Unit 6: Motivation, Emotion, and Stress

What is a motivation? Examples?

What is a motivation? Examples?

• a need or desire that energizes and directs behavior

• arise from the interplay between nature (the bodily “push”) and nurture (the “pulls” from our thought processes and culture).

What is a need? Examples?

• A need or desire that energiezes and directs behavior.

• drive to seek a goal such as food, water, friends, etc.

• Both humans and weaverbirds satisfy their need for shelter in ways that reflect their inherited capacities.

What is Instinct? Examples?

a complex, unlearned behavior that is rigidly patterned throughout a species.

example: infant’s innate reflexes for rooting and sucking.

What is homeostasis and how does the body try to maintain it?

• a tendency to maintain a balanced or constant internal state; the regulation of any aspect of body chemistry, such as blood glucose, around a particular level.

• The physiological aim of drive reduction, the maintenance of a steady internal state. An example of homeostasis (literally “staying the same”) is the body’s temperature-regulation system,

Explain with an example the Drive-Reduction theory.

• The food-deprived person who smells baking bread feels a strong hunger drive. In the presence of that drive, the baking bread becomes a compelling incentive.

What is Drive-Reduction theory?

• the idea that a physiological need creates an aroused tension state (a drive) that motivates an organism to satisfy the need.

What is the Yerkes-Dodson Law?

the principle that performance increases with arousal only up to a point, beyond which performance decreases.

Two early-twentieth-century psychologists studied the relationship of arousal to per- formance and identified what we now call the Yerkes-Dodson law, suggesting that moderate arousal would lead to optimal performance

Y is like the second last letter so like perofrmance increases to a certain point, not the entire time

Arousal theory?

Optimal arousal theory holds that some motivated behaviors actually increase arousal.

Are we overstimulated as a society today?

yes! probs! (I’m guessing like technology etc)

What is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?

• Maslow’s pyramid of human needs, beginning at the base with physiological needs that must first be satisfied before higher- level safety needs and then psychological needs become active

How is Maslow’s concept of motivation different from the other theories of motivation?

• Maslow’s hierarchy is somewhat arbitrary; the order of such needs is not universally fixed.

• simple idea that some motives are more compelling than others provides a framework for thinking about motivation.

• Maslow's theory is based on the concept of human needs and their satisfaction

What is the set point/settling point?

• the point at which an individual’s “weight thermostat” is supposedly set. When the body falls below this weight, an increase in hunger and a lowered metabolic rate may act to restore the lost weight.

Basal metabolic rate?

• the body’s resting rate of energy expenditure.

What is the difference between the Lateral hypothalamus and the Ventromedial hypothalamus?

• Ventromedial Hypothalamus: gives a person Very Meager Hunger, or the feeling of satiety.

• Lateral Hypothalamus: gives a person a Large Hunger, or the desire to eat.

arousal

being alert, awake, and attentive

stimulation

responding to internal or external influence.

Sexual motivation

the desires and pleasures of sex are our gene’s way of preserving and spreading themselves.

William Masters and Virginia Johnson

studied the sexual response cycle in the1960s to see what happens to your body when you have sex. No one had studied the physiology of sex like that before.

masters like master

virginia like virgin

(im funny right guys)

How do estrogen and testosterone affect sexual motivation?

• These hormones stimulate the development of sexual characteristics and they also activate sexual behavior.

• Women have testosterone! If their levels drop, their sexual interest may wane.

What are the benefits of belonging/affiliation? How did belonging help our ancestors survive? What are the negative effects of ostracism?

• Survival (cooperation), psychological well being (self-esteem, happiness), studies show people describe their lives as happy and meaningful because of their close relationships, social exclusion feels just as bad as physical pain.

Further types of motivation

Overjustification Effect, Achievement motivation, Self-efficacy, Alfred Kinsey

Overjustification Effect

Extrinsic motivation will displace a person’s intrinsic motivation.

like when a kid enjoys guitar but then they only start doing it for rewards from parents womp womp

Achievement motivation

• Need for achievement (nAch)

• The drive to succeed especially in competition with others. Learned early in life especially from parents.

Self-efficacy

• the belief that you are capable of carrying out a specific task or accomplishing a specific goal.

Alfred Kinsey

• Sexual motivation

• Conducted studies of men and women’s sexual behavior in the 1940’s and 50’s, and showed a variety of human sexual behaviors in the Kinsey Reports.

• Dispelled many wrong theories about gay men.

kinsey like kinky (why am i funny)

Instinct Theory

• Key terms: Unlearned, innate reflexes

• Behavior stems from inborn drives. (Genetic predispositions that impact our behavior.)

Drive-Reduction Theory

• Key terms: homeostasis, needs/drives

• A physiological need creates a drive that motivates one to satisfy the need.

