Motivation and emotion/Book/2020/Indigenous Australian psychologist motivation

Indigenous Australian psychologist motivation:
What motivates Indigenous Australians to become psychologists?

Multimedia presentation (3 min)

Overview

Figure 1. The Aboriginal Tent Embassy, established in the Australian Capital Territory in 1972.

In order to determine what motivates Indigenous Australians to become psychologists, it is important to understand why more Indigenous Australian psychologists are needed, and to determine the progress that has occurred to date. It is also important to broadly understand motivation from a psychological perspective, in order to understand the psychological theory mentioned later. The application of psychological theory provides a deeper understanding of the motivations of Indigenous Australians to become psychologists, from a psychological perspective. Furthermore, it provides potential solutions to the focus question from an opposing perspective to existing efforts made by the Australian Government.

Focus questions: Why does society need more Indigenous Australian people to become psychologists? What is motivation? What motivates Indigenous Australian people to become psychologists?

Indigenous Australia's mental health crisis

Indigenous Australians are in a mental health crisis as a result of stressful life events. Almost one third of Indigenous Australians report significant psychological distress, which is over twice the amount of other cultural populations in Australia (Australian Indigenous Psychology Education Project, 2020). One of the most prominent causes of disease burden with Indigenous Australians is mental and substance use disorders. 24% of Indigenous Australians reported mental and behavioural conditions in 2018-2019. Mental health issues are a prominent cause of the Indigenous Australian psychologist gap, with 18% (AIPEP, 2020), and a lack of system-wide strategies exist to support non-Indigenous Australian psychologists to develop the cultural competence required to reduce this gap (AIPA, 2020).

Why does society need more Indigenous Australian people to become psychologists?

Figure 2. Hand-holding is representative of collectivist cultures.

There is a significant lack of Indigenous Australian psychologists compared to the number of non-Indigenous Australian psychologists (AIPA, 2020). An Indigenous psychologist has the background and ideologies of an Indigenous Australian client and has the tools to form a strong client-psychologist relationship. People have better outcomes if they are treated by a psychologist who understands their cultural background (Psychology Today, 2020). If a client and their psychologist are from different cultures with different ideologies, there is potential for conflict to arise in the relationship. This is because Indigenous Australians are typically raised in a collectivist culture, where children are socialised to seek harmony, think of themselves in terms of group memberships and put group needs over individual needs (Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2020). For example, the Indigenous Australian community typically considers mental health issues less as an individuals challenge, and more in the context of social and emotional wellbeing, with an emphasises to maintaining a connection to country (land and sea), spirituality, and history. Furthermore, Indigenous Australian culture considers how these factors influence the wellbeing of the individual and their community (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2020).

Figure 3. Competition is representative of individualistic cultures.

In contrast, non-Indigenous Australians are typically raised in an individualistic culture, where children are socialised to be independent, think of themselves as individuals and put their own needs and goals over those of a group (Cherry, 2020). Australian psychologists are trained based on psychological research and theories which were developed in individualistic cultures. For example, individualistic perspectives are practiced in Austria (Freud), the United States (Skinner, Rogers, Bandura, Maslow, James, Watson, Zimbardo, Thorndike, Ellis, Milgram, Kohlberg, Seligman, Ainsworth, and Festinger), Switzerland (Piaget and  Jung), Germany (Erikson and Wundt), France (Binet) and the United Kingdom (Bowlby). As the discipline of psychology is dominated by an individualistic perspective, it can cause challenging views in collectivist cultures and therefore less practical to Indigenous Australian clients. Additionally, Indigenous Australians are less likely to receive sufficient support when seeking psychological treatment. Conflict could arise if a non-Indigenous Australian psychologist does not understand their Indigenous Australian client's collectivist ideologies and could prevent the psychologist from being able to provide sufficient support for their client and potentially damage their client-psychologist relationship. This type of conflict would be far less likely between Indigenous Australian psychologists and clients. If more Indigenous Australians become psychologists, there will be more of a voice for collectivist cultures in the field and more Indigenous Australians could feel comfortable seeking psychological treatment.

Quiz questions

1 What are the characteristics of a collectivist culture?

	Valuing group needs over individual needs
	Valuing individual needs over group needs

2 What are the characteristics of an individualistic culture?

	Valuing group needs over individual needs
	Valuing individual needs over group needs

Existing efforts to reduce the Indigenous Australian psychologist gap

The standards to practice as a psychologist in Australia are set by the Australian Psychology Accreditation Council{{ic|add link}, approved by the Psychology Board of Australia and implemented by universities. The Australian Psychological Society and the Australian Indigenous Psychologists Association jointly provide leadership, professional support, mentoring, and networking for psychologists. Their research shows that educators are often uncertain about how to engage with Indigenous people and Indigenous psychologists (Carey et al., 2017). The Australian Government has commenced 10 years of research projects to transform the way the health system responds to the needs of Indigenous Australian people. Carey and colleagues (2017) summarised the progress made in reducing the Indigenous Australian psychologist gap that has been the focus of 'Australian Psychologist'.

