Behavioural Theories

Applied to Online Communities

(Social Psychology)

Presented by: Nanfang Zhao

 Topics
● Theories of Motivation
● Community Effort in Online
Groups
● Social Comparison
● Persuasion for Advertisement
Theories of Motivation
 Motivation Models
● Basic model
● Needs(certain needs or wants) -> Behavior(to do
certain things) -> Satifaction(satisfy those needs) ...
● Variation(from an experimenter's or manager's point of view)
● Needs -> Behavior -> Rewards -> Satisfaction
Maslow Theory
 Maslow Theory
. Five levels:physiological, safety, belongingness,esteem,self-actualization
. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is predetermined in order of importance.It is often
depicted as a pyramid consisting of five levels: the lowest level is associated
with physiological needs, while the uppermost level is associated with self-
actualization needs, particularly those related to identity and purpose. The
higher needs in this hierarchy only come into focus when the lower needs in the
pyramid are met. Once an individual has moved upwards to the next level,
needs in the lower level will no longer be prioritized. If a lower set of needs is no
longer being met, the individual will temporarily re-prioritize those needs by
focusing attention on the unfulfilled needs, but will not permanently regress to
the lower level. For instance, a businessman at the esteem level who is
diagnosed with cancer will spend a great deal of time concentrating on his
health (physiological needs), but will continue to value his work performance
(esteem needs) and will likely return to work during periods of remission
.Do all physiological needs including sex have to be satisfied before "higher"
needs?
.Does Maslow's classification really reflect the order in which needs are
satisfied?
 Alderfer's ERG Theory
● Existence needs (physical well-being) -> Relatedness needs (satisfactory
relations with others) -> Growth needs (development of competence and
realization of potential)
● Alderfer’s ERG Theory of motivation was developed by
Clayton Paul Alderfer. He further expanded Maslow's hierarchy of needs by
categorizing the hierarchy into his ERG theory of motivation
● Categorized the lower order physiological and safety needs into the
Existence category
● Fittted Maslow's interpersonal love and esteem needs into the Relatedness
category
● Growth category contained the self actualization and self esteem needs
● when needs in a higher category are not met then individuals redouble the
efforts invested in a lower category need. For example if self actualization or
self esteem is not met then individuals will invest more effort in the
relatedness category in the hopes of achieving the higher need
 Acquired Needs Theory
Three-Need Theory or Learned Need Theory

● Need are shaped over time by our experiences over time. Most of these fall into three
general categories of needs:

• Achievement (nAch)

• Affiliation (nAff)

• Power (nPow)
● People will tend have one of these needs that affects us more powerfully than others
and thus affects our behaviors
● Achievers seek to excel and appreciate frequent recognition of how well they are
doing. They will avoid low risk activities that have no chance of gain. They also
will avoid high risks where there is a significant chance of failure
● Affiliation seekers look for harmonious relationships with other people. They will
thus tend to conform and shy away from standing out. The seek approval rather
than recognition
● Power seekers want power either to control other people (for their own goals) or
to achieve higher goals (for the greater good). They seek neither recognition nor
approval from others -- only agreement and compliance
 Cognitive Evalution Theory
● There are actually two motivation systems: intrinsic and extrinsic that
correspond to two kinds of motivators:
● intrinsic motivators: Achievement, responsibility and competence.
motivators that come from the actual performance of the task or
job -- the intrinsic interest of the work
● extrinsic: pay, promotion, feedback, working conditions -- things
that come from a person's environment, controlled by others.
● For a given individual, one of these may be a more powerful motivator
than another.
● If people think they will be able to complete the task, they will be
intrinsically motivated to complete the task, requiring no further
external motivation. So When you ask someone to do something, if
you want them to be motivated then ensure that it falls within their
current level of competency
 Two Factor Theory
Herzberg's motivation-hygiene theory

● Two kinds of factors affect motivation, and they do it in different ways:

