Series:

Nebraska Symposium on Motivation

20 total works

Cover of Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, Volume 50
This volume marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, the longest continuously running symposium in the field of psychology.

The motivational processes involved in drug abuse, the largest health problem in the United States, are the subject of eight thought-provoking essays that probe behavioral, cognitive, evolutionary, and physiological perspectives. George F. Koob discusses the implications of an allostatic view of motivation in psychopathology. Harriet de Witt considers the dual determinants of drug use in humans, reward and impulsivity, while R. D. Spealman and his research team assess the triggers of relapse in nonhuman primates. Jaak Panksepp and associates elucidate the role of emotional systems in addiction via a neuroethological perspective, while Michael T. Bardo and Linda Dwoskin describe the biological connection between novelty and drug-seeking motivational systems. Drive, incentive, and reinforcement, along with factors controlling the reinitiation of drug seeking and the environmental sources of motivation round out the remaining discussions by Roy A. Wise, Jane Stewart, and M. Vogel-Sprott.

Cover of Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 2002, Volume 49
Cross-Cultural Difference in Perspectives on the Self features the latest research in a dynamic area of inquiry and practice. Considered in these pages are cross-cultural differences in the idea of the person and in models of balancing obligations to the self, family, and community. Revisiting and questioning the concepts of self and self-worth, the authors investigate the extent to which factors traditionally associated with psychological effectiveness (intrinsic motivation; assuming personal responsibility for one’s actions; and feeling in control, unique, hopeful, and optimistic) are culturally bound. Hazel Markus and Shinobu Kitayama consider cultural differences in models of psychological agency; Joan Miller critiques the meaning of the term agency, analyzing the extent to which many popular theories in psychology rest on rather narrow Western models of behavior and effective functioning; Steven Heine calls into question the presumed universality of some forms of cognitive processing; Sheena Iyengar and Sanford DeVoe apply a cross-cultural perspective to better understand intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and the value of choice; Kuo-shu Yang questions the universality of the pervasive and popular “theory of self-actualization” formulated by Abraham Maslow; and finally, Ype Poortinga reexamines not only the cultural boundaries of theory but also the very meaning of the concept of culture itself.

Cover of Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, Volume 52
Capturing the complexity of human behavior has been a recurring theme in the Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. The contributors to this volume describe contemporary approaches to the modeling of complex cognitive and behavioral processes, ranging from molecular to molar phenomena. Although the essays reflect a wide range of theoretical and epistemic perspectives, they all incorporate complex frameworks of dynamic, systemlike relationships involving perception, learning, concept formation, emotion, motivation, intention, behavior, and the social context in which behavior occurs. The editors introduce the volume with a survey of the lifetime of the symposium, showing the development of ideas about behavioral and psychological complexity for over fifty years. A special feature of this collection is its emphasis on practical applications of the conceptual frameworks in which they work. The contributors provide examples of translational research ranging from clinical neuropsychology to self-actualization, from medical informatics to industrial psychology, from programmed learning to psychiatric rehabilitation.

Cover of Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 1993, Volume 41
Psychological theory has traditionally attempted to explain events in terms of motivation, emotion, or cognition. Over the past decade, psychology has come to be viewed as a paradigmatic science; the new paradigm being the understanding of behavior in terms of cognitive representations.

This cognitive revolution has fostered a view of the passing of information back and forth between perceptual, memory, and motor components of an integrated system, known as the “computational metaphor.” With cognition as the new paradigm, can we expect that the explanatory scope of psychology will be clarified? Will a cognitive perspective be extended to phenomena that have traditionally fallen under the rubric of motivation and emotion?

The psychologists involved in this volume of the Nebraska Symposium address these questions specifically. Their contributions stimulate a hypothesis that the cognitive paradigm has begun to move psychology toward a “unified field theory” of behavior and experience.

Herbert A. Simon tests the limits of a pure information processing paradigm. A basic tenet of this theoretical approach is that information exists independent of the medium by which it is represented. By analyzing the information processing capabilities of nonbiological systems, or “artificial intelligence,” we may determine which aspects of motivation and emotion require the biological substrate of cognition.

Muriel D. Lezak raises a similar question by focusing on the biological substrate itself and by analyzing the constraints and determinations that it imposes. Howard Gardner considers the medium and the information it processes; thus he lays a conceptual foundation for making the facts of biological brain science congruent with the richness of human behavior and experience.

