You Decide Activity Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

You Decide Activity - Assignment Example However in Carol’s case, it is clear that she does not need that maternity leave. This is evident as Bob the Union leader states, â€Å"First, maternity leaves are necessary for the physical health and recovery of the mother. Second, the bond formed between mother and child is an important component of child rearing.† This itself is the testament that Carol did not fulfill the first aspect of the leave itself, which should support the court to dismiss her case. Moreover, from a legal aspect- maternity is defined in an instance where a mother has conceived a child. Although the organization understand that this may be mentally exhaust Carol’s ability not to conceive, it does not grant her the right to take a maternity leave due to the fact she is not conceiving. Secondly, the vacation allocation of Carol seems to be illogical. If Carol wanted to request this vacation, she should have let her manager be aware of these circumstances. Instead, she takes a vacation of two weeks and then informs her manager after she comes back that she wants to go in a maternity leave. This type of behavior is not tolerable because her manager has now to allocate resources to her workload. It seems that this is against compliance. First and foremost, he Family and Medical Leave Act  protects the job of any worker who must take time away from work due to a serious illness, a sick family member or to care for a newborn, adopted or foster child. Under FML, mothers are able to time away regardless of the fact if the kids are fraternal or not. Furthermore, the bargaining act makes it clear that mothers are allowed to have up to 6 months of leave. If this in fact is the case, then there is no violation of the law as the collective argument upholds this. Secondly, the focal point is that the law explicitly states that maternal or adoption leave. Looking at ACE-AFSME

Business Ethics in IT Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Business Ethics in IT Management - Essay Example When the organization collect data related to employees they are supposed handle it with secrecy and confidentiality. My organization is highly strict on safeguarding the details of the employees and other information related to the human resource department. Information related to pay scale of employees, social security numbers and other account details are allowed to be handled only by authorized personnel. Even the organization is not supposed to conduct any activity which can harm the environmental balance of nature. The nature of business is not supposed to be conducted against the social interest of the community and nation. The managers are not allowed to manipulate and misuse the key strategies and policies of the organization. My organization also have the right to monitor our activities to assess whether we follow the ethical code and principles of the business. In my organization employees are evaluated by the ethical standard they follow, as it is the core value of the or ganization. A person with no moral or ethical value can never be a good employee and can spoil the goodwill and reputation of a firm. My company tests my ethical behavior while I work in the organization in order to make sure that I am productive and harmless to the organization working process. My company does not allow using the company telephones to make long distant calls as this show that as an employee I want to misuse the company services. Manipulating the software’s of the company and using company products when not in offices are against my organizational ethical standard. My organization feels that if the employee cannot adhere to the ethical code of the firm then he is not worth to work in the organization. An employee can only be trusted and relied upon if he can follow the moral and ethical value of the organization.  

Beowulf and The Modern Day Hero Essay Example for Free

Beowulf and The Modern Day Hero Essay A hero does something for the greater good of mankind. A hero is courageous and brave in any situation. Beowulf and Irena Sendler a social worker who smuggled over 2,500 Jewish out of harms way put their lives on the line to protect their mankind. While each warriors have their differences both believe in courage and triumphing over evil. In his final battle Beowulf goes up against a dragon that take a whole army to defeat. Caught up in his courageous high Beowulf does not realize the feat that lies ahead of him. Beowulf describes, â€Å"scant regard for the dragon as a threat, no dread at all of its courage or strength, for he kept going often in the past† (2348-2351). Beowulf is caught up in his past glories blinding him from the actualization of how dangerous the dragon is. Being courageous means one knows their limits. Irena Sendler knew that she could not act alone in rescuing over 2,500 innocent children. Ambulance drivers would transport children under the floorboards while police officers would be bribed to allow traffic through an underground corridor. Unlike Beowulf Irena knew that she needed help to sneak past the giant Nazi regime to rescue thousands of Jewish children. is not caught up in being labeled as a hero for risking her life to save over 2,500 innocent children. Beowulf states, â€Å"I have wrestled the hilt from the enemies’ hand, avenged the evil done to the Danes; it is what was due† (1668-1670) Beowulf fights for justice and to avenge those who have done wrong. By fighting for your beliefs Beowulf displays that you cannot terrorize without repercussions. In 1943 the Nazi party commenced a liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto. Irena believes, â€Å"Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this earth, and not a title to glory.† Irena did not want the title of glory she only fought for her beliefs in a non-violent manner. Unlike Beowulf she did not need to go out and avenge the Nazis for their vile acts towards humanity. A hero is brave and will put their lives on the line to protect mankind. Beowulf and a Irena are courageous no matter how daunting each of their tasks were. A hero stands up for the greater good of people when he witnesses mankind being threatened. While a hero comes in all different ways both possess the same qualities. MLA Format HEVESI, DENNIS. Irena Sendler, Lifeline to Young Jews, Is Dead at 98. Nytimes.com. Nytimes.com, 13 May 2008. Web.

