Chapter 9 Motivation and Emotion

Chapter 9Motivation and Emotion

Motivation • Dynamics of behavior that initiate, sustain, direct, and terminate actions

A Model of Motivational Activities • Model of how motivated activities work • Need: Internal deficiency; causes • Drive: Energized motivational state (e.g., hunger, thirst); activates a… • Response: Action or series of actions designed to attain a… • Goal: Target of motivated behavior • Incentive Value: Goal’s appeal beyond its ability to fill a need

Types of Motives • Primary Motive: Innate (inborn) motives based on biological needs we must meet to survive • Stimulus Motive: Innate needs for stimulation and information • Secondary Motive: Based on learned needs, drives, and goals

Hunger: Big Mac Attack? • Homeostasis: Body equilibrium; balance • Hypothalamus: Brain structure; regulates many aspects of motivation and emotion, including hunger, thirst, and sexual behavior • Lateral Hypothalamus: If turned on, an animal will begin eating; if destroyed, an animal will never eat again! • Ventromedial Hypothalamus: Stops eating behavior

Figure 9.2 FIGURE 9.2 In Walter Cannon’s early study of hunger, a simple apparatus was used to simultaneously record hunger pangs and stomach contractions.

Figure 9.3 FIGURE 9.3 Location of the hypothalamus in the human brain.

Figure 9.4 FIGURE 9.4 This is a cross section through the middle of the brain (viewed from the front of the brain). Indicated areas of the hypothalamus are associated with hunger and the regulation of body weight.

More on Eating Behavior (Hungry Yet?) • Neuropeptide Y (NPY): Substance in the brain that initiates eating • Glucagon-like Peptide 1 (GLP-1): Substance in brain that terminates eating • Set Point: Proportion of body fat that is maintained by changes in hunger and eating; point where weight stays the same when you make no effort to gain or lose weight

The Final Word on Eating Behavior • Leptin: Substance released by fat cells that inhibits eating • External Eating Cues: External stimuli that tend to encourage hunger or elicit eating; these cues may cause you to eat even if you are stuffed (like Homer Simpson, who eats whatever he sees!)

Behavioral Dieting • Weight reduction based on changing exercise and eating habits and not on temporary self-starvation • Some keys • Start with a complete physical • Exercise • Be committed to weight loss

Behavioral Dieting (cont'd) • Observe yourself, keep an eating diary, and keep a chart of daily progress. • Eat based on hunger, not on taste or learned habits that tell you to always clean your plate. • Avoid snacks. • Reward yourself if you change eating habits and punish yourself if you do not.

Taste • Taste Aversion: Active dislike for a particular food • VERYdifficult to overcome

Eating Disorders: Anorexia Nervosa • Active self-starvation or sustained loss of appetite that seems to have psychological origins • Control issues seem to be involved • Very difficult to effectively treat • Affects adolescent females overwhelmingly

Figure 9.6 FIGURE 9.6 Women with abnormal eating habits were asked to rate their body shape on a scale similar to the one you see here. As a group, they chose ideal figure is much thinner than what they thought their current weights were. (Most women say they want to be thinner than they currently are, but to a lesser degree than women with eating problems.) Notice that women with eating problems chose an ideal weight that was even thinner than what they thought men prefer. This is not typical of most women. Only women with eating problems wanted to be thinner than what they thought men find attractive

Eating Disorders: Bulimia Nervosa (Binge-Purge Syndrome) • Excessive eating usually followed by self-induced vomiting and/or taking laxatives • Difficult to treat • Prozac approved by FDA to treat bulimia nervosa • Affects females overwhelmingly

Causes of Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa • Anorectics and bulimics have exaggerated fears of becoming fat; they think they are fat when the opposite is true! • Bulimics are obsessed with food and weight; anorectics with perfect control. • Anorectics will often be put on a “weight-gain” diet to restore weight.

