Stuart C. Carr

Demotivating the Doctors: The Double Demotivation Hypothesis in the Health Services of Less‐developed Countries

The health services of many less‐developed countries continue to struggle. Donors also continue to contribute money, equipment and personnel in the hope of producing sustainable improvements in these health services. Despite this cumulative effort over many years, some health services in Africa have failed to make significant gains. Suggests that the giving of aid, through the provision of medical and other personnel, produces a potentially damaging double standard. In particular, the dramatic dichotomy in the renumerations of local and foreign doctors may have the unintended, but damaging, effect of demotivating local staff. In addition, reviews research which supports the notion that the higher‐paid foreign doctors may also experience a demotivation, through being focused on extrinsic rather than intrinsic aspects of their work. Discusses implications of this double demotivation – in local as well as foreign doctors – for the provision of medical personnel in less‐developed countries.

Development through educational collaboration: facilitating social equity

Previously, psychology has not been recognized as bearing on the educational, managerial and health issues that often characterize developing countries. Recently however, the Departments of Psychology at the University of Newcastle (Australia) and the National University of Malawi have used the Internet to conduct joint research on applied issues such as expatriate–host national pay inequities, ambivalence towards workplace achievement, and psychological influences on charitable behaviour. This tertiary collaboration has produced practical recommendations concerning community development, stress management, and poverty reduction, each of which may in turn inform higher education policy. Since these recommendations apply both in Malawi and in Australia, the Internet is functioning as a two-way bridge between the two universities and their respective countries. In addition to development through university cooperation, such cross-fertilization is also generating theoretical developments within the academic discipline of psychology itself.

Measuring motivational gravity: Likert or scenario scaling?

Despite a growing body of findings that individualistic achievers incur punitive social costs in the workplaces of collectivistic and equalitarian cultures, little attention has so far been paid to measuring such motivational gravity in psychometrically appropriate ways. From egalitarian Australia, reports psychometric data from two organizational surveys, evaluating the 20‐item “Tall Poppy Scale” (TPS), a Likert instrument which measures attitudes towards high achievers in society, and the twin‐item “Motivational Gravity Scenario Scale” (MGSS), which focuses instead on behavioural intentions towards high achievers in one’s own workplace. In Study I, involving 80 employees of a retail chain, scores on the TPS were significantly and positively associated with social desirability effects on the Marlowe‐Crowne Scale, whereas the MGSS remained free of such confounding. In Study II, 47 employees of a major service organization rated the MGSS as significantly more satisfactory than did 49 university undergraduates, who preferred the TPS. Workplace scenarios may be more appropriate than the conventional Likert TPS for describing organizational cultures, but recommends the development of multiple‐item instruments for assessing individual differences in motivational gravity.

The Acceptability of a Western Psychometric Instrument in a Non-Western Society

Abstract Cross-cultural investigations of psychometric instruments generally focus on their intrinsic features, such as validity and reliability, but little attention has been given to the face validity, or acceptability, of such instruments to those who will be assessed by them. Thirty-one Malawian managers completed the Managerial and Professional Profiler (MAPP), a British personality questionnaire developed for use in occupational settings, and gave their evaluation of it, using a Questionnaire Rating Form. Although individuals indicated personal preferences, group means were generally equivocal regarding interest in and enjoyment of the questionnaire and regarding the relevance of the MAPP to their work and professional development. Although the questions were easily understood, they were not all rated as being relevant to the Malawian culture. Suggestions for improvements included shortening, removing repetition, and translating into vernacular English and indigenous languages. The results emphasize...

Book review: Susan Pick and Jenna T. Sirkin, Breaking the Poverty Cycle: The Human Basis for Sustainable Development

Several years ago during a presentation at an applied psychology conference in Peru, I was asked how non-profit health services can reduce teenage pregnancies. This book would have provided an answer. It details decades of groundbreaking work on the social and health application of psychology, working through the auspices of a non-government organization called the Mexican Institute of Family and Population Research. This organization began life back in 1988, with a life skills programme called, ‘I Want to, I Can ... Prevent Pregnancies’. Today, greatly expanded in focus, and named ‘Programming for Choice’, the process skills taught in the programme have been developed and applied to a wider range of povertyrelated issues. Many of those are also, integrally, about health and well-being, including gender equity. They include, for example, such issues as ‘I Want to, I Can ... Prevent Violence’ and, ‘... Care for my Health and Exercise My Rights’, as well as substance abuse prevention and healthy nutrition promotion. Programming for Choice has also been expanded geographically. Originally located within Mexico, today the programme has been implemented in at least 13 other countries, chiefly across Latin America. According to the book, Programming for Choice has reached more than 19 million people. This is, therefore, a book about impact, through poverty reduction services that are grounded in research on (a) psychology and (b) well-being. Contextually, the book stands out in at least two key ways. First, it breaks with psychological tradition, emphasizing poverty reduction more than poverty per se. That message resonates with a recent special issue in this journal (Murray and Marks, 2010), and with a wider project linking applied psychology and poverty reduction (Global Special Issue, 2011; http://poverty.massey. ac.nz/#global_issue). Second, it connects with Development Studies, specifically the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals of which the overarching goal is poverty reduction by 2015. Undergirding that objective is health promotion, access and capability enhancement (Sen, 1999). Conceptually this book defines ‘capability’ as psychological competency, including a personal form of agency, with performance (‘functionings’) often taking the form of life skills in health-related behaviour. Theoretically, the book draws heavily on models in health psychology. These include, for example, reasoned action/ planned behaviour, social/observation learning, self-efficacy theory and the trans-theoretical stages of change model. Methodologically, the book is multi-disciplinary, drawing upon different approaches, but tends to be individualistic in orientation with a nod to systemic dynamics, not the other way round. Much of the programme hinges on empowerment. Specifically with individual empowerment and ‘personal agency’ in mind, it identifies social environmental barriers (subjective norms) like ‘pena’ (for socially induced shame) and considers how these can be challenged. The programmes are designed to foster expanded personal routines that are intrinsically liberating/motivating, and that are practised in a Changing people’s lives 438145 HPQ17310.1177/1359105312438145Book reviewJournal of Health Psychology 2012

Selection in Egalitarian Australia: Weighted Average or Motivational Gravity?

All else being equal, the Weighted Averaging Model of person perception (Anderson, 1981) predicts that the number of achievements listed on a job application will not influence the impression formed, whereas the concept of Motivational Gravity suggests (Carr, 1994) that there will be an inverted ’U’ function in work cultures that are egalitarian. In egalitarian Australia, a sample of 312 undergraduates rated their overall impression of an imaginary job candidate who had listed from 5 to 20 randomly generated, but job related and positive personality traits, or achievements, in a job application. Impressions first rose and then fell significantly, especially for female candidates and among raters who were anti-achievement. These findings support the Motivational Gravity model, as well as indicating a possible selection bias in Australian and other centripetal work cultures in the South Pacific region.