Article S8.8 Autonomy and Work Motivation: An Experiment Indicating Cultural Difference Seminar Leader: Ritu Tripathi Visiting Scholar, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA ritu.tripathi[at]gmail.com Social psychology is the scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others (Van Lange, 2006). In this definition, the word scientific refers to the empirical method of investigation. The terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviours include all psychological variables that are measurable in a human. The reference to “imagined or implied presence of others” suggests that we are prone to social influence even when no other people are present, such as when watching television or following internalised cultural norms. The seminar addressed the concerns of cultural variations in work motivation by drawing upon the methods of experimental social and personality psychology. The research was carried out to understand the variability in work motivation between Indian and American corporate professionals. For the purpose of research these two countries were chosen because US and Indian employees are very well matched on linguistic capabilities, socio-economic factors and educational qualification. What is different in these two countries is culture. While United States promotes Protestant work ethics which focuses upon individual needs, desires, and achievements, Indians follow dharma or duty-bound action. To study the universal applicability of self-determination theory (SDT) (Ryan & Deci, 2000) across the two cultures, the researcher chose autonomy as the control variable in her research. According to SDT, there are three psychological needs that motivate a person to initiate behaviour and specify needs that are necessary for the psychological health and wellbeing of an individual. These needs are said to be universal, innate, and psychological and include the need for competence, autonomy, and relatedness (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Here competence refers to being effective in dealing with the environment individuals find themselves in (White, 1959), relatedness is the universal want to interact, be connected to, and experience caring for others (Baumeister & Leary, 1995), autonomy is the universal urge to be the causal agents of our own life, and act in harmony with our integrated self (Deci & Vansteenkiste, 2004). The researcher carried out an online randomised controlled experiment to study the influence of autonomy support on motivated action. Both American and Indian corporate professionals performed a voluntary online task of judging a few posters in pairs under three kind of experimental manipulations namely autonomy-supportive, autonomy-suppressive, and neutral conditions. These posters appeared in pairs, and required respondents to make a reasoning-based comparative judgment and suggest which one of the pair appeared better to them. In autonomy-supportive condition which represents scenarios like “it’s your choice,” the respondents were not directed or commanded to judge the posters in the study. In autonomy-suppressive condition which represents scenarios like “tell us which picture is better,” the respondents were asked to decide which poster is better based on certain directions like “you should look at each poster very carefully,” “you must notice the background carefully,” and so forth. In case of neutral manipulation, the respondents were not given any instructions. However they were informed about the kind of pictures they may find in the experiment. Results indicated that Americans worked far longer in the autonomy-supportive condition whereas Indians worked far longer in the autonomy-suppressive condition. In both, cultural differences were extraordinarily large; the populations exhibiting little statistical overlap. The results refute the claim, made regularly in both basic and applied psychology, that enhancing autonomy boosts motivation universally. This experimental study was able to detect a large cultural variation among employees towards work motivation. References Baumeister, R., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497-529. Retrieved November 30, 2010, from http://persweb.wabash.edu/facstaff/hortonr/articles%20for%20class/baumeister%20and%20leary.pdf Deci, E. L., & Vansteenkiste, M. (2004). Self-determination theory and basic need satisfaction: Understanding human development in positive psychology. Ricerche di Psichologia, 27, 17-34. Retrieved November 30, 2010, from http://www.psych.rochester.edu/SDT/documents/2004_DeciVansteenkiste_SDTandBasicNeedSatisfaction.pdf Van Lange, P. A. M. (Ed.). (2006). Bridging social psychology: Benefits of transdisciplinary approaches. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55, 68-78. White, R. W. (1959). Motivation reconsidered: The concept of competence. Psychological Review, 66(3), 297-333. Reported by Satyendra Chandra Pandey, with inputs from Paromita Goswami; edited by D. P. Dash. [January 22, 2011] Copyleft Xavier Institute of Management, Xavier Square, Bhubaneswar 751013, India Research World (ISSN 0974-2379) http://www1.ximb.ac.in/RW.nsf/pages/Home | ||
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