DND

• Motivation


  Factors that direct and energize the behavior of humans and other organisms
• Motivation has biological, cognitive, and social aspects, and the complexity of the concept has led psychologists to develop a variety of approaches
• All approaches seek to explain the energy that guides people's behavior in specific directions
• Instinct approaches


  • People and animals are born preprogrammed with sets of behaviors essential to their survival
  • Those instincts provide the energy that channels behavior in appropriate directions
• Instincts


  Inborn patterns of behavior that are biologically determined rather than learned
• Difficulties with instinct approaches

  • Psychologists do not agree on what, or even how many, primary instincts exist
  • Instinct approaches are unable to explain why certain patterns of behavior and not others have evolved in a given species
  • Much of the variety and complexity of human behavior is learned and thus cannot be seen as instinctual
• Drive-reduction approaches


  • Suggest that a lack of some basic biological need produces a drive to push an organism to satisfy that need
• Drive


  Motivational tension, or arousal, that energizes behavior to fulfill a need
• Primary drives


  Drives related to basic biological needs of the body or of the species as a whole
• Secondary drives


  Drives that arise from prior experience and learning
• Homeostasis


  Body's tendency to maintain a steady internal state; underlies primary drives
• Drive-reduction theories cannot fully explain behavior in which the goal is not to reduce a drive but rather to maintain or even increase the level of excitement or arousal
• Arousal approaches


  • People try to maintain a steady level of stimulation and activity
  • If stimulation and activity levels become uncomfortably high, we try to reduce them
  • If levels of stimulation and activity are too low, we will try to increase them by seeking stimulation
• People vary widely in the optimal level of arousal they seek out, with some people looking for especially high levels of arousal
• Incentive approaches


  • Motivation stems from the desire to attain external rewards, known as incentives
  • The desirable properties of external stimuli account for a person's motivation
• Drives and incentives may work together in motivating behavior
• Cognitive approaches


  • Motivation is the outcome of people's thoughts, beliefs, expectations, and goals
• Intrinsic motivation


  Causes us to participate in an activity for our own enjoyment rather than for any actual or concrete reward that it will bring us
• Extrinsic motivation


  Causes us to do something for money, a grade, or some other actual, concrete reward
• We are more apt to persevere, work harder, and produce work of higher quality when motivation for a task is intrinsic rather than extrinsic
• Providing rewards for desirable behavior (thereby increasing extrinsic motivation) may actually decrease intrinsic motivation in some cases
• Maslow's hierarchy of needs


  • Places motivational needs in a hierarchy and suggests that before more sophisticated, higher-order needs can be met, certain primary needs must be satisfied
  • A pyramid can represent the model, with the more basic needs at the bottom and the higher-level needs at the top
  • To activate a specific higher-order need, a person must first fulfill the more basic needs in the hierarchy

  
• Lower order needs


  • Physiological needs
  • Safety needs
• Higher order needs


  • Love and belongingness
  • Esteem
  • Self-actualization
• Achieving self-actualization reduces the striving and yearning for greater fulfillment that mark most people's lives and instead provides a sense of satisfaction with their current state of affairs
• Emotions


  Feelings that generally have both physiological and cognitive elements that influence behavior

  
• It is possible to experience an emotion without the presence of cognitive elements
• The sequence of emotions and cognitive processes varies from situation to situation, with emotions predominating in some instances and cognitive processes occurring first in others

  
• Functions of emotions


  • Preparing us for action
  • Shaping our future behavior
  • Helping us interact more effectively with others

  
• Substantial differences exist in descriptions of emotions among various cultures, suggesting that fitting a particular emotion into a linguistic category may make it easier to discuss, contemplate, and perhaps experience

  
• James-Lange theory


  • Emotional experience is a reaction to instinctive bodily events that occur as a result of some situation or event in the environment
  • For every major emotion there is an accompanying physiological or "gut" reaction of internal organs, and it is this specific pattern of visceral response that leads us to label the emotional experience

  
• Drawbacks of the James-Lange theory include the fact that visceral changes do not always occur rapidly enough to account for immediate emotional experiences, and physiological arousal does not invariably produce emotional experience
• Cannon-Bard theory


  • Rejects the view that physiological arousal alone leads to the perception of emotion
  • Assumes that both physiological arousal and the emotional experience are produced simultaneously by the same nerve stimulus
  • The thalamus sends a signal to the autonomic nervous system, producing a visceral response, and at the same time communicates a message to the cerebral cortex regarding the nature of the emotion being experienced

  
• The simultaneous occurrence of the physiological and emotional responses, which is a fundamental assumption of the Cannon-Bard theory, has yet to be demonstrated conclusively
• Schachter-Singer theory


  • Emphasizes that we identify the emotion we are experiencing by observing our environment and comparing ourselves with others

  
• Evidence is growing that specific patterns of biological arousal are associated with specific emotions, and the amygdala plays an important role in the experience of emotions

  
• The Schachter-Singer experiment supported a cognitive view of emotions in which emotions are determined jointly by a relatively nonspecific kind of physiological arousal and the labeling of that arousal on the basis of cues from the environment

  
• No single theory of emotion has proved invariably accurate in its predictions, reflecting the fact that psychology is an evolving, developing science