Definitions of Human Behavior
Human behavior can be defined in many ways:
- The result of attempts to satisfy certain needs.
- The product of factors that cause people to act in predictable ways.
- A distinct set of physical, physiological, and behavioral features associated with each phase of life.
Instructors study human behavior to understand how individuals act, react, and interact in their environment, as well as to gain insights into learner motivations. Effective instructors use this knowledge to optimize learning.
The Instructor-Learner Relationship
The professional relationship between the instructor and the learner should be based on a mutual acknowledgment that both are important to each other and are working toward the same objective.
Core Principles of the Instructor-Learner Relationship
- Fairness: Instructors should not treat learners unfairly or in a way that favors some over others.
- Consistency: Instructors should be steady in their actions, principles, and performance standards.
- Approachability: Instructors should be approachable and accessible, but not necessarily friends. Certain boundaries must not be overstepped.
Best Practices for Building Professional Relationships
- Add Value: Go in to give, not to receive.
- Be Positive: Show respect and portray a positive attitude.
- Be Authentic: Be open about your goals and mistakes.
- Attend: Be an active listener and show interest.
- Give Praise: Recognize effort and progress, no matter how small.
- Show Empathy: Put yourself in their shoes.
- Adapt: Consider the learner’s personality and preferred learning style.
Personality Types
Personality is the embodiment of the personal traits that are set at a very early age and are resistant to change. Personality types are a collection of personality traits that often occur together.
An individual’s personality type can be categorized through a personality assessment, providing insights into their preferred learning style.
Myers and Briggs Personality Assessment
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), developed by Katharine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers in 1962, is a widely recognized tool for assessing personality. The MBTI categorizes personalities into 16 distinct types based on how individuals predominantly use perception and judgment.
The MBTI test can be taken online. Once the personality type is determined, the preferred learning styles can be assessed, enabling instructors to tailor their teaching methods for more effective education.
Links:
- https://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/take-the-mbti-instrument/ (MBTI)
- https://www.psychologyjunkie.com/2018/01/12/learning-styles-every-myers-briggs-personality-type/ (interpretation)
Motivation
Motivation is the driving force that propels individuals toward their goals. It causes learners to engage in hard work and affects their success.
Where Does the Motivation to Learn Come From?
Motivation for learning aviation can come from several sources, including:
- Interest in a promising aviation career.
- The prestige or social acceptance that aviation can bring.
- A desire to boost self-image or achieve personal accomplishment.
- A wish to follow in the footsteps of a family member or close friend.
Types of Motivations
Motivations vary and can be categorized as:
- Obvious or Subtle: Direct and easily recognizable or more understated.
- Positive or Negative: Positive motivation comes from rewards, while negative motivation involves fear or threats, which is useful for addressing unsafe practices.
- Tangible or Intangible: Physical rewards like money or non-physical like satisfaction.
- Intrinsic or Extrinsic: Intrinsic motivation is driven by internal desires, while external rewards or pressures influence extrinsic motivation.
Learner Questionnaire
Instructors can use a short questionnaire to gain a better understanding of a learner’s motivations, such as:
- Why are you learning to fly?
- Have you flown a small airplane before?
- How do you plan to use your pilot certificate?
Methods of Maintaining Motivation
To help maintain learner motivation, instructors should:
- Present new challenges.
- Acknowledge and praise incremental achievements.
- Create a need to learn the material (“What’s in it for me?”).
Using Praise as a Motivator
Praise is the expression of approval. It stimulates the reward and pleasure centers of the brain and provides feedback to learners, benefiting them.
Tips for instructors:
- Comment favorably on learner progress.
- Connect daily achievements to the lesson objectives.
- Focus on the process rather than ability (e.g., Instead of saying, “You are a natural pilot,” say, “I can tell you prepared.”).
Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.
Mother Teresa
Using Rewards as Motivators
Rewards can motivate learners with low interest in a subject, but their effect is often short-lived and doesn’t boost intrinsic motivation. Rewards may demotivate if learners feel coerced by them or if the subject is intrinsically motivating and the reward is known beforehand.
