Distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and provide an example of each. How might extrinsic motivation affect intrinsic motivation? Access Guay, Vallerand, & Blanchard (2000) at http://sdtheory.s3.amazonaws.com/SDT/documents/2000_GuayVallerandBlanchard_MO.pdf. The article reports the development of a brief self-report scale to measure intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Whereas other scales assessing intrinsic and extrinsic motivation focus solely on academic or work environments, Guay et al.’s scale may be adapted to any situation. Read the first two paragraphs and the section headed, “Self-Determination Theory.” Define a motivation and distinguish between external regulation and identified regulation, two types of extrinsic motivation. Locate the 16-item scale in the article’s appendix on Page 216. Examine the codification key below the scale, noting which items tap each of the four types of motivation Guay et al. identified. Guay et al. assessed the scale’s reliability and validity by measuring intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for academic activities in university classrooms and libraries. How might you validate the 16-item scale by testing participants in non-academic settings such as gyms, cafes, bars, or parks? Consider how scores on each of the four types of motivation might vary across settings. How might participants’ liking for an activity or their intention to repeat the activity in the future correlate with their scores on each of the four types of motivation? Use your imagination and propose a study examining motivation in nonacademic settings using Guay et al.’s scale. Include liking for an activity, intention to repeat an activity, and any other variables that you think might be important. By completing this exercise, you should be able to define intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation and illustrate each with examples.
“Smile, even though your heart is aching/Smile, even though it’s breaking,” advises a standard in the American songbook. (You can view Judy Garland singing “Smile” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh57sCPjtzw.) Is this good advice? Make explicit reference to self-perception theory and the facial feedback hypothesis is your answer. Watch “Does Smiling Make You Happy?” on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR9lTqrkTYw. Define a Duchenne smile. Which two facial muscles are involved? Identify the experimental and control groups in the Botox study of frowning described in the video. Why were the Botox participants compared to participants who had undergone other surgical procedures, rather than to participants who had not undergone any procedure? Identify the dependent variable in the study of forced smiles mentioned in the clip. What effect did forcing a smile have? This exercise should help you contrast introspection and self-perception describes how the facial feedback hypothesis relates to self-perception.
Doing Research; Social Psychology in the News. Tap your knowledge of 20th-century American history: who was Alfred Landon? Exactly. Although he has faded into obscurity, Landon was a former governor of Kansas who enjoyed his 15 minutes in 1936, when the Literary Digest’s poll predicted that Landon would capture 57% of the votes in the 1936 Presidential election. In reality, Landon’s opponent, Franklin D. Rooseveldt, won the election by a landslide, with 62% of the vote. Political polls are surveys and are susceptible to the same biases potentially seen in psychological surveys. Identify and describe two response biases mentioned in your textbook. Visit https://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/wk4/lecture/case1.html. Explain what is meant by selection bias and nonresponse bias and discuss how these biases influenced the results of the Literary Digest poll. Although contemporary polls seem to produce better results than the 1936 poll, they are not necessarily free of selection bias. Go to http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/10/which-polls-fared-best-and-worst-in-the-2012-presidential-race/?_r=1. Describe how selection biases may have compromised the results of polls in the 2012 race. If you are interested, a longer, more detailed analysis appears at http://www.people-press.org/2012/05/15/assessing-the-representativeness-of-public-opinion-surveys/. This exercise should develop your understanding of some of the limitations of survey research, including such biases as response effects, acquiescence, extremity, and context effects.
Social Psychology, Social Media, and Technology. Your textbook describes a number of ways that people manage self-esteem. Distinguish between self-protection and self-promotion. Identify and define two specific self-protection or self-promotion techniques mentioned in your textbook. A future social psychology textbook might include the term “humblebragging” in boldface in its discussion of self-promotion. Humblebragging is especially prevalent on social media. Read the article at http://fortune.com/2015/04/30/humblebrag-study/. Define humblebragging. To see sample humblebrags, visit http://twistedsifter.com/2011/05/funniest-humble-brags-on-twitter/; in 2011, they collected 50 especially cringe-worthy humblebrags. Return to the Fortune article to read the overview of Sezer, Gino, and Norton’s 2015 scientific study of humblebragging. Then go to http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2597626 to obtain Sezeret al.’s article. Download it or view the pdf file in the browser. Briefly summarize the research reported in the article. In all, Sezer et al. report five studies: you might wish to summarize each one in a sentence or two. Overall, is humblebragging effective? Why or why not? Illustrate your response with two or three examples of humblebragging that you have encountered when using social media. This exercise should reinforce your understanding of self-enhancement strategies.
Social Psychology Applied to Work: Managing Impressions. Read your textbook’s discussion of impression management in the workplace. List some negative characteristics of workers high in impression management. Impression management depends on self-monitoring. Visit http://work.chron.com/manage-self-monitoring-employees-10358.html and describe some of the positive characteristics of workers high in self-monitoring. Identify some considerations managers might bear in mind when leading such workers. Go to http://universumglobal.com/blog/2013/10/self-monitor-your-behavior-to-be-a-great-manager and suggest several advantages self-monitoring might confer on managers. Completing this exercise should enhance your understanding of impression management and self-monitoring.