Democratic Leadership Or Participative Leadership Business Essay

Democratic Leadership Or Participative Leadership Business Essay Open system in Organisation:  An open system means open to environment. Organisation exists and utilities in environment. Environment makes the organization to  obtain  right type of people, technology and structure so that the goals to serve the environment can be managed. The organisation is thus critically effect the environment. Mostly the demands or wants of the people defines the strategies and goals of an organization. What are the needs in  the market  and how an organization can carry new and needy products to  the market  create a contact between the organization and the environment. Without communication, organization cannot satisfy required products or services to  the users  groups. This way, an organization is an open system, without which it cannot survive. Organisation is goal oriented:  Without goal or set of goals, organisation is unusable. There is nothing for the organization to do. Therefore, the main characteristic of any organization is its goal.The goal gives line of action; acquire  required type of people and uses type of technology so that the goal is achieved in an expected time point. Without goal, organization cannot be designed. Collection  of people in organisation:  People are the main performers in any organisation. In other world, all the features of any organisation are the same except the people. Even with the same age, qualification, skills and services, the output of the people may differ, simply because the needs and wants of all people are not the same. What makes them work by heart and head is the one that differentiate organisations from one to others. Organisation consists of technology:  Technology is the means of doing works. There are various types of doing works. An organisation contains of more people, its performance technique should be of a fixed type so that each individual in the organisation can  exercise  them well. This is how technology pledges. Technology comforts  the work  and reduces the time. Technology creates a certain policy necessary to keep  organizational  beliefs in doings of the various people at different  structural  level. This saves the integrity of the people in succeed goals. Organisation has continuity:  As the organization includes people, and the people produce different needs, they can leave the organization or some may die too. This does not affect the organization to stop or decrease in size. Hence, it is said that every organisation has its own continuity. A good manager can leave but other better man can take over the trust of the organisation. AC 1.2 I have chosen KFC fast food restaurant. Its mission statement is given below. KFC   Kentucky fried chicken. Brand mission is to be our customers favorite place and way to eat. That broad and common mission statement is more clearly defined by the Kfc Values, which reflects the experience that customers can expect when walking into a Kfc fast food restaurant no matter where it is located  · We place the customer experience at the core of all we do.  · We are committed to our people.  · We believe in the kfc System.  · We operate our business decently.  · We give back to our communities.  · We grow our business profitably.  · We struggle continually to improve. As KFC mission statement states, they value their customers and want to be the best place for them to eat. KFC offer a wide range of fast foods like Chicken burgers, fries, drinks etc with affordable prices. Their quality of food is so good that one thinks to go to their restaurants again and again. They offer deals including different items on the cheapest prices. From their mission statement, we can note that their goals are to achieve market share by becoming peoples favourite. By visiting them, one can say that they have almost achieved their goals because every time a great rush of people always seen there. When someone goes to the restaurant, he/she feels like he belongs to that place. Staff performance to the people in a very good manner. Restaurants are kept very neat. Their quality of food is of such a standard that customers get the value for their money. AC1.3 There are many different features that affect the individual behaviour at work but there are some general factors. These general features are, Ability and Skills Personality Perception Attitudes Ability and Skills: Ability is a person talent to perform mentel Ara physical task Skill is a learned talent that a person has acquired to perform a task. Personality: Personality can be defined as the study of the characteristics and traits of an individual, the inter-relations between them and the way in which a person responds and adjusts to other people and situations. Different factors that affect the personality of an individual are heredity, family, society, culture and situation. Personality can be regarded as the most complex aspect of humans that influences their behaviour in a big way. It can be concluded that the study of personality traits offers an opportunity to understand the individuals. It helps them properly in directing their effort and motivating them for the achievement of the organisational goal. Perception: The cognitive process meant for interpreting the environmental stimuli in a meaningful way is referred to as perception. Every individual on the basis of his/he reference can organize and interpret environmental stimuli. There are