Social Psychology - Essay Example

PSYCH A-What are the three things you regret most in your life? How do the events you d relate to counterfactual thinking? One event that I regret in my life was not reporting my friend P.M. when he was stealing. We were just kids at this point, and we were working low level cafeteria jobs.We were talking together outside of the food storage area, and then P.M. went into the storage area and came back out with a bunch of food from the area, including 3 expensive steaks. P.M. then offered me some of the food and when I said that I was OK, he told me to go ahead and take it because he got it “with a five-finger discount.

” I asked him what he meant after some time because I didn’t understand, and then he explained the idiom to me and I understood it, and I was slightly shocked. But instead of confronting P.M. and then telling the restaurant and hotel management about it, because he was my friend and I didn’t want to compromise our friendship and working unity over something like this, I didn’t say anything. Another time, I also took food from the cafeteria, along with P.M. He took most of it, but I kept a couple of sodas.

The third time, I stole three steaks on my own. I think I wouldn’t have finally been fired for stealing, if I had done the right thing and reported P.M. This itself could be considered counter-factual thinking, though, because it is not rationally based: the past happened, and I cannot go back and change it, to make it fictional. I also saw these events with P.M. as being progressive and related to each other, but counter-factually, this could mean I was just ascribing meaning to them which they didn’t really have.

B-Some psychologists suggest you can reduce cognitive dissonance by restoring positive self-evaluations that are threatened by the dissonance. Elliot and Devine (1994) refer to this as self-affirmation. Give an example of a time in your life when you reduced an unpleasant internal state in some self-affirming way. One time, I was able to overcome a bad situation in my life in a self-affirming way, using my sense of morality. I wanted to list examples of their morality may be more prone to give an accounting of their personal beliefs than what they see to be a proscribed function of weighing behavior by a set standard.

“An affirmation is more effective when stated in the present tense. For example; "I now have a wonderful job." Avoid affirming something in the future tense, e.g. "I am going to have a wonderful job" or the results will always be waiting to happen” (Self, 2010). Therefore, ethics is perhaps a better measure of district leadership practice than morality, as it is seen as being less intertwined with belief systems than it is with more generalized (good or bad) behavior in relation to oneself and others.

Like morality, ethics are assigned to a certain extent by the customs of the society in which the individual works and lives. It becomes clear that the working environment must also function in this situation. This is backed up in theoretical literature as well.I can also overcome dissonance by improving my self-efficacy. Many of my personal motivational theories involve self-efficacy, or the motivation to succeed in school students, as well as self-regulation, which may have more to do with teaching good study habits.

“People who have high self-esteem are more likely to continuously improve the work environment. They are willing to take intelligent risks because they have confidence in their ideas and competence. They work willingly on teams because they are confident about their ability to contribute” (Foster, 2010). The relationship between self-efficacy and self-regulated learning in students is a good place to begin looking at how teachers can appropriately plan to meet the needs of all learners through dynamic instructional strategy that employs technology effectively.

Sometimes the student needs multiple types of affirmation through assessment studies. REFERENCEFoster success (2010). http://humanresources.about.com/od/motivationsucces3/a/motivation_must.htm Science of self affirmation (2010). http://hubpages.com/hub/Self-AffirmationsSelf affirmation (2010). http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=employee+self-affirmation&rlz=1R2ACAW_en&aq=f&aqi=g4g-m2g-ms1g-m3&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=C0vo83IIBTMfhF5TuzASs6pieBQAAAKoEBU_QR6OR