Motivation

Motivation: the set of factors that activate, direct, and sustain behavior in pursuit of a goal.

Biological Factors of Motivation

Needs: biological requirements to stay alive and healthy

Drives: psychological tension states are created when there is a deficiency in the need. Primary for innate needs (hunger, thirst, escape from danger) and Secondary for learned needs (success, achievements, money)

Homeostasis: the body’s design to maintain a balanced internal state with factors including internal body temp, water intake, etc, often regulated by the hypothalamus. (NOT a theory, look at drive-reduction)

Arousal: the activation of the autonomic nervous

system

Yerkes-Dodson (NOT OPTIMAL AROUSAL): the

relationship between performance and arousal,

graphed as an inverted U.

Evolutionary Theory

● Replaces instinct theory

● Adaptive/survival functions of behavior

● Natural selection

Drive-Reduction Theory: the aim of motivation is

homeostasis, and the deficiency of a biological need

leads to an internal psychological tension (drive0

motivates individuals to act in such a way that they may fulfill the need and return the body to homeostasis. (does not explain non-innate behaviors)

Optimal Arousal Theory: the aim of motivation is a personally preferred level of physiological stimulation (arousal level meaning activation of the autonomic nervous system) in order to escape from boredom by increasing arousal or escaping from stress by decreasing arousal.

Social Motivation

Affiliation Motivation: an idea of motivation that associates the drive to attach and make connections with and to other people.

● The belongingness and love needs step of Maslow’s pyramid

● Evolutionary: early humans were motivated to make social bonds in order to survive Incentive Theory: the aim of motivation is a positive reinforcement, influenced by the pull of an external stimuli. This is driven by curiosity

Extrinsic v Intrinsic Motivation

● Extrinsic: external drive or incentive

○ Reward, avoid punishment, grades, praise, money

● Intrinsic: internal drive or incentive

○ Curiosity, pride, interest, mastery, meaning, achievement

Self-Efficacy: the notion that motivation is impacted by the differences that we have in our belief to master a specific task — this is a part of Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theories. ● High self-efficacy: belief in one’s ability to master a task characterised by greater intrinsic motivation and an increased willingness to accept challenges. Also may create persistence after setbacks.

● Low self-efficacy: uncertainty about one’s ability to master a task characterized by reduced intrinsic motivation and an avoidance of challenges. Also may decrease persistence after setbacks.

● Self-efficacy vs Locus of Control

○ Self efficacy: high or low belief in one’s ability to master a specific task ○ Locus of control: beliefs about the causes of what happens to us and whether they are internal or external.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory: the notion that the aim of motivation is to reduce the tension caused by an inconsistency in one’s thoughts and beliefs; this tension, if great enough, motivates behavior.

Achievement Motivation: a drive learned from nature and culture, more likely to come from those with high self-efficacy (measured by self-reports).

● Includes the esteem needs & self-transcendence

needs on Maslow’s pyramid

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory (Humanist): the aim

of motivation is to fulfill successively higher levels of rank

ordered needs, and the lower needs must be met before

individuals are driven to satisfy higher-level needs.

Hunger motivation (biopsychosocial)

● Hunger may be satiated by stomach muscle

contractions only for a brief period

● Glucose (nutrient) and insulin and glucagon

hormones from the pancreas drive you to eat. Ghrelin

from the stomach and orexin from the hypothalamus,

along with PYY in the digestive tract and leptin in

the fat cells do the same thing.

● The limbic system craves for specific foods, and the

hypothalamus controls the basic drives for survival,

and the frontal lobes control taste cues and rewards for those cues.

● The lateral hypothalamus are hunger sensors, and when stimulated the hunger is increased and when destroyed/suppressed, the hunger is completely eliminated. ● The ventromedial hypothalamus is the fullness sensor. When stimulated, hunger decreases, but when destroyed/suppressed, hunger increases.

● Cognition (moods and thoughts) affect hunger, conditioning and external incentives will do the same.

