by DK
See also: Galen • Francis Galton • J.P. Guilford • Gordon Allport • Raymond Cattell • Walter Mischel • David Rosenhan
IN CONTEXT
APPROACH
Need theory
BEFORE
1938 American psychologist Henry Murray develops his theory of how personality is shaped by psychogenic needs.
1943 Abraham Maslow’s A Theory of Human Motivation presents his hierarchy of needs.
1959 In Motivation to Work, US psychologist Frederick Herzberg states that achievement, rather than money, motives people.
AFTER
1990 In Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi discusses motivation for achievement.
2002 Martin Seligman explores motivation as the expression of character strengths.
2004 In Leadership That Gets Results, US psychologist Daniel Goleman applies McClelland’s ideas to leadership in business.
In the 1960s and 70s, decisions about whether to employ someone or not were usually based on educational achievement, and the results of personality and IQ tests. David C. McClelland, however, suggested that peoples’ motivations were the best predictor of success in the workplace. Through extensive research, he identified the three key motivations that he believed were responsible for job performance: the need for power, for achievement, and for affiliation. While everyone has all three motivations, he maintained that one would be dominant, shaping a person’s performance in the workplace.
Three key needs
McClelland saw the need for power, or to have control over others, as the most important motivation for a good manager or leader. But this is only true as long as the need for power is on behalf of a company or an organization. Someone with a strong drive for personal power may make a poor team player.
High quality work, McClelland thought, stems from the need for achievement, which is therefore a far more accurate predictor of job success than intelligence. The drive to achieve, he believed, is what gives people a competitive edge, helping them to stretch for new goals and improve.
Lastly, McClelland claimed that the need for affiliation—to have good relationships with others—helps people to work well within a team. He also noted that people with a pronounced need for affiliation are unlikely to be successful managers.
McClelland pointed out that motivation stems from personality traits that are deeply embedded in the unconscious. We are not fully aware of our own motivations, he stated, so what we may say about our motives in job interviews or self-report questionnaires should not be taken at face value. He advocated using the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), which psychologists Henry Murray and Christiana Morgan devised in the 1930s as a way of revealing aspects of the unconscious. Rarely used in a business setting, the test presents a series of pictures to the subject, who is then asked to develop a story based on them. The assumption is that the stories will be a projection of the subject’s underlying abilities and motivations. McClelland went on to devise an innovative way of analyzing TAT responses to allow a comparison between the suitability of the different people who took the test to specific work-related roles.
McClelland’s ideas revolutionized business recruitment, and although his intensive methods of assessing job applicants have lost some of their popularity, the basic principles endure. Motivation is now seen as critical to performance at work.
The Thematic Apperception Test was promoted by McClelland as a way of assessing job candidates. Telling a story based on a series of images was thought to uncover people’s true motives.
DAVID C. MCCLELLAND
David Clarence McClelland was born in Mount Vernon, New York. After graduating from Wesleyan University, Connecticut, and gaining an MA at the University of Missouri, he moved to Yale, where he completed his PhD in experimental psychology in 1941. He taught briefly at several universities, before accepting a position at Harvard in 1956. McClelland stayed there for 30 years, becoming Chairman of the Department of Social Relations.
In 1963, McClelland set up a business management consultancy, applying his theories to assist company executives in the assessment and training of staff. In 1987, Boston University made him a Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology, a position he held up to his death at the age of 80.
Key works
1953 The Achievement Motive
1961 The Achieving Society
1973 Testing for Competence Rather Than for Intelligence
1987 Human Motivation
1998 Identifying Competencies with Behavioral-Event Interviews
See also: Abraham Maslow • Mihály Csíkszentmihályi • Martin Seligman
IN CONTEXT
APPROACH
Psychology of emotion
BEFORE
1872 Biologist Charles Darwin publishes the first scientific study of human emotions in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
Late 1800s William James and Danish physiologist Carl Lange propose the James—Lange theory of emotion: that emotions are the result of bodily changes, and not the cause of them.
1929 Physiologists Walter Cannon and Philip Bard say we experience physiological arousal and emotion at the same time, in the Bard—Cannon theory.
AFTER
1991 In Emotion and Adaptation, psychologist Richard Lazarus says a thought must precede any emotion or physiological arousal.
Our emotions and feelings are idiosyncratic; they seem to be purely subjective, and the mysticism surrounding them may explain why the psychology of emotion has advanced so slowly. But during the last 30 years, this situation has changed, as scientific findings regarding the “site” of emotions have led to renewed interest. Evolutionary psychologists have also posed questions. What is the purpose of emotions? How have they helped us survive and thrive?
