conflict: this conflict involve internal priority.
Interpersonal Value Conflict: conflict is at the core of personality
conflict.
Individual-organization Value Conflict: values enacted by the
organization collide with employees’ personal value.
Nature of Attitude
Attitudes consist of three major components
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Affective Component: a feeling or emotions one has about and
object or situation.
Cognitive Component: the beliefs or ideas one has about an object
or situation.
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Behavioral Component: how one intend to acts toward someone or
something.
Attitude and reality Collide
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Cognitive Dissonance: psychological discomfort experienced when
attitudes and behavior are inconsistent.
Attitude Affect Behavior via intention
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Attitude toward the behavior: person have favorable or unfavorable
evaluation of the behavior.
Subjective norm: perceived social pressure to perform or not to
perform the behavior.
Degree of control about perceived behavior: how easy or difficult to
perform the behavior.
Key Work Attitudes
Organizational Commitment: the extend to which individual identifies with
an organization and is committed to its goals.
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Affective Commitment: employee’s emotional attachment and
involvement in the organization.
Continuance Commitment: employee aware of the cost and benefit
associate with leaving the organization.
Normative Commitment: employee feel obligation to continue
employment.
Job Involvement: the degree to which one is cognitively preoccupied with,
engaged in, and concerned with one’s present job.
Managerial Implication
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Increase job involvement by providing work environment that fuel
intrinsic motivation
Job involvement can reduce employee turnover
Job Satisfaction Job satisfaction - an affective of emotional toward
various facets of one’s job
Job Satisfaction
The cause of job satisfaction
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Need Fulfillment: this model propose that satisfaction is determined by
extend to which the characteristics of job allow an individual to fulfill
his or her need.
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Discrepancies: job satisfaction is the result of met expectation. Value
attainment: satisfaction is the result from the perception that a job
allow you to satisfy important work values.
Equity: satisfaction is the function of how fairly an individual is treated
at work
Distortional / Genetic component: satisfaction is the function of
personal traits and genetic factor
Topic V: Social Perception and Learning
Social Perception and Learning
Perception: The process of receiving information about and making sense of the
world around us
Selective Attention
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Characteristics of the object- size, intensity, motion, repetition, novelty
Characteristics of the perceiver- Emotional marker process
,expectations ,self-concept and beliefs
Stereotyping: Assigning traits to people based on their membership in a social
category
Occurs because:
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Categorical thinking
Innate drive to understand and anticipate others’ behavior
Enhances our self-concept
Problems: Overgeneralizes - Stereotypes don’t represent all or most
people in the category
Discrimination – Systemic ,Intentional (prejudice)
Overcoming stereotype biases: Difficult to prevent stereotype
activation
Possible to minimize stereotype application
Other Perceptual Bias
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Halo effect: one trait forms a general impression
Primacy effect: first impressions
Recency effect: most recent information dominates perceptions
False-consensus effect: overestimate the extent to others beliefs and
characteristics similar to our own
Improving Perceptions
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Empathy: the person’s understanding and sensitivity to the feeling,
thoughts and situation of other
Johari Window: the popular model for understanding how co-worker
can increase their mutual understanding.
Learning in Organizations: A relatively permanent change in behavior (or
behavior tendency) that occurs as a result of a person’s interaction with the environment
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Explicit knowledge: Knowledge that is articulated through language,
such as documents
Tacit knowledge: Knowledge acquired through observation and direct
experience
Behavior Modification: We “operate” on the environment by alter behavior to
maximize positive and minimize adverse consequences ,Learning is viewed as completely
,dependent on the environment ,Human thoughts are viewed as unimportant
A-B-Cs of Behavior Modification
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Antecedents: What happens before behavior
Behavior: What person says or does
Consequences: What happens after behavior
Contingencies of Reinforcement
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Punishment
Extinction
Positive reinforcement
Negative reinforcement
Behavior Modification in Practice: everyday life to influence behavior of
others company programs to reduce absenteeism, improve safety, etc.
Social Learning Theory
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Behavioral modeling: Observing and modeling behavior of others
Learning behavior consequences: Observing consequences that
others experience
Self-reinforcement: Reinforcing our own behavior with consequences
within our control
Kolb’s Experiential Learning Model
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Concrete experience
Active experimentation
Reflective observation
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Abstract conceptualization
Developing a Learning Orientation: Value the generation of new
knowledge
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Reward experimentation
Recognize mistakes as part of learning
Encourage employees to take reasonable risks
Classical Conditioning (Ivan Pavlov): the work of formulating the StimulusResponse (S-R) relationship
Topic VI: Motivation
Drives and Needs
Needs
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Goal-directed forces that people experience.