● Social rules and cultural traditions (what you eat, when you eat, spicy food vs savory) Emotion

● Emotion: considers there areas, physiological arousal (in the body), cognitive and affective (mind), and behavioral (expressions, gestures, actions)

● Evolutionary Theories: innate emotions are naturally selected and so are the corresponding facial expressions. For example, disgust prevents you from eating poisonous foods.

○ Detecting and emoting specific emotions has adaptive value

THEORIES

James-Lange Theory: the emotion theory that believes the emotion provoking stimuli causes autonomic nervous system arousal (ex heart beats faster), causing the brain to have an emotion. (no cognition)

● Strengths: stimuli create physiological responses which may lead to emotion, cross-cultural consistency with this

● Weakness: diverse emotions can have similar responses, does not consider cognitive factors, and arousal can occur without emotion (think exercise).

Facial Feedback Theory: activity in the facial muscles that create expressions cue the brain to experience the emotion expressed.

Cannon-Bard Theory: an emotion provoking stimulus leads the hypothalamus to send simultaneous messages to the body for a physiological reaction nadn the mind for the experience of an emotion.

● Strengths: explains the rapid experience of emotion and physical reactions ● Weaknesses: thalamus is not the center for emotion (Many brain areas), does not consider cognitive factors.

Joseph LeDoux’s Dual Pathway Theory: the stimulus travels on two pathways at the same time: the slower route to the thalamus, sensory cortex, the frontal lobe, and then the amygdala. The other creates an automatic reaction in the body.

Schachter-Singer Two-Factor Theory: an emotion provoking stimuli, with two components of a physiological reaction and a cognitive label (your interpretation) leads to the experience of an emotion.

● Strengths: experimental research supports this

● Weaknesses: does not account for emotional experiences that happen to quickly for cognitive labeling

Richard Lazarus’s Cognitive Appraisal Theory: theory that cognition (effortful or unconscious) happens before the subjective experience of emotion. There are two components: primary appraisal, deciding if the event will affect an individual personally, and secondary appraisal, deciding how one should deal with the event.

UNIVERSAL EMOTIONS

● Anger, fear, disgust, sadness, and happiness are cross-cultural

Paul Ekmen and Cross-Cultural Displays of Emotion

● Regardless of cultural background, individuals can ID emotions the same based on facial expression

Display rules: the culture of the individual helps determine when and to what degree one displays spontaneous emotion.

STRESS (definition above)

● The fight or flight response is the reaction to physiological stress

● Physiological Stress Response

○ Sympathetic-Adrenal-Medullary (SAM) System

■ Nervous and endocrine FAST response to acute stressors

■ Hypothalamus activates adrenal glands to secrete adrenaline (fight or flight)

■ After stressors ends, the parasympathetic nervous system returns the body to homeostasis

○ Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenocortical (HPA) System

■ Nervous and endocrine SLOW response to chronic stressors

■ Hypothalamus stimulates the pituitary gland to stimulate the adrenal

glands to produce cortisol

■ Cortisol helps the body cope with chronic stressors and return to

homeostasis

● Stress & Illness

○ Stress makes you vulnerable to illness

General Adaptation Syndrome: the general state of ALARM has the highest level of stress hormones. If the stressor is not removed, the body goes into RESISTANCE with elevated levels of stress hormones and the body attempts to adapt to the higher arousal state. Finally comes EXHAUSTION, because the body’s internal resources are depleted.

Distress: stress from unpleasant experiences

Eustress: positive stress resulting from pursuing challenging but achievable goals Richard Lazarus Appraisal Theory

● Cognitive response to stress is appraisal

○ Primary Appraisal: evaluate threat/stressor

○ Secondary Appraisal: choose coping method

■ Problem-focused coping: strategies that deal with the stressor head on ■ Emotion-focused coping: methods to relieve or regulate reactions to a stressor

Lewin and Motivational Conflict Theory

● Approach-approach conflict: you must make a choice, but both are good. ● Avoidance-avoidance conflict: you must make a choice, but both are bad ● Approach-avoidance conflict: you are attracted to but repelled by the same goal (someone offers you a donut but it’s empty calories but it tastes so good)

● Double approach-avoidance conflict: two choices, both with good or bad options (picking college)

● IN AN FRQ: Indicate what is liked and what is disliked (Be super forward!), and indicate that a difficult choice must be made.

