Human Motivation - Essay Example

Assignment 1

A good day is one in which everything I do goes well from the time I get up in the morning to the time I go to sleep that night. My work goes well because I am able to meet my deadlines easily and even catch up on a few things. I have lunch with a friend and we have a great conversation. When I get home, my children are not fighting and they are sitting down doing their homework without having to be told. This allows me to have time to myself and then get a good night's sleep.

The Engagement Model

According to research, an individual must be engaged in their activity in order for it to be psychologically fulfilling (Reeve, 2009). When I look at my description of a good day, I can say that emotionally I would be feeling happy and peaceful during the day. I would have autonomy because I was working alone, getting things done, and having a good conversation with a friend. This would be my example of autonomy support. I believe that competence would be shown in my ability to do my job well and identify prospects to finish. This action gives me a high feeling of competence. The structure is very important to me and the more organized I am, the more competent I feel. My conversation with my friends appeals to my sense of involvement because the conversation showed we are caring people and we enjoy being together. This action brings me a sense of well-being and I feel that I am loved by my friend and my family.

Vitality

Reeves (2009) states that vitality is associated with the way in which people feel during a good day. When people feel "autonomous, competent and interpersonally related (p. 168) they also feel vital or like their life has meaning. In terms of psychological needs, people need to feel a sense of self-worth in anything they do. I would think that a person who is feeling vibrant and needed would be more motivated to do more than those who are not. Motivation would be enhanced for someone when they knew they were needed.

Assignment 3

My final project will research the educational needs of teenagers in Liberia. I will concentrate on the needs of teenage girls. This is a social change issue because there are many challenges that girls in Liberia have that influence their education. Some of these challenges are teen pregnancy, rape, and fallout from their past civil war. I would like to understand the motivation for teens to become educated despite all of these issues.

Generally speaking, in most countries teens may be motivated to become educated because the laws say that children must go to school from an early age to about the age of 18. In Liberia, the motivation may need to come from the children and their families. According to Reeves (2009), everyone makes choices and these choices are based on our need for autonomy. We want to be the ones who decide our own choices as they relate to our behavior. Education was not a priority for girls in Liberia until 2006 when Her Excellency Ellen Johnson made education for girls a priority (Kanalstein, 2006'). Also in Liberia, the education of girls is more a matter of "human rights and human dignity," according to President Sirleaf, "The first elected female president in an African Nation" (as cited in Kanalstein, 2006, p. 1). Because of this, autonomy may come later for these girls as they receive education.

When looking at the concept of competence, Reeves (2009) describes competence as a desire for people to be effective in the things they do in life. Competence means the improvement of skills, capacities, and talents. In my final project, I would hope that the teens I would work with in the future would have the motivation to become competent students and take care of their lives. They would need to make choices that may be foreign to them and their culture. I think that relatedness would be important to this situation because the girls would need to be engaged in the process in order for them to do what they would be taught. It would be important for them to relate to each other and their culture through this process.

Culture will definitely play a part in these teens' lives because they have been in their culture longer than they will be in the educational setting. They have also been in a situation where girls were not educated in the past so an educational program may seem foreign to them.

Of the needs discussed in this chapter, I would say that the psychological need for competence may not be the same for all people. I think the need for autonomy and relatedness is more important. According to Reeves (2009), "psychological needs promote a willingness to seek out and to engage in an environment …" (p. 142). This says to me that environment is important because people tend to move into environments where their psychological needs can be met. As an example, people work or live in environments that make them feel happy and where they can feel peaceful. In order to have behavior change, psychological needs must be met in order for the change to take place. Physiological needs are first and then psychological needs must be met in order for an individual to feel totally completed.