5: Motivation 1

Introduction to Motivation and Emotion

  • Everyone needs love, motivation, and emotion.

  • Focus on understanding motivation and emotion in upcoming lectures.

The Importance of Motivation and Emotion in Psychology

  • Psychology extends beyond clinical work to various research areas: clinical, learning and cognition, behavioral perception, social neuropsychology, forensic, and developmental psychology.

  • Motivation and emotion are crucial to understanding behaviors across all psychological fields.

Defining Motivation

  • Motivation is defined as the force or urge that drives organisms to behave as they do.

  • It influences behaviors related to fundamental needs like hunger, thirst, and social affiliations.

Key Concepts of Motivation

  • Direction: Motivation causes either approach (moving toward a stimulus) or avoidance (moving away).

  • Intensity: Motivation can vary in strength from low to high.

  • Conflicting Motivations: Individuals often experience competing motivations, leading to complications such as inaction or the need for self-control.

Importance of Emotion in Motivation

  • Emotion often serves as a catalyst for motivation; blocked motivations can lead to various emotional responses.

  • There are positive approach emotions (e.g., joy) and negative avoidance emotions (e.g., fear).

  • Anger can also motivate approach behavior, complicating traditional views of motivations being solely positive or negative.

Evolutionary Approach to Motivation

  • Darwin's perspective emphasizes instincts as unlearned responses essential for adapting to the environment.

  • Instincts facilitate behaviors that promote reproductive success, often occurring outside conscious awareness.

  • Important motivations may include mating, parenting, and social relationships.

Learning and Experience's Role in Instincts

  • Instinctive behaviors can be influenced or modified by individual learning experiences.

  • Examples of instinctive or unlearned responses include maternal defense responses or fear reactions to perceived threats.

Preparedness Theory

  • Phobias often relate back to evolutionary threats, suggesting an innate biological tendency to react to certain dangers (e.g., snakes, heights).

  • Research indicates that people can develop fears of threats they have never encountered due to evolutionary conditioning.

Drive Reduction Theory

  • A behaviorist approach suggests that biological needs (e.g., hunger, thirst) create drives that lead to motivated behavior aimed at reducing deprivation.

  • Not all motivation results from biological needs; there exist secondary, learned drives that influence behavior without direct biological deprivation (e.g., the motivation for money).

Behaviorist Theories of Motivation

  • Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory by Jeffrey Gray highlights three key motivational systems:

    • Behavioral Approach System (BAS): Associated with approach motivations and positive rewards.

    • Fight-Flight-Freeze System: Related to avoidance motivations in response to threats.

    • Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS): Involved when there’s a conflict between approach and avoidance motivations.

Conclusion

  • Motivation is a broad topic covering instinctive behaviors, learned experiences, and biological drives, impacting various areas of psychology including clinical applications and understanding personality.

  • Future lectures will delve deeper into specific motivations and behavior implications.