many factors that influence the perception of an individual. The study of perception plays important role for the managers. It is important for mangers to create the favorable work environment so that employees perceive them in most favorable way. The employees are likely to perform better if they are going to perceive it in a positive way. Attitude: are determines of behaviour because they are linked with Perception, Personality, feeling and motivation. Attitude: A mentel state of readiness Learned and organized through experience Exerting a specific response to people objects and situation which it is related. Task 2 AC 2.1 Management: Management is the act of getting people together to achieve chosen goals. Management Functions: The first person who said about the management functions was French named Henri Fayol 1916  book  Administration  Industrially et Generali. He identified five functions of management, .Planning .Organising .Commanding .Controlling .Co-ordinating Planning The first step is planning this step involves mapping out exactly how to achieve the goal for an organisation and how to improve the company scale The manager first step needs to decide step are necessary to accomplish that goal, these may be improve organisation growth, inventory and sales staff. The manager step to plane, than the plane is place. Organising: As the name suggests organising relates to assigning the tasks and roles to the employees. Managers must assign the tasks to the employees in such a way that they get clear understanding of what to do and also ensure that the tasks are assigned to employees according to their skills. Commanding: This function concerns how managers direct employees. Fayol addressed such activities as effective communications, managerial behaviors, and the uses of rewards and punishment in discussing how a manager should command employees. Co-ordinating: Co-ordinating means helping. So, managers must help their sub ordinates whenever they feel in trouble. They must try to create a friendly environment so that employees could easily share the problems they are facing while working towards the achievement of organisational objectives and goals. Controlling After the other elements are in place, a manager job is not finished, he needs to check result against the goal and take any corrective action necessary to make that this area plane is on track. Managerial Roles A role is a planned set of behaviours. Henry Mintzberg (1973) has defines ten Sub roles common to the work of all managers. The ten roles are divided into three groups: interpersonal, informational, and decisional. as stated by Mintzberg (1973), managerial roles are as follows:   1. Informational roles   2. Decisional roles   3. Interpersonal roles   1.  Informational roles:  This involves the role of adjusting and disadjusting information as and when required.    2. Decisional roles:  It involves make good decision for orgnisation. 3.  Interpersonal roles:   This role involves personal things with people working in the organization. A.c 2.2 Management Styles: Management styles are the characteristics of management about making decisions, their manners and behaviours with the people inside and outside the organisation. There are four different management styles.  ·Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  Autocratic  ·Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  Democratic  ·Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  Consultative  ·Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  Laissez-Faire Autocratic: An autocratic management style is that where manager makes decisions on his/her own without asking their subordinates about their opinions. Manager of this style can be a confident person but he loses the trust by the subordinates. They may feel limited freedom of opinion. So, this can sometimes results to lack of employees, lack of trust and a potential lack of profitability. Democratic: A democratic management style is that where manager allows his/her sub-ordinates to take part in the decision making. This creates a sense of trust and satisfaction between managers and subordinates. Communication becomes easy between managers and subordinates. Complex decisions can be taken by using the specialist skills of the employees. Consultative: As the name suggests, consultative management style refers to consultation. Manager asks his/her sub-ordinates for their opinions but it is the manager who takes the final decision. Overall decision is taken in the best interest of employees as well as the company. In this style there is a sense of freedom but it is limited to some extent. Employees feel satisfied as they are involved in making decision. Laissez-Faire: Laissez-faire management style refers to the complete freedom given to employees by their managers. It is the style in which manager delegates the responsibility to the employees to make decisions. Manager directs the sub-ordinates towards the target and asks them to achieve the target using their own ways and ideas. There comes a sense of complete freedom, sense and satisfaction as employees are now free to complete the tasks using their own perception. It can bring the creativity and innovation to the work. It can also increase the profitability of the organisation. By looking at all the management styles I would recommend the Consultative management style because, I think, a little gap between the management and the employees is must. In this style though decision