2

FUNDAMENTALS OF BEHAVIOUR

Cognition, Conation, and Affect

When we study behaviour, the terms ‘cognitive’, ‘conative‘, and ‘affective’ tend to figure in many places.¹ Though all of them are related to the mind, they operate differently. Contemporary studies indicate that a particular way of behaving can be linked to some neural functioning in the brain. Modern techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can detect where, in the brain, these activities take place. Let us try to understand these terms.

Cognition

Cognition refers to mental abilities such as knowledge, attention, and memory. It also includes reasoning, problem-solving, and comprehension. These terms would be familiar to most of us, who have written competitive examinations. We also hear of terms such as cognitive science, cognitive engineering, and social cognition. The term ‘cognition’, in psychology and OB, refers to the ability of the brain to process information. This ability may be conscious or subconscious. The essence is that the brain is involved in an information processing mode and tends to answer ‘what’.² The term ‘social cognition’ also figures in the study of OB. This refers to an individual’s information-processing capability related to attitudes, group dynamics, and attribution of various behaviours.³ As we go along the study of OB, this term will figure often. For example, you might read in this book that attitude formation or perception has a cognitive component. At that time, you should remember that the term refers to information processing, and is generally associated with the question of ‘what’. For example, it helps us to answer what happened, what is going on, or what is the meaning of information.⁴

 

Cognition refers to mental abilities such as knowledge, attention, and memory.

Conation

Conation is another term that is related to human behaviour and OB. Though we do not find this term often in this book, it is important to know the term. Conation is defined as the mental process that activates and/or directs behaviour and action. Various terms used to represent some aspect of conation include intrinsic motivation, goal-orientation, volition, will, self-direction, and self-regulation.⁹ You will encounter these terms often in this book. For instance, we will discuss how vision and goal-orientation would affect behaviour, why intrinsic motivation matters, how self-directed teams perform better, and so on. Though we may not use the term ‘conative’ when we discuss these aspects, it is important to remember that it is conation which is the force that underlies these behaviours. Conation usually answers the question of ‘why’, that is, why we behave in a particular way.¹⁰ It is often referred to as the ‘vectored energy’ or personal energy that has both direction and magnitude. For instance, values result in self-regulated behaviour and have direction and magnitude. Some conative issues we face on an everyday basis are our purpose, how we make our actions congruent to that, our aspirations, goals, ideas, objectives, accomplishments, investment, and of course, our intentionality. People act by their own volition or intent unlike animals. Although animals also have intent for behaviour, human beings can act in contravention to their intent. For instance, intent to hit someone in self-defence can he held back by a human being. Therefore, the concept of conation has a unique role in OB. When we come across terms such as vision, goals, how they shape our behaviour, and so on, remember that conation is in operation.

 

Conation is defined as the mental process that activates and/or directs behaviour and action.

Affect

Affect refers to the feelings that originate from perceptions, information, or knowledge. It is generally associated with one’s attachment (positive or negative) to people, objects, ideas, etc., and is associated with the question ‘How do I feel about this knowledge or information?’⁵ Affect is displayed through facial expression, vocal expression, and gestures⁶; however, such expressions are rarely identifiable except when their valence, arousal, and motivational intensity are high enough.⁷ Valence means evaluation of something that a person experiences; for instance, feeling of love or hate. It follows that valence can be positive to negative. It can also be a subjective feeling, which is the consequence of an emotion. For example, after feeling angry, a person may express a feeling of dejection or a feeling of having energy or arousal to work harder. Arousal is the result of the sympathetic nervous system. This can be measured subjectively through self-report. For example, one can report how angry one feels by using words such as irritation, anger, or rage. Motivational intensity refers to the impulse to act. It represents the strength of the urge to respond. For instance, one can move towards a person who is abusing you with an urge to hit and silence the person, or move away from that person with an urge to avoid such a situation. It is the urge, and not the moving towards or away, that creates the intensity.

 

Affect refers to the feelings that originate from perceptions, information, or knowledge.

 

Affect cannot be completely disassociated from cognition. There is growing evidence that if an affect is high in motivational intensity, it reduces the scope of cognition. Anger, for example, limits a person’s cognitive scope. Similarly, if the motivational intensity is low, it broadens cognitive scope.⁸

What is Behaviour?

There is considerable variation in the way the term ‘behaviour’ is used. Freedictionary.com¹¹ defines it as ‘aggregate of all responses made by an organism in any situation and/or a specific response of a certain organism to a specific stimulus or group of stimuli.’ It elaborates behaviour as the action, reaction, or functioning of a system, under normal or specified circumstances. Levitis¹² evaluates many definitions of behaviour and suggests that behaviour can be defined at least in the following four ways:

• First is the approach of Beck et al. (1981)¹³. Beck defines behaviour as ‘externally visible activity of an animal, in which a coordinated pattern of sensory, motor, and associated neural activity responds to changing external or internal conditions’.
• Second is the approach of Starr and Taggart (1992)¹⁴. They define behaviour as ‘a response to external and internal stimuli, following integration of sensory, neural, endocrine, and ‘effector’ components. Behaviour has a genetic basis, hence is subject to natural selection, and it commonly can be modified through experience’.
• Third is the approach of Wallace et al (1991)¹⁵. Wallace defines behaviour as ‘observable activity of an organism; anything an organism does that involves action and/or response to stimulation’.
• Finally, Raven and Johnson (1989)¹⁶ define it as ‘what an animal does’.

If we evaluate these definitions, we find two commonalities. One, behaviour is a visible activity, and two, the activity takes place in response to a stimulus. Other issues that emerge are genetic basics, natural way of selecting and modification through experience.

 

Human behaviour is observable, deliberate, and preferred response. It is inherited, as also shaped by environment and developmental stages.

 

Keeping these in mind, we can define human behaviour as observable, deliberate, and preferred response of a person to stimuli, whether it is inherited, modified, learnt from the environment, and the social context, or imbibed through the developmental stages of human beings. Defining behaviour this way has the following advantages:

• This definition does not include the unobservable responses and therefore, obviates subjectivity. It brings in scientific rigour; that is, you should not judge a person based on assumptions such as ‘this person is internally angry even though he did not show any signs of anger’.
• It emphasises deliberate response and leaves out involuntary ones. The words ‘preferred response’ insulate occasional deviations.
• The definition acknowledges the role of heredity or biological basis, modification through training, and impact of environment, social context, and developmental stages.

The implications of this definition in organisation context are many. For instance, while selection of personnel who respond appropriately to organisational stimuli is important, it is equally important to recognise that the environment including organisational environment, social context and developmental stages of a person influence his/her behaviour in organisations. These realities compel us to see OB with ‘new eyes’.

Biological Basis of Behaviour ¹⁷

Under the head, ‘biological basis of behaviour’, we will discuss several aspects that affect behaviour, starting from neurons to the brain. This will enable you to appreciate the complexity, and the high degree of involuntary actions involved in our responses. This knowledge will form an excellent base for understanding several individual variables in OB such as personality, perception, attitude, and learning.

Understanding Neurological Sophistication of Human Beings

If you touch a hot surface, your hand would reflexively pull back, and so would the paw of your pet cat. If you hear a loud thud in your office, you would reflexively jump off your chair. On the other hand, if you see your irritable boss from far, you might find a way to avoid him or if someone pinches you in the office, you might cry, shout, tell that person to keep his/her hands off or suffer in silence. If you hit your pet cat hard a couple of times, it too will avoid you. These are observable. But they are not entirely reflexive, or entirely deliberate. You might go and complain about the person who pinched you to appropriate authority and press for action against that person. Though the cat too might go and mew around someone to register its complaint, it can hardly press for action. The differing responses of an octopus, cat, and man to a threat are governed by neurological sophistication, and this underscores the importance of studying the nervous system.

 

The differing responses of an octopus, cat, and man to a threat are governed by neurological sophistication, and this underscores the importance of studying the nervous system.

 

The study of the nervous system in human beings is quite difficult and complex. You need a working brain to study about the brain, and all of us know that we cannot experiment with a working human brain. Therefore, in earlier days, scientists used octopus, squids, and rats to study the nervous system. However, now they are able to use various types of brain scans to study the brain.

Neuron, the Basic Entity in the Nervous System

The neuron is the basic entity of the nervous system. It has many fibre tips called dendrite that branches out (see Figure 2.1). Each neuron has some 15,000 dendrites. Most neurons communicate only with another neuron, and this is done through axon, which is a long fibre that connects one neuron to another. Each axon has several axon terminals, much like the cables of a multi-pin that connects one computer to another device. The connecting point is called synapse (Small button like feature seen at the end of Axon Terminals in Figure 2.1). Interestingly, unlike the cable, the terminal buttons do not physically fit into the other neuron, but has a gap between it and the receiver neuron and this gap is called synaptic cleft (we will return to the purpose of this cleft later).

 

Neurons are the basic entity of the nervous system and they communicate with other neurons/sensory organs.

