Psych #5 - Motivation / Thinking Flashcards
What is motivation?
An inner state that energizes people toward the fulfillment of a goal
What is the Instinct Theory?
- Things in the environment are “releasers” which leads to instinctual pre-programmed responses?
- pushed by hard-wired desires
What kind of pattern in Instinct Theory?
It’s a fixed response pattern (innate)
What is an example of Instinct Theory?
If a baby feels a touch on the lips it will instinctively start sucking because the baby thinks it’s a nipple for food.
What is the Drive Reduction Theory?
- We have a biological need
- There is tension
- Do something to reduce the tension
What is an example of drive-reduction theory?
It’s when we are hungry so we find food
What is the incentive theory?
There are rewards and punishments associated with different activities
What are the two different types of incentives in the incentive theory?
Extrinsic vs. intrinsic
What are extrinsic incentives?
Activities with external rewards or punishments like working or doing chorse
What are intrinsic incentives?
Activities that are an end unto themselves. Example eating, watching cartoons
What is the arousal theory?
- Seek stimulation when you are bored and relaxation if anxious
- Pushed by anxiety and boredom
- Strive to maintain an optimal level of arousal
What is Yerkes-Dodson Law?
The principle that performance increases with arousal only up to a point, beyond which performance decreases.
What is an example of Yorkes-Dodson law?
You are going to box somebody but someone is bigger than you you are fighting harder than you would normally. You are still going to end up loosing.
What are maslow’s hierarchy of needs?
- Physiological needs: basic needs
- Safety
- Love/belongingness
- Esteem
- Self actualization
- Self transcendence
What is the general idea of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?
Before we can entertain certain ideas we need to fulfill basic needs like survival (who cares about therapy if a person doesn’t have a place to sleep at night)
Cannon and Washburn’s Hunger Experiment
- Washburn swallowed a balloon to record stomach contractions
- Pushed button to report hunger feelings
- Hunger feelings came at peak of contractions
- Contractions lead to hunger and vice versa
Do people who have their stomachs removed still get hungry?
yes
What will amnesics do if they forget that they ate?
They will keep eating
What happens to glucose levels in the bloodstream when we eat?
Eating increases glucose levels in the bloodstream
What is the hunger-regulation cycle?
When blood glucose is low, people become hungry. Food raises glucose, reduces hunger and eating
Orexin
secreted by hypothalamus triggers hunger
Obestatin
secreted by stomach; sends “full” signals to brain
Leptin
- secreted by fat cells; send signals to brain diminished reward or food
- Helps maintain a normal body weight
Chrelin
secreted by empty stomach; sends hunger signals to brain
Insulin
secreted by pancreas; controls blood glucose
What is the role of the hypothalamus?
Hypothalamus brain structure that regulates body temperature, release of hormones, and monitors glucose levels
What is the lateral hypothalamus?
“hunger center” if stimulates these cells, the animal eats and eats. Starve to death if LH is destroyed
What is the ventromedial hypothalmus?
“satiation center” stimulates this and animals will not eat. Destroy VH and animal eats and eats
Will identical twins be more similar in body weight than fraternal twins?
Yes they will be the same whether raised together or apart because genetic factors play a larger role in body weight
Sex
It’s a basic physiological drive. It’s not an actual need, but is a primary drive for survival of the species. Testosterone for males. Estrogen for women, estrogen levels peak during ovulation, promoting sexual receptivity
What are some belongingness motives?
The need for affiliation: desire to establish and maintain social contacts
Need for Intimacy: Desire for close relationships characterized by open and intimate communication
Self-disclosure
Sharing of intimate details about oneself to another person (women share more than men)
What are some esteem motives?
Achievement motivation: A strong desire to accomplish difficult tasks, outperform others, and excel
Need for power: A strong desire to acquire prestige and influence over other people
Main ideas from college student experiment on intrinsic motivation
- College students had 3 sessions with puzzles
- Some were paid during the second session and others weren’t
- Time spent on puzzles during breaks was covertly recorded
- If people are paid for a task they already enjoy, they may lose interest in it
What does a problem consist of?
