This movie has concepts from Chapters 8-9.
Next, write your comment. Your comment does not need to provide an overview of the movie (we have all seen it). Your comment should be an in-depth analysis of one or more principles from your text. You should use scenes and characters to provide examples of textbook concepts. Your comment should reflect that you are in an upper division, university level Motivation and Emotion course and clearly link elements from the movie to the textbook. This is a comprehensive assignment (linking course lectures, textbook, and the movie) and you cannot do that in just a few short paragraphs.
BE SPECIFIC. At the bottom of your comment, please put a list of the ME terms you used.
I thought the first hour of this movie was quite dull, I'm not going to lie. Once it got to the war scene though, I couldn't stop watching it. A concept that really stood out was self efficacy in the scene where Mike and Nick were forced to play roulette with the guns. Self efficacy is described as one's judgement of how well (or poorly) one will cope with a situation, given the skills one possess and the circumstances one faces. Clearly, Mike and Nick both have skills when it comes to using guns, especially Mike since he's known to shoot and kill a deer in one shot. In their situation presented, Mike realized that him and Nick only had one shot to kill their enemies so they could escape with just 3 bullets.
The book states "self efficacy is that generative capacity in which the performer improvises ways to best translate personal abilities into effective performance." I think both of them got lucky that Mike just happened to be the one in control of the gun when they made the decision, because he had better shooting skills than Nick. Self-efficacy beliefs also affect 1.choice of activities and selection of environments, 2.extent of effort and persistence put forth during performance, 3.the quality of thinking and decision making during performance, and 4. emotional reactions, especially related to stress and anxiety. Mike selected the right time to shoot the enemies and his effort put forth was obviously successful. It was a stressful situation but he kept hold of his emotions and actually tricked the Vietnamese into laughing before making his move.
A threat to a personal freedom often coincides with the perception of an uncontrollable outcome. The Reactance theory predicts that people experience reactance only if they expect to have some control over what happens to them. Mike believed that if him and Nick were aggressive enough, they would survive. Another great concept that ties along with this scene is empowerment. This involves processing knowledge, skills, and beliefs that allow people to exert control over their lives. This can be found in learning to defend oneself against intimidation and threats from abusive others (in their case, the vietnamese).
Also during that scene, right before the two had to go up on the deck to play roulette, Mike used verbal persuasion on Nick, as well on his friend Steve. This works to the extent that it provides the performer with enough of a temporary and provisional efficacy boost to generate the motivation necessary for another try. When Steve was up playing roulette, Mike kept telling him it's okay, just do it (over and over) and I believe Steve did it until he couldn't do it any longer and was thrown into the pit.
Nick, on the other hand seemed to have the opposite of self efficacy which is doubt because he obviously wasn't ready for any of it to happen and he was scared. But, because of how the situation turned out, Nick's doubt turned into self efficacy which then turned into empowerment throughout the rest of the movie when he decided to continue to do roulette because he felt empowered and not afraid anymore. Even though this can be a good thing, it lead to his death.
When Mike returned from the war, he went and found his friend Steven who happened to be in a wheelchair at the hospital. Because Steve was in a wheelchair, he felt like he didn't fit in with his old life and had a helpless motivational orientation. This is when the person responds to failure by giving up and withdrawing acting as if the situation were out of his or her control. Even though he had a wife and a kid back home, he didn't think he belonged and felt helpless. He had motivational deficits which consist of a decreased willingness to try. After a while of encouragement from Mike, he finally returned home.
I thought this movie was quite long, but the last 2 hours were the best. There were many different concepts seen throughout this movie but the one seen mainly throughout almost the entire movie was self efficacy.
Terms: self efficacy, doubt, reactance theory, empowerment, helplessness, motivational deficits
This film is very slow starting, but wow it gets good. I felt like they set the movie up in three different parts. The first being pre-war, the second being at war, and the third being post-war. The movie basically starts by setting the foundation of who the characters are, their relationships (not only between spouses, but between each other), and informing the viewer on what is going on during this time period. This movie has so many parts surrounding the idea of goals and personal control. One of the main characters, Nick, is a quiet man who really enjoys hunting. His motto is, “I like the trees…you know…the way the trees are…” Nick thrives on the challenge that hunting entitles. He lives for the act of nature challenging him to shoot an animal. This is a goal he sets every time he goes hunting. He wants to bring something back, so in his eyes it had not been a complete failure. The theme of “one shot” is what Nick and his buddies live by. Nick abides by the two types of mental simulations: Outcome/Process simulation. Outcome simulation is where we focus on a goal itself, and process simulation is where we focus on the ways we can behave in order to achieve the goal.
The concept of feedback is portrayed in the movie. I noticed it when we get informed that the girlfriend (Angela) of one of the main characters (Steven) is pregnant, but pregnant by another man.
Traditionally, you would think this would be a hard hill to climb, but Steven loves Angela so much and is not going to let her pregnancy with someone else quit his love for her. With Steven’s viewpoint being the way it is, Angela can feel better about the “sticky” situation. Since Angela is seeing that Steven is trying to be positive about the situation, it makes Angela feel better as well. Feedback allows one to see how much progress he/she is making toward their goal. In this case, the progress is “the strides they are making as a couple toward accepting the situation.” And the goal is being able to both accept the situation and being able to put it in the rearview mirror and in the past. They do end up getting married so it was a success for both of them.
One scene where I noticed how we are motivated to have personal control over ourselves is when Mike sees the NVA soldier shoot a woman carrying a baby. When he sees this happen, he retaliates by shooting the soldier. Mike mirrored the notion of efficacy expectation. Then it was followed by an outcome expectation. Efficacy expectation is a judgment of one’s capacity to execute a particular act or course of action. And outcome expectation is the given action that will cause a particular outcome. So in essence, after Mike witnessed the murder of the woman, he took initiative, grabbed the gun, pointed at the guy, and shot him. During the course of his action, he knew what the end result was going to be. Along with this, the action he took showed his motivated behavior to get his revenge.
As mentioned before, the idea of goal setting and achieving those goals is a reoccurring theme. The huge one in the movie is the determination by Mike to save his two friends, especially Nick. Mike, at all costs, will do anything to try and have Nick recognize him and come back home with him. This shows the true character of Mike and how he would literally go to the end of the world for the ones he cared about. He had his mindset and his goal was to save his buddies. He went through hell and back to try succeeding at this.
Key Terms: goals, personal control, outcome simulation, process simulation, feedback, efficacy expectation, outcome expectation, goal setting
It seems as though the most common theme throughout The Deer Hunter was the concept of self-efficacy. We can see this portrayed through the many scenes of Russian roulette. For example, the first roulette scene the audience sees is during the war while Michael, Nick, and Steve are being held hostage. We can see how scared and nervous Steve is and his self-efficacy is low through “observations of similar others who also try to execute that behavior.” Right before Steve is up to play the game, he witnesses the death of another person who got unlucky and “lost.” This heavily influences Steve’s self-efficacy through vicarious experience. Steve is certain he will die (and he would’ve had he not angled the gun upwards during his turn). In other words, Steve doesn’t believe he has the skills to cope with the situation at hand.
Along these same lines, we can also see that Nick doesn’t have a lot of self-efficacy with this game. Nick is very hesitant about putting the gun up to his temple and pulling the trigger. However, Michael tries to use verbal persuasion to get Nick to play and increase his sense of self-efficacy. Michael seems to be the only one who has a higher sense of self-efficacy with roulette. Michael seems confident and doesn’t tend to hesitate when it is his turn to pull the trigger. I think this may be due in part of Michael’s natural leadership he possesses within his group of friends. His self-efficacy probably doesn’t stem from previous experience of playing roulette but rather from his personal history of being a leader.
Later on in the movie we see a switch in Nick’s self-efficacy. Nick starts playing the game he hated for money. He becomes almost famous and his self-efficacy increases. If we apply chapter 9 to this, we can see that Nick’s personal history of winning contributes to his increased self-efficacy. Otherwise there is no way Nick would be alive to even continue playing. In addition, self-efficacy is known to influence effort and persistence at a task. Nick is obviously very persistent in playing roulette. It seems almost like a job to him. He doesn’t even want to go home.
Another theme we can see in The Deer Hunter is the concept of learned helplessness. More specifically we see this within the character of Steve. When Michael first visits Steve in the hospital, Steve does not want to leave because he has no legs. I feel like Steve had lost all hope that he could survive out in the real world. Steve believed he belonged in that place because he was helpless.
If we take a concept from chapter 8, we can also apply it to The Deer Hunter. Michael has an ultimate goal of finding Nick. There is an obvious discrepancy between his present state (without Nick) to his ideal state (having Nick home). He makes a specific plan to go back to Vietnam and somehow get into the place where roulette is played. This makes me wonder if playing roulette against Nick was even a part of Michael’s plan to get Nick home.
Multiple concepts from Chapters 8 and 9 were seen in The Deer Hunter, but the most obvious and reoccurring theme was self-efficacy.
Terms: self-efficacy, personal history, goals, ideal state, present state, learned helplessness, observations of similar others, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion
The movie The Deer Hunter was very good…however, way too intense and depressing for me! I had no idea what this movie even was and it quickly became horrifying and sad. This movie definitely hits on a lot of key of chapters eight and nine. In chapter eight there is a lot of information about goals and goal setting. A goal is anything and individual is striving to accomplish and goal setting is described with goal-performance discrepancy. We set our goals with the idea in mind of what we have right now, and what we wish to have at the end of our goal once it is reached. One example of having a goal and reaching it from the movie is at the end of the film, when Mike decides that he is going to go find Nick and try to bring him home. Michael knows that Nick is going to be estranged, and probably doesn’t even know that he is alive, Mike knows that he is going to have to do whatever it takes to get Nick back. When Michael leaves to get Nick, we know that his plan is just to get Nick back; we don’t know the careful steps going on in his head as to how he is going to do it until Mike finally sees him and realizes that Nick has no idea who Mike is. At this point we can see that Michael’s plan to get Nick home, as part of his goal setting, it just a “whatever it takes” mentality. Michael proves that he will do whatever it takes for his friend by joining a game of Russian roulette just to help jog Nick’s memory. He tries to reminding him of hunting and other memories he might have still. After pressing him more and more Nick finally understands and remembers, only it is his turn to pull the trigger and he dies saying “one shot”.
An example from chapter nine found in this film is of efficacy expectations and outcome expectations. Efficacy expectations are a judgment of one’s capacity to execute a particular act or course of action. Outcome expectation is a judgment that a given outcome, once performed, will cause a certain outcome. In this film, Steven is punished for only grazing his head during Russian roulette while they are being held captive. He is forced to live in a sort of underwater cage in misery with rats and dead bodies. Nick and Mike come up with efficacy expectations. They try to figure out how they can save themselves and their friend from below. They know that they cannot take out the guards on their own with one gun while being locked in cages, so they persuade the guards that it would be more fun to play Russian roulette with more guns. The guards oblige them in this case. The boys now know that they have the capacity to carry out this task if they don’t hesitate. They manage to kill the guards and escape. Mike and Nick had earlier argued if Steven could be saved or not, but after they were able to escape themselves, their outcome expectations grew and they knew that they could now save Steven.
Although this movie did not end the way I had hoped it would, it really was an amazing movie. I hate to know that people have been through what these three men have in real life. It is tragic.
Terms: goal, goal setting, goal performance discrepancy, efficacy expectation, outcome expectation
Before this class, I had never even heard of the movie “The Deer Hunter”. I kind of like watching movies like that, because sometimes I believe reviews can ruin a movie. Going into this movie with zero knowledge other than the title was therefore kind of fun for me. However, I wasn’t a big fan of this movie. I’d be lying to say that on Sunday when I was watching it I didn’t doze off a couple of times or two. However, I do see how there were many aspects of the movie that tied into the concepts we learned in chapters 8 and 9.
I thought at the beginning of the movie when they were going on a hunt was a great example of concepts from chapter eight. I really liked this because this, in a way, ties in with the topical blog I wrote on Thursday. In that blog, I talked about how my long term goal is to kill a deer in a year. So I found it interesting that this movie tied in with my goal. Before they go to war, the friends go out for a final hunt. During this hunt they talk about the “perfect kill” – one, beautiful shot. This is a good goal to have because it has two very important things – specificity and difficulty. We learned in chapter eight that when you make a goal that has these two attributes, you are much more likely to follow through with that goal. That is because specificity and difficulty gives the goal two things that make it easier to follow: direction and energy. In the movie he (I believe it was Michael, though I could be incorrect. I’m terrible with movies and character names) talks about how the perfect kill is just one, beautiful shot. Lets look at this statement as a goal: the perfect kill. To make the goal more specific, we talk about only taking one shot. Now we have direction for our goal – we know we can only take one shot. With that being said, we also have the difficulty for our goal. Only talking one shot and having that shot be accurate enough to take down a deer is extremely difficult. The more difficult the goal, the more it energizes the performer. With this goal, the hunter has plenty of energy because the goal is very difficult.
Another example that doesn’t have to do with any of the main characters is how Angela, Stevens wife, has gone completely catatonic when Mike visits her after finding out Steven is still alive. She won’t say a word and eventually just writes down where Mike can find Steven. This part of the movie reminded me about “learned helplessness” that I read about in chapter nine. As I just said and learned, helpless is learned. Sometimes we are put into a situation where the outcome is uncontrollable. Angela couldn’t control the outcome of her husband going overseas to fight. He could have came back alive and well, or not come back at all. After she was put into this situation for so long, she developed the expectation that her future actions will have little to no effect on what happens to her: learned helplessness. There are three different components in the learned helplessness theory: contingency, cognition, and behavior. Contingency refers to Angela’s behavior and the environment’s outcomes. Angela took it upon herself to be responsible for how Steven returned to her in the state he was in, when in reality her behavior had nothing to do with this environment outcome. In this particular circumstance the outcome was uncontrollable for her. Cognition a person’s subjective understanding of personal control in an environment. Angela’s judgment is clouded by the fact she loves and cares for her husband so much. Perhaps it was his overlooking of the “situation” she was in during their wedding (carrying another man’s child) that makes her feel so responsible for Steven’s well-being. The last component is behavior deals with coping with the outcome. Obviously Angela is coping very poorly considering she doesn’t even talk to Mike when he comes to visit.