 

Though neurons usually communicate with only another neuron, some privileged neurons related to our sensory feelings can receive communication from external sources; for example, the neurons of the tongue which can capture taste, or neurons that receive light signals through the eye. Let us now see how the neurons transmit the impulses they pick up.

Role of Neurotransmitters in Transmitting Impulse/Stimuli

The transmission of the neural impulse generated due to simulation takes place through electrochemical force called neurotransmitters (see Figure 2.2). These chemical messengers are ions with either positive or negative charges, much like the charge in the cell of a battery. The positive charge is created by sodium and potassium and negative ones by chloride. Neurotransmitters (ions) are enclosed in a sac called synaptic vesicle and they exist both inside and outside the neuron. These positive and negative ions keep crossing the cell membrane of a neuron from outside to inside and vice versa. However, the flow of negative and positive ions is not identical. It is biased such that a neuron is generally negative when at rest. This state is called resting potential. It is akin to the potential energy stored in a battery. The important point to note is that the variations in the chemical charge result in transmission of impulse and in response/behaviour.

 

The transmission of the neural impulse generated due to simulation takes place through electrochemical force called neurotransmitters.

 

Reaction of Neurotransmitters When Stimulated

When you get angry with a person, do you shout at him/her, and then go away or do you go on shouting till it reaches a major confrontation? Well, a preferable behaviour is that you calm quickly after shouting. How do we do that? When a stimulus takes place, the vesicles containing the neurotransmitters move along the axon and arrive at the terminal button. Then the vesicle fuses with the membrane of the terminal button. This opens the membrane and the neurotransmitters are released into the synoptic cleft. Once they are into this cleft, some get attached to the membrane of the receiving cell and fuse into it, whereas others drift away and are inactivated by enzymes and re-enter the transmitting neuron.

 

Neurotransmitters communicate stimulus from one neuron to another systematically without getting overexcited.

 

Now you can see the role of synaptic cleft. Had the dendrite been fixed to another neuron cell much like the cable of a computer without the gap, it would not have been possible for some charges to drift away. The result would have been very high charge. Synaptic cleft prevents this.

The receptor neuron has specialised areas where it will allow the entry of charges sent by the donor neuron. If the charge hits areas which are not ready to absorb it, it simply cannot enter and the stimulus will die down. This means that there are two types of neurotransmitter messages—excitatory and inhibitory (those that will die down). If the neurotransmitters were to send only excitatory signals, the excitation would grow, reverberate, and become like a chain reaction in a nuclear bomb. In fact, the same phenomenon happens when a person suffers from a state of seizure or ‘fits’ as we often call it.

Once the ‘receiver cell’ receives sufficient neurotransmitters, its charge changes to less negative. This message eventually reaches the muscles which make the response. For instance, you may hit someone, yell at him/her or simply cool off. This is called behaviour. You can now appreciate the role of inhibitory messages. If the messages were only of excitatory nature, the stimulus that created anger would become progressively stronger, and you can well imagine the reaction of your muscles. Life in this world would have been impossible without the combination of excitatory and inhibitory messages.

All or None Rule

A neural impulse, which begins the transmission is like firing a gun. Either it fires or it does not. Therefore, either the impulse creates the transmission chain or it does not. This firing does not depend on the intensity of the stimulus. However, the number of times the repeated firing takes place depends on the intensity. This is an important factor in behaviour. For example, the intensity of the stimulation can result in continuous firing of the excitatory stimulus, leading to a person not only getting angry but also going into a rage. You can perhaps intuitively see that instant interference to calm a person (by others/by oneself) is vital to prevent the biological chain reaction from going out of control. When we do so, we are actually preventing repeated firing of the neural impulse.

Neurotransmitters and Their Influence on Behaviour

We have already seen that there are two types of neurotransmitter messages, and that they have to bind with their corresponding receptor, not just anywhere. It is like a lock and key. They have to match to be functional. Thus, neurotransmitters are fundamental to our behaviour and play a role from muscle movement to moods and mental health. This is the reason why we dwelt on the biology so much. Our biological make-up is largely due to our genes, and newer studies in evolutionary psychology ¹⁸ are throwing more light on the way our behaviour is controlled by the nervous system and genes. In the next decade or so, understanding the role of genes in behaviour can become fundamental to understanding OB. Perhaps now you can explain better why some workers of Maruti Suzuki, a reputed car manufacturing company in India, ransacked the office and injured several managers and stabbed to death an HR manager.¹⁹ You might call it a deliberate action by the workers; but no less is the role of excitatory signals.

 

Role of genes in behaviour is getting a new focus through studies in evolutionary psychology

Neurotransmitters are Chemicals and They can be Fooled

Although synaptic receptors of the neuron are sensitive to transmitters and are akin to a lock and key, often, they can be fooled by other chemicals much like a thief opening a lock. Let us look at the chemical nature of some of these neurotransmitters²⁰ and some chemicals that can fool the system.

 

Neurotransmitters are chemicals and presence of similar chemicals such as nicotine in our body can dupe them.

ACh ACh or acetylcholine is often called a model transmitter and is found throughout the nervous system²¹. It is the only transmitter that can communicate with the voluntary muscles. Without it, you cannot walk, run, type on a computer, or even eat. They also contribute towards attention, arousal, and memory processes. Those suffering from Alzheimer’s disease are seen to have abnormally low supply of ACh²². Since neurotransmitters are chemicals, there can be other chemicals that can mimic the transmitters. For example, if you smoke, nicotine that reaches your brain can mimic Ach and influence your response/behaviour. There can also be chemicals that oppose the neurotransmitter. One such chemical is curare. Many tribal people use curare extracted locally from plants to smear the tip of their arrows to immobilise their hunt. Curare opposes ACh, and this leads to the muscular movement getting blocked, and the animal getting paralyzed once the arrow penetrates it.

Biogenic Amines These are related to mental health/illness. This transmitter includes dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. Neurons use these to regulate muscular movements, physiological arousal, wakefulness, and feeling of pleasure and mood fluctuations. For example, those suffering from depression tend to have either lower level of norepinephrine or it might be that their norepinephrine has lesser sensitivity ²³. Schizophrenia is a disease which is attributed to dopamine, one of the biogenic amines. It leads to irrational thought, hallucinations, and poor contact with reality and deterioration of routine adaptive behaviour.

GABA Gamma-amino butyric acid or GABA is associated with anxiety.²⁴ If you have lower levels of GABA, you will be highly excited and this will end you up in anxiety. Tranquilisers, that we often use, are chemicals that boost GABA.

Endorphins Candace Pert, a neuroscience student, had a fall from horseback. To relieve her of pain, she was administered morphine, a drug extracted from opium. She became curious about the drug and her research led to the finding that morphine relieves pain by binding with receptors in the brain. Why would the brain have such receptors? It was found that the body secretes them to control pain and also to regulate pleasure and hunger. Can the body then get addicted to its own opiate substance? Yes indeed; but fortunately, as we saw earlier, excess endorphins are digested by enzymes so that you do not get addicted to your natural neurotransmitter.

We touched upon the key neurotransmitters because most behaviour is regulated by them.²⁵ Though science has learnt a great deal about them, our knowledge is still very poor. We keep identifying newer transmitters. Further, we are still not very clear how they could interact and have a more holistic regulatory effect on our behaviour. Research is still progressing in this direction. However, you would have realised by now that our responses to various workplace (and non-workplace) stimuli are not, as much in our control, as we think. The chemical balances do influence our behaviour.

 

Our responses to various workplace (and non-workplace) stimuli are not as much in our control as we think. The chemical balances do influence our behaviour.

Nervous System and Its Influence on Behaviour

We have examined the complex neurotransmitters and how they communicate, resulting in response/behaviour. Every response of the body, whether voluntary or involuntary, is regulated by this messaging system. This means that there must be a lot of neurons in our bodies. There are at least 100–180 billion neurons²⁶ in the brain alone and the other parts of the body have additional neurons.

With such a large number of neurons, there would be utter chaos; but the neurons group themselves based on the tasks and this is the wonder called nervous system. The nervous system can be divided into the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS). The CNS consists of the brain and the spinal cord. Everything else attached to it is called PNS. As the name indicates, the PNS lies to the periphery of the body. See Figure 2.3 for the nervous system.

Peripheral Nervous System

The PNS regulates several voluntary and involuntary actions and is divided into somatic and autonomic nervous systems. The somatic nervous system is connected to voluntary muscles and sensory receptors like the ear and skin. They convey the sensory message to the CNS (in fact, the brain) and take orders from it. The nerves that carry the message from sensory system to the CNS are called afferent nerves and those that carry the message from the CNS to the muscles, resulting in response are called the efferent system. For example, if someone shouts at you, the stimulus is carried from your ear to the CNS by afferent nerves and the response to hit the person who shouted at you is conveyed by the CNS to your hand muscles by the efferent system.

