1. Motivation and Emotion
Chapter 8
Motivation and Emotion

2. Motivation: What Makes Us Act as We Do?
Motivation: All processes involved in starting, directing, and maintaining physical and psychological activities

3. Behavior motivated by…
Biological factors – food, water, sex
Emotional factors – panic, fear, love
Cognitive factors – perceptions, beliefs, expectations
Social factors – parents, friends, media

4. How Psychologists Use the Concept of Motivation
Connects observable behavior to internal states
Accounts for variability in behavior
Explains perseverance despite adversity
Relates biology to behavior
Helps explain behavior over time
Based partly on desire to feel certain emotions
Motivation affects emotion
MOTIVATION & EMOTION ARE INTERTWINED!!!

5. Types of Motivation
Drive: Biologically instigated motivation; usually from a need
Motive: Reason or purpose for behavior (often used to describe motivations that are learned, rather that biologically based)

6. Types of Motivation
Conscious motivation: Having the desire to engage in an activity and being aware of the desire
Unconscious motivation: Having a desire to engage in an activity but being consciously unaware of the desire
Intrinsic motivation: Desire to engage in an activity for its own sake
Extrinsic motivation: Desire to engage in an activity to achieve an external consequence (reward)

7. Rewards Can Sometimes Squelch Motivation
Overjustification: The process by which extrinsic rewards can sometimes displace internal motivation

8. Theories of Motivation
Instinct theory: View that certain behaviors are determined by innate, automatic, involuntary and unlearned responses
Emphasizes biological factors
Fixed-action patterns: Genetically based behaviors, seen across a species, that can be set off by a specific stimulus (instincts)

9. Theories of Motivation
Drive-reduction theory: View that motivation arises from imbalances in homeostasis
Emphasizes biological factors
Homeostasis: body’s tendency to maintain a biologically balanced condition
Need: biological imbalance that threatens survival if left unmet; produces drives
Brain responds to needs by creating drives
Need for food hunger drive motivates you to find food

10. Theories of Motivation
Social-Cognitive Theory: motivation due to cognitive processes
Locus of control: An individual’s sense of where his or her life influences originate–internally or externally

11. Theories of Motivation
Freud’s Psychodymanic Theory: motivation from the unconscious
Focused on mental disorders more than everyday behaviors
Everything we do based on either
Eros – desire for sex
Thantos – aggressive/destructive impulse

12. Maslow’s Humanistic Theory
Hierarchy of needs: The notion that needs occur in priority order, with the biological needs as the most basic

13. Theories of Motivation
Arousal theory: motivated to behave in ways that keep us at our optimal level of arousal
Seek excitement when bored
Seek relaxation when over-aroused

14. Theories of Motivation
Incentive theory: behavior is directed toward attaining desirable stimuli and avoiding unwanted stimuli

15. Measuring the Need for Achievement
Need for achievement (n Ach): Mental state that produces a psychological motive to excel or reach some goal
Projection: Process by which people attribute their own unconscious motives to other people or objects

16. Motives in Conflict
Approach-approach conflict: A conflict in which one must choose between two equally attractive options
Avoidance-avoidance conflict: A conflict in which one must choose between two equally unattractive options

17. Motives in Conflict
Approach-avoidance conflict: A conflict in which there are both appealing and negative aspects to the decision to be made
Multiple approach-avoidance conflict: A conflict in which one must choose between options that have both many attractive and many negative aspects

18. Hunger Motivation The multiple-systems approach to hunger
Set point: Refers to the tendency of the body to maintain a certain level of body fat and body weight
Brain receptors/hypothalamus – fat/sugar in blood
Lack of Leptin – keep eating
Pressure detectors in stomach – full or empty
Other mechanisms – sweet and fatty foods
Physical activity

19. Thirst and Pain Thirst/hunger: Seek a stimulus
Volumetric thirst: A drop in extracellular fluid levels
Osmotic thirst: A drop in intracellular fluid levels
Pain: Avoid/remove stimulus

20. What Do Our Emotions Do For Us?
Emotions have evolved to help us respond to important situations and to convey our intentions to others

21. What Is Emotion?
Emotion: A four-part process consisting of physiological arousal, cognitive interpretation subjective feelings, and behavioral expression

22. The Evolution of Emotions
Emotions have survival value and have been shaped by natural selection
Individuals vary tremendously in emotional responsiveness
Emotions are not entirely programmed by genetics

