Psychology in Your Life

Transcription

1 Sarah Grison Todd Heatherton Michael Gazzaniga Psychology in Your Life SECOND EDITION Chapter 9 Motivation and Emotion W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

2 9.1 What Motivates Our Behavior? The words emotion and motivation come from the same Latin word, movere, to move Motivation Factors of differing strength that energize, direct, and sustain behavior 2

3 Many Factors Influence Motivation Most of the general theories of motivation emphasize four basic qualities 1. Activating it stimulates us to do something 2. Directive it guides our behaviors toward meeting specific goals or needs 3. Sustaining it helps us sustain behaviors until we achieve our goals or satisfy our needs 4. Motivating motives will differ in strength depending on the person and the situation 3

4 Many Factors Influence Motivation (4) Satisfaction of needs Need: A state of biological or social deficiency Need hierarchy: An arrangement of needs, in which basic survival needs must be met before people can satisfy higher needs Maslow s theory is an example of humanistic psychology Self-actualization 4

5 Many Factors Influence Motivation (5) 5

6 Many Factors Influence Motivation (6) Drive reduction Drive: A psychological state that, by creating arousal, motivates an organism to engage in a behavior to satisfy a need Basic biological drives, such as thirst and hunger, help animals maintain a stable condition A stable condition is called equilibrium Homeostasis: Tendency for bodily functions to remain in equilibrium The set point indicates homeostasis for the system 6

7 Many Factors Influence Motivation (7) 7

8 Many Factors Influence Motivation (9) 8

9 Many Factors Influence Motivation (10) Optimal arousal and performance Arousal and performance Everyone is motivated to engage in behaviors based on their own optimal level of arousal Arousal: Physiological activation (such as increased brain activity) or increased autonomic responses (such as increased heart rate, sweating, or muscle tension) 9

10 Many Factors Influence Motivation (12) The Yerkes-Dodson law describes the relationship between arousal, motivation, and performance This law states that performance increases with arousal up to an optimal point. After that point, more arousal will result in decreasing performance A graph of this relationship is shaped like an upsidedown U 10

11 Many Factors Influence Motivation (13) 11

12 Many Factors Influence Motivation (15) Pleasure Freud proposed that needs are satisfied based on the pleasure principle According to Freud, the pleasure principle motivates people to seek pleasure and avoid pain Incentives External objects or external goals, rather than internal drives, that motivate behaviors Incentives affect our motivations to act in certain ways because we have learned over time that our actions have consequences 12

13 Some Behaviors Are Motivated for Their Own Sake (1) Extrinsic motivation A desire to perform an activity because of the external goals toward which that activity is directed Intrinsic motivation A desire to perform an activity because of the value or pleasure associated with it rather than for an apparent external goal or purpose 13

14 Some Behaviors Are Motivated for Their Own Sake (4) Self-determination and self-perception In self-determination theory, extrinsic rewards may reduce the intrinsic value of an activity because they undermine our feeling that we are choosing to do something for ourselves In self-perception theory, we are seldom aware of our specific motives. Instead, we make inferences about our motives according to what seems to make the most sense 14

15 9.2 What Motivates Eating, the Need to Belong, and the Need for Achievement? This section explores our motivations to eat, create social ties, and work hard to be successful in academics and the workplace 15

16 Many Biological Systems Motivate Eating (1) Stomach and blood chemistry People who have had their stomach surgically removed due to illness continue to report feeling hungry even though they no longer have a stomach The existence of receptors in the bloodstream that monitor levels of vital nutrients One theory proposes that the bloodstream is monitored for its glucose levels 16

17 Many Biological Systems Motivate Eating Hormones Insulin: A hormone, secreted by the pancreas, that controls glucose levels in the blood Ghrelin: A hormone, secreted by an empty stomach, that is associated with increasing eating behavior based on short-term signals in the bloodstream Leptin: A hormone, secreted by fat cells, that is associated with decreasing eating behavior based on long-term body fat regulation The brain The hypothalamus is the brain structure that most influences eating Seeing tasty food makes a person crave it, and this response is associated with activity in the limbic system 17

18 Eating Is Influenced by Learning (1) Conditioned to eat The internal clock leads to various anticipatory responses that motivate eating behavior and prepare the body for digestion Familiarity and eating preferences People s avoidance of unfamiliar foods, which may be dangerous or poisonous, makes evolutionary sense and is adaptive What we prefer to eat is also determined by the ethnic, cultural, and religious values of our own upbringing and experiences 18

19 Eating Is Influenced by Learning Cultural influences Even when people are starving to death, they may refuse to eat perfectly nutritious substances because they are culturally unfamiliar 19

20 We Have a Need to Belong (1) Need to belong theory The need for interpersonal attachments is a fundamental motive that has evolved for adaptive purposes. Example: the movie Cast Away 20

21 We Have a Need to Belong (2) 21

22 We Have a Need to Achieve Long- Term Goals (1) Achievement motivation Murray proposed a number of basic psychosocial needs, including Power Autonomy Achievement Play 22

23 We Have a Need to Achieve Long- Term Goals (2) Achievement motivation: The need, or desire, to attain a certain standard of excellence Four factors that affect our ability to achieve long-term goals The goals themselves Our sense of self-efficacy Our ability to delay gratification Grit 23

24 We Have a Need to Achieve Long- Term Goals (3) Goals affect achievement Challenging goals encourage effort, persistence, and concentration Goals that are too easy or too hard can undermine motivation and lead to failure Self-efficacy affects achievement The expectation that your efforts will lead to success Goals that are challenging but not overwhelming usually are most likely to lead to success 24

25 We Have a Need to Achieve Long- Term Goals (5) Ability to delay gratification The ability to delay gratification is an indicator of success in life. The Marshmallow Study 25