The last part of chapter nine talks about hope, something I feel like the movie ends with. The last scene is where most of the friends are back together, celebrating the life of their deceased friend. Hope can be experienced when people have motivation to work toward a goal as well as when they know ways to achieve their goals. I believe all of the men have the goal of just getting things back to how they used to be. They are all in some ways physically and emotionally abused. They long for the old days of when things were simple. This is their goal: to get things as close as they can to how they used to be. The two components that create hope are one in the same for these fellas. They know to achieve this goal they need to stick together, and they have the motivation to do so because they are together.
Terms:
Specific, difficulty, learned helplessness, three components of learned helplessness theory: contingency, cognition, and behavior,, hope
The movie, The Deer Hunter was a very slow paced film. I did not finish the movie, although I did find a scene to connect with psychologically. The first hour of the movie introduced a group young men, this group spent majority of their time together throughout the movie. Several of the first few scenes showed a wedding, bars, and hunting. The next scene is the one that stood out to me when focusing on personal control beliefs, the war flashback.
After hunting the group went to the bar where one of the friends started to play piano. This was the first part of the movie that had a calming aspect to it.Then the cameras switched to the men at war. The men eventually were captured and held prisoners of war. The men were held in a house type structure waiting to be killed. This is when Mike’s efficiency made a large affect. The Vietnamese were torturing the Americans by forcing them to play Russian Roulette. Mike then used self efficiency to come up with a plan to use more bullets and turn the guns on the Vietnamese. His efficiency expectations where that his given action for using more bullets would have the cause to help them survive. His mind set seemed to be thinking do something or die without a fight. He might have thought through his outcome expectations but choose not to think about the likelihood of their deaths. Mikes self efficiency was very important, because of the bad circumstance given but he could not use the opposite, because that would have lead to doubt. The personal behavior history also played a large role in the men progressing with these circumstances. Guns were used continuously, and the history from the past shows knowledge with guns. Steve is a good example of the opposite of self-efficiency in this situation.
Steve experienced weakness and a limited psychological state.Verbal persuasion from Mike and the others got Steve to pursue the experience. The movie gave a good example of how persuasion can be contradicted with direct experience. Steve could not shoot at his temple. He had limited boundaries. His behavior showed a direct example of his inefficiency. Steve could also be characterized as having helplessness. War is an overall test of efficiency, soldiers are constantly being given harsh circumstances and based on self efficiency have to react to survive. Many things play into a persons efficiency at war including; past history, efficiency, personality variable, explanatory style, and much more. This movie had great examples during the war scenes of behavior control.
Key Terms: Personal Control Belief, efficiency, efficiency expectations, outcome expectations, personal behavior history, psychological state,verbal persuasion, helplessness,explanatory style.
Wow…I knew that this movie would be intense, but not to such an extent! I had heard of Russian roulette before, but never attached any emotions to it. I will never think of it the same way again. Within the many scenes where this game was played, I saw both efficacy and outcome expectations, all four sources of self-efficacy, learned helplessness, and goals.
The first scene where Michael and Nick were forced to play Russian roulette against one another combined many of the terms from chapters 8 and 9. To begin with, it included both efficacy and outcome expectations, both of which Michael had to determine. As he created his plan to escape, he had to decide if he could do it (efficacy expectation) and also if it would work (outcome expectation). He determined that he could, in fact, shoot well enough to kill three men with only three bullets, which shows strong self-efficacy. The only problem with this plan was that he was not sure if it would work; he could not confirm that neither he nor Nick would shoot themselves in the head. Michael knew that he had to continue with his plan, however, because it was the only possible way that they would make it out of the prison alive.
In order to form his plan, Michael had to be aware of both his present state and his ideal state. He knew that if he remained where he was for much longer, he was going to be killed. His ideal state was being free, so he had to come up with a goal to change his present state to his ideal one. The incongruity – or difference between – his present and ideal states made him uncomfortable enough to form a goal. The book defines a goal as “whatever an individual is striving to accomplish” (pg. 211). In this case, Michael was striving to escape.
Also in this scene, we see one source of self-efficacy manifest itself. Michael gave encouragement, or verbal persuasion, to both Steve and Nick while they played Russian roulette. He told them to shoot the gun at their heads, and that everything would be okay. Had he not done so, both men probably would not have fired the gun at themselves, and would instead have been shot and killed by their captors.
The other three sources of self-efficacy manifested themselves at the end of the movie, when Michael and Nick are again playing Russian roulette against one another. All of the men in that room who played had a personal history within the game, and played now for money. They had all also seen plenty of others play and win, which is a vicarious experience; if the others could win lots of money, then they could, too. There was also a difference in physiological states between these men and the three friends when they were imprisoned. At the end of the movie, the players were all stoic, and seemed very confident that they would not lose. While the friends were forced to play while imprisoned, they were shaky and terrified. The calm physiological state helped provide self-efficacy to the men who played for money.
The final scene with Nick and Michael also showed strong learned helplessness, portrayed by Nick. When he was imprisoned he was forced to pull the trigger on himself. This experience must have broken him, because even after Michael came to bring him home and offer him a way out, Nick still felt compelled to put the gun up to his head and pull the trigger. The sad part about this scene is that Nick finally ran out of luck and lost his life because of it.
Terms: efficacy expectation, outcome expectation, self-efficacy, plan, present state, ideal state, incongruity, goal, verbal persuasion, physiological state, learned helplessness
To be honest, this movie did not grab my attention as much as other movies we have watched in this class, such as American Beauty. It is easy, however, to see concepts from our book in this movie. I had never even heard about this movie before this class. Unfortunately I was not able to watch it all because I saw it in class, but even within the first hour; there are different concepts that can be seen. One big thing that I enjoy about this movie is how there are so many actors and actresses that are famous today and are so young in this movie.
This movie shows different concepts from this class. The first concept that I saw was self-efficacy. The first example I saw of that was the woman in the wedding dress. She is obviously very concerned that her wedding will not go well. She is practicing simple things, like saying “I do.” She also falls apart because she believes that she is noticeably getting pregnant. She is scared that she will not be able to succeed at the task of getting married or being a good wife ultimately because she’s pregnant with another man’s child. You can also see some concepts from chapter 8 with setting goals. The coal workers are getting ready for their “rite of passage;” marriage and military service.
I can also see concepts of autonomy in this movie. One of the first examples I see of this is when Steven is getting yelled at by the Orthodox nun. He wants to spend time with his friends and not be tied down, but he also has the responsibility of being married. Personal freedoms can very easily interfere with responsibilities.
Another concept that I saw was affiliation and intimacy. Obviously, we can see intimacy because there is a marriage within the first few scenes. One big example of affiliation and intimacy is when the guys try talking to the Vietnam War veteran. The guys want to associate with the veteran because they are going over to Vietnam soon.
Terms: self-efficacy, goal, goal setting, autonomy, personal freedom, affiliation, intimacy
Um…I cannot really say that I loved this movie. To be honest though I just think it was difficult to get into. The storyline did confuse me a little bit and the movie seemed to jump around quite a lot. Nonetheless, I will relate what I saw to what we are discussing in class in chapters 8 and 9.
Mike, Steve and Nick were all going to Vietnam to fight in the war. None of them had experience in war and so they could not measure their self efficacy off of personal history. Looking at your past is one way (the best way in fact) in which you can measure yourself efficacy or how well you think you will do in a specific given situation (e.g. war). Because they could not rely on personal history, the men likely relied on vicarious experience. We can judge how well we think we will do in a given task by watching another person that we find similar to us perform that same task. After the wedding, when the guys met an old soldier, they were excited to discuss the war with him. I think they were expecting to be encouraged and uplifted by a guy who had been there. This didn’t happen though. The guys didn’t think too much into this though probably because of how detached they still were from the war. They had no visual of the war and had zero idea about what to expect. Plus, they were getting all sorts of encouragement or verbal persuasion from those around them to go to war. Everyone was excited that they were serving their country. Verbal persuasion helped bolster their self efficacy. Evidently, the guys had enough confidence in their ability to perform well at war that they made the choice to go to war.
One shot. Michael was known and took pride in his ability to kill a deer with just one shot. He was confident in his ability to kill a deer with just one shot. What happened to his confidence though when he encountered a life or death situation and his skills were challenged? Michael may not have been as sure of himself in the roulette situation when he had to kill other human beings to save his own life but he nonetheless mustered up enough self efficacy to do what needed to be done. His high feeling of self efficacy likely came from his personal history. If he could focus on the fact that he has done this many times with deer before, then he can be confident in his ability in this situation. It’s good that he was confident too because without his confidence he likely would have withdrawn from the stress of the challenge and the fear of what failure would bring.
A common theme in the movie is learned helplessness. The men go off to war excited and ready to fight. However, like the man at the bar, there is something in their demeanor when they come back that suggests a feeling of helplessness and sadness. Learned helplessness is the feeling that you have no control in the outcome of a given situation. With the two words that repeatedly came out of the man’s mouth at the bar at the beginning of the movie, it appears as though he had given up all hope. He was helpless and had no desire to try. Learned helplessness had possibly carried over into many aspects of his life and into an overarching feeling of hopelessness. After being beaten down and destroyed in so many ways, veterans likely feel an overwhelming helplessness in life.
In the beginning of the movie, Nick begs Michael not to leave him in Vietnam, so when Michael comes home from Vietnam without his pal there is discrepancy between what Michael desires and what is happening. Michael feels an anxiety about this discrepancy. Through the discrepancy between his current state (no Nick) and the ideal state (having Nick back home with him) Michael is motivated to find his friend and bring him back. Michael might also be partially motivated by the promise that he made to Nick to not leave him in Vietnam. The present state is that he “left” Nick while his ideal state would be reunion with him. Therefore, Michael has a goal to track down and find Nick and to convince Nick to come back to the US (which took some trying because of Nick’s memory problems). Unfortunately, Nick doesn’t ever make it back to the US.
Terms: personal history, self efficacy, choice, verbal persuasion, vicarious experience, learned helplessness, ideal state, present state, discrepancy, goal
Before this class I had never heard of the movie “Deer Hunter”. I am not going to lie; I didn’t enjoy watching this movie and wanted to turn it off multiple times. This is definitely a movie I would not recommend to watch for fun. I do understand why you have us watch it and how it relates to the chapters in the book. I found the beginning of the movie extremely boring but I do understand they had to set the stage for the war and to have us understand the characters.
Self-efficacy is seen throughout the movie. Self-efficacy is the measure of one’s own competence to complete tasks and reach goals. Self-efficacy is seen in the scenes with Russian roulette. Steven is extremely scared and his self-efficacy is real low. Right before it is Stevens turn to play the game he sees an unlucky person that had just lost playing. Steven believes he will die next. Nick also doesn’t have high self-efficacy. He is afraid to pull the trigger on the gun. Michael tries to motivate him and persuade him. Michael is really the only one with a high sense of self-efficacy. Michael is confident and doesn’t hesitate ever when pulling the trigger. Nick’s self-efficacy eventually changes and becomes high. Nick even starts playing Russian roulette for money.
Efficacy expectations and outcome expectations were both talked about in chapter 9 and expressed in this chapter. Efficacy expectation is a judgment of one’s capacity to execute a particular act or course of action. Outcome expectation is a judgment that a given action, once performed, will cause a particular outcome. In the movie Steven gets in trouble while they are being held captive because he just grazes his head with the gun during Russian roulette. For punishment he is forced to stay in an underwater cage with dead bodies. Michael and Nick come up with efficacy expectations to escape. They try to come up with a plan on how to save themselves and Steven at the same time. They realize they cannot take out the guards with just one gun. They talk the guard into playing Russian roulette with more than one gun. Michael and Nick now know they can carry out the task of taking out the guards. They kill the guards and escape. Michael and Nick had earlier discussed if they would be able to save Steven or not. After they escaped themselves, their outcome expectation grew and they could save Steven.
Learned helplessness was also expressed during the movie. During the war Steven loses his legs. When Michael visits Steven in the hospital for the first time Michael tries to get Steven to leave with him. Steven doesn’t want to leave. I feel as though Steven had lost hope. He told Michael he liked it in the hospital. Steven was helpless and felt he belonged in there. Another example of learned helplessness is seen in Angela, Steven’s wife. She was extremely withdrawn with Michael went to visit her. Michael went to visit her and ask her where Steven was. She didn’t say a word while Michael was there. She eventually wrote the address down after Michael wouldn’t leave her alone. Angela couldn’t control anything that had happened therefore she felt helpless. She didn’t have control over Steven going over to Vietnam and fighting in the war. She didn’t have control on whether he would make it back alive, safe and in one piece.
A goal is anything an individual is striving to accomplish. Goal setting is described with goal performance discrepancy. We set goals for ourselves knowing what we have right now and what we want our end result to be. An example from the movie that relates to having a goal and reaching or it is Michael. Michael decides he is going to go try and find Nick and bring him home. When Michael finds him he realizes Nick doesn’t know who he is. Michael joins a game of Russian roulette to prove he will do whatever it takes to get Nick back. While he’s playing he tries to remind Nick of memories they shared together such as hunting. Nick finally remembers but it is his turn to pull the trigger and he dies.
The last scene in the movie I feel deals with hope. After the funeral the friends get together and celebrate Nick’s life. Hope is experienced when people heave motivation to work towards a goal and know ways to achieve the goal. All of the friends are suffering together. They have hope that they will someday be as close with each other as they once were.
The movie was quite long but there were many different concepts used throughout the movie that made watching it beneficial.
Terms used: self-efficacy, learned helplessness, goals, goal setting, hope, efficacy expectation, outcome expectations, verbal persuasion
Yes, it was long as everyone is saying. It wasn't my favorite, but it is fun to look at it in a motivations and emotions perspective. The biggest event that stood out in in the movie as far as motivation and emotion was the game they had to play when first captured, the game I believe was named roulette, but with guns. They to go war with no prior knowledge of war or what they will see. They meet a soldier at the reception of the marriage prior to their departure, and are eager to ask him questions about the war. This, looking back was a great for shadow of how much Micheal and Nick's attitude will change. First, their self efficacy, or how well they can perform a task under difficult circumstances. These men are going in to a gun-ridden army. They are familiar with guns, but do not necessarily have the skills to use them in battle. Their self- efficacy is challenged here in battle with the game of roulette.
They are challenged specifically when Micheal and Nick are first captured and playing the game. They come up with a plan in which their own self-efficacy must be of high measure due to the level of competency with these guns they must possess to save their lives. Micheal uses his gun skills to quickly turn the game over and shoot every opposing soldier in the bunker, saving Nick and Micheals lives, as well as their third friend, steven who has already been badly wounded.