Read the incident given in Box 2.1.²⁷ Do you think that Nirbhaya took deliberate and premeditated actions like a trained soldier crawling to the enemy bunker and lobbing a grenade to silence the machine gun? Of course, it was not so. She was simply responding to the danger and was not trained for it. Yet, her response/behaviour was different from that of many others. This is because we have the gift of autonomic nervous system. First, as the name suggests, it controls the automatic responses and actions of the body such as digestion and heartbeat about which we do not think. Second, it also prepares the body to exert, during emergencies. The autonomic NS has two divisions—sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions. The former prepares you to exert, and expend bodily resources, and the latter to conserve the resources.

Take for instance, if your boss or co-worker shouts at you. This is a threat and your sympathetic system will prepare you for action and increase your heartbeat, and blood pressure, and drains the blood from the periphery of the body so that you do not bleed profusely. You tremble, and perhaps get goose pimples, depending on the level of danger. This could happen even if a cockroach crawls up your leg. These incidents are so common that we would end up exerting every minute of our life tackling such problems, but for the parasympathetic system, which does quite the opposite, and prevents you from exploding. Fight and flight, the common response, to stress, are also controlled by the autonomous nervous system.

The Central Nervous System

We will now have a look at the CNS. The spinal cord of the CNS is a bundle of axons, which carry the sensory signals or the stimulus from the PNS to the brain and carry the response from the brain back to the PNS. It is like an information highway, or something like cables that connect the input device, CPU, and the output device in a computer. If the cable breaks/malfunctions, the communication winds up even if the CPU (brain in this case) itself may be working. Of course, we all know what happens if the spinal cord breaks, but even malfunctioning of the neurotransmitters could lead to communication break.

Brain and Its Influence on Behaviour

Let us now take a look at the most powerful organ on earth, if not the universe—the brain. To study the functions of a brain, you need a working brain and that is the challenge in brain research. Therefore, most research is done on animals by ‘lesioning’, that is, deliberate destruction of a part of a brain and then observing the behaviour. Some things are observed during human brain surgery as well. Recent advancement in computerised tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain has added a new dimension to brain research. It is also possible to induct electricity of specialised frequency to the human brain, and then study the resultant behaviour. But the induced electricity is nothing like the charges that neurotransmitters create. While learning about the brain and its role in behaviour, let us acknowledge these limitations as also the modern advancements.

 

‘As long as our brain is a mystery, the universe, the reflection of the structure of the brain will also be a mystery.’

-Nobel laureate Santiago Ramony Cajal

 

The entire brain is suspended on a stem much like a cauliflower from its stem. This is called brainstem. You can see the brainstem in Figure 2.4 though, it is not marked. The brain is divided into three parts, namely the hindbrain, midbrain, and forebrain in relation to the stem. These terms are general demarcation in relation to the location of various parts of the brain from the brainstem. Therefore, hindbrain refers to the area where cerebellum, pons, and medulla oblongata are located (See Figure 2.4), midbrain to the area where the limpic system, thalamus, hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus, and pituitary are located, and forebrain to the area where cerebrum, frontal lobe, parietal lobe, occipital lobe, and temporal lobes are located. You can see most of these in Figure 2.4. The brain is connected to the spinal cord near the hindbrain, and so, it can communicate with all neurons.

As mentioned above, the hindbrain consists of the medulla, cerebellum, and pons. The medulla attached to the spinal cord regulates the involuntary controls such as breathing, circulation, and so on. The cerebellum literally means the ‘little brain’ and is connected to the brainstem through pons. It regulates fine muscle movements and sense of equilibrium and balance. Try walking on a rope or on a suspension bridge. You can see some people holding on, hesitant, and fearful, whereas others walk confidently. The cerebellum is at play here. Alcohol affects the cerebellum severely and that is why drunken people cannot walk straight. Now, you know that if a person has alcoholic habits, it is difficult to trust his/her physical balance whether he/she is driving, walking, or working on a machine on the shop floor. You also know why organisations make strict rules against on working under the influence of alcohol. Damage to the cerebellum will disrupt most of your normal responses including activities as mundane as typing, writing, or playing cricket.

Now, let us come to the midbrain. If you go for a walk and hear a sudden thud behind you, you will automatically look back with a jerk. Well, this reflexive action is activated by the midbrain,²⁸ which is responsible for some special sensory processes. From the midbrain, some dopamine-releasing neurons originate and radiate into specific regions of the forebrain and they control voluntary responses. Thus, the midbrain has a reflexive component and a voluntary response controlling component. Running through the hindbrain and midbrain is the reticular formation, which regulates sleep and wakefulness. Activity in the fibres of the reticular formation is essential to maintain an alert brain. Damage to the reticular formation can cause coma.²⁹

The forebrain is the most complex organ and consists of the thalamus, the hypothalamus, the limbic system, and the cerebrum. The thalamus, hypothalamus, and limbic system are located over the brainstem and form the core of the forebrain. The cerebrum lies over them.

• The thalamus is often called a ‘way station’. All sensory information to the cerebrum should pass through it. Therefore, it is like a policeman systematically controlling traffic, standing at a junction, from which a million roads radiate. Additionally, it integrates information from different senses.

   

  The thalamus is often called a ‘way station’. All sensory information to the cerebrum should pass through it.

   

• The hypothalamus is situated at the base of the thalamus and regulates the biological needs such as hunger, thirst, and sex. If it is damaged, you will probably never feel hungry and if it is excited beyond limit, you will probably never stop eating³⁰. It also controls the biological drive for survival as also fighting, fleeing, feeding, and mating. Returning to our story of Nirbhaya, you can intuitively see that she would have drawn upon her hypothalamus power to attempt to flee, fight, or both. You can also understand its importance when a person tries to harass you or threaten you in the office, whether it is your boss, colleague, or subordinates. We all know the law on self-defence, but seldom would we have thought that a law to protect our behaviour would be connected to our brain’s fundamental role in doing so.

   

  We all know the law on self-defence, but seldom would we have thought that a law to protect our behaviour would be connected to our brain.

  

  Figure 2.5: The Limbic system

• The limbic system is an ill-defined structure consisting of parts of the thalamus and the hypothalamus, the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the septum (see Figure 2.5). This is the seat of emotions.³¹ Out of these, the hippocampus is responsible for the formation of memories. The limbic system contains some pleasure centres.³² We have an entire chapter on emotions and moods not only in this book, but in most OB books. Now you know which part of your brain is responsible for emotions.

The cerebrum is the seat of complex thought and has wrinkled surface that makes it appear like a cauliflower. The wrinkling ensures that a large area of about 1.5 square feet can be tucked into the small space. It has 70% of the neurons of the nervous system and is the seat of complex thought. The wrinkled/folded portion is called cerebral cortex. The cerebral cortex is divided into two parts called left and right hemispheres. The hemispheres are connected by corpus callosum (seen as a vertical dark line running from top, as shown in Figure 2.6).

 

Cerebrum is the seat of complex thought, and this differentiates man from other living beings.

 

Each hemisphere has four distinct functional parts or lobes (see Figure 2.6). Occipital lobe at the rear is concerned with³³ vision, parietal lobe with touch sensation, temporal lobe with auditory function, and frontal lobe with primary motor function(see Figure 2.4). The frontal lobe is relatively larger than other lobes and there is reasonable evidence that it is also the seat of long-term planning and prediction. Scientists have been able to identify an area in the frontal cortex located in the frontal lobe that is responsible for the mechanism of both cognitive planning and associated executive traits such as working memory.³⁴

The cerebrum has a major influence on our behaviour. For example, if your cerebrum is not fully developed due to malnutrition or an accident, your thinking power would be seriously affected. The degree of development of various lobes also influences behaviour. For example, you may have seen that some people may be very sensitive to visual/auditory stimuli. You might have observed that some people can learn quickly through oral instructions, whereas others prefer sketches, videos, and other such signals.

There is also an on-going debate on the functions of right and left hemispheres of the brain. Many trainers and motivational speakers, often state that we are trained to use only our left brain, and coax us to use our right brain more effectively. Therefore, it is only appropriate that we understand the working of this system.

Hemispherical Specialisation of the Brain and Its Influence on Behaviour

Although the existence of hemispheres was well-known, the hemispherical specialisation came to the fore only in 1861 when Paul Broca³⁵ identified the left hemisphere with speech and language. This hemisphere was associated with reasoning, memory, planning, and problem-solving, whereas the right hemisphere was considered quite ‘dumb’. This view flourished until Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga launched the famous split brain research.³⁶

Michael’s findings started with observations of patients who had undergone surgery to separate the hemispheres connected by the corpus callosum³⁷ to reduce the impact of very high seizure. They found that the sensory stimuli from the left sensory organs was received in the right hemisphere and vice versa except in vision and hearing. Visual and auditory stimuli from one side were received on both hemispheres. However, there still was a separation because the information from the right half of the visual field (a visual field is what your both eyes see at a time) was communicated to the left and vice versa. Similarly, auditory signals from the right ear made a greater impact on the left hemisphere and that from the left ear on the right hemisphere.

