Unit 4 Psychology

Motivation and Emotion

*Both have very strong biological underpayne

*Both influenced by social, cultural, and psychological factors

  • Motivation

    • Refers to processes that direct an organism toward a goal

    • Appetitive conditioning-organism has to want the thing being put forth (IE for food to work organism has to be happy)

    • Psychology of eating is a new topic than the concept of motivation

    • Whaling vessel (Essex) (early 1800’s) the Essex was hunted and attacked by a male sperm whale. Assumed that the whale thought the hull of the ship was another male whale.

    • (1919-1920) Walter Cannon believed stomach grumbling was the primary cause of hunger. Wanted to study the correlation between hunger cues and stomach contractions. Swallowed balloon attached to stylus to write on paper. Subjectively recorded when he felt most hungry. Found out his stomach contracts and self ratings of hunger were correlated

    • Motivation pushes people to extremes

    • Different types of motivation (see graphic in slide show)

      • Hunger, thirst, sex, temp, excretory, sleep, activity, aggression (all biological motives)

      • Achievement, affiliation, autonomy, nurturance, dominance, exhibition, order, play (all social motives)

    • (Focus on Hunger)

      • Two big theories:

      • Drive theories have been posed to explain hunger motive (earliest theories)-drive is inside of a person (biological mechanisms)

      • Hydraulic models-the longer a person goes without satisfying the drive, the stronger it becomes

      • Drives alone are insufficient to satisfy motivation

      • Incentive Theory (external theory)- argues that different goals have different values (not all food is equally as satisfying (mexican rice and queso vs. jasmine rice with cheddar cheese)

  • Goals are not equal

  • Drive theories are thought of as push factors, incentive theories are thought of as pull theories

  • Homeostasis-body temperature needs to be regulated

  • For biological motives there is a particular range we need to be in to survive (body temperature, hydration,)

  • Psychological motives needed to satisfy social needs (isolation has harmful effects of humans psych)

  • Hunger: a regulatory drive

    • Regulated by a host of biological factors:

      • Genetics (basal metabolic rates and fat stores)

      • Brain regulation (hypothalamus (controls hunger drive) and cortex)

        • Hypothalamus help regulate Four F’s: fighting, fleeing, feeding, F-ing (mating)

      • Blood glucose levels

      • Hormones (insulin, leptin, ghrelin, CCK) (low amounts of leptin signal there aren’t enough fat stores)

      • Signals from the Stomach

    • Why do we eat when we’re not hungry?

      • taste cues, availability, bored, depressed/stressed, time cues, social cues

    • Suicide rates increased since 2010-thought to be tied to the adoption of smartphones by about 90% of the population

  • The French Paradox

    • French cuisine is higher in fat but French people are thinner and have less risk of heart disease than Americans

    • Portion size is the reason-25% larger

    • Lifespan in American is decreasing

  • Cultural Perceptions of Weight

    • people are larger now than they used to be

    • era of the green revolution

    • thin ideal for American women-stronger cultural emphasis for thinness for females than males (social media platforms)

    • Jean T (psychologist) argues that legal age for social media should be 18

    • Eating disorders

      • Anorexia Nervosa-anorexia results in distorted perceptions of themselves (body dysphoria), leads to attempts to lose weight.

      • Bulimia Nervosa-usually don’t have as much dysphoria, more unhappiness with weight

      • anorexia is harder to treat because patients don’t think there is anything wrong with them

  • NOTES FROM 11/10/23

  • Facial Feedback Hypothesis

    • by producing certain muscle movements in your face you get feedback through motor cortex areas in the brain that control emotions (smiling to make yourself feel happy)

  • Arousal vs. Emotion

    • Nervousness increases physiological arousal, lying does not

  • Theories of Emotions

    • James-Lange theory

    • Cannon-Bard there is no chicken or egg-due to subcortical brain you get both emotion and physiological response at the same time

    • Stanley-Schacter Theory-Proposes third most important component to emotion-argues that the first thing is autonomic arousal, emotion is not something that is not automatic, but an interpretation based on deliberative slower thinking. Emotion is a label that is attributed to physiological response. (we determine emotions based on what we think would be appropriate)

    • when given adrenaline injecting the response was enhanced

    • poses possibility that we may misinterpret emotions

  • Procedure of the Dutton Aron experiment

    • Male subjects had just crossed a bridge in a national park-either wobbly or stable bridge.

      the guys that crossed the wobbly bridge should have physiological arousal, the other men should not

      after bridge was crossed a researcher approached the men asking for them to take a survey (half male half female)

      asked to give a rating of an ambiguous image (a women covering her face with a fan)

      the researchers offered a card with their phone number for information of the study-wanted to see if there was a correlation between the wobbly bridge men an if they accepted #, called it, and how sexual they rated the image.

      -did they interpret the arousal to the women they are talking to instead of the bridge

    • Results

      Female: 16/22 men that crossed the stable bridge accepted the #. 18/23 that crossed the wobbly bridge accepted. 2/16 stable called. 9/18 wobbly called. Sexual imagery rating: 1.41 (stable) 2.47 (wobbly)

      Male: 6/22 stable accepted #. 7/23 wobbly accepted #. 1/6 stable called. 2/7 called.

      sexual imagery rating: .61 (stable) .80 (wobbly)

    • Men who crossed wobbly bridge felt the physiological arousal and misattributed the physiological arousal to the female researcher.

  • What is emotion?

    • The components of emotions

      -cognitive Appraisal

  • Emotion

    -the interaction between biology, behavior, and cognitive interpretation