1 Of the 3 Elements of Human Behavior | Affective | Cognitive | Instincts | Modalities | Modus Operandi | Volitional | Acts Of Will | Goal-Oriented Achievement | Executive Function Of The Brain
Copyright 2008 Kathy Kolbe. All rights reserved.
"conation: an inclination (as an instinct, a drive, a wish, or a craving) to act purposefully"
"conation" Merriam-Webster Dictionary 2008 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conation Feb. 18, 2008
"Will, volition, conation, velleity, liberum arbutrium; will and pleasure, free will; freedom &c. 748; direction; options &c. (choice) 609; voluntariness; spontaneity, (spontane)ousness; originality."
Roget, P.M. (1911). Thesaurus of English words and phrases. "Will" New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Publishers p. 273
"German and Scottish scholars in the late 1700s described the mind as having three capabilities, or 'faculties': cognitions, which is knowing; affection, which is the ability to value things or people or ideas; and conation, which means striving in a way that results in our energy's being managed and focused on a goal."
Atman, K. On goal setting and achievement. Pitt Magazine. Retrieved March 30, 1998, from University of Pittsburgh online magazine: http://www.univ-relations.pitt.edu/pittmag/mar95/m95classes.html
return to Google Knol | return to top
"affect:…the conscious subjective aspect of an emotion considered apart from bodily changes; also : a set of observable manifestations of a subjectively experienced emotion"
"affect" Merriam-Webster Dictionary 2008 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/affect Feb. 18, 2008
"Affections, character, qualities, disposition, nature, spirit, tone; temper -ament; diathesis, idiosyncrasy…"
Roget, P.M. (1911). Thesaurus of English words and phrases. "Affections" New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Publishers p. 273.
Affective Conative Cognitive
(Feeling) (Doing) (Thinking)
Desires Drive IQ
Motivation Necessity Skills
Attitudes Innate Force Reason
Preferences Instinct Knowledge
Emotions Mental Energy Experience
Values Talents Education
Kolbe Certification Manual (2000). Phoenix: Kolbe Corp. p. 15
return to Google Knol | return to top
"cognitive:… 1 : of, relating to, being, or involving conscious intellectual activity (as thinking, reasoning, or remembering) <cognitive impairment> 2 : based on or capable of being reduced to empirical factual knowledge"
"cognitive" Merriam-Webster Dictionary 2008 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cognitive Feb. 18, 2008
"Intellect, mind, understanding, reason, thinking, principle; rationality; cogitative (faculties), cognitive (faculties), discursive (faculties), reasoning, intellectual-faculties…"Roget, P.M. (1911). Thesaurus of English words and phrases. "Intellect" New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Publishers. p. 127.
Affective Conative Cognitive
(Feeling) (Doing) (Thinking)
Desires Drive IQ
Motivation Necessity Skills
Attitudes Innate Force Reason
Preferences Instinct Knowledge
Emotions Mental Energy Experience
Values Talents Education
Kolbe Certification Manual (2000). Phoenix: Kolbe Corp. p. 15
return to Google Knol | return to top
"1: a natural or inherent aptitude, impulse, or capacity <had an instinct for the right word>2 a: a largely inheritable and unalterable tendency of an organism to make a complex and specific response to environmental stimuli without involving reason b: behavior that is mediated by reactions below the conscious level"
"instinct" Merriam-Webster Dictionary 2008 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/instinct Feb. 21 2008
"Instinct as a word derives from the Latin instinctus, from instinguere - to incite. In some uses, the word has referred to particular behavior patterns and coordination but it is in the sense of a basic biological urge…"
Corsini, R.J. (1984). Encyclopedia of psychology (4 volume set). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
". . . true reconciliation of instinct and intuition will only appear as a feature of the unity of the self in mind, will and action."
"Their emergence from unconscious sources gives them a real and not a factitious independence of our conscious powers."
"Instinct is neither emotion nor reflex action. It differs from emotion in that its processes are largely unconscious, though it is aware of its conclusions and results. It differs from reflexes, because it has conscious results and is aware that it is producing them, while reflex action, in man at any state, has no conscious accompaniment from first to last."
Dibblee, G.B. (1929). Instinct and intuition, a study in mental duality. 25-27
"Instinctive behavior is the most important general fact in life. It is not necessarily so in human life, which is capable of aiming higher. Even a large part of human life, which is capable to satisfy instinctive impulses, and instincts of various kinds supply not only the motive but the method of the greater part of human conduct."
