Motivation and Emotion

Motivation and Emotion

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 What is motivation?
- Motivation: The set of factors that direct
and energize the behavior of humans and
other organisms
- There are several different approaches to how
we are motivated and what motivates us
 1. Instinct Approaches: Born to be
Motivated
• Instincts: Inborn patterns of behavior that are
biologically determined rather than learned
• People and animals are born preprogrammed with
certain sets of behaviors essential to their survival
and these are what motivates/drives them”
 1. Instinct Approaches: Born to be
Motivated
• Can explain basic behaviors
e.g. eating, drinking

• Criticism:
– How many primary instincts exist
• William McDougall; 18 instincts
• Others; even more (e.g., 5759)
– Why some behavior evolved?
– It is clear that much of the animal behavior
is based on instincts
• BUT variety and complexity of human behavior
is learned
• e.g. fasting (oruç tutmak) X hunger
 2. Drive-Reduction Approaches:
Satisfying Our Needs
• 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
• Wants to maintain homeostasis: Body’s tendency to
maintain a steady internal state
• Operates the need for food, water, stable body
temperature, and sleep
•Homeostasis: Underlying Primary Drives and the
Body’s Tendency to Maintain a Steady Internal State.

With Homeostasis, a series of

feedback loops is used to
regulate body functions,
similar to the way a
thermostat controls the air
temperature in a room.

When body temperature

becomes too high, the blood
vessels expand, and we sweat
as our bodies try to lower the
temperature.

10-7
 2. Drive-Reduction Approaches:
Satisfying Our Needs

• Drive: Motivational tension, or arousal,

that energizes behavior to fulfill a need
– Primary drives - Related to biological needs
of the body
e.g. hunger, thirst, sleep
- Secondary drives - Related to behavior that
fulfills no obvious biological need
e.g. money, achievement, affiliation (social)
 2. Drive-Reduction Approaches:
Satisfying Our Needs

• Can explain how our basic needs motivates us, but..

• Criticism: Needs are not enough to explain the complexity of
human behavior
• Cannot fully explain a behavior in which the goal is not to
reduce a drive but to increase the level of excitement or arousal
e.g. Bungee jumping
 3. Arousal Approaches: Beyond
Drive Reduction
• People try to maintain certain levels
of stimulation and activity
– People vary widely in the optimal
level of arousal they seek out and
maintain a certain level
• E.g., gamblers, extreme sports athletes
– If stimulation and activity levels
become too high, try to reduce them.
• If levels of stimulation and activity are too
low, try to increase it by seeking
stimulation
 Arousal
Approaches
• Yerkes-Dodson law;
there is an inverted U-
shaped relationship
between arousal and
performance
– Easier tasks allow for a
higher level of arousal
– Not aroused
sufficiently/too anxious
performance is low
10-11
 4. Incentive Approaches:
Motivation’s Pull
• Motivation stems from the desire to obtain
valued external goals, or incentives (rewards)
• e.g. the good feeling after you eat dessert
• Incentive; desirable properties of external
stimuli—grades, money, affection, food, or
sex—for a person’s motivation

• Internal drives proposed by drive-reduction

theory work in tandem with the external
incentives of incentive theory to “push” and
“pull” behavior
e.g. Your hunger (drive) pushes you to eat
The good taste of the food (incentive)
pulls you to eat
 Incentive vs. Drive Approaches:

Drive Behavior
Water
deprivation Drink fluids to
leads to thirst reduce drive

Behavior Incentive
Drink fluids to
experience Sweetened
incentive sports drink

10-13
 5. Cognitive Approaches: The
Thoughts Behind Motivation
• Motivation is a product of people’s thoughts,
expectations, and goals – their cognitions
• Intrinsic Motivation
Inner desire to do something for our own
enjoyment
e.g. playing an instrument as a hobby
• Extrinsic Motivation
External, tangible rewards
e.g. playing an instrument professionally
We are more likely to persevere, work harder,
and produce work of higher quality when
motivation for a task is intrinsic rather than
extrinsic !
 6. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:
Ordering Motivational Needs
“Not all needs have the
same importance and
more primary needs must
be satisfied before
moving onto the higher
order of needs”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-4ithG_07Q
Prior to Maslow, researchers generally focused
separately on such factors as biology,
achievement, or power: Places motivational
needs in a hierarchy
6. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:
Ordering Motivational Needs
 6. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:
Ordering Motivational Needs
• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is
important for two reasons:
– Highlights complexity of human needs
– Emphasizes that until basic biological needs
are met, people will be unconcerned about
higher-order needs
• Humanistic Psychology
“Everyone can reach their full potential
(self-actualization) provided that they
are given an optimal environment (their
baser needs are satisfied)”
 6. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:
Ordering Motivational Needs
Criticism:
• Has not been validated by empirical
research
• Defining self-actualization is difficult
• We do move around the hierarchy
• The relative importance of needs may
change from culture to culture and from
time to time
• The need of internet?
 Approaches for Motivation

