A Modest Construct | psychology

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¶ Satisfaction, Enrichment, & Motivation

rev. 20 November 2008; get the PDF.

In the inchoate years of the 21st century, the nominal ideas behind Frederick Herzberg’s “Two-Factor Theory” have been largely cast aside in their want of experimental validation, but the late psychologist’s ultimate conclusion—that “job enrichment” is a good and necessary function of management—is certainly alive and well, albeit superseded by more complete theories about the idea (Miner, 2005, pp. 61, 73-74). In a period of a global “flattening” of cultures and economies (to borrow Thomas Friedman’s nomenclature), when fears about job security are on the rise, long-term career goals are sinking into the dusk latitudes, and cynicism about outsource-happy management and inequality is worse in the United States than it has been since the Gilded Age, how can organizations elicit more than a minimum of effort from their employees, short of threatening or scaring them into hyperkinesis?

¶ Two-Factor Theory

See this in PDF format; revised 21 October 2008.

The relatively inglorious origins of organizational behavior as a field of study began as little more than queries into potential ways to improve productivity and reduce human variability—this at the advent of mass production as practiced today, with Henry Ford’s mechanized production line leading the charge. By the middle of the 20th century, organizational behavior as a codified field of study began to shift to a sort of organizational psychology, dedicated not to eliminating or marginalizing the human factors associated with production, but rather controlling and tempering them. The idea that employees were not only human, but complex persons with the capacity for actualization, began to some degree with the work of Elton Mayo (Pugh & Hickson, 2007, p. 217), but realized some shade of its existing form after World War II, lead by researchers such as Frederick Herzberg.

¶ Sam Vaknin is still an idiot

7 April 2009 • Comments are now closed. Unfortunately, they were devolving into a steady stream of people who didn’t bother to read to narrative thus far and added no value at all.

You’ll pardon my bluntness in the title, but I find it concise and to the point.

My entry “Sam Vaknin’s Self-Love” remains one of my most popular entries, and continues to attract a dialog/argument between refugees from various fora and user groups pertaining to narcissism and NPD. From commenter Derek comes word that Vaknin has seen fit to throw his hat into America’s current political ring by penning an amazingly obtuse and ridiculous article about Barack Obama.

¶ Wednesday’s Word: cacophony

cacophony: n. a mix of discordant sounds; dissonance.

There’s nothing inherently new or exciting in the word cacophonous; in fact, many of you have probably heard it before. It has a flair of the exotic, but it’s showed up often enough in the mainstream to be fairly well known.

The reason I chose it was because I was trying to dissect it etymologically the other day and realized that while I knew the latter root, -phon (φωνή), which means voice (or often more generally is used to mean “sound”), I didn’t know the etymology of “caco-” which I could only assume to mean “bad.” The only other word I could think of with that same root was “cacodemon,” and I wasn’t even entirely sure that was really a word outside of Doom.

It turns out that the construction really is as simple as all that: the Greek kakos (κακός) means “bad, evil, or harmful.” The Greek kakos refers to inherent or characteristic evil; by contrast, the Greek word for that which causes ill effects is poneros (πονηρός). The word likely comes from the Indo-European root kakka-, which denoted ill, specifically defecation

From this root, we get quite a few other, lesser-known words.

Cacoëthes refers to an urge or mania, the combination of the Greek kakos and ethos, which means “character;” literally, cacoëthes is “bad character.”

Cacodyl is a foul-smelling liquid compound: caco + od (smell) + yl (chemical suffix for radicals).

Cacogenics is a self-explanatory synonym for dysgenics (itself an antonym of eugenics.

One of my favorites is cacography, which is poor penmanship and/or spelling: kakos + graphein (writing or visual representation).

The balls-out coolest word, though, is a psychological one: cacodemonomania is a condition whereby a person believes he is possessed by an evil spirit. It comes from the English cacodemon (it is a word after all), from the Greek kakodaimon (κακοδαίμων). Whereas we have come to think of “demon” as being inherently bad, the word’s etymological origins, daimon, usually handed down to us through Latin as daemon, simply means “spirit,” without connotations of good or evil. The split happened mostly because of Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, and the evil spirits or beings described therein gave a permanent evil connotation to the word. As early as the 16th century, “demon” was evil, and “daemon” was reserved for the generally supernatural or incorporeal.

So, caco- reaches all the way back to the Indo-European kakka. It’s also related etymologically to the Greek kopros (κοπρος), which is, to be blunt, shit. While we may have words in English that use the root as “bad,” you’re far more likely to see it in words having to do with feces. The Dutch kakken, the German kacken, Russian kakat’ (какать ), Icelandic kúka, and Czech kakat all mean “to defecate.”

I’ll stop here before I go off onto other tangents. Tune in next week when I’ll probably look at another common curse word that we all know and love.

§1991 · February 27, 2008 · (No comments) · Tags: etymology, linguistics, psychology, Wednesday's Word

¶ Condensed Knowledge

Condensed Knowledge by Will Pearson et al.: Publisher: Collins; Year: 2004; Pages: 345

My brother’s been reading mental_floss and its associated books for several years. Condensed Knowledge is, to the extent of my knowledge, the first of their [adjective] Knowledge compendia, essentially giant books of trivia. After having my appetite whetted by A.J. Jacobs (who, though is a contributor to mental_floss, does not have any material in this particular book), I decided to try my hand at one of these.

To be honest, Condensed Knowledge is a little hit-or-miss. Personally, I can’t quite figure out of it’s supposed to be a “Knowledge for Dummies” kind of book, or a “Bet You Didn’t Know…” kind of book. It’s organized into sections based on topic; e.g. “Condensed Religion,” “Condensed Geography,” “Condensed Art.” Each section contains a bunch of 1 or 2-page articles with a variable number of trivia. For example, “5 Famous Sculptors” or “7 Ancient Civilizations You Never Knew About.” Each subitem gets a little blurb.

Perhaps it’s just my own variable knowledge that made the book seem inconsistent. When I’m being told, somewhat condescendingly, about famous painters, I think to myself, “Why am I reading this again?” But when the books veers into the esoteric, like little-known painful rituals in history, it becomes genuinely interesting. Even within a section (each section being written by a different author or co-authors), there is remarkable inconsistency: religion, for instance, goes from the stupidly simple to the genuinely interesting.

Then, too, some of the authors seem to have a better grasp of neutrality than others. The author responsible for the philosophy section, for instance, really hates Jean-Paul Sartre, and made those feelings known on at least two separate occasions.

Remember, too, that the purposed of Condensed Knowledge is to tell you a little bit about a lot of things. There’s no in-depth analysis here; sometimes the author repeats a misconception or is so glib that they misrepresent their topic.

Despite its flaws, the book was a fun enough read. If nothing else, it should function similarly to Wikipedia: if you read a blurb that piques your knowledge, or that sounds suspicious, go research it. I know that happened with not a few topics in my case. In that respect, I suppose, the book has fulfilled its mission.

§1973 · February 8, 2008 · 1 comment · Tags: Book Reviews, books, economics, literature, memes, philosophy, physics, psychology, religion, reviews, science, sociology