● Hygiene factors(determining dissatisfaction. e.g. status, job security,
salary and fringe benefits). Which do not give positive satisfaction,
although dissatisfaction results from their absence. These are extrinsic
to the work itself, and include aspects such as company policies,
supervisory practices, or wages/salary
● Motivators(determine satisfaction. e.g. challenging work, recognition,
responsibility). Which give positive satisfaction, arising from intrinsic
conditions of the job itself, such as recognition, achievement, or personal
growth .
● Job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction acted independently of each other.
Two Factor Theory states that there are certain factors in the workplace that
cause job satisfaction, while a separate set of factors cause dissatisfaction
● hygiene factors are needed to ensure an employee is not dissatisfied.
Motivation factors are needed in order to motivate an employee to higher
performance
 Equity Theory
● Equity Theory: people's motivation results from a ratio of ratios: a person
compares the ratio of reward to effort with the comparable ratio of reward to
effort that they think others are getting.
● Equity Theory consists of four propositions:
● Individuals seek to maximize their outcomes
● Groups can maximize collective rewards by developing accepted
systems for equitably apportioning rewards and costs among members
● When individuals find themselves participating in inequitable
relationships, they become distressed. The more inequitable the
relationship, the more distress individuals feel. According to equity
theory, both the person who gets “too much” and the person who gets
“too little” feel distressed
● Individuals who perceive that they are in an inequitable relationship
attempt to eliminate their distress by restoring equit
 Reinforcement Theory
● People seek out and remember information that provides cognitive support
for their pre-existing attitudes and beliefs. The main assumption that guides
this theory is that people do not like to be wrong and often feel
uncomfortable when their beliefs are challenged
● Four types of Operant Conditioning:
● Positive reinforcement. Strengthening a behavior(e.g: bonus for good
job). Result: raise above baseline
● Negative reinforcement. Strengthening a behavior(e.g: sanctions
removed from countries when their human rights records improve).
Result: raise up to baseline
● Extinction. Weakening a behavior. (e.g:If person does extra effort, but
gets no thanks for it, they stop doing it.). Result: stay at baseline
● Punishment. Weakening a behavior.(e.g: having your pay docked for
lateness.). Result: bring down below baseline
 Expectancy Theory(Vroom)
● This theory emphasizes the needs for organizations to relate rewards directly to
performance and to ensure that the rewards provided are those rewards deserved
and wanted by the recipients
● motivation = expectancy * instrumentality * valence(M = E*I*V)
● Motivation: The amount a person will be motivated by the situation they find
themselves in
● Eexpectancy: The person's perception that effort will result in performance.
● Instrumentality: The person's perception that performance will be
rewarded/punished.
● Valence: The perceived strength of the reward or punishment that will result from
the performance.
● Expectancy theory predicts that employees in an organization will be motivated when they
believe that:
● putting in more effort will yield better job performance
● better job performance will lead to organizational rewards, such as an increase in salary or
benefits
● these predicted organizational rewards are valued by the employee in question.
 Community
Effort in Online
Groups: Who
Does the Work
and Why?
 Topics
● Conditions to keep online group alive
● Online group roles
● Motivation of Contributors
● Factors affecting community building
● Results
Conditions to keep online groups alive

● Necessary tools and technical infrastructure which

make online group communication possible and
support the group’s interactions with the outside
world
● Mailing lists. To allow members to send email
messages to all group members
● Electronic bulletin boards. To post messages
on a designated group location where others
can read and comment on those messages.
● Others: real-time chat, group message
archives, etc.
● Infrastructure administration: Installing and
maintaining the basic systems, developing
Conditions to keep online groups alive

● Necessary social behaviors which sustains groups over

time
● Member's Skills in managing software versions,
keeping address files up to date, and so on.
● Social dynamics management: Letting newcomers
know the norms, managing disputes, discouraging
use of the infrastructure, chastising those who
engage in inappropriate behavior
● Members recruitment: Online groups die without new
members to replace those who leave. explicit effort
must be made to attract and inform people outside
about the benefits of becoming involved
● Active participation: Active participation by providing
 Online group roles