Figure 4. Former prime minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd.

• Assessment: assessing social and emotional wellbeing, cognitive assessment, cognitive impairment, and the suitability of investigative interviews (Carey et al., 2020).
• Intervention: treatment of mental health problems (Carey et al., 2020).
• Education and workforce: providing cultural competence workshops to deliver mental health services within a social and emotional wellbeing framework and to accommodate the social and historical factors when working with Indigenous Australian clients, and developing an understanding and awareness of Indigenous Australian history and culture and how colonisation has shaped contemporary disadvantage. AIPEP aims to redevelop psychology training towards a more culturally-aware and responsive mental health workforce, and increase the number of Indigenous Australian psychologists (Carey et al., 2020).
• Reconciliation: former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's apology for the stolen generation, and the Australian Psychological Society’s Reconciliation Action Plan is facilitating the cultural awareness and responsiveness of Australian psychologists to work with Indigenous Australian communities through training psychologists and psychology students in cultural competence, motivating Indigenous students to study psychology and promoting respectful relationships (Carey et al., 2020).

The report by Carey and colleagues is limited, as Carey is an author for Australian Psychologist and is, therefore, biased towards the journal's role in becoming culturally aware. Although progress is being made to reduce the gap, further work needs to be done. Continuing to educate non-Indigenous Australian psychologists about Indigenous Australian culture could enable Indigenous Australians to feel understood, strengthening the psychologist-client relationship, and, therefore, providing Indigenous Australians the sufficient psychological treatment that they require.

What is motivation?

Motivation is a condition inside us that desires change in ourselves or our environment (Souders, 2020). In short, motivation = energy + direction + persistence. More specifically, it is a dynamic process that combines our environmental context and our individual internal motive status of needs, cognitions and emotions to give our behaviour energy, direction and persistence (Reeve, 2018). As individuals, we play active roles in our own motivation with internal and external influences. Understanding motivation as a psychological concept can help explain why Indigenous Australians are motivated to become psychologists.

Energy	Strong behaviour that is intense and resilient
Direction	Purposeful behaviour that is aimed at a specific outcome
Persistence	Enduring behaviour that sustains itself over time and across different situations

Quiz questions

1 What is energy?

	Strong behaviour that is intense and resilient
	Purposeful behaviour that is aimed at a specific outcome
	Enduring behaviour that sustains itself over time and across different situations

2 What is direction?

	Strong behaviour that is intense and resilient
	Purposeful behaviour that is aimed at a specific outcome
	Enduring behaviour that sustains itself over time and across different situations

3 What is persistence?

	Strong behaviour that is intense and resilient
	Purposeful behaviour that is aimed at a specific outcome
	Enduring behaviour that sustains itself over time and across different situations

Psychological theory

Psychological theories of motivation can be applied to the focus question to determine why Indigenous Australians are motivated to become psychologists.

Effectance motivation

Effectance motivation is an individual's desire for effective interaction with their environment (Harter, 1978; Sabir, 2014; White, 1959). This can be applied to the motivations of Indigenous Australians to become psychologists, as they have a desire for Indigenous Australians to be represented proportionally in the profession and feel comfortable seeking out help from a psychologist who understands their culture and ideologies.

Attribution theory of achievement motivation (Weiner, 1972)

Attribution theory focuses on how people interpret events and how these interpretations relate to their cognitions and behaviour, therefore affecting their motivation (Seel, 2012). It is based on the assumption that people try to determine why people do what they do, to attribute causes to behaviour. There are three steps to attribution.

1. The observer observes a behaviour.
2. The observer believes that the behaviour was intentionally performed.
3. The observer determines whether they believe that the other person was forced to perform that behaviour, where the cause is attributed to the situation, or not, where the cause is attributed to the other person.

This theory can be applied to explain the motivations behind becoming a psychologist, as psychology is the study of mind and behaviour (McLeod, 2019). Therefore, if people are focused on determining the causes of behaviour, they would be motivated to study psychology in order to receive answers and subsequently become psychologists to personally observe individual case studies.

Sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978)

Figure 5. Lev Vygotsky.