is taken by the manager him/herself but he /she still asks his/her sub-ordinates about their opinions. So, he takes into account what majority needs and what will go in the favour of employees and company as well and takes the best decision. So, management is involved in decision making but up to a limit. So, according to me, consultative style is best to follow as a management style. A.C 2.3 Leadership A leadership is the art of motivating a people or a group act towards to achieving a combine or common goal is called leadership. Leader ship is a force who incurring the people to achieving a common goal. Leadership styles Leadership have many styles Coaching This one on one style focuses on developing individual showing them how to improve their performance, and the big thing is helping to contact their goals for the organisation, if the coaching is well people and employee learn more. Afflictive This style emphasizes the importance of team work ,and create harmony in group by connecting with each other .MR.Goleman argues this approach is very important when trying to heighten team harmony, increase moral, improve ,communication or repair broken trust in an organisation but he warns against when you using it alone. Democratic This style is draw on peoples knowledge and skill and create a group to a resulting goals ,this style of leadership is best work when the direction the organisation unclear its very helpful and the leader needs to top of collective wisdom of the group. Commanding This style of leadership the classic model of military, it is most often when the last condition, because it rarely involves praise and frequently employs criticism, even the modern military has come to recognize its usefulness. Leadership Advantages Disadvantages Democratic: DISADVANTAGES Shower decision making Less production Every one involve Decision making is very difficult Leader can unsure and make everything a matter combine or meeting decision Advantages More individual responsibility More relation with other organisation More easily targeted growth More motivate the people Greater for production AUTOARATIC Disadvantages More group hostility More dependence on selected leader More apathy in group .Decision making is very difficult Advantages .More group productivity .Group makes the quicker decision . Pushes the group for more production AC3.1 Motivation: The urge to take action to achieve specific goal is known as motivation. It means trying to encourage somebody to decide to do something for themselves. Motivation is important to an organisation because it enhances the quality and increases the output of an organisation. Staffs get happy, so there comes innovation in the activities of the organisations. Motivation also affects the individuals working in organisations. It increases the morale of the motivated workers and helps them deal with the challenging tasks in an efficient way. They feel like more involved in the organisation and think that they are doing something best which leads the organisation towards the profitability and development. Organisations use different techniques to motivate their employees. A few of them are,  · Monetary rewards- According to Frederick Taylor, Monetary reward are an important motivating factor. Most of the people do agree with the statement of Taylor and it is true to some extent. By giving monetary rewards based on performance, an employee gets motivated and works hard to perform better to gain those monetary rewards. Monetary rewards include bonus payments, paying a portion of basic pay on achieving more than expected profits etc.  · Enhanced Communication- Communication refers to, not only ordering and giving feedback but, listening to the employee needs. By asking the employee about his problems on the workplace, he/she may feel like part of the organisation and motivated to perform well in his/her area of performance.  · Employee Involvement- By involving an employee in decision making for the organisation, an employee may feel like he/she is trusted to give opinions and there might be a share of his/her thought in making important decisions. Involving an employee in organisations important activities makes them feel they are trusted so this impacts the performance of employee in a positive way.  · Job rotation- There are a lot of workers in an organisation which have to do the same tasks daily. In order to motivate them, job rotation is best. It allows them to learn new skills by shifting them from one task to another. Autocratic Leadership: Autocratic leadership is an extreme form of transactional leadership, where leaders have absolute power over their workers or team. Staff and team members have little opportunity to make suggestions, even if these would be in the teams or the organizations best interest. Most people tend to resent being treated like this. Therefore, autocratic leadership often leads to high levels of absenteeism and staff turnover. However, for some routine and unskilled jobs, the style can remain effective because the advantages of control may outweigh the disadvantages. Democratic leadership or participative leadership: Although democratic leaders make the final decisions, they invite other members of the team to contribute to the decision-making process. This not only increases job satisfaction by involving team members, but it also helps to develop peoples skills. Team members feel in control of their own destiny, so theyre motivated to work hard by more than just a