"Interpreting life more widely, there is a little of animal or human energy which is not either instinct, or in the way to become instinct, or something more or less remotely instinctive in its source."
"It is not straining words to say that both intellect and intuition, the rival faculties of instinct, are each often set in motion by instinctive desires and emotions. Their operation may be often also suspended at will by the same controlling influences."
"There are also single generic items of incentive to conduct, called 'instincts', a sense which governs the strict physiological meaning of the word. The inborn association between a definite stimulation coming through one of the higher centres and a bodily activity may be essentially considered to be a unit of physiological instinct."
Dibblee, G.B. (1929). Instinct and intuition, a study in mental duality. 25-27
return to Google Knol | return to top
"Now, since the notions of good and evil, as consequences of the a priori determination of the will, imply also a pure practical principle, and therefore a causality of pure reason; hence they do not originally refer to objects (so as to be, for instance, special modes of the synthetic unity of the manifold of given intuitions in one consciousness) like the pure concepts of the understanding or categories of reason in its theoretic employment; on the contrary, they presuppose that objects are given; but they are all modes (modi) of a single category, namely, that of causality, the determining principle of which consists in the rational conception of a law, which as a law of freedom reason gives to itself, thereby a priori proving itself practical."
"Now, looking at the grounds of the possibility of an experience, the first thing, of course, that meets us is something necessary-namely, the universal laws apart from which nature in general (as an object of sense) cannot be thought. These rest on the categories, applied to the formal conditions of all intuition possible for us, so far as it is also given a priori. Under these laws, judgement is determinant; for it has nothing else to do than to subsume under given laws. For instance, understanding says: all change has its cause (universal law of nature); transcendental judgement has nothing further to do than to furnish a priori the condition of subsumption under the concept of understanding placed before it: this we get in the succession of the determinations of one and the same thing. Now for nature in general, as an object of possible experience, that law is cognized as absolutely necessary. But besides this formal time-condition, the objects of empirical cognition are determined, or, so far as we can judge a priori, are determinable, in diverse ways, so that specifically differentiated natures, over and above what they have in common as things of nature in general, are further capable of being causes in an infinite variety of ways; and each of these modes must, on the concept of a cause in general, have its rule, which is a law, and, consequently, imports necessity: although owing to the constitution and limitations of our faculties of cognition we may entirely fail to see this necessity."
Kant, I. The critique of practical reason. (translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott).
"Vessels' (1998) refers to these theory-supported and strategically rich avenues to learning as learning modes, and, like Ryan and Bohlin (1999) identified about a half dozen. He refers to these as the five E's: experience, expectations, ethos, example, explanation. Vessels includes in his list developmentally-appropriate discipline and reinforcement, direct instruction, modeling and observation, unstructured peer-group interaction and play, interpersonal/environmental support, active experiential participation in class and school communities, and real-world experiences within the larger community. Although nearly every instructional strategy uses more than one learning mode, most use one more than the others. In Table 3, he aligned each learning mode with strategies that correspond."
Vessels, G., & Huitt, W. (2005). Moral and character development. Presented at the National Youth at Risk Conference, Savannah, GA, March 8-10. Retrieved Feb. 13 2008, from http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/brilstar/chapters/chardev.doc
"It is characteristic of that situation that in it I am aware of an end A which I believe to be morally right, and also of an end B, incompatible with A, towards which, in virtue of that system of conative dispositions which constitutes my 'character' as so far formed, I entertain a strong desire. There may be, and perhaps must be, desiring elements in my nature which are directed to A also. But what gives to the situation its specific character as one of moral temptation is that the urge of our desiring nature towards the right end, A, is felt to be relatively weak. We are sure that if our desiring nature is permitted to issue directly in action, it is end B that we shall choose. That is what is meant by saying, as William James does, that end B is 'in the line of least resistance' relatively to our conative dispositions. The expressions is, of course, a metaphorical one, but it serves to describe, graphically enough, a situation of which we all have frequent experience, viz,. where we recognize a specific end as that towards which the 'set' of our desiring nature most strongly inclines us, and which we shall indubitably choose if no inhibiting factor intervenes."
