Module 33- MOTIVATION

I. A motivation is a need or desire that serves to energize behavior and to direct it towards a goal.
II. Instinct and Evolutionary Psychology
A. Early in the twentieth century, the influence of Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory grew,
because it became fashionable to classify all sorts of behaviors as instincts.
B. An instinct is a complex behavior that is rigidly patterned throughout a species and is
unlearned.

III. Drives and Incentives

A. Drive-reduction theory is the idea that a psychological need creates an aroused tension state
(in drive) that motivates an organism to satisfy their drive, by say eating or drinking.
B. With a few exceptions when the physiological need increases – so does the physiological drive
(an aroused, motivated state).

IV. Homeostasis
A. is a tendency to maintain a balanced or constant internal state; the regulation of any aspect of
the body chemistry, such as blood glucose, around a particular level.
B. An example of it is our body’s temperature, which works like thermostat. If our body
temperature cools, blood vessels constrict to reserve warmth, and we are forced t put on more
clothes or seek a warmer environment.
C. We are "pulled" by incentives – a positive or negative environmental stimulus that motivate
(lure or repel) behavior.
D. Our internal needs energize and direct our behavior, but our external incentives do as well. The
lure of money may energize us quite apart from any need-based drive.

V. Optimum Arousal
A. Our biological rhythms cycle through times of arousal.
B. Far from reducing a physiological need or minimizing tension, some motivated behaviors
increase arousal.
C. Curiosity drives monkeys to monkey around trying to figure out how to unlock a latch that
opens nothing, or how to open a window that allows them to see outside the room.
D. Despite having our biological needs satisfied, we feel driven to experience stimulation., because
we feel bored without it.

VI. A Hierarchy of Motives

Some needs take priority over others.

A. Hierarchy of needs is Abraham Maslow’s pyramid of human needs, beginning at the base with
physiological needs that must first be satisfied before higher-level safety needs and then
physiological needs to become active.

Maslow’s hierarchy is somewhat arbitrary; the order of needs is not universally fixed.

Module 34: The Physiology of Hunger

 I. World War II Experiment - Scientist Ancel Keys and his colleagues (1950) solicited volunteers
whom they fed just enough to maintain their weight, and the for six month they cut this food
level in half.

A. As an effect, the men began conserving energy; they appeared listless and apathetic. Consistent
with Maslow’s idea of need hierarchy, the men became obsessed with food.

II. The Physiology of hunger

A. Keys’ semistarved subjects felt their hunger in response to a homeostatic system designed to
maintain normal body weight and adequate nutrition supply.
B. Stomach contractions (pangs) send signals to the brain making us aware of our hunger.
C. Some diets reduce this feeling of an empty stomach by filling the stomach with indigestible
fibers that swell as they absorb water.
D. When people with severe obesity undergo bypass surgery that seals off part of the stomach, the
remaining stomach then produces much less ghrelin, hunger-arousing hormone secreted by an
empty stomach and appetite lessens.
E. Tsang (1938) removed rats’ stomachs and attached their esophagi to their small intestines and
yet the rats still felt hungry and ate food.

III. Body Chemistry and the Brain

A. Glucose is the form of sugar that circulates in the blood and provides a major source of energy
for body tissues. Glucose level in blood is maintained. When insulin decreases, glucose in blood
makes us feel hungry.

B-Glucose levels in our blood are monitored by the brain.

Signals from the stomach, the intestines, and the liver (indicating whether glucose is
being deposited or withdrawn) all signal the brain to motivate eating or not.

Researchers located hunger controls within the hypothalamus, a small but complex
neural traffic intersection buried deep in the brain.