Although this appeared to be reasonable evidence to substantiate that the right hemisphere is not ‘dumb’, the observations were not of normal people, but of those who had undergone split brain surgery. To overcome this gap, researchers adopted a procedure called perceptual asymmetries. In this method, a number of auditory stimuli were given from one side and then the other side. Those given from the right side was recognised faster than those given from the left. However, people recognised stimuli from the left side as well. This meant that when a verbal stimulus is given from the left, it went to the right; but the right perhaps consulted the left and then responded. This could be the reason for the delay ³⁸. With the help of this experiment and several other such experiments, we now know that the left hemisphere usually handles verbal processing such as language, speech, reading, and writing. The right handles non-verbal processing such as spatial, musical, and visual recognition tasks³⁹ (see Figure 2.6 for hemispherical task division).

The hemispherical specialisation has led to four important arguments/assumptions which can have workplace implications. It is important that we know them:

 

The hemispherical specialisation has led to four important arguments/assumptions which can have workplace implications.

• First, the hemispheres have some specialisation. This is rather a well-settled argument.⁴⁰
• Second, the two hemispheres have different modes of thinking⁴¹. There is little direct evidence to support this. Although hemispherical task specialisation is given in Figure 2.6, there is considerable confusion on differentiating between these distinctions. For example, it is difficult to differentiate between analytical versus synthetic thinking or rational versus non-rational. These distinctions are not truly scientific.
• Third, people can be differentiated as right- or left-brained.⁴² There is no convincing data to support this notion yet. This is possible only to the extent that one person may activate a particular hemisphere more often than another person, much like some use their right hand more than the left.
• Fourth, there is a notion that while teaching students, schools should focus more on right-brain thinking.⁴³ This is not a sound argument since one hemisphere cannot function without the other. The argument that our young people should do more holistic, intuitive, and creative thinking is, of course, very reasonable and desirable, but it has little to do with cerebral specialisation.

Endocrine System and Its Influence on Behaviour

The primary way in which the brain communicates is through the nervous system. However, there is a second communication system also that influences behaviour, namely the endocrine system. The endocrine system consists of several glands that secrete hormones, which are chemical substances. They flow through the blood. They lack the lightning speed of the nervous system and so, their effect takes longer to manifest. For instance, hormones influence sexual behaviour, but this is a slow process. Though its effect may be over a long term, students of OB should have considerable interest in it. For example, a sophomore who joins your organisation changes his/her behaviour as he/she grows up, not only because of the organisational influence, but also because of the hormonal influence of the endocrine system. Therefore, if you find a nineteen or twenty year old person with high competency level, but low emotional stability, you might go ahead and select him/her, fully knowing that his/her emotional stability is likely to increase with age.

There are eight glands (see Figure 2.7) related to this system. These are hypothalamus, pituitary gland, thyroid, parathyroid, pancreas, glands (testes/ovaries), adrenal glands, thymus and pineal gland. Of the pituitary and adrenal glands have a special role in behaviour. Pituitary glands is co-located with the brain. It is controlled by the hypothalamus of the brain and, in turn, controls the endocrine system. Thus, the pituitary gland creates the interface between the brain and the nervous system. The combined effect of this is seen in a stressful situation. When you sense an angry co-worker or customer, the hypothalamus triggers the autonomic nervous system and the pituitary gland simultaneously. While the autonomic nervous system acts as discussed under the nervous system, the pituitary triggers the secretion of adrenalin from the adrenal glands. The adrenaline prepares the body for the emergency. Adrenal glands also secrete hormones that are active in emotional arousal and sleep. You will learn more about it in the chapter on stress.

 

The endocrine system supplements the nervous system and has a major role in stress and stress control.

 

Another important gland is the gonads, which is a common name given to the male and female sexual gland. They produce hormones that affect the development of the body and the reproductive system.

Heredity as Basis of Behaviour

Do genes control us totally? This is an important question that we shall examine now. The basic principle of genetics is that each cell of our body consists of 46 chromosomes (23 from each parent). Each chromosome has thousands of genes, which are biochemical messengers responsible to transmit a characteristic from the parents to the offspring. If an equal number comes from the parents, why are the children not identical clones of the parents? Well, with 23 chromosomes from two different sources (father and mother) and thousands of genes, there are thousands of ways the genes can combine. It is estimated that there are 70 trillion possible configurations when a sperm fertilises an egg.⁴⁴ Hence, each person ends up with a unique genetic blueprint, there is little overlap.

In order to identify the role of heredity in our behaviour, researchers use three types of studies—family studies, adoption studies, and twin studies.

Family Studies In this mode, you examine blood relatives and see how their behaviour overlaps and differs. The overlap is definitely high, but the problem is that since they live in identical or similar environment, there is no pragmatic way to factor out the influence of environment. Hence, it becomes difficult to know whether the similarity is due to genes or the environment.

Adoption Studies Here, we compare the traits of adopted children with the traits of their biological parents and adoptive parents. Research has shown significant similarity between adopted children and their biological parents. A correlation of 0.36 has been found by some researchers.⁴⁶ Since the adopted children lived in a different environment, this similarity can be easily attributed to heredity. However, the adopted children resemble their adoptive parents almost as much with a correlation of 0.31. This suggests that the environment is almost as influential.

Twin Studies Studies of identical and fraternal twins have been revealing. In the case of identical twins, when the egg accidentally splits into two after fertilisation, the genetic overlap is 100%. The fraternal twins (term indicates another sibling, parent, or child) also show high overlap (see Table 2.1). When we examine identical and fraternal twins who have grown up in the same environment, we find that identical twins have more similarity than fraternal ones. Since the environment is the same, this higher correlation can be attributed to heredity. For example, the general mental ability score of identical twins has a correlation score of 0.86, whereas fraternal twins have only a score of 0.61 with their parents. Similarly, special mental ability or aptitude score shows a correlation of 0.71 for identical twins against 0.51 for fraternal ones and personality traits of 0.50 for identical twins, while 0.29 for fraternal twins.⁴⁷

The role of heredity and environment is a long-standing debate in behavioural sciences. It seems to be a never-ending one, because while everyone accepts the role of both factors, their relative contribution is still an enigma. It is very important to understand the debate and the difficulty in settling it, more so for a student of OB. We started with the question: ‘Do genes control us totally?’ As far as behaviour is concerned, the answer is an emphatic ‘no’. That leads us to examine the influence of environment on behaviour.

 

Environment and its Influence on Behaviour

When we examined heredity as basics of behaviour, we saw that genes can combine in millions of ways, which means that each one of us have a unique genetic map. This would make it impossible to understand the behaviour of people. Imagine having to understand a million ways in which people behave! Though we say ‘each individual is unique’, it is not as if the variance is impossible to understand.

Some of the best studies in the area of understanding the influence of environment on behaviour come from the study of schizophrenia patients. Observations indicate that there is an 8.5% probability that an offspring of a person suffering from schizophrenia will be schizophrenic too, while it is 1% for the offspring of someone without schizophrenia. The probability is 50% for identical twins with schizophrenic parents. Since the genome of the identical twins is the same, logically 100 per cent of the identical twins should also suffer from schizophrenia. But why is the probability only 50 per cent? This is because environment mitigates the genetic influence.

In sum, there is growing evidence that both heredity and experience jointly influence many aspects of behaviour. Indication is also that the interplay between heredity and environment actually results in behaviour. See Box 2.2 to gain a better understanding of the interplay between genes and the environment. This interplay creates patterns in behaviour and once we are able to understand patterns, we can manage them better. It is equally important to accept that since people live in an organisational environment for a substantial period of their life, organisations are uniquely placed to influence the behaviour of people.

 

There is growing evidence that both heredity and experience jointly influence many aspects of behaviour.

Influence of Social Context on Behaviour

First, answer the questions in Box 2.3 and then read on. Most of the answers you give are not likely to be correct. Research has shown that height of men is more important than grades for getting selected for a job. When faced with an emergency in a moderately large group, chances of getting help is less than, when you are in a smaller group. Gladis’ friends are likely to appreciate Roshan, but say that he is not a good match for her, and the police and firemen are likely to obey Kapoor without checking on his credentials. Though these sound quite irrational, research on social context and behaviour show such results. This is the precise reason why we need to study the influence of social context on behaviour.

Social psychology is about how the behaviour of people is affected in actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. It is not only about an individual’s behaviour in the presence of others, but also about an individual’s behaviour when s/he is alone. For example, as you drive along a lonely, scenic road, you may down the window of your car and toss out a banana peel, which you will never do in a city.

We will now consider six important variables related to behaviour in social contexts namely:

• Person perception
• Attribution process
• Interpersonal attraction
• Attitudes
• Conformity and obedience
• Behaviour in groups

Person Perception

Social factors influence our behaviour. For example, physical appearance of a person can influence our perception about that person. See Fig. 2.8 for an illustration of factors that influence our behaviour.