Thirst and Pain • Extracellular Thirst: When water is lost from fluids surrounding the cells of the body • Intracellular Thirst: When fluid is drawn out of cells because of increased concentration of salts and minerals outside the cell • Best satisfied by drinking water • Pain Avoidance:An episodic drive • Distinct episodes when bodily damage takes place or is about to occur

Sex Drive • Estrus: Changes in animals that create a desire for sex; females in heat • Estrogen: A female sex hormone • Androgens: Male hormones

Figure 9.7 FIGURE 9.7 These graphs show the frequency of sexual intercourse for American adults. To generalize, about one third of the people surveyed have sex twice a week or more, one third a few times a month, and one third a few times a year or not at all. The overall average is about once a week

Sexual Behavior and Orientation • Erogenous Zones: Areas of the body that produce pleasure and/or provoke erotic desires (genitals, breasts, etc.) • Sexual Orientation: Degree of emotional and erotic attraction to members of the same sex, opposite sex, or both sexes • Heterosexual: Attracted romantically and erotically to the opposite sex • Homosexual: Attracted romantically and erotically to the same sex • Bisexual: Attracted romantically and erotically to both sexes

Human Sexual Response: Masters and Johnson • Sexual response can be divided into four phases that occur in the following order: • Excitement: Initial signs of sexual arousal • Plateau: Physical arousal intensifies • Orgasm: Climax and release of sexual tension • Resolution: Return to lower levels of sexual tension and arousal

Stimulus Drives • Reflect needs for information, exploration, manipulation, and sensory input • Sensation Seeking: Trait of people who prefer high levels of stimulation (e.g., the contestants on “Eco-Challenge” and “Fear Factor”) • Yerkes-Dodson Law: If a task is simple, it is best for arousal to be high; if it is complex, lower levels of arousal provide for the best performance

Figure 9.11 FIGURE 9.11 (a) The general relationship between arousal and efficiency can be described by an inverted U curve. The optimal level of arousal or motivation is higher for a simple task (b) than for a complex task (c).

How to Cope With Test Anxiety • Preparation • Relaxation • Rehearsal • Restructuring thoughts

Circadian Rhythms • Cyclical changes in bodily functions and arousal levels that vary on a 24-hour schedule • Preadaptation: Gradual matching of sleep-waking cycles to a new time schedule before an anticipated circadian rhythm change (e.g., trying to adjust to new time zone to avoid jet lag)

Figure 9.12 FIGURE 9.12 Core body temperature follows a circadian rhythm. Most people reach a low point 2 to 3 hours before the time they normally wake u Page It’s no wonder that both the Chernobyl and Three-Mile Island nuclear power plant accidents occurred around 4 A.M. Rapid travel to a different time zone, shift work, depression, and illness can disrupt the body’s core rhythm, with disturbing effects

Figure 9.13 FIGURE 9.13 Time required to adjust to air travel across six time zones. The average time to resynchronize was shorter for westbound travel than for eastbound flights.

Learned Motives • Social Motives: Acquired by growing up in a particular society or culture • Need for Achievement (nAch): Desire to meet some internal standard of excellence • Need for Power: Desire to have impact or control over others

Abraham Maslow and Needs • Hierarchy of Human Needs: Maslow’s ordering of needs based on presumed strength or potency; some needs are more powerful than others and thus will influence your behavior to a greater degree • Basic Needs: First four levels of needs in Maslow’s hierarchy • Lower needs tend to be more potent than higher needs • Growth Needs: Higher-level needs associated with self-actualization • Meta-Needs: Needs associated with impulses for self-actualization

Figure 9.14 FIGURE 9.14 Maslow believed that lower needs in the hierarchy are dominant. Basic needs must be satisfied before growth motives are fully expressed. Desires for selfactualization are reflected in various metaneeds (see text).