Cover of Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 1990, Volume 38
Appearing on the hundredth anniversary of the teaching of psychology at the University of Nebraska, this volume represents a return to an earlier preoccupation with motivation and reflects a resurgence of interest in it. Eight professionals in psychology discuss the many sides of motivation. Mortimer Appley, president emeritus of Clark University, sees equilibrium, or homeostasis, as the fundamental motivational process. Douglas Derryberry and Don M. Tucker of the University of Oregon present a broad and basic model of motivation, viewing it as a product of the evolution and neural architecture of the human brain. Carole S. Dweck of Columbia University approaches personality development through motivational concepts, in particular goals related to self-image. Bernard Weiner of the University of California, Los Angeles, discusses the importance of one’s perception of control over the causes of a situation or problem and over its management or solution. Albert Bandura of Stanford University is concerned with short- and long-term goals as they are affected by emotional states and a sense of self-efficacy. Similarly, Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan of the University of Rochester consider the bearing of self-determination on motivation and achievement.

Cover of Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 1986, Volume 34
Alcohol and drug abuse are among the gravest and most widespread problems clinical psychologists must treat. Though the problems seem perennial, diagnosis and treatment have been steadily refined, allowing professional psychologists to assess more variables and to offer more effective help. This volume surveys the latest advances in research and therapy and reconsiders standard treatment practices.

The contributors to Alcohol and Addictive Behavior, all of them established professionals, focus on such key issues as the effect of addiction on the family, the influence of genetics, and the source of alcohol and drug craving. Much of what they report is based on new and ongoing research that should have considerable influence in the future treatment of alcohol and substance abusers.

The contents include: “What Do Behavioral Scientists Know—and What Can They Do—about Alcoholism” by Peter E. Nathan, Rutgers University; “The Four Alcoholisms: A Developmental Account of the Etiological Process” by Robert A. Zucker, Michigan State University; “Antecedents and Consequences of Drinking and Drinking Patterns in Women: Patterns from a U.S. National Survey” by Richard W. Wilsnack, University of North Dakota School of Medicine; “Alcoholism: A Family Interaction Perspective” by Theodore Jacob, University of Pittsburgh, Biological Markers for Alcoholism: A Vulnerability Model Conceptualization” by Shirley Y. Hill, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine; and “The Motivation to Use Drugs: A Psychobiological Analysis of Urges” by Timothy B. Baker, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Cover of Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 1984, Volume 32
Gender, an important concept in psychology, is brought into sharp focus in the 1984 Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, which presents important new findings in eight papers, four dealing with sex differences and four with gender as a variable. 

The papers on sex differences with Ann Anastasi's "Reciprocal Relations between Cognitive and Affective Development—with Implications for Sex Differences," in which the author relates aptitudes about the sex appropriateness of behaviors to attitudes and task performance. The effects of prenatal sex hormones on gender identity and gender-role behavior are the subject of the next paper, "Gender Differences: A Biosocial Perspective" by Anke A. Ehrhardt. In "Gender Identity and Its Implications for the Concepts of Masculinity and Femininity," Janet T. Spence proposes a new theoretical approach to the meanings of "femininity" and "masculinity." "Sex Differences in Achievement Patterns" are Jacquelynne Eccles's concern in her paper.

Gender is now studied as a variable in all areas of psychology, several of which are represented in the next four papers. The concept is viewed in the light of attribution theory by Virginia E. O'Leary and Ranald D. Hansen in "Sex as an Attributional Fact." Sandra Lipsitz Bem, in "Androgeny and Gender Schema Theory: A Conceptual and Empirical Integration," reviews her studies of gender-schematic processing and offers strategies for parents who wish to raise gender-schematic children in a gender-schematic society. Joan C. Martin's "Perinatal Psychoactive Drug Use: Effects on Gender, Development, and Function in Offspring" focuses on the sex-ratio effects of nicotine, alcohol, and barbiturates on the offspring of rats to whom those drugs were administered during their pregnancy. Differential effects on women and men of cultural attitudes about obesity are the subject of "Women and Weight: A Normative Discontent" by Judith Rodin, Lisa Silberstein, and Ruth Striegel-Moore.

An introduction by Theo B. Sonderegger, professor of psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, places the papers in the context of research on sex differences and gender as a variable.