financial reward. Laissez-faire leadership: This French phrase means leave it be, and its used to describe leaders who leave their team members to work on their own. It can be effective if the leader monitors whats being achieved and communicates this back to the team regularly. Most often, laissez-faire leadership is effective when individual team members are very experienced and skilled self-starters. Unfortunately, this type of leadership can also occur when managers dont apply sufficient control. A.C 3.2 Motivation Motivation is a process to attract the people for giving some packages, salary, bonus, etc. Many companies are working in the world and TESCO is one of them TESCO is begin 1919 with one man Jack Cohen ,a market stakeholder selling groceries in London since the TESCO has across the world ,now 2,200 stores in whole the world they have meet and customer needs ,goods TESCO have more polite ,well educated staff and trained staff. TESCO considers that the business into two groups people customer and staff. TESCO have reward to their staff flex working Discount gym member ship Staff discount Company share option In 1911 the engineer Frederick Taylor published one of the earliest motivation theories. Taylor search people work purely for money In the early 1930 theorist Elton Mayo suggested that motivation at work was promoted by such factor Greater communication Good team work Showing interest in other Involving other decision making Ensuring work is interesting and no respective Maslow and Herzberg C:UsersAMAAppDataLocalTempksohtmlwps_clip_image-4749.png Maslow Maslow argued that humans are motivated by five essential needs, and he formed a pyramid demonstrating these needs and these are called hierarach of needs At the bottom of the pyramids basic needs those are motivated for food and shelter, once time these needs through pay, individual want security through, for example, good job position social need, refer to the needs to belong and to be part of a group Maslow suggest that achieving one level motivates achieve the next C:UsersAMAAppDataLocalTempksohtmlwps_clip_image-10688.png Herzberg Herzberg theory is based on two parts hygienic factor and motivators, his research showed that certain factor where the true motivators This theory shows that to truly motivate an employee a business and need to the certain condition. Its very helpful committed to work place. Herzberg theory motivating factor helps to build a business that delivers and give consistently strong result. Conclusion Employee motivation is an important task for a company managers thats why the Taylor suggest pat motivated worker to improve the production and Herzberg suggest by hygienic conditions. A.C 3.3 Frederick Herzberg, after interviewing a lot of employees, gave his theory of motivation. His theory is also known as Herzbergs two factor theory because, after interviewing the employees, there were two factors common among all the employees. These factors are Hygiene factors and Motivators. Hygiene factors are often referred to as dissatisfies. These include the factors that make an employee unhappy for example in an autocratic work environment, employees may feel unhappy, dissatisfied and low trusted. These are the things that lead an employee to demotivation and hence, affect his performance and companies as well. On the other hand, motivators are the factors opposite to hygiene factors. These are sometimes referred to as satisfiers. These are the factors that satisfy the employees needs on a workplace. These factors include promotion, job recognition, responsibility etc. Herzberg believed that businesses needed to ensure that hygiene factors were minimized in order to enable motivators to have their full effect. Managers must keep the environment in such a manner so that they could understand the problems employees are facing. They must ensure the open communication with the employees so that they could work out to solve them. These things motivate the employees and they start working and thinking in a positive way. AC4.2 My name is Muhammad Adnan. In the class we were grouped by teacher. Then we decided the name of group. Our group name was Tiger. We decide 1 electrical thing that was cut camera. 4.1 Our group was arranged by the teacher. We was three guys in the group. Adnan sherbet iftakhar we were advertise the cctv camera.cctv   is use for monitoring of the  behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people for the purpose of influencing, managing, directing, or protecting.cctv is amazing technology.first we thought about cctv how can we advertise the purpose of cctv.then we made a plan.we imagine one organization. DR.Browne give a chance to present ourselves and promote abilities and utilize our experience .First of all we decide to present on CCTV , because many robbery cases are seeing in city ,in banks ,or country ,when we were working a team everyone feel relax ,because many advisor who were giving many ideas but finally we decide CCTV. Teamwork can lead better decision and quality of team work may be measured by analyzing in the following six components of collaboration among the team work. 1. Communication 2. Co-ordination 3. Balance member 4. Contribution 5. Mutual support 6. Effort When you work in a team communication is very important, teamwork is done well when everyone proper contributes and with co-coordinative mind, then your team play effective role. In my teamwork my experience is good and will helpful for my factures.