While in the lower part of this bunker, before they were called up to play their game of roulette, Steven was freaking out, hyperventilating, crying, you name it. Micheal had stepped up and was using verbal persuasion ( help in shifting a persons persuasive attitude to the task at hand, thus creating more self-efficacy in that person ). He was giving him a pep talk and telling him things like "you can do this", "we are going to get out of this".
I was confused about the difference between self-efficacy and the psychological need for competence. I was then very pleased to see an explanation in the book! Competence, as explained in the book, is more of a need or motivation to try and feel accomplished at a given task. For example, I see someone playing the cello, I feel the psychological need to pick up my cello and play and feel competent that I can also play this instrument. If one gives me a new, difficult piece, I will find ways to learn this learn this new piece, creating self-efficacy.
Learned helplessness is also seen in the roulette game. The first time Micheal and Nick played the game, they were scared to death. After Micheal had gone home, Nick continued to play the game. I believe this was some sort of learned helplessness from Nick. He had little or no control whether or not he was going to get shot. It was up to chance. He came into his last game with Micheal with no sense of emotion, this was learned helplessness. There are three effects of helplessness, motivational deficits (decreased willingness to try), learning deficits (acquiring a pessimistic attitude, leaving the person with a handicap ability to learn), and emotional deficits (one becomes lethargic and depressed when one should be the opposite). The last game of roulette that Nick plays with Micheal is an example of emotional deficit stemming from learned helplessness. Nick is literally emotionless and doesn't even recognize Micheal, or even recognize that he is there to take him home. Depression is, in some cases, caused by learned helplessness, according to some clinical psychologists (our book says). The book says that research has shown that depressed people seem to see events as less controllable than non depressed people. This is what Nick was going through in his last scene of roulette. He had fallen into a deep state of depression and learned helplessness. He believed there was no other way out.
Terms: Self-efficacy, verbal persuasion, psychological need, competence, learned helplessness, motivational deficits, learning deficits, emotional deficits, depression
This was the first time that I had ever seen The Deer Hunter, and I thought that it was a pretty good movie and that it definitely portrayed different motivation and emotion concepts from the textbook and what we learned in class.
The beginning of the movie was rather slow. It felt like the wedding scene took forever to get through. But, it quickly picked up momentum as it delved into the war scenes in Vietnam. One of the first concepts portrayed was coping. The textbook states that people can cope by taking proactive or reactive action, by approaching the problem and taking action or by avoiding it and walking away, singly or in the context of a group or organization, by focusing on the problem to be solved or by focusing on regulating their emotions to better handle what is happening to them, and by electing to enact additional ways of coping as well (p.243). In the scenes where Russian roulette was being played, Mike used a direct and approach-oriented way of coping, meaning that he took action by moving toward and interacting with the problem and he took action by himself. Mike’s friend Steve coped with the situation at hand in an entirely different way. He used more of an indirect, escape, and emotion focused strategy.
The next concept that played a large role in The Deer Hunter was self-efficacy. According to the textbook, self-efficacy is one’s judgment of how well or poorly one will cope with a situation, given the skills one possesses and the circumstances one faces (p.233). It is not the same as ability, but rather the generative capacity in which the performer improvises ways to best translate personal abilities into effective performance. Mike has very high self-efficacy. The extent of his self-efficacy is the motivational variable that determines the extent to which he copes well when his skills and abilities are stressed. For example, during the Russian roulette scene, which is obviously very distressing and nerve-racking, Mike was able to think clearly and make the decision to get more bullets added to the gun so that he would be able to shoot the men who held him, Nick, and Steve captive and be able to escape. All throughout this part, Mike encouraged both Steve and Nick by telling them that they could do it and that things were going to be fine. Because of Mike’s ability to cope well with this very trying situation, Mike, Nick, and Steve were all able to escape.
Nick and Steve’s self-efficacy were definitely not as high as Mike’s, but Mike used verbal persuasion and vicarious experience to try to help pull them through. The verbal persuasion, or pep talks, gave Nick a sense of empowerment and the belief that they would be able to escape. Vicarious experience also motivated Nick because he saw that Mike was in the game with him and that neither of them had gotten killed so far, so he believed that they would be okay. Steve, on the other hand, did not use vicarious experience to his benefit. He saw people playing roulette before him and die, and this just made him feel helpless and that he had zero control over the situation at hand. Nick was able to get over his self-doubt and turn it into self-efficacy with these motivational techniques, but Steve really did not believe that he had any control over the outcome of the situation and definitely took on some characteristics of learned helplessness.
Something else that was seen in the movie was reactance theory. The term reactance refers to the psychological and behavioral attempt at reestablishing an eliminated or threatened freedom (p.256). Reactance theory predicts that people experience reactance only if they expect to have some control over what happens to them, and people react to a loss of control by becoming more active, even aggressive (p.256). Once again, in the Russian roulette scene, Mike was the one who was reacting versus feeling a sense of helplessness. He realized that his freedom was being taken away, but he knew that he still had some control over the outcome, so he decided to take a chance and shoot everyone so that he and Nick could escape. He had hope, and that is what pulled him through and allowed him to take necessary action.
Many other things had to do with how the Russian roulette scene played out, including thinking and decision making, emotionality, effort, and persistence. According to the textbook, strong self-efficacy beliefs produce persistent coping efforts aimed at overcoming setbacks and difficulties (p.238). It also states that people who believe strongly in their efficacy for solving problems remain remarkably efficient in their analytic thinking during stressful episodes, whereas people who doubt their problem-solving capacities think erratically (p.239). Also, people with a strong sense of efficacy attend to the demands and challenges of the task, visualize competent scenarios for forthcoming behaviors, and harbor enthusiasm, optimism, and interest, and once performance begins and things start to go awry, strong self-efficacy beliefs keep anxiety at bay (p.239). All of these characteristics apply to Mike. Although he was facing great adversity, he was able to stay cool, calm, and collected even though he could die at any moment. He had both his life and his friends’ lives in his hands, and he was able to pull himself together and fight through.
The final concept that was prevalent throughout The Deer Hunter was incongruity between present state and ideal state. This occurred for Mike when he came back home without Nick, even though he had promised Nick in the beginning of the movie that he would not do so. This motivates Mike to go find Nick with the goal in mind of bringing him back home so that they could be together. He would go back to Vietnam and do whatever it takes to get Nick back. Sadly, Nick did not recognize Mike at first, and ultimately Nick never makes it back home alive with Mike because he died playing a final game of Russian roulette.
All in all, I thought The Deer Hunter was pretty captivating, and it definitely helped me in applying new concepts from the textbook and class to what was seen in the movie. I am looking forward to moving on and learning more!
Terms: motivation, emotion, coping, self-efficacy, verbal persuasion, vicarious experience, empowerment, self-doubt, learned helplessness, reactance theory, reactance, control, thinking, decision making, emotionality, effort, persistence, incongruity, present state, ideal state, goal
I would first like say wow, the movie Deer Hunter was not what I expected at all. I knew it was a movie about friends enlisting in the Vietnam War, but I had no idea that it would be so intense and emotionally horrifying. I can honestly say that I did dose off a little in the beginning because I was watching it after a long day at work, but once I got to the war part of the movie I was wide awake. I felt lost through out some parts of the movie because it seemed to jump around a lot and that may be due to my dosing off and not actually the movies fault. Overall, there were many aspects of the movie that went along with what we are learning in chapters eight and nine.
The first thing I noticed from the movie that went along with chapter eight was a big incongruity with the friend’s ideas about the war. Having incongruity means that a person has a mismatch between their present state and their ideal state. Mike, Nick and Steve all thought that they were going to war to be honorable men and fight for an honorable cause. At the wedding they even say a man who looked like he just got back from war and they were drunkenly asking him how it was and all he could say was fuck it. They thought he was just being unfriendly and did not realize how bad it was over in Vietnam. Once they actually started combat, they finally realized that their ideas of how war would be was nothing like it actually was. There was no honor in being captured for some game of life or death and all they wanted to do was to go home. This was the major incongruity throughout the war scenes.
Another part of the movie that connected with our textbook was when the three friends were a part of the Russian roulette when being held as prisons. This scene showed how Mike was able to perform the two types of expectancies: Efficiency and outcome expectancies. Efficiency expectancy is when a person judges if a particular action or course of actions will be able to be executed. Outcome expectancy is whether or not that particular action will have the expected outcome that is wanted. Mike had been the one that talked the other two through what they needed to do to have at least a chance of surviving at that moment. He knew the only way out was to play their little game. He convinced Steve that he could do it and then he convinced Nick to keep going even after putting three bullets in the gun. Mike really was not completely sure it would work, but he knew that his efficiency expectations of himself were that he could keep playing and the outcome expectancy was that there would be three bullets for him to kill the men who held them captive. His expectancies paid off when he was able to get his friends out of captivity. Mike was also the one who showed high self-efficiency compared to the other two friends. Self-efficiency is different than efficiency expectations because it how a person perceives if they are able to cope with a situation using their own skills and abilities and not taking others abilities into consideration. Mike knew what he was capable of and showed that he could take charge and change the situation with his own skills. Only he himself could kill all three men when it was his turn in the game.
The reason why I believe that Mike had the best handle on the situations at hand was because he showed the least amount of physiological signals that a person chows when they are in distress. Steve was the one who was screaming and trembling when it came time for him to point the gun at himself. These are signs of having an unstable physiological state. Other signs are showing fatigue, pain, muscle tension, mental confusion and uncontrollable trembling. Nick had also showed that he was a wreck because he was crying and trembling just as much as Steve was when it came to his turn at the game. This did change for Nick throughout the movie. He had stayed behind in Vietnam because he all of a sudden started taking part in big Russian roulette gambling centers. He was no longer shaking or crying when Mike came back to rescue him. He had completely changed and was no longer the Nick that Mike knew.
One last part of this movie that I saw connecting to chapter nine was how each of the friends coped with their experiences in the war. Steve and Nick were the two friends that seemed to have had the hardest time recovering from what happened to them while at war. Steve was injured so badly the he lost both legs and an arm. He was physically scarred for life. Nick had continued to play the game that had changed his life forever and this left him emotionally scarred. Both of these men had succumbed to learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is a psychological state that results when an individual expects that life’s outcomes are uncontrollable (Reeve p. 244). Steve was sent to a veteran’s hospital after he had three of his limbs amputated. At first he never wanted to leave the hospital because he believed that he would not belong back home and that was just where he was going to spend the rest of his life. His learned helplessness was that he could not go home because he was no longer in control of his body and how others would react to him. Nick showed a different form of learned helplessness than Steve. Once Nick was out of the hospital unit in Vietnam he was roaming around the city and heard gun shots so he went to see what it was. A man pulled him into a shed and he saw a group of men gambling and betting on Russian roulette; the game that had almost cost him his life. He lost his mind right there and pulled a gutsy move of putting the gun to his own head and he was hooked from then on out. Nick had showed his learned helplessness by joining the game because he thought he was never going to escape this game so he might as well join them.
The way that Steve’s learned helplessness was different from Nick’s was that Steve had a motivational deficit while Nick had a learning deficit. A motivational deficit is when a person has lost their willingness to even try. Steve had no longer wanted to try to go home and did not even want others from his past to be a part of his life. He gave up on everything and just wanted to stay in the hospital. A learning deficit is when someone acquires a pessimistic view that interferes with them learning new responses. Nick had completely changed his way of thinking when he saw the game of Russian roulette and no longer had a new way of changing his outcome. He was set that he was going to be playing this game for the rest of his life.
Overall, the Deer Hunter showed many ways of how a person can either take control or lose control of their goals and their outcomes. It was an emotional journey watching this movie and I hope that I will never have to go through an experience like that in my lifetime. I also would not want to watch another movie like that for a long time, it was very emotionally exhausting.
Terms: incongruity, efficiency expectancies, outcome expectancies, self-efficiency, physiological state, learned helplessness, motivational deficit, learning deficit
I have never heard of ‘Deer Hunter’ before this class. I thought the movie was slow and it didn’t grab my attention for a while. Unfortunately, I was not able to watch the entire fill because I watched it in class. I do however see a lot of concepts in this movie that were discussed in chapter 8 and chapter 9.
Self-efficacy is present during the Russian roulette game between Michael and Nick. Self-efficacy happens when a person organizes and orchestrates his or her skills to cope with the demands and circumstances he or she is faces. Michael has fantastic aim and can kill deer in one shot. When Michael and Nick are in the water waiting for their turn to play Russian roulette they come up with a plan to escape. Michael knows the gun has only a couple bullets left so he will need to use them all to kill the guards. During their game Michael and Nick turn on the guards and kill them all. Michael coped with the demands that he was facing by using his guns skills.
This Russian roulette scene is also a great example of goal setting and goal-performance discrepancy is chapter 8. In chapter 8 we learned that goals do not always enhance performance. Only goals that are difficult and specific enhance performance. Difficult goals energize the performer, and specific goals direct them toward a particular course of action. Michael and Nick came up with a specific goal of how they are going to escape. This goal isn’t easy. If they fail then they are going to die. Both Michael and Nick are fatigued, cold, and hungry but this goal energizes them to perform well. They both follow through with the course of action and did exactly as they were supposed to do.
Learned helplessness was also present in this movie. Learned helplessness is the psychological state that results when an individual expects that life’s outcomes are uncontrollable. Before the guys went to war they met a guy at the bar who had just returned from the war. He was sitting quiet and all alone at the bar drinking. When they tried talking to him he only responded with “fuck it.” He seemed very depressed and acted like he had given up all hope. All the guys were taken back by this because they seemed optimistic about going to war.
Stephen also showed learned helplessness. When he was in the water with all the other American soldiers waiting for their turn in Russian roulette he started to lose his mind. He began to shake uncontrollably, cry, and yell. Michael tried calming him down and telling him everything is okay. At this point Stephen was losing all hope that he was going to survive and return home.
Terms: Self-efficacy, learned helplessness, goal-performance discrepancy, goal setting.
