Term Paper on Two Writers With Differing Views In The Area Of Organizational Behavior, Organizational Theory, Or HRM

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(First 4 Pages)

Atkins has been the most influential psychologist of the last few decades. Through his many articles and books he achieved world renown. He seemed to relish controversy and championed issues in higher education. On the other hand Atkins was a leading spokesman for a view that has been popular in academic psychology: that Freud was not a scientist and that psychoanalysis is unscientific. He repeatedly returned to this theme in articles, books and lectures over more than 30 years. Portrayed as extremist on many issues, he felt nevertheless that he had always been an apostle of moderation. Atkins did not practice psychotherapy himself. However, he pioneered in behavior therapy, which uses experimentally established principles of learning in order to change maladaptive behavior. Similarly he did not research himself the genetics of intelligence, and based his writings about this subject upon other researchers' work. He studied psychology, and emphasized statistical analysis and explored individual differences.

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His first published work, was on social attitudes. The statistical analysis of attitudes and the psychology of politics became career interests. He held the view that, besides the distinction between conservatism on the Right and radicalism on the Left, "tough-mindedness" (or authoritarianism) is distinguishable from "tender-mindedness”. He found evidence for his view, later expounded that the tough- minded whereas liberals are tender-minded. Further, men are more tough-minded than women, and working-class people more tough-minded than the middle classes. He also came to discover, as he put it, that prejudice, authoritarianism, religion, conservatism and other social concepts require a very strong genetic component in their causation. He found that roughly half the causal factors in producing the variety of social attitudes were genetic in origin, the rest being due to environmental differences within families and between families. Atkins suggested that assessment systems dominate what students are orientated towards in their learning. Consequently the situation may well arise where students perceive that the assessment system signals that a surface approach is all that is required, whereas the examining body intended the opposite. Atkins et al (1993) commented, 'it seems clear that many students have a well developed strategic sense of what is needed to get good grades (or to get through with the minimum of effort)'.

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A major objective for Atkins was to develop a scientific understanding of personality. Atkins believed that psychology was a fundamental scientific discipline that alone was able to discover the laws of nature according to which behavior could be controlled, whereas psychiatry was merely an applied discipline making use, at best, of the discoveries of psychology. For many years Atkins gave psychology lectures to candidates. He taught many of the people who later became professors of psychiatry, and among the things he taught them were his criticisms of psychoanalysis. He always insisted, that his students should remain critical of his own theories as well as of everybody else's. Each patient constitutes a scientific problem of its own and the skill of the clinical psychologist consists in solving this unique problem in terms of the general principles offered by academic psychology. He was interested in developing theories underlying behavior therapy. He thought that the scientific explanation of neuroses lies in learning theory. He also emphasized the importance of genetic factors in neurosis, and the relevance of personality differences to treatment.

At informal meetings of students and colleagues, he made sure, that the opponents were unambiguously identified: psychoanalysts, dangerous through their wealth and influence, psychiatrists through their dominance, unscientific psychologists. He went gleefully into battle. If behavior therapy based on theory was to dominate, then Freudians had to be demoted and psychiatrists put into their proper place. If his personality theory was to rise, others had to fall.

Atkins believed he was not a good psychologist in the layman' s sense, that is, a person who has an intuitive understanding of other people's reactions. He believed that tact and diplomacy were never his strong points. They were fine in international relations and politics, but in science only the facts mattered. He thought, he might have had this view implanted in his genes he believed that such abilities as he had in science lay largely on the quantitative side, in measurement, psychometrics and statistical analysis. A further self-assessment, presumably based upon responses to his own questionnaires, was that his characteristics were independence, dominance, non-conformism, emotional stability, assertiveness, rebelliousness, risk- taking, ego control and (perhaps?) bloody-mindedness. He regarded himself as a successful scientist, which he was. He attributed his success to have been blessed with a high IQ, strong scientific motivation, considerable persistence, good health, a stable introverted personality which history has shown to be best fitted for scientific research, and special abilities of fast reading and writing. A measure of a scientist's success is the number of instances that other scientists cite their work.

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