Motivation and Emotion

Chapter Eight

Lecture Slides

By Glenn MeyerTrinity University

Introduction: Motivation and Emotion

Three basic characteristics

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Activation is demonstrated by

initiation or production of

behavior.

Persistence is demonstrated by continued efforts or determination

to achieve a particular goal.

Intensity is seen in the greater

vigor of responding that

usually accompanies

motivated behavior.

Motivation refers to forces acting on or

within an organism to initiate and direct

behavior: biological, emotional, cognitive, or

social forces.

Emotion is a psychological state involving three distinct components:• Subjective

experience• Physiological

response• Behavioral or

expressive response

Motivational Concepts and Theories

Instinct Theories• People are motivated to

engage in certain behaviors because of evolutionary programming.

• In the 1920s, instinct theories had fallen out of favor as an explanation of human motivation, primarily because of their lack of explanatory power.

• The general idea that human behaviors are innate and genetically influenced remained important.

Drive TheoriesBiological Needs as Motivators

Instinct theories were replaced by drive theories.• Drive

• Need or internal motivational state • Drive theories

• Behavior motivated by desire to reduce internal tension caused by unmet biological needs and restore homeostasis

• Drive state• Created by unmet biological needs; drives are

triggered by internal mechanisms of homeostasis• Homeostasis

• Body monitors and maintains internal states, such as body temperature and energy supplies, at relatively constant levels; in general, tendency to reach or maintain

• Homeostasis cannot explain all drives

Incentive MotivationGoal Objects as Motivators

Incentive Theories

• Behavior is motivated by “pull” of external goals, such as rewards, money, or recognition

• Incentive theories based learning principles from Pavlov, Watson, Skinner, and Tolman

• Tolman stressed importance of cognitive factors and expectation of goal in motivation

Arousal TheoryOptimal Stimulation as a Motivator

• People experience both very high levels of arousal and very low levels of arousal as being quite unpleasant

• When arousal is too low, we experience boredom and become motivated to increase arousal

• When arousal is too high, we seek to reduce arousal in a less-stimulating environment

• People are motivated to maintain an optimal level of arousal

Supported by

• Sensation-seeking behavior

• Animals seek out novel environmental stimulation

Humanistic TheoryHuman Potential as a Motivator

Rogers and Maslow emphasized• Importance of psychological and cognitive factors in

motivation• Notion that people are motivated to realize their personal

potential• Most famous humanistic model of motivation— Maslow’s

hierarchy of needs

Biological MotivationHunger and Eating

• Hunger — biological motive• Eating behavior — complex interaction of biological,

social, and psychological factors

Energy Homeostasis

Calories consumed = Calories expended

• Food is broken down by enzymes, absorbed by intestines

• Glucose, or blood sugar, is converted as a source of energy

• Insulin helps control glucose and regulate eating and weight

• Basal metabolic rate is resting rate

• Adipose tissue (body fat) is main source of stored calories

• Baseline body weight—cluster of genetic and environmental factors that cause a person’s weight to settle within a given range

• When your caloric intake exceeds the amount of calories expended for energy, you experience positive energy balance.

• When you diet or fast, a negative energy balance occurs.

Regulatory process called energy

homeostasis helps you maintain your baseline

body weight

Short-term Signals that Regulate EatingPhysiological changes

• Slight drop in blood glucose

• Slight increase in insulin – 30 minutes before eating

• Ghrelin:

• Hormone manufactured in stomach lining

• Stimulates secretion of growth hormone by pituitary gland in brain

• Stimulates appetite

• Blood levels of ghrelin rise sharply before and fall abruptly after meals

• Increase in body temperature

• Decrease in metabolism

Psychological Factors that Trigger EatingPsychological changes

Classical conditioning• Time of day at which you normally

eat (conditioned stimulus) elicits reflexive internal physiological changes (conditioned response)

• Blood levels of insulin, glucose, and ghrelin change

• Increased body temperature• Decreased metabolism• Internal physiological changes

increase your sense of hunger• Stimuli can be associated with

anticipation of eating

Operant conditioning• Preference for certain tastes: sweet,

salty, and fatty (positive incentive value)

Satiation SignalsWhen to stop eating

Satiation signals• Stretch receptors

communicating sensory information

• Signals from stomach (cholecystokinin [CCK]) slowing rate at which stomach empties

• Sensory-specific satiety: reduced desire to continue consuming a particular food; now we want dessert!

