Ch. 8 Study Guide

Chapter 8 - Motivation & Emotion 

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Motivation & Emotion

• Motivation - the reason or reasons someone has for behaving a certain way. 

• Emotion - a natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one’s circumstances, mood, or relationships with others. 

• Homeostasis - a balanced internal state. 

• Drive Reduction Theory - a need that is biological, and a drive to fulfill that need. 

  • If we do not eat, drink, or are cold or physically hurt, we are not in homeostasis, and a ‘drive’ is created to get back to homeostasis. 

• Drives are categorized into primary and secondary drives. 

  • Primary Drives - biological drives like thirst, hunger, warmth, shelter, and sex. 

  • Secondary Drives - learned drives, like how we have learned to acquire money because money can get us a house, food, clothing, etc. 

    • Secondary drives help get us primary drives. 

• Criticism of Drive Reduction Theory - it cannot explain why someone would strive to be an Olympic athlete or why a scientist might want to conduct basic research. 

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Arousal Theory

• States that we seek an optimum level of arousal. Each individual has a different need for excitement or arousal, and we are motivated by activities that will help us achieve their own optimum. 

• Yerkes-Dodson Law - states that performance improves with arousal, but only up to a certain point.

  • Most of us perform best with an optimum level of arousal, although this varies with different activities. 

  • We might perform well at an easy task with a very high level of arousal, but the same high level of arousal would prevent us from performing a difficult task. 

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Opponent Process Theory

• Attempts to explain addiction. States that people are usually at a normal, or baseline state, and that move away from the baseline state. 

• We feel good from drinking coffee, because caffeine blocks certain “tiredness” neurotransmitters from binding to neurons in our brain. 

  • We eventually feel an opponent-process, meaning a motivation to return to our baseline. 

  • Withdrawal occurs, and we want to relieve withdrawal symptoms, so we drink more coffee; eventually, our baseline is adjusted down. 

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Incentive Theory

• Incentives are external stimuli that motivate behavior. 

• Incentives are stimuli that we are drawn to due to learning. We learn to associate some stimuli with rewards and others with punishment and we are motivated to seek rewards. 

• Criticism of Maslow - people sometimes act in ways that do not correspond to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. 

  • Example: feeding children before yourself. 

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Biological Basis for Hunger

• The hypothalamus monitors and helps to control body chemistry. It regulates glucose and insulin. 

• Electrical stimulation of the lateral hypothalamus causes animals to eat. Destruction of the lateral hypothalamus eliminates hunger, and the animal does not eat. 

• Electrical stimulation of the ventromedial hypothalamus causes an animal to stop eating. If this area is destroyed, the animal will continue to eat. 

• Set Point Theory - describes how the hypothalamus might decide what impulse to send (eat or not eat). The hypothalamus wants to maintain a certain body weight; tells us to eat or stop eating when some set point is reached and raises or lowers our metabolic rate to maintain a certain weight. 

• Psychological factors in hunger: External vs. Internal

  • Externals are individuals motivated to eat by external cues such as the attractiveness of the food, availability of food, whether a McDonald’s is nearby. 

  • Internals are individuals less affected by the presence and presentation of food and respond to hunger more from internal processes. 

• Bulimia - people who suffer from bulimia eat a large amount of food in a short period of time, and then get rid of the food by vomiting, excessive exercise, or by using laxatives. 

• Anorexia Nervosa - people who suffer from anorexia starve themselves to below 85% of their normal body weight. The vast majority are women. 

• The difference between an anorexic and bulimic person is weight. Anorexic people are generally 85% below their weight while bulimics tend to be of average weight. 

• Causes of anorexia and bulimia - emphasis on body weight in a specific culture can have very significant impacts. 

• Obesity - people who are severely overweight. They could have unhealthy eating habits or be genetically predisposed to eat more. The heritability of obesity is generally seen as being between 40% and 70%. 

• Genetics and eating disorders - having family with prior eating disorders increases likelihood of having a disorder. 

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Sexual Motivation

• William Masters and Virginia Johnson Documented sexual response cycle in men and women. 

