Humanistic Behaviorism: Appreciative Inquiry, Actively Caring, and Self Motivation

Hi classmates,

I appreciate all of this information on appreciative inquiry!! This a wonderful humanistic perspective that the world needs more of. At Virginia Tech in Psychology, our research center shares a similar perspective and principles, but we include a behavioral perspective for integration: Humanistic Behaviorism. We call it "Actively Caring." Actively = Behavioral and Caring = Humanism.

In reference to Daniel Pink's video on self motivation, an effective way to increase self motivation is to provide supportive feedback or recognition to someone for a specific behavior. It builds competence and community. We use actively-caring wristbands to recognize caring behaviors on our VT campus, but they have spread far beyond. Since January 2011, we have nearly 1,000 AC4P stories from across the U.S. and world.

If you are interested to know more, check out this 2 minute video: http://www.unirel.vt.edu/audio_video/2011/07/07252011-activelycaring.html

I hope our individual actions build a collective community where each of us does more to appreciate each other, our fellow students, and our faculty/staff/admin for their actively-caring behaviors. Thanks again for sharing all of these articles on appreciative inquiry.

Additionally, we talked about anger and curiosity today. The model below provides interesting insight to support Dr. Fowler's claim.

Relationship between anger, curiosity and job performance

thanks,
shane