Man and Motivation for Group Living

1. Man and Motivation for Group Living

2. Man does not start life as human being. He originates from cells and cells are not human. • The study of sociology shows that man becomes a different type of individual from his original nature when he takes on acquired characteristics of human nature. • Man is not born with traits that lead to power seeking, aggrandizement and intolerance. These traits are acquired through man’s environment. • Human nature is characterized by the acquisition of human traits that are part of the environment in which an individual lives.

3. It is characterized by intelligence and thinking. • From birth man develops as a social being as well as an individual characterized by self-assertiveness and personal, interest and designs. • Few weeks after birth the child shows inclination to social being. • As the maturing process continues, the child exhibits behavior that is characterized by cooperation and a willingness to be friendly. • Man’s nature is also characterized by a progressive advance from involuntary action to one of fixed modes of behavior.

4. Human needs to be satisfied in a constructive manner and these are: • Physiological needs • Psychological needs • Sociological needs

5. Physiological Needs • Include the need for oxygen, escape from pain- producing situations and attention to requirements to thirst, sex, intestinal and bladder elimination, rest, sleep, and hunger. • These are important to the individual as a means of survival and comfort.

6. Psychological Needs • Include love, achievement, affection, belonging, approval, recognition, acceptance, and security. Sociological Needs • Include cooperation, sharing, gregariousness, and love. They take into account the opinion of others, the desire to influence others and the security one has within the group.

7. Motivation for Group Living Forces that motivated mankind to live in groups: • Hostile environment • Hereditary influences • Acquired drives

8. Hostile Environment • Man’s early enemies were wild animals that inhabited the forest and thick underbrush ; natural disasters and disease. • association, rather than individualistic existence , has proved to be safer and better expedient in the life struggle. Hereditary Influences • Heredity in itself results in individuals becoming members of certain groups. • Heredity has placed the sex drive in human beings, which impels them to seek mates.

9. Acquired Drives These include such desires as hunger, love and vanity: such as wishes as the desire to adventure, security and recognition ; such sentiments as those for the flag, the home, the Bible, the state or nation; such interest and values as health, wealth, politics, sociability, knowledge, beauty, and rightness.

10. Certain conditions that are necessary for successful adjustment: • An individual needs to have affection. • He needs to experience a feeling of “belonging.” • He needs independence. • He needs approval and the opportunity to maintain his self- esteem.

11. SOME THEORIES OF PLAY • Surplus – Energy or Spencer- Schiller Theory • Recreation theory • Relaxation theory • Inheritance or Recapitulation theory • Instinct theory • Social-contact theory • Self-expression theory

12. Spencer –Schiller Theory • Expressed the idea of play as “the aimless expenditure of exuberant energy”. • This theory points out that human beings have developed many powers that cannot all act as once. • Play is an excellent medium of letting off his steam that has developed as a result of the continual bombardment of the organism by a multitude of stimuli. Friedrich Schiller

13. Recreation theory • This theory has its premise the idea that that the human body needs some form of play as a means of revitalization. • Play is a medium of refreshing the body after long hours of work. • It aids in the recovery of exhausted energies and is an antidote for tense nerves, mental fatigue, and emotional unrest. Guts Muths The father of physical training in Germany

14. Inheritance or Recapitulation Theory • This theory maintains that the past is the key to play. • Play has been passed down from generation to generation from earliest times. • Play and games are a part of each individual’s inheritance. G. Stanley Hall -developed the recapitulation theory

15. Instinct Theory • This theory declares that human beings have an instinctive tendency to be active at various stages of their lifetime. • Play is something that just naturally happens as a matter of growth and development • It is something that is natural and part of man’s make up.

16. Social –contact Theory • Human beings are born of parents. The parents are members of a certain group, culture and society. • Consequently , the human being takes activities from his surroundings.

17. Self- expression Theory Man is an active creature, that his physiological and anatomical structure places limits on his activity, that his degree of physical fitness at any time affects the kind of activity in which he engages, and that psychological inclination that are the result of physiological needs and learned responses, habits, or attitudes propel him into certain types of play activities.

18. Some Early Classical Theories Growth Theories (Appleton 1919) • Play is a response to a generalized drive for growth in the organism. • Play serves to facilitate the mastery of skills necessary to the function of adult behaviors.

19. 2.Ego Expanding Theories ( Lange and Claparde) • Play is nature’s way of completing the ego ; an expressive exercising of the ego and the rest of the personality ,an exercising that develops cognitive skills and aids in the emergence of additional skills.

20. 3. Pre- Exercise Theory (Gross 1898) • Play is the necessary practice for behaviors that are essential to later survival. • The playful fighting of animals or the rough and tumble play of children are essentially the practice of skills that will later aid their survival.

21. Current Theories of Play Infantile Dynamics (Lewin) • Play occurs because the cognitive life space of the child is still unstructured, resulting in failure to discriminate between real and unreal. • The child passes into a region of playful unreality where things are changeable arbitrary.

22. 2. Cathartic Theory ( Freud 1908) • Play represents an attempt to partially satisfy drives or to resolve conflicts when the child really doesn’t have the means to do so. • When a child works through a drive through play he has temporarily resolved it.

23. 3. Psychoanalytic Theory ( Buhler and Anna Freud) • Play represents not merely wish- fulfilling tendencies but also mastery – an attempt through repetition to cope with overwhelming anxiety-provoking situations. • Play is defensive as well as adaptive in dealing with anxiety.

24. 4. Cognitive Theory (Piaget 1962) • Play is derived from the child’s working out of the two fundamental characteristics of his mode of experience and development. • These are accommodation and assimilation • Accommodation – the attempt to imitate and interact physically with the environment. • Assimilation – the attempt to integrate externally derived percepts or motor actions in a limited amount of schemata.