Archive for date: December 2nd, 2014

Episode: This is where we gain trust

Motivation was key in this episode. The idol reward challenge took Wes over the edge and he could’ve used the idol to stay in the game. Instead he wasn’t strong enough for the power of the reward. The host used reward power as a way to give out “resources valued by members” and for Wes it was very much valued. In a way because of that power that the host had he changed the game for the players who originally had their mind set on Jon to be sent home. If only they read Chapter 5 Wes could’ve seen it coming.

According to the text, motive comes from a French word, motif, which means causing to move. Motivation gives us a reason to act. For everyone in survivor, motivation is definitely not something that is missing. Most members are after the extrinsic reward of winning the price money, which satisfies our most basic needs including our physiological and safety needs.

In today’s challenge, Reed and Natalie, the last two standing during the challenge proved that they were still motivated by immunity and ultimately willing Survivor. However, Natalie, like the others who voluntarily stepped down, were tempted by other basic need and chose the basic need of food over immunity.

Although I do not think any of the survivor players are ultimately being motivated by intrinsic reward, throughout the challenges, we see that some thrive on intrinsic rewards that come from the need for praise and recognition. For example, Missy and her daughter are constantly verbally encouraging each other throughout challenges. Jaclyn is also very motivated by Jon. For example, in this episode they disclosed that she could not have children and they longing to adopt- another basic need. I am confident that if the finalist were down to Jon and Jaclyn, she would easily give up her spot for Jon just for the intrinsic reward.

Since survivor is close to being an individual game at this point, we have not seen optimal group experience however, we somewhat saw this with Reed’s alliance. Optimal group experience is when members are highly committed and inspired to accomplish a common goal, in this case it was to vote Jon out. Although they all stuck to the plan and were committed and inspired to vote Jon, it did not work the way they planned because Keith was not as inspired to play along when he felt threaten by Reeds comment. He blew it with his comment to Reed, causing Jon to play immunity.

In Survivor, there is plenty of motivation to work however; it might not be in the warm, fuzzy group feeling.

In this weeks episode of survivor things were intensified with the few contestants remaining.  This episode contained a few  examples of how group motivation was attempted but in my opinion they didn’t really end up working out the way some people had planned it. For example, when the group was put up on small platforms they all showed the motivator “sense of choice”(pg 7). I thought that every last one of them had the power and ability on how to complete the task that they had. Unfortunately even though they were all able, all but Reed quite over a plate of food. I was amazed to see the contestants throw away the money over a small plate of food.

Since Jeff Probst was the one who was handing the contestants the food I would say he was the satisfier in this episode since he was the one who was able to satisfy the contestants need for food. Another term that was depicted in the episode was “A sense of meaningfulness”(pg 7) since everyone felt that they were all after a worthy task other wise they wouldn’t be doing the show to begin with.

Although the contestants started the first challenge with intentions of winning the second John saw the plate of sweets i thought that he instantly turned into an apathetic member of the group. I was surprised to see how easily John quite the challenge. Of all people i didn’t expect to see john as the first one to quite. By the end of the episode I thought  that there was a lot of informational feed back for the contestants since after all the chaos that happened in the episode they were able to see how they were doing in the game. Overall, I Honestly didn’t see Wes going home tonight. I thought it was a real blind side for him and this episode was a very entertaining one for me to watch.

In episode 10 I related concepts from chapter 9. Chapter 10 deals with group decision making and problem solving.  Throughout the whole series all of the members use these theories and also contradict these theories in order to move through successfully.  The interesting thing with relating these concepts is most of the theories are based on  a groups well being as a whole and a lot of times, the members are thinking of how it can help them individually.

In chapter 9, they describe how to use decision making questions when problem solving.  There are questions of fact, conjecture, value, and policy. From what I have seen, most of the members so not use questions of value or what is morally right when they make decisions.  In episode 10,  Natalie is told by jon about his idol and even though he took out Natalie ‘ s closest ally, Jeremy,  she still stuck in their alliance.  However she, also knew she would have to betray him in the end to better her chances. This goes against many values and morals she would usually have in her every day life.

There are many different styles of decision making and different types of decision makers. You can be a rational, intuitive, dependent, avoidant, or spontaneous decision maker. I think all members are different types at different tumes. In this episode, Reed was quite a rational decision maker.  He was clever when he played both sides by persuading the tribe to go half votes for Wes and half for kieth in order to vote off Jon. He carefully considered all of the issues and made his decision rationally as well as spontaneously in order to make the best choice and use clever and creative problem solving.  In the chapter they also  describe creative problem solving. Reed definitely used the component of connecting unrelated ideas and elements in a non judgmental process.