I was very skeptical about this movie, but I have to admit that once it got going I was completely immersed & fascinated. The most easily identifiable concept within 'The Deer Hunter' concerns self-efficacy, or ones capacity to “best translate personal abilities into effective performances.” There is a scene in the movie where the friends are trapped in a prisoner of war camp, and forced to play Russian Roulette against one another for the entertainment of the cruel guards. Nick and more specifically Mike, displays both efficacy expectation and outcome expectation. Efficacy expectation is an understanding of ones ability to achieve a certain action or actions, while outcome expectation estimates the probability of certain outcomes based on ones behavior. Driven by efficacy expectation, the soldiers decided to put extra bullets into the gun barrel, because they were confident that if they tried they may succeed and escape, but if they did not try at all they would die in the camp anyway. Based on the possibility of escape, Nick and Mike were motivated to try and do so. They are also motivated to fight back because they are confident that if their plan does work, they will be able to escape and survive; this is their outcome expectation. An individual fails to perform a behavior, when their efficacy expectation and outcome expectations are anything but high. When their turn arrives to play Russian Roulette, Nick begins to doubt himself and his ability to succeed, and he fails to pull the trigger until Mike gives him the necessary confidence in his own self-efficacy to be motivated and able to complete their plan of escape.
This scene also exemplifies the cognitive mechanism in which plans direct and motivate behavior. According to the TOTE model, Nick and Mike realized their present state, stuck in a torturous POW camp, contradicted their ideal state of freedom. Due to this contradiction, they were motivated to change and act upon their current environment and situation, so that it matched their ideal. They operated on their surroundings in an attempt to create a more desirable situation. The soldiers were motivated to carry out their plan of escape until they were successful and their ideal state matched their current.
Terms: Self-Efficacy, Efficacy Expectation, Outcome Expectation, TOTE Model
I’m not usually in to older movies but I’m afraid I have to admit that this was one of the better movies I’ve seen in a while. It’s weird to see all these older actors now a day in their youth. Probably my favorite scene in the whole movie involved Robert De Niro (Michael) and Christopher Walken (Nick) when they had to play Russian roulette while being held hostage by the Vietcong’s. Even though it might be a stretch, I thought this scene showed a little mastery motivational orientation. The definition of mastery orientation is a person responds to failure (getting caught) by remaining task focused (divising a plan) despite difficulties and setbacks. Michael knew that they were probably going to die one way or another, be it getting killed in the game or by their captors. He could have easily given up and excepted his fate but he played the Vietcong’s came and made it his own in the second round by putting three bullets in the gun. He knew if he and Nick could serve the first two shots he could use the gun to free them, which he ultimately did.
Another great scene in the movie is when the American helicopter finds the three men and attempts to pick them up. Nick is able to get on board but Steven and Michael struggle to get on. Eventually Steven falls of the helicopter into the river and Michael goes with him. Michael then drags Steven out of the water and carries him to friend territory. I thought this scene showed empowerment. Empowerment involves possessing the knowledge, skills, and beliefs that allow people to exert control over their live. When threatened, people typically feel anxious, stressed, vulnerable, at risk, and in danger. To empower oneself, people need more than just skills and the knowledge of what to do. People also need self-efficacy beliefs so they can translate their knowledge and skills into effective performance when threatened and exert control over intrusive negative thoughts. While Steven probably wanted to give up Michael had the empowerment to keep going. He refused to let them die in that jungle and had the will to keep going which I believe is an excellent example of empowerment.
One other amazing scene in the movie is at the end when Michael goes back to Saigon to find Nick. He eventually does and Nick has been playing Russian roulette and winning a lot of money doing so. To try and snap him out of it Michael play nick in the game. Nick has no memory and show a bad physiological state. Physiological states are fatigue, pain, muscle tension, mental confusion, etc. After being lost for so long Nick’s physiological is rough and he plays the game as if he has nothing to lose. I believe this increased his self-efficacy because he was winning the game so much because he wasn’t scared to die because he had no memory of anything. On the other hand, Michael was shown to be jittery when it was his turn. He had low self-efficacy because he knew the behavior could result in a bad consequence so he didn’t want to partake in it. After he and passed the gun to Nick again, it sparked his memory back. Nick says “one last time” and pulls the trigger to his death. I believe that scene shows reactance theory. Reactance theory is basically doing the exact opposite of what you are supposed to do. Nick remembers now what he has to go back to but his mind has made him so invincible that he thinks he can still win the game. He thinks he has control over the game which is why I believe reactance theory works here.
One last scene is when Michael goes hunting again. He has the opportunity to kill a deer but instead shoots up in the sky saying that he cannot kill another living thing. I believe in a way this show learned helplessness. After being in war, losing friends, etc. Michael no longer has the motivation to kill. He let his environment take control of his actions for so long having to kill countless men and other things. Him not killing the deer I believe shows that he no longer has low self-efficacy and is able to make choices instead of his environment making choices for him.
Terms: Efficacy, learned helplessness, mastery orientation, empowerment, self-efficacy.
I only got to watch the lovely first part of this movie thus far since I watched it in class (though I am definitely watching the rest when I can). Even though the beginning was quite boring it was starting to get interesting when class ended. This was such an old movie and I’m surprised at how many of these movies I’ve not heard of. I can’t wait to find this movie and watch the rest of it, because I felt like it was just getting started at the end of class on Tuesday. But even just the beginning of this movie had many terms from chapters 8 and 9.
The first aspect of motivation I saw in the movie was probably the goal for the first young man to get married. He set his mind to marrying who he wanted to marry, and he wasn’t going to let anyone stop him. Even when his mother (I believe that’s who it was anyway) had something to say about it, he was motivated by the discrepancy in his life to get married. His ideal state is to be married to the young woman and the present state was obviously his unmarried state where he was always drinking and hanging around his friends. This discrepancy drives the young man to betray his mother and do what he was driven to do. He ended up reaching his ideal state as he wished when he got married. His goal was difficult with his mother pressuring him to do otherwise which as was discussed in chapter 8 can actually increase persistence and effort.
Another term I saw towards the end of the portion of the movie I saw was during the game of roulette where they had blanks and bullets in the gun. I didn’t quite get their names right I don’t think, but during the roulette game the characters all had to take turns pulling the trigger on themselves. I believe it was Mike who was using verbal persuasion on his friends to allow them to get it over with. They didn’t believe in themselves and didn’t have the self-efficacy to pull the trigger without the verbal persuasion from Mike. Mike was yelling and screaming at Nick and Steve to convince them to complete the game. The self-efficacy from Nick and Steve, who were the ones being yelled at by Mike, produced an emotional reaction when the stress and anxiety was too much for them. Mike had self-efficacy from the beginning it seemed, but it still provoked an emotional reaction for him as well. Mike was the motivational force behind Steve and Nick’s actions during roulette, but once one of the men didn’t think he could do it anymore, he developed learned helplessness and was thrown into the pit.
Terms: goals, ideal state, present state, discrepancy, drive, effort, self-efficacy, learned helplessness
Well, I only got to watch the very beginning of the movie because I watched it in class on tuesday. It was hard to follow in the beginning. I honestly had practicly no idea what was going on the first few minutes. After a while though you get to know some of the characters. Once the movie got to the war scene though I realized that this is a movie that would be way to emotionaly intense for me. I wish though, that I could have seen more of the movie. Too bad it's so long! I think that I would have been able to get a better understanding of concepts from the chapter being played out in the movie. Anyways, this movie did a great job of showing different concepts from chapter 9.
The first concept that I noticed being shown in the movie was self efficacy. Self efficacy is, a person's capacity to best translate personal abilities into effective performances. This is shown when Christopher Walken and Rober DiNiro have to play russin roulette against eachother. Robert DiNiro showed self efficacy when he decieded to have them put three bullets in the gun instead of three. He was confident in his ability, (if he survived the game first), to kill his enemies and escape from the people trying to kill him and his friend. They had a goal to survive the situation they were in and they would do whatever it took to do so.
Also durring the game of roulette Robert DiNiros character is verbally persuading Christopher Walkens character to go through with the game. He tells him that he can do it and that it'll be alright. By being able to effectively persuade him to play the game they ultimately survived. DiNiro does this with other characters as well and he is successful at keeping everyone as calm as possible.
I feel that the characters may have also experienced learned helplessness. I feel this way because most of the men that had to play the game did not fight for their lives. For the most part they went through with exactly what the enemies were telling them to do even though it could cost them their lives. Most people would say that they would fight in a situation like that, but in reality, many people do the exact opposite.
Terms: self efficacy, learned helplessness, persuasion, motivation.
“The Deer Hunter” is a movie with two parts. The first part takes place in a blue collar town and features the lives of individuals in it. The second part takes place in the Vietnam War. The mentality that the individuals had in the small town is much different than the mentality they emit during the war.
There are two things from the chapter that I want to talk about that the movie portrayed, goals within the individuals and personal control. These are both portrayed in Vietnam when the individuals get captured. Their captors are playing a Russian Roulette type of game with them where you put a bullet into a gun, spin it and then someone sticks it up to their head and pulls the trigger. In this case the prisoners had to do it. Some got lucky and got the empty chamber while others shot themselves in the head. You saw one prisoner who didn’t make any type of noise; he just stared at Robert Deniro and Christopher Walkens character. He was in a daze due to what was going on. At this point he had basically shed his motivation to survive as well as any goals of escaping. In essence he had given up. Helplessness had set in and he felt (among other things I’m sure) that he could not control the future from this point. There was no sense of the character striving or making plans to change his situation.
Robert Deniros character was expressing great personal control. He was remaining calm at the beginning of the capture until he was driven and motivated enough to risk his life and take action. He helped his comrades as well keep calm, he wanted them to have the same goal that he had which was to stay alive. For most people staying alive is a long term goal, you make choices everyday to make your life better or worse. In this case they were living for the moment. They could be killed at anytime. This makes their goal a lot more specific and difficult. This results in their performance becoming enhanced which allows them to make it out alive. Despite what their reactions were, each prisoner was experiencing mental stimulations. They were focusing on something, whether it was the horror going on around them, how to escape, preparing themselves to die. These focuses also come with expectancies. Robert Deniros character at first probably experience efficiency expectations, can I do it? The “it” to him was to stay alive and possibly escape. He then makes a plan and reaches the outcome expectation, will what I do work? To do what he had to do required a lot of self-efficacy. He really had to believe that his plan would work, he believed that he had what it took to accomplish this task so he took action.
The psychological state that these individuals were in was almost unbearable. They were tired, injured and shaken up about the possible events to come. Their emotions were all over the place, from being anxious, to anger, to melancholy. Some had better coping skills for this than others. Robert Deniro seemed to be at a mastery level in this, he wasn’t giving in to the helplessness. He truly believed that he could do take action towards the problem and it would go away. He had what it took to be a leader.
Terms: coping, self-efficacy, goals, motivation, mastery, helplessness, personal control, long term goal, mental stimulation
I am not a fan of war movies (or movies containing war scenes), so this was a difficult movie for me to watch. Nonetheless, I watched the entire movie. I have heard of Russian roulette, but I have honestly never understood the term. After watching this movie I now have a much clearer understanding of the “game” and how lethal it is. In “The Deer Hunter” this “game” was used as a means of torture to those captured and was later used as a means of business and betting between wealthy men. I had a difficult time paying attention for about the first hour of the movie – the scenes seemed to drag on longer than necessary. But I do understand the need to develop the characters and this was done well in the lengthy beginning scenes. Many terms from chapters 8 and 9 can be applied scenes in the movie “The Deer Hunter.”
Our text states that people have knowledge of both their present states (one’s current status of how life is going) and ideal states (how one wishes life was going), and that any perceived incongruity/discrepancy (mismatch perceived between one’s personal and ideal states) between the two makes people uncomfortable enough to formulate and act on a plan of action to remove incongruity so that the present state will change and become the ideal state. A major scene in the movie is when Michael, Nick, and Steven are first held as prisoners together. Their present states are horrible as they are being held as prisoners and are forced to play Russian roulette until someone involved in the game dies. Their ideal state is obviously not being held prisoner (such as Steven wishing he was not in the war anymore – stress and the psychological game of roulette have him in hysterics). The three friends are experiencing incongruity and discrepancy because their ideal and present states do not match. They feel uncomfortable enough that they formulate a plan of action (to fight against their captors) to remove the incongruity (escape) and attempt to match their present and ideal states.
Another term that can be applied to a scene in “The Deer Hunter” is that of goal specificity. Goal specificity refers to how clearly a goal informs the performer precisely what he is to do. In the movie, Michael makes the comment that it is “impossible to take down a deer with one shot.” He gives himself a goal, a clear goal that informs him of what he is precisely to do in order to achieve his goal – to kill a deer with one shot. For the reason that Michael’s goal is specific, he is directed toward a particular course of action; for the reason that Michael’s goal is difficult, he is energized to complete and master his goal. Implementation intentions are plans to carry out one’s goal-directed behavior – deciding in advance of one’s goal striving the “when, where, and how long” that underlies one’s forthcoming goal-directed action. In this same scene, Michael constructs a plan to attack their captors during a game of Russian roulette. He was deciding in advance what his goal was (obvious where it would take place) and how long until it occurred/how long they would have to complete their “attack.” The when, where, and how long underlie Michael’s goal-directed action of him and his friends escaping the torture and prison of their enemies.
There are two types of expectancy. Efficacy expectations are described as the judgment of one’s capacity to execute a particular act or course of action (“can I do it?”). Outcome expectations are defined as the judgment that the given action, once performed, will cause a particular outcome (“will what I do work?”). An example scene that demonstrates efficacy expectations is again the scene in which Michael is plotting and attempting to free him and his friends from their captors. He judges his capacity to carry-out the particular course of action of escaping (his friend Nick is actually the one that questions Michael’s success in the plan and could possibly be the one that further demonstrates efficacy expectations). Outcome expectations can also be observed in this scene as Nick questions if what they complete (attacking and escaping) would work and free them. It had to be determined if the action could be completed – efficacy expectation – and if it would work – outcome expectation. A note from the text states that both expectations must be reasonably high before behavior becomes energetic and goal directed.