Sociocultural theory is a development theory based on Vygotsky's assumption that individuals develop through social mediation. Cognitive development is shaped by sociocultural context and grows from a child's interactions with members of their culture. That is, children form their cultural values, beliefs, and problem-solving strategies through communicating with knowledgeable members of their culture (McLeod, 2020). There are four prominent components of sociocultural theory.

• Social constructivism: people actively create their own understandings of the world from social interactions and exposure to cultural tools. Any function in a child’s cultural development appears twice:
  1. first socially in an intermental category,
  2. and then psychologically in an intramental category (Nicholl, 1998).
• Guided participation: children are social and develop their minds through guided participation in culturally important activities where their parents provide the support that facilitates their learning (McLeod, 2020).
• Mediation: people deliberately interject items between their themselves and their environment to modify the environment in an attempt to gain specific results. The key in understanding how mental functioning occurs is tied to cultural, institutional, and historical settings, as these settings shape and provide cultural tools then mastered by individuals to perform functioning (McLeod, 2020).
• Cultural tools: shape cognitive development with technical tools that act on the environment, and psychological tools, which are tools for thinking. Cultural tools help individuals understand their environment. For example, language mediates the relationship between people and their environment. Language is a cultural tool first for regulating action and communication, and secondly for thought (McLeod, 2020).

This theory can explain why Indigenous Australians are motivated to become psychologists as the Indigenous community is typically collectivist and, therefore, emphasises cultural relationships. If Indigenous Australian children are taught by their elders about the gap between non-Indigenous Australian and Indigenous Australian psychologists, and the lack of cultural sensitivity training taught to psychology students, sociocultural theory assumes that these children would then be motivated to become psychologists to address these issues. However, sociocultural theory has three limitations:

• there is too much emphasis on the role of language in cognitive development,
• there is too much emphasis on social interaction,
• and the concepts are broad and vague, making it difficult for researchers to verify them (McLeod, 2020).

Despite these limitations, the application of sociocultural theory to Indigenous Australian psychologist motivation has an advantage over the other theories, as it can apply more accurately to collectivist cultures, such as the Indigenous Australian community, whereas the other mentioned theories are based on the individualistic perspective.

Social learning theory (Bandura, 1986)

Figure 6. Albert Bandura.

Social learning theory is based on the concept of observational learning, where people learn by imitating models. A model is someone that the individual respects. This theory is based on the concept of vicarious reinforcement, where the learner becomes more or less likely to perform a behaviour based on whether consequences experienced by the model were reinforcing or punishing. This enables the learner to anticipate consequences, so they are more affected by their expectation of what will happen from an action than personally encountering consequences. Social learning theory can be applied to the motivations of Indigenous Australians in becoming psychologists as Indigenous Australians are witnessing role models, particularly Indigenous Australian psychologists, within the community working towards making the psychology discipline culturally-aware and safe, and, therefore, witnessing the progress in reducing the Indigenous Australian psychologist gap. Social learning theory would then assume that the reinforcements, however gradual, experienced by these Indigenous Australian psychologists would motivate Indigenous Australians to imitate the actions of the role models and work towards becoming psychologists. However, this theory is limited, as it is a form of extrinsic motivation. The learner does not act solely based on internal desires, instead they act based on the model's experiences.

Quiz questions

1 Which theory assumes that people attribute causes to behaviour?

	Effectance motivation
	Attribution theory of achievement motivation
	Sociocultural theory
	Social learning theory

2 Which theory involves learning through imitation?

	Effectance motivation
	Attribution theory of achievement motivation
	Sociocultural theory
	Social learning theory

How to motivate Indigenous Australians to become psychologists

Psychological theory can be applied to motivate Indigenous Australians to become psychologists.

Extrinsic motivation

Motivating Indigenous Australian people to become psychologists could involve extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is an environmentally-created reason to engage in a specific behaviour by offering rewards or punishments, which encourage recipients to adjust their behaviour accordingly. Extrinsic motivation is facilitated through operant conditioning. The equation for extrinsic motivation is: situational cue = a response which leads to a consequence (a reward or punishment). The situational cue is an incentive that sets the occasion, causing a behavioural action that results in a reward, which the recipient tries to earn, or a punishment, which the recipient tries to avoid. The effectiveness of external reinforcements depends on the quality, immediacy and the recipient's need for, and perceived value, of the reward. In particular, unexpected rewards are a more effective source of motivation. Explaining to the recipient why the desired behaviour is important and useful as it can increase their willingness to perform that behaviour. Building on the recipient’s intrinsic interests by catching their situational interest in the desired behaviour can help them gradually develop individual interest. Characteristics of the environment, which builds situational interest + characteristics of the recipient, which builds individual interest = actualised interest = increased attention, learning, knowledge, achievement, and, therefore, increased effectiveness of extrinsic motivation.

