task 1 Flashcards
Concepts of emotion & motivation
What is meant with laws of emotion?
- emotions are lawful phenomena and thus can be described in terms of a set of
laws of emotion - These laws are accessible to intentional
control to only a limited extent
-> describe emotion elicitation, emotion persistance and emotion regulation
What is Maslow’s model of needs? What are the core assumptions?
- the pattern through which human motivation generally moves:
-> five needs humans try to fulfil in a successive order, meaning for motivation to
arise for the next stage, the stage below must be satisfied - The correlations among the satisfactions of the five needs were all positive and significant, supporting hypotheses #1-4. The
results showed that satisfaction of needs that are adjacent had higher correlations than those that are not - For family support, traditional values, and life satisfaction, correlations with need satisfaction were positive.
For neuroticism, correlations with need satisfaction were all negative
Does this model still hold for today? validity, reliability, correlation between levels etc. (Maslow’s model of needs)
using ideas that are based only in
Western culture, the data in this study, which were obtained from an Eastern culture, lent substantial support to the generality of
the theory of hierarchical needs
- Psychometric tests of the scales conducted on questionnaire results from 386 adult respondents
from the general population lent strong support for the validity and reliability of all 5 needs
measures
- satisfaction of each higher-level need was statistically predicted by the satisfaction of the need immediately below it in the hierarchy, as expected from Maslow’s theory
What are the core concept/assumption of the cognitive-attribution theories of emotion and motivation ?
The most basic assumption of an attribution view of emotion is
that feelings are determined by thoughts, and specifically by
beliefs about causality. This may be considered a subset of the
appraisal approach to emotions, but the appraisals are focused
on causal beliefs.
–> Causal Locus
–> Causal stability
–> Causal control
history of attribution approach to emotion and motivation
Early motivation theorists incorporated
emotion within the pleasure/pain principle but they did not recognize specific emotions. This changed when Atkinson introduced
his theory of achievement motivation, which argued that achievement strivings are determined by the anticipated emotions of
pride and shame
Attribution theory/theorists
many other emotional reactions to success and failure that are determined
by the perceived causes of achievement outcomes and the shared characteristics or dimensions of causality
How/Why the incentive-salience perspective on emotion-motivation excels the drive-reduction perspectives?
Motivation is directed toward affectively positive incentives and the brain motivation systems modulate those
incentive values, increasing wanting and liking
–> drive theory was prooved wrong as they found that cues for incentive stimulus evoke motivation in a state, whereas cues for drive state do not
–> brain electrode stimulation: electrodes were not only
rewarding (people worked to activate them) but were also motivating
Drive Theory
Drive: an aversive state that motivates behavior to reduce the unpleasant drive.
- -> Reward = drive reduction – a negative reinforcement, not as a positive pleasure or incentive
- -> Natural motivations are generators of aversive states (nutrients, water…)
Is there a differentiation in the way certain laws might act on particular aspects of emotions (e.g. initiation, durability?)
- laws are differnetiated between durability, elicitation and regulation
- laws of emotion are grounded in mechanisms that are not of voluntary nature & that are only partly under voluntary control
- -> the term “emotions have to obey certain laws”
- -> they may act on different aspects on emotions such as that they explain why for example the otherwise annyoing husband is missed so badly after his death by his wife by the Law of Change/Habituation in that the law explains this elicitation of emotion
Do emotions necessarily reflect conscious subjective feelings?
No. Some features of emotion cannot be accessed via introspection (e.g. implicit prejudice)
–> Verbal reports might be construed explanation of what we think we should feel
–> Affective reactions can be triggered unconsciously; change a person’s behaviour & judgements while feelings remain unreportable
–> Unconsciously seeing happy face induced positive affective reactions
–> Unconscious affective reactions able to modulate incentive salience of a drink –> poured more drink, drank more of what they poured and
were willing to pay more
Do we share emotions with animals?
LeDoux –> no, bc cannot verbally articulate their feelings
Berrigde –> criticises that; lets not do a double standard for humans vs. animals; lack proof and scientific certainty about the subjective experience of every other human besides ourselves. There is no scientific
certainty about the minimum neural circuitry needed for consciousness; affective reactions can occur unconsciously and consciously and that we share many emotional processes
and their brain circuitry with animals
–> share basic emotions with them, primary emotions such as fear, anger, sadness and happiness
Popper –> only evidence when we can falsify that they dont have any conscious emotions
The differences in ‘Wanting’ vs ‘Liking’ and involvement in motivation-emotion
Dopamine: mediates wanting – if mesolimbic system is excited, wanting is increased but
not liking –> anhedonia if we lost all ‘wanting’ due to dopamine loss, but ‘liking’ is still preserved
VS –> for liking, if liking is suppressed
Cues trigger motivated ‘wanting’ and to a degree ‘liking’ of the reward
–> Alliesthesia: something becomes more hedonically rewarding when we are wanting it (food = more
rewarding when we are hungry)
Incentive Salience Theory
motivation directed towards positive drives
subjective feelings and objective features of emotions
objective features –> physiological arousals
subjective feelings–> everything consciously perceived
induced panic attacks if not attributed to something we get a panic attack
How do emotions relate to mesocortical areas including to DOPA related systems?
DOPA: wanting –> energizes & motivates to seek reward
–> more stable & that’S why we often have intense wanting, but not intense liking
–> areas w/ liking: more fragile, why we have less intense liking; limbic structures, PFC, brainstem & nucleus accumbens –> act together in network ==> if stimulated, exponential liking
- D1: positve, wanting
- D2: negative, fear
–> limbic system that are related to DOPA e.g. striatum, nucleus accumbens