Cover of Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 1994, Volume 42
The question of whether personal gratification is compatible with social good is one of the fundamental problems of motivation. The family, an institution that has undergone extraordinary change in the last generation, is perhaps the most profound context in which to consider this issue. This volume is tinged with prophetic concern about the state of contemporary family life and about the (un)likelihood of reconciling individual family members’ interests with those of the family as a whole. The nine contributors’ backgrounds are diverse—anthropology, economics, law, and clinical, community, developmental, and social psychology—and their positions on the nature of motivation in families vary widely. Their views are often disquieting and sometimes conflicting as they offer provocative analyses of divorce, family violence, political transitions, and concerns of both Western and non-Western cultures.

Cover of Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 1998, Volume 46
In this volume, the concept of motivation is used to shed light on a range of complex issues surrounding the maltreatment of children. Cathy Spatz Widom investigates the role of motivation in the intergenerational transmission of violence, where victimized children themselves become perpetrators of violence as adults. Joel S. Milner looks at the way abusive parents process social information related to children. The biological, psychological, and social-contextual regulatory processes in maltreated children are considered by Dante Cicchetti and Sheree L. Toth. Deborah Daro discusses the current status of efforts to eliminate maltreatment of children and offers an alternative model for approaching the concept and practice of prevention. John R. Lutzker addresses the challenges of and procedures for applied research on the treatment of abusive parents. In his concluding essay Ross A. Thompson highlights the important themes focusing on child maltreatment that underlie this volume.

Cover of Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 1996, Volume 44
Motivational concepts pervade the classic theories of delinquency. And yet, there has been little detailed analysis of the relationship between motivation and delinquency. In this 44th volume of the Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, a group of leading scholars in a broad range of fields make up for that scholarly negligence, giving explicit and systematic attention to the subject. Joan McCord opens the volume by considering fundamental questions about relationships between motivation, explanation, blame, and free will, thereby developing a base from which she poses a theory of motivation for crime. Michael Rutter and colleagues review findings concerning factors ranging from social organization to behavioral genetics; throughout, they grapple with various forms of delinquency, from common misbehavior to persistent personality disorder. Gerald Patterson and Karen Yoeger’s chapter on late-onset delinquency extends their influential work and illustrates the application of behaviorist psychology that Patterson has been developing for over twenty years. James Tedeschi examines juvenile delinquency from the perspective of his social interactionist theory of violence; this theory, based on the social psychology of interdependence, construes violence as a coercive attempt at social influence. Finally, Karen Heimer and Ross Matsueda compare the study of delinquency by social psychologists in the fields of psychology and sociology and present their own symbolic interactionist theory of delinquency.

Cover of Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 1985, Volume 33
The effect of the law on human behavior is contemporary society—nothing less is the concern of this important book. It is curious that scholars in psychology and law have largely neglected this topic because studies of the effects of law on behavior may have much to teach about the role of social regulation in human motivation more generally. Similarly, such studies may offer jurisprudential scholars new ways of thinking about the role of law in human experience. Here seven leading experts on law and the social sciences discuss the contributions their research c an make to the legal system. Concerned with the relationship between the law and both individual and group behavior, they examine the law as an instrument of social stasis and social change and as an element of personal motivation. The result is a major step toward the development of a psychology of jurisprudence. The scope of this book is in the best tradition of the Nebraska Symposium on Motivation and a fitting celebration of the tenth anniversary of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Law/Psychology Program, the first integrated graduate training program in psycho-legal studies. Drawing from law, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and philosophy, the contributors take a truly interdisciplinary approach to understanding the instrumentality of law.

Cover of Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 1995, Volume 43
Modern conceptualization of the multidimensional nature of anxiety, panic, and fear are examined from a variety of perspectives, including theories of emotion and cognition, neuropsychology, and conditioning.

Carroll E. Izard and Eric A. Youngstrom open with a review of Differential Emotions Theory. In the second chapter, Jeffrey A. Gray and Neil McNaughton summarize and update Gray's neuropsychological theory of anxiety. Susan Mineka and Richard Zinbarg consider what modern conditioning theory contributes to the understanding of emotion, and Richard J. McNally offers an overview of the application of experimental cognitive paradigms to fear, panic, and anxiety.

The volume concludes with a new version of David H. Barlow's theory of emotional disorders. Barlow, Bruce F. Chorpita, and Julia Turovsky draw from work on emotion, neurophysiology, attributions, learning, ethology, attention, and child development to describe how the inappropriate activation of fear (e.g., a panic attack) can trigger events that may eventually become a clinical anxiety disorder.

