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TOPIC 9GROWTH MOTIVATION

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CURIOSITY AND EXPLORATORY BEHAVIOR

• Children like to explore their environments; occurs without much encouragement from parents.

• Organisms are motivated to interact with new or novel objects; learn in the process.

• Interest in novel things diminishes with repeated exposure.

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• Humans show a preference for complexity.• Human exploratory behavior is highly

systematic: as an individual becomes accustomed/habituated to a certain level of complexity he/she is motivated to explore stimuli that are slightly more complex.

CURIOSITY AND EXPLORATORY BEHAVIOR

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Competence and Exploratory Behavior

• Interacting with stimuli in the environment increases competence (ability to process information).

• Evolutionary perspective: animals explore to help ensure their survival; motivation is to know everything that might affect one’s survival; roots in curiosity drive (aroused by novelty).

• Having new skills or competence, we discover new or different aspects of that object.

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Motivation to Explore

• Level of arousal is basic mechanism underlying exploratory and play behaviors.

• Person experiencing low arousal will seek to increase arousal; experiencing high arousal will seek to lower arousal.

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• New information is governed by the ability of the new stimulus to elicit arousal: greater discrepancy = greater arousal.

• Exploration is a person-environment interaction in which the environment provides a challenge to the individual; individual develops wide range of competencies.

Motivation to Explore

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Anxiety and Exploratory Behavior

• Exploration decreases or stops altogether when the individual is anxious.

• Emotional animals explore less but show that when they have been tamed, their tendency to explore increases.

• Securely attached infants explore more; early attachment has been shown to reduce anxiety and increase achievement/mastery behavior.

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Curiosity and Exploratory Behavior

The Biological Component:• Children vary in tendencies to approach

novelty; stable temperaments are more receptive to new situations.

• Inhibited and uninhibited temperaments are inherited- inclination to approach novel objects.

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The Biological Component: (cont)• Extraversion (inherited) has been linked

to tendency to select variety, novelty, complexity.

• High anxiety/arousal focuses on survival cues.

• Individuals are motivated to explore while being cautious (BAS/BIS working together).

Curiosity and Exploratory Behavior

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Curiosity and Exploratory Behavior

The Learned/Cognitive Component:• Experience/competence plays central role

in tendency to respond to variety, novelty, and complexity.

• Organisms become familiar with something by abstracting information.

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The Learned/Cognitive Component:• We tend to develop more complex cognitive

structures as the result of processing info.• Individuals will lose interest in repeatedly

exposed stimulus.• Intrinsic motivation: tendency to seek out

novelty and challenge, to extend and exercise one’s capacities, to explore and learn.

Curiosity and Exploratory Behavior

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Self-Determination Theory

• Humans have three innate needs: competence, relatedness, and autonomy.

• Innately inclined to systematically respond to novelty and challenge and to develop competence.

• Can self-regulate: set goals, find paths to goals, and activate mental capacities to meet challenges.

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• Feelings of competence are important motivators for exploring/responding to challenge.

• Relatedness grows out of feelings of being connected or belonging; people internalize rules for cooperative behavior; motivation for internalizing values.

Self-Determination Theory

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Sensation Seeking

• Trait defined by the need for varied, novel, and complex sensations/experiences and the willingness to take physical and social risks for the sake of such experiences.

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• Based on four factors:

1.Thrill and adventure seeking.

2.Experience seeking.

3.Disinhibition.

4.Boredom susceptibility.

Sensation Seeking

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Sensation Seeking

The Biological Component:• Negatively correlated with monoamine

oxidase (MAO) levels- important in regulation of norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin.

• High sensation seekers are likely to experience greater pleasure/reward when they take drugs; likely to use drugs, again.

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The Biological Component:• Differences in MAO levels is inherited.• Sensation seeking is also related to

testosterone levels in men.

Sensation Seeking

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Sensation Seeking

The Learned/Cognitive Component:• Thrill seekers learn to use fear as a means

of increasing arousal level in order to experience a psychological high.

• Because they have good coping skills, they do not experience much fear.

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The Learned/Cognitive Component:• They experience self-satisfaction associated

with exercising highly developed coping skill in face of uncertainty; value variety.

• People come to control their fears and anxiety through mastery training.

• Driven by need for new experiences; more willing to break previous commitments.

Sensation Seeking

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Sensation Seeking

The Learned/Cognitive Component: (cont.)• Develop better cognitive skills, higher IQs,

superior scholastic/reading ability, and better social skills/intimacy.

• May lead to creativity (or delinquency); view things in new ways.

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The Learned/Cognitive Component: (cont.)• Adept at working in environments where

change is a way of life.• Cannot be committed to any one activity in

case something new or more interesting comes along.

• Inclined to self-disclose; not inclined to commit to long-term relationships.

Sensation Seeking

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Creativity

• The tendency to generate/recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that can be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves/others.

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Motivation to engage in creative acts:

1. The need for novel, varied, complex stimulation.

2. The need to communicate ideas and values.

3. The need to solve problems.

Creativity

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Creativity

The Biological Component:• Linked to active right prefrontal cortex;

also evidence that linked to left side and communication between two sides.

• Linked to positive affect; elevated dopamine levels increase cognitive flexibility and facilitate the selection of different cognitive perspectives.

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The Biological Component: (cont)• Viewed as playful activity; sense of disinhibition.• No correlation between intelligence and creative

behavior.• Creative people are independent,

nonconformist, unconventional; characterized by wide interests, greater openness to new experiences, greater flexibility, and tendency to take risks.

Creativity

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Creativity

The Learned/Cognitive Component:• People can learn to become creative with

motivation and with techniques for generating new possibilities.

• People have tendency to act creatively but inhibit tendencies for fear of rejection by society.

• Many people are afraid of change or motivated to avoid it; they may be anxious, fearful, or highly aroused.

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The Learned/Cognitive Component:• Support and recognition of creative effort

leads to innovation; extrinsic rewards inhibit creativity.

• Individuals faced with adversity or need to deal with new people can turn out to be more creative.

• Later-borns are more creative than first-borns.

Creativity

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Important Components of Creativity

• Delineating the problem: defining the problem gives direction to thinking.

• Knowledge: need a well-developed information base to generate new ideas; new ideas often elaboration of existing ideas.

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• Constructing images and categories: groups of patterns or components can be rearranged to form new ideas.

• Synthesis: putting together components to create whole; deliberately activating various patterns in brain (lateral thinking)

• Suspension of judgment: judgments stop creative process.

Important Components of Creativity