23. Cultural Universals in Emotional Expression
Seven universal basic emotions: sadness, fear, anger, disgust, contempt, happiness and surprise (Ekman)
There are huge cultural differences in the context and intensity of emotional displays
Display rules: Permissible ways of displaying emotions in a particular society

24. The Emotion Wheel (Robert Plutchik)

25. Where Do Our Emotions Come From?
Two distinct brain pathways for emotional arousal:
Fast & unconscious
Slow & conscious
clarified connections among biological structures involved in emotion
offered solutions to many issues in the psychology of emotion

26. Where do our emotions come from? The Neuroscience of Emotion
The biological mechanisms at work behind our emotions include:
The limbic system
The reticular formation
The cerebral cortex
The autonomic nervous system
Hormones/neurotransmitters

27. Psychological Theories of Emotion
James-Lange theory: A stimulus produces a physical response that, in turn, produces/causes an emotion
Cannon-Bard theory: An emotional feeling and an internal physiological response to the stimulus occur at the same time
One is not the cause of the other

28. Psychological Theories of Emotion
Two-factor theory of emotion: Emotion results from the cognitive appraisal of both (1) physical arousal and (2) stimulus
Schachter-Singer Theory

29. James-Lange theory Cannon-bard theory Two-factor theory
Physiological arousal trembling increased heart rate
Stimulus snake
Emotion fear
Physiological arousal trembling increased heart rate
Emotion fear
Cannon-bard theory
Stimulus snake
Cognitive interpretation “I feel afraid!”
Physiological arousal trembling increased heart rate
Two-factor theory
Emotion fear
Stimulus

30. Psychological Theories of Emotion
Cognitive appraisal theory: Theory that individuals consciously decide on an appropriate emotion after the event (Lazarus)
Opponent-process theory: Theory that emotions have pairs; when one is triggered the other is suppressed

31. Inverted “U”
Inverted “U” function: Describes the relationship between arousal and performance
Both low and high levels of arousal produce lower performance than does a moderate level of arousal
Easy tasks = high level; Hard tasks = low level
Performance
Low
High
Arousal Level

32. Developing Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence: Ability to understand and control emotional responses
Examples of when you’ve needed to mask an emotion?
Marshmallow Test – delay of gratification

33. Arousal, Performance, and the Inverted “U”
Sensation seekers: Individuals who have a biological need for higher levels of stimulation than do other people

34. How and Why Do We Experience Stress?
The human stress response to a perceived threat activates thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and physiological arousal that normally promote adaptation and survival

35. Stress and Stressors
Stress: A physical and mental response to a challenging or threatening situation
Stressor: A stressful stimulus, a condition demanding adaptation

36. Psychological Stressors
Pleasant or unpleasant
Upleasant
Catastrophic events – sudden, unexpected, potentially life-threatening experiences or traumas
Life changes – divorce, family illness, difficulties at work, moving
Chronic stressors – living in unsafe area, serious illness, lack of decent living, discrimination, academic pressure
Daily hassles – irritations, pressures, annoyances

37. The Physical Stress Response
Acute stress: a temporary pattern of arousal caused by a stressor with a clear onset and offset
Chronic stress: a continuous state of stressful arousal persisting over time

38. The Physical Stress Response
Fight-or-flight response: a sequence of internal processes that prepares the organism for struggle or escape
Tend-and-befriend model: stress response model proposing that females are biologically predisposed to respond to stress by nurturing and protecting offspring and seeking social support

39. The Physical Stress Response
General adaptation syndrome (GAS): a pattern of general physical responses that takes essentially the same form in responding to any serious chronic stressor

40. The General Adaptation Syndrome
Alarm Reaction
Alarm reaction – the body mobilizes it’s resources to cope with a stressor
Exhaustion
Illness/death
Exhaustion – the body depletes it’s resources
Resistance
Resistance – the body seems to adapt to the presence of the stressor
Successful Resistance
Level of
normal resistance

41. Stress and the Immune System
Immune system: bodily organs and responses that protect the body from foreign substances and threats

42. Stress and the Immune System
Psychoneuroimmunology: Multidisciplinary field that studies the influence of mental states on the immune system
Cytokines: Hormone-like chemicals facilitating communication between brain and immune system

43. Personality and Stress
Type A: behavior pattern characterized by intense, angry, competitive, or perfectionistic responses to challenging situations
Type B: behavior pattern characterized by a relaxed, unstressed approach to life

44. Psychological Responses to Stress
Learned helplessness: Pattern of not responding to noxious stimuli after an organism learns that its behavior has no effect