Speaker
Kira Lussier
Title
'How to Motivate Yourself and Others’: The Business of Motivational Psychology in 1970s America
Abstract
This talk examines a series of motivation training seminars implemented in 1970s American corporations which drew on theories and techniques of motivational psychology to elicit—and cultivate—motivation in managers. I focus on seminars run by psychologists and consultants Ernest Dichter and David McClelland, who used a range of techniques, from self-help quizzes and mood charts, rooted in a psychoanalytic understanding of motives as unconscious. My talk brings together psychology and business to show how management in late 20th-century America was understood in terms of the psychological and emotional work of motivating others.
Bio
Kira Lussier is a PhD candidate in history of science at the University of Toronto. Her SSHRC-funded dissertation traces the history of psychological techniques in American corporations from 1960 to present.
Location
York University, Behavioural Science Building, Room 163 (Endler)