• Applying multiple approaches to motivation in a given

situation provides a broader understanding than we
might obtain by employing only a single approach
 Biological Basis of Hunger
• Hunger does NOT come
from our stomach.
It comes from our…
• Brain
What part of the brain?
• The Hypothalamus

https://www.youtube.com/wat
ch?v=mjR6KRMPQGw
 Biological Factors in the Regulation of
Hunger
• Complex biological mechanisms tell
organisms to stop eating or not
• Changes in the chemical composition of
the blood
– Glucose levels
• Glucose; a sugar that serves as the primary
energy source
• Glucostats (specialized neurons) monitor
glucose levels; when drop signal
hypothalamus energy supplies are low
– Insulin; secreted by pancreas
• Leads body to store excess sugar in the blood
as fats and carbohydrates
– Ghrelin; communicates to the brain feelings
of hunger; subject to external cues like smell
of food or meal schedules
10-22
 Biological Factors in the Regulation of
Hunger
• Hypothalamus
– Monitors glucose levels
– Injury to the hypothalamus has radical
consequences for eating behavior
• Lateral hypothalamus; rats literally starve to death
• Ventromedial hypothalamus; extreme overeating
– The exact way of its operation is unclear
• Weight set point
• Metabolism; the rate at which food is converted into
energy and expanded by the body
10-23
 Social Factors in Eating

Societal Rules
• Social Facilitation; the longer the people sits socializing, the more
likely he/she is to continue nibbling
• Impression management; polite to chew with a closed mouth; to eat
small amounts to be seen as rude
• Modeling; eating whatever they eat

Cultural Influences
• Determine when, what, and how much we eat
• What is a preferred taste; e.g., in China cats and dogs
• Portions; e.g., big portions in USA

10-24
 Social Factors in Eating

Individual Habits
• Daily schedule of eating
• Portions to eat; Bottomless bowl; asked to eat soup until full; when
tube continued to fill at 70 % more

Operant Conditioning
• Associate food with comfort and consolation; e.g. Eating
sweets when sad
• Learn to escape from unpleasant thoughts through eating

10-25
• The Need for Eating: A social and psychological
need as well a biological one
• Eating disorders
– Anorexia Nervosa: Starve themselves to below 85% of
their normal body weight. See themselves as fat.
– Bulimia Nervosa: Characterized by binging (eating large
amounts of food) and purging (getting rid of the food).

https://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=MprkgCuCu80
The Need for Achievement: Striving for
Success

• Stable, learned characteristic in which

person obtains satisfaction by striving
for and achieving challenging goals

– High need for achievement; challenges

–
– Low achievement motivation; avoid
failure

10-27
The Need for Achievement: Striving for
Success
• Measuring achievement motivation
– Thematic Apperception Tests (TAT)

Researchers use a
standard scoring
Examiner shows a Tells participants system to
series of to write a story determine the
ambiguous that describes amount of
pictures what is happening achievement
imagery in
people’s stories

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2gn_9m3hx0
10-28
 • How do we define abilities?
– Fluid and flexible vs. fixed and
nonchargeable?
Mindsets and • Some believe they either possess skills and
Achievement abilities or not; a fixed mindset.
– Others believe that abilities can be changed
through effort, a growth mindset (having
Grit).
 The Need for Affiliation:
Striving for Friendship
• An interest in establishing and
maintaining relationships with other
people
– Desire to be with their friends more
of the time and alone less often,
compared with people with lower
need for affiliation
– Gender determine how much time
spent with friends
• Regardless of affiliative orientation,
female students spend more time
with friends and less time alone than
male students do
10-30
 The Need for Power:
Striving for Impact on
Others
• Tendency to seek control or influence over others
and to be seen as a powerful individual
– More apt to belong to organizations and seek office
than are those low in the need for power
• Work in professions, in which their power needs may be fulfilled
– Significant gender differences
• Men; show unusual levels of aggression, drink heavily, participate in
competitive sports, act in a sexually exploitive manner
• Women; satisfy in a socially responsible manner; e.g., showing
concern for others, displaying highly nurturing behavior
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Emotions
 Emotions
Emotions: Feelings that generally have both
physiological and cognitive elements, and that
influence behavior
 What are the Functions of
Emotions?
Preparing us for Action

e.g. Fear: Seeing an angry dog and

running
Shaping our Future
Behavior
e.g. Sadness: Being upset when you get a low
grade, studying harder to avoid this in the future

