Motivation and emotion/Book/2024/Groups and individual motivation enhancement

Groups and individual motivation enhancement:
How can group dynamics enhance individual motivation?

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Overview

Figure 1. Conflict within a group Case study Eleanor, Britney and Janette are all in the second year of their Economics degree and have been grouped together to complete an assignment. All three girls have been struggling to work together due to conflicting approaches, holding them back from completing the assignment. Eleanor doesn’t care much for this class and prefers to spend her time with her friends going out for dinner or baking sweet treats from scratch. Eleanor has only made very minor contributions to the assignments and ignores communication attempts from the other two girls in her group. Britney on the other hand has taken full creative control of the assignment and conducted all the initial research as well as already completing around 70% of the work without consulting her other group members. Britney has ambitions to maintain her perfect GPA and doesn’t want to be compromised by Eleanor and Janette. Because of this, Britney prefers to complete all the work herself. Janette feels bitterness towards Eleanor for her pathetic contributions to the group assignment. Janette wishes to do well in this class, but not to the same extent as Britney. Janette suspects Eleanor will get in trouble for not making enough substantial contributions to the assignment and doesn’t want to give Britney or the Unit Convenor an opportunity to accuse her of not making enough of a contribution. This has led to Janette making moderate contributions to the assignment here and there to ensure her efforts are notable enough to prevent repercussions.

It is well known that a person’s motivation can be easily influenced by a variety of factors including intrinsic or extrinsic motivators, goals, experiences, emotional states and culture just to name a few. This chapter examines the involvement of a group on an individual’s motivation, including whether or not groups have the potential to increase an individual’s motivation. This chapter will also go into detail about why some individuals placed in a group are more motivated than others, as well as including some strategies to increase the motivation of other group members who might lack motivation.

Multiple psychology theories have been studied to examine potential impacts on motivation and some of these theories will be explored. There will be a differentiation between theories that could enhance individual motivation and theories that explain why some individuals might lack motivation in a group.

Through examining all this information, the overarching, yet complicated, question of how can group dynamics enhance individual motivation is answered.

Suggestions for this section: Engage the reader with a scenario, example, or case study, and an accompanying image Explain the problem and why it is important Outline how psychological science can help Present focus questions

Focus questions: Why are some individuals more motivated than others? How can groups increase individual motivation? What theories explain why group dynamics increase individual motivation? What motivates people to contribute or participate in a group?

Headings

• Aim for three to six main headings inbetween the Overview and Conclusion
• Sub-headings can also be used, but
  • avoid having sections with only one sub-heading
  • provide an introductory paragraph before breaking into sub-sections

Psychology Theories to Enhance Group Motivation

• Provide definitions for all theories
• Apply the theories to explain reductions in group motivations
• Provide examples

Social Identity Theory

• Developed by Henri Tajfel
• Theory suggests people derive a sense of identity and self esteem from the groups they are placed in (Scheepers & Ellemers, 2019)
• Application to Enhancing Motivation - People typically aim to maintain a positive social identity and people are motivated to contribute to their group successes leading to more effective collective effort.

Self Determination Theory

• Developed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan
• Focus on three psychological factors which involve autonomy, competence and relatedness. Theory indicates that when all three of these factors are achieved it can increase intrinsic motivation in individuals (Deci & Ryan, 2012).
• Application to Enhancing Motivation - Motivation is increased when people sense their needs are valued (competence), they are able to exercise control over their actions (autonomy) and they have established connections with other group members (relatedness).

Goal Setting Theory

• Developed by Edwin Locke and Gary Latham
• Theory based on the idea that people (either individuals or groups) can increase their motivation by setting themselves goals that are challenging, achievable and specific (Locke & Latham, 2006)
• Application to Enhancing Motivation - Setting goals as a group can increase effort and commitment within the group when everyone works together to achieve this goal. Once the goal is achieved it can create accomplishment and increase group cohesion leading to further increased motivation.

Psychology Theories to Explain Reductions in Group Motivation

• Provide definitions for all theories
• Apply the theories to explain reductions in group motivations
• Provide examples

Social Loafing

• (Karau & Hart, 1998)
• social loafing

Strategies to Motivate Individuals in a Group

• How to motivate individuals in a group - https://hbr.org/2003/01/how-to-motivate-your-problem-people

Key points

• Provide at least three bullet-points per headingʔ and sub-heading, including for the Overview and Conclusion
• Include key citations

Figures

Figure 2. Example of an image with a descriptive caption.

• Use figures to illustrate concepts, add interest, and to serve as examples
• Figures can show photos, diagrams, graphs, video, audio, etcetera
• Embed figures throughout the chapter, including the Overview section
• Figures should be captioned (using Figure #. and a caption). Use captions to explain the relevance of the image to the text/
• Wikimedia Commons provides a library of embeddable images
• Images can also be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons if they are openly licensed
• Refer to each figure at least once in the main text (e.g., see Figure 2)

Learning features

Interactive learning features help to bring online book chapters to life and can be embedded throughout the chapter.

