7. Motivation and Emotion (Ch 10)

7.1 Theories of Emotion

• Emotion: a psychological state involving three distinct components
  • subjective experience
  • physiological response
  • behavioral or expressive feature
• Mood
  • prolonged, less explicit, affective state
  • not usually determined by a single event

• James-Lange theory

  • stimulus causes arousal → emotion
  • facial feedback hypothesis

• Cannon- Bard theory

  • relevant stimulus generate arousal
  • information sent to central nervous system and cortex
  • "It's a cannon"

• Two-factor theory

  • quality of emotional experience depends on how arousal is labeled

  • excitation transfer

    

7.2 Theories of Motivation

• What drives us? What makes us behave as we do?

• Motivation

  • Describes the wants or needs that direct behavior towards a goal

• Drive theory

  • deviations from homeostasis create physiological needs to regain balance
  • e.g., no food → blood sugar⬇️ → hunger

  • habit- likely to engage in previous behaviors that met need

    

• Yerkes-Dodson law

  • optimal arousal levels depend on complexity and difficulty of task
  • complex task→ low arousal
  • simple task→ high arousal

• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
  • physiological needs→ basic needs→ self-actualization
  • ongoing lifelong process

7.3 Biological Bases: Hunger, Thirst, Sex, Pain

• Hunger

  • biological instinct for survival
  • empty stomach → hunger pains and chemicals that initiate hunger in brain
  • glucose: blood sugar from food that provides energy for body
  • insulin: helps reduce glucose levels thus impacting hunger
  • hypothalamus

  

  

  • set-point: weight your body works to maintain

  

  • Eating Disorders
    • social and cultural pressures for ideal beauty
    • anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder

  

• Thirst

  • Produced by depletion of fluid outside and within cells
  • Peripheral and central nervous system
    • subfornical organ and lateral hypothalamic nucleus
  • Angiotensin: produced by the kidneys

• Sexual behavior

  • Sexual motivation from Limbic System

    • amygdala
    • nucleus accumbens

    

  • Hormones produced in endocrine system

    • estrogen (women)
    • testosterone (both)

  • Dr. Alfred Kinsey

    • Kinsey scale: used to categorize individual’s sexual orientation

    

  • Masters and Johnson

    • sexual response cycle: excitement, plateau, orgasm and resolution

    

• Biology of Pain

  • Nociception process
  • contact with stimulus
  • reception: nerve ending sense stimulus
  • transmission: relayed to central nervous system
  • pain center reception: brain further processes

• Types of Pain
  • Physical pain
    • physical characteristics, intensity and interpretation
    • acute vs chronic
  • Social pain
    • pain of social disconnection
  • Psychological pain
    • depression and other mental disorders

7.4 Social Motivation

• Human need to interact with others and be accepted by them
• extrinsic
  • receive something from others
• intrinsic
  • biological motives
  • sense of personal satisfaction

• Albert Bandura

  • We ultimately have a strong drive for self efficacy and that's what leads people to succeed

  • self-efficacy motivates behavior

    

Quiz

• Stimulation of the lateral hypothalamus will result in which of the following behaviors in laboratory rats?
  • (A) An increase in sexual behavior
  • (B) An increase in eating behavior
  • (C) An increase in visual processing speed
  • (D) A decrease in auditory perception
  • (E) A decrease in memory functioning
• Which of the following is a disadvantage of relying on external rewards to motivate behavior?
  • (A) There is potential to reduce extrinsic motivation
  • (B) There is potential to reduce intrinsic motivation
  • (C) It increases fear of failure
  • (D) It increases fear of success
  • (E) It decreases competency
• One theory of the effects of arousal holds that efficiency of behavior can be described as an inverted U-shaped function of increasing arousal. Which of the following accurately describes this relationship?
  • (A) Greater arousal leads to better performance
  • (B) Greater arousal leads to poorer performance
  • (C) Low and high levels of arousal lead to poorest performance
  • (D) Overarousal leads to performance efficiency
  • (E) Underarousal leads to performance efficiency
• Which of the following presents a pair of needs from Abraham Maslow’s hierarchical need structure, in order from lower to higher need?
  • (A) Belongingness, safety
  • (B) Self-actualization, physiological needs
  • (C) Physiological needs, safety
  • (D) Esteem, belongingness
  • (E) Self-actualization, esteem
• Which of the following scenarios best illustrates the facial feedback hypothesis of emotion?
  • (A) Bill is a good card player who shows no emotion in his face that would reveal what he is thinking
  • (B) Ellen says that hanging up the laundry on a clothesline makes her feel happy; she holds the clothespins in her teeth as she hangs each piece of clothing
  • (C) Juanita fakes a smile to make her friends think she is happy
  • (D) Paul has been blind from birth and has never seen emotional faces, but he has emotional facial expressions similar to those of a sighted person
  • (E) As a result of Raj smiling at his customers, they smile at him