Unit 11

• Motivation


  any physical or phycological process underlaying the initiation of behaviors towards a goal

  • Drive - the physiological triggers that signal we may be deprived of something
  • Incentives - stimuli we seek to reduce drives such as social approval and companionship, food and water
• Satiation - the feeling of fullness

  • lateral hypothalamus - on switch
  • Ventromedial hypothalamus - off switch
• Glucose - sugar that is the primary fuel for our body

  Insulin - hormone that helps cells absorb glucose for later use

  Cholecystokinin - released by neurons as intestines expand
• Specific satiety - motivation to eat can be reinstated by new foods being introduced (seeing desert after dinner)
• Dopamine is releases in two stages

  1. When we taste food
  2. While food is digested
• Unit bias


  the tendency to believe we are served the appropriate portion size of food

  • portion size
  • Delboeuf illusion - same amount of food on smaller plates seem like more food
• Social facilitation - we eat more when around people
• Impression management


  eating less to make a good impression
• Modeling


  conforming to social setting (not eating till others start to eat)
• Over eating

  • hyper palatable foods
  • lots of energy rich foods available
  • food diversity maintains incentive to eat
• Anorexia nervosa

  • self starvation
  • fear of weight gain
  • disordered perception of body
  • denial of consequences of being under weight
• Bulimia nervosa 


  Cycle

  1. food desperation
  2. binge eating
  3. purging

  • tendency to be aware that what they are doing is bad
• libido - motivation for sexual activity

  • gender differences (women desire less sexual partners)
• Kinsey - father of sexology

  Kinsey scale of sexual behavior

  • sexuality is a scale
• William Masters and Virginia Johnson

  Sexual response cycle - the phase of physiological change during sexual activity

  1. Excitement
  2. Plateau
  3. Orgasm
  4. Resolution
• Gender roles - accepted things for each gender to do
• Sexual scripts - expectations on how to behave
• Sexual guilt - guilty feeling for violating social norms (having sex while in religious family)
• Possible reasons for being gay

  • small hypothalamus
  • Exposure to testosterone in uterus
  • Gay men show women cognitive abilities
  • identical twins are more likely to both be gay than fraternal twins
  • Having more older brothers = higher chance of being gay
• Transgender - mismatch between the gender one identifies as and they sex they are born
• Intersex - reproductive anatomy, chromosomes, or hormones do not fit the typical definition of male or female
• The need to belong

  • motivation to maintain relationships that involve affection
  • lonely people don't live as long
  • based on subjective terms
• Types of love

  Passionate love - associated with physical and emotional longing for the other person

  • high dopamine and oxytocin

  Companionate love - related to tenderness and affection to a person with which you are your life
• Achievement 


  the drive to achieve goals
• Approach goals - enjoyable incentives you are drawn towards

  • gaining something

  Avoidance goals - unpleasant out comes that we try to avoid

  • Trying not to gain a bad thing
• Self determination theory


  Your ability to achieve goals is dependent on your ability to control the outcome
• Extrinsic motivation 


  when you are doing something for external reward

  • money, public recognition
• Intrinsic motivation


  Doing something for internal reward

  • fun, to over come challenge
• The over justification effect


  Decrease in intrinsic motivation when external rewards are received
• Physiology of emotion

  1. subjective thoughts and experiences
  2. accompanying patterns of physical and neural arousal
  3. characteristic behavioral expression
• Decision making

  Somatic markers - gut feelings that nudge us into making decisions

  • orbital frontal cortex damage - no decision making

  Affective forecasting - ability to predict your emotional response to a decision

  Regret avoidance - over estimating how much you will later regret it and under estimating ability to adjust to outcomes
• James-Lang theory

  Fear stimulus - autonomic arousal - conscious feeling
• Connon-Bard theory

  Fear stimulus - subcortical brain activity - conscious feeling and autonomic arousal
• Facial feed back hypothesis

  emotional expression can influence our subjective emotional states

  • supports James-Lang theory
• Two factor theory of emotion - Stanly Schacter

  our interpretation of why we are aroused creates the emotional experience

  • Misattribution of arousal - process where people make a mistake in assuming what is causing them to feel aroused (Many emptions precent the same way)
• Universal emotions


  Some emotions are expressed the same across cultures
• Emotional dialects


  Variations of emotional expression across cultures
• Display rules

  What it is considered appropriate to express emotions

  • Individualistic cultures - more expressive
  • Collective culture - less expressive
• Polygraph -


  measures changes in the heart rate and precipitation

  • unreliable for lie detection
• Micro expressions 


  Facial expressions made within a fraction of a second that can be detected before emotions are suppressed