User:S.emp/Week 6, lecture 6

{| cellpadding="10" cellspacing="5" style="width: 100%; background-color: inherent; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto"
 * style="background-color: PaleGreen; border: 1px solid #777777; -moz-border-radius-topleft: 8px; -moz-border-radius-bottomleft: 8px; -moz-border-radius-topright: 8px; -moz-border-radius-bottomright: 8px;" colspan="2" |

=Week 6, Lecture 6=

Personal control beliefs
According to Reeve (2009) people want to have control over their environment. This desire to exercise person control is predicted on a person’s belief that they have the power to produce favourable results. In anticipating events and outcomes, people rely on their past experiences and personal resources to make forecasts about what the future holds and how they will cope with what is to come. Before reading this information and listening to the lecture I had never thought of myself as someone who needed control, however, the more I thought about it the more I realised that I need control to some extent in my life, for example, while I like the idea of surprises, I do not like them for myself, as I want to know what I am getting and if I will like it and this unknown feeling makes me extremely impatient. Next year my boyfriend and I are moving to the Gold Coast and I am becoming more nervous each day, as I do not have complete control over what will happen. While I know where I will be living, the name of the university and where I will be working, I do not know the environment or the people as I do not have any past experiences to help more forecast the future and that is scary.

Expectancy is the subjective prediction of how likely it is that an event will occur. Reeve (2009) states that there are two types of expectations that are important when determining how someone will act. Efficacy expectations are considerations of personal skills or attributes. Questions are asked such as can I do it? These expectations influence whether a person will perform in a certain way. Outcome expectations are considerations of the outcome of the event/behaviour. Questions are asked such as, will what I do work? Reeve (2009) states that when a person beliefs that they will be able to do something, that they have the skills to complete the task and they know what they have to do to have the desired outcome, they will act, this is called empowerment.

Self-efficacy is a person’s ability to use their own personal resources well under varied and difficult circumstances. Self efficacy is determined by a person’s personal behaviour history, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and their physiological state. Self efficacy effects a person’s behaviour in regards to choice, effort and persistence, thinking and decision making and emotionally.

Mastery beliefs are also another area of personal control beliefs that we learnt about this week. Mastery beliefs are the extent of perceived control a person has over attaining desirable outcomes and preventing aversive ones. When personal beliefs are strong there is a strong link between actions and outcomes but the weaker the beliefs the weaker the link between these two factors. When reading about self-efficacy and mastery beliefs I got a little confused between the two so I examined the difference between the two. From what I learnt mastery beliefs is about a person’s locus of causality, while self-efficacy is about skills.

Learned helplessness is the psychological state that occurs when a person expects that life’s outcomes are uncontrollable. Learned helplessness is learned and people who feel helpless do not believe that they can attain what they want or prevent something from occurring. An individual who has learned to feel helpless experiences three main effects, loss of motivation, learning loses and emotional loses. I find the concept of learned helplessness fascinating, as I can not imagine getting into the frame of mind that I am helpless in life. However, it can be extremely common, especially in people who experience domestic violence. Individual’s who suffer from domestic violence become use to the violence, they become almost paralysed, as they have learnt to be helpless (Perilla, Bakeman & Norris, 1994).

Explanatory style helps individual explain why bad things happen to them. According to Reeve (2009) there are two explanatory styles, optimistic explanatory style and pessimistic explanatory style. Optimistic explanatory style is where an individual will explain bad things by using attributions that are unstable and controllable. These people take credit for things going their way and accept little to no blame for things that go against them. Pessimistic explanatory style is where an individual will explain bad things by using attributions that are stable and uncontrollable. This style leads individuals towards giving up when there is setbacks or failure. Another interesting fact on people who have a pessimistic explanatory style is that they are generally at a higher risk of physical illness (Lin & Peterson, 1990). I think that interesting that a person’s way of thinking not only affects their outlook on life, but their health as well.

The Self
Self concept is a person’s mental representation of themselves. Self-construct is constructed from an individual’s experiences and from reflection. Self-schemas direct and energise behaviour, they are also constructed from feedback that a person receives daily that reveal their personal attributes, characteristics and preferences. The self-concept is a collection of domain-specific self-schemas. Self-schemas are cognitive generalisations about the self that are domain specific and learned from past experiences.

Cognitive Dissonance is when beliefs about who is self is and what the self does are inconsistent, for example, believing that everyone should recycle, however, the person does not recycle. Cognitive dissonance arrises when people feel incompetent, immortal or unreasonable. If the inconsistency is intense then it could produce motivational properties and the people may seek out ways to eliminate or reduce the psychological discomfort. Dissonance arousing situations are brought about by four main experiences, choice (individuals choose between alternatives), insufficient justification (how individual’s explain their behaviours they have little or no outside prompting), effort justification (the amount of effort a person puts in much also equal the amount of important a person has on that belief) and new information (individual’s experience so much new information that they give themselves so many opportunities to contradict their beliefs).

Identity is another factor that effects a person’s self. Identity is the way the self relates to society and who a person is within a cultural context and in social groups. For example, when a person becomes a mother this concept begins to define their self to some extent. These roles can direct a person towards some behaviours (identity-confirming behaviours) and to shun other behaviours (identity-disconfirming behaviours). When people take on a role they behave in a certain way that fits in the context of their environment and if they change roles than their behaviour also changes. People all have numerous identities and people pick which identity they will take on based in a certain situation. For example, I am a student, a sister, a daughter, a counsellor, a friend and a Woolworth’s supervisor. In each role I change my behaviour to work within that environment for example, as a supervisor I am outgoing and outspoken, as a student I am quiet and as a daughter I am spoilt. I think that it is vital that people are able to change their identity to some extent in different situations, while the main aspects of ourselves are the same, certain things need to change otherwise we would not fit well in certain situations or environments.