10.1 The Basics of Motivation

• Motivation: A process that arouses, maintains, and guides behavior toward a goal.

  A Model of Motivation

• Need: An internal deficiency that may energize behavior.

• Drive: A state of bodily tension, such as hunger or thirst, that arises from an unmet need.

• Response: Any action, glandular activity, or other identifiable behavior.

• Goal: The target or objective of motivated behavior.

• Incentive: A reward or other stimulus that motivates behavior.

• Classifying Motives

  Self Determination Theory

• Self-determination theory: Proposes that needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness are critical motivational needs.

• Intrinsic motivation: Desire to engage in a behavior based on internal rewards.

• Extrinsic motivation: Motivation that comes from outside of the person.

  Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

• Hierarchy of needs: Maslow’s classification of human motivations by order of importance from basic biological function to self-actualization.

• Basic needs: The first four levels of needs in Maslow’s hierarchy; lower needs tend to be more potent than higher needs.

• Growth needs: In Maslow’s hierarchy, the higher-level needs associated with self-actualization.

  Three-Way Classification of Motives

• Biological motives: Innate motives based on biological needs.

• Stimulus motives: Innate needs for stimulation and information.

• Learned motives: Motives based on learned needs, drives, and goals.

  10.2 Biological Motives

• Homeostasis: The steady state of body equilibrium.

  Sex

• Sex drive: The strength of one’s motivation to engage in sexual behavior.

• Estrus: Changes in the sexual drives of animals that create a desire for mating; particularly used to refer to females in heat.

• Estrogen: Any of a number of female sex hormones.

• Androgen: Any of a number of male sex hormones, especially testosterone.

• Non-homeostatic drive: A drive that is relatively independent of physical deprivation cycles or body need states.

  Sleep and Circadian Rhythms

• Circadian rhythm: A 24-Hour biological cycle found in humans and many other species.

  Pain

• Pain avoidance is an episodic drive

  • Occurs in distinct episodes when bodily damage takes place or is about to occur

  Thirst

• Extracellular thirst: Thirst caused by a reduction in the volume of fluids found between body cells.

• Intracellular thirst: Thirst triggered when fluid is drawn out of cells due to an increased concentration of salts and minerals outside the cells.

  Hunger

• Hunger levels are affected by both internal bodily factors and external environmental and social factors

  Internal Factors That Control Eating

• Hypothalamus manages hunger

  • Receives neural messages from the tongue to the digestive system and is sensitive to levels of a variety of substances in the blood like sugar

• Three Parts of the Hypothalamus’ Role in Hunger:

  1. Lateral Hypothalamus

     1. Acts as a feeding “start button”

  2. Ventromedial Hypothalamus

     1. Functions as a “stop button”

  3. Paraventricular nucleus

     1. Helps keep blood sugar levels steady by starting and stopping eating

• Hypothalamus: A small area of the brain that regulates emotional behaviors and basic biological needs.

  Internal Factors and the Long-Term Control of Weight

• Set point (for fat): The proportion of body fat that tends to be maintained by changes in hunger and eating.

  External Factors That Control Eating

  External Eating Cues

• Most people are sensitive to the “pull” of external eating cues

  Cultural Factors

• Cultural values affect the incentive value of foods

  Taste and Plenty

• Taste aversion: An active dislike for a particular food.

• Biological preparedness (to learn): Organism are more easily ale to learn some associations (e.g., food with illness) than others (e.g., flashing light with illness). Evolution, then, places biological limits on what an animal or person can easily learn.

  Dieting

• Current diet is the types and amounts of food people regularly eat

• Behavioral dieting: Weight reduction based on changing exercise and eating habits, rather than temporary self-starvation.

  Hunger in Everyday Life: Eating Disorders

• Anorexia nervosa: An eating disorder characterized by a distorted body image and maintenance of unusually low body weight.

• Feeding and eating disorder: A problem managing food intake that manifests itself in forms such as a life-threatening failure to maintain sufficient body weight.

• Bulimia nervosa: A disorder marked by excessive eating followed by inappropriate methods of preventing weight gain.

  10.3 Stimulus and Learned Motives

  Arousal Theory

• Arousal theory: Assumes that people prefer to maintain ideal, or comfortable, levels of arousal.