Effects of Physical Appearance ‘Beauty is skin deep’; but that is what you think! Studies show that attractive and well-dressed people are considered more professional, kind, sensitive, sociable, pleasant, likeable, and more interesting than non-attractive people. Such people are also considered more intelligent and competent.⁵³

Cognitive Schemas Earlier in this chapter, we saw that every person is unique as per the heredity theory. It is very difficult to consider many unique features of an individual and make sense of them. Imagine having to consider some 100 variables before we can make a decision about a person! To overcome this complexity, our brain creates patterns about people, sees them as groups, and attributes certain behaviour to the group. Such labelling is called cognitive schemas. Schemas help in information processing. There are also ‘social schemas’, which are organised clusters of ideas for social events and people. We have social schemas for anything and everything; from a committee meeting to picnics. When a schema is activated, it is likely to influence one’s perception of a person. For instance, Gladis’ friends might think that though Roshan is a pleasant person, but he is not very modern because their social schema of modernity could be associated with social drinking.

 

Our brain creates patterns about people, sees them as groups, and attributes certain behaviour to the group.

Stereotyping This means having a belief that people have certain characteristics because they belong to some group or the other. Such beliefs are quite widespread. For example, we believe that Rotarians are social and sympathetic, slum dwellers are unsociable, poor people are debt defaulters, and rich people tend to be rude.

 

Stereotyping means having a belief that people have certain characteristics, because they belong to some group or the other.

Illusionary Correlation It is common to hear statements like ‘I have never met an honest lawyer’ or ‘politicians are all corrupt’. People tend to estimate that they have encountered more confirmations of an association between the social traits than they have actually seen. As a result, illusory correlation occurs. How do people create such associations? We may have heard or known that a particular politician is corrupt. Then, we imagine that some others are also corrupt, but this is based on imagination and not on any evidence or events. They get recorded in memory and our brain pulls up the imagined situation without quite realising that it is imagination and not reality, and then consolidates them to get the illusory correlation.⁵⁴

 

Our brain pulls up the imagined situation without quite realising that it is an imagination and not a reality, and then, consolidates them to get the illusory correlation.

 

The memory process, which is regulated by the brain makes significant contribution to confirmatory biases. Often, people selectively recall facts⁵⁵ about a person about whom they have some perception. In an experiment subjects were shown pictures of a woman, doing several activities including drinking beer and listening to classical music, and then told that she was either a waitress or a librarian. From the experimental result, it was found that, those who perceived her as a waitress recalled her drinking beer and those who perceived her as a librarian recalled her listening to music. There are several researches that suggest our behaviour towards others is influenced by our person perception. With this insight, let us look at the next important issue in social psychology—attribution processes.

Attribution Processes

If you read the incident in Box 2.4, you are likely to remain undisturbed. It might mean nothing to you, but not for Pradeep. Half the morning, he was trying to figure out why Preeti had climbed seven flights in her high-heeled shoes. He thought, ‘Maybe she was trying to avoid her boss who was in the queue,’ ‘Maybe she was late for an appointment because she started late from home,’ ‘Maybe she wants to exercise a bit in the morning by walking up,’ or ‘Maybe she was simply stressed or impatient.’ However, these possibilities still did not explain why she had not greeted him when they met on the seventh floor. You can see that Pradeep made several possible inferences about Preeti’s behaviour that morning. But why should Pradeep spend his working time on the incident?

 

Attributions are inferences that we make about the causes of events, the behaviour of others, and our own behaviour.

 

Such incidents are common in our workplace and these are called attribution. Attributions are inferences that we make about the causes of events, the behaviour of others, and our own behaviour. Why do people make attributions? They do so because of a strong need to understand their experiences and others’ actions. We do so when something unusual happens (Preeti not waiting for the elevator), when events have personal consequences, or when others behave in an unexpected way (not waiting for the elevator and not wishing when they met on the seventh floor).⁵⁶ It is the human desire for attribution that led to Pradeep’s constant thinking of the event.

External and Internal Attribution Attribution can be external or internal. For example, blaming the difficulty of an examination for a poor grade is an example of external attribution, whereas blaming it on poor preparation would be internal.⁵⁷ You may blame the poor preparation on a headache on the day preceding the examination. In this case, the cause is temporary (it is called ‘unstable’ in technical language). You may also feel that your poor language skill is responsible for poor preparation as you find it difficult to read and understand, unlike others. Here, the cause is relatively more permanent (it is called ‘stable’ in technical language). Therefore, attribution can be external, internal, stable, or unstable. An attribution involves two parties namely, a performer (or actor) and an observer. For example, a student may blame the difficulty of the examination for getting poor grades, whereas his teacher may blame the student for lack of preparation. Here student is the actor and teacher is the observer. They attributed different reasons for the poor grades. This is called actor–observer bias.

 

Attribution can be external, internal, stable, or unstable.

 

Defensive Attribution Returning to the case of Pradeep and Preeti, it is quite possible that Pradeep would have thought that she had to run up the flight of stairs because she would have started late from home. This is called defensive attribution. For misfortunes, we tend to blame the victim, rather than external factors. This is because if we make an external attribution, say for example traffic jam, then it could affect us also someday. If it was attributed to the individual, say Preeti’s mistake of starting late, then we would feel less likely to be victimised in a similar way because we tend to make ourselves believe that we will not ever start late.

 

Because of defensive attribution, we tend to blame the victim for the misfortune rather than external factors.

 

Self-serving Bias The next category is self-serving bias. Usually, we link our failures to external factors and successes to internal factors. This is called self-serving bias.

 

We link our failures to external factors and successes to internal factors. This is called self-serving bias.

 

Our brain is a logic centre and wants to store unusual activities observed with some logic attached to them, so that, it can be used effectively later. Attribution helps this. But it also affects our interpersonal relations because our mind and memory are likely to use this information for interpretation of future events in our interpersonal relations. Evidence shows that attribution bias is often the root cause for deterioration of relationships.⁵⁸ Interpersonal relationship is the first connection between the individual and the organisation; therefore, understanding the concept of attribution, and how it works is important for a student of OB.

Interpersonal Attraction

What a match! She is tall, slim, and pretty, and he is flabby. Have you heard such comments on the campus? This campus phenomenon is equally true in the workplace and more so in the ‘campus-like’ workplaces of today. You need not be unduly concerned about such comments even if the comment is about you, because the commentators were just wondering at the mystery of interpersonal relationship.

The term ‘interpersonal attraction’ refers to a positive feeling towards another. Social psychologists include liking, friendship, admiration, lust, and love when they use the term ‘attraction’. These attractions shape our behaviour towards others in the workplace and eventually our behaviour in the teams and organisations. Although there are different reasons for attraction, proximity, physical attractiveness, similarity, and reciprocity are the most important reasons.

Proximity It refers to geographical, residential, and other types of spatial closeness, including sitting next to each other in a class. Research shows that despite a high degree of mobility, and moving away from the place where we grew up for jobs, people still tend to marry someone who grew up nearby.⁵⁹ This social phenomenon can be seen in the work context also. For example, most research on a subject comes from the same laboratory, many entrepreneurs are college mates, and so on. Contemporary research also supports the proximity factor. Those who show up in office are more likely to be promoted or receive better performance reviews than their co-workers who do the work from home. Just being seen at work, without any information about what they are actually doing, lead people to think more highly of you.⁶⁰ Is Yahoo and other companies mentioned in Box 2.5 right in their insistence that employees should avoid working from home? Perhaps you can debate this better in the light of proximity.

Physical Attractiveness In the earlier discourse on person perception, we had included the importance of appearance. Walster ⁶¹ and others randomly paired people for a date and then compared their desire to date again with the same person, against a number of factors. Attractiveness turned out to be the only factor for wanting to date with the same person again. This 1966 study has been reconfirmed by Lymann in 1981,⁶² Patzer in 1985,⁶³ and by Feingold in 1988⁶⁴, just to quote a few. What does this mean to organisations? Perhaps, team dynamics can have a relation to physical attractiveness of its members. What does this mean to you? Learn to groom yourself and look as attractive as possible.

Similarity Effect Do ‘Birds of the same feather flock together?’ or do ‘Opposites poles attract?’ Both may be true in different contexts; but in interpersonal attraction, the former is the reality. In the social environment, people similar in age, race, religion, social class, education, intelligence, physical attractiveness, and attitudes tend to flock together.⁶⁵ Laboratory experiments also show that people want to associate with similar ‘flock’.⁶⁶ Rosenbaum⁶⁷ gives an alternative explanation and states that it is not so much that similar people want to flock together, but non-similar people try to avoid each other. Perhaps today’s social network is simply based on this truth and may be the reason why some organisations tend to look at your social network to a get an idea what sort of person you are. Today, organisations also focus a lot on diversity because of its benefits for innovation, social inclusiveness, and so on. However, knowledge of similarity effect would suggest that the climb to this utopia is steep and hard. Organisations may have to create a special force or culture to leverage the benefit of diversity.

