Motivation and Emotion

Chapter 9

Psychology

Vocabulary Unit 9

• Motive• Emotion• Instinct• Drive• Incentive• Intrinsic Motivation• Extrinsic Motivation• Primary Drive • Stimulus Motive• Social Motive• Aggression• Achievement Motive

• Power Motive• Affiliation Motive• Yerkes-Dodson Law• James-Lange Theory• Cannon-Bard Theory• Cognitive Theory• Display rules• Need• Lateral Hypothalamus• Ventromedial

Hypothalamus• Fundamental Needs• Psychological Needs

Bellringer

• List FIVE people, things, or feelings that motivate you.

Don’t Look Back• Willie Davis, the great defensive end at Green Bay…

had given [another player] a kind of mental tip that he used to motivate himself. He had used it ever since a game the Packers lost against the Eagles back in the 1960s. As he left the field at the end of the game, Davis had turned around, the stands emptying, and he realized that he was learning something on the field--namely, regrets that he had not given the extra effort, the extra push…and that he was going to have to live with that regret for the rest of his life because there was no way that he could recapture that moment. He made up his mind then that he would never look back again at a football field or even a days effort at what he was doing with any sense of regret.

How does motivation help you go the extra mile or give extra effort?

Questions to Ponder…

• Is human behavior based on instincts?

• What are these instincts?

• Is aggression a learned behavior or an instinct we are born with?

So What?

• Motivation and Emotions are the

underlying WHYS of behavior, and psychology is the study of human behavior…

• We are basically studying what drives us to behave the way we do!

Motivation

• Motivation is inferred from goal-directed behavior (cannot be observed)

• Motives that drive our behavior originate either inside or outside of us.

Theories of Motivation

• Many psychologists explain motivation in different ways.

• We are going to discuss the various ways in which psychologists explain motivation in the following theories:

Instinct Theory

• (1900s) William McDougall– Proposed humans were motivated by a variety of

instincts. What are instincts?– Instincts: natural, or innate, tendencies that

determine behavior. These responses (behaviors) do not involve reasoning (thinking) to occur.

– William James proposed humans have instincts such as cleanliness, curiosity, parental love, sociability, and sympathy.

– Problems with theory: Instincts do not EXPLAIN behavior, only label it.

Drive-Reduction Theory

• Clark Hull (1943)• Need -> Drive -> Behavior

– Need: Biological or psychological requirement of an organism. Stems from a lack of something desirable or useful.

– Need produces a drive: state of tension produced by a need that motivates us towards a goal (behavior).

– Different Needs and Drives.– How are habits formed?

Incentive Theory

• Stresses the role of the environment (external) in motivating behavior.– Incentives are reinforcers, goals, and

rewards

• What are some examples of incentives (external motivators)?

Incentives

• In your notes, list 5 positive incentives that many students seek and 5 negative incentives that most students seek to avoid.

Think about it…

• What are some things from the environment that motivate you? (food, candy, people, things)

• What are some expectations that you have for yourself? (grades, achievement, success)

Cognitive Theory

• Want to explain motivations by looking at forces inside and outside of us.– Extrinsic Motivation: engaging in

activities that either reduce biological needs or help us obtain external incentives.

– Intrinsic Motivation: engaging in activities because they are personally rewarding or because they fulfill our beliefs and expectations.

Extrinsic/Intrinsic Motivation

• Example:– If you spend hours and hours playing/ practicing/

studying ______ because you wish to excel at _______ you are following intrinsic motivation.

– If you are playing/practicing/studying ____ because your parents want you to excel at _____ you are following extrinsic motivation.

– If you are doing ____ because of the fun of it, you are following intrinsic motivation.

Problems with Motivation

• Psychologists believe that when people are given more extrinsic motivation than necessary to perform a task, then their intrinsic motivation declines.

• Do you think this is true?

Lesson Application

• When you are motivated, three things are true: you are energized to engage in an activity, you focus your energies toward reaching a goal, and you have differing intensities of feelings about achieving your goal.

• Use the criteria above to describe three activities or behaviors you engaged in over the last week and why you might have engaged in these behaviors.

