Motivation and Emotion Lecture Notes

MOTIVATION

Intrinsic Motivation (from within)
- Key components include:
- Autonomy: The desire to direct one's own life.
- Mastery: The urge to improve or become proficient at skills.
- Purpose: Involvement in activities that align with personal values or goals.
Extrinsic Motivation (from outside)
- Key elements include:
- Compensation: Monetary or material rewards from performing a task.
- Punishment: Consequences that discourage behavior.
- Reward: Positive reinforcement to encourage desired behaviors.

Intrinsic motivation diminishes when extrinsic motivation is introduced.
- Example: When individuals start to receive monetary payment for an activity they initially performed for enjoyment, it can lead to a decline in their intrinsic motivation.
Some research suggests that specific types of reinforcement, such as praise, can actually enhance intrinsic motivation.
Explanations for Differences:
1. Type of reinforcement offered.
2. Expectation of external rewards.

Proposed by William James who introduced the instinct theory of motivation.
Suggested instincts include:
- Protection of offspring (e.g., mother's instinct to protect her baby).
- Urge to consume sugar (e.g., taste-driven instinct to lick sugar).
- Instincts regarding hunting and obtaining prey.
Criticism: This theory has been critiqued for neglecting the influence of learning in shaping behavior.

Maintains that the preservation of homeostasis is essential in directing behavior.
Homeostasis: A state of physiological equilibrium.
- Deviations from homeostasis create physiological needs, which in turn produce psychological drive states that cause behaviors aimed at restoring homeostasis.

Postulates that there exists an optimal level of arousal that individuals strive to maintain.
- Underarousal: Can lead to boredom, prompting individuals to seek stimulation.
- Overarousal: Results in behaviors aimed at reducing arousal levels.
- It is identified that moderate levels of arousal are optimal for performance.

Introduced by Yerkes and Dodson in 1908.
States that optimal arousal levels are task-dependent.
- General Principle:
- Task performance is generally best when arousal is in the mid-range.
  - For difficult tasks, lower levels of arousal lead to optimal performance.
  - For simple tasks, higher levels of arousal enhance performance.

Self-Efficacy: The belief in one's own capabilities to accomplish a task.
- Albert Bandura emphasized the role of self-efficacy in motivating behavior.
- Motivation is influenced by the consequences of behaviors.
- Beliefs about one’s abilities shape personal behaviors and goals.
Social Motives:
- Encompass the need for achievement, affiliation, and intimacy.

Represents a framework suggesting that individuals must satisfy lower-level needs before addressing higher-level needs.
- Example: A person lacking basic necessities such as food, water, and shelter is unlikely to focus on emotional or relational needs.

Mood:
- A prolonged, less intense affective state.
- Not typically a direct response to an experience.
- May not be consciously recognized or intentional.
Emotion:
- A subjective state of being defined by feelings.
- More intense and occurs as a direct response to an experience.
- Consciously experienced and intentional.
- Involves physiological and psychological appraisal, along with subjective experiences.

Posits that physiological arousal precedes the experience of emotion.
- Example: Encountering a snake leads to heart pounding and sweating, which are then interpreted as fear.

Proposes that emotional experience and physiological reactions occur simultaneously and independently.
- Example: Seeing a snake causes heart pounding and immediate fear response at the same time.

Suggests that emotion is based on physiological arousal and cognitive label.
- Encountering a snake causes heart pounding and sweating, followed by the cognitive label of being scared, leading to the emotional experience of fear.

Asserts that an emotional response is determined by cognitive appraisal where individuals evaluate situations before experiencing an emotional response.
- The appraisal leads to physiological reaction (heart pounding, sweating) followed by the emotional experience of fear.

Central to the mediation of emotional responses and memory processing.
- Hypothalamus: Involved in activating the sympathetic nervous system during emotional reactions.
- Thalamus: Functions as a sensory relay center; neurons project towards the amygdala and higher cortical areas for further processing of emotional cues.
- Amygdala: Plays a critical role in processing emotional information and directing it to cortical structures.
- Hippocampus: Integrates emotional experiences with cognitive processes.