Reciprocity Effect Dale Carnegie claims that people can win other’s affection by praising them.⁶⁸ Well, evidence shows that it works only sometimes, and that too, with only some people.⁶⁹ Reciprocity implies liking those who show that they like you. In general, this is true.⁷⁰ However, if ingratiation is a conscious effort to cultivate the liking of the other person, by complimenting them, agreeing with them, and so on, it may not give results.⁷¹

Can We Love Our Work and Workplace? ‘I love my work’ or ‘I love to work here’ is a statement that we hear often; at least most business leaders would like to hear it. Most motivation speakers also propound the idea of being in love with the work and the organisation. Do people actually fall in love with work or organisations, the way they fall in love with other people?

The research on love is still in its infancy. Yet we can gain some insight from the seminal work of Elaine Hatfield.⁷² There are two types of love namely, passionate and companionate. Donelson Forsyth⁷³ defines passionate love as something that involves absorption in another to include tender sexual feeling and the agony and ecstasy of intense emotions. Differentiated from this, is companionate love which is warm, trusting, and tolerant. It is affection for another person whose life is deeply intertwined with one’s own. Could people and organisations get entangled in companionate love? Perhaps this is possible. We can see this phenomenon when we observe how entrepreneurs nurture their organisations. Trust, tolerance, and intertwining of lives are all features that appear to have a role in individual–organisation relationship.

Some of the myths that Berscheid and Hatfield unravel about love between two people are also applicable in the organisational context. The first myth is that when you fall in love, you will know. Research shows that it is not so. You are at first in doubt. This is true for ‘people-organisation’ love too. Second, love is purely a positive experience. The reality is that people are more critical and less tolerant of lovers than of other friends. How many of us really remember this when someone in the organisation criticise the organisation? Perhaps the person who is criticising is more in love with the organisation than the person who is not criticising. Third, true love lasts forever. While this is not true for passionate love, companionate love tends to grow over the long haul, but there are no guarantees. It would be interesting to test some of these features in the context of ‘love of employees’ for the organisation.

 

People in love are less tolerant and more critical of each other.

Attitudes

Attitude is a very important concept in social psychology. It is also one of the pillars of individual behaviour and of OB, and we have an entire chapter dedicated to it. Hence, let us keep the discussion brief here. Attitude has three components namely, cognitive, affective, and behavioural. The cognitive component is created from beliefs. Beliefs are memory records based on some events or opinions that the brain had picked up consciously or unconsciously. For example, you might have picked up a belief that college is a waste of time. This might be so because you have listened to such statements from people important to you or from someone close to you who had a bad experience in college. That does not mean that you will not join a college and earn a degree. In other words, though your cognitive component or belief about college is that it is a waste of time, you do not have any active aversion to studying in a college. Therefore, you will go to college and study anyway. However, if you had an active aversion, you would not go to college. This indicates that attitudes are predisposition towards behaviour; but they do not necessarily result in behaviour.

Why is attitude important in a workplace? If you have a positive attitude towards something, it is easier for you to do that. For instance, if a policeman has a positive attitude towards gender equality, it would be easier to ask him to behave respectfully with women. However, even if he does not have such an attitude, he can still behave respectfully, as far as he does not hold any strong bias towards women. Though positive attitude towards something in the organisation is useful, not having it does not mean that the person will show deviant behaviour.

 

Though positive attitude towards something in the organisation is useful, not having it does not mean that the person will show deviant behaviour.

Conformity and Obedience

Much like attitude, conformity and obedience are important components in group dynamics.

Conformity For instance, you might enjoy having beer when you are with your friends. You might have it when you are with your friends even if you do not enjoy it. The latter behaviour is due to social pressure. This is called conformity. See Box 2.6 for the result of an experiment on conformity.

Obedience If your boss tells you, ‘Somehow, get the license approved; it does not matter how’, the chances are that you will go and do so even if you have to bribe someone for it. It is the reason why no one in Satyam Computer Limited reported any financial bugling. It is also the reason why bureaucrats generally do what a minister tells even if it is wrong. Obedience is a common phenomenon in society.

Milgram’s experiment indicates that obedience is a highly prevalent social phenomenon. Perhaps this explains several actions that might bewilder you in organisations. It also explains why you will do many unethical actions despite complaining, cribbing, and feeling agonised at having to do so. Obedience is, therefore, a double edged weapon; powerful when used ethically and terrible otherwise.

The study came under severe ethical criticism for doing what Milgram had done; but he scientifically showed the impact of obedience on behaviour. The implications of this study are quite self-explanatory. Once we perceive authority, we tend to obey it. You can now see how easy it is for a person in authority as per the organisational structure to elicit obedience. See Box 2.7 for result of an experiment on the impact of perceived authority on obedience.

Behaviour in Groups

The behaviour of a person varies when he/she is alone and when in a group. These variations are created by bystander effect, social loafing, group polarisation, and group think. Bystander effect suggests that people are less likely to provide needed help when they are in groups than when they are alone, perhaps because of diffusion of responsibility. Social loafing implies that some of the members of a group will reduce their effort when in a group than when working alone. Group polarisation means a tendency of the members to swing their opinion in one direction as the discussions progress. Group think means members of a group tend to strive towards concurrence than critical thinking, while arriving at a decision. We will learn about them in detail in due course in this book.

 

Groups and teams are excellent entities to ensure productivity. However, they suffer from bystander effect, social loafing, group polarisation, and group think.

Implications of Social Factors for Organisational Behaviour

In this section, we saw six key social psychology concepts that occur in the social environment in which we live. In today’s work context, organisations create social contexts in which people spend substantial part of their time. Hence, organisations are also responsible for shaping the behaviour of their people. Knowing the social factors can help organisations to handle behaviour better.

‘Development is a sequence of age-based changes that occur as a person progresses from conception to death. As a person passes through this cycle, you can see the complex interplay between heredity and environment as also several behavioural changes’.⁷⁶ At the time of conception, genes play a dominant role. They continue to exert their influence throughout life, but the environment, including the opportunities we get during various stages of our development, begins to have increased influence on us. The case of Wilma (opening case) highlights this interplay. We can study development in four stages based on the life cycle. These are pre-natal (from conception to birth), childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.

 

There is growing evidence that much of what we are happens when we are still in our mother’s womb. Providing the expectant mother the right environment is the moral task of an organisation.

Prenatal Stage

This stage ranges from conception to birth. When the sperm and egg fuse, our basic genetic structure is defined. As we grow, this genetic structure begins to demonstrate its power in the form of behaviour. Within the womb, there are three phases namely, germinal phase (the first two weeks after conception), embryonic phase (two weeks to two months), and foetal phase (two months through birth). During these phases, the foetus, though well tucked into the mother, is linked to the mother and thereby to the environment. It is found that even moderate deterioration in maternal nutrition affects motor skills, apathy, and irritability during infancy. Even moderate use of alcohol by mother can be hazardous to the foetus. Smoking and even drugs (medicines), which the mother may have to take, also affects behaviour, later in life. In addition, there are several studies on the effect of the mother’s emotional state on the foetus that can manifest later in life. Though we still do not know the exact nature of the connection between these factors, we know for sure, that there is a close linkage.

Childhood

The wondrous development of childhood makes us marvel at our children. This happens very systematically. Let us look at some of the important facets of childhood development that affect behaviour.

Motor Development This is a clearly visible stage. Because it is visible, we usually worry about it, the most. The motor development in the upper part of the body always precedes the lower part. Hence, head and hand movements come up before leg movements.

Temperament Development Temperament refers to mood, activity level, and emotional reaction. From the beginning, some babies are animated and cheerful, whereas others are sluggish. A seminal study by Thomas and Chess⁷⁷ found that 40% of the children can be classified as easy children (happy, regular in eating and sleeping, adaptable, and not readily upset). Some 15% are slow to warm up and they are less regular in eating and sleeping and slower to adapt. Some 10% are difficult children and tend to be glum, erratic in sleeping and eating, resistant to change, and relatively irritable. The remaining 35% is a mix of the three categories. A child’s temperament at three months is a very good predictor of its temperament at ten years of age. Temperament is largely inborn or inherited, but the reaction of the parent or caretaker has a major influence. In fact, the match between a child’s temperament and the parent’s expectations is crucial in shaping temperament. Temperament lays the foundation for subsequent behaviour.

 

The role of parents and caretaker of a child is indispensable in temperament and emotional development, which affect future behaviour.

Emotional Development Attachment created through close emotional bond of affection between the child and its caregiver is the hallmark of this stage. Although the role of the mother is important, activities such as crying, fussing, smiling, and babbling of the child are also equally important. Difficult children, who make a fuss over eating, bathing, and sleeping, make the attachment process slower. Infants do not get attached to mothers automatically. They can get attached even to a caregiver, as much as to a mother. The attachment can be of three types—secure attachment, anxious-ambivalent attachment (opposite of secure), or avoidance attachment (looking for little or no attachment).

 

 

Personality Development Sigmund Freud, the father of personality psychology, opined that personality development takes place right from childhood and manifests through life (his psychodynamic theory is discussed in detail in the chapter on personality). In 1963, Erik Erikson⁷⁸ proposed a sweeping revision to this thought. He proposed the ‘stage theory’, linking personality development to stages of human development. His model is based on eight stages of personality development (see Table 2.2).

