Individual differences in Personality and Motivation: Non-cognitive Determinants of Cognitive Performance - Term Paper Example

Individual differences in Personality and Motivation: ‘Non cognitive’ Determinants of Cognitive Performance Date of Submission: Contents Contents 2 Introduction 4 Individual differences in Personality and Motivation in Context 5 Summary 9 Practical Implications 10 Directions for Future Research 11 Conclusion 13 References 14 Abstract The purpose of this paper is to examine how an individual’s personality impacts on their motivation. The paper presents a review of both current and historical evidence which highlight how individual differences when coupled with certain manipulations affect the allocation and availability of cognitive resources. It further discusses how motivation can be analyzed on the basis of the different rates at which cognitive control system parameters are adjusted in order to cope with the constant varying world. With regards to the purpose of this paper, scholarly materials, which touch on the complexities associated with motivation and personality differences, have also been reviewed. A proper understanding of the human information processing was also taken into account. This paper touches on the results of motivation and how the importance of the research findings. Finally, this paper comes up with recommendations on how future research will impact on the topic in discussion. All the ideas presented in this paper are as a result of thorough research work. Citations and a bibliography are provided to acknowledge the authors of books and articles used in compiling this report. Individual differences in Personality and Motivation: ‘Non cognitive’ Determinants of Cognitive Performance Introduction Motivation refers to the psychological feature which arouses organisms to act towards desired goals, eliciting control and sustaining certain behaviors. Motivation has various approaches including behavioral, physiological, social and cognitive (Brown and Veroff, 1986). Motivation may have its roots in a certain basic need so as to maximize pleasure and minimize the physical pain. Personality in the other hand is an organized and dynamic set of characteristics which a person possesses. They uniquely influence the person’s cognitions, motivations, behaviors, interpersonal orientations, and emotions. Personality may still refer to patterns of thoughts, social adjustments, feelings, and behaviors which an individual consistently exhibits over time (Zuckerman, 1991). These patterns strongly influence an individual’s expectations, values and attitudes, self-perceptions, predict reactions to other people, stress, and problems. Therefore, when someone is motivated, he/she develops incentives and sets up the conditions to start or stop the behavior (Eysenck and Eysenck, 1985). Motivation deals with setting certain conditions to perform at the best of their potential or abilities in different settings. Motivators often motivate people by helping them to develop a sense of hope that a certain benefit will occur due to their participation in a certain instructional experience. Motivation, therefore, is about the factors that inhibit or stimulate the desire or urge to engage in a certain behavior (Charles, and Mortimer, 1967). Individual differences in Personality and Motivation in Context Motivation can be categorized into intrinsic or internal motivation, and extrinsic or external motivation. Intrinsic motivation can be defined as the motivation which is steered by an enjoyment or interest in a specific task. It exists within an individual and does not rely on external pressure whatsoever (Eysenck and Eysenck, 1985). Intrinsic motivation has a basis on taking pleasure or enjoyment in an activity, as opposed to working in order to be externally rewarded. Individuals who are internally motivated often engage in a task at will and also work at improving their skills and capabilities. People are likely to have intrinsic motivation if they; attribute their results to autonomy, believe they do possess the skills to reach desired goals, and have an interest in mastering something rather than just doing it to get paid (König and Steel, 2006). Extrinsic or external motivation is a contradiction of intrinsic motivation. It refers to the undertaking an activity with the intensions of achieving an outcome. It is believed that the motivation has two functions; it acts as the component which activates the energy component in the motivation constructs. It also references the direction orientation component when directed at specific behaviors. Extrinsic motivation does not come from within an individual but outside. Extrinsic motivations include rewards like grades and money, and also threats (Barrick, Tewart, and Pietrowski, 2002). Generally, extrinsic motivation is competitive since it encourages winning and beating other competitors, and not necessarily to enjoy the activity. A cheering crowd and trophies are extrinsic incentives as well. Psychological research shows that extrinsic motivation brings about over justification and as a result reduces intrinsic motivation. Due to reinforcement histories and personal learning, people tend to develop predispositions that are unique to the set goals, persisting at the tasks which are related to the set goals. Some people often focus on the intrinsic reinforcements in making controllable and internal attributions to their failures and successes compared to people with low achievement orientations. Such predispositions are learned, therefore, classroom activity can impact on personality characteristics even they cannot be easily changed (Charles and Mortimer, 1967). A huge number of a person’s characteristics relate to motivation. People can be classified as either motivated by avoiding failure or seeking success (Brown and Veroff, 1986). Research shows that motivation increases on success seekers after a failure. On the contrary, motivation decreases on failure avoiders after a failure when doing a task. Success-seekers tend to source motivation form tasks with of medium level difficulty. On the contrary, failure-avoiders tend prefer either extremely easy tasks or extremely difficult tasks. In addition, success seekers tend to set goals which are realistic, whereas failure-avoiders have a habit of setting