Self-efficacy is one’s judgment of how well or poorly one will cope with a situation, given the skills one possesses and the circumstances one faces. Self-efficacy is a main term that is present throughout this movie. One example would be concerning Steve when he is held captive with Michael and Nick. Steve is sure that he and his friends will all die as prisoners, that they will be tortured to death. His self-efficacy is extremely low and he judges the circumstances that he faces (weak self-efficacy = pessimism, anxiety, and depression emotionality). Nick also demonstrates self-efficacy in this scene as he is unsure as to whether they will survive the three-bullet game of Russian roulette. He is hesitant to play and given the circumstances of the situation, is judging that they will all be killed in this game (weak self-efficacy = pessimism, anxiety, and depression emotionality). Michael has high self-efficacy as he is determined to try anything that will allow the three of them to escape (strong efficacy = enthusiastic and optimistic emotionality). He does not show any hesitation as he continues to pull the trigger in the three-bullet game so that they can escape (he uses the idea of three bullets so that when they attack their enemies he has three shots at killing them). His self-efficacy is high as he believes that with three bullets he can kill three of their enemies. In an attempt to increase Nick’s and Steve’s self-efficacy as they were forced to play Russian roulette was Michael using verbal persuasion. His verbal persuasion was encouraging to his friends as he told them that everything would be alright and that they would be okay if they just pulled the trigger. Vicarious experience is also present in this scene. Vicarious experience in this scene is described as seeing others perform masterfully raises the observer’s sense of efficacy, or seeing others perform clumsily lowers the observer’s sense of efficacy. Steven’s efficacy is lowered in the Russian roulette scene because he sees a prisoner (like himself – the model) die while playing the game. He is thus sure that he will not survive and becomes hysterical as he turn to play the game approaches – his efficacy is lowered greatly.
A self-efficacy belief (besides that of vicarious experience and verbal persuasion) of physiological state is also present in “The Deer Hunter.” In the absence of fear, tension, and stress, one has a heightened sense of efficacy. This can be seen in the ending Russian roulette scene in which Nick ends up dying. He is so lost “psychologically” that his physiological state is producing a sense of high self-efficacy. He either does not care or is unfathomed by the chance that he may die each time he continues to play the deadly game. He is not afraid, tense, or stress, and thus has a heightened sense of efficacy. Nick is persistent as he continues to play the game and continues with a steady effort as even the meeting and conversation with Michael do not change his mind or remind him of his friend. (As self-efficacy increases, fear and anxiety slip away). Michael also shows empowerment over being captured. He persists in the face of adversity to free himself and his two friends.
Learned helplessness is the psychological state that results when an individual expects that the outcomes in life are uncontrollable. A great example of this term is based on the scene of Steve losing his legs and staying at the Veteran’s hospital. He once fit into society and now feels that he has no place. He believes that his life outcomes are uncontrollable and that remaining in the hospital is what he needs to do and how he needs to spend the remainder of his life. Angela, Steve’s wife, also shows learned helplessness. She has no control over the war or the fact that her husband lost his legs. She feels helpless and displays emotional deficits – an effect of helplessness. Emotional deficits are effective disruptions in which lethargic, depressive emotional reactions occur in situations that call for active, assertive emotion. Angela is clearly lethargic and depressive in reaction to her husband going to war and returning home to live at the Veteran’s hospital (she is lying in bed with unfocused eyes as Michael tries to pry out of her Steve’s location). Steve portrays motivational deficits as he decreases his willingness to try – “why try?” (Michael has to go to the Veteran’s hospital and literally wheel Steve home).
Reactance theory is the psychological and behavioral attempt at reestablishing (“reacting” against) an eliminated or threatened freedom. Going again back to the Russian roulette scene, Michael attempts to react against his captors to reestablishing his eliminated freedom. He is psychologically aware that his freedom was taken from him, and he acts out against this occurrence in order to regain his freedom. If a person expects to be able to control important outcomes, then exposure to uncontrollable outcomes arouses reactance. A perfect example of this is Nick’s “one last game” of Russian roulette. He is expecting to be able to control this life-or-death outcome and, being exposed to the actual uncontrollable outcome (death) he is arousing his reactance to the situation (to pull the trigger). Reactance is rooted in perceived control – Nick believes he is in control of the game as he has played numerous times and has survived so far.
A final term found in numerous scenes of “The Deer Hunter” is hope. Hope is displayed by Linda (Meryl Streep) as she waits for Nick to return home so that they may be married and start their life together. Hope is also displayed by Michael in the ending Russian roulette scene as he hopes that Nick will quit the game and leave with him (I wonder if he would have mentioned Linda to Nick, if her name would have “clicked” for Nick and he would have left with Michael). Michael also hopes, once he realizes that Nick will not so-quickly return home with him, that Nick and himself will survive this “last” game of Russian roulette – unfortunately Michael is the only one to survive the game.
Terms: present state, ideal state, incongruity, discrepancy, goal specificity, goal difficulty, implementation intentions, efficacy expectations, outcome expectations, self-efficacy, emotionality, verbal persuasion, vicarious experience, physiological state, persistence, empowerment, learned helplessness, emotional deficits, motivational deficits, reactance theory, reactance, and hope
In the first part of the movie, the main characters Mike, Steven, Nick, Stanley and Axle go on a hunting tip in the mountains. Once they arrive to their destination, Stanley realizes that he forgot to pack his boots for hunting. He asks Mike if he could wear his second pair of boots he had brought on the trip and Mike proceeds to say no due to the fact that this isn’t the first time Stanley had forgotten something important on one of their hunting outings. Mike continues to tell Stanley that he is not allowed to wear the boots even as Stanley is throwing a fit and their other friends are pushing Mike just to let him wear the boots. Stanley is displaying a learned helplessness that he has formed. Learned helplessness is defined as the psychological state that results when an individual expects life’s outcomes are uncontrollable and is learned based on our interaction with the environment around which we live. When it comes to learned helplessness, ones behavior exerts little or no influence over ones outcomes. In the previous hunting trips the group has been on, they have constantly given into the needs of Stanley by letting him use the supplies that he didn’t bring with him on the trip. By providing him with such necessities, his behavior of forgetting vital things needed on a hunting trip exerts little to know influence on his outcomes of a successful hunting trip in the fact that his friends are feeding him the things he needs, thus he developed a sense of learned helplessness.
The second aspect of chapter nine in the book that can be related to this movie was that of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is defined as more generative capacity in which an individual organizes and orchestrates their skills to cope with the demands and circumstances that they may face. It is also defines as how well a person will cope with a situation given the skills they already posses and the circumstances they face. In essence self-efficacy is certain skills and individual processes and their ability use such skills and know how to put them to use in difficult situations. Self-efficacy can be seen in many different places in the movie. The one scene in the movie that I will be focusing on is the roulette scene towards the middle of the movie. During this scene Steven, Mike, and Nick have been captured by the Vietnamese enemy and are being held hostage. As the other hostages are being forced to play roulette, Steven begins to become extremely emotionally unstable and Mike comes to his side to help try and comfort him. They are then both selected to play roulette against one another and with a hysterical Steven, Mike is comforting throughout the entire event, trying to get him to calm down and talk him through the events that were taking place. Next, Mike and Nick are forced to play roulette against each other and once again Mike is comforting to his friend and devises a plan on as to how they will both survive. They then kill their captors and escape, along with Steven.
In this scene, Mike is demonstrating high levels of self-efficacy in multiple different ways. He is using the skills he already has in order to cope with the demands of the situation they are all currently placed in. He is using his skills to not only help comfort his distraught friend and himself, but also using his skills from hunting and knowledge of guns to devise a plan as to how they can escape their game of roulette as well as escape from their captors.
Because of his strong believe is his self efficacy, Mike was able to solve the problems that they faced as a group while being held captive and was efficient in his analytical thinking during a stressful situation.
Terms: Leaned helplessness, Self-Efficacy
Given the background information on the movie the Deer Hunter I knew the beginning of the movie was going to be somewhat dull, or at least not as engaging and detailed as the second part. However, I thought the way the movie was set up was relatable to everyday life, there was a pre, during and post war, chapters you could say, within the movie; allowing the viewer to understand different concepts within different settings. Mike is one of the main characters within the movie, he enjoys hunting and every time he goes hunting he sets a goal, or something that he personally is trying to accomplish, which would be to always bring back a deer. Within that goal though he has a standard; which is an adequate performance or the cross over point between satisfaction and dissatisfaction, to Mike his standard is he can use “one bullet” one bullet to kill his deer and that’s what he always strives to do. One of the characters, Stan, stood out to me in the beginning because he seemed to always be blaming someone else for his troubles; during a hunting scene Stand forgets his boots (which by everyone’s reactions seemed as if it happened a lot) in other words Stand had a goal to go hunting and kill a deer but his lack of planning on how he was going to do that ultimately stopped him from achieving that goal. I would also say that Stan seemed to lack intimacy, it was very clear that Stand wasn’t lacking the ability to be intimate, but he didn’t have any real relationships; the scene at the wedding where he punches a woman he likes for a man grabbing her ass is a perfect example of him craving an actual intimate relationship, a loving and warm relation with someone.
Staying within Chapter 8, one the war was over and Mike came back home it seemed as if he was experiencing discrepancy, or his present state of life wasn’t measuring up to his ideal state. Obviously anyone post-war is going to have troubles coming back to a “normal” way of life, but with Mike he seemed very out of place in his old world, he didn’t come home right away when he saw everyone at his house waiting for him and I think the fact that Nick wasn’t home with him never allowed him to settle back into the ways of life.
The war scene was graphic and somewhat disturbing, but I also saw how a war scene can be very helpful in understanding certain concepts. A person faced in a situation like Mike, Nick and Steven, in which they were essential Prisoners of War, can be mentally and emotionally traumatizing. This was evident in all three of the men, but I think Steven showed more of an allover break-down. While awaiting their turn in the “pit” every time he heard the click of the barrel or the gun actually go off he completely lose it, he was majorly lacking affiliation. However, Mike, essentially saved all the mens lives, if he hadn’t stepped up and had the desire to exercise his personal control; which can produce favorable outcomes, then in all reality all three of them would have died. Efficacy expectation is basically the question of, “can I do it” and during the roulette scene and the plan to gain control of the weapons around them, I think Mike knew that they could take control of the guns but would there be an outcome expectation, or that once they took action will the outcome of killing the captors actually be possible without dying themselves. Also during the Russian roulette scene Mike displayed Self-efficacy, or how well one will perform or cope within a given situation. Clearly Steven had no control over himself and if Mike hadn’t verbally coached him through his turn at roulette then he wouldn’t have had that temporary boost of efficacy to motivate himself to pull the trigger, resulting in the captors shooting him instead. Although with that I think Stevens severe lack of self-efficacy and affiliation somewhat saved his life also because he was mentally distraught that at the last second he ended up pulling the gun up, causing the bullet to skim his head instead of a clean entry.
Going back to post-war you can see that Steven’s wife, Angela, who is not really a main character, has many problems within herself. When Mike goes to see Angela to gain knowledge about Stevens’ whereabouts, she is completely mute, she is in a state of helpless motivational orientation, which is a fragile view of one’s self during encounters of failure. Angela could be classified as having severe depression and helplessness because she blames herself for Steven coming home from war as an amputee and paralyzed, she took on the burden of his given state as being her fault when in all reality she had no control over the environmental outcome of war and Stevens body.
In the end the movie obviously ends on a very tragic and sad note, it was not your ideal ending but it was in all actuality a realistic ending. Until Mike had found Nick and brought him home he never would have been able to settle back into his ways of life, he had set the goal that he would bring Nick home no matter what. In the end he essentially did bring him home, however it was in a casket, but I think that knowing that they now knew where Nick was gave the entire group a sense of hope. They ended the movie with a song, a song I consider to be one about hope, they now had hope that they could all move forward and continue living.
Terms: Goal, Standard, Plan, Discrepancy, intimacy, affiliation, exercise of personal control, Efficacy expectation, Outcome expectation, Self-efficacy, Helpless motivational orientation, Helpless motivational orientation, Helplessness, Hope.
This movie was very boring and hard to follow because I had no interest in it, at all. The only thing I'll remember from this movie is that there was a lot of music played, singing and dancing. That was, in my opinion, the best part of the entire movie.
Self-efficacy is seen throughout the movie, especially in the Russian roulette scenes. Self-efficacy is the measure of one’s own competence to complete tasks and reach goals. We see Steven, Nick and Michael's different levels of self-efficacy displayed during these scenes. Michael's self-efficacy is very high, as he is confident that he's not going to die and doesn't hestitate to pull the trigger. Steven, who had witnessed a guy die before him, didn't have the courage to pull the trigger because he was certain that he was going to die. Nick displayed low self-efficacy as well, as he held the gun to his head twice, but failed to pull the trigger. After Michael persuaded him by telling him over and over to just do it, he finally pulled the trigger and didn't die.
The man at the bar at the beginning of the movie who only spoke two words, came off as very disturbed and depressed. Little did we know at the time that he was foreshadowing how the guys would feel after being in the war. They developed learned helplessness, which is where you feel no control in a situation and are constantly sad. Another example of learned helplessness is at the end of the film when Michael goes hunting one more time and has the opportunity to shoot a deer, but doesn't. He realizes that he cannot kill another living thing because he had killed so many and seen so many be killed during the war. A motivational deficit goes along with learned helplessness. Motivational deficit is when a person has lost their willingness to even try. Steven is the character who demonstrates this the most. He is so badly shaken up from the war and his tramautic injuries that he no longer wants to go home and he doesn't want those were in his life in the past, to see him as he is. His injuries were so bad that he lost both of his legs and his arm. Steven gave up on everything and just wanted to stay in the hospital.
Incongruity is being out of place between present state and ideal state. In the beginning of the movie, Michael promises Nick that he would not return home without him. We see that when Michael comes home without Nick, he realizes this promise he had made. This thought motivates Michael and triggers the goal of him wanting to go back to bring Nick home so that they could be together. He would go back to Vietnam and do whatever it takes to get Nick back home safely. Nick's psychological state is so bad when Michael finds him that Nick doesn't remember who he is. He finds that Nick has been playing multiple games of Russain roulette and has even been betting, and winning on a lot of them. Michael is trying to bring Nick home, but unfortunately, Nick dies in one last game of Russain roulette.
Terms: Self-efficacy, learned helplessness, motivational deficit, incongruity, goal, psychological state
The Deer Hunter was extremely interesting to watch from a motivational stand point, there were so many examples of the topics that were in the book. I found the movie to be disturbing at time but also very interesting and educational. In regards to chapter 8 the first example from the movie involves a celebration. The couple that got married had been planning for their big day for a certain period of time. That had to make decisions that involved the TOTE model, for example they would compare their present state of not being married to their future or ideal state of being married. Once that was decided they acted based on their environment in hopes of accomplishing their ideal state. Then they would test, or compare their present state to their ideal state, and once this occurred and their ideal state was accomplished the process ended.
