Motivation slides

What is motivation

• A process that influences the:

  • Direction

  • Persistence

  • vigour

of goal-directed behaviour.

Various perspectives on motivation

• Instinct theories

• Drive theory

• Incentive and expectancy theories

• Psychodynamic theories

• Humanistic theories

Perspectives on motivation (instinct theory)

• Instinct Theory

  • Little support; simplistic explanations

  • Circular reasoning problems

  • Heredity partly accounts for motivational differences among people

• Modern Evolutionary Psychology

  • Adaptive significance:

  • motivated to engage in behaviours that promote survival advantages

• Homeostasis

  • Internal physiological equilibrium that the body strives to maintain

  • Requires sensory mechanism, response system, control center

Perspectives on motivation (Drive Theory)

• Drive Theory

  • Physiological disruptions to homeostasis produce drives to behave in a certain way (e.g. thirst influences drinking)

  • “pushes” organism into action

Perspectives on motivation (Incentive theories)

• Incentives

  • Stimuli that “pull” an organism toward a goal

  •  (e.g., good grades, food)

Perspectives on motivation (Expectancy theories)

• Expectancy x Value Theory

  • Behaviour is determined by:

    • Strength of expectation that behaviour will lead to a goal

    • Incentive value that person places on goal

  • Motivation = expectancy x incentive value

• Extrinsic Motivation

  • Performing an activity to obtain an external reward or to avoid punishment

• Intrinsic Motivation

  • Performing an activity for its own sake

Perspectives on motivation (Psychodynamic view)

• Psychodynamic View

  • Unconscious motives affect how we behave

  • Freud emphasized sexual & aggressive motives

  • Many modern theorists emphasize motives for self-esteem and social belonging

Perspectives on motivation (Humanistic view)

• Humanistic Views

• Striving for personal growth

• Need hierarchy - must fulfill certain needs first

  • Deficiency needs

    • Physical & social survival

  • Human growth needs

    • Develop potential

  • Self-actualization

    • peak’ of the mountain

• •Idea: As needs are met - progress to full potential

Hunger and weight regulations

• Physiology of hunger

  • Homeostatic mechanisms help regulate eating

  • Eating not necessarily linked to immediate energy needs

• Set Point theory

  • Biologically determined standard around which fat mass is regulated

  • Homeostatic mechanisms alter energy utilization and hunger to return us close to original weight

• Signals that start a meal

  • Decline in blood glucose levels

  • Liver converts stored nutrients into glucose

  • Blood glucose levels rise

• Produces drop-rise pattern in glucose

  • Changes in supply of glucose provide signals that help brain regulate hunger

• Signals that end a Meal

  • Stomach and intestinal distention

  • Cholecystokinin (CCK) and other peptides released by small intestine into bloodstream, travel to brain

Signals that regulate appetite and weight

• Leptin

  • Hormone secreted by fat cells

  • Signals brain to decrease appetite & increase energy expenditure

• Genetics?

  • Genetically obese mice fail to produce leptin

  • Doesn’t explain obesity

Brain Mechanisms

• Lateral hypothalamus (LH)

  • may be involved in stimulating eating

• Ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH)

  • may influence stopping eating

• Paraventricular nucleus (PVN)

  • Various neurotransmitters

  • Neuropeptide Y - neurotransmitter, appetite stimulant

Eating

• Eating is positively reinforced by good tastes and negatively reinforced by hunger reduction

• Expectations that eating will be pleasurable and will reduce hunger stimulate eating

• Beliefs, memories, and attitudes about food can also affect eating

• Pressures for thinness

  • Cultural standards of beauty

  • Overestimation of thinness for attractiveness

  • Objectification Theory (viewing body as object)

• Women overestimate how thin they need to be

• Men overestimate how bulky they need to be

Excessive exercise

• Activity Anorexia

  • Eating is suppressed while physical exercise becomes excessive

  • Wheel running rats

    • Eating and running come to compete  with each other

    • Virginia Grant

      • Wheel running can develop dysfunctional eating behaviours in rats

      • Can act as a reinforcer but also can be used as an aversive consequence to generate taste aversion

Psychological aspects of hunger

• Environmental & cultural factors affecting eating

  • Food variety

  • Smell and sight of food (classical conditioned)

  • Presence of others

  • Familiarity of food (tastes can be culturally specific)

Achievement motivation

• Need for achievement

  • Desire for accomplishment and excellence

  • Stable personality characteristic

  • Individual differences

• People are motivated to succeed because of

  • Motive for success

  • Fear of failure

• Those with strong motive for success

  • Mastery goals

    • Intrinsic motivation

    • Desire to master tasks & learn knowledge, skills

  • Performance-approach goals

  • Desire to be judged favorably compared to others

• Those with high fear of failure

  • Performance-approach goals

    • Desire to be judged favorably compared to others

  • Performance-avoidance goals

    • Desire to avoid negative judgments

• Fear of failure + performance-avoidance goals

  • Impairs performance

Situational Factors

• High-need achievers

  • Ambitious

  • Persist longer at difficult task

  • Perform best when conditions are challenging

• Strive hard for success when perceive

  • Responsible for outcome

  • Risk of not succeeding

  • Potential feedback

• Prefer situations of intermediate chance of success to very high / low risk conditions

Family and cultural influences

• Parental attitudes

  • High need for achievement

    • Encourage & reward achievement; Do not punish failure

  • Fear of failure

    • Achievement taken for granted; Failure is punished

• Culture

  • Individualistic cultures

    • stress personal achievement

  • Collectivistic cultures

    • meet expectations of family & social group

Motivation in the workplace

• Key motivators

  • Personal accomplishment

  • Mastery & Growth

  • Satisfying interpersonal relationships

• Productivity & job satisfaction

  • Weakly related

• Enhancing motivation

• Job enrichment programs

  • Making jobs more fulfilling

  • Provide employees with opportunities for  growth

• Intrinsic motivation increased by

  • Skill variety

  • Task identity

  • Task significance

  • Autonomy

  • Feedback

• Incentive Programs

  • Reinforcement contingent on productivity

• Goal-Setting Programs

  • Set goals that employees value

  • Set goals that employees expect they can reach

• Management by objectives (MBO)

  • Combines:

    • Goal setting

    • Employee participation

    • Objective feedback

Motivational conflicts (Types)

• 1) Approach-approach conflict

  • “I want this and I want that.”

