RUNNING HEAD: BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT
Title of the Paper
Author
[Name of the Institution]
Reflection 2 Learning Journal
Reflection
After the completion of Reflection (Learning Journal) 1, I learned the introduction of psychology and the concept of the human psyche, the same knowledge I applied while writing Reflection 2. Reflection 1 argued human behaviour could be understood in three levels: biological, psychological, and environmental/social. Biological level discusses the natural manufacturing of human brain with the parts like hormones which contribute to its functioning (Doise, and Mapstone, 1986). This level reveals the differences which exist in different brains (of male, female, child, grown-up man, or an old man/woman) and the impacts of these differences on how people behave. The other level is psychological that reveals the cognitive perspective and analysis of how thoughts, memories, and planning influence behaviour. Where psychological level reveals the influence of internal variations, the environmental or social level of understanding reveals the influence of the external factors on human behaviour. For example, a person might have the normal biological and psychological structure of brain and mind, but the experiences he/she faces in society might mould his/her behaviour into wrong or destructive direction. The same logic can be applied to the people who might have weaker psychological or biological structure, but he/she might perform very well due to helpful socioeconomic circumstances or motivation by any person. Moreover, the same three levels were discussed concerning the experiences of studying and learning in human being. All these concepts added much to my knowledge and helped me to write Reflection (Learning Journal) 2.
Subtopics
2a. Self and Identity/Self-Esteem
Self-Esteem refers to self-confidence or belief in one's capabilities. It is essential in one's personality to live a peaceful and productive life. A person is an active and productive part of society if he/she regards himself/herself and considers his/her contribution important to society (Boud, D., 2001). Loss of self-regard is harmful to one's psyche so is too much self-love. Loss of self-regard leads to depression and too much self-love leads to narcissism.
The thing which interested me the most about this sub-topic was its influence upon the performance of workers. We can say that Self-Esteem influences personality in myriad ways like personal feelings and relationships, academic performance, and professional success. If a person experiences continuous disapproval from people related to his/her life like family, boss, friends, teachers, and colleagues, there is much possibility that he would experience low self-esteem (Passer, and Smith, 2004). On the side, if a person receives too much recognition and reverence from these people, he/she might become self-indulged or narcissist. Also, there is least possibility that he/she would become an as competent and good performer as he/she assumes to be. Self-Esteem is a concept that fluctuates based on the experiences of a person with others. A balanced response from others can make a person realistic.
I chose this sub-topic because self-esteem is an important factor in the performance people at workplace and thus it is useful for the student of Business and Management to have knowledge of this factor (Patrick, and Kumar, 2012). Rick Best writes in his book Strategic management: Workplace Strategies and Facilities Management (2007) that if a person faces the issue of low Self-Esteem at the workplace, the party that would face the most loss will be the firm he/she is working for (Leung, L., 2013).
The sub-topic is very much related to the social world, and its impacts are apparent on the activities of human beings. Louis Leung argues in his book Generational differences in content generation in social media: The roles of the Gratifications Sought and of narcissism that social media has boosted narcissism and the time is over when people were encouraged to regard themselves and have confidence in them rather the need has arisen to curb over-confidence and delusions about personality among people. People take selfies to upload on social media and demand reverence from their friends, relatives, or fans. Over-confidence might satisfy one to stay contended, but it is not a useful thing for society as a whole because people become too indulged in themselves that they do not regard others at all. Narcissism, as noted above, is the extreme form of Self-Esteem. Moreover, the sub-topic helps the business managers to assess their personalities and the personalities of their subordinates to keep the firm working forward.
2b. Prejudice and Discrimination/ the Stigma of Prejudice
Unjust behaviour towards someone derived from preconceived and unfounded opinions is called prejudice. The stigma of prejudice refers to the practice of marking a person in mind to discriminate him/her based on race, gender, social state, and age group. Social stigmas are apparent where stereotype others and discriminate them.
This sub-topic attracted me because the understanding of this topic can help us to promote interpersonal positive understanding and harmony. Moreover, it can help the business managers to create a just environment at the workplace where no one shows stigmas or discriminate others due to the characteristics they have. A student of Business Management must know how people feel in a certain environment and what effects certain leaves on the psyche as well performance of workers. Harold Andrew Patrick notes in his book Managing Workplace Diversity: Issues and Challenges (2012) that if managers are not able to understand the interpersonal relationships at the workplace, they cannot develop a productive environment in the interest of the firm. The stigma of prejudice is one of the important factors which influence the environment of the workplace. More importantly, workplaces have become diverse after globalization, and people with different backgrounds come together at the workplace to work, and this kind of place is more vulnerable to the stigma of prejudice.
The main concept related to the sub-topic includes oppression, discrimination, and exploitation of certain groups of people. Yin Paradies quotes Johnson in his article Prejudice, Stigma, Bias, Discrimination, and Health who says that “Prejudice, stigma, bias, and discrimination are all expressions of oppression, “a concept that describes a relationship between groups or categories of people in which a dominant group benefits from the systematic abuse, exploitation, and injustice directed toward a subordinate group” (Johnson, 2000, p. 293)”. Sometimes, the stigma of prejudice is expressed by certain people in certain situations, but some people always show stigmas to certain groups. The professor showed two video clips in the online lecture where a person was singing while listening to music, but the girl was stigmatizing him as a handicap. In the other video, he showed a survey where old people were stigmatized as grumpy, filthy, sad, frail, but young people were called by name.