  • Initial Excitement - genital areas become engorged with blood, respiration and heart rate increases. 

  • Plateau Phase - respiration and heart rate continue at elevated phase, genitals secrete fluid in prep for intercourse. 

  • Orgasm - rhythmic genital contractions that help conception.

  • Resolution Phase - respiration and heart rate return to normal. 

• Homosexuality - not related to traumatic childhood experiences, parenting styles, the quality of relationships with parents, masculinity, or femininity, or whether raised by heterosexual or homosexual parents. Some researchers believe environmental influences probably affect sexual orientation; these factors have not yet been identified. 

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Achievement Motivation

• Tries to explain motivations behind more complex behaviors. Studies find that some people have high achievement motivation and feel motivated to challenge themselves more than others. 

• Extrinsic Motivators - rewards that we get for accomplishments from outside ourselves. 

• Intrinsic Motivators - rewards we get internally, such as enjoyment from hobbies, work, friends, family.

• Knowing what type of motivation an individual responds to can give parents, managers, leaders, etc, insight into what strategies to use to get things done. 

• Studies show that if we want advantageous behavior to continue, intrinsic motivation is most effective. 

• Extrinsic motivators are very effective for short periods of time, and the behavior underlying them will disappear shortly after the external reward disappears. 

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Management Theory

• Theory X - some managers believe that employees will work only if rewarded with benefits or threatened with punishment. 

• Theory Y - managers believe that employees are internally motivated to do good work and policies should encourage this internal motive. 

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Types of Conflict

• Approach - Approach - when you must choose between two desirable outcomes. 

• Avoidance - Avoidance - when you must choose between two undesirable outcomes. 

• Approach - Avoidance - when one event or goal has both attractive and unattractive features. 

• Multiple Approach - Avoidance - choosing between two or more things, each of which has both desirable and undesirable features. 

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Theories of Emotion

• James - Lange Theory of Emotion - we feel emotion because of biological stress signals. 

  • If a dog barks loudly at us, our heart rate increases, we begin to perspire, our breathing increases, and because of these biological stress signals, we then feel a fearful emotion. 

• Cannon - Bard Theory of Emotion - the biological changes and cognitive awareness of the emotional state occur simultaneously. The thalamus is said to be responsible for both biological changes and cognitive awareness of emotions. After receiving information from the environment, it sends signals to our neocortex and autonomic nervous system. 

• Stanley Schachter’s Two Factor Theory - showed that people already physiologically excited, experienced more intense emotions than people who are not already physiologically excited after both groups are exposed to the same stimulus. 

  • Ex, being more excited after a quick jog. 

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Nonverbal Expressions of Emotion

• Researchers established that people from different cultures are able to label six facial expressions accurately. 

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Stress

• Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe developed the Social Readjustment Rating Scale to measure using life-changing units. 

• A person who scores very high on the SSRS is more likely to have stress-related diseases than a person with a low score. 

• Hans Selylye’s General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) - our biological response to different physical and emotional stressors. The response is very consistent. Has three phases: Alarm, Resistance, Exhaustion.

  • Alarm Reaction - heart rate incincreases, blood is diverted from other body functions to muscles needed to react. The organism readies itself to meet the challenge through activation of the sympathetic nervous system.

  • Resistance - body remains physiologically ready. Hormones like cortisol are released to maintain this state of readiness. If the resistance stage lasts too long, the body will deplete its resources. 

  • Exhaustion - the parasympathetic nervous system returns our physiological state to normal. We can become more vulnerable to disease in this stage, esp if our resources are depleted. 

• Seyle’s model explains some of the documented problems associated with extended periods of stress. Excessive stress can contribute to both physical diseases such as some forms of ulcers and heart conditions, and emotional difficulties.

• Perceived lack of control over events exacerbates the harmful effects of stress.

• Rats given control over the duration of electric shocks are less likely to get ulcers than rats without such control.

• Control over events tends to lessen stress, while a perceived lack of control generally makes the event more stressful.

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