PSYCHOLOGy lecture V: Motivation and needs Jolanta Babiak Winter semester 2018/2019

Questions regarding motivated behavior Why do young adults pursue higher education? Why do we strive to achieve particular goals despite the high effort it involves? Why do we invest our time in a relationship? What makes us procrastinate? Why do we quit in the middle of the path to achieve our desired end?

Sources of motivation Internal Drives and incentives: equilibrium = homeostasis; disequilibrium = tension Hunger, thirst Instinctual behaviors Some behavior is governed by instincts: tendencies that are necessary for survival Animal instincts: communication of the location of food, mating trips, nests building Human instincts: sympathy, sociability, love Cognitive approach to motivation Subjective interpretation of reality Motivation by expectation of future events

Sources of motivation External Fritz Heider: outcome of a behavior can be attributed to: Dispositional forces Situational forces These attributions influence the way people behave

Behaviors influenced by interactions of motives: eating Effective food intake requires an organism to accomplish 4 tasks: Detection of the food need Start and organize eating behavior Control how much food is eaten and of what quality Detect the satiety and stop eating Cannon and Washburn’s experiment Does full stomach terminates eating?

Brain involvement in eating behaviors Dual-center model Hunger center Satiety center Monitoring sugar levels in the blood Particular hormones regulate appetite Does our need for food depend only on the cues our body send us?

Psychological factors that motivate people to eat or to avoid food What does culture has to do with eating habits? Three meals a day or body cues? Why do people become obese? Nature or nurture? Restrained versus unrestrained eating behavior Restrained eaters are chronically on diet They might be overweight They might not deal well with stressful situations when their self-esteem is in jeopardy

Eating disorders Anorexia nervosa Bulimia nervosa Occurs when a person weighs 85% of her expected weight but expresses intense fear of becoming fat Genetically determined to some extent; perfectionism as a personal characteristic Bulimia nervosa Characterized by periods of out-of-control eating followed by behaviors of getting rid of excess calories Body dissatisfaction: inaccurate perception of the body; impact of media images These syndromes have serious medical consequences In extreme cases may lead to death

Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs Self-actualization: fulfillment of potential, goal achievement Esteem: Confidence, sense of worth and competence Attachment: Needs to belong, affiliate, to be loved Safety: Security, comfort, freedom from fear Biological: Food, water, oxygen, rest, release of tension

Motivation and personal achievement What are motivational force that lead people to seek different levels of personal achievement? Thematic apperception test: generating stories in response to a series of ambiguous drawings – studying fantasies and dreams Need for achievement – McClelland (1953) individual difference in planning and pursuing one’s goal High n Ach individuals display need for efficiency – they quit if they believe the task is too difficult; they need to get the same results for less effort

attributions Judgements about the causes of outcomes Internal External Attribution can have effect on motivation Stability Variability Specificity globality

Attributional styles The way people explain events in their lives can become lifelong, habitual attributional style Optimistic versus pessimistic way of looking at the world impacts motivation and behavior Optimistic attributional style – failure is caused by external forces which are unstable and specific Pessimistic attributional style – causes of failure are internally generated, perceived as stable and global “doomed to fail” type of thinking

Motivation in Social psychology Determining the causes of events: inferential tasks facing all social perceivers Attribution theory – approach to describing the ways the social perceivers use information to generate causal explanations Fundamental Attribution Error: people on average are more likely to attribute others’ behaviors to dispositional influences and underestimate situational influences It is not ease to overcome FAE

Self serving bias Self serving bias – leads people to take credit for their success and deny responsibility for failure Dispositional attribution for success Situational attribution for their failure Serves short term self-esteem

Gerrig R.J. (2012). Psychology and Life, London, Pearson Education, Ltd. – Chapter 11