Emotion and Motivation

1. Emotion and Motivation Unit 7

2. How Do We Experience Emotions? Distinguish between primary and secondary emotions. Compare and contrast the James-Lange, Cannon-Bard, and Schachter-Singer two-factor theories of emotion. Discuss the roles that the amygdala and prefrontal cortex play in emotional experience. Define misattribution of arousal and excitation transfer. Discuss common strategies that people use to regulate their emotional states.

3. How Do We Experience Emotions? The terms emotion and mood are often used interchangeably in everyday language, but it is useful to distinguish between them. emotion (affect): feelings that involve subjective evaluation, physiological processes, and cognitive beliefs. Emotions typically interrupt whatever is happening, or trigger changes in thought and behavior. subjective experience:feelings that accompany an emotion physical changes:increases in heart rate, in skin temperature, and in brain activation cognitive appraisals:people’s beliefs and understandings about why they feel the way they do mood: diffuse, long-lasting emotional states. Rather than interrupting what is happening, they influence thought and behavior.

4. Emotions Have a Subjective Component • We experience emotions subjectively; we know we are experiencing emotions because we feel them • The intensity of emotional reactions varies but people who are overemotional or underemotional tend to have psychological problems, for example: • mood disorders:such as depression or panic attacks; • alexithymia: This disorder causes people to not experience the subjective components of emotions, e.g. Elliot

5. Emotions Have a Subjective Component • One cause of alexithymia is that the physiological messages associated with emotions do not reach the brain centers that interpret emotion • Damage to certain brain regions, especially the prefrontal cortex, is associated with a loss of emotion’s subjective component

6. Distinguishing Between Types of Emotions • At the center of the circumplex model is the intersection of two core dimensions of affect: • Valence indicates how negative or positive emotions are; activation indicates how arousing they are • arousal: physiological activation (such as increased brain activity) or increased autonomic responses (such as increased heart rate, sweating, or muscle tension)

7. Distinguishing Between Types of Emotions • At the center of the circumplex model is the intersection of two core dimensions of affect: • Valence indicates how negative or positive emotions are; activation indicates how arousing they are • arousal: physiological activation (such as increased brain activity) or increased autonomic responses (such as increased heart rate, sweating, or muscle tension)

9. Emotions Have a Physiological Component : James-Lange Theory • In 1884, William James asserted that a person’s interpretation of the physical changes in a situation leads that person to feel an emotion • A similar theory was independently proposed by the physician and psychologist Carl Lange • According to what is called the James-Lange theory of emotion, we perceive specific patterns of bodily responses, and as a result of that perception we feel emotion

11. Facial Feedback Hypothesis • One implication of the counterintuitive James-Lange theory is that if you mold your facial muscles to mimic an emotional state, you activate the associated emotion • Facial expressions trigger the experience of emotions, not the other way around • In 1963, Silvan Tomkins proposed this idea as the facial feedback hypothesis • In other words, putting on a smile can trigger a happy response

14. We Regulate Our Emotional States • In our daily lives, circumstances often require us to harness our emotional responses • How do you mask your expression of disgust when you are obligated by politeness to eat something you dislike? • Gross outlined the ways we strategically place ourselves in certain situations in order to self-regulate • Can you think of any specific examples? • Recent studies have found that engaging in reappraisal changes the activity of brain regions involved in the experience of emotion • Not all strategies for regulating emotional states are equally successful

15. Humor • Humor increases positive affect and can be used to cope with a difficult situation • Research shows that laughter stimulates endocrine secretion, improves the immune system, and stimulates the release of hormones, dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins • According to one theory, people sometimes laugh in situations that do not seem very funny (e.g. funerals) to distance themselves from their negative emotions, and strengthen their connections to other people

16. Thought Suppression and Rumination • Through thought suppression, people attempt to not feel or respond to the emotion at all • Thought suppression often leads to a rebound effect, in which people think more about something after suppression than before • Rumination involves thinking about, elaborating, and focusing on undesired thoughts or feelings • Rumination prolongs the mood, and it impedes successful mood regulation strategies, such as distracting oneself or focusing on solutions for the problem

17. Distraction • Distraction involves doing something other than the troubling activity or thinking about something other than the troubling thought • By absorbing attention, distraction temporarily helps people stop focusing on their problems • Distractions can backfire if people change their thoughts but end up thinking about other problems or engaging in maladaptive behaviors, e.g. overeating or binge drinking

18. How Does Motivation Energize, Direct, and Sustain Behavior? • Distinguish between a motive, a need, and a drive. • Describe Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. • Describe the Yerkes-Dodson law. • Distinguish between extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. • Discuss the relationships between self-efficacy, the achievement motive, delayed gratification, and goal achievement. • Describe needto belong theory.