Tips for instructors:
- Seek alternatives that are more intrinsic.
- Only use rewards for a limited time and a specific purpose.
Overcoming Drops in Motivation
Drops in motivation can appear in various ways, such as learners showing up unprepared or indicating a diminished commitment to aviation training.
To boost motivation, instructors should:
- Explain that learning seldom proceeds at a constant pace.
- Reinforce learners’ initial goals for pursuing aviation training.
- Assure learners that learning plateaus are normal and that improvement will resume with continued effort.
Human Needs and Motivation
Human needs are the things humans require for normal growth and development. These needs can be basic, like the need for food and water, or more intricate, such as recognition and acceptance.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs
Abraham Maslow developed a pyramid-style model to illustrate human motivations and needs. This model organizes motivations into distinct levels. As individuals fulfill the requirements of one level, they aspire to achieve the next level.
- Physiological (1): The need for air, food, and water and the maintenance of the human body.
- Safety and Security (2): The need to avoid pain and injury.
- Love and Belonging (3): The need for social approval. This involves love, affection, and a sense of belonging.
- Esteem (4): The need for self-respect and respect from others. When met, the person feels self-confident and valuable. When unmet, the person feels inferior, helpless, and worthless.
- Self-Actualization (5): The desire to maximize one’s abilities. Maslow described it as “the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.”
Note: Maslow later acknowledged that the hierarchy’s order is not fixed, and individuals can experience higher levels of motivation even if their basic needs are not fully met.
Self-actualized people are characterized by:
- Having a deep concern for personal growth.
- Not being afraid of the unknown; rather, they embrace it.
- Incorporating an ongoing freshness of appreciation of life.
Needs Added in Later Years by Maslow
- Cognitive: The desire to know and understand. When learning occurs, the brain reinforces this need by releasing dopamine, resulting in a sense of reward.
- Aesthetic: The desire for things around the person to be aesthetically pleasing. Aesthetics can enhance positive motivation and contribute to a successful learning experience.
- Transcendence: Needs that extend beyond one’s self, such as engaging in acts of service, pursuing scientific endeavors, or expressing faith.
Note: Cognitive and aesthetic needs were placed immediately before self-actualization (between 4 and 5 in the pyramid). Transcendence needs were placed at the top of the pyramid.
Bodily Reward Systems
- Basic Needs: Meeting basic human needs brings about a sense of satisfaction, also known as satiation. For example, hunger motivates someone to eat. Once the need is fulfilled, motivation decreases.
- Growth Needs: Complex motivations, such as the desire for personal achievement, are rewarded by a release of dopamine in the brain. As growth needs are satisfied, motivation increases.
Instructor Responsibilities Relating to Human Needs
- Learner Readiness: Instructors should confirm that learners’ fundamental needs are met before commencing a lesson.
- Learning Environment: A conducive learning environment minimizes frustrations for learners, enabling them to focus more effectively.
Human Nature and Motivation
Human nature refers to the general psychological characteristics, feelings, and behavioral traits shared by all humans. Because it is human nature to be motivated, it is the instructor’s responsibility to facilitate the realization of the learner’s potential.
Fast Versus Slow Thinking
Note: The following is based on the work of Dr. Daniel Kahneman, as presented in his book “Thinking, Fast and Slow.”
Two systems of thought constantly compete for control over human behaviors that affect decision-making. Familiarity with these systems can assist instructors in recognizing potential pitfalls learners may encounter.
| System 1 (Fast) | System 2 (Slow) |
| Emotional | Logical |
| Automatic | Deliberate |
| Unconscious effort | Conscious effort |
| Lazy | Calculating |
| Impulsive | Self-control |
System One (Fast)
System 1 (fast) is gained through memory and experience. It is an automatic “gut reaction ” that requires little thought or effort.
The average person can quickly and easily solve the following problem.
2 + 2 = X
System Two (Slow)
System 2 (slow) relies on logic and reasoning, which require extra effort and time to solve a problem.