A. Activity along the sides of the hypothalamus is known as lateral hypothalamus – brings on
hunger (stimulation); destroy it, and an animal has not interest in eating. Reduction of blood
glucose stimulates orexin (hunger-triggering hormone).
B. Lower middle of the hypothalamus – ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH) depresses hunger
stimulation. Destroy it and the animal eats excessively.
C. Insulin – hormone secreted by pancreas; controls blood glucose.
D. Leptin – protein secreted by fat cells; when abundant, causes brain to increase metabolism and
increase hunger.
E. Orexin – hunger-triggering hormone secreted by hypothalamus.
F. Ghrelin – hormone secreted by empty stomch; sends " I am hungry" signals to the brain.
G. PYY – digestive tract hormone; sends "I’m not hungry" signals to the brain.
H. Set point – the point at which an individual’s "weight thermostat is supposedly set. When the
body falls below the weight, and increase in hunger and a lowered metabolic rate may act to
restore the lost weight.
I. To maintain its set-point weight, your body adjusts not only food intake and energy output, but
also its basal metabolic rate – the body’s resting rate of energy expenditure.
IV. By the end of the World War II experiment, its participants became 3/4 h of their original
t

weight.

Some researchers doubt that the body has certain set point that drives it to hunger. They
believe that slow, sustained changes in body weight, for example, alter one’s set point.

Psychological factors sometimes drive our feelings of hunger.

Psychology of Hunger

Our eagerness to eat is indeed pushed by our physiological state, yet there is more to
hunger than meets the stomach.

Taste Preference: Biology or Culture?

As our hunger diminishes, our eating behavior changes

Body chemistry and environment influence not only when we feel hungry, but also what
we feel hungry for – our taste preference.

Carbohydrates help boost levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which has calming
affect.

Our preferences for sweet and salty foods are genetic, and universal, but culture affects
taste, too.

We humans have a natural dislike for things that are unfamiliar to us.

Countries with hot climates, in which food historically spoiled more quickly, feature
recipes with more bacteria-inhibiting spices.

Eating Disorders

Psychological influences on eating behavior are strikingly evident when a motive for
abnormal thinness overwhelms normal homeostatic pressure.

Anorexia nervosa – an eating disorder in which normal-weight person (usually an

adolescent female) diets and becomes significantly (15 percent or more) underweight,
yet, still feeling fat, continues to starve.

Bulimia nervosa – an eating disorder characterized by episodes of overeating, usually

high-calorie foods, followed by vomiting, laxative use, fasting, or excessive exercise.

Unlike anorexia, bulimia is marked by weight fluctuations within or above normal

ranges, making the condition easy to hide.

Researchers report that families of bulimia patients have a higher-than-usual incidence

of alcoholism, obesity, and depression.
 In contrast, anorexia patients come from families that are competitive, high-achieving
and protective.

Mothers of girls with eating disorders are themselves often focused on their own weight
and their daughter’s weight and appearance.

Facing a diet, a person’s body seems to revolt and overcomes the dieter’s willpower by
demanding food to restore lost fat.

People with eating disorders may also have abnormal supplies of neurotransmitters that
put them at risk for anxiety and depression.

Obesity: A disorder characterized by excessive eating. Obesity increases risk of health

issues such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, and back
problems.

Sexual abuse does not necessarily cause an eating disorder. Family habits and
genetics do. An identical twin has a higher chance of also developing an eating disorder.

Body image: Western culture tends to over-emphasize thin body image more than other
cultures. Women with low self-esteem are particularly likely to have both, a negative
body image and an eating disorder.

Body ideals vary across culture and time.

The complex recipe that produces eating disorders thus seems to include cultural
pressure to be thin, added to low self-esteem and negative emotions (perhaps genetically
predisposed), and mixed with a stressful life experience.

Module 35 Sexual motivation:

I. Sex is a part of life. The pleasure of sex is our genes’ way of preserving and spreading the
species.
II. sexual behavior

A. Alfred Kinsey confidential interviews with a random sample of 18,000 people, had statistics-
laden volumes became bestsellers.