Benefits of extrinsic motivation

Extrinsic motivation has several benefits, including:

• developing daily life skills,
• promoting positive emotions and facilitating specific behaviours because they imply opportunities for individual gain,
• increasing productivity,
• and creating a positive learning environment (Shrestha, 2017).

Limitations of extrinsic motivation

However, extrinsic motivation also has many limitations, namely:

• external rewards interfere with the quality and process of learning, encouraging short-cuts, and autonomous regulation, ultimately undermining intrinsic motivation,
• external punishments can result in negative emotionality, an impaired relationship between the punisher and the punishee and negative modelling of how to cope with an undesirable behaviour in others,
• external rewards are often temporary, not long-term,
• and external incentives undermine the punishee's long-term capacity for autonomous self-regulation (Shrestha, 2017).

Taxonomy of motivation (Ryan and Deci, 2000)

This theory outlines the process of internalisation; how an external way of behaving becomes an internally-endorsed way of behaving, through four steps:

1. External regulation, where an individual is solely motivated by punishments and rewards.
2. Introjected regulation, where external rewards begin to be represented internally within the individual to avoid feeling guilt and maintain pride.
3. Identified regulation, where the individual starts to voluntarily accept the benefits of external suggestions, due to their belief that their actions will contribute to their goals.
4. Integrated regulation, where the individual internally regulates their own behaviour, with less conflict surrounding any opposing behaviours that they initially may have preferred. This is not intrinsic motivation, but it provides the individual with increased autonomy and decreased reliance on external regulators (Wee et al., 2011).

This theory can be applied to motivate Indigenous Australians to become psychologists; illustrated in the following scenario:

1. An Indigenous Australian university student is initially motivated to study psychology because of a new government program that rewards Indigenous Australian psychology graduates with guaranteed job positions.
2. The student begins to enjoy studying psychology because helping people makes them feel good about themselves.
3. The student begins to value the benefits of the government program because it makes them feel productive and positive about their future career.
4. The student identifies with the psychology profession because they share the values that the profession is based on, helping others and bettering society. The student is now mostly motivated by their enjoyment of their study and less motivated by the external reward of their guaranteed graduate job position.

Although this theory utilises extrinsic motivation to promote intrinsic motivation, it is limited, as it still does not result in complete intrinsic motivation.

Quiz questions

1 What is extrinsic motivation?

	Motivation to do something solely by their enjoyment of the activity
	Motivation to do something by being rewarded/punished for the activity

2 Which step of taxonomy of motivation theory involves being motivated to do something by external incentives?

	External regulation
	Introjection regulation
	Identified regulation
	Integrated regulation

Conclusion

The psychological distress of Indigenous Australians caused by the Indigenous mental health crisis means that Indigenous Australians require psychological treatment. Indigenous Australians are motivated to become psychologists because Indigenous Australian clients are less likely to receive sufficient psychological treatment from non-Indigenous Australian psychologists, as they lack the cultural awareness necessary to understand Indigenous Australians clients and, therefore, cannot form the strong psychologist-client relationship necessary for clients to feel comfortable opening up. This prevents Indigenous Australians from receiving sufficient psychological treatment. There are significantly more non-Indigenous Australian psychologists than Indigenous Australian psychologists. This phenomenon is known as the Indigenous Australian psychologist gap. Progress has been made to reduce the gap, particularly through educating non-Indigenous Australian psychologists about Indigenous Australian culture and history. However, significantly more progress must be made in order to close the gap. This progress can occur by continuing to educate non-indigenous Australian psychologists about Indigenous culture, to ensure that non-Indigenous Australian psychologists provide culturally-aware psychological treatment to Indigenous Australian clients, and by motivating more Indigenous Australians to become psychologists. Psychological theory, including effectance motivation, attribution theory of achievement motivation, sociocultural theory, and social learning theory potentially explain the motivations behind Indigenous Australians becoming psychologists, while extrinsic motivation and taxonomy of motivation can be applied to motivate more Indigenous Australians to become psychologists.

See also

• Indigenous Australians and motivation (Book chapter, 2010)
• Indigenous Australian education and work motivation (Book chapter, 2020)
• Individualistic cultures (Wikipedia)
• Motivation (Wikiversity)

References

Operant Conditioning

External links

• Attracting Indigenous students to psychology studies (Website)
• Intrinsic motivation (healthline.com)
• Extrinsic motivation (verywellmind.com)
• Collectivist cultures (verywellmind.com)