Chapter 9: Motivation

Homeostasis

.A tendency to maintain a balanced or constant internal state; the regulation of any aspect of body chemistry, such as blood glucose, around a particular level.

Drive

A psychological state that, by creating arousal, motivates an organism to engage in a behavior to satisfy a need.

Arousal

A sense of psychological tension that encourages you to do something to reduce the drive. Psychological activation(such as increased brain activity) or increased autonomic responses (such as increased heart rate, sweating, or muscle tension). Everyone has a different level of optimal arousal that motivates us to behave in certain ways. People with a lower level tend to prefer calmer activities. Those with higher levels tend to prefer exciting activities.

Need

A state of biological or social deficiency.

Drive Reduction

According to drive reduction, a need is a deficiency in some area that creates a drive, an internal psychological state. The drive motivates a person to behave in ways to satisfy that need.

Primary emotions:

Also called basic emotions, are evolutionary adaptive, shared across cultures, and associated with specific physical states. Anger, fear, sadness, disgust, happiness, and sometimes surprise and contempt.

Need Hierarchy

An arrangement of needs, in which basic survival needs must be met before people can satisfy higher needs.

Emotion

An immediate, specific, negative or positive response to environmental events or internal thoughts.

Secondary Emotions:

Blends of primary emotions such as remorse, guilt, submission, shame and anticipation.

Three components of emotion:

Emotions are based on physical, bodily responses. It effects thoughts and actions. They are subjective so each person experiences emotions differently. 1. Prepare for action.. 2. Shape future behavior... 3. Help effective interactions with others...

9.7 Emotions are personal but labeled and described constantly:

Emotions are immediate, specific, negative or positive responses to environmental events or internal thoughts. Even though emotions are experienced personally, they are labeled and described consistently. Primary emotions are universal across cultures.Secondary emotions are blends of the primary emotions. Emotions have both valence, positive or negative, and a level of arousal that ranges from high to low.

Incentive

External objects or external goals, rather than internal drives, that motivate behavior.

Motivation

Factors of differing strength that energize, direct, or sustain behavior.

How do emotions influence behavior?

Help people respond appropriately to situations. Influence thoughts and behavior that increases likelihood people will survive and reproduce, adaptive. Help promote social relationships. Help to teach rules, necessary for living in groups. People detect emotions and try to regulate them in others. Emotions help you achieve certain goals, including surviving and creating social connections by preparing you for actions aimed at achieving those goal.

Drives become Habit

If a behavior reduces a drive over time, it becomes habit. The likelihood a behavior will occur is due to both drive and habit. For instance, if you feel hungry at night, you eat a late night snack, the snack reduces hunger, the outcome reinforces further late-night snacking which becomes a habit.

9.4 Motivation to eat is also influenced by learning:

Learning influences the motivation to eat through four factors, classical conditioning, familiarity, flavor, and culture.

Extrinsic Motivation

Influences people to act in certain c ways to obtain external goals.

Intrinsic Motivation

Influences people to act in certain ways because those activities have value, are pleasurable, or both.

9.2 Some Behaviors Are Motivated for Their Own Sake:

Intrinsic motivation influences people to act in certain ways because those activities have values, are pleasurable, or both. Extrinsic motivation influences people to act in certain ways to obtain external goals. Receiving an extrinsic reward may reduce intrinsic motivation.

Four basic qualities of motivation:

Motivation is activating- it stimulates you to do something. (Desire to be fit motivates you to run each morning) Motivation is directive - it guides your behaviors towards meeting specific goals or needs. (Hunger motivates you to eat. Pride or fear motivates you to study.) Motivation helps you sustain your behaviors until your achieve your goals or satisfy your needs. (Hunger knaws at you until you eat.Desire to win drives you to practice.) Motives differ in strength deepening on the person or situation.

9.1 Many Factors Influence Motivation:

Motivations include factors of differing strengths that activate, direct, and sustain behaviors that satisfy a need. Needs, drives, arousal, and pleasure are internal factors that affect motivation for particular behaviors. Incentives are external factors that affect our notivation to act in particular ways.

9.5 People have a need to belong:

People have a fundamental need for social relationships and to be in groups. This need to belong motivates people to make friends and avoid social exclusion. But this need creates feelings of emptiness and despair in the absence of other people.

