Bernard Weiner: on a Psychologist - Research Paper Example

Research On A Psychologist” Biography Bernard Weiner was born in 1935 and became a socialpsychologist, who studies how people are influenced by the thoughts, behaviors and feelings of others around them. He is known for the formation of a theory related to the attribution theory, which is discussed later. He was interested in attribution after the study of achievement motivation. He would study people’s achievement orientation by a thematic apperception test which projected what was on people’s minds through a series of pictures and this was he figured out the needs of people and he went on further to explore the individual need and requirements for achievement and what people were faced with in regards of failures and successes. Linda Beckman was one of his students who brought up this topic of achievement and successes and failures and this allowed Weiner to be curious and to embark on this journey of understanding cognitive processes and what impact they would have on the behavior of a person and their motivations. (Weiner, Human motivation : metaphors, theories, and research, 1992) Weiner has been renowned in the psychological world and has written fifteen books and several articles on the topic of emotions and motivation theories and he is also a tutor at University of California since many years. He is currently a Professor there as well. (Weiner, Cognitive views of human motivation, 1974) Zeitgeist The 1930s followed after the great financial crisis in 1929 on Wall Street, which was the biggest crash in the stock exchange that America had witnessed, and so after that, the world was in a depression called the ‘Great Depression.’ This had an impact on the world in several ways. Most European countries felt the full form of the depression. Some authoritarian regimes also arose in some areas of Europe especially in Germany. Some states that were already weak were China, Poland and Ethiopia suffered even more by the world powers and their invasions and World War II ensued after that by the end of the 1930a. There were also developments which will be discussed below. A great deal of conflicts and wars also occurred during the 1930s., the first one of which was the war between Colombia and Peru in 1932 as well the war fought between Paraguay and Bolivia over disputed territories. There was also a war between China and Japan in 1937 which was the largest war of the century and there were many casualties in this war. This was followed by World War II in 1939. Internal conflicts also ravaged some states such as China. There was a civil war within parties in China from 1927 onwards in which the soviets and the communists fought for power and the soviet republics had to withdraw as they faced a defeat. Internal struggles still continued after this one in China. Italy and Germany were also in a state of war and here the nationalists and republicans were fighting for power, with the rise of Spain, with a dictatorship state. Nazism was also prevalent during the 1930s and it actually increased during this decade with Adolf Hitler and his power in Germany. He was a Nazi and he was committed to banishing Jews and was also adamant against other minorities in Germany and he wanted to expand it beyond its current territory and halt communism. He also hosted the Olympics in 1936 in Germany even though he pulled Germany out of the League of Nations that very year, however he wanted to show the world his importance and his endorsement of athletes and how strong his army was. (Gerdes, 2002) There was a great deal of discrimination against the Jews all over the world during that time, and refugees from Germany who weren’t allowed in other states. No country would accept these Jews and sometimes they would go back to a Hitler run state where there was no hope for them except suicide. In United States meanwhile, Franklin Roosevelt was elected as President in 1932 and he started the ‘New Deal’ welfare project so that the issues of the economy and society that arose due to the Wall Street crash and ensuing depression were solved and the economy was taken control of. A few major disasters also took place in the 1930s such as the hurricane in New England in 1938, along with the flood of the Yellow River in China in 1938 which caused more than 500,000 deaths. Several people of notable character were also killed during the 1930s such as the chancellor of Austria in 1934. Issues in this age included the rise of Nazis, the Great Depression and other wars that are mentioned above. Technology also changed in the 1930s. The first sound cartoon with color was produced, along with the first movie of this sort in Technicolor, along with air mail and radars were invented during this period. Scotch tape, Kodak’s first color film, nuclear fission, bass guitar and many other things were invented, discovered or developed during the 1930s that helped the world progress as we know it today. Radio and music was becoming more important and the first FIFA World cup was also held in the 1930s which shows an era of great culture as well as architectural developments. (Peacock, 1997) Influences Bernard Weiner was influenced by believers of attribution theory. Psychologists who began looking into the matter of attribution