  Arousal and Peak Performance

• Yerkes-Dodson law: A summary of the relationships among arousal, task complexity, and performance.

  Arousal in Everyday Life: Coping with Test Anxiety

• Text anxiety: High levels of arousal and worry that seriously impair test performance.

• Suggestions for Coping with Test Anxiety:

  1. Preparation

  2. Relaxation

  3. Rehearsal

  4. Restructuring Thoughts

  Learned Motives

• Social motives: Learned motives acquired as part of growing up in a particular society or culture.

• Need for achievement: The drive to excel in one’s endeavors.

• Need for power: The desire to have social impact and control over others.

  Connecting Motivation and Emotions: Opponent Process Theory

• Opponent-process theory: States that strong emotions tend to be followed by the opposite emotional state; also the strength of both emotional states changes over time.

  10.4 The Four Basic Aspects of Emotion

• Emotion: A feeling state that has physiological, cognitive, and behavioral components.

  Experience

• Personal private emotional experiences are most obvious component of emotions

  • Most familiar with these emotions

• Mood: A low-intensity, long-lasting emotional state.

  Physiology

• Autonomic nervous system (ANS): The system of nerves carrying information to and from the internal organs and glands.

  Emotion physiology and the Brain

• Amygdala: A part of the limbic system associated with the rapid processing of emotions; especially fear.

  Emotion Physiology in Everyday Life: Lie Detectors

• Polygraph: A device for recording heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, and galvanic skin response; commonly called a “lie detector,”

• Guilty knowledge test: A polygraph procedure involving testing people with facts that only a guilty person could know.

  Expression

• Adaptive behaviors: Actions that aid attempts to survive and adapt to changing conditions.

• Kinesics: Study of meaning of body movements, posture, hand gestures, and facial expressions; commonly called body language.

  Regulating Emotional Expression

• Emotion regulation: Altering expression such that the emotion being displayed does not accurately reflect the one that is being experienced.

• Effective Emotion Regulation Strategies:

  • Situation Selection

  • Situation Modification

  • Redirecting Attention

  • Cognitive Reappraisal

  • Response Modulation

• Alexithymia: A learned difficulty expressing emotions, more common in men.

  Cognitions

• Emotional appraisal: Evaluating the personal meaning of a stimulus or situation.

• Attribution: The act of assigning cause to behavior.

  10.5 Connecting the Four Aspects of Emotion: Theories of Emotion

• James-Lange theory: The proposition that bodily arousal leads to subjective feelings.

• Cannon-Bard theory: The proposition that thalamus activity causes emotions and bodily arousal to occur simultaneously.

• Schachter-Singer two-factor theory: A theory stating that emotions occur when physical arousal is labeled or interpreted on the basis of experience and situational cues.

• Basic emotions: Theories that suggest emotions are brief states arising from cognitive appraisals and involve distinct expressions, physiology, and behavior.

  10.6 Psychology and Your Skill Set: Positivity and Optimism

• Positive psychology: The study of human strengths, virtues, and effective functioning.

• Subjective well-being: General life satisfaction, combined with frequent positive emotions and relatively few negative emotions.

Chapter In Review:

10.1 The Basics of Motivation

10.1.1 Explain the role played by needs, drives, responses, goals, and incentives in shaping our motives

Motives arouse, maintain, and guide behavior and typically involve the following sequence: Need, drive, goal, and goal attainment (need reduction). Needs are internal deficiencies (things we lack), while a drive is a state of bodily tension that arises when needs are not met. Drivers activate a response that pushes us toward a goal (usually, to address the unmet need). Incentives are rewards that can motivate behavior.

10.1.2 Distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

According to self-determination theory, competence, autonomy, and relatedness are the highest needs and are closely related to intrinsic motivation. (motivation that is based on internal, rather than external, rewards). In contrast, extrinsic motivation stems from factors outside the person (e.g., money, rewards, obligations, and approval).

10.1.3 Distinguish between Maslow’s basic needs and growth needs

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs categorizes needs as either basic or growth-oriented. Basic needs are lower in the hierarchy and are assumed to be prepotent (dominant). Basic needs include those required for physical survival (eg., food and shelter), as well as those related to love, acceptance, and belonging. Growth needs include the drive toward self-actualization, or the need to fulfill our potential.