This sub-topic is a social topic in nature as it belongs to interpersonal relations in society. The communities are getting together, and every social phenomenon can trigger many conflicts (Hendrick, and Hendrick, 1986). For example, if White people stigmatize the African-American uncivilized, barbarous, and having a rough nature, it might fuel mistrust among these communities, and it can cause many conflicts. The United States of America has experienced many conflicts due to such kinds of stigma and stereotype which fueled prejudice.
2c. Attraction and Close Relationships/Type of Love
Love is one of the most repeated words in a society which have diverse definition and concept near different people. This sub-subtopic appealed my interest due to the intense impact of the feeling we call 'love' on the psyche of people. The human being is an emotional creature and emotions have very much say in the rise and fall of a human being. Emotionally happy and satisfied people appear to be useful members of society, and they perform well at the workplace. A person cannot give better results if he/she is not emotionally satisfied. The expression of our passionate or compassionate feeling towards someone is called love.
Love can be for anyone, and anytime, the concept related to is an intense feeling of deep affection or a great and pleasurable interest in someone. Keith Abraham writes in his book It Starts with Passion: Do What You Love and Love What You Do that love starts when someone gets attracted to another self, and it turns to a passion if a person's focus in the other person keeps increasing. Abraham argues that it is random and unpredictable that how a person would get attracted to the other one. Moreover, he elaborates that people get attracted to a thing in the person that he/she lacks and has a desire to embrace that thing. It can be body shape, complexion, cultural background, honesty, loyalty, money, prestige, and even innocence. People tend to love and desire to be loved by another creature. Fulfilment of such desires make people happy, and the opposite observance leads to restlessness among people. It has been identified in chapter 8 of the textbook that love has two forms: passionate love, and compassionate love. Passionate love is understandable by Hatfield and Berscheid’s Passionate Love Scale. Hatfield and Berscheid argue that passionate love includes tenderness, the ‘agony and ecstasy, of intense emotion, and even sexual attraction towards someone (Abraham, 2019). The scale is represented with number 1 to 9. If a person expresses that he/she has the strongest such feelings for another one scores nine and showing a lesser degree of agreement decrease grades. Sternberg has identified three factors of love which include Intimacy, Commitment, and Passion. Sternberg explains the concept of love showing a triangle which shows that love is Consummate Love if it includes intimacy, commitment, and passion whereas if any one of these factors is missing, the kind of love can be Romantic Love, Companionate Love, Infatuation, Empty Love or any other thing but not Consummate Love.
This sub-topic is purely related to social practice, and thus it is relevant to my social world in a way that every social-animal is engaged in this practice. There were times when love meant an intimate relationship between two heterosexual people, but it has become a complex phenomenon in the modern world. For instance, people express love relationship with the same sex, quivers, animals, and even inanimate entities like a lonely Russian guy married to a Pizza in 2015.
Role of the Journal in Enhancing my Understanding and Scholarly Writing
The journal is an informative account of the techniques of scholarly writing, and it taught me a lot about scholarly writing along with much knowledge of psychology and business and management. I learned that scholarly writing is impossible without applying relevant theories and supporting them with relevant literature. I wrote my first reflection paper on psychology and its application to learning changing human behaviour (Segall, Dasen, Berry, and Poortinga, 1990). Three-level of understanding human behaviour were discussed in Reflection 1, which were learned with the help of the journal. Those three levels include biological, psychological, and social. I discussed interesting concepts of psychology after applying the knowledge of Reflection 1. I discussed three interesting concepts about personality and human behaviour in Reflection 2. The first concept was Self-Esteem and different layers of it. Self-Esteem is to regard one's own self; this is a feeling that fluctuates and leaves much influence on the behaviour and performance of a person in society. The Stigma of Prejudice is the second concept that is discussed. The Stigma of Prejudice refers to marking someone as a hateful person based on his/her race, socioeconomic group, ethnicity, gender, or any other association with his/her personality. The third commentary is on the topic of Type of Love. This part of the writing attempts to define love and its different layers (Best, de Valence, and Langston, 2007). The journal taught me to support arguments with relevant and credible literary sources: a method that I used orthodoxly while writing these reflections.
References
Best, R., de Valence, G. and Langston, C., 2007. Strategic management. In Workplace Strategies and Facilities Management (pp. 91-102). Routledge.
Leung, L., 2013. Generational differences in content generation in social media: The roles of the gratifications sought and of narcissism. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(3), pp.997-1006.
Patrick, H.A. and Kumar, V.R., 2012. Managing workplace diversity: Issues and challenges. Sage Open, 2(2), p.2158244012444615.
Abraham, K., 2019. It Starts With Passion: Do What You Love and Love What You Do. John Wiley & Sons.
Hendrick, C. and Hendrick, S., 1986. A theory and method of love. Journal of personality and social psychology, 50(2), p.392.
Boud, D., 2001. Using journal writing to enhance reflective practice. New directions for adult and continuing education, 2001(90), pp.9-18.
Doise, W. and Mapstone, E.T., 1986. Levels of explanation in social psychology. Cambridge University Press.
Passer, M.W. and Smith, R.E., 2004. Psychology: The science of mind and behavior. McGraw-Hill.
Segall, M.H., Dasen, P.R., Berry, J.W. and Poortinga, Y.H., 1990. Human behavior in global perspective: An introduction to cross-cultural psychology. Pergamon Press.