Long-term signals• Leptin

• Hormone indicating amount of fat in body; receptors in hypothalamus, stomach, and gut

• Leptin level in brain increases, food intake is reduced• Increased leptin levels also intensify satiety-producing

effects of CCK• Signals indicating amount of food molecules in blood

• Insulin-increased brain levels of insulin associated with a reduction in food intake

• Neuropeptide Y (NPY) is a neurotransmitter regulated by leptin and insulin; increased brain levels of neuropeptide Y trigger eating behavior, reduce body metabolism, and promote fat storage

Regulating Appetite and Body Weight

Your appetite is: • stimulated (+) by

increased levels of ghrelin and neuropeptide Y

• suppressed (-) by increased levels of leptin, insulin, and CCK

Eating and Body Weight Over the Lifespan

Set-point theory

Body has optimal body weight that body defends from becoming higher or lower by regulating feelings of hunger and body metabolism

Settling-point models

• Body weight settles at a balance between energy intake and expenditure

• Your settling-point weight will stay relatively stable as long as factors influencing food consumption and energy expenditure don’t change

Set-point theory

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Settling-point models

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Excess Weight and Obesity• Many different factors contribute to high rates

of overweight and obesity

• Thin ideal is pervasive in American culture

• More than two-thirds of American adults and almost one-third of children are above their healthy weight

• Healthy weight determined by:

• Body mass index (BMI)—numerical scale indicating height in relation to weight

• Obesity—condition characterized by excessive body fat and a BMI equal to or greater than 30.0

• Overweight—condition characterized by BMI between 25.0 and 29.9

• More than one-third of adult U.S. population considered overweight

• One and a half billion adults are overweight, and about 500 million of those are clinically obese

• Percentage of overweight people increases throughout adulthood, peaking in fifth and sixth decades of life

Factors Involved in Becoming

Overweight

Too little sleep: disrupts hunger hormones;

blood levels of appetite-suppressing hormone leptin

fall;appetite-increasing hormone ghrelin soars

Positive incentive value:

anticipated pleasures of

highly palatable foods

“Supersize It” syndrome:

caloric intake has increased nearly

10 percent for men and 7 percent for

womenCafeteria diet effect:

when offered a variety of highly palatable foods,

such as at a cafeteria or an all-you-can-eat buffet, we consume more

Sedentary lifestyles:1 in 5 persons worldwide

leads a sedentary lifestyle

Sedentary lifestyles are more common in

urbanized, developed countries

Four out of 10 American adults never exercise

Basal metabolic rate (BMR): individual differences and lifespan change:

as BMR decreases with age, less food is

required to meet your basic energy needs

Basal Metabolic RateRate at which body uses energy for vital functions

while at rest

Factors that influence BMR• Age• Sex• Size• Genetics• Food intake

Factors Involved in Obesity

300,000 adult deaths in United States are directly attributable

to obesity

Interaction of genetics and environment• People with a family history of obesity are two to three

times more likely than people with no such family history to become obese

• Obesity also occurs in about 30 percent of children with parents who are of normal weight

• Key phrase here is susceptibility to obesity

Dopamine Receptors and Obesity —Role of Pleasure in Eating and Obesity

• Compulsive binge eating compensates for reduced dopamine function in obese people by stimulating the brain’s reward system

• Much like brain changes associated with drug addiction

• Dopamine response in junk food–addicted rats was significantly reduced

• Similar in humans

• People eat more to compensate for reduced brain rewards

• Overeating reduces dopamine reward system levels even further

Psychological Needs as Motivators

According to motivation theories of Maslow and of Deci and Ryan, psychological needs must be fulfilled for optimal human functioning

• Are there universal psychological needs?

• Are we internally or externally motivated to satisfy psychological needs?

• What psychological needs must be satisfied for optimal human functioning?

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Self-actualization:Person’s “full use and exploitation of talents,

capacities, and potentialities.”

Critiques

• Vague and almost impossible to define in a way that would allow it to be tested scientifically

• Initial studies on self-actualization were based on limited samples with questionable reliability

• Most people do not experience or achieve self-actualization

Important contribution: encouraged psychology to

focus on motivation and development of

psychologically healthy people

Optimal human functioning can occur only these

psychological needs are met.