• But also incentives from our environment can create needs to be filled.

Arousal Theory

• Key terms: Yerkes-Dodson law, optimal arousal

• After needs are met, we still exhibit behavior. Human modification aims to seek optimum arousal.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

• Key terms: physiological, safety, belongingness, esteem, self- actualization, self- transcendence

• Once our lower-level needs are met we are prompted to satisfy our higher-level needs.

What is an emotion?

• a response of the whole organism, involving

  • (1) physiological arousal,

  • (2) expressive behaviors, and

  • (3) conscious experience.

• mix of bodily arousal (heart pounding); expressive behaviors (quickened pace); and conscious experience, including thoughts (“Is this a kidnapping?”) and feelings (panic, fear, joy).

What is the James-Lange theory?

• the theory that our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli.

• James and Lange would guess that I noticed my racing heart and then, shaking with fright, felt the whoosh of emotion. My feeling of fear followed my body’s response.

felt a Iick then felt grossed out

The Cannon-Bard theory?

• the theory that an emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers

  (1) physiological responses and

  (2) the subjective experience of emotion.

• my heart began pounding as I experienced fear. The emotion-triggering stimulus traveled to my sympathetic nervous system, causing my body’s arousal.

• cannon has 2 n’s happen at the same time!

The Schachter-Singer (two-factor theory)?

• the Schachter- Singer theory that to experience emotion one must (1) be physically aroused and (2) cognitively label the arousal

• something happens to arouse like you go on a run then you get a longed-for job giving you the ability to label the arousal

Two-factor theory aka ____

Schachter-Singer Theory

What is the Spillover effect? Which theory of emotion is this related to?

• Consider how arousal spills over from one event to the next. Imagine arriving home after an invigorating run and finding a message that you got a longed-for job. With arousal lingering from the run, would you feel more elated than if you received this news after awakening from a nap?

• Related to two-factor theory: emo- tions therefore have two ingredients: physical arousal and cognitive appraisal.

  Consider how arousal spills over from one event to the next.

spillover effect experiment

To explore this spillover effect, Schachter and Singer injected college men with the hormone epinephrine, which triggers feelings of arousal. Picture yourself as a participant: After receiving the injection, you go to a waiting room, where you find yourself with another person (actually an accomplice of the experimenters) who is acting either euphoric or irritated. As you observe this person, you begin to feel your heart race, your body flush, and your breath- ing become more rapid. If you had been told to expect these effects from the injection, what would you feel? The actual volunteers felt little emotion—because they attributed their arousal to the drug. But if you had been told the injection would produce no effects, what would you feel? Perhaps you would react as another group of participants did. They “caught” the apparent emotion of the other person in the waiting room. They became happy if the accomplice was acting euphoric, and testy if the accomplice was acting irritated.

What do Robert Zajonc and Joseph LeDoux have to say about emotion?

• Robert Zajonc contended that we actually have many emotional reactions apart from, or even before, our interpretation of a situation. E.g.: can recall liking something or someone immediately, without knowing why.

• Such experiences support Zajonc’s belief that some of our emotional reactions involve no deliberate thinking.

• LeDoux said that emotions take the "low road", a neural shortcut that bypasses the cortex

• So as Zajonc and LeDoux have demonstrated, some emotional responses- especially simple likes, dislikes, and fears—involve no conscious thinking

Zajonc and LeDoux are stupid sounding names they probs dont think alot (conscious thinking skips the core)

low road vs high road

Sometimes our emotions (especially simple likes, dislikes, and fears) take what Joseph LeDoux has called the “low road,” a neural shortcut that bypasses the cortex. Following the low-road pathway, a fear-provoking stimulus would travel from the eye or ear (again via the thalamus) directly to the amygdala. This shortcut, bypassing the cortex, enables our greased-lightning emotional response before our intellect intervenes. Like speedy reflexes that also operate apart from the brain’s thinking cortex, the amygdala reactions are so fast that we may be unaware of what transpires

What does Richard Lazarusx have to say about emotion?

• conceded that our brain processes vast amounts of information without our conscious awareness, and that some emotional responses do not require conscious thinking.

• Lazarus said emotions arise when we appraise an event as harmless or dangerous, whether we truly know it is or not. We appraise the sound of the rustling bushes as the presence of a threat. Later, we realize that it was “just the wind.”

But as Lazarus, Schachter, and Singer predicted ________.

our memories, expectations, and interpretations also influence our feelings about politics.

Emotional Theories chart

pic!

How does a polygraph work and what is their effectiveness?

• A polygraph cannot really detect the difference between arousal caused by anxiety and that caused by lying.

• Polygraph tests can easily be fooled.

• While widely used by police and government agencies, polygraphs often fail to identify the guilty.

