Chapter 2 Flashcards
From what culture are the roots of contemporary motivation and emotion?
Who was the key player?
Name 2 of their students
Ancient Greeks
Socrates
Plato and Aristotle
Name Plato’s 3 aspects of the mind
Appetitive
Competitive
Calculating
Plato’s appetitive aspect of the mind
Bodily related appetite and desire (e.g., hunger)
Plato’s competitive aspect of the mind
Socially-referenced standards (e.g., pride)
Plato’s calculating aspect of the mind
Decision-making capacities (e.g., reasoning)
What more recent theory (relatively speaking) is Plato’s theory of will related to? How?
Most similar to Freud
Calculating: Ego
Competitive: Superego
Appetitive: Id
Name Aristotle’s 3 aspects of the mind
Nutritive
Sensitive
Rational
Aristotle’s nutritive aspect of the mind
Impulsive, irrational, animal-like (e.g., urges)
Aristotle’s sensitive aspect of the mind
Bodily-related (e.g., pleasure and pain)
Aristotle’s rational aspect of the mind
Idea-related, intellectual
Featured the “will” (e.g., intention, choice)
What does a historical view of motivation study help us to consider?
How the concept of motivation came to prominence
How it changed and developed
How ideas were challenged and replaced
How the field reemerged and brought together various disciplines within psychology
3 grand theories of psychology
Will
Instinct
Drive
2 drive theories
Freud’s Drive Theory
Hull’s Drive Theory
Grand theory definition
All-encompassing theory that seeks to explain the full range of motivated action - why we eat, drink, work, play, compete, fear certain things, read, fall in love, etc.
Grand theory of will
Ancient philosophers understood motivation within the two themes:
Mechanical, impulsive, motivationally passive, biological, and reactive (i.e., body)
Immaterial, rational, motivationally active, and purposive (i.e., will)
Grand theory of instinct
Biological analysis that focused on unlearned, automated, mechanistic, and inherited sources of motivation
Appeal was that it could explain where motivation came from in the first place (i.e., genetic endowment)
What grand theory are fixed action patterns (FAPs) related to?
Grand theory of instict
Fixed action patterns
Sequence of events all organisms complete without intervention
Examples of fixed action patterns
Rodents and chain grooming (if stopped, will continue and run to conclusion)
Geese and imprinting
Grand theory of drive
Behaviour was motivated to the extent that it served the needs of the organism and restored a biological homeostasis
Appeal was that high vs. low motivation could be predicted and even experimentally manipulated before it occurred
4 aspects of Freud’s drive theory
Source
Impetus
Object
Aim
Drive’s source
Example
Bodily deficit occurs
Blood sugar drops and a sense of hunger emerges
Drive’s impetus
Intensity of bodily deficit grows and emerges into consciousness as a psychological discomfort, which is anxiety
Drive’s object
Example
Seeking to reduce anxiety and satisfy bodily deficit, the person searches out and consumes a need satisfying environmental object
Food
Drive’s aim
If the environmental object successfully satisfies the bodily deficit, satisfaction occurs and quiets anxiety, at least for a period of time
Hull’s Drive Theory equation
sEr = sHr * D * K
sEr
Excitatory potential - the strength of behaviour
sHr
Habit - probability of the motivated behaviour
D
Drive - biological motivation
K
Incentive - environmental motivation
Explain a study that contradicts Hull’s Drive Theory
Rats have preferred a sugar pellet to real food
This does not support the drive theory aspect of fulfilling physiological needs
What led to the decline of the grand theory of will?
The philosophical study of the will turned out to be a dead end that explained very little about motivation, as it actually raised more questions than it answered.
What led to the decline of the grand theory of instinct?
The physiological study of instinct proved to be an intellectual dead end as well, as it became clear that “naming is not explaining”
What led to the decline of the grand theory of drive?
Drive theory proved itself to be overly limited in scope, and with its rejection came the field’s disillusionment with grand theories in general, though several additional grand motivational principles emerged with some success, including incentive and arousal
Explain the first step that came in post-drive theory years
Motivation study rejected its commitment to a passive view of human nature and adopted a more active portrayal of human beings
Explain the second step that came in post-drive theory years
Motivation turned decidedly cognitive and somewhat humanistic
Explain the third step that came in post-drive theory years
The field focused on applied, socially relevant problems
Unlike grand theories that try to explain the full range of motivation, mini-theories limit their attention to a specific:
Motivational phenomenon
Particular circumstance that affects motivation
Theoretical question
Motivational phenomenon examples
Achievement motivation, the flow experience
Particular circumstance that affects motivation examples
Failure feedback, a role model
Theoretical question example
What is the relationship between cognition and emotion?
Name 10 other areas that are related to motivation study
Developmental
Educational
Cognitive
Neuroscience
Health
Counseling
Clinical
Personality
Industrial/organizational
Social
How do the 10 areas of study relate to motivation study?
Provide domain-specific answers to these core questions:
What causes behaviour?
Why does behaviour vary in intensity
Name the 2 broad aspects of the development of a scientific discipline
The crisis
The comeback
Explain the crisis of the study of motivation
Will, instinct and drive can all explain motivation, but discrepancies led to a new way of thinking
A grand theory can explain motivation, a new way of thinking emerges: Active nature, cognitive revolution, socially relevant questions
Explain the comeback of the study of motivation
Rise of the mini theories
Each mini theory successfully explained one piece of the larger puzzle in motivation and emotion study
These mini theories were embraced
Researchers used the mini theories to make incremental advances
Name the 10 perspectives of the many voices in motivation study
Neurological
Biological
Evolutionary
Implicit
Cognitive
Behavioural
Psychoanaytical
Humanistic
Social-cognitive
Cultural
In the neurological perspective, where do motives emerge from?
Brain activations
In the biological perspective, where do motives emerge from?
Hormones, psychophysiology
In the evolutionary perspective, where do motives emerge from?
Genes and genetic endowment
In the implicit perspective, where do motives emerge from?
Environmental primes
In the cognitive perspective, where do motives emerge from?
Mental events and thoughts
In the behavioural perspective, where do motives emerge from?
Environmental incentives
In the psychoanayltical perspective, where do motives emerge from?
Unconscious processes
In the humanistic perspective, where do motives emerge from?
Encouraging human potential
In the social-cognitive perspective, where do motives emerge from?
Socially-created beliefs
In the cultural perspective, where do motives emerge from?
Organizations and societies
Core questions in emotion research
What is an emotion (define it)?
What causes an emotion?
How many emotions are there?
Are emotions constructive assets or dysfunctional liabilities?
Can we control our emotions - can emotions be self-regulated?
What is the difference between emotion and mood?
What is the relation between emotion and cognition?
What is the relation between emotion and motivation?