Homework

• Due 11/27/2007:– Using complete sentences and specific

examples, write a one-page response to the following critical thinking question: • What are the motivations behind competition

in sports? • Do you think competition is constructive or

destructive? • When do you think competition crosses the

line and becomes aggression?

Bellringer

• List 5 things you think are biological motivators for YOU.

• List 5 things you think are social motivators for YOU.

Biological and Social Motives

Main Ideas of Section

• Much of our time is spent satisfying biological and social needs.

• Biological needs are requirements for us to survive

• Social needs are learned through experience

Why Do We Eat?

• Many psychologists have noticed that rats often begin to eat and drunk after being handled. For example, if you remove a number of rats from their cages, weigh them, and then return them to their cages, you will soon hear the crunching sound of food pellets being eaten. Two psychologists (Antelmen & Szechtman) reasoned that the handling, a form of mild stress, activated mechanisms involved in eating. So they devised a way of administering stress to the rats--pinching the rat’s tails gently with a pair of padded pliers. The technique did indeed induce eating. Normal animals that were pinched twice a day gained more weight than non-pinched rats.

Questions to Ponder…

• Does stress increase or decrease your appetite? Why do you think is increases/decreases your appetite?– Give specific examples to support your

answer.

Biological Motives

• Biological needs are critical to our survival & physical wellbeing

• All organisms have a regulation “built-in” regulation system to maintain internal processes

• Homeostasis: tendency of all organisms to correct imbalances and deviations from the normal state

Biological Motives

• Examples:– Hunger (motivates survival)– Sex (Motivates reproductive behavior)

Hunger

• What motives you to seek food?– What produces the sensation of hunger?– Lateral Hypothalamus (LH) is the part of

the brain that produces hunger signals – Ventromedial Hypothalamus (VMH) is

the part of the brain that sends signals to stop eating. (If this part of the brain is removed, the animal will eat everything in sight).

Psychological Hunger Factors

• External cues that affects eating (where, when and what we eat)– When others are eating, we tend to eat more– Choosing not to eat because of social pressures– Boredom/Stress can cause us to eat more– Habits formed because of time or behaviors

(popcorn/candy at the movies)– Can cause eating disorders (binge eating, eating

when depressed, or not being enough)

Social Motives

• Social motives are learned from interactions with other people

• Social Motives:– Achievement– Power– Affiliation (Belongingness)

Achievement

• Desire to EXCELL, “overcome obstacles, to exercise power, to strive to do something difficult as well and as quickly as possible.”

• Profile of a high achievement motivator:– Do well in competitive situations– Fast learners– Enjoy the opportunity to develop new strategies for

challenging tasks– Driven by a desire to live up to a high, self-imposed

standard– Energetic and allow few things to stand in their way of

accomplishing their goals

Academic Dishonesty

• Cheating occurs at all levels of schooling. Research into the causes of cheating yields the following results:– 70% of high school students and 56% of middle

school students have cheated on an exam in the past year.

– 90% of these students believe cheating is wrong– The primary cause of cheating is the fear of

failure.

Discussion

• John Atkinson & George Litwin– High achievers take moderate risks when asked to

perform a task that will bring some form of reward or punishment

– Subjects with a high fear of failure will either take little risk or very great risks.

– From this information we will discuss the following questions:

• Academically, how can you identify high and low achievers?• Socially, what characterizes high and low achievers?• Athletically, how are high and low achievers identified?

Power

• Motivation to win recognition or to influence or control other people

Affiliation

• Motivation to be with other people, or belong

• Especially motivated when we feel threatened

• Internal and External factors are involved in affiliation motivation

Fear of Failure

• How does a fear of failure differ from a motivation for achievement?– Choosing easy tasks to insure success OR

choosing impossible tasks with no chance of success (blaming the difficulty of the task for the failure)

– Excuses for poor performance to maintain a good self-image

– Can prevent us from taking responsibility for our OWN actions

Fear of Success

• In 1970, 89 Men/ 90 women asked to complete the following sentence:– “After first term finals, John/Anne finds himself at

the top of his medical school class…”• 90% of men wrote success stories for John• 65% of women predicted doom for Anne, WHY?