The average person needs to pause and consider an answer to the following problem.
48 × 76 = Y
Because System 2 demands greater effort, it is tempting to revert to the ease of System 1. However, if the task at hand is underestimated in complexity, this can lead to errors or poor decision-making.
Defense Mechanisms
Defense mechanisms are subconscious reactions that protect a person from anxiety arising from unpleasant situations. The reactions can be biological (due to fear) or psychological (due to unacceptable thoughts or feelings).
Defense mechanisms:
- Inhibit learning.
- Operate on an unconscious level.
- Distort, transform, or falsify reality.
- Alleviate symptoms, not causes.
A perceptive instructor can identify defense mechanisms and help a learner by discussing the problem. The goal should be to restore motivation and self-confidence.
Biological Defense Mechanisms
Biological defense mechanisms are physiological responses that protect or preserve life. They develop when adrenaline or other chemicals are activated, and physical symptoms such as rapid heart rate and increased blood pressure occur.
Example: When humans experience a danger or a threat, the “fight or flight” response kicks in.
Psychological (Ego) Defense Mechanisms
Note: Psychological defense mechanisms were introduced by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939).
Psychological defense mechanisms are unconscious mental processes to shield from anxiety and negative emotions. People use these defenses to prevent unacceptable ideas or impulses from entering the conscious mind.
Example: Someone blots out the memory of being physically assaulted.
Types of Psychological Defense Mechanisms
Note: Denial and repression are the primary defense mechanisms.
Denial: Refusing to admit the existence or truth about something.
Example: An instructor discovers an unlatched cargo door before a flight. The learner denies having been inattentive during the preflight inspection.
Repression: Restraining thoughts or emotions by placing them into inaccessible areas of the mind.
Example: A learner may have a repressed fear of flying that inhibits his or her ability to learn how to fly.
Displacement: Putting unpleasant feelings somewhere other than where they belong (taking anger out on someone else).
Example: A learner is angry with the instructor over a grade received but fears displaying the anger could affect the training. Instead, the anger is directed towards a family member.
Rationalization: A subconscious technique for justifying actions that otherwise would be unacceptable.
Example: A learner may justify a poor exam grade by claiming insufficient time to learn the information.
Compensation: Counterbalancing weaknesses by emphasizing strengths in other areas.
Example: A learner feels bad about not completing a reading assignment but compensates by highlighting knowledge in another area.
Projection: Blaming personal shortcomings, mistakes, and transgressions on someone else.
Example: A learner who fails a flight exam may say, “I failed because I had a poor examiner.”
Reaction Formation: When a person fakes a belief opposite to the actual belief because the actual belief causes anxiety.
Example: A learner who wants to fit in with the class but is not accepted by other members may develop a “who-cares-how-other-people-feel” attitude to cover up feelings of loneliness.
Fantasy: When a learner engages in daydreams about how things should be rather than doing anything about how things are.
Example: A learner spends more time dreaming about being a successful airline pilot than working toward the goal.
Learner Emotional Reactions
Stress
Stress is the body’s response to demands placed on it, which can be pleasant or unpleasant.
Reactions to Stress:
- Normal individuals react to stress by:
- Becoming extremely sensitive to their surroundings.
- Responding rapidly, often automatically, within their experience and training (this underlines the importance of proper training before emergencies).
- Abnormal responses to stress include:
- Severe anger at the instructor or others
- Inappropriate reactions (e.g., extreme over-cooperation or inappropriate laughter or singing)
- Marked changes in mood on different lessons (e.g., high morale followed by deep depression)
Corrective Actions: Instructors should observe learners to detect signs of stress reactions that could hinder learning or pose future safety risks in flight.
Anxiety
Anxiety is mental discomfort that arises from the fear of anything, real or imagined. It is arguably the most influential psychological factor impacting flight instruction.
We feel anxiety so that we don’t have to feel pain. We feel pain to help avoid bodily damage.