Cognitive Development Jean Piaget⁷⁹, another psychologist, pioneered the cognitive development model. Children actively explore the environment, and as they do so, they gradually change in the way they think, through a process called assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation involves interpreting new experiences in terms of existing mental structures without changing the original experience. A child may have experienced connecting some pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and then it is able to connect the pieces of the puzzle in several different ways to get several different shapes. This happens because of its learning by assimilation. Children often wear shoes fastened using Velcro grip, but when presented with a pair of shoes with laces, they first struggle, but quickly learn to unknot it on their own. This change in the mental structure used for removing the shoes, is called accommodation (for Piaget’s stages of development, see Table 2.3). Though there is some discussion on the age at which a particular activity starts, the framework is well-accepted. From an OB perspective, we should know that while some develop abstraction, logical and systemic thinking early in school (around the age of 11 years), others may do so later. Therefore, organisations should continue their perseverance to fine-tune such thinking, especially in their young workforce.

Moral Development Behaviour is also dependent on moral development (see Box 2.8, ‘The Interviewer’s Dilemma’).

By presenting similar moral dilemmas to various age groups, Kohlberg developed a model of moral development. This can best be explained in the Kohlberg’s⁸⁰ framework given in Table 2.4.

The learning from the ‘Interviewer’s dilemma’ is applicable in organisational context too. You will perhaps hear someone say, ‘Hey, this is not correct, but I am letting you copy my assignment as a one-time measure because you might fail in the examination if you don’t copy!’ When you hear that next time, you will understand it better in the light of this discussion. You can also understand how the moral reasoning, and consequently the behaviour changes, with age.

 

Social Development Social psychologists study many dimensions of social development. Let us look at two of them—altruism and aggression. The former is selfless concern for the welfare of others and the latter is the intent to hurt others physically or verbally.

• Altruism increases with age through school years and is positively correlated to the moral reasoning we looked at earlier.⁸¹ The higher the level of moral reasoning, the higher would be the level of altruism.⁸²

   

  It is good news that altruism increases with age and aggression reduces with age.

   

• In contrast, aggression reduces with age. Among young children, we find instrumental aggression or the type that makes one snatch the toy of the other child. In older ones, we find hostile aggression, which is intended to hurt others.⁸³

Both altruism and aggression have their roots in genetic predisposition, parental modelling, and portrayals of role models in mass media. Twin studies have shown evidence in support of the genetic predisposition, and it is found that identical twins are closer to both factors, compared to fraternal ones.⁸⁴ However, the exact mechanism of such transference is still not very clear. One possibility is that temperament, which is genetically transferred, is responsible for development of altruism and aggression, later in life. Observational learning, which children pick up from parents and others, is also considered important. Thus, children who suffer punishment from parents or have seen aggression between the parents are likely to be more aggressive.⁸⁵ Aggression is also influenced by mass media, especially television. Those who watch helpful actions tend to be more altruistic.⁸⁶ Many Western studies have shown that children in the US are exposed to at least two hours of television every day and by the age of 18, they would have witnessed some 16,000 television murders and 200,000 violent scenes.⁸⁷ Studies have also shown the negative relationship between aggression and intelligence quotient (IQ) for both genders.⁸⁸ Thus, the development of altruism and aggression in childhood is likely to have far-reaching behavioural implications in adolescence and adulthood when people begin to spend considerable time in the workplace. However, since learning is a life-long process, organisational environment can mitigate some of the adverse effect created during the childhood; of course, it can make it worse too.

Adolescence

Adolescence is the period between childhood and adulthood. Its onset takes place at around the age of 11 years among girls and 13 years among boys, and ends around 19 or 20 years, after which adulthood starts. During this period, several body features change, and this happens often in an asymmetric way, that is, some parts of the body develop faster than other parts, leading to confusion among adolescents. However, symmetry is quickly regained. This is also the stage when emotional changes occur. This stage is also considered very important because identity issues are addressed at this stage. Initially, it was thought that adolescents undergo various identity orientations or statuses in their bid to identify ‘who they are’. Current thought on the subject is that they undergo these, in their bid to know ‘who they will be’ rather than ‘who they are’. Marcia, who has done considerable research in this area, suggests that there are four stages in developing one identity:⁸⁹

• Foreclosure is a premature commitment to visions, values, and roles prescribed by one’s parents. Though this enables one to circumvent identity crisis, it can backfire and cause identity crisis later.

   

  Foreclosure, Moratorium, Identity diffusion and Identity achievement are the four important stages of adolescence.

   

• Moratorium involves experimenting with alternatives and delaying commitment for a while. This temporary status is valuable; but some remain infinitely in this fluid status.
• Identity diffusion is about rudderless situation. They refuse to face the situation and chart a course. This enables them to skip the crisis; but it can become problematic later.
• Identity achievement happens when the person takes a direction after due consideration. Though the direction taken is not irreversible, it is fairly permanent and gives the person a sense of commitment and purpose.

We have just seen that if a person has foreclosed his/her options, it is difficult to create a high level of commitment. This is a problem for Indian adolescents from a career perspective. Due to acute competition, many Indian children join coaching classes very early in their adolescence and are compelled to foreclose their options. Later, when they join a career, this might begin to affect their performance. Perhaps organisations need to do more to help them overcome this challenge by offering counselling support, and in extreme cases, may have to help them with career shift.

Adulthood

There are many ways to classify this stage though most agree that it starts at around 20 years. The period from 20 to 40 years is considered early adulthood, 40 to 60 years as middle adulthood, and the later years as late adulthood or old age. This is an important stage of life, not only because it is the longest stage, but also because most of us spend most of our adulthood in organisations. Let us look at some important aspects of this stage.

Social clock We tend to set many time-based targets for ourselves; for instance, we should get married by 30 years, or become a general manager by 35 years, and so on. This process of creating a time-bound target for our development is called social clock. Each individual sets a different clock. If one fails to achieve them, it can cause stress.

Personality Research has shown that personality tends to be stable over a period of 20 to 40 years. It has also been found that personality at early adulthood is a good predictor of personality right through adulthood. However, changes in personality do occur even when people are in their 50s.⁹⁰ Personality traits that tend to be stable right from early adulthood are emotional stability, extraversion, and assertiveness.

Midlife Crisis Many studies have addressed the phenomenon behind this popular belief. Interestingly, only a very few people actually undergo such a crisis.

 

Midlife crisis is not as common a phenomenon as people believe it to be.

 

Family Life Although remaining single is becoming more acceptable today, most people want to raise a family. We come across the challenges to do so—adjusting to marriage, adjusting to parenthood, and adjusting to the empty nest. With the emerging demographic changes in India, there will be a large number of people entering parenthood in organisations. Are organisations equipped to handle this challenge?

Middle Adulthood In middle adulthood, or at around 50 years of age, the challenge of the empty nest emerges. Children are relatively independent and are off to hostels for education and soon commence working. A person in middle adulthood gets ample time to work and also has years of experience. Though continuing to be active in the work place is very desirable, it also blocks the progression of young workforce. The young workforce, on the other hand, is faced with the challenge of parenting. Organisations have to face and manage these dichotomies.

Aging Physical changes associated with age are obvious. Hair loss, receding hair line, greying, and increase in weight are normal. These might cause stress to some, especially in a world where youthful looks have great value. Yet another phenomenon is the reduction in the neurons, and loss of cognitive competencies. This stage often begins at 60 years and there is slight reduction in speed of problem solving after this age; but greater experience compensates for this and so, slowing may not become visible and productivity may not reduce. Several studies substantiate that productivity remains remarkably stable even in the 70s.⁹¹ The challenge for organisations is to leverage this stage.

 

Fall in productivity with aging is more a myth, than a reality

Summary

Behaviour can be defined as observable, deliberate and preferred response of a person in response to stimuli. Behaviour is influenced by cognition, conation and affect. Cognition refers to mental abilities such as knowledge, attention, memory, reasoning, problem solving and comprehension. Conation refers to the mental process that activates and directs behaviour. We use terms such as intrinsic motivation, goal-orientation, volition, will, self-direction, and self-regulation to refer to connation. It refers to the intentions behind our behaviour. Affect refers to the feeling that originate from perceptions, information, or knowledge. In sum, our behaviour is influenced by our mental abilities, intentions, feelings, and a host of other factors.

In addition to the above, our behaviour is influenced by at least five important factors—our biological construction particularly that of the nervous and endocrine system, genes or heredity, environment, social context and stages of life. What makes behaviour complex is that it is the interaction of these factors that result in behaviour.

Nervous system is one of the important entities that influence our behaviour. It can be divided into the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system.