– Traditional roles of women

– Avoiding success in roles outside of the normal realm for women, or men for that matter

– Fear of success is found in BOTH men and women

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

• Abraham Maslow believed that ALL humans needs to feel competent, to win approval and recognition, and to sense that they have achieved something

• Maslow incorporates biological needs and social needs into his hierarchy.

Understanding Maslow’s Idea

• Fundamental Needs: Biological drives that must be satisfied to maintain life

• Psychological Needs: The urge to belong and to give and receive love, and the urge to acquire esteem

• Self-Actualization Needs: the pursuit of knowledge and beauty or whatever else is required for the realization of one’s unique potential

Hierarchy

Culminating Activity

• Top 10:– Take the next few minutes to write down

your top ten things that are important to you in your life (present things, future aspirations, goals, etc).

– After you have finished writing, using Maslow’s hierarchy, label/categorize each of your top 10 according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Emotions

Bellringer

• Respond to the following prompt:– You are awakened by a loud noise in the

middle of the night. You feel frightened and you start to tremble. Do you think your fright/fear or the trembling came first?

VictoryThe United States and China were locked in a scoreless

tie…The game--the Women’s World Cup final--had come down to a single penalty kick. [Brandi] Chastain approached the ball and barely hesitated before drilling her shot perfectly into the upper right corner of the net. As frenzied fans in Pasadena, CA’s Rose Bowl roared, she whipped off her shirt and waved it at the crowd before being buried in celebration by a pile of her teammates. “I didn’t hear any noise, I didn’t look at the [Chineses goalkeeper],” she said of her shot. “As soon as the whistle blew, I just stepped up and hit it. I just kind of lost my mind.”

How does emotion affect your actions?What emotions can cause you to “lose your mind”?

Main Ideas

• Emotions consist of three parts:– Physical (Body)– Behavioral (What we do)– Cognitive (Reasoning/What we think)

– Theories of Emotions propose that emotions result from physical changes and/or mental processes.

The Difference between Motivation & Emotions

• So, if hunger causes physiological changes that we CAN identify AND emotions like fear and love cause identifiable physiological changes too, what’s the difference??– Motivation is the SOURCE of our behavior– Emotion is the FEELING associated with

our behavior

Why it’s so confusing…

• We intermingle motivation and emotions all the time, we also describe the reasons for our behavior in terms of our emotions.– Example:

• Why did you walk out of class?• I was angry.

How emotions affect us

• Push & Pull us in different directions• Function like biological drives: feelings

energize us and make us pursue a goal• We behave in certain ways because it makes

us feel good.• Emotions can be incentives for our actions• Help make decisions and communicate what

is inside of us

Expressing Emotions

• Emotion: a set of complex reactions to stimuli involving subjective feelings, physiological arousal, and observable behavior– Result from 4 occurrences:

• Interpret some stimulus• Have a subjective feeling (fear or happiness)• Experience physiological responses (increased heart

rate)• Display an observable behavior (smiling/crying)

Did you know?

Emotions & Decisions: During surgery to remove a brain tumor, “Elliot” suffered damage to his prefrontal cortex. After the surgery, Elliot reported feeling almost no emotions. He described his brain surgery and the following deterioration of his life with calm detachment. Along with the loss of emotions, though, Elliot lost his ability to make decisions. When given information, he could discuss probable outcomes of each decision he might make, but he could not actually make the decision. If he forced himself to make a decision, he soon abandoned his decision. As a result, Elliot could not maintain normal relationships with friends. This points to the fact that our emotions play a large role in our decisions making.

Emotions

• Three Aspects:– Physical: how emotion affects the physical

arousal of an individual. Directs the body how to respond

– Behavioral: outward expression of the emotion (body language, gestures, tone of voice)

– Cognitive: how we think about or interpret a situation that affects our emotions

Charles Darwin

• The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals– He believed that all people express certain

basic feelings in the same ways.– Without knowing a person’s language you

can tell whether s/he is amused or angry just by looking at the person’s face.

Quick Quiz

• Identify the emotion each person in the photo is conveying:

1. QuickTime™ and a

decompressorare needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and a decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and a decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and a decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

2. 3.

4.

