Human Motivation II: Chpt 1 introduction to Motivation

Internal motivation sources

1) biological variables: mechanisms of the body that inspire action. It is a process (instincts/reflex): connections with sensory neurons to make a behavior. Example: gherlin is a stomach hormone that promotes eating. In proportion to how empty it is. 1 of 14 factors of hunger.

Motivation as a journey

1) choice: we have to choose a motive from the many vying for attention. 2) instrumental behavior's: we have to actually do the behavior's to satisfy the motive. (Instrumental behavior's). We aren't talking about a fixed thing. It is a journey. You are always going somewhere and never will reach it. Vary in intensity, duration and frequency. You have many things you want. How does 1 motive win over others? Many people have goals (a motive) but don't do anything about it?

Types of Motivational Research

1) correlation all studies: investigate situations already created in nature; cannot make causal claims. Look at directionality and third variables. What correlates with what? We can correlate various behaviors with situations but can't make causal claims. 2) experimental studies: random assignment to groups, independent variable manipulated, dependent variable measured 3) experiments of nature: Observe effects of naturally occurring events while they're occurring: for example, studying the motivations of hunger strikes as they become progressively hungrier. Observe a group or group before, during, and after the naturally occurring event. Allows us to avoid the directionality problem.

Different sciences focus on different motivations

1) neuroscience focuses on the biological 2) sports psych focuses on arousal and performance 3) health psych focuses on stress and well being 4) social psych and personality focus on self esteem, emotion, personality traits and psychological needs 5) behaviorism focuses on incentives and goals 6) industrial psych focuses on incentives and goals 7) clinical psych focuses on distressing emotions; causes of maladaptive behavior's, amotivation, drug addiction

Linking biological and psychological variabkes

1) reductionism: we can reduce motivation to various neural connections and hormones (brain structures monitor blood sugar and release hormones). Top down: break down to individual components to the micro. 2) emergence: mental processes emerge from brain activity (hunger gives rise to thoughts such as how much we could eat and what we would do to get food). Where it goes vs where it came from. Example hunger moves upward. Bottoms up: hunger moves upward. Why hungry? Blood sugar low, causes biological reaction...

History of Behaviorism

1870 Bill Wullmeth said in Germany that we should analyze psychology separately. We should be introspective, think while we think. Pull apart thinking about thinking. Problem: different people see things differently. JOHN Watson in the USA in the 1900s. Says psychology is not scientific. You must focus only on observable he says. So behaviorism was created. 50 years of behaviorism until Bandura stopped this. He said that we aren't just puppets on a strong. We are a complex mechanism. Behaviorism says that there is no free will and you just don't understand what is manipulating you. So behavior is caused by a stimulus meaning you are not responsible for bad things or credit for good things. Bandura's stopped this way of thinking. We aren't puppets because we pull back. Kids pull parents strings. Everyone is pulling. Whoever pulls the hardest wins. We both pull. Humans pull back and change the environment.

Intrinsic motivation

= push or to be moved into action Schopenhauer states that to be motivated is to be moved into action or to decide on a change in action. Atkinson states that s motive is a person's internal disposition to be concerned with and approach positive incentive and avoid negative incentives. An incentive is the anticipated reward or aversive event available in the environment. The link between incentives and motives was anticipated by Schopenhauer who maintained that it is not possible simply to be motivated. People are always motivated toward something or away from something.

Emotion and motivation

Adaptive universal reactions to stimuli involving both cognition and a physiological feeling. Serves as an internal push. Such as fear.

Motives

An internal disposition that pushes an individual toward some desired end which is the goal. An incentive is a valued feature of the environment that pulls an individual toward it. Emotions push an individual along multiple (channels: affect, physiology, behavior) in order to adapt to the environment. The physical features of the goal, consummatory behavior with the goal object or accompanying subjective feelings all contribute to motivation. As a journey, motivation means that an insidiously tries to reach or achieve various features of an end state or goal. These can be visualized cognitively as objects, experienced as anticipatory behavior's or felt as affect. Cognitive motivation involves visualizing an end state or goal as concrete objects such as food or people. The anticipatory response mechanism is an imaginary consummatory response that serves as a sign of an individual's expectations about the interaction with the goal object. Those predicted feelings promote behavior toward or away from the goal. Motivation can also be represented as a behavioral bounty that begins with the choice of a motive or goal. Once a choice is made, a person is motivated to engage in instrumental behavior that will eventually satisfy the motive or achieve the goal. Although motives and incentives are the causes of behavior, psychological (mental) energy or physical energy (glucose) are necessary to power behavior or thought. Knowledge and competence are necessary if behavior is to occur.

