Human Behavior

Semi-Final

• Human behavior ows from three main

sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.
Plato
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Introduction
• Human behavior is the response of individuals or groups of humans to internal and
external stimuli. It refers to the array of every physical action and observable
emotion associated with individuals, as well as the human race. While speci c traits
of one’s personality and temperament may be more consistent, other behaviors will
change as one moves from birth through adulthood. In addition to being dictated by
age and genetics, behavior, driven in part by thoughts and feelings, is an insight into
individual values. Social behavior, a subset of human behavior, study the
considerable in uence of social interaction and culture. Additional in uences include
ethics, encircling, authority, rapport, hypnosis, persuasion and coercion.

• The behavior of humans (and other organisms or even mechanism) falls within a
range with some behavior being common, some unusual, some acceptable, and
some beyond acceptable limits.
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Theories of Human Behavior
Theories of Human Behavior

• Human behavior, the potential and expressed capacity for physical, mental,
and social activity during the phases of human life.

• Human beings, like other animal species, have a typical life course that
consists of successive phases of growth, each of which is characterized by a
distinct set of physical, physiological, and behavioral features. These phases
are prenatal life, infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood (including old
age). Human development, or development psychology, is a eld of study that
attempts to describe and explain the changes in human cognitive, emotional,
and behavioral capabilities and functioning over the entire life span, from the
fetus to old age.

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Motivation and Motivation Theory

• Motivation and motivation theory is concerned with the processes that explain
why and how human behavior is activated.

• Most frequently studied and written-about topics in the organizational sciences

• No single theory of motivation that is universally accepted

• the lack of uni ed theory of motivation re ects both the complexity of the
construct and diverse background
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Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a theory of motivation and personality

development by the psychologist Abraham H. Maslow. Maslow’s hierarchy
explains human behavior in terms of basic requirement for survival and growth.
Other human needs (cont.)

• Maslow described other needs that did not t into his hierarchy. These
included cognitive needs, such as curiosity and scienti c interest, as well
as aesthetic needs, which include the need for beauty and order.

• As Maslow studied self-actualizing individuals, he also discovered a range

of needs that extend beyond self-actualizations. He called these needs
transcendence needs or B-values. They refer to needs to contribute to
human welfare and to nd higher meanings in life. Although
transcendence needs are usually described as lying somewhere beyond
the need for self-actualization, these needs are not included in the most
formulations of Maslow’s needs hierarchy.
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Alderfer’s ERG Theory

• Alderfer’s ERG theory is closely related to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. While

the two theories certainly share some common elements, they each come at
the point of motivation and needs from a slightly different perspective.

• The name “ERG” stands for the three needs that Alderfer identi es in his
theory:

1. Existence

2. Relatedness

3. Growth

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Herzberg Two-Factor Theory

• American psychologist Frederick Herzberg is regarded as one of the great

original thinkers in management and motivational theory. Herzberg set out the
times when they felt really good, and really bad, about their jobs. What he
found was that people who felt good about their jobs gave very different
responses from the people who felt bad.

• He especially recognized for his two-factor theory, which hypothesized that are
two different sets of factors governing job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction:
“hygiene factors”, or extrinsic motivators and “motivation factors”, or intrinsic
motivators.

Herzberg Two-Factor Theory

• Hygiene factors (more tangible needs)

• Status, job security, salary and bene ts

• Existence need- ERG

• Lower level of MHN

• Motivation factors (less tangible, more emotional needs)

• Relatedness and growth- ERG

• Higher levels of MHN

*The factor that differentiates two-factor theory from the others we’ve discussed is the role of employee
expectations.

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Expectancy Theory
• Expectancy theory is a behavioral and motivational theory that explains how people
choose their actions in order to achieve a result that they expected. A person is
especially motivated to act of not to act a certain way if usually applied in a
workplace setting, where employees perform in a certain way according to the
reward or incentives that the employers can give in return.

• Three elements of ET

1. Valence

2. Instrumentality

3. Expectancy

Cognitive theory

• When people learn something that doesn’t agree with what they
currently known to be true, they may do one of several things.
They may change the rst idea to t the newly introduced second
idea; they may add another idea to the rst two, to bridge the
difference; or they may drop either of the two ideas. All of these
are reactions to a state called cognitive dissonance, a mental
feeling of discomfort or stress that, according to some
psychologists, people will do anything to avoid.
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Reinforce Theory
• Reinforce Theory is the process of shaping behavior by controlling the consequences
of behavior. In reinforcement theory, a combination of rewards and/ or punishments is
used to reinforce desired behavior or extinguish unwanted behavior.

• Reinforcement

A. Positive (reward)

B. Negative (undesirable behavior consequences, increase desired behavior)

• Punishment (decrease the probability of speci c behavior, reduce unwanted behavior)

• Extinction (similar to punishment)

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Equity Theory

• Equity theory attempts to explain relational satisfaction in terms of

perceived fairness; that is, people evaluate the extent to which where is
a fair or unfair distribution of resources within their interpersonal
relationships.

• ET proposes that people value fair treatment, which motivates them to

maintain a similar standard of fairness with their co-workers and the
organization.

McClelland’s Learned Needs Theory

McClelland’s Learned Needs Theory believes that the speci c needs

of the individual are acquired over a period of time and gets moulded
with one’s experience of the life.

Three basic motivating needs:

1. Need for power
2. Need for af liation
3. Need for achievement
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The Six Human Needs
The Six Human Needs by Anthony Robbins

• Certainty (faith)

• Variety

• Signi cance (C&V)

• Love and Connection

• Growth

• Contribution
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