The next example involves the scene where the three men were at war and wanting to be picked up by an American helicopter. They had gone through a very traumatic event and wanted relief or help. A discrepancy occurred when they were trying to get on the helicopter, only one individual made it safely.
The current state was not what they wanted at all, so their ideal state was to be safe in the helicopter rather than in the water on a branch. The ideal state fell short for two individuals who had to find another way to save themselves. There was one individual in the entire movie that stood out to me. He was always the one that was thinking ten steps in front of everyone else. He always had a goal to rescue not only himself but the other soldiers that were with him. He would set a goal with intent to accomplish it the way he expected, even though this did not always happen. There were several times where he did not receive positive feedback; this was interesting because he still tried to accomplish his goal no matter what was occurring.
The three men that decided to go to war set a short-term goal of simply going to war, and their long-term goal was to come back home safe and not injured. Like with any goals that are set there are problems that arise and make the goal more difficult; or easier. A more specific example would be when the three men were playing a very disturbing game which involved shooting themselves in hopes that they would not die. In this case their short term goal was to live through the game, while their long term goal was to get free away from the people who were keeping them captive.
During the movie there were several times where the three men questioned what they were doing and why. Questions such as, Can I do this? Do I have resources to help me if I am unable to help myself? Were asked before as well as during their time at war. Self-efficacy involves one’s judgment of how well or poorly one will cope with a situation, given the skills one possesses and the circumstance of faces. There was one individual in particular that in my opinion did not have high self-efficacy at all. He seemed to be constantly looking for someone else to help him, rather than him helping himself. This individual was not capable to resolve their conflict even though they were given the tools and experience to do so. Empowerment involves possessing knowledge, skills, and beliefs that allow people to exert control over their lives. An example of this would be the skills and knowledge that the soldiers learn while in combat; they learn how to protect themselves as well as others.
I have always found the concept of learned helplessness to be very interesting. This occurs when people expect desired outcomes such as getting a job, or undesired outcomes such as being fired, are independent of their outcomes. Learned helplessness occurs when an individual expects that life’s outcomes are uncontrollable. An example of this was when the strongest of the three soldiers had to coach the weakest to calm down. This individual assumed that he was going to die and thus had a nervous breakdown rather than assess his situation and trying to find a solution.
Overall I found this movie to be extremely interesting and a great example of motivation and emotion. There were several examples that I was able to connect to the chapters which made it even more interesting to see what was going to happen in the move. It was interesting to watch how the characters interacted and how they responded to different situations.
Terms: Plan, TOTE, Discrepancy, Feedback, Efficacy, Self-Efficacy, Empowerment, Helplessness.
The first obvious concept I found in the film is discrepancy. Throughout the movie the characters are dissatisfied with many events in the reality. The corrective motivation comes in and the characters take actions to improve the situation they are in. An example of discrepancy reduction is the main character telling his friend that he needs to prepare his own gear when they go hunting. His friend never brought the necessary items and always borrowed from others, so he gave him a lecture and told him "this is this." Another example is that they wanted to get out of their cell and avoid a bullet in the head so they killed the Vietnamese soldiers and escaped.
An example of discrepancy creation is that the main character promised his friend that they will get out Vietnam together. Many people died there so they set a goal that they will come back alive. Another example is that the main character wants to kill a deer with only one shot. He sets a goal so that hunting becomes more challenging.
The process of escaping from their cell demonstrates implementation intention. Before they were taken out of their cell, the main character told his friend how he planned to take out the enemy soldiers. He explained what they needed to do, and they persisted through threats of death. Finally they achieved the goal of freedom successfully.
The character playing Russian roulette for money displayed learned helplessness. He showed the three features of the concept. The contingency was low because he could not stop people from gambling on this game. The cognition part is more complicated. He was persuaded into playing the game when he could have walked away. There could be bias in his understanding of the game, and his expectancy of winning the game was influenced by his past experience. Finally, the repetition of the game showed passive behavior.
The three deficits caused by learned helplessness were also demonstrated. The motivational aspect is shown as the character keeps playing the game even when his friend comes to stop him. The learning aspect is obvious when the main character talked to him but he does not respond. The emotional aspect may be his spitting on his friend when his friend desperately told him that he was loved.
Terms: discrepancy, corrective motivation, discrepancy reduction, discrepancy creation, implementation intention, learned helplessness, contingency
Overall, I really didn’t like this movie. It’s the only one this semester that I haven’t liked, even having seen a few of them before this class and having to rewatch them. It was so slowly paced and just confusing at times. It has a lot of important psychological impact associated with veterans and I feel like it was probably a ground breaking movie in its time but I just wasn’t pulled into it. There were a lot of interesting aspects but they were all jumbled in there together and it felt too long to focus on so many problems so shortly.
The soldier at the wedding was a great show of foreshadowing. The young soldiers to be were excited and wanted to know how it was overseas in the fighting and the thick of it all. This is a good representation of vicarious experience being used to increase self efficacy. Self efficacy is the personal assessment of how well one can deal with a particular circumstance. If they don’t feel they can handle it, their self efficacy will be low and they will be more likely to avoid that circumstance. Vicarious experience is a source of self efficacy and is an observation of another individual who has done the same activity that the observer will soon hope to accomplish. By asking how it is to be over there, the guys are hoping to hear great stories and get a sense of can do attitude. Because this isn’t direct observation of the action, it might be better suited to another source of self efficacy, verbal persuasion. Verbal persuasion is essentially a pep talk. For someone they look up to, a fellow soldier with more experience, they see him as a credible and trustworthy source of information and seek it from him. They don’t get it in the end, just a “fuck it” and constant avoidance by him. They were seeking the self efficacy boost that a positive persuasion would provide. They were probably more than a little bit scared behind all that manly bravado and hearing a kind word about how it isn’t as bad as most people think would have lightened their doubt in their ability and future performances.
During the scene where Mike makes a plan to break free from the Vietcong, there are a lot of examples from chapter nine on personal control beliefs. Perceived control is made up of efficacy expectations and outcome expectations; it is essentially the line that brings the self together with the desired situational outcome. When Mike decided to try their crazy plan with three bullets to get a loaded gun handed to him so he could use it against them, Nick was unconvinced and very hesitant. Mike’s self efficacy was high; he believed he could accomplish the task of getting them to put three bullets in and that he could fire at them and escape relatively unharmed. The efficacy expectations are the questions of ability and potential of being able to accomplish action leading to desired outcome. The outcome expectations are the likelihood that an individual’s actions will actually impact the outcome of the situation. Both efficacy and outcome expectations must be high before a course of action will become motivated and attempted. Mike had belief that he would be able to do it and that it would impact their overall standing positively so he went for it.
As far as the chapter eight goal setting and striving went, I saw less of that than chapter nine. However, there were some more subtle parts that I saw used in the movie. One was the goal acceptance of Steve when he was getting married. Goal acceptance is the internalization of a goal that is outwardly received. When a goal is developed interpersonally with others, not just of the individual, they need to accept the goal as their own in some way or they will be much less likely to accomplish it or even attempt it. It was sort of expected of him by his bride and their families that they be married because she was pregnant. This shows an example of discrepancy. Discrepancy is the difference between the current self and the ideal self. When someone becomes pregnant (especially for an older movie and very religious families) it is expected that they have been married beforehand. For Angela, a discrepancy more certainly existed and that probably evolved into a discrepancy for Steve and them as a couple. Even though we find out later that it isn’t his baby, he still steps up to the role and does what he feels is right. He tells his mother that he loves Angela and that’s why he’s marrying her. Instead of seeing it as something others have set out for him, he has accepted it as his own and that makes it much more likely that he will actually go through with the marriage and be happy.
Terms: vicarious experience, self efficacy, verbal persuasion, perceived control, efficacy expectations, outcome expectations, goal acceptance, discrepancy
The movie The Deer Hunter was good, but definitely not my favorite from this class. Even though it had some big names in it like, Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, and Christopher Walken. To me it was a little on the depressing and sad side. But that’s beside the point, in this movie it dealt with a few points from both chapters eight and nine.
One of the major scenes to me is when Mike decides to set his goal of finding Nick to bring him back home. Mike has an inkling that Nick won’t even know that he is alive, but he is determined to bring his buddy home at all costs. However, when Mike encounters Nick, Nick doesn’t know who he is. So this brings Mike’s goal setting down a few notches, but keeps his head up in doing whatever it takes to win back his friend. By trying his hardest to do this, he joins in the game of Russian roulette, bringing up their hunting memories and how they can still have them. Nick finally gets a glimmer of remembrance, the only problem is when it came to his turn to pull the trigger, it hits him right in the head, saying “one shot.” This scene was very powerful to me, because Nick not only made the connection to Mike by saying, “one shot” but we see that Nick felt empowered towards his end, and was no longer afraid. At first he started off in the movie with his self-efficacy in doubt due to the fact he was scared, but eventually he became more confident in playing the game. Also I would just like to add, I was definitely hoping Nick would put the gun down and stop the game, but had a feeling he was going to pull that trigger no matter what with the bullet ready to let loose. I had to look away from that scene once the bullet hit his head and the blood started oozing out, which was too much for me, but great scene with Mike’s character having the realization that he had just lost his friend.
Dealing with Angela and Steven, we find out that Angela is pregnant, but the baby’s daddy isn’t biologically Steven. However, due to positive feedback from Steven and the love he has for Angela, even though the baby isn’t is, he’s allowing Angela to be more relaxed with the situation, because he’s so accepting of it. So they both reached a goal of accepting the situation, and decided to put it and leave it in the past, so they could later on get married.
Another scene that I want to talk about is the scene where Mike returns back from war, and he visits his friend, Steven. Steven was in a wheelchair, where he felt out of placed from his old life, here we saw him facing being helpless and depressed. He responded with himself by giving up and withdrawing from his life, where he had a wife and kid who were patiently waiting for him to come back home to them. His willingness of not trying is linked to having motivational deficits. But thanks to Mike and his support, Steven finally returned back home.
Overall, I thought this movie was alright. Not my cup of tea, but definitely showed and brought up an good amount of scenes that related to self-efficacy.
Terms: goal setting, self-efficacy, empowerment, positive feedback, helpless, depressed, motivational deficits
I had heard about this movie before, and the famous Russian Roulette scene, but I had never actually seen the movie in its entirety until it was assigned for this class. The first part of this movie is relatively dry, but provides characterization of each person.
The theme of self-efficacy is prevalent throughout this entire film. Self-efficacy can be defined as the belief that an individual can do what he needs to do to cope with overwhelming demands of a situation. During the famous Russian roulette scene, Michael is the only one who has a high amount of self-efficacy, and he tries to motivate and persuade the others, and he doesn’t even hesitate to pull the trigger. Nick’s self-efficacy is at first low, but then it changes and becomes high. Steven’s starts off extremely low as he is very afraid.
Learned helplessness is evident in this movie when Steven loses his legs, and doesn’t want to go with Michael and claims he likes the hospital. He had given up on himself, and felt hopeless. Angela also experiences learned helplessness when Michael comes to visit her and asks where Steven is. Angela had no control over whether or not Steven would go to war, or if he would make it back. She is extremely withdrawn and doesn’t speak, but merely writes the address down.
Even though the men are all scared of playing Russian roulette to some degree, they are motivated to do it as they know it’s the only way that they will ever get out of there alive. Michael views the game as something that he can somewhat control, he pulls the trigger to see if he dies or not. According to the reactance theory, both Nick and Michael become increasingly assertive in their attempts at reestablishing control, by being into the game and sort of even freaking out their captors.
Hope is also evident in this movie after Nick’s death, when the friends all come together and wish that they were as close and as connected as they were before the war, and maybe they can work on being friends again.
Terms: self-efficacy, learned helplessness, reactance theory, assertive, motivation, control, hope
I watched The Deer Hunter in class and got to see the first hour of the movie. In the parts that I did get to see, I noticed just a few things from chapter eight and nine. The first thing that stuck out to me was how Mike showed empowerment after they had gotten captured. Empowerment involves possessing the knowledge, skills and beliefs that allow people to exert control over their lives. A lot of the soldiers had given up, knew they were going to die, there was no way out. One soldier was crying and terrified to die, he could not get a grip on his emotions. Then after they were brought to a prison camp they were forced to play Russian roulette against each other. Michael made it possible for them to escape by using his knowledge and skills. Michael tricks the Vietnamese in putting three bullets into the gun (this is where we stopped watching the movie) but I assume that he used the bullets to take out the Vietnamese and set him and his friend, Nick, free. Michael used his knowledge of his surroundings he knew that if he were to get three bullets in the gun he would use it to his advantage, he used his shooting skills to kill them and have Nick be able to grab a gun from one of them to kill the rest of them. Michael not once doubted himself, his empowerment lead him to safety. Along with this same scene one can see most of chapter nine in here. Self-efficacy is defined as one’s judgment of how well one will cope with a situation, given the skills one possesses and the circumstances one faces. Michael realized that if he did not come up with a plan soon him and Nick were going to die, and he was not going to let that happen. The sources of self-efficacy are personal behavior history, one’s personal history in trying to execute that particular behavior; I would recognize this as when he is hunting the deer. Sometime in the movie Michael tells Nick that he like to get just one shot to take out the deer and I think with that mechanism and the practice (in shooting the deer), he had the skills to take anything out with on shot including the Vietnamese men, which he had to only take one shot at them because he only had three bullets in the gun. Another source that was notified was vicarious experience; seeing similar others perform the same behavior initiates a social comparison process. Sort of like if he could do it so could I, we are motivated to enact in as the model we see. Nick was ready to give up and just die, he knew that it was his turn to play Russian roulette, but Michael told him what he needed Nick to do in order to survive, Nick was hesitant at first but he did what he had to do once he saw Michael spring into action. So Michael modeled the shooting behavior first and Nick followed. The first hour did not show much detail allowing me to compare it to the chapters. Chapter eight discusses goal setting, and I think the one short term goal that I saw, was Michael and Nick trying to escape. A goal is whatever and individual is striving to accomplish, Michael and Nick were trying to get free from the Vietnamese. In order to achieve this goal a plan must be made. To make a plan you must evaluate your present state; they were locked up in a cage, and compare it to your ideal state, which was freedom, and figure out what steps need to be made in order to make your present state to your ideal one and that is exactly what Michael did.
