6. The people who are grateful, optimistic and forgiving have better experiences with their lives, more happiness, fewer strokes, and higher incomes. It makes world a better place at the same time. 7. People who positively evaluate their well-being on average have stronger immune systems,
Stimuli that is rewarding produces positive feelings in us, and stimuli that is punishing produces negative feelings. As some of the stimuli are other people it follows that some people make us happy, while others do not. According to the principles of operant conditioning, we are likely to repeat any behaviour that leads to a desirable outcome and avoid behaviour that leads to an undesirable outcome. This theory suggests that we enter into relationships because the presence of some individuals in directly associated with reinforcement – they produce a positive feeling for us – which makes them more attractive to us. As well as being attracted to someone who directly makes us happy, we also like people who we associate with a pleasant experience.
Interpretivist sociologists would choose to not use lab experiments because they lack ecological validity as they are conducted within an environment that is artificial to the participant. This means that the results don’t reflect true-life behaviour because of both the environment they conducted the task in, and the nature of the task wasn’t true to real life and can also be said to not be generalisable to a population because of their small sample sizes in which lab experiments are conducted. Furthermore, participants might have been aware that they were being studied and so might not act normally, which is called the Hawthorne effect. Another reason why interpretivist sociologists don’t choose to use lab experiments is that they say human behaviour cannot be measured or explained in terms of cause and effect, and instead humans act in terms of feeling, choices and also individual motives. Society doesn’t lend itself to be studied in a laboratory and this is because it is so complex and cannot be artificially created.
Solipsism is the belief that nothing exists beyone ones own mind. NOt many people like it. Not may people worship it. Solipsism is the belief that nothing exists beyone ones own mind. NOt many people like it.
We may also be negatively reinforced by an individual helping us in our ‘time of need’. Both are said to increase our liking. We also find people rewarding through association. For example, if we met someone when we are in a pleasant mood we may
They also rated the onlooker more highly if given positive feedback about their performance. This study shows that positive reinforcement, such as praise, will increase the likelihood of an individual rating that person more than they would if they had received no positive feedback. This supports the rewards/need satisfaction theory as it shows that receiving a reward
• Reward-personal Goals Relationship (also known as Valence) – The Higher the reward, the higher satisfaction Each factor has its own characteristics that are further defined in below but essentially they boil down to the philosophy that an individual will be motivated to do something, as well as, act a certain way if their actions will benefit themselves. Vroom suggests that individuals are motivated when they believe higher levels of effort will lead to better performance and will be rewarded with desired outcomes (Redmond, 2007). Expectancy theory is classified as a process theory of motivation due to the face that it believes that individual perceptions of their environment and that they act on that environment as a repercussion of their personal expectations (Scholl, 2002). Expectancy probability: The first component of the Expectancy Theory is the Expectancy probability. With the Expectancy probability, it is believed that a person’s performance is based on their experiences.
Assess the claim that all knowledge and ideas derive from sensory experience This is an interesting question as many empiricists believe this as well as believing in a priori knowledge. However many empiricists do believe all knowledge is from sensory experience because they reject any innate ideas because as Locke says in his essay concerning human understanding there are things regarded as innate such as a thing cannot be what it is and what it is not at the same time. This is generally regarded as one of the principle rules of thought and also a basic understanding however Locke set out that even though this rule could be considered innate there were very few minds even aware of this principle, especially among young children. This shows how even something considered by almost all people aware of it to be innate could be obviously lacking the necessary criteria to be innate; not very many people know about it at all, let alone before birth. Furthermore experience is one of, if not the, principle way of gaining knowledge and forming ideas.
Strength / Weakness - research that is in the form of naturally occurring phenomena (Roberts and Lamb) has good ecological validity but is not scientific or replicable as variables were not highly controlled and because it is not artificial. It would also be unethical to test eye witness testimony when a real sensitive subject is being discussed. Strength / Weakness - the results could be due to a number of factors such as: young people may be more used to memory tests or older adults have poorer health leading to memory impairment. Weakness - the research findings are inconclusive. Weakness - the factors given by researchers, such as the ones stated, are only assumptions with no scientific evidence.
We are more likely to form a relationship with those people who are associated with pleasant event e.g. we are more likely to like someone when we are in a happy mood opposed to unhappy. Support for this theory comes from Griffitt and Guay, they found that higher ratings were given when the experimenter had positively evaluated the participants, thus showing the importance of positive stimuli in relationship formation. Although, the reward / need satisfaction theory doesn’t take into account cultural and gender differences in the formation of romantic relationships. Lott suggests that in many cultures are more focused on the needs of others rather than receiving reinforcement.