Helping us Interact more

Effectively with Others
e.g. Happiness: Being happy in a relationship
and showing it reinforces the mutual bond
 Facial Expressions of Emotion
• Are facial expressions of emotion universal?
– Yes, for the six major emotional expressions
(Ekman et al., 1971, 1987, 1993, 1994)
– Anger, happiness, surprise, fear, disgust, and
sadness
 These photographs depict facial expressions of the six major emotions. Can you guess the
emotion expressed on each face? Answers (beginning in the upper left): Anger, fear, disgust,
happiness, surprise, and sadness.
 Facial Expressions of Emotion
• Six major emotions are first to occur in human
development
• Other emotions develop later
– Guilt, shame, embarrassment, pride
• Other emotions
– Show less universality across cultures
– Closely tied to social interaction
 Why do People in All Cultures Express
Emotion Similarly?
• Facial-affect program: Activation of a set of nerve
impulses that make the face display the appropriate
expression
– Each primary emotion produces a set of muscular
movements: E.g., Happiness; zygomastic major
• Facial-feedback hypothesis: facial expressions not
only reflect emotional experience but determine how
experience and label emotions
– When muscle activated, send the brain the message
indicating the experience of emotion
– Study by Ekman et al. (1983); explicit instructions for
moving muscles, the hearth rate increased, body
temperature declined as in fear 10-38
 Decoding Facial Expressions of
Emotion
• Three reasons decoding can be complicated
1. Affect blends
• One part of the face displays one emotion
and another part, a different emotion
2. People may try to mask emotions
3. Culture
Often, people express more than one emotion at the same time. Can you tell which
emotions these people are expressing? (Adapted from Ekman & Friesen, 1975)
Answers: The man is expressing a blend of anger (the eye and eyebrow region) and
disgust (the nose and mouth region). The woman is expressing a blend of surprise
(eyes and eyebrows) and happiness (mouth). (It may help to cover half of the
photograph with your hand to see each emotional expression clearly.)
 Culture
• Paul Ekman and his colleagues have studied the
influence of culture on the facial display of
emotions
– Display rules
• Dictate what kinds of emotional expressions
people are supposed to show (culture
specific)
 Examples of Display Rule Differences

• Display of emotion
– Different norms for men and women
• Grief or crying
– Our cultural norms discourage emotional displays in
men, such as grief or crying, but allow the facial display
of such emotions in women
• Smiling
– Japanese women hide smile behind hands (is it similar
in Turkish cultural setting?)
– Western women allowed/encouraged—to smile broadly
and often
 Culture and Channels of Nonverbal
Communication
• Emblems
– Nonverbal gestures that have well-understood
definitions within a given culture; they usually
have direct verbal translations, like the “OK”
sign.
• Emblems are not universal! (remember six
emotions are universal)
 Understanding Our Emotions
• Consider how happy, angry, or afraid you feel
at any given time.
• How do you know which emotion you are
experiencing?
• Don’t we know how we feel without having to
think about it?
• Different approaches
1. The James-Lange Theory:
• Emotional experience is a reaction to bodily events
occurring as a result of an external stimuli

• Activation of visceral bodily changes à brain

interprets visceral changes as emotional experience

– e.g. You feel fear because your heart pounds at the sight of an
angry dog
Criticism

• The same physiological reaction may occur for

very different situations, how does this same
physiological sensation gets interpreted
differently?
e.g. Our heart pounds both when we are afraid
and when we are in love, but we are able to
differentiate between these two emotions even if
the physiological response is the same

• Not all emotions have direct physiological

equivalents, so this theory can not explain all
emotions
e.g. Guilt, pride
2. The Cannon-Bard Theory:
• Physiological arousal and emotional experience are
produced simultaneously by the same nerve stimulus
• Activation of Thalamus

• Has not been empirically demonstrated in a

conclusive manner yet
3. Stanley Schachter’s (1964) Two-Factor Theory
of Emotion
• Emotions are determined by a nonspecific kind of
physiological arousal and its interpretation
• So it is not the physiological reaction itself, but how
we interpret it (based on environmental cues) is what
causes the emotion
• We experience emotions in a two-step self-
perception process:
– Experience physiological arousal.
– Seek an appropriate explanation for it.
Emotions depend
on our
explanations for
arousal
The Two-Factor Theory of Emotion
People first experience physiological arousal and then attach an explanation to it.
 Finding the Wrong Cause
Misattribution of Arousal
• Misattribution of Arousal
– The process whereby people make
mistaken inferences about what is
causing them to feel the way they do.
• Arousal from one source (e.g., caffeine,
exercise, a fright) can enhance the intensity of
how the person interprets other feelings (e.g.,
attraction to someone).
When people are aroused for one reason, such as occurs when they cross a
scary bridge, they often attribute this arousal to the wrong source—such as
attraction to the person they are with.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0aMEkGlcQE
Comparison of the Three Models
 The Roots of Emotions
• Contemporary perspectives on the neuroscience
of emotions
– Specific patterns of biological arousal are associated
with individual emotions

• Study; participants underwent positron emission

tomography (PET) brain scans.
– Results; Happiness was related to a decrease in activity
in certain areas of the cerebral cortex
– Sadness was associated with increases in activity in
particular portions of the cortex.
10-53
 The Roots of Emotions
• Amygdala in experience of
emotions
– link emotion producing stimulus and
recall of that stimulus later
– E.g., attached by a pit bull, classical
conditioning through amygdala

• Neural pathways connect the:

• Amygdala
• Visual cortex
• Hippocampus
– Speculation; emotion-related stimuli
can be processed and responded to
almost instantaneously.

10-54