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson
Reactions to Anxiety: Some people affected by anxiety react appropriately, adequately, and more rapidly than they would without a threat. Others may hesitate to act or be compelled to do something quickly, even if it is wrong. In more severe cases, chronic anxiety or other anxiety disorders can impair a person’s ability to function.
Corrective Actions: Adverse responses to anxiety can be countered by:
- Reinforcing the learner’s enjoyment of flying.
- Treating fears as a normal reaction rather than ignoring them.
- Completing manageable yet challenging tasks to build confidence over time.
- Introducing learners to maneuvers with care so that the learner knows what to expect.
Impatience
Impatience leads learners to overlook necessary preliminary training and focus only on the end goal.
Why Impatience Occurs: This mindset can stem from a desire for rapid progress and may be intensified if instruction doesn’t match the learner’s pace.
Corrective Actions: Instructors should address impatience by pacing instruction to meet the learner’s capability and setting clear objectives.
Worry or Lack of Interest
Worry or lack of interest arises when learners are distracted by personal issues, concerns about training progress, or a disconnect with the instructor or course. These distractions carry over into the training environment and hinder learning.
Corrective Actions: Instructors should engage learners’ interests and clarify each lesson’s objectives and progress. Providing transparent feedback and fostering an open environment helps prevent discouragement.
Physical Discomforts
Note: Physical comforts include illness, fatigue, dehydration, and heatstroke.
Physical discomforts during flight training stem from prolonged or demanding activities, environmental factors, and individual health conditions. These discomforts can distract learners, slowing their learning rate.
Corrective Actions: Instructors can mitigate physical discomforts by:
- Monitoring learners for signs of discomfort.
- Structuring lessons to avoid prolonged exposure to challenging conditions.
- Ensuring proper hydration and ventilation.
- Providing breaks as needed.
Apathy from Inadequate Instruction
Poorly prepared or contradictory instruction can lead to learner disengagement.
Apathy is a lack of engagement that can occur when learners sense that instruction is poorly prepared, disorganized, or mismatched to their knowledge level.
Corrective Actions: Instructors can prevent apathy by:
- Tailoring lessons to the learner’s experience level.
- Adapting instructional styles to align with the learner’s needs.
- Ensuring each session is well-prepared, organized, and presented with genuine engagement
Instructor Actions Regarding Seriously Abnormal Learners
If an instructor suspects that a learner may have a disqualifying psychological issue, it is advisable to seek a second opinion. Arrangements should be made for another instructor who is unfamiliar with the learner to conduct an evaluation flight. If both instructors believe the learner has a psychological deficiency, endorsements and recommendations should be withheld.
Serious Psychological Abnormalities
A flight instructor who believes a learner may be suffering from a serious psychological abnormality must refrain from instructing that person. Instructors should contact their local FSDO to report hazardous behaviors that affect airmen certification.
Signs of serious psychological abnormalities include:
- Talks of suicide
- Excessive anger, hostility, or violence
- Detachment from reality (e.g., paranoia or hallucinations)
- Conditions that interfere with the learner’s ability to learn or operate the airplane safely
- Mental disorders that would disqualify the learner from obtaining a medical certificate (e.g., psychosis or bipolar disorder)
Link: https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/field_offices/fsdo/
Teaching the Adult Learner
Note: The following is based on the work of Dr. Malcolm Knowles (1913–1997), as presented in his book “The Adult Learner.”
As individuals grow and develop, they transition from dependence to self-direction in their approach to learning. Since learners’ ages can vary, instructors should address the varying levels of self-direction.
The average age of a student pilot is 34.
Adult learners:
- Rely on internal rather than external motivation.
- Bring a wealth of experience to the learning process.
- Want to solve problems rather than memorize facts.
- Want to learn things that they can put to immediate use.
- Need to be involved in the planning and evaluation of their instruction.
When training adults, instructors should:
- Challenge them (avoid “spoon-feeding”).
- Set a cooperative learning environment.
- Frequently use scenario-based training (SBT).
- Help them integrate new ideas with what they already know.
- Recognize their need to control the training pace and start/stop time.
- Provide an organized training syllabus with clearly defined objectives.