Nico Frijda’s groundbreaking book, The Laws of Emotion, explores the substance and rules of emotions. He sees them as lying at the crossroads of biological and cognitive processes: some, such as fear, are biologically inherent or innate, and these basic emotions are the ones we share with other animals. Others arise in us in response to thoughts, so are clearly cognition-based. They may even—as in the case of indignation or humiliation—be shaped by culture.
Frijda makes clear distinctions between emotions and feelings. Emotions are beyond our control; they spontaneously arise and alert us to their presence by physical sensations, such as a tightening in the gut when we feel fear. For this reason he says that “emotion is an essentially unconscious process.” Feelings, on the other hand, are our interpretations of whatever emotions we are experiencing, and have a more conscious element to them. When we feel something, we are able to have thoughts and make decisions about it. We are not suddenly hijacked by our feelings as we are by our emotions.
Action and thought
Frijda points out that emotions and feelings are also displayed differently. Emotions prepare us for action; in situations that induce fear, they are motivating forces that prepare the body to flee or stand and fight. Other people are able to understand, or at least guess at, our emotions from our behavior. Feelings, however, may or may not be consistent with behavior, because we can choose to behave in a way that hides them.
Frijda sees the basic emotions as an opportunity for greater self-awareness. They accompany a biological arousal that makes us notice them and become more aware of our feelings. This allows us to factor them into choices we make, and with honest reflection, to deepen self-awareness. But Frijda confines basic emotions to anger, joy, shame, sadness, and fear. Others, such as jealousy and guil
t, do not have the same biological imperative.
In defining and describing a very specific set of laws by which emotions operate, Frijda shows that they emerge, wax, and wane in a predictable way. Reason interprets them like a barometer, to ensure our mental well-being. “Our emotional selves and reasonable selves are not compartmentalized,” Frijda says, “on the contrary, they are connected much more than they seem.”
Emotions, such as fear, Frijda says, are always “about something.” They are spontaneous responses to changing circumstances, and reveal much about our relationship with our environment.
NICO FRIJDA
Nico Henri Frijda was born in Amsterdam to an academic Jewish family, and lived in hiding as a child to avoid the persecution of the Jews during World War II. He studied psychology at Gemeente Universiteit, Amsterdam, where he was awarded a PhD in 1956 for his thesis Understanding Facial Expressions. He attributes his initial interest in emotions to being in love, as a student, with “a very expressive girl.”
From 1952 to 1955 Frijda worked as a clinical psychologist at the Dutch Army Neurosis Center, before returning to research and teaching. For the next 10 years he was assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam, then professor in experimental and theoretical psychology.
Frijda has held visiting posts in universities across Europe, including Paris, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He lives with his second wife in Amsterdam.
Key works
1986 The Emotions
2006 The Laws of Emotion
2011 Emotion Regulation and Free Will
See also: William James • Albert Ellis • Gordon H. Bower • Charlotte Bühler • René Diatkine • Stanley Schachter
IN CONTEXT
APPROACH
Personality theory
BEFORE
c.400 BCE Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates suggests personality depends on the levels of the four humors in the body.
1946 Raymond Cattell begins developing his 16-factor model of personality.
1961 American psychologists Ernest Tupes and Raymond Christal propose the first “Big Five” personality-factor model.
AFTER
1975 Hans J. Eysenck’s Personality Questionnaire identifies two biologically based, independent dimensions of personality.
1980 US psychologists Robert Hogan, Joyce Hogan, and Rodney Warrenfeltz develop comprehensive personality tests based on the “Big Five” model of personality.
Until the late 1960s, personality was most often described as a series of individual behavioral traits that were genetically inherited. Psychologists worked to define and measure these traits, because this was thought to be essential to understanding and reliably predicting a person’s behavior. Raymond Cattell identified 16 different personality traits; Hans J. Eysenck suggested there were only three or four. In 1961, Ernest Tupes and Raymond Christal proposed that there are five major personality traits (the “Big Five”): openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism or emotional stability. Then, in 1968, Walter Mischel shocked the world of personality theory when he proclaimed in Personality and Assessment that the classic personality test was almost worthless. He had reviewed a number of studies that tried to predict behavior from personality test scores, and found them to be accurate only 9 percent of the time.
Resisting temptation, rather than succumbing to short-term gratification, often indicates a capacity for greater achievement in life, as Mischel’s studies of behavior in young children revealed.