III. The physiology of sex

A. Like hunger, sexual arousal depends on the interplay of internal and external stimuli. To
understand sexual motivation, we must consider both.
IV. The sexual response cycle
A. Sexual response cycle- the four stages of sexual responding described by Masters and Johnson
B. Excitement phase- the genital areas become engorged with blood, causing the man’s penis to
become partially erect and the woman’s clitoris to swell and the inner lips covering her vagina
to open up. Her vagina also expands and secretes lubricant, and her breasts and nipples may
enlarge.
C. Plateau phase- excitement peaks as breathing, pulse and blood pressure rates.
D. Orgasm phase- a woman’s arousal and orgasm facilitate conception by helping propel semen
from the penis, positioning the uterus to receive sperm, and drawing the sperm farther inward.
E. Resolution Phase- the male enters a refractory period, lasting from a few minutes to a day or
more, during which he is incapable of another orgasm. The female refractory period is not very
long, which may make it possible for her to have another orgasm if re-stimulated during or soon
after resolution.
V. Refractory Period- a resting period after orgasm, during which a man cannot achieve another
orgasm.
VI. Sexual disorders- A problem that consistently impairs sexual arousal or functioning.
VII. Hormones and Sexual Behaviors
A. Sex hormones have two effects: the direct the development of the male and female sex
characteristics, and they activate sexual behavior.
B. Estrogen- a sex hormone, secreted in greater amounts by females than by males.
C. Testosterone- The most important of the male sex hormones.
D. At ovulation, woman’s sexual desire is only slightly higher than at other times.

VIII. The psychology of sex

A. External stimuli
B. Many studies confirm that men become aroused when they see, hear, or read erotic material.
C. Surprising to many is that most women-at least the less-inhibited women who volunteer to
participate in such studies-report nearly as much arousal to the same stimuli.
D. Sexual material can have adverse effects. Depictions of women being sexually coerced-and
enjoying it-tend to increase the viewers’ acceptance of the false idea that woman enjoy rape and
tend to increase males viewers willingness to hurt woman.

VII. Imagined Stimuli

A. The brain is our most significant sex organ.
B. Wide awake people become sexually aroused not only by memories of prior sexual activities
but also by fantasies.
C. About 95 percent of both men and women say they have sexual fantasies.

VIII. Adolescent Sexuality

Culture

A. Our attitudes toward behaviors such as premarital sex and non marital childbearing vary widely
across the planet.
B. In the United States, about half of ninth to twelfth graders report having had a sexual
intercourse, as do 42 percent of Canadian 16 year olds.
C. Teen intercourse rates are higher in Western Europe but much lower in Arab and Asian
countries and among North Americans of Asian decent.
D. Sexual Orientation
 1. Sexual Orientation- an enduring sexual attraction toward members of either one’s own sex or
the other.
2. Gay men and lesbians often recall childhood play preferences like those of the other sex.
3. But most homosexual people report not becoming aware if same sex attraction until during or
shortly after puberty.

V. Sex and Human values

A. Recognizing values are both personal and cultural, most sex researchers and educators strive to
keep their writings on sexuality value-free.

Module 36: Motivation at Work

A. The healthy life, said Freud, is filled by love and by work. For most of us, work is life’s biggest
single waking activity.
B. Most people have neither a single vacation nor a predictable career path.

Work is indeed both a bane and a blessing – but more a blessing.

C. Mihaly Csikszentminhalyi observed that people’s quality of life increases when they are
purposefully engaged.
D. Between the anxiety of being overwhelmed and stressed and the apathy of being overwhelmed
and stressed lies a zone called the flow – a completely involved, focused state of consciousness,
with diminished awareness of the self and time, resulting from optimal engagement of one’s
skills.
E. Flow experience boosts our self-esteem, competence, and well-being.
F. Industrial – organization (I/O) psychology – the application of psychological concepts and
methods to optimizing human behavior in a work place.

G-Two subfields: Personnel psychology – focuses on employee recruitment, selection,

placement, training, appraisal, and development. Organizational psychology –
examines organixational influence on worker’s satisfaction and productivity and
facilitates organizational change.

G. Human factor psychology – explores how machines and environment can be optimally
designed to fit one’s abilities and expectations.

III. Personnel Psychology

A. Psychologists help identify needed job skills, decide upon selection methods, recruit and
evaluate applicants, introduce and train new employees, and appraise their performance.

IV. Harnessing Strengths

A. Personnel selections aim to match people’s strengths with work that enables them and their
organization to flourish.
 B. Today only 20 percent of the employees surveyed said that they get the opportunity to do what
they can do best.
C. Personnel managers use various tools to asses applicant’s strengths.