Quick Quiz

• The “quiz” you just took about expression of emotions was given to a group of culturally diverse participants in a study.– Five different cultures & a majority of the

participants overwhelmingly identified the photos they way in which the researchers expected them to

– 2nd study conducted in a remote part of New Guinea (relatively to no exposure to American culture) and they were able to identify the photos in the same manner as the 1st study!

So What?

• These studies imply that certain basic facial expressions are innate (born with)

• Blind & Deaf children affirm this belief, they too, like you and I, laugh & smile when they are happy, frown & pout when sad, and clinch their fists in anger even though they might not have been able to observe someone doing this.

Carroll Izard

• Psychology Professor at University of Delaware

• Assessed emotional states in humans:– Noticed changes in different parts of the face,

Identified 10 different emotional states– Anger: Sharply lowered eyebrows and drawn

together & squinted/narrowed eyes– Concluded these are universal facial expressions

(conducted 11 cross-cultural studies)

James Averill

• Psychology professor at UMass• Believes that many of our everyday emotional

reactions are a result of social expectations and consequences– Response is given by a whole person, cannot separate

an individual’s biological or physical experience of emotions

– We learn that emotions can serve different social functions

– Children are taught socially which emotions and expressions of these emotions are appropriate in different situations

Social Learning of Emotions

• Emotions that are more abstract than the four basic ones psychologists believe are universal are expressed differently in different cultures:– Children will imitate caregivers/parents

(according to social conventions)

Physiological Theories

• William James, an early psychologist, was stumped when it came to listing emotions, but he found it easier to list the bodily changes that occur when we are feeling certain emotions– Anger: blood pressure rises, fists

clinched…

James-Lange Theory

• Emotion describes the visceral, or gut, reactions to our environment

• Emotions are the perception of certain internal bodily changes– Opposite to what other psychologists believed:

Emotions cause physiological changes– Basically… Frown for two minutes, and you begin

to start ‘feeling’ sad. Smile for two minutes and you will begin to start ‘feeling’ happy.

More About…

• Facial Feedback Theory– The facial feedback theory says that your brain

interprets feedback from the movement of your facial muscles as different emotions. For examples, you seek a dark shadow in the corner of your bedroom at night. You react by raising your eyebrows and widening your eyes. Your brain interprets these facial expressions as those associated with fear, and you feel fear.

– Critics of this theory claim that although your facial expressions may influence your emotions they do not cause your emotions. People whose facial muscles are paralyzed still experience emotion.

Criticisms of the James-Lange Theory

• What about anger, fear, jealousy, and love?– These emotions are not reactions to

physiological changes, but they are more complex or a reaction to social/ environmental cues

– Leaves out the cognition part of emotion

Cannon-Bard Theory

• Opposed James-Lange theory, believed the thalamus (lower brain) is the “seat” of emotion

• Certain experiences activate the thalamus & sends messages to the cortex & other parts of the body

• Brain sends two reactions:– Arousal of emotions– Experience of Emotion

Cognitive Theories

• Bodily changes and thinking work together to produce emotions– Physiological arousal is only half of the

process of emotions– What you feel depends on HOW you

interpret your symptoms

Schachter-Singer Experiment

• Internal components of emotion affect individual’s differently, depending on their interpretation or perception of the social situation– Take cues from environment

(society/people) to explain physical reactions

Lesson Application

• Choose an emotion (anger, happiness, sadness, etc.)

• Create a list of physical symptoms that occur when you feel this emotion.

• Create a list of social reasons for feeling this emotion.

• Create a list of biological reasons for feeling this emotion.

Emotions in Art

Gender Differences in Emotion

• Is it true that men generally feel less emotion than women?

• Experience tells us that males and females differ.

Gender Differences

• Men are perceived as being less emotional, but are they really LESS emotional or do they just EXPRESS emotions less?– What type(s) of emotions do men typically

EXPRESS?– What type(s) of emotions do women

typically EXPRESS?

Gender

• Men typically inhibit their expression of emotions, but do experience the emotions. Women are just more open about emotions.

Culture and Emotions

• Feelings of achievement depends on attachment to personal success– Group v Individual effort/emphasis– Collective society v Individual society

• Collective focus on group cohesion• Individual focuses on experiences of person

Expression of Emotions

• Culturally,