Truffaut’s Jules et Jim †An Expressionistic Analysis :: Movie Film Essays

Truffaut’s Jules et Jim — An Expressionistic Analysis As far as Bazin’s essay â€Å"The Evolution of the Language of Cinema† might be used as a formal test of categorisation—notwithstanding the problematics inherent in his oversimplification of the realist and expressionist methodology—initial viewing of Jules et Jim seems to present a dichotomous structure. Certainly, a number of Bazin’s criteria for realism are met: camera movement; long-takes; composition-in-depth. and deep focus; a certain ambiguity of meaning. Similarly, several of Bazin’s criteria for expressionism also can be found: there is spatial and temporal discontinuity; editing is used for artistic effect; reality is augmented to create a world only vaguely like our own, and so on. The dichotomy though is only apparent. The over-all effect created by Truffaut shows Jules et Jim belonging more comfortably in the expressionistic domain; and, as we shall discover, devices which would normally—at least according to Bazin— deliver the effect of realism are utilised by Truffaut as tools of expressionism. In our analysis of Jules et Jim, rather than examine fleetingly the whole gamut of expressionistic techniques, we shall instead explore in some detail the more important methods, paying particular attention to temporal and spatial distortions, editing and montage, special visual effects, and finally discover the manner in which Bazin’s archetypal techniques of realism—long-takes and composition-in-depth.—are recast. Certainly one of the most striking features of Jules et Jim is temporal distortion. Truffaut utilises this effect by various means and for various purposes. In the first two minutes of the film, time is condensed in two ways: by the third person narrative, which encapsulates the film’s exposition in the most laconic of terms, describing the meeting and developing friendship of Jules and Jim, and also by the selective images which largely avoid redunant description of the aural narrative, but instead seek to interpret and compliment. Accordingly, when the narrator tells us that Jules is a foreigner in Paris; that he wants to go to an art student’s ball; and that Jim gets him a ticket and costume, the image we are offered is a simple one of the two playing dominoes. This image, incidentally, becomes a leitmotif in the film, supporting the theme of friendship and is touchingly varied much later when Jules plays instead with his daughter. Next, the narrator tells us that their friendship grows; the ball takes place; that Jules has tender eyes.

