9 / Motivation and Emotion

Motivation

involves goal-directed behavior

Many theories view motivational forces in terms of […].

Many theories view motivational forces in terms of drive.

What did the concept of drive derived from?

homeostasis, which is a state of physiological equilibrium or stability.

What is a drive?

a hypothetical, internal state of tension that motivates an organism to engage in activities that should reduce this tension.

What is an incentive?

an external goal that has the capacity to motivate behavior.

obesity

the condition of being overweight

body mass index (BMI)

weight (kg) divided by height (in meters) squared (kg/m²)

What are some factors that scientists have identified that contributes to obesity?

• genetic predisposition

• excessive eating and inadequate exercise

• inadequate sleep

• people who lose weight on a diet (have a rather strong tendency to gain back all the weight they lose)

parental investment

refers to what each sex has to invest—in terms of time, energy, survival risk, and forgone opportunities (to pursue other goals)—to produce and nurture offspring.

achievement motive

the need to master difficult challenges, to outperform others, and to meet high standards of excellence.

What does emotion involve?

1. a subjective conscious experience (the cognitive component), accompanied by

2. bodily arousal (the physiological component) and

3. characteristic overt expressions (the behavioral component)

affective forecasting

efforts to predict one’s emotional reactions to future events

polygraph

a.k.a. a lie detector

is a device that records autonomic fluctuations while a subject is questioned

galvanic skin response (GSR)

an increase in the electrical conductivity of the skin that occurs when sweat glands increase their activity

display rules

norms that regulate the appropriate expression of emotions

subjective well-being

indiidual's’ personal perceptions of their overall happiness and life satisfaction

hedonic adaptation

occurs when the mental scale that people use to judge the pleasantness-unpleasantness of their experiences shifts so that their neutral point, or baseline for comparison, changes.