Test 1 Flashcards
• Form _____ new hypotheses can be generated
Theories
5 sub questions
a. Why does a behavior start?
b. Once begun, why is that behavior sustained over time?
c. Why is that behavior directed toward some goals (and
away from others)?
d. Why does that behavior change its direction?
e. Why does that behavior stop?
Sensation seekers
continually seek out strong sources of stimulation
Sensation avoiders
find strong stimulation an irritant.
‣ Needs
conditions within the individual that are
essential and necessary for the maintenance of life, well-
being and growth.
Cognitions:
mental events, such as plans, goals, beliefs, expectations, and the self
Emotions:
complex and coordinated reactions to
significant events in our lives and orchestrate four interrelated aspects
to react adaptively:
• Feelings:
subjective, verbal descriptions of emotional
experience
Arousal
How our body mobilizes itself to cope with situational demands
purpose
what specifically we want to accomplish in a given moment
expression
non verbal communication of our emotional experience.
external events are ______
environmental social and cultural aspects that affect motives such as: specific stimuli (money), events (being praised), general situations, culture
motivation is a ______, _______, ________, experience
private, internal, unobservable experience. behavior is observable.
Five ways to infer motivation:
- Behavior
- Engagement
- Psychophysiology
- Brain activations
- Self-report.
Engagement is
a multidimensional construct.
It consists of four distinct, intercorrelated and mutually supportive, aspects.
Aspects of engagement
- effort and persistence (behavioral engagement),
- positive emotions (e.g. interest, enjoyment) (emotional
engagement) - the use of sophisticated -rather than superficial- learning
strategies (cognitive engagement)
-verbal participation and contribution to the lesson (e.g.,
asking questions, constructive contribution, and so on)
(agentic engagement).
Phychophysiology:
study of the interaction between bodily and mental
states); the activity of our hormonal system.
How to measure neural and hormonal changes
- Blood tests
- saliva tests
- heart rate
- respiratory rate
- pupil diameter
when thirsty, the _________ is active.
hypothalamus
Self-Report:
• ask via an interview or a questionnaire to infer the level of anxiety
• by asking to report anxiety-related symptoms (an upset
stomach or thoughts of failure).
Advantages of questionnaires:
• easy to administer
• can be given to many people
simultaneously, can target very specific information.
Disadvantages of self report
lack of correspondence between what people say they do and what they actually do (e.g., more maximizers than satisfiers) between how they say they feel and what their 1psychophysiological activity indicates.
THEMES IN THE STUDY OF MOTIVATION
- Motivation benefits adaptation
- Motivation directs attention
- Motivation is an intervening variable
- Motives vary over time and influence the ongoing stream of behavior
- Types of motivations exist
- We are not always aware of the motivational basis of our behavior
- Motivation study reveals what people want
- To flourish, motivation needs supportive conditions
- When trying to motivate others, what is easy to do is rarely what works
- There is nothing so practical as a good theory.
- Motivation Benefits Adaptation
Circumstances constantly change (at home, school, work). Motivations and emotions help to adapt to the environmental changes.When students, workers, athletes are motivated, excited, confident and set higher goals, they will be able to adapt successfully to their environment.
In contrast, when motivation is low, personal adaptation suffers. People who feel helpless and unmotivated, tend to give up quickly when challenged.
- Motives direct attention (and prepares for action)
Environments constantly demand our attention. Our motivational states direct our attention to one aspect of the environment rather than to another. Motives prepare us for action by directing attention to select some courses of action over others.
- Motivation (and Emotions) are ‘Intervening
Variables’
Variables that intervene (or “mediate”) between causes (antecedents: environmental events) and effects (outcomes: behavior).
- Motives vary over time and influence the ongoing stream of behavior
Motivation is a dynamic process rather than a static
condition. The strength continually rises and falls as circumstances
change. One motive is strongest and dominates our attention, while
others are weak. But each subordinate motive can become dominant as
circumstances change.