19. How Does Motivation Energize, Direct, and Sustain Behavior? Emotions are a primary source of motivation. motivation: factors that energize, direct, or sustain behavior Most of the general theories of motivation emphasize four essential qualities of motivational states. Motivational states: are energizing or stimulating; they activate behaviors; are directive; they guide behaviors toward satisfying specific goals or specific needs; help animals persist in their behavior until they achieve their goals or satisfy their needs; differ in strength, depending on internal and external forces.

20. Multiple Factors Motivate Behavior • Needs lead to goal-directed behaviors; failure to satisfy a particular need leads to psychosocial or physical impairment • need: a state of biological or social deficiency • Maslow believed that people are driven by many needs, which he arranged into a need hierarchy • need hierarchy: Maslow’s arrangement of needs, in which basic survival needs must be met before people can satisfy higher needs

21. Multiple Factors Motivate Behavior • Maslow’s “need theory” is an example of humanistic psychology because itfocuses on the person in motivation, e.g. it is the person who desires food, not the person’s stomach • A state of self-actualization occurs when someone achieves his or her personal dreams and aspirations • Maslow’s hierarchy is more useful as an indicator of what might be true about people’s behaviors than of what actually is true about them • For example, some people starve themselves in hunger strikes to demonstrate the importance of their personal beliefs • Others, who have satisfied their physiological and security needs, prefer to be left alone

24. Arousal and Performance • Yerkes-Dodson law: the psychological principle that performance increases with arousal up to an optimal point, after which it decreases with increasing arousal • For example, As the Yerkes-Dodson law predicts, students perform best on exams when feeling moderate anxiety. Too little anxiety can make them inattentive or unmotivated, while too much anxiety can interfere with their thinking ability. • Motivation does not always lower tension and arousal; we are individually motivated to seek an optimal level of arousal

26. Critical Thinking Skill: Recognizing When Psychological Reactance May Be Influencing Your Thinking • Psychological reactance is a motivational state aroused when our feelings of personal freedom are threatened and often affects how we make choices • The common notion of reverse psychology is based on psychological reactance, e.g. playing hard to get • By noticing if your thinking has been influenced by this potentially irrelevant variable, you will find it easier to make better-informed and more-rational choices

29. We Have a Need to Belong • Over the course of human evolution, our ancestors who lived with others were more likely to survive and pass along their genes • Effective groups shared food, provided mates, and helped care for offspring, including orphans • Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary formulated the need to belong theory, which states that the need for interpersonal attachments is a fundamental motive that has evolved for adaptive purposes

30. Making and Keeping Friends • Societies differ in their types of groups, but all societies have some form of group membership • Not belonging to a group increases a person’s risk for various adverse consequences, such as illnesses and premature death, and suggests that the need to belong is a basic motive driving behavior • Evidence indicates that people feel anxious when facing exclusion from their social groups • People who are shy and lonely tend to worry most about social evaluation and pay much more attention to social information

31. Anxiety and Affiliation Schachter found that increased anxiety led to increased affiliativemotivations According to Schachter, other people provide information that helps us evaluate whether we are acting appropriately According to Festinger’ssocial comparison theory,we are motivated to have accurate information about ourselves and others; we compare ourselves with those around us to test and validate personal beliefs and emotional responses The effect occurs especially when the situation is ambiguous and we can compare ourselves with people relatively similar to us

33. Psychology: Knowledge You Can Use—How Might Psychology Influence My Working Life? • Industrial and Organizational (I-O) psychology applies findings from psychological science to work settings • Key challenges in I-O psychology include helping employers deal with employees fairly, helping employers design jobs so that workers find them interesting and satisfying, and helping workers be more productive • An important finding in I-O psychology is that satisfied workers are the best workers; people will work hardest when their jobs are meaningful and when they feel they have some control over what they do • Assess your strengths and weaknesses and try to develop a general idea of the kind of career you can pursue effectively and are likely to find fulfilling