are Fritz Heider, who was present in the early twentieth century. His dissertation revolved around phenomenology which was the study of why people perceive that objects have some properties and when their senses come into play what they would actually see and feel and how do those properties of an object impact their minds. The way that Heider went about it was to see the object that was being analyzed and the senses that were used to perceive it and how the perceiver’s mind worked to deconstruct the object and consider it again and construct it according to his own perceptions and media. Perceivers will only judge an object by the object’s image and this is due to underlying reasons as well; however this is called attribution. Motives played an extremely important role in Heider’s model and he accounted people’s perceptions of objects and others as the result of how they behaved and their actions. Motives are the main element which allows people to behave the way they do. Personal casualty is an action that someone incurs on their own such as offering someone something knowingly and impersonal casualty is something one cannot control such as natural elements and reflexes such as sneezing. Later, other psychologists including Weiner have distinguished between personal and external factors that are situational factors which affect the behavior of people and they are fundamental. (Weiner, An attributional theory of motivation and emotion, 1986) Weiner and his colleagues was Jones who followed after Heider and developed a skeletal framework that helped out social psychologists and their entire field to come. Heider talked about common sense and psychology in this light only; however people in this regards were like scientists themselves but amateur in the regards that they would try to understand others by seeing the information they had available and then continuing to make sense of that information till they could come up with a reason or cause for a person’s particular behavior. Social realism was also an important concept of the time in which Weiner lived and it became popular due to the art movement and the Great depression that followed the Wall Street crisis. Social realism was a form of art which depicts that the ruling class is a hero because of the hardships they suffer from. Weiner was also influenced by his students and their beliefs about achievement and how personal strengths and weaknesses play a role in this behavior of achievement. He was also influenced by his son, Mark who is also a Professor but of law. (Weiner, Human Motivation, 1980) Overall impact Bernard Weiner, a contributor in the field of social psychology has written fifteen books and many articles on psychology of emotions and motivation theories and he is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has worked on the motivational theories, attribution theory and emotion and linked the three together. He believes that psychology should also be applied to the classroom and in this case he believes that students are self seeking of knowledge and they strive to know their strengths and their weaknesses in order to find out why they succeed or fail. For over thirty years, Weiner has been influencing psychology and especially the scope of social psychology. He has also helped educationalists understand what causes motivation and behavior etc. The theoretical framework that Weiner developed involves a three stage process of attribution which involves understanding why people behave the way they do and understand also what leads to a certain act or behaviors of people. The three steps involve: Observing and analyzing behavior The behavior needs to be intentional Behavior can be due to external or internal reasons. Achievement is the key theory behind all his theories. The most top priority facto in attribution is effort, ability of a person, luck and task difficulty. And there are further three dimensions to be explored in these as well: Stability (the time period should be stable during which events remain static) Locus (internal and external locus of control are two dimensions. Internal locus of control means that a person blames or rewards himself for everything, i.e. he or she is in control or at least believes that he is in control of his environment where as he feels helpless in the case of an external locus of control) Controllable vs. uncontrollable events Usual patterns that are observed are that if one person succeeds, they will usually take all the credit themselves, where as if another person succeeds, they will associate it with luck and if another person fails, they will base it on some personality trait of theirs. Such scenarios are important to notice in social settings, and therefore Weiner has contributed to society significantly. (Weiner, Theories of motivation; from mechanism to cognition., 1970) References Gerdes, L. I. (2002). The 1930s. Greenhaven Press. Peacock, J. (1997). The 1930s. Thames and Hudson. Weiner, B. (1970). Theories of motivation; from mechanism to cognition. Weiner, B. (1974). Cognitive views of human motivation. Academia Press. Weiner, B. (1980). Human Motivation. Weiner, B. (1986). An attributional theory of motivation and emotion. Weiner, B. (1992). Human motivation : metaphors, theories, and research. Sage. Read More