Affective forecasting

Anticipating how we will feel, our affect is the third motivational mechanism. It resembles a weather report but concerns the individual's expected subjective feelings of pain and pleasure. People are less precursor forecasting heir future feelings compared to say visualizing concrete goals and consummatory behaviors. Affective forecasting does motivate behavior but it's predictive accuracy is probably lower than what actually occurs on the trip.

Factors in the establishment and completion of a motivation

Anticipation of the future. Cognitive motivation: visualization of goals which drive you even more. Plans of actions to achieve those goals (implementation intentions). What to do to get what you want. Anticipatory behavior: imagining enjoying the incentive (in the form of minuscule consummation behavior) Affective forecasting: anticipating how we'll feel when the goal is met. Cognitive psychologists think this. Visualization: anticipating how it will feel will drive you to that behavior

Motivation and emotion

Bentham stated that characteristics of stimuli such as intensity, duration, certainty, and closeness enhance pleasure and thus increase their power of motivation. However what is true isn't necessarily true of another person.

Other factors

Completion of a task requires: 1) the energy for motivation 2) knowledge of the activity: know how to do it 3) incentives and competence to perform needed actions: you have to be able to do it. Ability and incentives to keep you to it. Law of attraction: if you want it, the philosophy is that it will happen. But you need more than this, you need knowledge and competence.

What ends Motivation?

Consummating behavior marks the end of motivational sequences. You eat the food. Enjoy the company of others, or receive the college degree. Often accompanied by pleasure, but not as much pleasure as we thought.

Correlational variabke

Contains levels that are measured but not created by the experimenter.

Problems with motivation research

Correlation study advantages: 1) some things can't be manipulated 2) some things are unethical to manipulate 3) greater emotional intensities can be examined correlationalky

Historical incentive theories

Correlation study advantages: 1) some things can't be manipulated 2) some things are unethical to manipulate 3) greater emotional intensities can be examined correlationally

Emotions

From the Latin word "emovere", meaning "to move out" Linked to universal facial expressions Particular emotions move us particular ways Anger move us toward things (fight) Fear moves us away from things (flight)

Physical energy

Has a material existence. It consists mainly in the form of glucose, which powers the brain and muscles. Without glucose, motivation would not be possible. When muscles run low on glucose, an individual feels fatigued and is inclined to rest. The brain is a voracious user of energy and utilizes 25% of all glucose.

Linking External and internal motives

How quickly rats run to water depends on the magnitude (internal) and amount of water at the end (external) External and internal motives more interlinked in humans. Food deprivation can increase the value of money and vice versa. Students entering dining hall considered food deprived, those leaving food dated. Hunger and sated students asked to donate to charity. Hungry students donated less. Hunger raised the incentive value of money because money can satisfy hunger. Those who pictured winning the large lottery with a stronger motive for money are more M&Ms. There are complex links between internal and external.

Bandura's agentic theory

Humans don't react just to environments. They create the circumstances of their lives. Humans are agents of change. They create circumstances to change the environment. You are not a puppet. You pull back.

Aspects of motivation as a journey

Implementation intentions. Choice refers to the selection of the motive or incentive from those vying for satisfaction. The choice becomes the goal. Which option is chosen depends on the intensity of the motive, The attractiveness of the incentive, the likelihood of success, and the amount of effort required to succeed. Choice is only the first step. Next, an individual must be motivated to do what is required to realize her chosen goal. Instrumental behavior's are this motivated activities in which a person engages to satisfy a motive. Aspects of instrumental behavior include duration, frequency, and intensity. Duration or persistence refers to the amount of time a person persists to satisfy a motive. Frequency refers to the rate of engaging in a particular behavior. The intensity or effort of behavior varies directly with motivation.

Knowledge, competence and motivation

In addition to a sufficient amount of energy, knowledge and competence are also required. A student may be motivated to obtain summer employment, to earn a university degree and become a doctor but being motivated is not the sole factor for these events to be realized. The student must also know how to accomplish these goals and be capable of doing so. Cognitive knowledge is important because it enables the individual to evaluate incentives, understand how to attain them and assess the chances of success. Competence means being capable of performing the behavior necessary to achieve the desired end. Thus insidiously may fail to accomplish a task because they did not know how or were not able. Even with sufficient energy, knowledge, and competence, motivation is still the impetus or reason for doing the behavior. It initiates the action. In the study of motivation, we assume that a person as the energy, knowledge and competence to do the behavior.

