All

• Psychology


  The study of the mind and behavior
• Positive Psychology


  The study of the conditions and processes that contribute to the flourishing or optimal functioning of people, groups, and institutions
• Motivation


  What people want to do [Direction] and how strongly they want to do it [Strength]
• Perspectives on Motivation


  • Biological
  • Psychogenic/psychosocial
  • Evolutionary
  • Psychodynamic
  • Behavioural
  • Cognitive
  • Humanistic
• Drive


  Motivation activated by a need state (e.g. hunger)
• Drive reduction theory


  Deprivation of basic needs causes an unpleasant state of tension that leads to action. If the action happens to reduce the tension, it is reinforced
• Drives


  • Primary drives: innate
  • Secondary drives: an originally neutral stimulus becomes associated with drive reduction and becomes a motivator
• Evolutionary perspective on motivation

  Basic human motives derive from tasks of survival and reproduction; natural selection endowed animals with motivational mechanisms that lead them to maximise their inclusive fitness
• Psychodynamic perspective on motivation

  Motivated by internal tension states: drives, for sex and aggression
• Behavioural perspective on motivation


  Emphasise motives for relatedness and self-esteem
• Cognitive perspective on motivation

  • Goals: valued outcomes established through social learning
  • Expectancy-value: motivation is a joint function of the value of outcome (subjective) and the extent they believe they can achieve it
  • Goal setting theory: conscious goals regulate much of human action
  • Self Determination Theory: Intrinsic motivation when competence, autonomy, relatedness
• Humanistic perspective on motivation

  • Human motives are unconscious
  • Maslow's hierarchy of needs: basic needs to be met before higher-level needs become active
• Homeostasis


  Constant internal equilibrium, permits cells to live and function
• Set point


  Optimal level
• Feedback mechanisms


  Information regarding internal state
• Metabolism


  Converting food into energy
• Absorptive phase


  Absorbing nutrients
• Fasting phase


  Converting short and long term fuel stores into energy
• Hunger and satiety mechanisms

  Turning off eating
• Hunger increases


  As glucose levels fall in the bloodstream (fuels are diminishing)
• Eating is also regulated by

  External cues: palatability, learned meal times, presence of others
• Receptors in intestines


  Regulate eating
• Psychosocial needs


  Personal and interpersonal motives for ends such as mastery, achievement, power, self-esteem, affiliation and intimacy
• Psychosocial needs


  • Agency: Self-oriented goals: mastery or power
  • Relatedness: Interpersonal motives for connection/communion with others
• Strength of a motive

  Depends on whether appropriate stimuli impinge on the organism
• Factors influencing psychosocial needs

  • Innate factors: Nature
  • Learning and culture: Nurture
• Cognition


  Representations that provide the direction of the motive
• Emotional energy


  Providing the fuel/strength of motivation
• Need for achievement


  Motive to succeed and avoid failure, heavily influenced by cultural and economic conditions
• Performance goals


  • To approach or achieve a socially visible standard
  • Mastery: To master the skill
• Emotion


  Includes subjective experience, physiological arousal, and behavioural expression
• James-Lange theory


  Subjective experience of emotion results from bodily experience induced by an emotion-eliciting stimulus
• Cannon-Bard theory


  Emotion-inducing stimuli simultaneously elicit both emotional experience and bodily responses
• Emotional expression


  Facial and outward indications of emotions (body language and tone of voice), which are innate and cross-cultural
• Display rules


  Culturally variable patterns of regulating and displaying emotion
• Basic emotions


  • Anger
  • Fear
  • Sadness
  • Disgust
• Positive and negative affect


  Emotions are controlled by neural pathways distributed throughout the nervous system, with the hypothalamus activating sympathetic and endocrine responses, and the limbic system, particularly the amygdala, being part of an emotional circuit
• Consciousness


  Refers to the subjective awareness of percepts, thoughts, feelings, and behaviour
• Functions of consciousness


  • Monitoring the self and environment
  • Controlling thought and behaviour
• Attention


  The process of focusing awareness, providing heightened sensitivity to a limited range of experience requiring more extensive information processing