Terms: Ideal State, Present State, Plan, Goal, Self-Efficacy, Empowerment, Personal Behavior History, Vicarious Experience
The scene I am going to start with is in part one of the movie and is the party scene right before Michael, Steven and Nick get shipped off to Vietnam. They seem pretty excited and with high hopes this may be seen as efficacy expectation, as these men feel that they can complete this action and that at the moment they don’t really fear anything. While they are still in the waiting period to go Steven gets married and his outcome expectation now is that he wants to make it home safe to his wife. While I think Nick and Michael expectations really don’t expand past the war yet, as they just have the mentality of beating this thing right now!
The second scene I am going to look at involves Michael, Steven and Nick right before they break out of prisoner camp. All of the men in the camp are demoralized as they repeatedly see there fellow comrades dying from the nasty game known as Russian roulette. Steven before getting selected to sit in at Russian roulette has a mental breakdown. Eventually feels that he has no control of his outcome; leading to learned helplessness as he feels that regardless of his behavior in the situation he is inevitable going to die. Really depressing I know but it did not seem like a very bright situation, as Steven’s anxiousness ends up saving his life. While Steven “dodges a bullet” Michael and Nick begin to formulate a plan to get them all out of this place. We could see this plan as expectations, as they were bleak but hopeful, it worked. Michael asking for three bullets while in the death seat, (in a 5 round gun) both Michael and Nick survived a round. I feel you could look at this scene as efficacy and outcome expectations as there are both as the act and the outcome are committed and followed through with (as there was no other way).
The final scene I am going to be looking at is When Michael goes back to Vietnam to look for Nick (who has amnesia?). Nick can be seen as a victim to a bad situation, as the trauma of the war put him in this comatose amnesia state. While he doesn’t remember anything he still has mostly full functioning ability, and with this in Vietnam could be bad as it seems he was easily manipulated. To start the game Russian roulette and getting paid for it. When Michael went back you could see the learned helplessness inside of Nick’s eyes as he felt that his life has no control of itself, and he more or less had to pull the trigger (which sadly led to his death).
Term: Learned helplessness, efficacy and outcome expectations
The Deer Hunter was a very powerful movie to watch. I had never seen any movies about the Vietnam War and it was incredibly disturbing watching reenactments of actual occurrences during the war. The forced roulette between two prisoners was what stood out to me, and I am sure to many other people. It was in these scenes that I saw several concepts appear from chapter 9.
The first roulette match that caught my attention most was that between Steven and Michael. Steven was experiencing a great sense of inefficacy and helplessness. This could be very easily seen through his physiological state. He was trembling, crying, tense, shaking his head, etc., showing that he felt that he could not perform the task that was forced upon him. He felt helpless because knew that the roulette game was out of his control because he did not know which round the bullet would appear in the gun. Michael on the other hand, tried to keep calm and tried to calm down Steven. To do this when Steven first received the gun, Michael used verbal persuasion to take Steven through it. He told Steven that he could do it, that it would be okay. He also told Steven that he had to shoot the gun or he would be subjected to “the pit.” After Steven finally did shoot the gun and it did not go off, he realized that he was capable of performing the task and Michael praised him for having done it. Next, it was Michael’s turn and, once again, Michael tried to keep calm and just do what he had to do. When he shot the gun with no adverse effects, the gun was given back to Steven. At this point, Steven had shot the gun himself once (personal history) and had watched Michael do it as well (vicarious experience). Although Steven was still frightened, still trembling, he seemed to have a somewhat easier time shooting the gun the second time. He now had the personal experience from the first time when nothing happened, he observed a similar other complete the same task, and he was receiving verbal persuasion from Michael. He shot the gun a second time and was still alive. You could see his physiological state begin to show less tension and fear because he had successfully completely the task. Overall, this scene clearly demonstrated the four sources of self-efficacy.
Michael showed a great deal of self-efficacy and mastery belief throughout the whole movie. A similar scene to the one above where he demonstrated these qualities was when he was put up against Nick in the Russian roulette match. Once again, Michael played the calm one. Although Nick was not as physiologically aroused as Steven, he was still rather tense and you could see he was scared. Michael used verbal persuasion to help him through it. Once it became Michael’s turn again, he knew that, although he was being forced to play the game, he still could have control over the situation. In this situation, he used the skills he had obtained and his quick thinking to get Nick, Steven, and himself all out of the imprisonment.
Michael’s high self-efficacy helped him to maintain his effort and persistence toward freeing himself and his friends. It allowed him to think clearly and make quick decisions that would help him obtain the desired outcome. His self-efficacy also helped him to retain a more positive emotionality, feeling more drive and enthusiasm toward freedom, rather than feeling distress or anxiety thinking that freedom could not be obtained. Michael demonstrated his mastery in the he saw a way to escape and realized that he had control over attaining his desired outcome. He also knew that in order to attain any sort of progression toward his desired goal of freedom, he would have to take action. It was these qualities that helped him to escape during the forced game of Russian roulette, which many would have thought to be impossible.
Terms: Inefficacy, helplessness, physiological state, verbal persuasion, personal history, vicarious experience, self-efficacy, effort, persistence, thinking and decision making, emotionality.
Self-efficacy is one’s judgment of how well one will cope with a situation, given the skills one possesses and the circumstances one faces. Competent functioning requires possessing skills and the ability to translate those skills into effective performance, especially under difficult and trying circumstances. Performance situations are often stressful, ambiguous, unpredictable, and always changing. This is why ability alone is not enough. Self-efficacy can be seen in the movie when the characters are forced to play Russian Roulette. At first, Steven and Nick both have low efficacy expectations and outcome expectations, which both relate to self-efficacy. Efficacy expectations refer to the likelihood than an individual can behave in a particular way. Outcome expectations estimate how likely it is that certain consequences will follow once a behavior is enacted. In their case, the efficacy expectations are whether or not they will be able to pull the trigger on a gun pointed at their own head. The outcome expectations is whether or not they believe that the bullet will be shot out of the gun once they pull the trigger. Efficacy expectations do not matter as much in this situation because they are being physically and psychologically tortured to do the behavior (pull the trigger). What matters here are their outcome expectations, which are obviously very low. Both Steven and Nick fear that the outcome expectation will kill them and they are traumatized when forced to pull the trigger. Mike, on the other hand, has a high efficacy expectation and a high outcome expectation. He has convinced himself that he will make it out of the game alive. This is why he shows far less fear and hesitance than the other two. He believes he can pull the trigger and that it will not shoot a bullet. Self-efficacy beliefs arise from one’s personal history in trying to execute the behavior, observing someone else trying to execute the behavior, verbal persuasions from others, and physiological states. Since none of the men have had personal experience in playing Russian roulette, they must form their beliefs in the three other ways. Mike verbally persuades both Steven and Nick to perform the behavior. He soothes them by saying, “It’s gunna be alright.” He encourages them by saying, “Go ahead, shoot!” This gives Steven and Nick a boost of self-efficacy. Mike had a vicarious experience when he watched the guys that went before him, so he knew a little more of what to expect. He knew that he had a chance of survival when he saw that the gun was not fully loaded, which increased his self-efficacy. We could look at self-efficacy in a couple more ways within the same scene. Mike knew he needed to kill the Vietnamese soldiers that had captured them. He had great skills with using guns, but skills would not be enough to accomplish this task. The performance situation was extremely stressful, life threatening, and completely new to him. He had to judge how well he could cope with the situation, given his skills and the circumstances he was faced with. In a more broad sense, escaping the war alive was the behavior that the characters wanted to achieve. As the movie went on, their efficacy expectations and outcome expectations increased as they successfully survived different situations, such as the game of roulette.
Terms: self-efficacy, competent functioning, efficacy expectations, outcome expectations, vicarious experience
I thought this was an excellent movie, and it had many concepts from chapters 8 and 9. One of the most prominent concepts in the movie was the idea of self-efficacy, or how well a person believes they will cope with a situation, based on their skills and the circumstances they are in. Mike and Nick are good examples of this; throughout the movie they are plunged into deadly combat situations, yet because of their hunting skills they are able to confidently and effectively deal with any situation they are in. Outcome/process simulation also occurs in this movie. Outcome simulation is when you envision and focus on your goal, and process simulation is when you focus on the behaviors needed to reach that goal. A goal is the purpose that an individual is striving for. The Russian-roulette game is a good example, Nick realized that he could use the extra bullets in the gun to help him and Mike escape. He had the goal in mind, then focused on the process as he was doing it, allowing him and Mike to escape the POW camp.
Feedback also played an important role in this movie. Feedback is when we receive information about how much progress we are making towards a goal. A good example of feedback is when Steven's girlfriend Angela informs him that she is pregnant from another man. Most couples would probably break up after this news, but Steven copes with it very well, and he makes a goal that he will accept the situation and get over it. Coping is constantly changing cognitive and behavioral patterns to manage specific external and internal demands that are considered difficult. Feedback comes into play because Angela sees that Steven is serious about accepting the situation, which makes her feel much better about herself and the situation, and together they both take steps towards putting their mistakes in the past.
Terms: Goal, Self-efficacy, Outcome/process simulation, Coping, Feedback
The Deer Hunter Movie is about the friendship of three guys who are to war in Vietnam. They go through struggles together before, during, and after the war. The movie was kind of slow for me, but there were a few scenes where it was very interesting and caught my attention. Especially the scenes during the war when they were being held prisoner and being forced to play Russian roulette. There were several examples from the movie that can be related back to the book.
An example would be goals. There were many examples of goals in the movie. All three of the guys have a goal of going to Vietnam to fight in the war and they all achieve that goal. They also all have a goal to get out of the prisoner of war camps they were being held in. They all made it out there, but they were never the same.
They also experienced their present state and their ideal state. Their current state being the fact that they are being held prisoner and being forced to play Russian roulette. Their ideal state would be wanting to be back home. They come to realize later that they may never get what was their ideal state again. Steven so badly wanted to be back home when he was being held prisoner. He just wanted to be back home with his new wife, but when he made it out the war and back home he was badly injured and lost his legs. Also the emotional trauma that he endured was too much to overcome.
The guys showed empowerment when they used their knowledge and skills to escape from the prisoner of war camps and take control over their lives. The guys also exhibited learned helplessness when they had to participate in the Russian roulette. They had to participate and were completely helpless. They had no control over their lives, which is why they had to stand up and exhibit empowerment.
I didn’t really care for this movie. It was too slow for me, but it did have an interesting story behind it and I did enjoy seeing some of the actors when they were really young.
Terms: goals, present state, ideal state, empowerment, learned helplessness
The Deer Hunter shows great examples of expectancy and self-efficacy. There are two types of expectancies: efficacy expectations and outcome expectations. An efficacy expectation is a judgment of one’s capacity to execute a particular act or course of action. Before engaging in a behavior, an individual will ask themselves if they can do it. In the scene where the three men are trapped in a POW camp and Steven shoots himself and then is thrown into the underwater cage, Nick and Michael talk about a plane to escape. Nick is terrified, and Michael is creating this plan to escape. He makes a judgment about whether or not the plan will work , and once he decides that it will, they go for it. The other kind of expectancies are outcome expectancies. These are judgments about if a given action, once performed, will cause a particular outcome. In the same scene with Michael and Nick planning their escape, Michael is thinking about how putting three bullets in the gun while they are playing Russian Roulette is going to benefit them. He plans it out in his head and figures out a way to make the situation work and for them to escape.
This scene also shows a use of verbal persuasion. Verbal persuasion is when we are being convinced that we can competently execute a given action, despite our entrenched inefficacy, if we just try. When effective, these verbal persuasions persuade the performer to focus more on personal strength and potential and less on personal weakness and deficiencies. Pep talks shift someone’s attention from sources of inefficacy to sources of efficacy. However, verbal persuasion can only go so far, if it is contradicted by direct experience. Its effectiveness is limited by boundaries of what is possible (to the performer) and depends on the credibility, expertise, and trustworthiness of the persuader. When Michael is trying to persuade Nick to go along with their plan for escape, he is using verbal persuasion. He tries to get Nick in on the plan, even though Nick shows resistance and fear. In the end, he convinces Nick that he is competent enough to do this, and Nick agrees.
Physiological state also plays a huge role in this movie, especially during the second and some in the third part. Pain, mental confusion, etc. are physiological signals that the demands of the task exceed the performer’s capacity of cope with those demands. There is a causal direction between efficacy and physiological activity which is bidirectional. Inefficacy heightens arousal and heightened arousal feeds back to fuel perceived inefficacy. Physiological state plays a huge role in the scene right after the men escape. A helicopter happens to find them, but Nick is the only one that makes it safely inside. Michael and Steven are forced to hang on, and Steven has just went through a physically and emotionally traumatic experience. His physiological state signals that the demands of the task of hanging on to the helicopter are too much at that time, and he falls.
Terms: expectancy, self-efficacy, efficacy expectations, outcome expectations, verbal persuasion, physiological state
The movie “The Deer Hunter” was one of the most interesting movies we’ve seen so far. At first, I wasn’t so keen on it, but as the film went on it got more intense and suspenseful. Self-efficacy is a major concept that is related to this movie. Out of all the characters, Mike displays the greatest self-efficacy. While the guys were prisoners of the Vietnamese, they were forced to play Russian roulette, a game of chance when putting a gun to the head with only few bullets in it. Mike self-efficacy was high because he believed he could overcome this game. In fact, he is the one that suggested putting more bullets in the gun. I think Mike’s self-efficacy is high because he displays empowerment. He feels he is control of his own life, and by adding more bullets to the gun, is increasing his chances of survival. You could also apply mastery beliefs to Mike’s behavior. According to the book, mastery beliefs “reflect to what extent of perceived control one has over attaining desirable outcomes and preventing aversive ones (pg. 242).” Mike believes he has control over his own fate. That is why he decides to play roulette and add more bullets. If he doesn’t act, the he knows that he will fail, which will lead to his death, along with his fellow soldiers. Mikes high –efficacy is very apparent in the film, but Steven and Nick on the other hand, seem to lack the same characteristic. Through verbal persuasion, Mike was able to convince Steve and Nick to play Roulette. Through verbal persuasion, Mike motivated the two characters into putting effort into a behavior. Without having this source of self-efficacy, both Steve and Nick would probably have both neglected playing the game, which would have led to their death.
Another term that can be used to describe events in this movie is goal setting. Mike has a goal of being able to survive and escape imprisonment. His goal is difficult; therefore it creates both persistence and effort on his part to attain his desired outcome. He devises an implementation intention, which is a strategy used to reach his goal. Mike’s strategy to eliminate the incongruity between his desired outcome and the ideal state is to add more bullets in the gun. Since there will be more bullets in the gun, Mike and his fellow soldiers will be able to shoot and kill the enemies at the right time. Their plan is risky though, because there is a high probability they will shoot themselves. Every time they play the game, they are getting feedback: living or death. By getting positive feedback, Mike is able to keep striving to his goal, until the opportune moment to escape.