Personality Theories

Personalities Inventories: a longer, specialized survey for personality theories. ● Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory: a personality inventory designed to identify traits that might correspond with disorders.

● Factor Analysis: a method for considering relationships between variables (how is question 2 different from question 4?)

● Objective Surveys/Inventories: surveys that can be scored by a machine or routine grading.

● Projective Tests: a person is shown an ambiguous stimuli (picture or scene) and a trained professional interprets it

○ Helps because people do not have self-insight, removes the Hawthorne Effect

○ Hinders because the study relief on other people to interpret results (They may be biased)

○ Thematic Apperception Test: a neutral scene is shown to the client, who will write or narrate a caption or explanations.

○ Rorschach Inkblot Test: a set of cards shown to a client with ink blots that look like pictures, and their responses will be interpreted for a pattern.

Determining Reliability and Validity of Personality Tests

● Reliable: Are the results stable over multiple attempts? Does mood matter? What stage of life is the person in?

● Valid: Does the test measure what it says it measures? What is the goal of the test (ex employment or treatment)? (Each method is different for different applications) Psychoanalytic

● Can be used interchangeably with psychodynamic

● Sigmund Freud: unconscious processes and conflict makes the personality ● Animal urges (the ID, hypothalamus) vs. Society (superego, frontal lobe) ● Early childhood is super important (but still unconscious, e.g. you don’t remember weaning)

● Parts of Personality

○ ID - infancy, pleasure principle

○ Ego - toddlerhood, reality principle

○ Superego - conscience, a blend of society, religion, parents

● Neo Freudians: unconscious processes create personality

○ Alfred Adler’s Inferiority Complex: instead of unconscious sexual urges (Freud), we had an unconscious urge to prove ourselves superior to our younger selves and others.

○ Carl Jung’s Collective Unconscious Idea: the idea that we share a common unconscious. This explains why we have similar dreams as people we’ve never met. Perhaps it is instinct, passed down from generations

○ Hermann Rorschach’s Ink Blot

Behaviorist

● B.F. Skinner - was not known for personality, but we can apply operant conditioning to personality anyway

○ Personality is the result of countless interactions between behaviors,

reinforcements, and punishments (if you are rewarded with friends or a cookie every time you approach a new group of people, do you become an extrovert?)

● Albert Bandura (Bobo Doll Guy): we can apply social cognitive idea for him ○ A model demonstrates a behavior, and the child must have the ability and motivation to imitate that behavior

○ We are not simply trained, we are actively evaluating, reacting, and changing our environment which then continues to shape us.

Humanistic: rejection of fatalistic ideas that the unconscious or that our environment decides who we will be

● Abraham Maslow: we are motivated to grow, change, and seek who we could or should become under the right conditions.

○ Highest level is self-actualization (think about his pyramid)

● Carl Rogers

○ Incongruence: when there is a difference between what people see themselves as and what they want to be or think they should be.

○ Ideal self: how a person WISHES they were

○ Perceived self: how a person sees themselves

○ Unconditional Positive Regard: support and positivity even when there is disagreement

Culture & Personality

● Self-esteem: general feeling of worth

● Self-efficacy: your idea of your ability to perform on a task (Bandura loves this) ● Collectivistic Culture

○ Identity and self-esteem are tied to one’s position in a group or family. Well being might be connected to position in group how much you contribute to group’s success

● Individualistic Culture

○ Identity and self-esteem are tied to how the individual does, internal locus of control, more competitive

○ Correlated with less happiness

Trait Theories

● Factor analysis: mathematical technique to find

significant relationships between variables

● Hans Eyesenck

○ See the pic

● Five-Factor Model

○ Openness (low score: loves routine, high score: curious), conscientiousness (low score: careless and impulsive, high score: dependable, considers consequences), extraversion (low score: quiet and withdrawn, high score: outgoing, seeks social contact), agreeableness (low score: critical of others, high score: trusting & empathetic), neuroticism (low score: even-tempered, does not feel worried or sad, high score: prone to anxiety)