10.1.4 Distinguish between biological, stimulus, and learned motives

In the three-way classification of motives, biological motives refer to those that must be met for survival. Stimulus motives relate to the need for stimulation. Learned motives are based on needs that we develop as a result of interacting with others (e.g., the need for power or achievement)

10.2 Biological Motives

10.2.1 Explain what is meant by the term sex drive, and how hormones are related to the sex drive of human and nonhuman animals

The sex drive refers to the strength of our motivation to engage in sexual behavior it is unusual in that it's non-homeostatic (independent of body needs states) the sex drive is influenced primarily by estrogen and females. In humans, androgens such as the hormone testosterone, impact the sex drive of men and, to a lesser extent, women.

10.2.2 Explain what is meant by the term circadian rhythms, and how these rhythms impact human sleep cycles

Circadian rhythms refer to the cycles that are governed by the body's internal clock. People with early peaks in their circadian rhythm are usually early risers, while those with lighter peaks are more likely to be night owls. Time zone travel, shift work, and pulling all-nighters can seriously disrupt sleep and circadian rhythms.

10.2.3 Outline why pain is considered an episodic drive, and how our responses to pain are shaped

Pain avoidance is unusual because it is an episodic drive (one that occurs in distinct episodes when there is damage to the body) as opposed to cyclic. Pain avoidance and pain tolerance are partially learned through interactions with the people and culture that surround us.

10.2.4 Distinguish between intracellular and extracellular thirst and how each is best managed

Intracellular thirst is caused by the consumption of salt causing fluid to move out of your cells it is best managed by consuming water in contrast, extracellular thirst results from water being lost from the body bleeding, sweating, vomiting, and diarrhea. This type of thirst is best managed by drinking something that contains salt and minerals (e.g., Gatorade or other sports drinks).

10.2.5 Outline the internal and external factors that impact hunger

Hunger is influenced by a complex interplay of internal factors that include the body set point, fullness of the stomach, blood sugar levels, metabolism in the liver, and fat stores in the body. The hypothalamus exerts the most direct internal control of eating, through areas that act like feeding and satiety systems period the hypothalamus is sensitive to both neural and chemical messages, which affect eating period external factors influencing hunger include external eating cues, the attractiveness and variety of diet, emotions, learned taste preferences and taste aversions, and cultural values.

10.2.6 Distinguish between anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, and outline the causes of these eating disorders

Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are two prominent eating disorders anorexia involves reduction in food consumption (though hunger is still experienced) that results in significant weight loss period bulimia is a disorder in which people gorge on food and then purge by vomiting or taking laxatives to eliminate waste, which allows them to prevent weight gain. Both tend to involve conflicts about self-image, self-control, and anxiety.

10.3 Stimulus and Learned Motives

10.3.1 Explain the central idea that underlies arousal theory

Drives for stimulation are partially explained by arousal theory, which states that an ideal level of bodily arousal will be maintained if possible. The desired level of arousal or stimulation varies from person to person.

10.3.2 Describe the relationship between arousal and performance, as outlined in the Yerkes-Dodson law

Optimal performance on a task usually occurs at moderate levels of arousal, though the relationship between arousal and performance depends on the difficulty of the task. For very simple tasks that are well practiced, performance is not impacted even when arousal becomes quite high. However, for tasks that are moderately or very difficult, the relationship between arousal and performance is described by an inverted-U function**.** Using this inverted-U function, the Yerkes-Dodson law states that for moderately challenging tasks, the ideal arousal level is higher, but as tasks become more complex or less well practiced, it is lower.

10.3.3 Outline what is meant by the need for achievement and need for power

In the three-way classification of motives (biological, stimulus, and learned), learned motives include social motives. Social motives such as the need for achievement and the need for power relate to our relationships with others**,** and are learned through socialization and cultural conditioning.

10.3.4 Explain the central idea that underlies opponent-process theory

Opponent process theory explains the operation of some learned motives. Essentially, the theory proposes that when a stimulus generates a strong emotion, the opposite emotion will occur when the stimulus is removed, or ends. However, when the stimulus is repeated many times, our initial response to it will weaken and will be replaced with its opposite side. However, the emotional aftereffects will strengthen.

