Motivation Flashcards
What is motivation?
Psychological cause of action
How do emotions motivate people?
- Providing people with information about world
- Providing people with objectives to strive towards
Hedonistic principle
People look to experience pleasure and avoid pain (not always physical)
Hedonistic treadmill
Constantly wanting more pleasurable experiences
Instincts
Natural tendency to seek particular goal, without being taught.
Drive
Internal state caused by physiological needs (e.g. hunger). Based in homeostasis and evoked by external stimuli + learned.
Drive-reduction theory
Motivation to reduce drive
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
People experience a need when need below is met. You may go back to a previous need, but you can’t jump. These needs are physiological, safety and security, belongingness and love, esteem and self-actualization.
What are some criticisms about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?
Varies across culture and with people’s values
Orexigenic signal
Switches hunger on. Caused by a hormone called grehlin, which is found in the stomach. If the lateral hypothalamus is damaged, people starve to death.
Anorexigenic signal
Switches hunger off. Caused by leptin (secreted by fat cells). If ventromedial hypothalamus is damaged, people gorge to death.
Binge eating
Lots of calories in short time
Bulimia
Cycle of binge eating to reduce negative emotions and purging due to guilt
Anorexia
Severe food restriction due to intense fear of being overweight. Results in distorted body image, severe control of eating, and can even turn off some physiological processes such as menstruation.
Obesity
BMI of 30 or greater. Obese people are leptin-resistant; they don’t respond to signal to turn hunger off.
What are some causes of obesity?
Genetics, obesogenic toxins, calorie rich foods, saturated fat rich food makes brain less sensitive to stop eating messages
Why is it so hard to lose weight?
Losing weight reduces the size of fat cells but not the number. Also, even if you’re overweight, body has a set weight it likes to stay so the body might reduce your metabolism if you lose weight too fast and dip below it.
DHEA
Hormone involved in onset of sexual desire
Testosterone
Male sex hormone
Estrogen
Female sex hormone
Excitement phase
Muscle tension and blood flow increase around sexual organs, heart rate and respiration and blood pressure also increase
Plateau phase
Heart rate and muscle tension continue to increase
Orgasm phase
Rapid breathing, pelvic contractions
Resolution phase
Muscles relax, blood pressure drops, body returns to resting state; enters a refractory period
Intrinsic motivation
Taking actions that are rewarding; they don’t have a payoff, they ARE the payoff (e.g. eating french fries)
Extrinsic motivation
Take actions that lead to a reward; don’t directly bring pleasure but lead to pleasure in time (e.g. flossing to get nice teeth to get a date). Delay gratification works!
Why shouldn’t you get paid to do an activity you love?
Extrinsic rewards take away value of intrinsic interest (if they pay me to do it, am I doing it because I love it or because I’m being paid?)
Conscious motivation
Motivation that people are aware of
Unconscious motivation
Motivation that people aren’t aware of or constantly thinking about
Need for achievement
Motivation to solve worthwhile problems
What determines if we are conscious of our motivations?
Level of difficulty
General motivation
Easy actions
Specific motivation
Difficult actions
Approach
Motivation to experience good
Avoidance
Motivation to avoid bad - tends to be a more powerful motivator
Promotion focus
Achieving gains
Prevention focus
Avoiding losses
Loss aversion
Tendency to care more about avoiding losses than achieving equal-sized gains
Terror management theory
How people respond to the knowledge of their own mortality. Most people cope by developing cultural worldviews/shared beliefs, that allow them to give life meaning and seek symbolic (legacy or children) or literal immortality (afterlife)
Mortality salience hypothesis
When people were reminded of their own mortality, they will work to reinforce their cultural worldviews - more likely to praise people who share them and derogate those who don’t.