“The Deer Hunter” also displays the concept of learned helplessness. Steven is severely wounded and has both of his legs cut amputated. Steven was limited to what he able to do since he was in a wheelchair. He felt like he could not do anything and didn’t want to see his family. I have been in a situation where I was on crutches for a very long time, and I felt helpless because I had to depend on everyone else to do things for me that I normally could do. I can only imagine the pain Steven had to go through not having either of his legs. After a while, Steven feels hopeless and worthless.
At the end of the movie, Mike and Nick are reunited, safe from harm, and play roulette for money. The two have an outcome expectation, that the behavior they engage in will produce certain results. Back during the war, Nick had an efficiency expectation, that is, he questioned whether or not he had the guts to play the game. Now, both men were free, and since they have done it before and succeeded (vicarious experience) they played again. The outcome expectation was that they would survive the game of roulette. Consequently, this resulted in the death of Nick, as he pulled the trigger and died.
Terms: outcome expectation, efficacy expectation, goal setting, effort, persistence, implementation intentions, feedback, goal difficulty, learned helplessness, mastery beliefs, empowerment, self-efficacy, verbal persuasion, vicarious experience,
The Deer Hunter was definitely a good movie, but also definitely not my favorite that we have watched so far. To me, it started off really slow and it struggled to keep my attention until the war portion of the movie began and then it became much more interesting. I don’t know if I would be able to sit through this movie again, but it was very good for class purposes as it displayed many different aspects from chapters 8 and 9.
One concept that really stuck out to me was the idea of learned helplessness from chapter 9. This is a pretty depressing topic and is described as basically giving up (or having much less motivation than before) due to events that happen that the individual feels like is out of his or her control. There are a few ways helplessness can be learned and the text describes “academic failures, poor physical health, and subpar job performance.” At least one of these examples can be seen in The Deer Hunter, specifically the poor physical health. War creates some tragic outcomes which we see with Steve laying in the hospital bed without his legs. He is so pessimistic about his situation that he doesn’t even want to leave his bed. He thought that he wouldn’t be a productive member of society so he had planned on simply throwing in the towel. Steve needed an illusion of control to turn his pessimism into optimism. When people feel that they have control over situations, they are more likely to set goals, obtain those goals, and be energized while attempting to obtain those goals. Steve needed a little aspect of narcissism in his life but that may be difficult since he has a pessimistic view on the world. In the text, it describes dogs that received shocks that were inescapable. These dogs were then given shocks that they could escape but they didn’t even attempt to because they had already assumed their fate was sealed. This is a very good example of the pessimistic concept.
A couple more topics from chapters 8 and 9 that clearly are mentioned in the movie include self-efficacy and goal-setting behavior. This can be seen in the beginning when they discuss the perfect shot where a deer is killed with a single bullet. Even though this is a pretty simple goal, it actually coincides with the correct goal setting behavior described in the text. The one shot that kills a deer is a specific goal that is attainable, but also difficult. This makes for a good goal because the specificity and difficultly of a goal determine how well a person will be able complete the goal. If it is too hard, the person will give up and if it is not specific enough, the person will not know what direction to take. The goal should probably also state exactly where the deer needs to be shot, what kind of gun and bullet need to be used, and other factors that go into shooting a deer. This is not included in the movie but that is understandable because it is not realistic to include that type of dialogue just to elaborate on the goal specificity. The efficacy expectation is determining how well the characters can accomplish the perfect shot. Not only is it measuring competence, but also self-efficacy is how well a person can deal with changing circumstances on the way to accomplishing a goal. In this case, to complete the perfect shot, one must take into account the weather and other conditions. A person’s perceived ability to adjust to these always changing environmental situations is called self-efficacy.
Terms: optimistic, pessimistic, goals, narcissism, learned helplessness, goal difficulty, goal specificity, self-efficacy
Deer Hunter is a great movie. Even though I could easily take out the first hour of the movie and add it as flashbacks and even though many times it seems that the dialogue are missing lines (at times I think they don’t say enough and leave the audience member confused – one of the pit falls of older movies) the theme and overall story win out in the end. I am going to use my time talking about the movie and reflecting on its relationship with things I read in Chapter 9 about Personal Control by looking at one character in particular during a pivotal escape scene in the movie: Michael. Michael is a character that you can tell likes to remain in control of everything around him and he does it very well. However, if you take a closer look at his actions and behavior it’s easy to see that he struggles with trying to be in personal control of everything in the movie, though in the end, never seems to attain that total personal control he strives for – failing to save his friend Stephen. It is fairly obvious that things have not been going too well in the war for Michael. We find him waking up possibly being unconscious around many of his wounded soldiers. Things get even worse when he is suddenly captured. Michael exhibits mastery motivational orientation, meaning when things start to go wrong and he is faced with failure (this is a reoccurring theme throughout the rest of the movie) he shows resilience. This point is exemplified by when he awakens and sees an enemy soldier shooting and killing helpless villagers, he gets back up immediately, despite more than likely being surrounded, and takes the enemy down. His self-efficacy (the part of him that thinks “if things star t to go wrong, do I have the resources within me to cope and turn things around for the better?”) kicks in and while many of the prisoners start to crack under the pressure of impending doom under the sadistic guards, Michael attempts to rationalize the situation to escape. Granted, he is not clear and level headed and by the time he figures out a plan he has been pushed to the edge before getting captured and then even farther once he is. This is when he feels his highest empowerment level. He had already been using his need for competence to cope and calm himself by easing the mind of his friend who as the prison scene starts is starting to completely lose it. Everyone copes in different ways and nothing is more obvious than the differences between Michael and his friend in the beginning of the prison. Efficacy expectation and Outcome expectation is something Michael exerts while being held prisoner. It is something that, when backed in the corner, he uses in order to escape his captors. Seeing his friend be thrown to die in to a submerged cage, Michael comes up with a plan to get his 2 friends out by adding 3 bullets to the deadly Russian roulette game his captors are maliciously playing with their prisoners. He determines, through outcome expectation, that if Stephen and Michael can survive the deadly higher stakes game of Russian roulette then they will be sitting with a loaded weapon with 3 bullets to take out the guards that are oblivious to any sort of plan. Stephen is very unsure about the plan and figures the odds of them both coming up with 3 empty shots before being able to put this plan in motion are very slim. However, Michael has used efficacy expectation to know that since the guards have been gambling on when someone will ‘bite the bullet’ in the game of Russian Roulette, this higher stakes will make the guards forget they have now given their prisoners a half loaded gun and instead fall victim to the excitement of the higher stakes. Unfortunately for the guards, Michael is very right. This leads Michael to exert control over the situation he is in, having perceived control where he uses an action to end with the control. This movie starts slow but turns in to a fantastic adventure of friends uniting and Michael struggling with personal control, feelings of helplessness and relationships between loves and friends. I would highly recommend this movie to anyone, especially on a rainy cloudy day.
TERMS: personal control, efficacy expectation, outcome expectation, perceived control, self-efficacy, performance, empowerment, competency need, mastery motivational orientation
The Deer Hunter is a movie about the Vietnam War and how it affected the lives of three friends and their family back home. The movie is really long and starts out really slow paces trying to let the watcher get a feel for each character. Once the move gets to where the three friends, Michael, Steven and Nick. This movie showed many aspects of Chapter 9 from our book on Personal Control Beliefs.
As the movie starts, all three friends are excited to go to Vietnam and get to fight in the war. Steven is getting married, and Nick gets engaged. They feel like they will get to Vietnam and kill some people and really make a difference in the war. They feel very in control before they leave. All three friends have so much going for them and they are young and naive about what war is really like.
When they get to Vietnam they realize just how crazy and unpredictable war is. The get captured and put into Russian Roulette games where they have to take a gun and pull the trigger against their own head. There is one bullet and people make bets on who will be the one to die. Michael rises as the leader of this group. He has to go against both of his friends. Steven is so afraid that he shoots the ceiling and gets up into a cage for not following directs. When Michael and Nick go, they fight back and are able to escape.
Even though as they played this game where it seems like they have no control, Michael kept his calm and was able to come up with a plan. He used self efficacy, which is being able to cope with problems and still accomplishing a goal. Michael believes that they could live and escape. Instead of getting afraid and just believing he had no control he fought back. When a person thinks they have no control over a situation that is called learned helplessness. Both Steven and Nick had this. They believed that there was no escape; they would be there until they lost the roulette game. The only thing that got them out of this situation was the bravery and level headedness of Michael. He showed them that they could escape. A person can get a higher self efficacy by watching others (vicarious experience). Also the whole time Michael was encouraging them and building up the others self efficacy by giving them support. This is called verbal persuasion. When Michael fought back the others realized that they could to. They were not helpless.
After they escape it seems like all is now going to be alright. They go their separate ways for awhile. Michael gets to go back to the US. When back he finds out Steven has been injured and is in a soldier’s hospital. Steven now does not have legs. He has pushed everyone away including his new wife. He believes he is nothing now. He has learned helplessness. Steven feels that he can do doing now and has no control over his life. Nothing Michael tries will help Steven. In a roundabout way it takes Nick to get Steven to realize that his life is not so bad.
My favorite character in the movie was Nick. War changes people and he was the most affected. Rather than returning to the US when Michael did, Nick is still in Vietnam. He has given up his live in the US and his fiancé waiting for him back home. He has started doing drugs and playing the Russian roulette game for money. He is getting more and more confident with each game. He is starting to believe that he will not die and is good at the game, even though it is a game of pure chance. He is biasing his efficacy on his own past experiences; this is called person behavior history. He is so confident in his not dying placing this game. He is over estimating to amount of control his actions have on the game. Believing you have control over a situation is called mastery belief.
Michael goes back to Vietnam to find his friend. They end up meeting at opposite ends of the Russian roulette game, facing each other. Nick is still confident in not losing. It is like he doesn’t even care his best friend or him will die at the end of the match. Michael tries to talk to Nick and tell him not to do this, to put the gun down and come home back to the US. With each thing Michael says Nick seems like he is more motivated to keep pulling the trigger. He is using the reactance theory. He has had little control over the whole war and not Michael is trying to tell him he cannot do something he believes he is good at, biased on his own experiences. He is motivated to keep pulling that trigger to prove Michael wrong and show he has control. He wants to show that he has autonomy, which is a freedom to do what he wants when he wants and how he wants.
After a few shots you know the end is coming. The question is neither friend is going to stop. Michael will not give up trying to give advice and encourage Nick and Nick will not let Michael tell him what to do. Finally the final shot rings. You get watch Michael, watch his best friend dye.
Michael tried to save Nick but in the end just could not. Nick’s body it taken back to America and no one knows what really happened other than Michael. Nick dies as a hero. Steven realizes that being in a wheel chair is not the worst thing. He is alive and still able to live to see another day. Michael ends up talking and in a relationship with Nick’s fiancé.
The Deer Hunter has many realistic events and shows real life. As I was watching this movie, my dad who had family member and friends in Vietnam was telling me more about this roulette game. I have never heard of it before and thought that the game was crazy; no one would even play that. My dad says that people actually used to play the game here in the US after the war. Who in their right mind would put a gun to their head… for fun? Well it does have to do with how the war affected some of these people. Also if they really do feel in control then they may believe they are indestructible like Nick did. A person is told to believe in themselves, but there is a limit. A person is not superman and cannot do everything. A person needs to know their limits and how much is in their control. They can’t just walk through life feeling like they have not control, but they need to realize that some things are not in their control.
The Deer Hunter is not a happy movie, but realistic and showed what a war can do to people. In the end people start realizing that each day is a gift. At the end people were realizing that things can be worse and to look on the bright side.
Personal control beliefs, Self efficacy, mastery beliefs, learned helplessness, Reactance Theory, motivation, autonomy, vicarious experience, encouragement, verbal persuasion, personal behavioral history
The movie Deer Hunter was a very good movie for an old movie and I think it expressed many terms that we have learned in chapter 8 and 9. The first scene that I want to talk about and the terms it expressed would be when the boys in the film are in the make shift hut in Vietnam and have to put the gun to their head and pull the trigger. The boy’s cognitions were that the gun would not go off when they pulled the trigger. The boys also had cognitions of escaping the hut and returning to the American soldiers. The boys played the gun game several times and watched people die so they tried to come up with a plan to escape which was their goal. They played the game a few times and when their friend was taken and put in the pit they changed their plan again. The boys plan was that they would pull the trigger the first time and then get more bullets in the gun and then kill the men holding them captive. The boys were able to follow through with their plan and achieve their goal. Also during this scene, the boys knew the expectancy of what would happen if they pulled the trigger of the gun. The either pull the trigger and die or pull the trigger and live. The boys all showed different self-efficacy during this stressful situation. One of the boys stayed fairly calm and kept using verbal persuasion to get the other boys to do the task at hand. One of the boys was at a poor physiological state. He was shaking, couldn’t control his breathing, his hand trembled as he held the gun, and was crying. The other boy stayed fairly quiet and followed what his friend was telling him and showed goal acceptance. This scene shows undesirable behavior and the possible outcomes. I think this scene also displayed helplessness because no matter what the boys did they would end up dying in the end. They had to play the bullet game until they were all dead but one and if they didn’t play they got put in a pit where they would end up dying. I think later in the movie when the one boy is playing the game, he is doing it by choice and the money is an extrinsic motivator so the helplessness is taken away. I think later in the movie, Robert, showed self-efficacy when he went to get his friend back in Vietnam and had to play the bullet gun game one more time. He knew what was expected and used it as a way to persuade his friend to come back home. He also knew the possible outcomes of his actions if he pulled the trigger of the gun. But like in the book, circumstances always change and for Roberts’s friend, his self-efficacy changed. He played the game so long that it was not as stressful for him, he coped well with the situation (or the drugs helped him cope), and he was improving his ability for an effective performance, but when he pulled the trigger the gun went off and killed him.
I think these were the best scenes in the movie that showed the majority of the terms in chapter 8 and 9.
Terms: Cognitions, TOTE, plan, goal, Expectancy, Self-efficacy, verbal persuasion, physiological state, helplessness, extrinsic motivator, goal acceptance,