10.4 The Four Basics Aspects of Emotion

10.4.1 Outline the four basics aspects of an emotion

The four basic aspects of emotion are experience (feelings), physiology, expression, and cognitions.

10.4.2 Explain what is meant by emotional experience, and how it differs from mood

Emotion experience refers to our subjective emotion related feelings. Emotions differ from moods because they are shorter in duration than moods, and because emotions typically have a target (that is, they are directed at something identifiable).

10.4.3 Describe the physiological responses that are associated with emotions

Physical changes associated with emotion are caused by activity in the autonomic nervous system and (ANS). The sympathetic branch of the ANS is primarily responsible for arousing the body, the parasympathetic branch for quieting it. The amygdala provides a “quick and dirty” pathway for the arousal of fear, bypassing the cerebral cortex.

10.4.4 Outline the various ways in which an emotion can be expressed and regulated

Emotions can be expressed through multiple channels, or modalities. The most obvious one is the face, but researchers have established that body language (including touch, posture, and eye gaze) is also important. The formal study of body language is known as kinesics. In addition to facial expressions and body language. Psychological have also found that the human voice (including prosody and vocal burst) is important in expressing emotion.

In terms of emotion regulation, strategies include suppression (clamping down an emotional experiences), situation selection (controlling the circumstances in which you find yourselves), situation modification (alternating unavoidable situations to make them more palatable), redirecting attention (shifting your focus in ways that allow you to avoid negative emotions and increase the likelihood of positive ones), cognitive reappraisal (changing the way you interpret events that are going on around you), and response modulation (controlling outward signs of emotions like facial expressions and body language).

10.4.5 Describe two types of cognition that are relevant to emotions

Two types of cognitions that are relevant to emotions are attributions and appraisals.

10.5 Connecting the Four Aspects of Emotion: Theories of Emotion

10.5.1 Outline the similarities and differences between the James-Lange, Cannon-Bard, and Schachter-Singer theories of emotion.

Contrary to common sense, the James Lang theory says that emotional experience follows bodily reactions. In contrast, the common Cannon-Bard theory says that the bodily reactions and emotional experiences occur at the same time period however, these theories are similar in the sense that they focus only on three of the four aspects of emotion (experience, physiology, and behaviors/expression). Schacter and Singer’s two-factor theory also brings in the cognitive aspect of the motion, and emphasizes that all motion emerges when we experience physiological arousal open (first factor) and then use cognitive attributions label the bodily arousal (second factor) as a particular emotion.

10.5.2 Explain the central idea that underlies basic emotion theories (BETs), and the strengths and weaknesses of Ekman's BET

BTEs share a common belief that emotions are brief states that arise after cognitive appraisals of events, and involve broadly distinct expressions, Physiology, and behavior; As a result, they believe that emotions fall into broad categories. Paul Ekman argued that there are at least six basic emotions: surprise, happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear. Basic emotions are fast and automatic, they appear early in infancy, they are universal among humans, and they are shared with other mammals.

10.6 Psychology and Your Skill Set: Positivity and Optimism

10.6.1 Outline what is meant by the terms positive psychology, subjective well-being, and optimism

The field of positive psychology focuses on people's experience of positive emotions, optimism (seeing the positive side of events that occur), and subjective well-being (people's view about the quality of their lives). Optimism can help you overcome and grow from negative events; However, “unrealistic optimism” can cause people to ignore preventable risks period to some extent, optimism is a stable characteristic (dispositional optimism), but is also considered a skill that can be developed.

10.6.2 Outline the three elements of explanatory style

Your explanatory style (the way that you evaluate the events that you experience) has three components: pervasiveness (to the extent to which you believe the event can impact others areas of your life), permanence (the extent to which you believe the conditions will last), and the extent to which the events reflecting that are personal (that is, how much they reflect your unchanging characteristics versus changeable circumstances).

10.6.3 Create a plan that will allow you to be more positive and optimistic about an issue that you find challenging

Developing an explanatory style that allows for optimistic assessments about permanence, pervasiveness, and the role of personal factors and events that you experience is important in both personal and professional settings. Specifically, a positive explanatory style can help you with such things as building relationships and maintaining a resilient attitude in the face of challenges. We hope that after reading the section comma you'll be able to be better able to use what you know about the three elements of explanatory style to help you tackle all the things both positive and negative that life sends your way.