Links between internal and external motives

Internal dispositions such as motives push us. External dispositions such as incentives and goals pull us. Both combine to enable us to reach goals.

Motivation research

Introspection: observing our motives as we experience them. Maybe you are delusional. Led to the downfall of behaviorism because most of human behavior is internal (thoughts and emotions) But how do we know what's really motivating us? Observing stimuli and responses But how do we observe internal motives

Push and pull

Little blue engine's journey illustrates both the push and pull aspects of motivation. Internal dispositions are referred to as motives (desire, want, longing) push individuals toward some end such as Blue Engines's desire pushed it toward the next town. External objects are referred to as incentives and goals, pull individuals toward an end state for example the doll's pleadings and the importance of the town pulled Little Blue engine. For human motivation, biological and psychological motives push an individual into action while environmental prospects like incentives and goals pull an individual. Individuals are not pushed or pulled at random but instead are directed toward specific ends which are known as goals. A person's internal disposition specifies the nature of this end state. Internal dispositions may consist of biological motives like hunger. Hunger pushes a person toward s goal of eating food and a belonging need pushes people toward associating with people. A person's values determine the power of a particular goal. Either by push, pull or their combination, individuals are motivated toward the appropriate end where goals and motives become linked together.

Motivations as anticipation of the future

Motives push the train to its destination and external tangible objects pull the train to its destination--that is, the end state. Similarly, motives push a person toward some end state while external incentives pull a person toward the end state. This concept implies that based on past experience individuals are capable of looking ahead and visualizing their future. Philosophers have long been aware that humans are motivated by the anticipated outcomes of their actions. Kant: among all the prospects which man can have, the most comforting is, in the basis of his present moral condition, to look foraged to something permanent and to further progress toward a still better prospect. A person may never have experienced the event before but may have thought about various aspects of it. Motivation is a journey that involves being push or pulled toward end states. An individual is motivated. It by the actual end state but by the expectation and anticipation of it. Motivation can depend on visualizing he end state as consummatory (finish behavior) which signals the end of the motivational sequence. Sometimes the expectation or anticipation of the end state receives little attention or occurs below the level of awareness. Habits are examples of behaviors that occur with little conscious awareness of their end states. Cognitive analyses, behavioral anticipation and effective devices are broad views of how to understand motivation.

Experimental variable

One manipulated by the experimenter to create different values or levels

Internal motivation sources

Psychological variables: internal desires like emotions and wants that aren't physiological. Sometimes overrides biology. I am really hungry but I am in a diet. Example: need to belong motivates close scrutiny of facial expressions. Psy needs such as achievement, power, understanding (hunger for knowledge), belonging (looking for nonverbal).

Past as a source of motivation

Push motivation depends on characteristics of the body, brain and mind. These two variables are the result of our evolutionary history and personal history. Motives that promote eating and drinking aid the survival of the human species. The emotion of fear motivates insidiously to avoid danger. Evolutionary psychology attempts to understand current human behavior by relating it to our evolutionary past. Applying evolutionary psychology to motivation is an attempt to describe and understand the origin of psychological motives through natural selection. Personal history refers to an individual's experience from conception to the present. These experiences help shape an individual's motives and system of values about incentives.

Bandura's agentic theory: individual differences

Rather than merely reacting, humans also intentionally create the circumstances of their lives. People are not spaces to their environments and instead seek out or create environments in order to satisfy their psychological motives.

Dependent variabke

Refers to behavior that depends on the experimental variabke

Anticipatory Behavior

Second mechanism. BY which pull motivation occurs. The goal evokes excitement in the form of minuscule consummatory behavior's that would occur to the actual goal. Anticipation response mechanism becomes more intense the closer s person gets to actually eating the pizza.

Linking biological and psychological variables

The brain and mind are intertwined. According to reductionism, the mind's mental processes can be reduced to the activity of the neurons in the brain. Conversely, according to the concept of emergency, the brain's neuronal activity issues forth mental processes -- that is the mind is an emergent property of the brain.

External motivation sources

The past as a motive. 1) Evolutionary history: the effect of millions of years of natural selection. Universal motives. Everyone shares 2) Personal history: the effect of individual experience. Individual motives: personal history. Long period of time: end of a very long evolutionary process. Forces of history. Why humans? Behave as they way they do.

