Psychology and Human Behavior

“They just need to care more”

You will hear this sentence in a management meeting. It is almost always wrong — not because caring is irrelevant, but because the people in question usually already care.

This week asks what else has to be true before a person acts.

Today’s question

What does psychology add once we already know that people support a conservation goal?

What you should be able to do

By the end of today, you should be able to:

• distinguish cognition, conation, and affect;
• explain the person and the situation as two interacting lenses;
• explain the cognitive hierarchy from values to specific behavior; and
• state the specificity principle and why it matters for prediction.

Five jobs psychology does in management

• Designing interventions — targeting the actual drivers of action.
• Enhancing participation — uncovering what motivates or discourages different publics.
• Managing conflict — understanding the roots of conflict among people, groups, and institutions.
• Contextual planning — making plans relevant to local communities.
• Informing decisions — cognitive biases, emotions, bounded rationality, and uncertainty.

A caution before we start

Most classic disciplines, psychology included, emerged within Western cultures and ways of knowing. There is often an implicit assumption that those concepts apply universally.

Cognition, conation, affect

Motivational and volitional drive: will, intent, striving

These interact to form internal states — beliefs and attitudes — which then appear as observable decisions and actions.

The person and the situation

A worked contrast

A landowner wants to secure bear attractants but has nowhere secure to store them.

From values to behavior

Wildlife value orientations in the U.S.

Wildlife values across Europe and the Americas

The specificity principle

Correlations between variables are larger when the variables correspond in target, action, context, and time.

An orientation describes broad beliefs about wildlife; a particular hunting decision is much more specific.

• Wildlife value orientations predict general acceptability of hunting well.

• They predict archery hunting [action] a white-tailed deer [target] in a suburban neighborhood [context] in fall 2027 [time] far less well.

Pair rehearsal: sort the evidence

With a partner, label each as cognition, conation, or affect:

1. “I don’t think one person draining a boat matters.”
2. “I feel blamed every time I read one of those signs.”
3. “I plan to do it next time I’m out.”
4. “Invasive mussels would ruin this lake.”

Wednesday and Friday

Wednesday: the frameworks — reasoned action and TACT, collective action and norms, emotions, motivation and satisfaction.

Before Friday: read the Week 07 Case Brief: The Thornapple Lake Decontamination Problem. It is a separate document in the Canvas module and is required preparation.

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