Motivation and Emotion
Motivation
The drive to seek a goal, such as food, water, and
friends
What goals do you have?
What motivates you to seek those goals?
Emotion
A state of the body
causing feelings, such as
hope, fear, or love
What controls
motivation and emotion?
Hypothalamus
controls pain, pleasure; also location of fear, rage,
hunger, thirst, and sex drives
Amygdala
emotional responses like aggression and fear
The Reticular Formation
activity level in body
What controls
motivation and emotion?
Pituitary Gland
Controller of chemical responses
Adrenal Glands
Released adrenaline when faced with an emergency
Gonads
Testes (male) and ovaries (female) produce sperm and
eggs, respectively
Motivational Forces
Drives
Forces that push an organism
into action to reach a goal
Example: If you’re thirsty, you
have a need for water and are
driven by the body to seek it
Goal
What our behavior is aimed
toward
Example: Quenching your thirst
Motivational Forces
The body’s drives operate in a cycle to maintain
balance in the long run
Homeostasis
Establishing a physical equilibrium, “staying the same”
Hunger
What causes hunger?
Stomach contractions
Blood-sugar levels
Taste receptors on the tongue
Fat cells shrink
Set point: the bodyregulating mechanism that
determines a person’s typical
weight
Thirst
Humans are made of 65 to 70 percent water
What causes thirst?
A constant need for water
A dry tongue
Receptors in the intestines
Intrinsic v. Extrinsic Motivation
Intrinsic: from
within yourself
Extrinsic: from
outside of
yourself
Drive-Reduction Theory
When individuals experience a need or
drive, they’re motivated to reduce that need
or drive.
Drive theories assume that people are always trying to
reduce internal tension.
Therefore, drive theories believe that the source of
motivation lies within the person (not from the
environment)
Need (ex. for
food, water)
Drive
(hunger, thirst)
Drive-reducing
behaviors
(eating, drinking)
Drive-Reduction Theory
Drive reduction theory has some implications.
Have you ever eaten when you weren’t
hungry?
What about a person that excessively works
out?
How do we account for other motivating
factors like: achievement, power, and
curiosity?
Incentive Theories
Again, an incentive has an ability to motivate
behavior.
Push vs. Pull theory –
Internal states of tension push people certain
directions.
External stimuli pull people in certain
directions.
According to incentive theory, motivation
comes from the environment around you.
Drive-Reduction v. Incentive
Drive theory –
Biological internal
motivation (homeostasis)
Incentive theory –
Environmental
motivation (not as much
homeostasis, more
outside factors)
Cognitive Theory
Behavior strongly influenced by others
We watch others’ actions and consider their
success or failure, reward and punishment, etc.
The observer thinks about what he sees and
draws conclusions from it
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Emotions
Emotions
Emotions: difficult to define
A relatively brief episode of synchronized evaluative
physiological, behavioral, and subjective responses.
The term emotion usually is distinguished from feelings,
mood, and affect.
Feeling: the subjective experience associated with an emotion.
Mood: an emotional state that is general and extended in time.
Affect: encompasses feelings and mood and categories of
emotion (e.g., positive or negative affect).
Emotions
Part of our physical survival
system
We experience all basic
human emotions before the
age of two
Emotion is influenced by
culture
Theories of Emotion
James-Lange
Evaluation of a stimulus causes physical reaction that
is experienced as a specific emotion.
Example: A person sees a spider and regards it as
dangerous. According to the James–Lange theory, the
person would begin to shake and then experience the
shaking behavior as fear: “I feel afraid because I am
shaking”
James-Lange
Theories of Emotion
Cannon-Bard
Thalamus relays stimuli to internal organs and cortex
simultaneously.
Physical changes and emotional experience occur at
the same time.
Example: A person sees a spider. According to the Cannon–
Bard theory, the person would begin to shake and
simultaneously appraise the shaking behavior as fear: “The
spider makes me shake and feel afraid”
Cannon-Bard
Theories of Emotion
Schacter’s Cognitive Theory
Situational cues and what one is thinking at the
moment determine which emotion is experienced
(crying at a birth =happy; crying at funeral = sad).
Example: A person sees a spider. According to two-factor
theory, the person, who believes spiders are dangerous,
begins to shake and appraises the shaking as fear: “I label
my shaking as fear because I appraised the situation as
dangerous”
Schacter’s Cognitive Theory
Facial Expressions and Emotion
Facial Expressions and Emotions
People around the world share basic
emotions
Fear, anger, surprise, disgust, sadness, joy
Each emotion has a distinctive facial
expression
Facial Expressions and Emotion
Expressions are universal
People from different cultures can use the same
facial expressions and recognize them in others
as well
Facial Expressions and Emotions
Cultural differences do exist
Example: in the Utku Eskimo population, anger is
rarely expressed
“Display rules” are different in Eastern v.
Western cultures
Differences between individualistic (e.g., U.S.) and
collectivist (e.g., China) cultures. For example,
Chinese adults discourage expression of strong
emotions, and Chinese children cry and smile less at
one year of age compared with U.S. children.
The four psychological (non-survival)
needs that affect motivation
Curiosity
We want to try different things
Manipulation
We want to handle objects in our environment
Intrinsic and Extrinsic
Seeking rewards from within and without
Need for Stimulation
We need stimulation in order to develop properly
Three Other Psychological
Motivators
Need for Affiliation
We want to belong
Need for Approval
We want others to have good opinions of us
Need for Achievement
We want to feel like we have accomplished
something in our life
Emotion
Opponent-Process Theory
After an intense emotion, we experience its
opposite for awhile
Cognition
We interpret situations and are directed to how we
should feel about those situations
Daniel Goleman: Emotional
Intelligence
Emotional Awareness
Introspection – knowing how we feel and why
Managing Emotions
Able to exercise self control and think reasonably
in an emotional situation
Identifying and Understanding other’s
emotions
Empathy “I feel you man.”