Motivation and Emotion Chapter 9 Lecture Notes

Chapter 9: Motivation and Emotion Chapter 9 Big Questions  What motivates your behavior?  What are your most important motivated behaviors?  How do you experience emotions?  How do emotions support social relationships? What Motivates Your Behavior?  9.1 Many factors influence motivation  9.2 Some behaviors are motivated for their own sake Many Factors Influence Motivation  Most of the general theories of motivation emphasize four basic qualities o Activating—it stimulates us to do something o Directive— it guides our behavior toward meeting specific goals or needs o Sustaining—it helps us sustain behaviors until we achieve our goals or satisfy our needs o Differing in strength—motives will differ in strength depending on the person and the situation Satisfaction of Needs  Need: A state of biological or social deficiency (like water or being with people)  Need hierarchy: An arrangement of needs, in which basic survival needs must be met before people can satisfy higher needs o Maslow’s theory is an example of humanistic psychology o Self-actualization Drive Reduction  Drive: A psychological state that, by creating arousal, motivates an organism to engage in a behavior to satisfy a need o Basic biological drives, such as thirst and hunger, help animals maintain a stable condition  Equilibrium: A stable condition  Homeostasis: Tendency for bodily functions to remain in equilibrium o The set point indicates homeostasis for the system o New studies around the world have found that average temperature is lower, at around 36.4 C or 97.5 F. Optimal Arousal and Performance  Arousal and performance   o Everyone is motivated to engage in behaviors based on their own optimal level of arousal Arousal: Physiological activation (such as increased brain activity) or increased autonomic responses (such as increased heart rate, sweating, or muscle tension) The Yerkes-Dodson law describes the relationship between arousal, motivation, and performance o This law states that performance increases with arousal up to an optimal point. After that point, more arousal will result in decreasing performance.  A graph of this relationship is shaped like an upside-down U. Pleasure and Incentives  Pleasure o Freud proposed that needs are satisfied based on the pleasure principle.  According to Freud, the pleasure principle motivates people to seek pleasure and avoid pain.  Incentives o External objects or external goals, rather than internal drives, that motivate behaviors  Incentives affect our motivations to act in certain ways because we have learned over time that our actions have consequences 9.2 Some Behaviors Are Motivated for Their Own Sake  Intrinsic motivation o A desire to perform an activity because of the value or pleasure associated with that activity, rather than for an apparent external goal or purpose  Extrinsic motivation o A desire to perform an activity to achieve an external goal that activity is directed toward  Extrinsic rewards can reduce intrinsic motivation o Self-determination theory  In self-determination theory, people are motivated to feel good about themselves  People are motivated to feel successful (competence), have personal control (autonomy), and develop personal relationships with others (relatedness).  Extrinsic rewards may reduce the intrinsic value of activity because they undermine our feeling that we are choosing to do something for ourselves o Self-perception theory  In self-perception theory, we are seldom aware of our specific motives. Instead, we make inferences about our motives according to what seems to make the most sense. What Are Your Most Important Motivated Behaviors?     9.3 Motivation to Eat Is Affected by Biology 9.4 Motivated to Eat Is Also Influenced by Learning 9.5 People Have a Need to Belong 9.6 People Have a Need to Achieve Long-Term Goals Motivation to Eat is Affected by Biology  Stomach o Stomach movements are associated with hunger, they play a minor role in how hungry you feel. o They have more to do with digestion than with the motivation to eat.  Blood chemistry o The existence of receptors in the bloodstream that monitor levels of vital nutrients  One theory proposes that the bloodstream is monitored for its glucose levels  Hormones o Insulin: A hormone, secreted by the pancreas, that controls glucose levels in the blood o Ghrelin: A hormone, secreted by an empty stomach, that is associated with increasing eating behavior based on short-term signals in the bloodstream o Leptin: A hormone, secreted by fat cells, that is associated with decreasing eating behavior based on long-term body fat regulations  The brain o The hypothalamus is the brain structure that most influences eating o In rats, the ventromedial hypothalamus is the brain region associated with feeling full. It is like the “off switch” for hunger; when damaged, rats are constantly hungry o In contrast, when the outer, or lateral, region of the hypothalamus (LH) is damaged, rats eat far less than normal, leading to weight loss and eventual death unless the rat is force-fed o Seeing tasty food makes a person crave it, and this response is associated with activity in the limbic system Motivation to Eat is Also Influenced by Learning  Conditioned to eat o The internal clock leads to various anticipatory responses that motivate eating behavior and prepare the body for digestion  Familiarity and eating preferences o People’s avoidance of unfamiliar foods, which may be dangerous or poisonous, makes evolutionary sense and is adaptive o What we prefer to eat is also determined by the ethnic, cultural, and religious values of our own upbringing and experiences Motivation to Eat is Also Influenced by Learning  Cultural influences o Even when people are starving to death, they may refuse to eat perfectly nutritious substances because they are culturally unfamiliar  Flavor o Humans have an inborn preference for sweetness o Animals, including humans, will stop eating relatively quickly if they have just one type of food to eat People Have a Need to Belong  People are motivated to form groups o Need to belong theory: The need for interpersonal attachments is a fundamental motive that has evolved for adaptive purposes  Example: the movie Cast Away  Belonging uncertainty o Is particularly likely for those from underrepresented groups o It leads people to focus attention on cues that signal whether they are welcome or whether they fit in o There have been effective methods available for increasing belongingness People Have a Need to Achieve Long-Term Goals  Achievement motivation o Murray proposed that this is a basic psychosocial need o A desire to attain a certain standard of excellence o Four factors that affect our ability to achieve long-term goals  The goals themselves  Our sense of self-efficacy  Our ability to delay gratification  Grit  Goals affect achievement o Challenging goals encourage effort, persistence, and concentration  Goals that are too easy or too hard can undermine motivation and lead to failure  Self-efficacy affects achievement o The expectation that your efforts will lead to success  Goals that are challenging but not overwhelming usually are most likely to lead to success  Ability to delay gratification o The ability to delay gratification is an indicator of success in life  Marshmallow study o Delay of gratification scores for children have improved over the past 50 years  Grit o People with grit have a deep passion for their goals and a willingness to keep working toward them, even in spite of hardships and pitfalls  Shown to be a significant predictor for the grades of college students How Do You Experience Emotions?  