themselves goals which are unrealistically difficult or easy (König and Steel, 2006). The term ‘self-motivated’ was coined in reference to individuals who are easily motivated to do something without the need of external persuasion to do so. These people are fast learners who have developed methods of self-motivating. This kind of self-motivation is usually considered the strongest. Self-motivated people are most likely to be among the best learners, given that their motivation used towards achieving productive goals. This trait is not innate, but rather learned the same way as metacognitive skills (Barrick et. Al., 2002). Good teachers enable learners to apply motivational strategies well by focusing their attention on principles that help them in developing personality traits of self-motivation. Such personality traits are helpful in both non-academic and academic tasks. However, there are always questions about motivation concerning the duration, direction, and intensity of behavior. Alongside these broad questions are the sub-questions about the distinction between arousal and effort, quantity and quality, and persistence and latency (König and Steel, 2006). Research has been done to examine how situational manipulations combine with personality traits to produce certain motivational states which in turn influence cognitive performance. These effects impact information being processed at different overlapping stages. First stimuli must be detected, and encoded, just before the new information is stored in the memory (Zuckerman, 1991). More information is retrieved from the memory, based on the stimulus which is incoming. The information is supposed to be integrated, with some response being executed thereafter. This loop is continuous, and as a result of each response, an environmental feedback is given which partly determines which next stimulus is supposed to be detected (McAdams, 2009). On a much bigger timeframe, while the information processing loop keeps on being executed, the resources keep on varying in their allocation and availability. The memory Knowledge structures change. Effects of the reactions of the outcomes skew the futuristic expectancies. The environmental coding of demands shows biological sensitive differences to cues for punishment and reward as well as the memory’s prior contents. Emotional reactions based on the feedback are reflections of interaction between outcomes and expectancies. Positive effects result from a reward following certain expectations of non-punishment or reward following punishment expectancies. Negative states are as a result of punishment after reward expectancies of reward or from punishment after expectancies of the same. Positive effects facilitate an approach behavior, while negative effects facilitate an avoidance behavior. The avoidance and approach traits are mutually inhibitory. Increased arousal is aids in facilitating both storage and detection of information. In addition, it facilitates the execution of the dominant tendency of response (McAdams, 2009). Abraham H. Maslow came up with a hierarchy of needs consisting of five classes. He showed how complex human requirements can get. According to Maslow, unsatisfied needs motivate people to do things. Lower level needs like safety and physiological needs have to be satisfied first before any higher level needs get to be addressed. Maslows Hierarchy of Needs theory can be related to employee motivation. According to Maslow, a manager who tries to motivate his junior employees through satisfying their needs should start with lower level needs going up towards the upper levels otherwise the employees will never be motivated. The manager should also keep in mind not everyone can get satisfied by addressing the same needs. Good managers figure out the levels of needs which are active for certain people. Basic requirements comprise the first step in Maslow’s pyramid. If there is a deficit from this level, humans will exhibit behavior oriented towards satisfying the deficit. The second level is a need to be secure. After one secures the two levels, motives shift towards the social sphere, forming the third level. In the fourth level are the Psychological requirements, while at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy is self-actualization. In summary, human beings have desires and wants which influence how they behave. According to Maslow, only the unsatisfied wants influence human behavior, the satisfied ones do not. Given that there are quite a number of needs; Maslow arranges them in order of importance, starting with the basic ones to the complex. A person is motivated to progress to the next stage of needs if the lower level needs are at least satisfied minimally. The higher the person progress up the levels, the more psychological health, humanness, and individuality, a person shows (Ashwood and Pritchard, 2008). Motivation is not an entirely a concept of psychology. In addition to emotional and intellectual interest, an individual’s tendency of engaging in certain behaviors is partially determined by his/her physiological state. The level of arousal is a crucial physiological factor. It refers to the human organism overall readiness to engage in an activity. Research shows that individuals exhibit either very high level of arousal (nearly panicking) or at the very low level of arousal (nearly asleep) grasp or learn very little. At the medium arousal level, people learn best (Ashwood and Pritchard, 2008). Summary Research shows that if the perceived ability of a person is low, he/she is probably going to quit after a failure if he/she is extrinsically motivated. In algorithmic and mundane tasks, an extrinsically motivated person may perform better than an intrinsically motivated person. However, an intrinsically motivated person is more likely to be superior to the extrinsically motivated one in conceptual tasks requiring higher levels of thinking (Eysenck and Eysenck, 1985). Intrinsically motivated people are more likely to have deep study and metacognitive strategies which are effective. They are more likely to select sub-goals and problems which are moderately difficult. However, extrinsically motivated people will tend to select the sub-goals and problems. In addition, intrinsically motivated people are more of explorers and risk takers. For complex