essay on beowulf :: Epic of Beowulf Essays

In Beowulf, both pagan and Christian elements are present which add religious contrast to the poem. The poem begins with the king, Hrothgar, taking the throne of the Danes. During his reign, one of Hrothgars’ accomplishments included the building of the great Mead hall which served as a place of relaxation for his troops. Years passed and an evil monster came and terrorized the Hall. Then the great warrior, Beowulf, a foreigner offered to help rid the town of the monster. In the end, good triumphed over evil as he defeated the monster and returned the city to it’s people.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Present in this poem are certain forms of evil. The greatest of these is the descendent of Cain’s evil against his brother Abel. After Cain killed Abel God punished him by exiling him from the kingdom of God. From Cain’s soul came evil monsters, one in particular, Grendel. He was a demon; a fiend who haunted the moors, the wild marshes and made his home in â€Å"hell† (actually earth). King Hrothgar finished a great mead hall for his warriors to relax and reside in when away from war. Grendel, amused by the sound of drunkenness coming from the hall, kills all who reside there. This punishment and evil went on for twelve years. The people turned to the worship of pagan Gods, hoping they would take the demon back to the pits from whence it derived.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  After the failure of paganism Hrothgar searched for warriors that could defeat the beast. A decorated warrior, Beowulf, sailed from the land of the Geats to help. This shows how God works in mysterious ways. Grendel keeps on attacking the great mead hall but refuses to go after the king’s throne. God protected the throne. This is saying that God will defeat any evil that stands in his path. An example that God controls life and death is the line â€Å"God must decide who will be given to death’s cold grip†. Death is not the last part of life. The mead hall’s gargantuan size symbolizes the people’s desire to be closer to God. It’s reason for construction, so the people could reach the heavens.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Throughout the poem good clashes with evil. One example would be Grendel taking over the Mead hall. In this instance the mead hall would symbolize safeness and good harmony. One major important clash was when the townspeople gave up on Christianity and went back to paganism to get rid of the monster.

Implicit cognition Essay

Implicit cognition refers to internal influences that affect an individual’s behaviours. The identifying feature of implicit cognition is that an individual’s past experiences can influence their judgements in   fashion that the individual is not introspectively aware of – i.e. the person is not conscious of the fact that the experiences have affected his/her perceptions in such a way. (Greenwald & Banaji, pg 4; 1995) Evidence supports the view that social behaviour and attitudes in particular are often based largely on unconscious attitudes, for example an individual’s attitudes towards a specific ethnic group are prone to be implicitly influenced. Implicit attitudes are commonly thought to mainly effect cognitive bias in a negative way (e.g. racism), however Edward Thorndike (1920) named the ‘halo effect’, upon observing that personality ratings showed a tendency for positive attributes to be associated with other positive attributes more than they should be (Greenwald & Banaji, pg 9; 1995). A great amount of ‘halo effect’ research has been based on using physical attractiveness as the objectively irrelevant attribute that influences perception of other characteristics. Studies have shown that attractive people are judged to possess greater social skills as well as being more successful in employment (Dion, Berscheid & Walster; 1972). As previously mentioned implicit cognition is caused by past experiences influencing judgement in ways that the individual is not introspectively aware, thus it is imperative to use indirect measures to gauge an individual’s implicit attitudes. The distinction between direct and indirect measures depends on the relationship between what the subject is informed about the purpose of a measure and what the researcher chooses to interpret from the subject’s response to the measure (Greenwald & Banaji, pg 8; 1995) – the researcher will inform the subject that one attribute is being measured when in fact the researcher will interpret information about another attribute based on the subjects response to the measure. It is necessary to use indirect measures because implicit attitudes are by definition attitudes that an individual is unable to report as they are unaware of their existence i.e. implicit attitudes are beyond an individual’s introspective limits. For the purpose of this essay I have chosen to examine the reaction time based ‘Implicit Association Test’ (IAT) and Facial Electromyography (fEMG) which is based on physiological measurement. Implicit attitudes result in projections of behaviour or judgments that are under the control of automatically activated evaluation, without the actor’s awareness of that causation. The IAT procedure seeks to measure implicit attitudes by measuring their underlying automatic evaluation. A beneficial property of the IAT is that it may resist individuals masking their attitudes using self presentation strategies (e.g. providing false responses in order to gain social acceptance or avoid criticism). In