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Autonomyneed to

determine, control, and organize

one’s own behavior and

goals so that you are in harmony with one’s own interests and

values

Competenceneed to learn and master

appropriately challenging

tasks

Relatednessneed to feel attached to others and experience senses of belonging,

security, and intimacy

Deci and Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory• Intrinsic motivation: desire to

engage in tasks that person finds inherently satisfying and enjoyable, novel, or optimally challenging

• Extrinsic motivation: external influences on behavior, such as rewards, social evaluations, rules, and responsibilities

A person who has satisfied

needs for competence,

autonomy, and relatedness

actively internalizes and

integrates different external

motivators as part of his or her

identity and values.

Competence and Achievement Motivation

Competence MotivationDesire to direct behavior toward demonstrating competence and exercising control in a situation

Achievement Motivation• Desire to direct your behavior toward

excelling, succeeding, or outperforming others at some task

• Measures of achievement motivation generally correlate well with various areas of success

Thematic Apperception Test

(TAT)Projective test

developed by Henry Murray involving

creating stories about ambiguous scenes that can be interpreted in a

variety of ways –including achievement

motivation

Motivation and Culture

• Individualistic cultures’ focus on personal, individual success, rather than success of group, is closely linked to success in competitive tasks.

• Collectivistic cultures’ orientation is toward social harmony and promoting one’s group and/or family.

Emotion

A complex psychological

state that involves

subjective experience, a physiological response, and a behavioral or

expressive response.

Mood

A milder emotional state that is more

general and pervasive, such as

gloominess or contentment.

Functions of Emotion

• Early psychologists considered emotions to be disruptive forces that interfered with rational behavior.

• Today’s views:

• Emotion moves us to act, set goals, and make rational decisions

• People who have lost the capacity to feel emotion because of damage to specific brain areas tend to make disastrous decisions

Emotional IntelligenceInvolves ability to manage and

understand one’s own emotional experiences, as well as be attuned to

the emotions of others

Evolutionary Explanations of EmotionCharles Darwin: Emotions reflect evolutionary adaptations to problems of survival and reproduction

• Fear prompts us to flee an attacker or evade a threat

• Anger moves us to turn and fight a rival

• Love propels us to seek out a mate and care for our offspring

• Disgust prompts us to avoid a sickening stimulus

Emotional displays serve important functions

• Inform other organisms about our internal state

• Move us toward resources and away from danger

Subjective Experience of Emotion

• Limited number of basic emotions and responses

• Innate and hard-wired in brain

• People often experience a blend of emotions; mixed emotions

Culture

• General agreement across culture about basic emotions

• Classified along two dimensions: pleasant or unpleasant

• Level of activation or arousal associated with emotion

• Example: joy > contentment

• Cultural variations do exist

• Interpersonal engagement reflects idea that some emotions result from your connections and interactions with other people

• Japanese participants rated anger and shame as being about the same in terms of unpleasantness and activation, but rated shame as being much higher than anger on the dimension of interpersonal engagement; collectivist culture

Culture, Gender, and Emotional ExperienceGender

• Both men and women tend to view women as more emotional

• Men and women do not differ in their self-ratings of experience of emotions, but do differ in their expression of emotions

Neuroscience of EmotionEmotion and the sympathetic nervous system

• Emotions are associated with distinct patterns of responses by the sympathetic nervous system and in the brain.

• Sympathetic nervous system is aroused by emotions (fight-or-flight response)

• Different emotions stimulate different responses

• Fear—decrease in skin temperature (cold feet)

• Anger—increase in skin temperature (hot under the collar)

• Differing patterns of sympathetic nervous system activation are universal, reflecting hard-wired biological responses to basic emotions

Detecting Lies

Microexpressions: Fleeting indicators of deceit

Ekman (2003):• Deception associated with a variety of nonverbal cues• Fleeting facial expressions, vocal cues, and nervous body movements• Microexpressions last about 1/25 of a second

Problems

• No unique pattern of physiological arousal associated specifically with lying (Vrij &others, 2010)

• Some people can lie without experiencing anxiety or arousal

• People may be innocent of any wrongdoing but still be fearful or anxious when asked incriminating questions

