Page 164 - DMGT402_MANAGEMENT_PRACTICES_AND_ORGANIZATIONAL_BEHAVIOUR

Unit 8: Foundations of Organisational Behaviour

Notes
Other students adopted an optimistic strategy. They began college with high expectations.
When they approached a task, they felt positive, calm, and in control. They made few
plans, but their confidence motivated them to work hard and, like the defensive pessimists,
they succeeded. Their approach was sunny: “I generally go into academic situations with
positive expectations about how I will do.”
The “Pessimists” found the prospect of getting good grades more important, difficult,
stressful, challenging, and time-consuming than the “optimists.” Yet the experience-
sampling reports indicated that both groups spent the same amount of time working on
academic tasks. The pessimists were as involved in their studies as the optimists and
found their successes just as rewarding. In fact, pessimism was a successful strategy only
for students who found academic tasks intrinsically motivating.
Students who were successful optimists succeeded as long as their approach remained
optimistic. Those who despite expectations of success, engaged in the sort of detailed
planning that enabled pessimists to succeed wound up with lower grade-point averages
than the rest.
For students in this study, personality expressed itself in consistent differences in strategies
for academic achievement and in the way reflective planning affected their ability to
handle threatening academic situations. But, as cognitive theorists maintain, the effect
was an interaction of person and situation. Yet the pessimists’ apprehension was domain-
specific; the researchers noted that the self-concept of pessimists was not negative in other
areas and that their pessimism did not extend to their expectations of success in social
interaction.
Questions
1. What do analyse about the behavioural pattern of pessimistic people in organisations?

2. What do analyse about the behavioural pattern of optimistic people in organisations?
Source: Richard R. Bootzin, Gordon H. Bower, Jennifer Crocker, “Psychology Today – An Introduction”
7th edition, McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York, (1991) Page 523.7.

8.6.2 Humanistic Psychology Framework

Humanistic psychologists emphasize the potential of human beings for growth, creativity and
spontaneity. The most influential humanistic psychologists have been Abraham Maslow and
Carl Rogers.

1. Abraham Maslow and the Self-Actualized Personality: Abraham Maslow proposed that
people have a hierarchy of needs, the highest of those needs is self-actualization, the
fulfilment of a person's potential. He based his theory of personality on the characteristics
of healthy, creative people who used all their talents, potential, and capabilities, rather
than on studies of disturbed individuals as Freud had done. To determine the characteristics
of the self-actualized personality, Maslow made a list of people who in his opinion had
achieved their full potential. His list included people he knew personally as well as
figures from history. He then sought to discover what they had in common. The
characteristics of self-actualized persons are given in the Box 8.2 below.

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