Motivation and Emotion

Agency, Emotion, and Motivation

• Motivation - "energizing and directing our efforts towards a meaningful goal" - teleological

• Basic human desire is goal-orientation (Maslow, developmental-social-cognitive psychology, etc.)

Agency + Motivation

• For most of you, "achievement motivation" is most central in your lives

  • Success drives

  • Failure fear

• Then there is the "Personal Motivation" -- which is, in many ways, the purpose of the IAP for this course (underlying the action taken)

• Over the course of this semester your achievement motivation is about "getting to convocation" - the "reward"

• Two core motivational sources:

  • Intrinsic - what you engage in / find interesting and that promotes growth… eg? (time management)

  • Extrinsic - what you engage in because it provides a means to an ends - not really following your internal interest? Eg?

• How is university both intrinsic and extrinsic? Eg?

• The pursuit of the extrinsic only can come at psychological costs (distress, depression, self-esteem, etc.) & tangible rewards have a negative effect in intrinsic motivation

Agency + Emotion

• Emotional reactions are universal and shape our self-control/agency

  • They include a complex mix of: feelings, physiological reactions, cognitive processes, and behavioural reactions

  • Two general categories of emotions

    • Primary

    • Secondary

• Secondary emotions are especially important in shaping our self-identity and agency

• Agency has a strong striving focus on subjective well-being SWB (aka: happiness)

• Yet, we have to manage and regulate a wide range of emotions that challenge SWB (anxiety, depression, lack of optimism, anger, etc.) aka emotional regulation

• Early sources of ER in children

• Emotion regulation (ER) is manifested both internally and externally to inhibit or moderate expressions to support thoughtful interaction

• We are all different in our ER and self-control

• We don’t always reveal our "true selves" -- we are good at "masking" …

• ER is critical to psych growth and adaptation and shapes EQ or emotional intelligence (v. cognitive intelligence)

• ER emotional intelligence - 4 core components

Primary

• Direct/immediate (joy, fear, sadness, anger,…)

Secondary

• Reflexive/evaluative (you get angry, then feel embarrassment…; feeling guilt or pride)

ER Emotional Intelligence - 4 Core Components

• Detect/decipher emotions in self (self-monitoring)

• Harness emotions to facilitate cognition (like problem solving, etc.)

• Comprehend emotion language (detect primary emotions - inc. body language)

• Regulate one's own and others' emotions

IAP and Emotion/Motivation

• Motivation matters -- reflect on your "drive factors"

• Map your 'Emotion Profile' and your EQ

• Link your ER/EQ with your agency project (IAP)

Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Motivation

• Social psych article -- focused on IO/org beh.

• How people tend to have the wrong theories of motivation

• Bias to the extrinsic motivation

• Goes against classic Actor-observer effect (we "see" intrinsic in others and extrinsic in ourselves)