Perspectives on Anxiety, Panic, and Fear confirms that anxiety, panic, and fear are complex phenomena requiring a multidimensional approach that ranges from neuroanatomy to conditioning.

Cover of Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 2001, Volume 48
In what ways do individuals influence the course of their lives? How do people construct a unique life path within the opportunities and constraints afforded by their world?

This volume examines how agency in the life course can be conceptualized and investigates the specific ways in which personal characteristics and contextual variables play a role in shaping individual lives. The contributors offer differing perspectives on agency, how its expression changes over a lifetime, and how it is constrained, channeled, or altered by cultural and social institutions.

Each chapter focuses on one aspect of individual agency that can have a cumulative influence on an individual's life. Following an overview of the subject by Lisa J. Crockett, Jochen Brandtstädter and Klaus Rothermund provide a life-span model of agency focused on "intentional self-development" and goal accommodation. Ellen Skinner and Kathleen Edge discuss the development of coping, a potential underpinning of agency. In a concluding essay, Michael J. Shanahan and Glen H. Elder Jr. examine agency within a life-course framework, showing that the impact of individual agency on people's lives depends on the opportunities and constraints present during a particular historical era.

Cover of Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, Volume 51
Moral Motivation through the Life Span is the fifty-first volume in the Nebraska Symposium on Motivation series, the longest continuously running symposium in the field of psychology. This work focuses on moral development theory and research, an area of academic study that began early in the twentieth century but has never before been addressed by the Symposium. What is morality, such theorists ask, and what exactly makes a "moral person"? The contributors to this volume are of diverse theoretical orientations and take different stances on a number of major themes: What motivates moral behavior? Are there certain universal moral values, or are such values always subjective? Does an individual's will or an individual's environment play a greater role in determining moral conduct? What influence can we attribute to spirituality? Finally, the contributors explore the practical applications of their research on moral motivation: What implications do such theories have for child-rearing or our educational system? How do we raise the next generation to be empathetic toward their fellow human beings?

Cover of Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 1993, Volume 41
Psychological theory has traditionally attempted to explain events in terms of motivation, emotion, or cognition. Over the past decade, psychology has come to be viewed as a paradigmatic science; the new paradigm being the understanding of behavior in terms of cognitive representations.

This cognitive revolution has fostered a view of the passing of information back and forth between perceptual, memory, and motor components of an integrated system, known as the “computational metaphor.” With cognition as the new paradigm, can we expect that the explanatory scope of psychology will be clarified? Will a cognitive perspective be extended to phenomena that have traditionally fallen under the rubric of motivation and emotion?

The psychologists involved in this volume of the Nebraska Symposium address these questions specifically. Their contributions stimulate a hypothesis that the cognitive paradigm has begun to move psychology toward a “unified field theory” of behavior and experience.

Herbert A. Simon tests the limits of a pure information processing paradigm. A basic tenet of this theoretical approach is that information exists independent of the medium by which it is represented. By analyzing the information processing capabilities of nonbiological systems, or “artificial intelligence,” we may determine which aspects of motivation and emotion require the biological substrate of cognition.

Muriel D. Lezak raises a similar question by focusing on the biological substrate itself and by analyzing the constraints and determinations that it imposes. Howard Gardner considers the medium and the information it processes; thus he lays a conceptual foundation for making the facts of biological brain science congruent with the richness of human behavior and experience.

Cover of Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 1988, Volume 36
Variations in childhood development are nowhere more conspicuous or important than in the development and expression of emotions. A child’s capacity to understand another’s feelings, to experience guilt or shame, to manipulate others emotionally, to anticipate the response of parents to displays of anger of distress, to exercise emotional control—all of these are aspects of socioemotional development. A concern with it is reflected in the efforts of researchers to understand the long-term consequences of the parent-infant attachment, the effects of maltreatment on young children, the influence of congenital disorders on their social and emotional functioning, and the origins of depression. Thus the topic of socioemotional development has far-reaching and fascinating applications to everyday life, as the essays in this volume reveal.

In Socioemotional Development leading scholars approach the topic from diverse perspectives, summarizing findings and discussing original research. They also address a number of broad developmental concerns: What are the lasting effects of early influence? What can account for the long-term consistency of individual characteristics? What are the origins of psychological disorders? To what extent is emotional experience socially constructed? How does biology affect emotion?

