Motivation & Emotion

Define motivation.

The process that initiates, guides, and maintains goal-oriented behaviors. It involves biological, emotional, social, and cognitive forces that activate behavior.

What do drive theories propose?

Motivation arises from biological drives such as hunger, thirst, or the need for homeostasis, which propel individuals to take action to fulfill these needs.

What is drive?

An internal state that arises from a physiological need, prompting an organism to engage in behavior to fulfill that need and restore homeostasis.

What do incentive theories propose?

Motivation is driven by external rewards or stimuli that attract individuals to engage in specific behaviors, emphasizing the role of environmental factors in influencing actions.

What do evolutionary theories of motivation propose?

Motivation is influenced by the evolutionary adaptation of behaviors that enhance survival and reproductive success. These theories emphasize how inherited traits and instincts shape human motivation.

What two parts of the hypothalamus are currently considered to be key to hunger and satiety signal processing?

The arcuate nucleus and the paraventricular nucleus.

True or False: Hunger signal processing can be attributed to specific anatomical centres in the brain.

False. Contemporary theories of hunger focus more on neural circuits that pass through areas of the hypothalamus that are massively and reciprocally interconnected with extensive parallel processing.

True or False: There are nerves in the stomach that send signals tot he brain to regulate hunger.

True. Nerves in the stomach can inform the brain about how stretched (i.e. full) the stomach is and about the nutrient richness of its contents.

What is ghrelin?

A hormone produced by the stomach that causes contractions and stimulates appetite, signaling hunger to the brain.

What is leptin?

A hormone produced by fat tissue that helps to regulate energy balance by inhibiting hunger, signaling satiety to the brain.

What are the three key environmental factors related to the regulation of hunger?

(1) The availability of food; (2) learned preferences and habits; and (3) stress.

True or False: Hunger is fully explained by drive theories of motivation.

False. Hunger is not an entirely biological or internal phenomenon; it is also influenced by external factors and incentive considerations.

What does set-point theory propose?

The body has a predetermined weight range that it tries to maintain through biological mechanisms and regulation of hunger and metabolism.

What are William Masters and Virginia Johnson known for?

Pioneering research on human sexual response and the sexual response cycle.

What are the four stages in the sexual response cycle?

Excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution.

What is vasocongestion?

The process by which blood flow increases to specific areas of the body during sexual arousal, leading to swelling and engorgement of tissues.

What is David Buss known for?

Work in evolutionary psychology, particularly on mating strategies and sexual selection.

What is David McClelland known for?

Work on motivation theory, particularly the concepts of need for achievement, affiliation, and power.

What are the three situational determinants of the tendency to pursue achievement, according to John Atkinson?

The strength of one’s motivation to achieve success, one’s estimate of the probability of success, and the incentive value of success.

What are the three components of emotion?

Cognitive, physiological, and behavioural.

What does the cognitive component of emotion consist of?

Subjective, conscious experience.

What does the physiological component of emotion consist of?

Bodily arousal.

What does the behavioural component of emotion consist of?

Characteristic overt expressions.

What is affective forecasting?

The process of predicting one's emotional reactions to future events.

What part of affective forecasting is usually accurate, and which part is usually inaccurate?

People tend to accurately predict whether their emotions will be positive or negative, but often misjudge the duration and/or intensity of those feelings.

What is galvanic skin response?

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

In what field does Joseph LeDoux work?

Affective neuroscience.

What route does sensory input capable of eliciting emotion take in the brain?

It arrives in the thalamus and is routed simultaneously to the amygdala and areas in the cortex. If the amygdala senses a threat, it triggers activity in the hypothalamus, leading to autonomic arousal and hormonal responses.

True or False: According to Joseph LeDoux, the cortex thinks about emotional input at the same time as the emotion itself is triggered.

False. According to LeDoux, the processing in the pathway between the thalamus, amygdala, and hypothalamus is so fast, emotions can be triggered before the cortex has a chance to “think” about the input.

Who are Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen?

Psychologists known for their work on emotions and facial expressions, particularly in studying universal facial expressions.

What are the six fundamental emotions people can generally successfully identify based on facial expression?

Happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust.

What does the facial feedback hypothesis suggest?

Facial muscles send signals to the brain that help the brain recognize the emotion that one is experiencing.

What does the James-Lange theory of emotion suggest?

The conscious experience of emotion results from one’s perception of autonomic arousal.

True or False: Walter Cannon agreed with the James-Lange theory of emotion.

False. Cannon argued that physiological arousal can occur without emotion, that visceral change is slower than the conscious experience of emotion, and that different emotions have the same patterns of autonomic arousal.

What part(s) of James-Lange theory did Stanley Schachter agree with?

The idea that emotion is inferred from arousal.

What part(s) of Cannon-Bard theory did Stanley Schachter agree with?

The idea that different emotions yield indistinguishable patterns of autonomic arousal.

How did Stanley Schachter reconcile the ideas he took from James-Lange and Cannon-Bard theories of emotion?

By arguing that people look to external rather than internal cues to differentiate and label their specific emotions.

What are the two factors involved in Stanley Schachter’s two-factor theory of emotion?

Autonomic arousal and cognitive interpretation of that arousal using environmental cues.

What is Robert Plutchik known for?

Devising a model of 1) how primary emotions (e.g. fear, surprise) may blend into secondary emotions (e.g. awe) and 2) how various emotions (e.g. apprehension, fear, terror) involve one primary emotion experienced at different levels of intensity.

When does hedonic adaptation occur?

When the mental scale that people use to judge the pleasantness-unpleasantness of their experience shifts so that their neutral point (or baseline for comparison) changes.