● Owner(administrator, host ): A person to take a

formal leadership role
● Community building
● Taking action to limit undesirable behavior
● Add or remove members
● Assign duties to other members
● Allow or reject posting
● General participants
● Silent participants
● Active participants
 Motivations of Contributors

● Obtaining information: Gain access to

otherwise obscure or inaccessible
information that is relevant to their work;
Receive answers to specific questions or
general knowledge
● Building social relationships
● Providing opportunities for people to be
visible(visibility may have direct
economic and professional payoffs in
work-related online groups)
● Altruistic: contributors value the
 Results
● Community building requires significant expenditures of time
and effort(average of almost four hours a week and a
maximum of 31 hours)
● Owners did not differ significantly from either silent or active
participants on the total time they expended in community
building work(Owners did significantly more of the active
work of infrastructure maintenance, social control, and
external promotion work than other members did. They did
not differ from other members, however, in the time they
devoted to reading messages and encouraging other
members )
● Owners valued different community benefits than other
members, and perceived altruistic benefits to be significantly
more important and information benefits to be significantly
less important than other members
● People who valued altruistic benefits were more like to
 Results
● Formal leadership role, personal and community
benefits, and community characteristics
influence the effort members put into helping
their online groups
● Owners, who have a formal leadership role, do
more of the effortful community building work
than do regular members
● Members who value different benefits are likely
to contribute to the development on an online
community in different ways
Social Comparison
 Social Comparison Process
● A term referring the process through which
people come to know themselves by evaluating
their own attitudes, abilities, and beliefs in
comparison with others. In most cases, we try
to compare ourselves to those in our peer
group or with whom we are similar. There are
two kinds of social comparison. Upward social
comparison is when we compare ourselves with
those who we believe are better than us.
Downward social comparison is when we
compare themselves to others who are worse
off that ourselve
 Social comparison theory
● A theory initially proposed by social psychologist Leon
Festinger in 1954. This theory explains how individuals
evaluate their own opinions and desires by comparing
themselves to others
● There is a drive within individuals to look to outside
images in order to evaluate their own opinions and
abilities. These images may be a reference to physical
reality or in comparison to other people. People look to
the images portrayed by others to be obtainable and
realistic, and subsequently, make comparisons among
themselves, others and the idealized images.
 Assumptions