The contributors and their works are Carol Z. Malatesta, “The Role of Emotions in the Development and Organization of Personality”; Inge Bretherton, “Open Communication and Internal Working Models: Their Role in the Development of Attachment Relationships”; Carolyn Saarni, “Emotional Competence: How Emotions and Relationships Become Integrated”: Carolyn Zahn-Waxler and Grazyna Kochanska, “The Origins of Guilt”; Dante Cicchetti, “The Organization and Coherence of Socioemotional, Cognitive, and Representational Development: Illustrations through a Developmental Psychopathology Perspective on Down’s Syndrome and Child Maltreatment.”

Cover of Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 1987, Volume 35
The study of animal behavior throws light on everything said to be “natural”: social and family relations, mating, communication, and learning. Comparative Perspectives in Modern Psychology illustrates that human behavior is best understood through a method of comparative psychology, based on evolutionary theory that views behavior as the result of the complex interplay of genetics and environment.

Contents include: “The Comparative Psychology of Monogamy” by Donald A. Dewsbury; “Coming to Terms with the Everyday Language of Comparative Psychology” by Meredith J. West and Andrew P. King; “The Darwinian Psychology of Discriminative Parental Solicitude” by Martin Daly and Margo Wilson; “A Comparative Approach to Vocal Communication” by Charles T. Snowdon; “A New Look at Ape Language: Comprehension of Vocal Speech and Syntax” by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh; “A Synthetic Approach to the Study of Animal Intelligence” by Alan C. Kamil.

Cover of Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 1992, Volume 40
Some of the best current work on the development of motivation is presented in this fortieth volume of the Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. The diverse approaches for conceptualizing and studying motivational development psychology that extends the traditional area of achievement motivation. Some major themes emerge: the conceptualization of the self, the internal and external factors that affect development of motivations, and the choices that result from one's motivations. Richard Ryan's opening chapter places the entire work in context by describing historical and theoretical perspectives on developmental and psychosocial models used to understand motivation. Mihaly Csikszentmihaly and Kevin Rathunde also focus on intrinsic motivation, but with a greater focus on "flow," the experience of full involvement with an activity. Susan Harter discusses the roles of the I-self and the me-self research models. Jacquelynne S. Eccles stresses the link between the social contexts of family and school and the motivational constructs related to achievement and choice of activity. Laura L. Carstensen maintains Eccles's focus on the importance of choice of activity, but concentrates on the later stages in life when social contact declines as a result of changing social and emotional motivations. The volume concludes with a summary analyzing the contributors' descriptions of the diverse but complementary aspects of developmental processes and theory.

Cover of Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 2000, Volume 47
Recent media coverage of the controversial theory of sexual violence as a product of biological evolution has once again brought the question of the origins of human motivation into the public eye. In this volume, leading scholars in behavioral studies examine the value of evolutionary perspectives in understanding psychological motivations. Beginning with the fundamental fact that humans are part of the biological world, evolutionary psychologists contend that human motivations and mental processes should be understood as by-products of natural selection. By viewing human psychology—both normal and abnormal—within this framework, evolutionary psychologists intend to bridge the disciplinary divide between traditional psychology and fields such as biology.

Cover of Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 1991, Volume 39
The prestigious group of scholars assembled for this thirty-ninth volume of the Nebraska Symposium on Motivation address important issues in "Psychology and Aging." In the first chapter, James E. Birren and Laurel M. Fisher consider slowness of behavior as a general condition often associated with advancing age and explore its implications of a wide range of hierarchical functions. In succeeding chapters Martha Storandt assesses memory-skills training for older adults, and Irene Mackintosh Hulicka offers, in a previously unpublished G. Stanley Hall lecture, cogent reasons for teaching about aging in psychology classes and procedures for doing so.

Challenging the view that cognitive aging is identical with decline, Paul B. Baltes, Jacqui Smith, and Ursula Staudinger adopt the hypothesis of simultaneous growth and decline and relate it to wisdom. Trait psychology is discussed by Paul T. Costa, Jr., and Robert R. McCrae, who review the most recent advances and present new data from longitudinal studies. K. Warner Schaie and his colleagues describe problems and methods of studying natural cohorts within a longitudinal study and report the first data on adult parent-offspring similarity determined as a function of the age of the pair when studied. A commentary chapter by Ross A. Thompson concludes the volume.