Scenarios

• Scenarios or case studies describe applied/real-world examples of concepts in action
• Case studies can be real or fictional
• A case study could be split into multiple boxes throughout a chapter (e.g., to illustrate different theories or stages)
• It is often helpful to present case studies using feature boxes.

Feature boxes

• Important content can be highlighted in a feature box. But don't overuse feature boxes, otherwise they lose their effect.
• Consider using feature boxes for:
  • Scenarios, case studies, or examples
  • Focus questions
  • Tips
  • Quiz questions
  • Take-home messages

Links

• When key words are introduced, use interwiki links to:
  • Wikipedia (e.g., Sigmund Freud wrote about (e.g., dreams) or
  • Related book chapters (e.g., writer's block)

Tables

• Use to organise and summarise information
• As with figures, tables should be captioned
• Refer to each table at least once in the main text (e.g., see Table 1)
• Example 3 x 3 tables which could be adapted

Table 1. Descriptive Caption Which Explains The Table and its Relevant to the Text - Johari Window Model

	Known to self	Not known to self
Known to others	Open area	Blind spot
Not known to others	Hidden area	Unknown

Quizzes

• Using one or two review questions per major section is usually better than a long quiz at the end
• Quiz conceptual understanding, rather than trivia
• Don't make quizzes too hard
• Different types of quiz questions are possible; see Quiz

Example simple quiz questions. Choose your answers and click "Submit":

1 Quizzes are an interactive learning feature:

	True
	False

2 Long quizzes are a good idea:

	True
	False

Conclusion

• The Conclusion is arguably the most important section
• Suggested word count: 150 to 330 words
• It should be possible for someone to only read the Overview and the Conclusion and still get a pretty good idea of the problem and what is known based on psychological science

Suggestions for this section: What is the answer to the sub-title question based on psychological theory and research? What are the answers to the focus questions? What are the practical, take-home messages? (Even for the topic development, have a go at the likely take-home message)

See also

Provide internal (wiki) links to the most relevant Wikiversity pages (esp. related motivation and emotion book chapters) and Wikipedia articles. Use these formats:

• Light triad (Book chapter, 2021)
• Collaborative authoring using wiki (Wikiversity)
• Self determination theory (Wikipedia)

Suggestions for this section: Present in alphabetical order Use sentence casing Include the source in parentheses

References

List cited references in APA style (7th ed.) or wiki style.

APA style example:

Rosenberg, B. D., & Siegel, J. T. (2018). A 50-year review of psychological reactance theory: Do not read this article. Motivation Science, 4(4), 281–300. https://doi.org/10.1037/mot0000091

Cady, S. H., Brodke, M., & Parker, N. (2018). When a Team is More Like a Group: Improving Individual Motivation by Managing Integrity Through Team Action Processes. Public Integrity, 21(1), 86–103. https://doi.org/10.1080/10999922.2017.1419052

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2012). Self-determination theory. Handbook of Theories of Social Psychology, 1, 416-437. https://www.torrossa.com/en/resources/an/4912667#page=438

Karau, S. J., & Hart, J. W. (1998). Group cohesiveness and social loafing: Effects of a social interaction manipulation on individual motivation within groups. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 2(3), 185-191. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2699.2.3.185

Locke, E. A., Latham, G. P. (2006). New directions in goal-setting theory. Association for Psychological Science, 15(5), 265-260. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2006.00449.x

Scheepers, D., & Ellemers, N. (2019). Social identity theory. Social Psychology in Action, 129-143. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13788-5_9

Taylor, B. M. (2015). The integrated dynamics of motivation and performance in the workplace. International Society for Performance Improvement, 54(5), 28-37. https://doi.org/10.1002/pfi.21481

Suggestions for this section:

• Important aspects of APA style for references include:
  • Wrap the set of references in the hanging indent template. Use "Edit source": {{Hanging indent|1= the full list of references}}
  • Author surname, followed by a comma, then the author initials separated by full stops and spaces
  • Year of publication in parentheses
  • Title of work in lower case except first letter and proper names, ending in a full-stop
  • Journal title in italics, volume number in italics, issue number in parentheses, first and last page numbers separated by an en-dash(–), followed by a full-stop
  • Provide the full doi as a URL and working hyperlink
• The most common mistakes include:
  • Incorrect capitalisation
  • Incorrect italicisation
  • Citing sources that weren't read or consulted

External links

Provide external links to highly relevant resources such as presentations, news articles, and professional sites. Use sentence casing. For example:

• Six top tips for writing a great essay (University of Melbourne)
• The importance of structure (skillsyouneed.com)

Suggestions for this section: Only select links to major external resources about the topic Present in alphabetical order Include the source in parentheses after the link