1. Biological and Social Motives and Emotion

2. Biological Motives
Some behavior is determined by the internal, or physiological, state
Humans have certain survival needs
We have built-in regulating systems to help us maintain internal processes
Body temperature
Level of sugars in blood system
Production of hormones
This tendency for organisms to correct imbalances is known as homeostasis

3. Hunger
What motivates you to seek food? Smell? Habit? Social calls? What is it that causes your body to respond?
Lateral hypothalamus (LH)
If stimulated an animal will eat, even after just having a large meal
If removed, an animal will stop eating and eventually starve to death
Thus, the lateral hypothalamus provides signals that tell you when to eat
Ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH)
If stimulated, an animal will slow down or stop eating even if it has been kept from a meal
If removed, the animal will eat everything in sight
Thus, the ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH) provides the signal of when to stop eating

4. Other Factors Psychosocial hunger factors
External cues that affect where, when and what we eat.
Smell and appearance
In a social group
Social pressures
Not eating so you can look like a model
Boredom or stress
Habits
Eating at same time everyday
Popcorn at the movies
Can contribute to eating disorders

5. Obesity May include a genetic component of predisposition
Defined as 30% or more above his/her ideal body weight
Different than overweight, which is 20% over his/her ideal body weight
⅓ of Americans are obese
Respond to external cues, not because they are hungry
Normal weight individuals respond to internal cues
Insufficient level of exercise
Anxiety or depression not a factor due to similar conditions in both obese and normal weight individuals

6. Social Motives Learned from our interactions with others
Measuring the need for achievement
Concerns the desire to set challenging goals and to persist in trying to reach those goals despite obstacles
This motivation has been well researched via David McClelland who sought to find a quantitative way of measuring social motives
Developed the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT Test)
Series of pictures that participants are told to tell a story for
No right or wrong answers
Ranked high or low based on achievement imagery
Followed careers of participants and found 83% who became entrepreneurs scored high, while only 21% of the non entrepreneurs had scored high
Critics claim TAT unreliable, difficult to score thoughts/feelings objectively

7. Fear of Failure
While some are motivated through achievement, others fear failure
Quitting music lessons when improvement seems difficult
Displayed by people who choose easy tasks offering assured success or impossible tasks with no chance of success
They will either success or blame the difficulty of the task
People motivated by fear of failure often find excuses to poor performances
Helps to maintain self-image
Poor grade on a test is due to lack of sleep rather than lack of study

8. Fear of Success as a Motivation
Matina Horner Study
89 men to write a story with this prompt: “After first term finals, John finds himself at the top of his medical school class.”
90 women were given the same task with the name Anne in place of John.
90% of the men wrote success stories/65% of the women doomed Anne
Era of the study, women were raised to view women in a man’s occupation as a failure as a woman
Replicated studies display too many confounding variables
When readjusted to account for variances, studies showed both men and women expressed fear of success 45%-49% repectively

9. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Abraham Maslow, pioneer of humanistic psychology
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Fundamental base
Second level are psychological needs
Top level are self-actualizing needs

10. Emotions
When we want to emphasize the need or desire that leads to goal-directed behavior, we use the word motivation. When we want to stress the feelings associated with these decisions, we use the word emotion. The two, however, are intertwined.
Sometimes our emotions function like biological drives- our feelings energize us and make us pursue a goal. Other times we do things because we think it will make us feel good- anticipated emotions are an incentive for our actions.
Many psychologists talk about emotional intelligence- the ability to perceive, imagine and understand emotions in order to use them in decision making.

11. Expressing Emotion
An emotion is a subjective feeling provoked by real or imagined objects or events
Emotions result from four occurrences:
You must interpret some stimulus
You have a subjective feeling (fear, happy)
You experience physiological responses (increased heart rate)
You display observable behavior (smile or cry)
All emotions have 3 parts
Physical- how it affects physical arousal of an individual
Behavioral- outward expression of the emotion (body language, hand gestures)
Cognitive- how we think or interpret a situation which affects our emotions (friendly, hostile)

12. Universal Emotion
Charles Darwin “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals”
All people express certain basic feelings in the same ways
Regardless of language
Ekman, Friesen, & Ellsworth (1972) Study
Showed photographs to people from 5 different cultures that depicted surprise, anger, sadness, and happiness
Asked participants to indicate what the person in each photograph was feeling
Majority of participants were able to accurately identify emotion
Certain basic facial expressions are innate

13. Physiological Theories
James-Lange Theory
Bodily reactions (heart rate, tears) form the basis of labeling and experiencing emotions
Critics of James-Lange Theory claim some emotions are not necessarily associated with different physiological reactions (fear and sadness may cause same bodily reaction)
Cannon-Bard Theory
Claimed the thalamus (part of lower brain) is the seat of emotion
Certain experiences activate the thalamus, which sends messages to the cortex and other organs
The brain sends two reactions- arousal and experience of emotion, but one does not cause the other
Emotions, therefore, refer to the simultaneous burst of brain activity

14. Cognitive Theories
Cognitive theories believe that bodily changes and thinking work together to produce emotions.
Schachter-Singer Experiment
Internal components of an emotion (such as ones produced by adrenaline) affect a person differently, depending on his/her interpretation of the social situation.
When people cannot explain their physical reactions, they take cues from their environment
Perception and arousal interact to create emotions
Critics claim you do not need arousal to feel an emotion, stating that sometimes you feel an emotions and then your body reacts.
If you realize your wallet was stolen, you become angry and then react with anger