A problem consists of some initial state in which a person begins and a goal state that is to be attained, plus a non-obvious way of getting from the first to the second
What is a well-structured problem?
Completely specified starting conditions, goal state, and methods for achieving the goal (geometry proofs)
What is a ill-structured problem?
Some aspects are not completely specified. Examples: finding the perfect mate, choosing a career, fix the economy, win a war
What is a problem space?
whole range of possible states and operators, only some of which will lead to goal state
What are operators in a problem?
Mental actions that move between states
What would be the initial state, operators, intermediate states, and goal in a simple math problem?
Initial state: problem at hand
Operators: substituting for a variable, subtracting, dividing
Intermediate states: when you subtract the state is what you get after you do that step
Goal state: answer
Problem Representation
For many problems, the representation is the key to solving a problem:
- Right representation makes it easier, wrong representation makes it harder to solve
- Algebra word problems easier as equations
- Geometry problems often easier graphically
- Decision problems easier when relevant information is laid out in a grid
Main takeaways from the monk problem
- Text-based representation difficult
- Imagining a single monk walking up and down the mountain can be misleading
- Graphical representation of the monk problem is a lot easier
What are isomorphs?
Equivalent problems, different representation. Example: number scrabble, two players, each draws one card at a time. first player to hold 3 cards that sum to 15 wins. It can be set up to be the same as tic tac toe
Solving problems by analogy
- Retrieve a representation of a problem from memory that is similar (or even isomorphic) to the problem you currently face
- If you can already solve the old problem you may be able to solve the new (analogous) problem as well
- Unfortunately, people tend to miss deep (structural) similarities between problems because they tend to focus on surface similarities and difference
What’s an example of a literal version?
Collapsing stars spin faster and faster as they fold in on themselves and their size decreases. This phenomenon of spinning faster as the star’s size shrinks occurs because of a principle called “conservation of angular momentum.
What is an example of an analogy version?
Collapsing stars spin faster as their size decreases. Stars are thus like ice-skaters, who pirouette faster as they pull in their arms. Both stars and skaters operate by a principle called
“conservation of angular momentum.
Takeaways from military problem
No analogy 10% (only x-ray problem)
Military analogy no hint (30% no highlighting
Military analogy + hint: 80% with highlighting
What are top-down preconceptions?
When we look at a new problem, we tend to encode it in a way consistent with long-term memory
Functional fixedness?
See an object as having only a fixed, familiar function
Takeaways from Duncker’s Candle problem
- initial problem state affects the types of solutions people will entertain
- Improvements when tacks are not initially inside the box
- Improvements when the box is referred to explicitly
What is a mental set?
The tendency to approach a problem in a particular way, especially a way that has been successful in the past but may or may not be helpful (or could actually hurt) in solving a new problem
Algorithms
Completely specified sequence of steps that is guaranteed to produce an answer (like a recipe).
Usually guaranteed to produce the correct answer
But may be slow or laborious
Fallon and Rozin Study of bodyweight and self-image
- Studied 500 university students
- Women’s ideal weight was less than their actual weight
- Men’s ideal weight matched up pretty closely with their actual weight
- Also women thought that men preferred to be thinner than the men actually did.
Heuristics
- Short-cut “rule of thumb”
- Never guaranteed to produce the correct answer
- But usually quick and easy
- Example: trial and error
Difference Reduction/Hill Climbing
At any point, select the operator that moves you closer to the goal state, Is this state new or similar to goal?
In hill climbing you never choose an operation that moves you away from the goal.
Working backward
Transform goal state so that it is more similar to the initial state. Useful if too many paths leading from initial state
Availability Heuristic
A tendency to estimate the likelihood of an event in terms of how easily instances of it can be recalled.
Representativeness Heuristic
Judge whether A has some characteristic by
relying on the similarity of A to other things
with that characteristic
What is the problem with Representativeness Heuristics?
Ignores base rates (how common something is)
Overconfidence
a cognitive bias that occurs when someone has an unrealistic belief about their abilities, knowledge, or character.
Anchoring Effect
The tendency to use the initial value as a reference point in making a
numerical estimate