Combined internal and external sources motivate behavior

The push pull metaphor of motivation suggests that internal and external sources combine to motivate behavior in both animals and humans. Behavior depends on internal states which determine what incentives motivate behavior. Internal states refer to an individual's feelings (states) such as sleepiness, hunger, thirst, warm, cold. It is as if pulling of an incentive depends on those states. What is motivating is constantly changing because people's internal states are constantly changing. Other incentives motivate behavior independent of intent all states and instead rely on a more stable value system. Thus how motivated an individual is to obtain a college education depends on what those are worth, that is how much value is placed on those items. So the study of motivation is to determine how internal states and value systems link up with external events. Those links motivate behavior.

Auxiliary assumptions

There are some hidden assumptions regarding motivation. Even if all sources of motivation are in place, behavior may not occur if these assumptions are not met. Also necessary are sufficient energy, knowledge and competence. A goal will not be achieved if a person lacks the energy, knowledge and competence to do so.

Definitions of Motivation

This course is about why we do stuff. It is the most theoretical part of psychology. It is uncertain because it is theoretical. Motivated = "to be moved into action" You act it. It is doing something. Motive = "a person's internal disposition to approach positive incentives and avoid negative incentives" This is a oversimplication. You move towards the good and away from the bad. Problem is it that you avoid the bad because it is bad or is it bad because you avoid it. Incentive = "an anticipated reward or aversive reward or aversive outcome from the environment . It is not the reward but the anticipated reward. Motives are often confused with incentives because incentives can be observed. Incentives aren't motives. Ex not being fired is not a motive. Incentives cause motivations so they are not themselves motivations. $500 doesn't cause behavior. Why do you want $500? Why would the outcome motivate you? Internal dispositions such as motives push us. Internal dispositions push us to get out of bed. External dispositions such as incentives and goals pull us. Both combine to enable us to reach goals.

Energy for motivation

To be motivated, to be moved to behave or think, assumes a supply of energy. Psychological and physical energy are two major categories of energy for motivation. Psychological energies or mental energies have gone by the name cathexis, regulation energy, adaptation energy, and processing resources. Cathexis refers to the accumulation of energy within the brains neurons by Freud. This process of cathexis is accompanied by pleasure. It serves as both a source of energy and as a motive for behavior. Adaptation energy was coined by Hans Selye. He assumed the body possessed a certain amount of adaptation energy that could be used to overcome stress. Over a lifetime, humans experience a wider variety of stressors. The body's ability to adapt depends upon the amount of available adaptation energy. When a person's adaptation energy runs out, motivation cease. Psychological energy is also used for a process called self regulation or self control. This process refers to the ability to control the effects that a person's emotions and impulses have on her behavior. This ability allows the individual to weigh the value of larger delayed incentives instead of submitting to current emotions and impulses that yield smaller rewards. Processing resources are those capacities that allow the mind to carry out operations that are necessary for the motivation of behavior. Information from the environment impinges on the human senses and is briefly held in sensory memory where some of it is selected Evans sent along for further processing. This combined information provides the basis for developing preferences, making decisions, developing goals and eventually taking action.

Motivation

To be moved into action or for a more cognitive orientation, to be moved into cognition, feeling and action. Biological refers to the material aspects of the body, nervous system and brain. Psychological drives refer to drives, psychological needs, and personality traits. Environmental sources are composed of incentives and goals. The anticipation of their occurrence motivates behavior. Motivation refers to the why of behavior, not the how. Why do we engage in certain behaviors and have certain feelings and thoughts but not others. Why do some events motivate us while other events do not?

Cognitive motivation

Using the pizza metaphor, one can see the function of anticipation in pull motivation. One pull mechanism is cognitive motivation which works by visualizing an end state as a goal and executing s plan or following a script in order to achieve that goal. This visualization is easier to perform for concrete aspects of the goal and accompanying consummatory behavior. To reach the goal, requires a plan of action or series of behavior's to achieve it. These can be visualized also. The plan involves a hierarchy of steps or a sequence of specific behaviors that when performed bring individuals closer and closer to their goal. What motives a person to go to a pizza restaurant and eat a pizza? 1) cognitive motivation: visualize pizza restaurant and follow plan to arrive there 2) anticipatory response mechanism: stimuli that predict arrival at the restaurant election responses that motivate and guide an individual to go there 3) affective forecasting: presumed pleasure from eating pizza is pleasant and this anticipated feeling motivates approaching the restaurant

Students anticipated spring break as being more fun that it turns out to be and remember it as being more fun than it was

We tend to anticipate the future greater than it will be and then after it was judged great but during the event, it was less enjoyable. We always love for the future that will never be and remember a past better than it was. We are always living for the future.