• a machine, commonly used in attempts to detect lies, that measures several of the physiological responses (such as perspiration and cardiovascular and breathing changes) accompanying emotion.

emotional theories memory cues

James-Lange (JL): J comes before L in the alphabet.

Cannon-Bard (CB): C and B are directly next to each other.

Schachter-Singer: The 2 S’s = 2 factors (arousal then label)

Paul Ekman

• facial expressions of basic emotions

• Believes that the “facial language” for basic emotions is innate and thus universal.

• Six basic emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust.

• Ex: children born deaf and blind exhibit facial expressions identical to other children

• paul = 4

• ekman = 5

• emotions = 6!

• ekMAN, all men have faces

What is stress in psychology?

the process by which we perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors, that we appraise as threatening or challenging

How can stress be both positive and negative?

• When short-lived, or when perceived as challenges, stressors can have positive effects. A momentary stress can mobilize the immune system for fending off infections and healing wounds. Stress also arouses and motivates us to conquer problems.

• Extreme or prolonged stress can harm us. Children who suffer severe or prolonged abuse are later at risk of chronic disease

List and give an example of the three types of stressors.

• catastrophes

• significant life changes

• daily hassles

All can be toxic.

Catastrophes (and examples)

unpredictable large-scale events, such as wars, earthquakes, floods, wildfires, and famines.

Significant life changes (and examples)

Life transitions are often keenly felt. Even happy events, such as getting married, can be stressful. Other changes—graduating from high school, leaving home for college, los- ing a job, having a loved one die—often happen during young adulthood.

Daily Hassles (and examples)

Events don’t have to remake our lives to cause stress. Stress also comes from daily hassles— rush-hour traffic, aggravating siblings, long lunch lines, too many things to do, family frus- trations, and friends who don’t respond to calls or texts

Explain Hans Selye’s concept of GAS.

• Hans Selye’s concept of the body’s adaptive response to stress in three phases—alarm, resistance, and exhaustion.

• Although the human body copes well with temporary stress, prolonged stress can damage it. The brain’s production of new neurons slows and some neural circuits degenerate

GAS three stages

Let’s say you suffer a physical or an emotional trauma.

• Phase 1, you have an alarm reaction, as your sympathetic nervous system is suddenly activated.Your heart rate zooms. Blood is diverted to your skeletal muscles, you feel the faintness of shock.

• Phase 2, resistance, your temperature, blood pressure, and respiration remain high. Your adrenal glands pump hormones into your bloodstream, you are fully engaged, summoning all your resourc- es to meet the challenge.

• Phase 3, exhaustion. With exhaustion, you become more vulnerable to illness or even, in extreme cases, collapse and death.

How do men and women differ in their response to stress?

• A stress response, found especially among women, is the tend-and-befriend response

• Facing stress, men more often than women tend to socially withdraw, turn to alcohol, or become aggressive.

• Women more often respond to stress by nurturing and banding together.

• Gender differences in stress responses are reflected in brain scans: Women’s brains become more active in areas important for face processing and empathy; men’s become less active

tend-and-befriend response

under stress, people (especially women) often provide support to others (tend) and bond with and seek support from others (befriend).

How does stress affect illness?

• psychophysiological illness: literally,“mind-body” illness; any stress-related physical illness, such as hypertension and some headaches.

• psychoneuroimmunology: the study of how psychological, neural, and endocrine processes together affect the immune system and resulting health.

  • Stress also leaves us less able to fight off disease

psychophysiological illness

literally,“mind-body” illness; any stress-related physical illness, such as hypertension and some headaches

psychoneuroimmunology

the study of how psychological, neural, and endocrine processes together affect the immune system and resulting health.

lymphocytes

• the two types of white blood cells that are part of the body’s immune system:

  • B lymphocytes form in the bone marrow and release antibodies that fight bacterial infections;

  • T lymphocytes form in the thymus and other lymphatic tissue and attack cancer cells, viruses, and foreign substances.

What is the difference between Type A and Type B personalities?

• Type A: Friedman and Rosenman’s term for competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone people.

  • more prone to heart disease

• Type B: Friedman and Rosenman’s term for easygoing, relaxed people.

Lewin’s motivational conflicts theory

Conflict occurs when someone is forced to choose between two or more opposing goals or desires.

Lewin’s motivational conflicts theory 3 types

• Approach-approach conflict: when you are forced to choose between 2 or more desirable alternatives that both lead to positive results.

• Avoidance-avoidance conflict: when you are forced to choose between two undesirable alternatives that will both lead to negative results.

• Approach-avoidance conflict: when you are forced to choose an alternative that will have both desirable and undesirable results.

two good, two bad, or both good and bad

Stress Appraisal

The events of our lives flow through a psychological filter. How we appraise an event influences how much stress we experience and how effectively we respond.