External factors
Mischel drew attention to the part played by external factors, such as context, in determining behavior, believing that it was necessary to look at the dynamic interaction of people and the situation they find themselves in. Imagine how absurd it would be if people’s behavior appeared to be independent of external factors. He proposed that an analysis of a person’s behavior, in different situations, observed on numerous occasions, would provide clues to behavior patterns that would reveal a distinctive signature of personality, as opposed to a list of traits. Individual interpretation of a situation was also considered.
Later, Mischel explored habits of thinking, which might endure over time and across different situations. In his famous marshmallow experiments, aimed at testing willpower, four-year-old children were presented with a single marshmallow and told they could either eat it immediately, or wait 20 minutes and then have two. Some children were able to wait, others were not. Mischel monitored each child’s progress into adolescence, and reported that those who had resisted temptation were better adjusted psychologically and more dependable; they did better at school, were more socially competent, and had greater self-esteem. Ability to delay gratification seemed to be a better predictor of future success than any previously measured trait.
Mischel’s work led to a shift in the study of personality—from how personality predicts behavior to how behavior reveals personality. It also changed the way personality profiling is used in assessing job candidates. Tests that were once considered an accurate basis for staff recruitment are now seen as a guide, to be interpreted in the context of the situations that are likely to arise in doing a job.
"What is a personality test really telling us about a person?"
Walter Mischel
WALTER MISCHEL
Walter Mischel was born in Austria, but emigrated with his family to the US in 1938. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York, receiving his PhD in clinical psychology from Ohio State University in 1956. He then went on to teach at the Universities of Colorado, Harvard, and Stanford, moving in 1983 to Columbia University in New York City, where he is the Robert Johnston Niven Professor of Humane Letters.
Numerous honors have been heaped on Mischel. These include the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award as well as the Distinguished Scientist Award of the American Psychological Association, and the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in psychology in 2011. Mischel is also a prolific and talented artist.
Key works
1968 Personality and Assessment
1973 Is Information About Individuals More Important Than Information About Situations?
2003 Introduction to Personality
See also: Galen • Gordon Allport • Raymond Cattell • Hans J. Eysenck
IN CONTEXT
APPROACH
Anti-psychiatry
BEFORE
1960 In The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness, R.D. Laing emphasizes the family as a source of mental illness.
1961 Psychologists E. Zigler and L. Phillips demonstrate huge overlaps in the symptoms of different categories of psychiatric disorder.
1961 Hungarian-American psychiatrist Thomas Szasz publishes the controversial The Myth of Mental Illness.
1967 British psychiatrist David Cooper defines the anti-psychiatry movement in Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry.
AFTER
2008 Thomas Szasz publishes Psychiatry: The Science of Lies.
During the 1960s, psychiatry faced a vocal challenge to its fundamental beliefs by a number of experts known as the “anti-psychiatrists.” This informal group of psychiatrists, psychologists, and welfare workers claimed that psychiatry is a medical model of mental health, yet there are no physical symptoms, and its treatment regimes largely ignore the patient’s needs and behaviors.
In 1973, David Rosenhan carried out a field study in the US that explored the validity of psychiatric diagnosis and resulted in the dramatic conclusion that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals.
In the first part of the study, Rosenhan assembled a grou
p of eight sane people (including himself), made up of women and men of different occupations and ages, and designated them as pseudo-patients. They were briefed to make an attempt to be admitted as patients to different mental hospitals in five US states, first by telephoning the hospital to ask for an appointment. Later, at the admissions office, they were to complain of hearing an unfamiliar voice in their heads, which was unclear but used words such as “empty” and “thud.” This suggested existential feelings of pointlessness. They were instructed to give false names and occupations, but otherwise true personal histories.
As a result, all the pseudo-patients were admitted to hospital with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, despite showing no symptoms of the disorder. Their hospital stays lasted an average of 19 days, during which time they behaved completely normally. They maintained journals of their experiences, surreptitiously at first but then openly, as it was never questioned. Demonstrating how even normal behavior might be interpreted as evidence of a psychiatric condition, Rosenhan found that a common comment in their medical notes was “patient engages in writing behavior.”
The “patients” themselves described their experience in hospital as one of depersonalization and powerlessness. Their records showed that the average daily time they spent with medical staff was less than seven minutes. Although they were undetected by the hospital staff, other patients challenged their sanity, sometimes quite vigorously: “You’re not crazy. You’re a journalist checking up on the hospital.”