The brain and the spinal cord are the part of central nervous system. Our brain has a special role in our behaviour. The brain can be divided into the forebrain, midbrain and the hindbrain. The forebrain consists of cerebrum, which is the seat of complex thought, the limbic system which is the seat of emotions and the thalamus which controls our physical needs such as hunger, thirst and sex. The brain is also divided into two hemispheres. The left hemisphere is usually associated with abstraction and analytical ability, while the right hemisphere with synthesis and intuition. The midbrain has a reflexive component and a voluntary response controlling component. The hindbrain controls our muscle movements. So, any damage or changes to our brain will affect our behaviour. The information from the brain is transported to various parts of our body through the spinal cord and this results in our response. Hence any damage to our spinal cord also affects our behaviour.

Our peripheral nervous system radiates from the central nervous system to various parts of our body. The peripheral nervous system feeds stimuli or information from the outside world to the central nervous system, which processes the information and prepares a response. It also passes the information from the central nervous system to various parts of the body, so that we can respond. It is easy to see that this complex system controls our behaviour in a big way.

The nervous system consists of nerve cells or neurons. Neurons are responsible for passing information. The information passing is done using chemicals. So, if the property of the chemicals change, or we induce changes in chemicals artificially (say by smoking or taking some drugs), then, our behaviour would also change. The simplest example is how a drunk person behaves differently because of alcohol content that changes the chemical compositon related to neurous.

The endocrine system consists of glands that secrete hormones or chemicals which mix with our blood and creates change in our behaviour. It is the hormonal changes which are often responsible for our anger and calmness. If you understand the endocrine system, it is easy to understand the behaviour changes when a person becomes an adolescent, as adolescence leads to changes in hormonal levels.

Genes or heredity has a major influence on our behaviour, which is the reason why people with similar genes tend to behave in a similar manner. With the advancement in genome studies and evolutionary psychology, the link between genes and behaviour is being revealed more and more. A lot of insight has come through studying the behaviour of twins.

Studying the behaviour of twins has also revealed the importance of the environment in shaping our behaviour. For instance, identical twins, when reared apart, show not only similarities to the biological parents, but also differences. The difference can be explained by the influence of environment on our behaviour.

Social context has a powerful influence on our behaviour. Factors that effect social context are person perception, cognitive schemas and stereotyping, and attribution process. Attribution process refers to our way of looking reasons for our behaviour to ourselves/internal factors or to external factors. Interpersonal attraction, attitudes, conformity, obedience and groups also influence our behaviours.

Human developmental stages also influence our behaviour. Prenatal stage, childhood, adolescence and adulthood are the major stages, and within these there are sub-stages which influence our behaviour. Erickson and Piaget are two eminent psychologists who have identified various stages of development. While Erickson discusses the development in general terms, Piaget focuses on stages of cognitive development.

This chapter includes various factors that influence behaviour. While studying OB, especially in today’s world with diversity, it is important to understand the fundamental factors that underlie behaviour. The chapter forms the hinge around which behaviour is discussed in other chapters. For instance, learning is a factor that influences behaviour, but cognitive capability and the functioning of the brain have a major role in learning. A detailed study of this chapter will enable you to understand the powerful underlying factors that influence behaviour, and help you to gain greater insights as you read on.

Test Your Understanding

1. Fill in the blanks.

   Factors that influence behaviour are heredity, environment, _______ context and _______ stages.

2. Fill in the blank.

   The basic entity of the nervous system is the ______.

3. Which of the following is the most appropriate statement?

   Neurotransmitters are:

   1. Inert agents that define behaviour.
   2. Chemical carriers of message.
   3. Name of nerve cells.
   4. All the above.
4. Which of the following statements is the most appropriate?

   Our behaviour is influenced by the:

   1. Excitatory signals created by the neurotransmitters.
   2. Inhibitory signals created by the neurotransmitters.
   3. Both excitatory and inhibitory signals influence our behaviour.
   4. Neurotransmitters are inert agents, which give stability to nerves.
5. Your colleague abused you and you turned round and punched him. Which of the following nervous system that is predominantly involved in this behaviour?
   1. Somatic nervous system
   2. Central nervous system
   3. Peripheral nervous system
   4. None of the above
6. You came late to the office one day because the bus had broken down in the rain. Your supervisor became over critical. You badly wanted to retaliate but managed to resist and return to your seat calmly. Which of the following systems in your body do you think helped you calm down and return to your seat?
   1. Sympathetic nervous system
   2. Parasympathetic nervous system
   3. Peripheral nervous system
   4. All of the above.
7. After you returned to your seat (follow the situation from Question 6), you cried and then your friend came and comforted you. To which of the following part of your brain can your crying be associated?
   1. Lympic system of your brain.
   2. Cerebrum of your brain.
   3. Frontal lobe.
   4. Right hemisphere of your brain
8. Though your friend comforted you (follow the situation from Question 7), you remembered the incident for a long time. Which of the following parts of your brain is remember the incident?
   1. Hypothalamus
   2. Amygdala
   3. Hippocampus
   4. None of these
9. You are a smart, young lady manager who just joined a reputed company. While you were going to the canteen for your morning coffee, someone made a snide remark. Your blood boiled, your breath increased, and you called and rebuked him and warned him that if he did it another time, there would be serious consequences. Which part of the body do you think played a major part in this?
   1. Pituitary gland
   2. Gondas
   3. Hindbrain
   4. None of the above
10. Genetic overlap in fraternal twins is at least:
    1. 25%
    2. 50%
    3. 75%
    4. 100%
11. Fill in the blank.

    _______ schemas help us to reduce complexity in information processing.

12. A manager asked his sales executive the reason for dip in performance while that of others had actually increased or remained same in the third quarter. The sales executive quickly replied, ‘Sir, the economy is growing at 4 to 5% instead of the earlier 8%.’ This explanation is due to _______ bias.
13. Milgram’s experiment suggests that
    1. Authority is best exercised by a team.
    2. People tend to challenge authority.
    3. People obey authority only if it is ethical.
    4. People tend to obey perceived authority irrespective of rationale.
14. Which is the most appropriate statement?

    Moratorium is an identity status that

    1. Is dangerous and self-defeating.
    2. Involves experimenting and is very useful.
    3. Takes place after the foreclosure stage.
    4. None of the above fully explains the status
15. Which of the following is the most appropriate statement?

    One’s personality at childhood is a:

    1. Good predictor of personality in adulthood.
    2. Poor predictor of personality in adulthood.
    3. Personalities at childhood and adulthood have no correlation.
    4. Good predictor of personality at only adolescence.

Need some help with this? Go to Answers to Test Your Understanding given at the end of the book.

Assimilation Questions

1. What is the all or none rule?
2. Body has endorphins. What is the purpose of this?
3. It is the cerebrum which differentiates man from other animals. Defend or refute this statement.
4. Hemispherical specialisation of brain known as ‘right brained and left brained’ is a figment of imagination. Critique this statement.
5. What are the special types of studies used to identify the role of heredity in our behaviour?
6. What contributes more to behaviour? Heredity or environment? Take a position and defend your view.
7. What person perceptions could affect our behaviour towards an interviewee? Discuss.
8. Illustrate how defensive attribution can affect behaviour in the workplace?
9. Can we love our work and workplace? Critique this from the perspective of research on love.
10. How much could the prenatal stage affect behaviour?
11. What are Erickson’s stages of development?
12. Read ‘Interviewer’s dilemma’ given in Box 2.8 in the chapter. Would you recommend selection of the candidate? Justify.
13. The way the adolescent resolves identity issues has a bearing on his/her achievements. Critique this statement.
14. How do you think evolutionary psychology is likely to affect thoughts on OB?
15. What is the impact of genotype rs4950 on leadership?

Need some help with this? Go to Clues to Answer Assimilation Questions given at the end of the book.

Application Challenges

1. Read the Times of India Article ‘Gagged by BCCI, Dhoni keeps mum on spot-fixing scandal’ at http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-05-28/top-stories/39579312_1_mahendra-singh-dhoni-all-dhoni-spot-fixing-scandal. Do you think that most of us would have done the same thing? Is there a scientific basis to explain this?
2. When was the last time you got angry and behaved aggressively towards someone? How long did it take you to cool down? Have you forgotten the incident and forgiven the person? Analyse this from a biological perspective, indicating the nervous and endocrine cycles that would have been involved in the aggressive behaviour, cooling down, and still remembering it.

Approach to Teaching/Learning

For Lecture-driven Teaching Those institutions which use lecture method can follow the standard pattern of lecture and quizzes. Thereafter, they can go to the experiential learning mode by attempting the application challenges.

For Case-driven Teaching The content of chapter is not amenable to case-driven teaching. However, you may consider using the following activity and convert the input from the student groups into a short case for use in the class:

Narrate the story given below to children going to Class 2 or 3, high school students, college students, and your faculty, and seek their opinion. Link the opinions to the Kohlberg’s framework of moral development and record your findings.

‘Jyothi had studied hard for her examinations, but three days before the examination, she fell ill. She had pinned so much hope on passing this degree examination to get a job. She wanted to support her widowed mother who had taken a loan for her education while working as domestic aid in several houses. Jyothi could hardly answer the paper and she sought help from her friend sitting next to her. Her friend gave her some chits’.