Summary: Why People Behave The Way They Do

Assignment 1: Why People Behave the Way They Do
The article by Dr. Clawson introduces basic ideas about what motivates people and suggests under what conditions people find favorable enough to be productive. I found this article interesting because I currently manage a few people at my job who are a few years younger than me and by understanding what they’re thinking or the reasoning behind their decisions I can hopefully become a better leader. Dr. Clawson mentions that effective leaders understand why the people they are trying to influence behave the way they do and go beyond just giving orders.
Dr. Clawson describes how people develop their personalities as soon as they are born. In the first 3 to 6 months of life, the individual becomes

One reason that the reward/punishment model does not always explain human behavior well is that one person’s reward may be another person’s punishment. “Expectancy theory gives us a partial answer to this question in that it suggests that people are motivated to do things that they expect they can do and when they can expect to receive a reward that they value, but are not motivated if they do not value the reward.” (Clawson 8) So in other words, employees will be motivated to perform their best if they think it will receive reward like a bonus, salary increase, or promotion. (Robbins 224) Managers should not be managing people but rather the inputs and outputs to people, making sure that the desirable outputs were being rewarded and the undesirable outputs were being ignored or punished.
The Rational-Emotive-Behavior Model (REB) considers the genetic and memetic endowments and our nurtured tendencies to help explain why people behave the way they do and give us some practical tools to begin thinking about how to work with, how to communicate with, and how to lead others. (Clawson 10) Albert Ellis, the founder of REB, discovered that people’s beliefs affected their emotional functioning. (Jorn) The model provides leaders with another way to understand human behavior and its motivations to lead more

(Clawson 14) When we see something, we immediately compare it to our VABEs. If what we observe matches our VABEs, then everything is fine and we let it be. If it doesn’t match our VABEs, then there is problem and we will try to change it. We also have the capacity to observe and judge ourselves. We compare what we believe we should be with what we see ourselves doing. The conclusions from our judgements can convince us that we are or are not something that we stop trying to do anything