Motivation and Emotion

How is Emotion Related to the Topic of Motivation?

Motivation is the biological, emotional, cognitive, or social forces that activate and direct behavior.

Motivation is closely tied to emotional process, and vice versa. Many forms of motivation have an emotional component, which is involved in the initiation and persistence of behavior.

Emotion is a psychological state involving three distinct components: subjective experience, a physiological response, and a behavioral or expressive component.

Motivational Concepts and Theories

Over the past century, instinct, drive, incentive, arousal, and humanistic theories were proposed to explain the general principles of motivation.

Instinct theories: The view that certain human behaviors are innate and due to evolutionary programming.

Drive theories: Behavior that is motivated by the desire to reduce internal tension caused by unmet biological needs, such as hunger or thirst.

Incentive theories: behavior that is motivated by the “pull” of external goals, such as rewards, money, or recognition.

Arousal theory: the view that people are motivated to maintain an optimal level of arousal that is neither too high nor too low.

Humanistic theory: the view that emphasizes the importance of psychological and cognitive factors in motivation, especially the notion that people are motivated to realize their personal potential.

Biological Motivation

Hunger is biological motive, but eating behavior is motivated by a complex interaction of biological, social, and psychological factors.

The long-term matching of food intake to energy expenditure is energy homeostasis. It also helps you maintain your baseline body weight.

Short-term signals that regulate eating; sometimes stopping to eat has become a routine in our lives that most of us don’t give it much thought. But eating any given meal has both physiological and psychological factors that are involved in motivating our behavior.

Long-term signals that regulate body weight; researchers have discovered more than 20 different chemical messengers that monitor and help us maintain a stable body weight over time. Internal signals, such as leptin, insulin, neuropeptide Y, and corticotropin-releasing hormone, are in response to the hypothalamus in the brain influencing eating behavior and the body’s energy expenditure.

Energy BalanceEnergy Intake = Energy Expenditure

Excess Weight and Obesity

Overweight, obesity, and eating disorders are characterized by unhealthy body weight and maladaptive patterns of eating disorders.

The most widely used method to determine weight status is the body mass index, abbreviated BMI. A numerical scale indicating adult height in relation to weight. It is possible to be overweight and very healthy, such as a bodybuilder.

The factors involved in becoming overweight at the simplest lever, is the only if your caloric intake consistently exceeds your energy expenditure—the essence of positive energy balance.

Eating disorders involve serious and maladaptive disturbances in eating behavior. These disturbances can include extreme reduction of food intake, severe bouts of overeating, and obsessive concerns about body shape and weight.

The two main types of eating disorders are anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, which usually begin during adolescence or early adulthood.

Psychological Needs as Motivators

According to the motivational theories of Maslow and of Deci and Ryan, psychological needs must be fulfilled for optimal human functioning.

The centerpiece of Maslow’s (1954, 1986) model of motivation was his famous hierarchy of needs. He believed that people are motivated to satisfy the needs at each level of the hierarchy before moving up to the next level.

Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan (1985, 2000) have developed self-determination theory, abbreviated SDT. Much like Maslow’s theory, SDT moves up on the premise that people are actively growth-oriented and that they move toward a unified sense of self and integration with others.

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Deci and Ryan's Self-Determination Theory

Competence and Achievement Motivation

Competence and achievement motivation are important psychological motives. In self-determination theory, Deci and Ryan identified competences as a universal motive.

You are displaying competence motivation when you strive to use your cognitive, social, and behavioral skills to be capable and exercise control in a situation. However, achievement motivation is the drive to excel, succeed, or outperform others at some task.

Emotion

Emotions are complex psychological states that serve many functions in human behavior and relationships. It involves three distinct components: a subjective experience, a physiological response, and a behavioral or expressive response.

Emotion process are closely tied to motivational processes. Emotions shape our decisions by helping us choose which goal to pursue and how strongly to pursue it.

Charles Darwin published ‘The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals’ in 1872. He described the facial expressions, body movements, and postures used to express specific emotions in animals and humans. He argued that emotions reflect evolutionary adaptations to the problems of survival and reproduction.

Basic Emotions, are experienced with all humans, in every culture. The most commonly cited as the basic emotions are happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust.

The Neuroscience of Emotion

Emotions are associated with distinct patterns of responses by the sympathetic nervous system and in the brain.

The pounding heart, rapid breathing, trembling hands and feet , and churning stomach that occur when you experience an intense emotion like fear reflect the activation of the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system.

Many brain areas are implicated in emotional responses, but the brain structure called the amygdala has long been known to be important. Several studies have shown that the amygdala is a key brain structure in the emotional response of fear in humans. For example, people with amygdala damage lose the ability to distinguish between friendly and threatening faces.

The Expression of Emotion_________________

The behavioral components of emotion include facial expressions and nonverbal behavior.

Theories of Emotion

Emotion theories emphasize different aspects of emotion, but

all have influenced the direction of emotion research.

Theories of emotion differ in terms of which component of emotion receives the most emphasis—subjective experience, physiological arousal, or expressive behavior.

• The James-Lange Theory of Emotion• Cognitive Theories of Emotion

The James-Lange Theory of Emotion

The perception of an environmental stimulus (such as a growling dog) causes bodily changes (such as rapid heart beat and fast breathing). The brain perceives those changes in behavior and identifies them as the emotion. The progression is

Evidence Supporting the James-Lange Theory

The facial feedback hypothesis supports the notion that our bodily responses affect our subjective experience. The facial feedback hypotheses states that expressing a specific emotion, especially facially, causes us to subjectively experience that emotion.

The basic explanation for this phenomenon is that facial muscles send feedback signals to the brain. In turn, the brain uses this information to activate and regulate emotional experience, intensifying or lessening emotion. Collectively, the evidence for the facial feedback hypothesis adds support for aspects of the James-Lange theory.

Cognitive Theories of Emotion

Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer, was influential or short time. Schachter and Singer (1962) agreed with James that physiological arousal is a central element in emotion. But hey also agreed with Cannon that physiological arousal us very similar for different emotions. Thus, arousal alone would not produce an emotional response.

According to the two-factor theory of emotion, emotion is the result of the interaction of physiological arousal and the cognitive label we use to explain our stirred-up state.

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