Lecture 18 Flashcards
What is autonomy
Means to behave with a sense of volition, willingness and congruence, thus acting according to one’s true feelings
Assessed with the General Causality Orientation Scales
Measuring autonomy in kids
Kid and mom come in to lab and mom is asked to play with kid
Observers rate autonomy based on how effectively the kid plays. Is the mom interested/smothering or just right.
For attachment this requires the mother to be a safe haven for kids but for attachment and authority she must be a safe base too that the child can explore from.
Anecdote: Home movie of Sophie in library
Prof was over involved with Sophie when she played
His wife would have sat with her and made it ok for her to explore
She was scared of the bird sound
Measuring autonomy as adults
The General Causality Orientation Scales
Use a questionnaire where you see 12 scenarios and each has 3 options. You rate each out of 10 and all the scores are summed at the end.
One response codes for autonomous behavior: initiated and regulated volitionally based on an awareness of one’s needs and integrated goals
One codes for controlled behaviors: regulated by controls in the environment like reward structures or internally controlling imperatives like how one “should behave”
One for Impersonal behaviors; they think their behavior is beyond their control.
Results show that on average uni students who do this rate mostly autonomous then controlled and a small amount impersonal.
There is a normal distribution for each and some are very high on one or other in almost all circumstances.
The first two are totally independent of the big 5 but impersonal behavior is associated with high H and low E (dominance). It is the same thing as external Locus of Control.
Anecdote: Profs first seminar at McGill in 1989
Allowed them to do a paper on anything they wanted. 3 behavioral styles emerged.
10/15 wanted to check with Prof about everything. Clearly controlled behavior motivated by rewards.
3 came a week before the due date and said they had not started it. Impersonal.
2 had autonomous style. Did amazing papers based on Freud and transitional objects and sesame street.
Autonomy and Personality integration
People high on autonomy are very consistent in their personality trait expression across situations
Are also high with attitude and behavior consistency. For example if given a task, asked to rate it and then observed, high autonomy people will do the task if they said it was fun or not if they don’t. They are consistent.
Measurements of their implicit motivation consistently correlate with measurements of their explicit motivation. So TAT correlates with questionnaires.
Autonomy and Emotional integration
When asked to remember aspect of their childhood, high autonomy people remember both the negative and the positive.
Autonomy is associated with an ability to process the negative emotions
This is a core part of attachment and those who are autonomous can do it.
Autonomy and Social integration
Autonomy is associated with good general and intimate relationships/
Hodgins et al (1997) had college kids record their interactions for a week. Write down any time they spoke for more than 10 mins. They found that autonomous people had the most number of interactions, the longest time, did the most disclosure when it was appropriate and not when it was not and also responded to disclosure with disclosure. The only disclosed to close people and not friends.
Their conclusion was that autonomy does not negate close relations, rather it allows for more open, honest interpersonal experiences.
Integration as the hallmark of autonomy
Autonomy is associated with increased
(1) Personality integration
(2) Emotional integration
(3) Social integration
So what is and is not autonomy?
Is a teenager who always does the opposite or someone that never listens to outside opinions autonomous?
No. If someone always does the opposite, there is a perfect correlation between the order and their response. Its perfectly negative.
BUT THIS COULD BE IN THE OLD DEFINITION
Reactive autonomy
Henry Murray (1938)
Old definition
To resist coercion, defy authority or seek freedom
“do what you want”
There’s a questionnaire for it
Ryan 1993
There is no way to be free of external influences. That is not autonomy. This old definition is dumb.
Koestner & Losier, 1996
Study 1 examined relations among two forms of autonomy in 100 women and 50 men
1 - no correlation between autonomy forms
2 - Women were higher in new, men in old
3 - Reactive autonomy is closely related to controlled behaviour scale on GCOS (knowing where reward is coming from)
4 - Relates to big 5
Reactive autonomy: E - +.27, O: +.29 A: -.54
Reflective autonomy: no significant relations with Bug 5 (independent)
Study 2 measured tow forms of autonomy and quality of social interaction over 1 week in 30 men and 30 women
Reflective authority had good quality social interactions with authority and non-authority people
Reactive authority had very bad social interactions with authority figures.
Race track study
Taught how to bet
Allowed to access experts for advice
Some experts were experts, some were fake
Reflective autonomy listened more to actual experts
Reactive authority listened more to fake experts than not cos they wanted their win to be cos of them not an expert.