C.A.Campbell page 452
"Spatial children appear to develop in a different manner from the norm. Normally, children progress at around age nine from a phase of eidetic imagery to what has been considered a more sophisticated linguistic phase (Bruner, Goodnow & Austin, 1966; Luria, 1961). Lohman (1994) believes that 'high-spatial individuals preserve in adulthood imagery abilities that are lost to most individuals as they mature' (p. 255), and that those with heightened imagistic abilities have a potential for 'visual-spatial creativity of a high order' (p. 255). He suggests that high level creativity is fostered in children who are slower in language development, who are homeschooled during their early school years, and who are furnished with construction toys, such as wooden cubes, geometric puzzles, and mechanical models. 'Research suggests that the decline in the relative strength of visual-spatial abilities is not entirely due to disuse, but to their incompatibility with sequential modes of processing' (Lohman, 1994, p. 260). Bruner (1973) recommends programs that stimulate visual thinking and problem solving. And Lohman wistfully concurs: 'I wonder what my life would be like had my education given as much attention to the development of my visual-spatial abilities as to my verbal abilities' (p. 263)."
Silverman, L.K. (1998). Two ways of knowing. Denver: Love.
return to Google Knol | return to top
"Modus Operandi (Modal Operators) - These terms reflect our MO (or modus operandi) in the world, our style of operating with regard to events, tasks, people, information, etc."
Gambardella, Pascal J. (1997) Meta-programs for First Rounds of Meta-Detective. Beginning Meta-Detective™. 2
"an unvarying or habitual method or procedure"
"Modus Operandi" WordNet, Princeton University, 2006. http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=modus%20operandi Feb. 23 2008
return to Google Knol | return to top
"1: an act of making a choice or decision; also : a choice or decision made 2: the power of choosing or determining : WILL"
"Volition" Merriam-Webster Dictionary 2008 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/volition Feb. 21 2008
"If you were to go into many elementary and secondary schools today, you might sense a huge amount of energy in the building, but that energy would not necessarily be purposeful or focused."
Atman, K. On goal setting and achievement. Pitt Magazine. Retrieved March 30, 1998, from University of Pittsburgh online magazine: http://www.univ-relations.pitt.edu/pittmag/mar95/m95classes.html
"Therefore, it is argued that characteristics of human beings (e.g. volitional control, self-determination, or perhaps even free will) suggest that self-prediction and/or self-control might be appropriate to warrant scientific understanding of instances suggesting volitional (which is teleological or final cause) action."
Lazarick, D. L. et al (1988). Practical investigations of volition. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 35.1, 16
."Let us begin by considering Webster's definition of volition: 'the act or the power of making a choice, or decision; will' (Woolf, 1977, p.1311). Now consider Webster's definition of determinism, 'a doctrine that acts of the will, natural events, or social changes are determined by antecedent causes' (Woolf, 1977, p.310). From these two definitions one could speculate that volitional acts might represent a subset of determinant factors and therefore might be studied as a subarea of a determinant science of psychology. Such a science would meet psychologists' need for a determinant approach (cf. Kimble, 1984) but would also allow for the introduction of concepts taken from active agent models of humans (e.g. volition). Thus, we propose that volition or self-determination should be one among many factors that form human action."
Conway, C.G. &Howard, G.S. (1986). Can there be an empirical science of volitional action? American Psychologist, 41.11, 1242.
"'Conation' refers to the act of striving, of focusing our attention and acting with a purpose."
". . . Conation, which means striving in a way that results in our energy's being managed and focused on a goal."
Atman, K. On goal setting and achievement. Pitt Magazine. Retrieved March 30, 1998, from University of Pittsburgh online magazine: http://www.univ-relations.pitt.edu/pittmag/mar95/m95classes.html
"Cudsworth used the word 'conation' to describe the will that 'first moveth in the soul, and starteth all wheels (p.26)…a thread of life always spinning out…an ever bubbling fountain in the center of the soul, an elater [i.e., drive or to drive] or spring of motion (p.30).'"