● Humans have a drive to evaluate themselves by examining their opinions

and abilities in comparison to others
● There is an upward drive towards achieving greater abilities, but that there
are non-social restraints which make it nearly impossible to change them,
and that this is largely absent in opinions
● A shift in the importance of a comparison group will increase pressure
towards uniformity with that group. However, if the person, image or
comparison group is too divergent from the evaluator, the tendency to
narrow the range of comparability becomes stronger
● The distance from the mode of the comparison group will affect the
tendencies of those comparing; that those who are closer will have stronger
tendencies to change than those who are further away
 Models for Social Comparison
● Proxy model. If a person is successful or
familiar with a task, then he or she would also
be successful at a new similar task(Future
performance in some domain can be predicted
by comparing with a proxy who has already
completed the task of interest.)
● Triadic Model: people with similar attributes and
opinions will be relevant to each other and
therefore influential to each other
 Types of Comparisons
● Upward social comparison. Individuals compare
themselves to others who are deemed socially
above them in some way. People intentionally
compare themselves with others so that they
can make their self-views more positive.
● Downward social comparison: A defensive
tendency to evaluate oneself with a comparison
group whose troubles are more serious than
one's own
 Self-Enhancement
● Self-Enhancement: A longitudinal investigation showed that self-
enhancement by social comparison (assessing whether people
perceive themselves more positively than they perceive others)
was prospectively related to an increase in self-reported
adjustment, controlling for the effects of narcissism. Better
adjustment, including higher self-esteem, was not prospectively
related to an increase in self-enhancement. The investigation
also included a diary period, allowing the assessment of
intrasubject covariation between daily reports of self-esteem
and daily reports of perceived challenge and daily events
(positive or negative). High (compared to low) self-enhancers
were less likely to report lower self-esteem under higher
challenge and less likely to report higher self-esteem under
positive events.
 Cognitive Consistency,
Persuasion for Advertisement
 Cognitive Consistency
Innate human tendency to seek out stimuli that are consistent
with one's beliefs and attitudes and to censor or limit one's
exposure to stimuli that are inconsistent with beliefs and
attitudes. For example, a Detroit autoworker is likely to read
articles that extol the virtues of U.S.-built cars and will avoid
reading articles that are critical of U.S. Cars or that praise
foreign cars. By doing so, uncomfortable feelings associated
with contradictory information, known as cognitive dissonance
, are avoided
 Persuasion
Persuasion is a form of social influence. It is the process
of guiding people and oneself toward the adoption of an
idea, attitude, or action by rational and symbolic (though
not always logical) means. It is a strategy of problem-
solving relying on "appeals" rather than coercion.
According to Aristotle, "Rhetoric is the art of discovering,
in a particular case, the available means of persuasion."
 Principles of Persuasion
● Reciprocity - People tend to return a favor. Thus, the pervasiveness of free samples in
marketing and advertising
● Commitment and Consistency - Once people commit to what they think is right, orally or in
writing, they are more likely to honor that commitment, even if the original incentive or
motivation is subsequently removed
● Social Proof - People will do things that they see other people are doing. For example, in one
experiment, one or more confederates would look up into the sky; bystanders would then look
up into the sky to see what they were seeing. At one point this experiment aborted, as so many
people were looking up that they stopped traffic. See conformity, and the Asch conformity
experiments
● Authority - People will tend to obey authority figures, even if they are asked to perform
objectionable acts.
● Liking - People are easily persuaded by other people whom they like. People were more likely to
buy if they liked the person selling it to them.
● Scarcity - Perceived scarcity will generate demand. For example, saying offers are available for
a "limited time only" encourages sales.
 Advertising
● Advertising is a form of communication used to
influence individuals to purchase products or services
or support political candidates or ideas. Frequently it
communicates a message that includes the name of
the product or service and how that product or service
could potentially benefit the consumer. Advertising
often attempts to persuade potential customers to
purchase or to consume a particular brand of product
or service.
 ADVERTISING STRATEGIES
● Objective: States what you would like to convince consumers to feel or do as a result
of the advertising execution. This statement should be the central, singular
marketplace problem facing the brand.
● Target Audience: Who is your prime prospect/customer? (Include age, gender and
any other pertinent demographic/psycho-graphic information and/or lifestyle
explanation of who your target customers are.)
● Key Consumer Benefit: Must go beyond "Cleans your windows" or "Tastes great."
What (singular) thought/belief about consumers' lives, brand feelings, category
assumptions, hopes, dreams, expectations, worries, cultural beliefs, etc., will cause a
strong reaction and get the target's attention?
● Reason to Believe: Which one or two product attributes will persuade the consumer
to believe the product will deliver the promised benefits? In other words, what is the
single most important fact,angle, direction, sentiment or emotion that can be
communicated in order to meet business objectives/solve the problem?
● Proof: Provide support.
● Tone and Manner: Affects the setting, look and feel of the execution.Must be relevant
to the target audience to drive the message.
 Two approaches to persuasion in
advertising
● Rational persuasion taps into consumers' thinking
side. It tells them about the benefits of the product and
why they should buy it.
● Emotional advertising taps into consumers' feeling
side. It shows them the benefits of the product through
drama and relies on them being so involved with the
characters and finding the story so relevant that it will
hit an emotional chord. Emotional advertising is much
more indirect in its persuasion