How is motivation affected by:

Needs: A need is a state of deficiency either biological or social in nature. Failure to satisfy needs lead to physical or psychological problems, and so people are motivated to engage in behaviors that satisfy those needs. Maslow's need theory. Drives: When needs are unmet it results in a drive, which is a psychological state that motivates a person to engage in a behavior that will satisfy the need. When the need is satisfied, the drive is reduced. Drive reduction theory. Arousal: Drives create arousal, and people are motivated to engage in behavior that fits their optimal level of arousal. Arousal theory and optimal level of arousal. Pleasure: People are motivated to engage in behaviors that make them feel good and avoid behavior that causes pain. Pleasure principle.

9. 10 Most people try to regulate their emotional states:

People may try to regulate their emotional states with thought suppression, or ruminations, but research suggests these techniques are not effective.Instead, people can successfully regulate their negative emotional states by using three strategies: positive reappraisal (changing your thoughts about an event), humor, and distraction.

9.6 People have a need to achieve long-term goals:

People with high achievement motivation are morel likely to achieve long-term goals,especially when they have good goals, have a high sense of self efficiency, can delay gratification and have grit,which lets them persevere towards their goal.

Factors that motivate behavior:

Satisfaction of needs: A need is a state of being deficient in biological or social factors. That deficiency motivates the person to engage in behavior that make up for it, that is, helps satisfy the need. (Your job does not pay well enough to guarantee you can pay rent, so you take a second job.) Drive reduction: A drive is an internal psychological state that motivates behaviors that will satisfy a certain need. What the need is satisfied, the drive is reduced. You feel cold in your apartment, the feeling creates a drive that motivates you to put on a sweater to satisfy your need for warmth. Once you feel warm, the drive is reduced. Optimal level of arousal: Each person has an optimal level of arousal, somewhere from high to low. People are motivated to engage in behaviors that fit with their preferred level of arousal. Pleasure Principle: The pleasure principle says that people are motivated to engage in behaviors that make them feel good and to avoid behaviors that cause them pain. Incentives: external factors that motivate behaviors.Knowing you can win the championship is a good incentive that motivates you to practice hard.

9.8 Three major theories explain your emotions:

The James-Lange theory states that specific bodily responses create the perception of emotions. The Cannon-Bard theory proposes that processing in the brain simultaneously activates both bodily responses and the perception of emotions. The Two-Factor theory states that people interpret bodily changes, which leads them to label their emotions. People often experience misattribution of arousal where they wrongly think that their emotions are caused by their situations.

9.9 Your body and brain influence your emotions:

The emotions that people experience are influenced by physiological responses in the body, such as increased or decreased blood pressure and breathing rate. People's perceptions of those responses in certain areas of their bodies influence what emotions they experience. People's experience of emotion is also influenced by processing in certain areas of the brain, such as the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. The amygdala processes emotional significance of stimuli and is associated with emotional learning, memory of emotional events, and the interpretation of facial expressions of emotions. The amygdala processes emotions in two ways: a fast route, where sensory input moves through the thalamus and directly to the amygdala for immediate response, and a slow route where sensory input moves through the thalamus and then cortical sensory processing areas,such as the primary visual cortex for more careful processing first.

9.3 Motivation to Eat is Affected by Biology:

The motivation to eat is not strongly influenced by signals from the stomach. Instead, this motivation is influenced primarily by three factors: signals from the bloodstream (glucose), hormones (insulin, ghrelin, and leptin), and specific regions of the brain (hypothalamus, gustatory cortex, and limbic system).

Yerkes-Dodson Law

The principle that performance increases with arousal only up to a point, beyond which performance decreases. Describes the relationship between arousal, motivation, and performance.

Optimal level of arousal:

Theory arguing that humans are driven to increase or decrease arousal to produce a comfortable level that is not over- nor under stimulating.

Needs Theory

Theory of motivation positing that people are motivated to take action to satisfy basic and higher-level needs. (level 1) Physiological Needs, (level 2) Safety and Security, (level 3) Relationships, Love and Affection, (level 4) Self Esteem, (level 5) Self Actualization

9. 11 You use facial expressions to interpret emotions:

We communicate emotion through facial expressions, especially with the eyes and mouth. Certain expressions of emotions are universally recognized, such as anger, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. In addition, expressions of pride also seem to be innate, because they are seen even in blind people who have never observed pride.