9.7 Emotions Are Personal but Labeled and Described Consistently  9.8 Three Major Theories Explain Your Emotions  9.9 Your Body and Brain Influence Your Emotions  9.10 Most People Try to Regulate Their Emotional States Emotions Are Personal but Labeled and Described Consistently  Emotion o An immediate, specific, negative or positive response to environmental events or internal thoughts o Emotions are based on physical, bodily responses, affect thoughts and actions, and are subjective  Primary emotions o Evolutionary adaptive emotions that are shared across cultures and associated with specific physical states; they include anger, fear, sadness, disgust, happiness, and possible surprise and contempt  Secondary emotions o Blends of primary emotions; they include remorse, guilt, shame, submission, and anticipation  Moods o By contrast with emotions, moods are spread-out, long-lasting emotional states that do not have an identifiable object of trigger  Emotions are described by valence and arousal o Circumplex model  Your experience of emotions can be categorized by a certain degree of valence (negative to positive) and by a certain level of arousal (low to high) Theories of Emotion: James-Lange  James-Lange theory o Emotions result from the experience of physiological reactions in the body  Facial feedback hypothesis: according to this hypothesis, the muscles used to create a facial expression trigger your experience of emotion  A pencil between your teeth, your cheek muscles draw up into a smile  A pencil held between the nose and upper lip, the cheek muscles draw into a frown Theories of Emotion: Cannon-Bard theory  Cannon-Bard theory  o Emotions and bodily responses both occur simultaneously due to the ways that parts of the brain process information Two-factor theory o How we experience an emotion is influenced by the cognitive label we apply to explain the physiological changes we have experienced o Excitation transfer o Misattribution of arousal Your Body and Brain Influence Your Emotions  Emotions from bodily process o Maps of emotion represent areas of the body that are more active (warm colors) or less active (cool colors) when people consider how various emotions make their bodies feel o The color bar reflects the extent of increasing activity (yellow) or decreasing activity (blue)  Emotional response in lie detection o Polygraph is an electronic device that measures the body’s physiological response to questions o Problems with using polygraphs to uncover deception leading psychologists view lie detector tests as unreliable in determining deception  Innocent people are often falsely classified as being deceptive  Polygraph cannot tell what a response is due to lying, nervousness, or anything else arousing  Emotions from brain processes o The amygdala processes the emotional significance of stimuli and generates immediate emotional and behavioral reactions o Information reaches the amygdala along two separate pathways  The first path is a “quick and dirty” system, which processes sensory information nearly instantaneously  The second path is somewhat slower, but it leads to more deliberate and thorough evaluations  The amygdala is involved in the perception of social stimuli o We “read” people’s facial expressions; the amygdala helps us interpret them Most People Try to Regulate Their Emotional States  James Gross (1999, 2013) outlined several strategies people use to regulate their emotions: o Thought suppression and rumination  When we suppress negative thoughts, we are trying not to feel or respond to the emotion at all  Extremely difficult and often leads to a rebound effect Rumination involves thinking about, elaborating, and focusing on undesired thoughts or feelings o Positive Reappraisal  We directly alter our emotional reactions to events by thinking about those events in more neutral terms Humor o Humor has many mental and physical health benefits o Laughter improves the immune system and stimulates the release of hormones, dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins o When we laugh, we experience rises in circulation, blood pressure, skin temperature, and heart rate, along with a decrease in pain perception Distraction o Involves doing or thinking about something other than the troubling activity or thought o Some distractions backfire as we may end up thinking about other problems    How Do Emotions Support Social Relationships?  9.11 You use facial expressions to interpret emotions  9.12 Emotions strengthen your interpersonal relations You Use Facial Expressions to Interpret Emotions  Charles Darwin argued that expressive aspects of emotion are adaptive because they communicate how we are feeling.  Eyes and mouth o We convey emotional information by means of our eyes and mouth o We see faces in contexts that give us cues about what emotion a person is experiencing  Facial expression across cultures o Research has found general support for cross-cultural identification of some facial expressions  Support is strongest for happiness and weakest for fear and disgust o However, there are subtle aspects of emotional expression that vary across cultures, indicating that the meanings of some emotional expressions are learned  Facial expression of pride are innate o Researchers found that isolated populations with minimal Western contact accurately identify the physical signs of pride o These signs include:  A smiling face  Raised arms  An expanded chest  A pushed-out torso  Display rules indicate what emotions to show  Display rules o Rules that are learned through socialization and that dictate what emotions are suitable in certain situations  From culture to culture, display rules tend to be different for women and men Emotions Strengthen Your Interpersonal Relations  Social emotion is important for maintaining social bonds  Guilt strengthens social bonds o A negative emotional state associated with anxiety, tension, and agitation  Excessive feelings of guilt may have negative consequences  There is evidence that socialization is more important than biology in determining specifically how children experience guilt  Embarrassment and blushing o People feel embarrassed after violating a cultural norm, doing something clumsy, being teased, or experiencing a threat to their self-image o Blushing occurs most often when people believe others might view them negatively and communicates an understanding that some type of social awkwardness has occurred