Drive-generated emotions directed toward goals
Goals formed by self-concept, social norms, and experience Selfconcept, social norms, and past experience Needs and Drives
(primary needs) Decisions and Behavior
Drives: aka-primary needs, fundamental needs, innate motives
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Neural states that energize individuals to correct deficiencies or
maintain an internal equilibrium
Prime movers of behavior by activating emotions Self-concept, social
norms, and past experience Needs, Drives (primary needs) Decisions
and Behavior
Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy Theory
Five categories placed in a hierarchy
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Self-actualization
Esteem
Belongingness
Safety
Physiological
Evaluating Maslow’s Theory
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Lack of support for theory
Maslow’s needs aren’t as separate as assumed
People progress to different needs
Needs change more rapidly than Maslow stated
What Maslow Contributed to Motivation Theory
More holistic
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integrative view of needs
More humanistic
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Influence of social dynamics, not just instinct
More positivistic
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Pay attention to strengths, not just deficiencies
What’s Wrong with Needs Hierarchy Models?
Wrongly assume that everyone has the same needs hierarchy (i.e.
universal) Instead, likely that each person has a unique needs hierarchy
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by our self-concept -- values and social identity
Learned Needs Theory
Drives are innate (universal)
Needs are amplified or suppressed through self- concept, social norms, and past
experience. Therefore, needs can be “learned” (i.e. strengthened or weakened
through training)
Four-Drive Theory
Drive to Acquire
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Drive to take/keep objects and experiences
Basis of hierarchy and status
Drive to Bond
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Drive to form relationships and social commitments
Basis of social identity
Drive to Learn
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Drive to satisfy curiosity and resolve conflicting information
Drive to Defend
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Need to protect ourselves
Reactive (not proactive) drive
Basis of fight or flight
Three Learned Needs
Need for achievement
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Values competition against a standard of excellence
Want reasonably challenging goals Need for affiliation
Desire to seek approval, conform to others wishes
Avoid conflicts
Need for affiliation
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Desire to seek approval, conform, and avoid conflict
Try to project a favorable self-image Need for power
Desire to control one’s environment
Personalized versus socialized power
How Four Drives Affect Needs
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Four drives determine which emotions are automatically tagged to
incoming information
Drives generate independent and often competing emotions that
demand our attention
Mental skill set uses social norms, personal values, and experience
to translate competing drives into needs and effort
Implications of Four Drive Theory
Provide a balanced opportunity for employees to fulfill all four drives
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Employees continually seek fulfillment of drives
Avoid having conditions support one drive over others
Expectancy Theory of Motivation
E-to-P
P-to-O Expectancy
Expectancy
Outcomes & Valences
Outcome1 + or Outcome2 + or E - Effort
P - Performance
O - Outcome3 + or -
Increasing E-to-P-to-O Expectancies
Increasing E-to-P Expectancies
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Assuring employees they have competencies
Person-job matching Provide role clarification and sufficient
resources
Behavioral modeling Increasing P-to-O Expectancies
Measure performance accurately
More rewards for good performance
Explain how rewards are linked to performance
Increasing Outcome Valences
Ensure that rewards are valued Individualize rewards Minimize counteragent
outcomes
Effective Goal Setting
The process of motivating employees and clarifying their role perceptions by
establishing performance objectives
Effective goals are:
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Specific
Relevant
Challenging
Commitment
Participation (sometimes)
Feedback
Characteristics of Effective Feedback
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Effective Feedback
Specific
Credible
Relevant
Sufficiently frequent
Timely
Evaluating Goal Setting and Feedback
Goal setting is one of the most respected theories in terms of validity and
usefulness
Goal setting/feedback limitations:
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Focuses employees on measurable performance
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Tied to pay - employees motivated to set easy goals
Goal setting interferes with learning process in new, complex jobs
Organizational Justice
Elements of Equity Theory
Outcome/input ratio
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Inputs -- what employee contributes (e.g., skill)
Outcomes -- what employee receives (e.g.,pay)
Comparison other
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Person/people against whom we compare our ratio
Not easily identifiable
Equity evaluation
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Compare outcome/input ratio with the comparison other
Correcting Inequity Feelings
Actions to correct inequity
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Reduce our inputs
Less organizational citizenship
Increase our outcomes
Increase other’s inputs
Reduce other’s outputs Ask boss to stop giving other preferred
treatment Change our perceptions Start thinking that other’s perks
aren’t really so valuable
Change comparison other Compare self to someone closer to your
situation
Leave the field
Ask for pay increase
Ask coworker to work harder
Quit job
Procedural Justice
Perceived fairness of procedures used to decide the distribution of resources
higher procedural fairness with:
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Voice
Unbiased decision maker
Decision based on all information Existing policies consistently
Decision maker listened to all sides
Those who complain are treated respectfully
Those who complain are given full explanation