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 within their environment. This knowledge reveals learners’ motivations and helps instructors tailor their approach 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.

Related: Instructor Responsibilities and Professionalism: Aviation Instructor’s Code of Conduct

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.

Motivation

Motivation is the driving force that propels individuals toward their goals. It causes learners to engage in hard work and affects their success.

Related: The Learning Process: Domains of Learning

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.

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.

Related: The Learning Process: Learning Plateaus

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.

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.

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 above all others.

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.

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.

Related: Aeromedical Factors: Stress

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.

Related:

• Aeromedical Factors: Motion Sickness
• Aeromedical Factors: Dehydration
• Aeromedical Factors: Heatstroke
• Aeromedical Factors: Fatigue

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/

Related: Aeromedical Factors: Disqualifying Medical Conditions

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.

Basic Elements of Communication

The communication process is composed of three interrelated elements:

• Source: The sender, speaker, or writer.
• Symbols: The words or gestures used.
• Receiver: The listener or reader.

Note: The channel is the method of communication.

Barriers to Effective Communication

Confusion Between the Symbol and Symbolized Object: Words and symbols might not carry the same meaning for everyone.

Overuse of Abstractions: Abstract terms may not elicit the intended images in listeners’ minds. More concrete (specific) terms are preferred.

Interference (External Factors): Disruptions in the communication cycle can truncate or distort the message.

Types of interference:

• Physiological: Biological problems that inhibit symbol reception, such as hearing loss, injury, or physical illness.
• Environmental: External physical conditions, such as the noise level inside many small aircraft.
• Psychological: How the participants feel. For example, a lack of commitment inhibits the flow of information.

Lack of Common Experience: This is the greatest barrier to communication. Instructors should tailor their dialogue to match the varying experience levels of different pilots.

Developing Communication Skills

Communication skills must be developed through experience and practice. For instructors, this means role-playing, the use of effective listening and questioning techniques, experience in actual instruction, and continued professional development.

Role-Playing Techniques

Role-playing provides aspiring instructors with experience in instructional communication. The instructor candidate assumes the teaching role, instructing their peers as if they were learners.

Listening Techniques

Hearing is a passive but constant process. Listening is an active process (hearing with comprehension).

Effective listeners:

• Take notes.
• Maintain eye contact.
• Listen for the main ideas.
• Guard against daydreaming.
• Listen to understand rather than refute.

Everyone has two ears, two eyes, and one mouth. They should be used in that order and proportion.

Guarding Against Daydreaming

Since most people can listen faster than someone can speak, listeners may start daydreaming. To counteract this, listeners can internally paraphrase or summarize what’s being said, leading to better information retention.

Types of Listening

• Reactive: Reacting to an attention-grabbing sound, the most basic type of listening.
• Intensive: Listening for shades of meaning in words, used when learning a new language.
• Responsive: Listening for a response to a posed question.
• Selective: Sorting through the sounds being heard for main ideas.
• Extensive: Trying to understand the information being communicated.
• Interactive: Involves communicating and listening simultaneously.

Instructional Communication

Instructional communication informs listeners during the teaching-learning process. This type of communication requires instructors to be knowledgeable about the subject matter and present content in a way that is engaging and tailored to the needs of their learners.

Suggestions to Enhance Instructional Communication

1. Teach Familiar Subjects: Instructors should focus on topics they are knowledgeable about and confident in teaching.
2. Incorporate Personal Experiences: Using personal experiences can make instructions more relatable, but excessive anecdotes or “war stories” should be avoided.
3. Clarify “How“ and “Why”: Instructors should explain not only the procedures but also the underlying principles and reasons behind them.

Questioning Techniques

Effective questioning can determine how well the learner understands what is being taught. It also shows the learner that the instructor is paying attention and is interested in the response.

An instructor should ask focused, open-ended questions (“why” or “how”) and avoid closed-ended questions (“yes” or “no”).

Instructors should prepare relevant questions before each lesson, supplementing with spontaneous questions as the lesson unfolds.

Related: Assessment and Critique: Oral Assessment

Perception Checking

Perception checking is a questioning technique where the receiver verifies the correct interpretation of a message, significantly reducing the potential for misunderstanding and conflict.

Perception checking has three steps:

1. Restate the message (e.g., “When you said […].”).
2. Provide two possible interpretations of the message (e.g., “I think you meant […] or […].”).
3. Request clarification (e.g., “Does that sound right?”).

Instructional Enhancement

Instructional enhancement states that instructors’ knowledge depth directly influences their confidence, engagement, and productivity in teaching. Aviation instructors can pursue professional development through seminars, membership in professional organizations, and online courses.

A good instructor never stops learning.

Related: Professional Aviation Organizations and Programs

Risk Examples for the Fundamentals of Instructing

Recognizing and Accommodating Human Behavior

• Not recognizing stress or anxiety can increase learner frustration; foster an open, supportive learning environment.
• Not accommodating different learning styles can reduce instructional effectiveness; teaching methods should be adapted to suit each learner.

Barriers to Communication

• Technical jargon can cause misunderstandings; use clear, simple language.
• Environmental factors such as noise can inhibit communication; ensure a conducive learning environment and verify understanding through feedback.