Motivation Flashcards
1
Q
What is motivation?
A
- Refers to a need or desire that energizes (effortful) behaviour and directs it towards a goal
- Combination of physiological and psychological processes
2
Q
What is instinct? How is it acquired?
A
- A fixed (rigid and predictable) pattern of behaviour observed across all members of the species
- Not acquired by learning, typically rooted in genes
- Does not involve rational decision making (cognition)
- Typically is rationalized after
- The matter of humans having instinct (not shaped from learning) is complicated because even from birth humans are learning
- Eg. humans making round huts around the world are an instinct
3
Q
What is a drive?
A
- An aroused/tense state related to a biological need that is not being met
- Some strong human needs include hunger, thirst, belonging, pain and sex
- Shared among all members of the species
4
Q
What is the drive-reduction theory? Talk about cognitive perspectives.
A
- Duggest that we are motivated to restore homeostasis when a drive emerges
- Need = drive = drive-reducing behaviour
- Negative reinforcement, except sex (positive reinforcement)
- Cognitive perspective: what we perceive as a need, we will have thoughts and go with the behaviour that we expect will satisfy need
5
Q
What is an incentive?
A
- A reward that increases likelihood of behaviour
Positive reinforcement - Still need-satisfy principle, however allows for learned response-reward pairings
- Motivates by attracting the person to the reward as opposed to pushing (drive, negative reinforcement)
6
Q
How do push and pulls work to regulate behaviour?
A
- When both drives/needs (push) and incentives (pull) work in tandem we are highly motivated
- While in some situations, incentives conflict with needs
- One way through which society can impact how we regulate our behaviour
- Pleasure request must be delayed due to societal norms (allows us to cooperate)
7
Q
What is beyond pain and pleasure for motivation?
A
- Perspective of balance rather than minimizing pain and maximizing pleasure
- A need to either increase or decrease our physiological arousal level to maintain an optimal level of arousal
- As opposed to eliminating arousal, motive is balancing arousal
- Probably at the root of best discoveries of humans
- Eg. all year round surfers getting up early to surf, no rational explanation but feeling of riding wave is motivational
8
Q
What is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and what are some criticisms?
A
- Needs that go beyond pain and pleasure to motivate
- Physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, self-actualization
BUT:
- The order is fixed (you can’t achieve anything until lower levels can be achieved) when is reality the system does not have such a structure
- This model is claimed to be universal but the order and structure does not apply to non-Western/collective settings (family is later on the structure)
9
Q
What is flow?
A
- A state of experience where a person, totally absorbed in what’s going on, feels tremendous amounts of exhilaration, control, and enjoyment
- Model made by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
- Occurs when people push their abilities to their boundaries and in so doing experience a merging of action and awareness
- Balance high skill and high challenge
- Occurs throughout the spectrum of daily experience (eg. playing sports or musical instrument)
- Typically in activities require motor skills or thinking skills
10
Q
What is the self-determined perspective?
A
You need to balance 3 needs as opposed to maximizing any:
- Autonomy: refers to the feeling that we are causal agents of our own behaviour and the goals we pursue
If you work in a job that deals with health/mental health, you need to give people a sense of control
- Competence: people need to gain mastery of tasks and learn different skills
- Relatedness: people need to experience a sense of belonging and attachment to other people
- These needs can be in competition with each other
11
Q
What are some things influencing hunger?
A
- Physiological signals: stomach contractions, hypothalamus, set point of calories body needs to achieve each day
- Some taste preferences are universal; carbohydrates from an evolutionary perspective provide us with a lot of calories
- Other tastes are acquired and become favourites through exposure, culture, and conditioning
- Some are individually learned (eg. aversions after only 1 accident)
- Socio-cultural influences shape how much we eat
“French paradox”: people in France tend to drink more and eat fattier foods but have lower risk for heart diseases due to more time spent eating and smaller portions
12
Q
What are some things influencing the need to belong?
A
- Strong and fundamental (all humans) need to bond with others
- Survival requires cooperation
- Married people are shown to be better off in terms of mental and physiological health (disorders, better quality of life)
- Loneliness is associated with greater risk of psychological and physiological disorders
- The pain of social exclusion is associated with the activation of the same areas of the brain linked to physical pain (operate through same pain brain system)
- In a study, social and physical pain is described in the same way
- Evolutionary reason is that pain teaches us to change our behaviour and is useful for survival
- It has been demonstrated that physical pain can trigger social pain (by decreasing feelings of belonging) even in absence of social interaction
13
Q
What is motivation in work contexts?
A
- We also seem to have a need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness
- Mixed motives, a challenge to keep them in harmony
- Challenge with notable implications in work context
- How to get people to increase their performance at work with affecting their well-being?
= Industrial and organizational psychology - You need to have honours/major in psychology
- Guelph has graduate programs in Canada
- To see if you are interested, undergraduate courses and opportunities to volunteer/work with some of the faculty
14
Q
What is homeostasis and allostasis?
A
- Homeostasis: body’s physiological processes that allow it to maintain consistent internal states in response to outer environment
- Allostasis: motivation is not only influenced by current needs but by anticipation of future needs
15
Q
What are the biological aspects in the brain related to hunger?
A
- Hypothalamus is involved with hunger
- Lateral: stimulates eating
- Ventromedial: tells us to stop eating
- Detects changes in level of glucose with neurons called glucostats
- If too low, hypothalamus sends signals of hunger
- Satiation: point in meal when we are no longer motivated to eat
- Caused by cholecystokinin released by neurons when intestines expand to decrease appetite
- Insulin circulates the glucose around
- Orbitofrontal cortex judges reward of food
