Intro to Psych

10/28/19
Lecture #16
What is Motivation?

 The process by which activities are started, directed, and continued so that physical or
psychological needs or wants are met
 Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic
 Intrinsic motivation comes from within or something you personally want to do
 Extrinsic is when something in your environment is motivating you
 Theories
 Drive-Reduction
 Primary vs. Secondary Drives
 Basic drives has to do with primary needs
 Secondary drives tend to be things we learn to value
 Are needs the same for everyone?
 Other needs?
o Need for Achievement
 Helps people be successful in school and life
 Or earn money
o Need for Affiliation
 Need to be with other people
 Some believe it is primary
o Need for Power
 Need to control people or be in control
 This theory doesn’t explain all the different elements of motivation
 Arousal Theories
 People are motivated to have an optimal (best or ideal) level of tension that
they seek to maintain by increasing or decreasing stimulation (arousal)
 Test Anxiety
 Sensation-Seekers
o People who love thrills
o Often try to maintain a high level of arousal
o Become easily bored with things so they keep searching for new things
 Arousal & Performance
 Generally, moderate arousal is optimal but…
o You want to be in the middle
o High levels of arousal on difficult task we do worse
o But if it’s easy and we have high levels of arousal than we do well
 Maslow
 Hierarchy of Needs
  Positive approach
 People are trying to satisfy needs for self-actualization or even
transcendence
 Says you needs to fulfill them in the certain order presented in pyramid

 Problem with theory is that needs don’t always follow this same order
 Self-Determination Theory
 Social context of an action has an effect on the type of motivation existing for
an action
 Having fulfilling relationships help meet needs in life
o Three needs that help motivate people
 o Helps change damaging psychological behavior
 Autonomy
 Ability to make your own decisions and be in control
 Competence
 Need to feel like you are able to do things or self-efficacy
 Relatedness
 Need to belong or be related to other people
 But is all motivation need- based?
 No because we are motivated by things we don’t need
 Incentive Approaches
 Expectancy value theories
 Beliefs, values, and the importance that people attach to them at any given
time impact motivation
What is Emotion?

 A response of the whole organism

 physiological
 arousal levels
 expressive
 behaviors
 cognitive
 conscious experiences
 Important for
 Communication
 Translating motivational states into behavior
 Theories
 James-Lange Theory
 Emotional experience stems from the physiological sensations that are
triggered by emotion
 Is incomplete because it some physiological sensations are common to
more than one emotion
o For instance, fast beating heart can mean other things like anxiety,
anger or love
 May have physiological responses without the emotion
o Injections of ephedrine
o Injury to the right somatosensory cortex
 Cannon-Bard theory
 Emotion-arousing stimuli simultaneously trigger physiological responses and
emotional experiences
 Schacter’s Two-factor theory of emotion
 To experience an emotion, one must
 1) be physiologically aroused
  2) cognitively label the arousal
 So, it is your subjective interpretation of arousal that determines your emotion
 Others contend we can have some emotions before thinking

 Perceived event- cognitive interpretation- emotional experience- physiological
arousal
 Theories differ regarding the
 1) temporal relationships of arousal and experience of emotion
 They say things happen at different times
 2) role of cognition
Read about Facial Feedback Theory
 Two Dimensions of Emotion
 One dimension is low arousal or high arousal and other is whether it is positive or
negative
 Negative emotions processed in right hemisphere
 Positive emotions processed in left hemisphere
 A Little History
 Charles Darwin
 The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals(1872)
 The face communicates emotions that are common across different cultures
 Facial Expressions are the same across cultures
 Have ability to pick out threatening faces because they could be a danger
to us
 Emotions are regulated by the limbic system
 Thalamus
 Hypothalamus
 Hippocampus
 Amygdala
 PET Study
 Fearful Stimuli
 Activated limbic brain regions
 Pleasant Stimuli
 Activated Cortex
 Evolutionary implications
What is Fear?

 Natural fears vs. learned fears

 Natural fears are conditioned really quickly
 While learned fears take a lot longer to be conditioned
 Little Albert Study
 Amygdala regulates fear response
  Damage to this area affects detection, experience of fear
 Psychopaths act the way they do because of damage to frontal cortex
What is Anger?
 Catharsis hypothesis
 Do we feel better after “releasing” anger?
 Venting is a bad idea
 They say it makes you feel better but relief won’t last and you express
anger even more next time
 What should we do then?
 Wait it out
 Deal with it constructively
 Journaling
 Discuss your anger (to a point)
o Don’t over discuss it
 Let it go
 Forgiveness
What is Happiness?

 If you feel good you’re more likely to do good things

 Subjective Well-Being
 One of the things we associate with happiness is our well-being
 Has to do with physical and mental well-being
 Moods change over time of day, but they balance out over time
 When we first get up, we’re not particularly happy but we get happier as we wake
and proceed throughout day but it decreases as we reach end of day and we’re
tired
 Negative emotion is more consistent throughout the day
 Does money really make us happier?
 Impact of Events
 Happiness is...