short, the IAT may reveal attitudes and other automatic associations even or those who prefer not to express those attitudes (Greenwald et al, pg 1464-5; 1998). The IAT is performed over a series of five stages; the first stage is called ‘Target Concept Discrimination’ in this stage the target concept is introduced and the subject is instructed to simply pair the stimuli with its corresponding concept, for example a study on implicit attitudes towards sexual preference (Project Implicit – an online database of IATs offering the test to the public, spearheaded by Dr Anthony Greenwald, Dr Brian Nosek and Dr Maharin Banaji) presents the subject with the task concepts ‘gay’ and ‘straight’, the subject is then presented with images displaying gay or straight couples or words such as homosexual and heterosexual. When the stimulus appears on screen the subject pairs it with the corresponding category – picture of a man and wife pairs with straight concept. The next stage in the IAT is ‘Associated Attribute Discrimination’ as previously this stage is presented as a two- category discrimination task. The subject is asked to pair words such as happiness, love, agony, strife with the corresponding attributes good and bad according to which attribute best suits their meaning. Following the introduction to the ‘Target Concept Discrimination’ and to the ‘Associates Attribute Dimension’, the two are amalgamated in the third stage –i.e. gay and good on one side of the screen and straight and bad on the other or vice versa. During this stage stimuli for target and attribute discriminations appear on alternate trials. For example’ a picture of a homosexual couple would be shown followed by the word ‘famine’.   As previously the subject pairs the stimuli with their matching category. The fourth stage consists of reversing the target concepts position in the experiment and the final stage of the experiment combines the ‘Reversed Target Concept Discrimination’ with attribute discrimination. For example the gay concept is now on the same side of the screen as bad. The subject is then presented with alternating stimuli and pairs them with the appropriate concept or attribute. If the target concepts are differentially associated with the attribute dimension, the subject should find one of the combined task (either the third stage or the fifth stage) to be more difficult than the other- this is shown in the subjects reaction time; longer reaction times suggest the subject has higher difficulty pairing an attribute with a concept. The measure of the difference in difficulty is used to provide the measure of implicit attitudinal difference between the target categories (Greenwald et al, pg 1465-6; 1998). In the example of implicit attitudes towards sexual preference, it should be easier to complete the task when straight is combined with good if there is a stronger association between heterosexuals and good meanings than between homosexuals and good meaning, thus showing an implicit attitude of bias towards heterosexuals. Also it is common to use training stages before each of the combined discrimination stages to reduce the effects the order of the combined discrimination tasks has on the IAT results. Since the IAT was first described by Dr. Anthony Greenwald et al in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1998 it has grown exponentially in popularity, having been used in over 300 published studies and cited in over 800 articles (Azar, 2008). Among the reasons for the success of the IAT are its relative ease of use, the large effect sizes it creates, its high level of adaptability and its resistance to subject’s faking their responses. To show the validity of the IAT Greenway et al (1998) used the classical known-groups validity measure. This measure consists of using groups whom are known previous to the experiment to differ regarding the construct of interest. Greenwald et al used Americans of Korean and Japanese descent to test the validity of the IAT. The participants had to classify positive and negative words along with typical Korean and Japanese names in the combined discrimination stage, as expected the IAT results showed that individuals of Korean or Japanese descent were prone to hold mutually negative implicit attitudes towards the other ethnicity (Banse et al pg 146; 2001). It has been disputed that the reason for these IAT results is at least partially based on ethnic groups being more familiar with names associated with in their own group, i.e. positive IAT scores may reflect familiarity more so than sympathy with their own ethnic group. Another commonly expressed concern with the internal validity of the IAT is the order in which the combined discrimination tasks appear. Greenwald et al (1998) expressed that all other thing being equal, strengths of associations used in the first of the IAT’s two combined tasks had a tendency to be stronger than those used in the second combined task. However, in a subsequent study Nosek et al (2005) showed that an increase in the length of the training stages before each of the combined discrimination stages can result the order having less of an effect on the IAT scores. If the pairing order effect is due to the interference caused by learning and becoming accustomed to an initial response set and subsequently needing to replace it with a new response set, then extra practice with the new response set may act to reduce this effect. (Nosek et al, pg 177; 2005). Furthermore the IAT is designed that the order of the combined discrimination task be random.