V. Do Interviews Predict performance?

A. It takes only a few seconds to sense an applicant’s animation, extraversion, warmth, and
speaking voice.

VI. The Interviewer Illusion

A. Given how quickly they form impressions, interviewers understandably feel confident in their
ability to predict long-term job performance from unstructured, get-acquainted interview.
B. Interviews disclose the interviewer’s good intentions, which are less revealing than habitual
behaviors.
C. Interviewers more often follow the career path of those they have hired, rather than the
successful careers of those they have lost track of.
D. Interviewers presume that people are what they seem to be in a given situation.
E. Interviewers’ perceptions and moods color how they perceive interviewees’ responses.
F. Gut feeling gleaned from someone’s interview is only modestly predictive.

VII. Structured Interviews

A. Structured interviews – interview process that asks the same job-relevant questions of all
applicants, each of whom is rated on established scales.
B. A personnel psychologist may analyze a job, script questions, and train interviewers.
C. Unlike in unstructured interviews, in structured interviews pinpoint strengths and distinguish
high performers in particular line of work.

VIII. Appraising Performance

A. Performance appraisal serves organizational purposes: It helps decide how appropriately reward
and pay people. Its feedback affirms worker’s strengths and helps motivate needed
improvements.
B. Performance appraisal methods include: checklist on which supervisors simply check behaviors
that describe the worker, graphic rating scales on which supervisors check the extent to which
a worker is dependable, productive, and so forth, behavior rating scales on which supervisor
checks behaviors that best describe worker’s performance.
C. Halo errors occur when overall evaluation of an employee, or of a trait such as friendliness,
biases rating of their specific work-related behaviors, such as reliability.
D. Lenience and severity errors reflect evaluators’ tendencies to be either too easy or too harsh
on everyone.

IX. Recency errors occur when rater’s focus on only easily remembered events.
A. Organizational Psychology: Motivating Achievement
B. Achievement motivation – a desire for significant accomplishments for mastery of things,
people, or ideas; for attaining high standard.
C. Analysis of the life histories of great scientists, philosophers, political leaders, writers, and
musicians confirm the importance of disciplined motivation.
D. Great achievers, consumed by passion to perfect their gift, are often continuously productive
from early age.
 X. Satisfaction and Engagement
A. Employee satisfaction is priority concern for I/O psychologists because work is a big part of
life.
B. Studies confirm the decreased job stress improve health.

Engaged workers have what they need to do their work, no what’s expacted of C- them,
feel fulfilled, have regular opportunities to do what they do best, perceive that they are
part of something significant, and have an opportunity to grow and develop.

XI. Managing Well

A. Effective leaders harness job-relevant strengths, set goals, and chose an appropriate leadership
style.

XII. Harnessing Job-Relevant Strengths

A. Positive psychology builds upon a basic principle of operant conditioning: To teach behavior,
catch an organism doing something right and reinforce it.

Great managers build upon their employees’ talents.

XIII. Setting Specific Challenging Goals

A. In study after study, people merely asked to do their best do not do so. But specific challenging
goals to motivate higher achievement, especially when combined with progress reports.
B. When people share in setting a goal, and find it challenging, yet attainable, reaching it boosts
their self-evaluation.

XIV. Choosing an Appropriate Leadership Style

A. Leadership varies from boss-focused directive style, to democratic sty empowering workers.
B. Task leadership – goal-oriented leadership that sets standards, organizes work, and focuses
attention on goals.
C. Social leadership – group-oriented leadership that builds team work, mediates conflict, and
offers support.

Effective leaders tend to exude "charisma".

D. Theory X – assumes that workers are basically lazy, error-prone, and extrinsically motivated by
money and, thus, should be directed from above.
E. Theory Y – assumes that, given challenge and freedom, workers are intrinsically motivated to
achieve self-esteem and to demonstrate their competence and creativity.
F. Theory Y managers are more likely to give their employees control over work procedures, to
welcome employee participation in decision making, and to have creative and satisfied
subordinate.

Achievement at work is more obviously driven by psychological factors, such as an

intrinsic quest for mastery and external award of recognition.