26 We Have a Need to Achieve Long- Grit Term Goals (7) People with grit have a deep passion for their goals and a willingness to keep working toward them, even in spite of hardships and pitfalls Shown to be a significant predictor for the grades of colleges students 26

27 Emotion 9.3 How Do We Experience Emotions? Feelings that involve physical responses, changes in thoughts and in actions, and personal evaluation 27

28 9.3 How Do We Experience Emotions? (2) Primary emotions Evolutionarily adaptive emotions that are shared across cultures and associated with specific physical states; they include anger, fear, sadness, disgust, happiness, and possibly surprise and contempt Secondary emotions Blends of primary emotions; they include remorse, guilt, shame, submission, and anticipation 28

29 There Are Three Major Theories James-Lange theory of Emotion (1) Emotions result from the experience of physiological reactions in the body Facial feedback hypothesis 29

30 There Are Three Major Theories of Emotion (3) 30

31 There Are Three Major Theories Cannon-Bard theory of Emotion (4) Emotions and bodily responses both occur simultaneously due to the ways that parts of the brain process information 31

32 There Are Three Major Theories of Emotion (6) Schachter-Singer two-factor theory How we experience an emotion is influenced by the cognitive label we apply to explain the physiological changes we have experienced Emotion label, Misattribution of arousal, and Excitation transfer 32

33 Both Body and Brain Are Important for Emotion (1) Emotions from bodily responses A polygraph popularly known as a lie detector The assumption is that people who are lying are more likely to be emotional. Because of their emotions, they will have physical reactions that show up on the polygraph 33

34 The amygdala Both Body and Brain Are Important for Emotion (2) Processes the emotional significance of stimuli and generates immediate emotional and behavioral reactions Information hits the amygdala via two separate pathways The first path is a quick and dirty system, which processes sensory information nearly instantaneously The second path is somewhat slower, but it leads to more deliberate and thorough evaluations, so we can confirm if a stimulus is actually a threat. It is involved in the perception of social stimuli We read people s facial expressions; the amygdala helps us interpret them 34

35 Both Body and Brain Are Important for Emotion (5) 35

36 Both Body and Brain Are Important for Emotion (8) The prefrontal cortex There is evidence that the left and right frontal lobes are affected by different emotions Right prefrontal cortex is associated with negative emotion Left hemisphere is associated with positive emotion Injury to the frontal lobes often impairs emotional experience 36

37 We Regulate Our Emotional States (1) Gross outlined several strategies people use to regulate their emotions Reappraisal We directly alter our emotional reactions to events by thinking about those events in more neutral terms Thought suppression and rumination When we suppress negative thoughts, we are trying not to feel or respond to the emotion at all Rebound effect Rumination involves thinking about, elaborating, and focusing on undesired thoughts or feelings 37

38 We Regulate Our Emotional States (2) Humor Humor has many mental and physical health benefits Laughter improves the immune system & stimulates the release of hormones, dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins When we laugh, we experience rises in circulation, blood pressure, skin temperature, and heart rate, along with a decrease in pain perception Distraction Involves doing or thinking about something other than the troubling activity or thought Some distractions backfire as we may end up thinking about other problems 38

39 9.4 How Do Emotions Affect Us? Because emotions provide information about the importance of stimuli to personal goals, they prepare us for actions aimed at achieving those goals In his 1872 book, Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin argued that expressive aspects of emotion are adaptive because they communicate how we are feeling 39

40 We Interpret Emotions in Facial Eyes and mouth Expressions (2) We convey emotional information by means of our eyes and mouth We see faces in contexts that give us cues about what emotion a person is experiencing 40

41 We Interpret Emotions in Facial Expressions (4) Facial expression across cultures Research has found general support for cross-cultural identification of some facial expressions Support is strongest for happiness and weakest for fear and disgust 41

42 We Interpret Emotions in Facial Expressions (5) Facial expression of pride Researchers found that isolated populations with minimal Western contact accurately identify the physical signs of pride. These signs include A smiling face, Raised arms, Expanded chest, and a Pushed out torso 42

43 Our Display of Emotion Varies Display rules Rules that are learned through socialization and that dictate what emotions are suitable in certain situations From culture to culture, display rules tend to be different for women and men Genes also influence how we experience (and express) emotions. Identical twins are likely to be similar in their reactions to fear provoking stimuli. 43

44 Emotions Influence Our Thoughts (1) Affect-as-information theory People use their current moods to make decisions, judgments, and appraisals, even if they do not know the sources of their moods Decision making Emotions influence our decision making in different ways Anticipating how different choices might make us feel can serve as a guide in decision making 44

45 Emotions Influence Our Thoughts (3) Emotion affects judgments In a study, people in good moods rated their lives as satisfactory, whereas people in bad moods gave lower overall ratings 45

46 Emotions Strengthen Our Interpersonal Relations (1) Twentieth-century psychologists paid little attention to interpersonal emotions Guilt, embarrassment, and similar phenomena were associated with Freudian thinking and therefore not studied in mainstream psychological science Theorists have since reconsidered interpersonal emotions in view of humans evolutionary need to belong to social groups 46

47 Emotions Strengthen Our Interpersonal Relations (3) Guilt strengthens social bonds A negative emotional state associated with anxiety, tension, and agitation Guilt discourages people from harming their relationships, encourages people to be honest, and demonstrates that we care about our partners. Excessive feelings of guilt may have negative consequences There is evidence that socialization is more important than biology in determining specifically how children experience guilt 47

48 Emotions Strengthen Interpersonal Relations (4) Embarrassment and blushing People feel embarrassed after violating a cultural norm, doing something clumsy, being teased, or experiencing a threat to their selfimage Blushing occurs most often when people believe others might view them negatively and communicates an understanding that some type of social awkwardness has occurred 48