  • Conflict where you must decided between two desirable or attractive goals

  • As one goal is approached

    • Desirability increases & dominates

• 2) Avoidance-avoidance conflict

  • “I don’t want this and I don’t want that.”

  • Two goals, both of which are negative

• 3) Approach-avoidance conflict

  • I want this but I don’t want what this entails

  • Being repelled and attracted by same goal

  • Most difficult to resolve

  • Attraction & repulsion grow stronger as approach goal

  • Avoidance tendency increases faster than approach tendency as goal nears

  • Vacillate in state of conflict

Motivational conflicts ( other Types)

• Defensive avoidance

  • Procrastination & avoidance of decision

• Delay discounting

  • Consequences are in the future

  • Have decrease in value of incentive

  • Further away in time = greater decrease in value

Nature and Function of emotions

• What are emotions?

  • Positive or negative feeling (affect) states that involve a pattern of cognitive, physiological, & behavioural reactions to events

• Link between motivation & emotion

  • React emotionally when goals are gratified, threatened or frustrated

  • Strong reaction to important goals

• Adaptive value of emotions

  • Direct attention - Arousal system

• Negative emotions

  • Narrow attention - increased physiological activation

• Positive emotions

  • Broaden thinking - exploration & skill learning

• Social communication

  • Information about internal state

  • Influence others’ behaviour toward us

Nature of emotion

• Four features common to all emotions

  • Emotions are responses to eliciting stimuli

  • Emotions result from cognitive appraisal of the stimuli

  • Bodies respond physiologically to stimuli

  • Emotions include behavioural tendencies, including expressive behaviour and instrumental behaviour

Eliciting Stimuli

• Can be internal or external

• Influence of innate biological factors

  • Newborn infants can respond emotionally

  • Adults primed to respond to evolutionarily significant stimuli

• Learning

  • Previous experiences can affect current emotional experiences

Cognitive Component

• Cognitive appraisals

  • Involved in every aspect of emotion

  • Interpretations & meanings attached to sensory stimuli

• Different appraisals can result in different behaviors

  • Influences expressions & actions

  • Different reactions to same event

• Culture & appraisal

  • Strong cross-cultural similarities in appraisals for basic emotions

  • Cultural differences in appraisals of other emotions

Physiological Component

• Interactions between cortical & subcortical structures

  • Hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus

    • Destruction or stimulation can produce aggression

  • Cerebral cortex

    • Prefrontal cortex = ability to regulate emotion

• Dual Pathway of Emotion, LeDoux (1996)

  • Thalamus sends sensory input along two independent neural pathways

    • One directly to amygdala

      • Emotional & behavioural reaction

    • One to cerebral cortex     

      • Conscious interpretation

• Amygdala

  • can process input before interpretation by the cortex

  • Removal of visual cortex in rats did not impair classically conditioned fear response

  • People with hippocampal damage (unable to learn a connection between CS and UCS) still acquire a fear response

• Hemispheric Activation

  • Evidence for left hemisphere activation underlying some positive emotions

  • Evidence for right hemisphere activation underlying some negative emotions

behavioural Component

• Expressive behaviours

  • Observable emotional displays

• Infer emotions of others

  • Anger, fear, sadness etc.

• Ekman

• Fundamental emotional patterns

  • Expression of certain emotions - similar across variety of cultures

  • Children blind from birth express basic emotions as sighted children do

• Evolutionary view

  • Certain emotions are innate

  • Can be modified by learning

behavioural Component (hierarchy of emotions)

• Hierarchy of emotions

  • Universal

    • Positive & negative affect (interest & disinterest)

    • First to appear

  • Basic

    • Appear later

  • Subtle

    • Influenced by culture

    • Derived from basic emotions

• Instrumental behaviours

  • Directed at achieving a goal

• Effects of emotions on behaviour

  • ‘Calls to action’ to engage in instrumental behaviour

  • Can enhance performance for simple motor tasks

  • Can interfere with complex mental & physical tasks

Interactions Among Components

• James-Lange = Somatic theory of emotion

  • Body informs mind

  • Physiological reactions determine emotions

• Cannon-Bard theory

  • Cognition is involved

  • Stimuli - thalamus - cortex - emotion

• Facial Feedback Hypothesis

  • Muscular feedback to the brain plays a key role in emotional experience

• Vascular theory of emotional feedback

  • Tensing facial muscles alters temperature of blood flow

    • Cooling increases positive affect

    • Warming increases negative affect

• Cognitive-Affective Theories

  • Cognitions + arousal

• Specific stimuli is not important

  • The appraisal is!

• Lazarus

  • All emotions require appraisals

    • Whether aware or not

• Two-Factor Theory

  • Physiological arousal + cognitive labelling determine emotion

  • Physiological arousal = how ‘strongly’ we feel

  • Labelling =  ‘what’ we feel