Motivation and Emotion

• SELF ACTUALIZATION is the point that is seldom reached at which people have satisfied the lower needs and achieved their full human potential.
• Motivation is the process by which activities are started, directed and continued so that physical or psychological needs or wants are met.
• The Latin word “movere” which means “to move” motivation is what moves people to do the things they do.
• You are energized to do or engage in some activity.
• You direct your energies toward reaching a specific goal.
• You have differing intensities of feeling about reaching the goal.
• Extrinsic Motivation involves engaging in certain activities or behavior that either reduce biological needs or help us obtain incentives or external rewards.
• Intrinsic Motivation involves engaging in certain activities or behaviors because the behaviors themselves are personally rewarding or because engaging in these activities fulfills our beliefs or expectations
• A model of Motivational Activities is a 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…
• Arousal Approach suggests people have an optimal level of tension that they seek to maintain by increasing or decreasing stimulation.
• Goal: Target of motivated behavior
• Motivation is about Needs, which are the requirements of some material such as food or water that is essential for survival of the organism.
• There are 2 kinds of drives: those involving survival needs of body such as hunger and thirst and acquired or secondary drives that are learned through experience and conditioning such as the need for money or social approval.
• Yerkes-Dodson Law states that performance is related to arousal; moderate levels of arousal lead to better performance than too low or too high arousal level.
• Incentive Approach is explained in terms of the external stimulus and its rewarding properties; relative to the Expectancy-value theory that assumes the actions of humans cannot be predicted or fully understood without understanding the beliefs, values, and the importance that a person attaches to those beliefs and values at any given moment.
• Humanistic Approach: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs proposes that there are several levels of needs that a person must strive to meet before achieving the highest level of personality fulfillment.
• There are 3 types of needs: the Need for achievement, the Need for affiliation, and the Need for power.
• Drive Reduction Approach (Clark Hull 1884-1952) assumes behavior arises from physiological or biological need that cause internal drives to satisfy the need and reduce tension and arousal to maintain a steady state or balance called homeostasis.
• Incentive Value: Goal’s appeal beyond its ability to fill a need
• Instinct Approach - motives are innate; assumes people are governed by distinct (biologically determined and innate patterns of behavior that exist in both people and animals)
• A steady state or balance called homeostasis
• Biological Hunger Factors come from physiological changes in blood chemistry and signals from digestive organs that provide feedback to the brain, which in turn, triggers us to eat or to stop eating.
• Psychosocial Hunger Factors come from learned associations between food and other stimuli, such as snacking while watching TV; socio-cultural influences, such as pressures to be thin; and various personality problems, such as depression, dislike of body image or low self-esteem.
• Genetic Hunger Factors come from inherited instructions found in our genes, which determine the number of fat cells or metabolic rates of burning off body’s fuel, which push us toward being normal, overweight, underweight.
• Parental Attitudes, such as poor parenting or parents with a history of substance abuse or psychiatric disorder, can contribute to the development of an eating disorder.
• Genetic Influence, specifically chromosomal abnormalities, can play a role in the development of an eating disorder.
• Cultural Pressures, including stereotypical judgment of what body standard is considered attractive and mass media influences, can contribute to the development of an eating disorder.
• Hormonal Imbalance, such as in the thyroid, gonads and pituitary glands, can contribute to the development of an eating disorder.
• Highly palatable food, which we eat because it tastes so good, can contribute to the development of an eating disorder.
• Super Size It, where food portions are larger than necessary for health, can contribute to the development of an eating disorder.
• Cafeteria Diet Effect, where more food and more variety lead us to eat more, can contribute to the development of an eating disorder.
• Snacking, which does not cause us to eat less at dinner, can contribute to the development of an eating disorder.
• Sedentary lifestyles, such as being a couch potato, can contribute to the development of an eating disorder.
• Influenced by blood sugar level, hunger increases when glucose levels drop.
• Glucose is a simple sugar.
• Insulin stimulates the storage of food molecules as fats.
• Insulin must be present to extract glucose from blood.