Gerdes, K. (2006). Conation: The missing link in the strengths perspective.
return to Google Knol | return to top
"energetic determination"
"will power" Merriam-Webster Dictionary 2008 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/will%20power Feb. 21 2008
"Through the responses and choices he makes, the individual begins to utilize both the inner and outer forces for his own growth and development. To these collective, directed, organizing, choosing processes Rank ascribed the term 'will' defined as: 'an autonomous organizing force in the individual which does not represent any particular biological impulse or social drive, but constitutes the creative expression of the total personality and distinguishes one individual from another. The individual will, as the united and balancing force between impulses and inhibition, is the decisive psychological factor in human behaviour. Its duofold functioning as an impulsive and likewise inhibiting force, accounts for the paradox that the will can manifest itself creatively or destructively, depending upon the individual's attitude toward himself and life in general.' 12"
12 Otto Rank, Beyond Psychology. (Op. citum.) p. 50.
Auman, C. Will, Choice, and Fate Perspectives on Rankian Thought. Presented at the Washington School of Psychiatry, Washington, D.C., April 8, 1978.
return to Google Knol | return to top
"A recent example is the Goal Orientation Index (GOI) which is an inventory based an Atman's conation cycle. The GOI is intended to measure individual strengths and weaknesses in goal-setting activities."
Beisner, Gary et al. (2006). Conation: its historical roots and implications for future research.
"My viewpoint is that human beings are goal-seeking, teleological organisms. That is, human beings do things for a reason or goal and strive to make meanings of their lives. The process of learning in a particular domain or content area is complex. Individuals develop a knowledge base through conditioning by the environment; they also actively construct a knowledge base through their seeking information and thinking about the subject based on their maturation and prior knowledge. When knowledge (which may be either cognitively- or affectively-based) is purposely put into practice through an exercise of volition, conation, or will it leads to behavioral competence and, through reflection, to wisdom."
Huitt, W. (2001). Why study educational psychology? Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University. Retrieved Feb. 13 2008, from http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/intro/whyedpsy.html
"A fourth aspect of the direction component of conation is the setting of goals for the aspirations or dreams that have been chosen. Dweck (1991) differentiated two types of goals: (1) mastery goals that focus on developing competence or on the process of learning, and (2) performance goals that focus on the outcome, winning, or attaining credentials. Urdan and Maehr (1995) suggested a third alternative: (3) social goals that focus on performance of the group or the individual fitting in with others. The importance of working in groups in the modern era (e.g., Bridges, 1994; Toffler & Toffler, 1995) highlights the importance of the ability to set and achieve social goals. Prawat (1985) demonstrated that affective goals should be included as an additional type of goal, at least in elementary classrooms. Goleman (1995) cited an extensive literature showing that the ability to manage one's emotions is as important, or perhaps even more important, than one's cognitive ability to acquire and process information quickly."
Huitt, W., & Cain, S. (2005). An overview of the conative domain. Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University. Retrieved Feb. 13 2008 from http://teach.valdosta.edu/whuitt/brilstar/chapters/conative.doc
return to Google Knol | return to top
"Executive functions are those capacities, most commonly linked to the frontal cortex, that guide complex behavior over time through planning, decision-making and response control."
Swatzwelder, H. Scott. (2004) Certain Components of the Brain's Executive Functions are Compromised Early in Abstinence Medical News Today 15 Sep. 2004 http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/13418.php
"The study of intentionality is common to the behavior of both animals and human beings. However, Frankfurt (1982) proposed that human intentionality is different from animal intentionality in that human beings can desire to contravene their conditioning. Bandura (1997, 2001b) suggested this is possible because of the singularly human ability of self-reflective evaluation and that studying human learning without considering human agency is unproductive. In the last several decades the terms executive function (Baumeister et al., 1998) and self-regulation (e.g., Bandura, 1991; Schunk & Zimmerman, 1994) have often been used as synonyms for conation, adding an additional dimension to the study of self (e.g., self-concept, self-esteem, self-reflection, self-determination, self-control)."
Huitt, W., & Cain, S. (2005). An overview of the conative domain. Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University. Retrieved Feb. 28 2008 from http://teach.valdosta.edu/whuitt/brilstar/chapters/conative.doc
"Conation is an executive function, supposedly carried out by the frontal lobes, but both brain scans and the preservation of social skills indicate that frontal lobe function is often retained. I suggest that conative loss stems from parietal lobe pathology resulting in the loss of ability to make simultaneous quasi-spatial syntheses (Luria, 1973) through procedures that were formerly effective."
Friedell, Morris (2000) Potential for Rehabilitation in Alzheimer's Disease Retrieved February 28, 2008 from http://members.aol.com/MorrisFF/Rehab.html
return to Google Knol | return to top
Copyright 2008 Kathy Kolbe. All rights reserved.