• Generally agreed that polygraphs are not a valid method to detect lies and should not be used as evidence

Polygraph

• Doesn’t really detect lies or deception

• Polygraph measures physiological changes associated with emotions like fear, tension, and anxiety

• Heart rate, blood pressure, respiration

Emotional BrainFear and the Amygdala

Amygdala

• Part of limbic system

• Activates when you see something threatening, fearful faces, or hear sounds related to fear

• Evaluates significance of stimuli and generates emotional responses

• Generates hormonal secretions and autonomic reactions that accompany strong emotions

• Rats with a damaged amygdala can’t be classically conditioned to acquire a fear response

• Humans with a damaged amygdala have “psychic blindness” — an inability to recognize fear in facial expressions and voice

Le Doux’s Model• Two neural pathways for

sensory information that project from thalamus

• One leads to cortex• One leads directly to

amygdala by passing cortex

• Thalamus – amygdalapathway – stimulates sympathetic nervous system

Example: People detect and react more quickly to angry or threatening faces than they do to friendly faces.

Expression of Emotion

• Darwin (1872): Human emotional expressions are innate and culturally universal

• Ekman (1980) estimates the human face is capable of creating more than 7,000 different expressions

• Each basic emotion is associated with a unique facial expression

• Facial expressions are innate and “hard-wired”

• Spontaneous facial expressions of children and young adults who were born blind do not differ from those of sighted children and adults

• Innate facial expressions are the same across many cultures

• Display rules: social and cultural rules that regulate emotional expression, especially facial expressions

Emotion in Nonhuman Animals Laughing Rats, Silly Elephants, and Smiling Dolphins?

• Darwin believed animals had emotions

• Behaviorists don’t

• But who can say?

• Just observing behavior can lead to anthropomorphism

• We can’t know animals’ subjective experience

• Smiling dolphins? Just a coincidence

Culture and Emotional Expression

• Ekman (1982) showed photographs of facial expressions to people in 21 different countries

• All participants identified the emotions being expressed with a high degree of accuracy

• Some specific nonverbal gestures, which are termed emblems, vary across cultures

• When and where we display our emotional expressions are strongly influenced by cultural norms

• Cultural differences in the management of facial expressions are called display rules

• In many cultures women are allowed a wider range of emotional expressiveness

Theories of EmotionCommon sense view of emotion

For example, you saw a threat and:

1. recognized a threatening situation,

2. reacted by feeling fearful, and this subjective experience

3. activated your sympathetic nervous system, which

4. triggered fearful behavior

James–Lange Theory of Emotion

• We perceive a stimulus

• Physiological and behavioral changes occur

• We experience these changes as a particular emotion

James–Lange Theory of Emotion

Challenged by Walter Cannon

• Body reactions are similar for many emotions, yet our subjective experience of various emotions is very different.

• Our emotional reaction to a stimulus is often faster than our physiological reaction.

• Artificially inducing physiological changes does not necessarily produce a related emotional experience. Individuals with spinal cord injuries report similar or stronger emotions.

Supported by:

• PET scan — each of basic emotions produced a distinct pattern of brain activity

• Participants who were highly sensitive to their own internal body signals were more likely to experience anxiety and negative emotions

• Facial feedback hypothesis

• Expressing a specific emotion, especially facially, causes us to subjectively experience that emotion

• Botox injections can dampen emotional experience and the ability to perceive it

Cognitive Theories of EmotionTwo-factor theory of emotion (Schachter and Singer)

Emotion is the interaction of physiological arousal and the cognitive label that we apply to explain arousal

Cognitive appraisal theory of emotion

• Emotions result from cognitive appraisal of a situation’s effect on personal well-being

• Similar to two-factor, but theory’s emphasis is on cognitive appraisal as essential trigger for emotional response.

Turning Your Goals into Reality

Implementation intentions: Turning goals into actions

Step 1: Form a goal intention.

Step 2: Create implementation intentions.

• Motivation to strive for achievement is closely linked to what you believe about your ability to produce necessary or desired results in a situation

• Bandura (1997, 2006): self-efficacy—the degree to which you are convinced of your ability to effectively meet the demands of a particular situation

Mental rehearsal: Visualize the process