Types of Motivation • Intrinsic Motivation: Motivation coming from within, not from external rewards; based on personal enjoyment of a task • Extrinsic Motivation: Based on obvious external rewards, obligations, or similar factors (e.g., pay, grades)

Emotions • State characterized by physiological arousal and changes in facial expressions, gestures, posture, and subjective feelings • Adaptive Behaviors: Aid our attempts to survive and adjust to changing conditions • Physiological Changes: Include heart rate, blood pressure, perspiration, and other involuntary bodily responses • Adrenaline: Hormone produced by adrenal glands that arouses the body • Emotional Expression: Outward signs of what a person is feeling • Emotional Feelings: Private emotional experience

Plutchik’s First Four Primary Emotions • Most basic emotions are: • Fear • Surprise • Sadness • Disgust

Plutchik’s Last Four Primary Emotions (cont'd) • Anger • Anticipation • Joy • Acceptance

Figure 9.15 FIGURE 9.15 Primary and mixed emotions. In Robert Plutchik’s model, there are eight primary emotions, as listed in the inner areas. Adjacent emotions may combine to give the emotions listed around the perimeter. Mixtures involving more widely separated emotions are also possible. For example, fear plus anticipation produces anxiety.

Figure 9.16 FIGURE 9.16 Folklore holds that people who work or attend school on a weekly schedule experience their lowest moods on “Blue Monday.” Actually, moods tend to be generally lower for most weekdays than they are on weekends. The graph shown here plots the average daily moods of a group of college students over a 5-week period. As you can see, many people find that their moods rise and fall on a 7-day cycle. For most students, a low point tends to occur around Monday or Tuesday and a peak on Friday or Saturday.

Brain and Emotion • Autonomic Nervous System (ANS): Neural system that connects brain with internal organs and glands • Sympathetic Branch: Part of ANS that activates body for emergency action • Parasympathetic Branch: Part of ANS that quiets body and conserves energy • Parasympathetic Rebound: Overreaction to intense emotion

Lie Detectors • Polygraph: Device that records heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, and galvanic skin response (GSR); lie detector • GSR: Measures sweating • Irrelevant Questions: Neutral, emotional questions in a polygraph test • Relevant Questions: Questions to which only someone guilty should react by becoming anxious or emotional • Control Questions: Questions that almost always provoke anxiety in a polygraph (e.g. “Have you ever taken any office supplies?”)

Body Language (Kinesics) • Study of communication through body movement, posture, gestures, and facial expressions • Facial Blends: Mix of two or more basic expressions

Three Types of Facial Expressions • Pleasantness-Unpleasantness: Degree to which a person is experiencing pleasure or displeasure • Attention-Rejection: Degree of attention given to a person or object • Activation: Degree of arousal a person is experiencing

Figure 9.19 FIGURE 9.19 When shown groups of simplified faces (without labels), the angry and scheming faces “jumped out” at people faster than sad, happy, or neutral faces. An ability to rapidly detect threatening expressions probably helped our ancestors survive.

Theories of Emotion • James-Lange Theory: Emotional feelings follow bodily arousal and come from awareness of such arousal. • Cannon-Bard Theory: The thalamus (in brain) causes emotional feelings and bodily arousal to occur at the same time. • Schachter’s Cognitive Theory: Emotions occur when a label is applied to general physical arousal. • Attribution: Mental process of assigning causes to events; attributing arousal to a certain source. • Facial Feedback Hypothesis: Sensations from facial expressions and help define what emotion someone feels.

Figure 9.21 FIGURE 9.21 Theories of emotion.

A Modern View of Emotion • Emotional Appraisal: Evaluating personal meaning of a stimulus • Emotional Intelligence: Combination of skills, including empathy, self-control, self-awareness, sensitivity to feelings of others, persistence, and self-motivation

Figure 9.23 FIGURE 9.23 A contemporary model of emotion.

Happiness • Subjective Well-Being (SWB): When people are satisfied with their lives, have frequent positive emotions, and have relatively few negative emotions • Are these factors related to happiness? • Wealth: No relation • Education: Not really • Marriage: Not really • Religion: Minimally

Happiness Factors (cont'd) • Aging: Happiness does not decline with age. • Sex: Men and women do not differ in happiness. • Work: No. • Personality: If you have a “sunny disposition,” you are more likely to be happy.

Chapter 9 Motivation and Emotion