tasks, intrinsically motivated people are more likely to use logic and strategies for efficient performance. People who were extrinsically motivated previously so as to engage in certain activities tend not undertake that activity again provided that the incentive is no longer provided (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1975). People who internalize motivation in order to learn have a tendency of displaying numerous characteristics which relate to success in learning and a high self-esteem, more confidence, and the ability of coping with failure (Barrick et. al., 2002). Internally motivated people have a low probability of succumbing to the negative side effects of external motivators. Children who are self-motivated often develop new motivational strategies from experience and adoption. An example is a self-motivated child by the urge to succeed who ends up becoming a better learner when he/she discovers that cooperation and curiosity are powerful motivating factors as well (Charles and Mortimer, 1967). Practical Implications Motivation is an essential element not only in psychology but other areas of research like andragogy and in pivotal response therapy in treating of autism spectrum disorders. For some people, motivation is derived from their social organization, a factor which educators put in account in addition to the variance in cognition and sociolinguistics. Researchers have found that measuring of student’s cognitive abilities as by science and mathematical test scores can be used as future earnings predictors among other individual outcomes. Moreover, recent studies have suggested that aggregate test score measures are important determinants in development and economic growth (Phares and Chaplin, 1997). It is evident that non‐cognitive skills can explain such variations just as cognitive skills. While some test scores measure cognitive skills, non-cognitive skills are based on survey data. There are weaknesses in information which is self‐reported. In addition, inherent difficulties while differentiating concepts between non-cognitive and cognitive skills suggest that additional studies with a new type of datum can increase the understanding of the roles played by different skill types. Greater comprehension of how motivation relates to both values and personality is important since it can establishment of more comprehensive theories concerning human behavior. This information will assist team leaders, managers, teachers, motivational speakers and anyone who needs it (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1975). Directions for Future Research There are ideas which provide highlight several arenas to consider for theoretical development and future research. These ideas do not make propositions which regard the value domains likely to predict the goal content domains, although the predictions can be readily tested and made. An area worth additional research is the goal commitment domain. Research shows that motivation towards assigned goals can be lower than motivation towards self-set goals. If the values relate to the independently chosen goals by individuals, they may as well relate to commitment goals which are set by other people (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1975). Understanding how goal content relates to value may, therefore, enhance how people understand the increase in motivation to assigned goals. Future researchers have to consider motivation outcomes which are relevant to certain environments such as counterproductive behavior, task performance, and organizational citizenship behavior. Although situational strength often constrains performance, role expectations, and cultural norms, discretionary behavior is less constrained and is more likely to get influenced attributes of an individual such as values and personality (König and Steel, 2006). In addition, it is expected that impacts of motivation on individual attributes is more likely expressed among individuals who have considerable discretion and autonomy, such as entrepreneurs and senior managers with substantial freedom to decide how they perform their tasks. For such individuals, values and personality may be a bit predictive of the motivated behavior compared to those with constrained behavior (König and Steel, 2006). A more detailed understanding of how values and personality impact on motivation will, therefore, provide a greater comprehension to the behaviors associated with top managers and entrepreneurial teams with an experience in high autonomy levels. Conclusion To conclude, there are other potential extensions of this theory which should be put into consideration, especially in the field of decision making. Research has demonstrated how decision making and values are linked; however, there has not been a simultaneous consideration on personality. Certain relationships should take into consideration and be explored further. The potential influence values and personality have on ethical and rational decision making should be researched as well. References Ajzen, I. & Fishbein, M. (1975). Belief, attitude, intention, and behavior: An introduction to theory and Research. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Ashwood, E and Pritchard, R. (2008). Managing Motivation. New York: Taylor & Francis Group. Barrick, M., Stewart, G., & Pietrowski, M. (2002). Personality and job performance. Test of the mediating effects of motivation among sales representatives. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(1), 43–51. Brown, D. & Veroff, J. (Ed.). (1986). Frontiers of Motivational Psychology: Essays in Honor of John W. Atkinson. Berlin: Springer. Chaplin, W and Phares, E. (1997). Introduction to personality (4th ed.). New York: Longman. Charles, N. & Mortimer, H (1967). Motivation: Theory and Research. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Eysenck, H. & Eysenck, M. (1985). Personality and individual differences: a natural science approach. New York: Plenum Press. König, C. & Steel, P. (2006). Integrating theories of motivation. Academy of Management Review, 31 (1), 889–913. McAdams, P. (2009). The person : a new introduction to personality psychology (5th ed.). Hoboken, N.J: Prentice Hall. Zuckerman, M. (1991). Psychobiology of personality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Read More