- Types of motivations exist
Motivation is not a unitary concept, but important type of motivations exist (human beings are motivationally complex).
Examples of Motivations:
Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic
Motivation To approach vs. To avoid
- We are not always consciously aware of the motivational basis of our behavior
Some motives are accessible to consciousness and to verbal report. Other motives are less accessible and they originate in the unconscious
- Motivation study reveals what people want
Motivation study reveals what human beings desire, hope,
want, need, and fear. It also reveals which motivations are universal and which
depend on culture, personal experience, age, historical period.
Examples of Universal Motivation are
our physiological needs (e.g., hunger, thirst, sex, pain), the tendency to be hedonists (approach pleasure and avoid pain).
Examples of Acquired Motivation
our culture, unique experience, exposure to particular role models.
- To flourish, motivation needs supportive conditions
Motivation cannot be separated from social context. A child’s motivation is affected by the social context provided by parents, athletes by coaches, patients by physicians, citizens by their culture.
Environment can be supportive or neglectful.
When it is supportive ________
people express positive emotions
joy, hope, interest, optimism
When an environment is neglectful ___________
neglectful or overwhelming, people express negative emotions (sadness, frustration, stress).
- When trying to motivate self and others, what is easy to do is rarely what works
Everyone has better success in motivating others when they stop giving commands and, instead, work patiently to see the situation from the other person’s point of view, ask
the other for suggestions.
- There is nothing so practical as a good theory
A Theory is a set of variables (e.g., self-efficacy, goals, effort) and the relationships that are assumed to exist among them (e.g., strong self-efficacy beliefs encourage people to set goals, and once set, goals encourage high effort).
A good theory is a practical tool for solving the problems faced by students, teachers, workers, employers, managers, athletes, coaches, parents, therapists, and clients.
___________ said “there is nothing so practical as a good theory. It
is a useful guide in how to understand and to solve a
problem.”
Kurt Lewin
_________ theorized about three levels of soul
Plato (ca. 428-348 B.C.)
3 levels of soul and examples:
- Appetitive aspect (biological level, bodily urges and desires, such as hunger, sex)
- Competitive aspect (social level, feeling honored or shamed)
- Calculating aspect (decision-making capacities: reasoning and choosing)
Hierarchically arranged - each higher aspect can regulate the motives of the lower aspects (e.g., reason could keep bodily appetites at bay).
______________ endorsed Plato’s tripartite soul.
Aristotle
Aristotle’s theory of motivation was composed of what 3 parts?
- Nutritive (the most impulsive, irrational and animal-like. Bodily urges necessary for the maintenance of life)
- Sensitive (It was also related to the body, but it regulated hedonic pleasure and pain)
- Rational (intellectual, unique to human beings)
The tripartite psyche (=soul) was reduced to
dualism
Dualism consisted of which two parts?
The passion of the body
(irrational, impulsive, and biological)
vs.
The reason of the mind
(rational, intelligent, spiritual)
________ created the grand theory of will
René Descartes
In his dualistic model, Descartes distinguished between:
• The body was a mechanical and passive agent
• The will was an immaterial and active agent.
• The body responded to the environment in mechanistic
ways through its sense, reflexes and physiology.
• The mind was a spiritual, thinking entity that possessed a purposive will.
• The ultimate motivational force was the will.
• The will initiated and directed action; it chose whether to
act and what to do when acting.
“If we can understand the will, then we understand
motivation” : _______________
Descartes
The instinct was brought about by the field of ____________
physiology
________ provided a foundation for instinct theory
Darwin
Darwin proposed ________, __________, and ________ in regards to instinct.
- Instincts arise from the genetic endowment.
- These behaviors occur naturally and automatically.
- They do not need to be learned in order to be displayed.
_____________ provided the first instinct theory of Motivation
William James
According to instinct theory, he presence of an appropriate_______ translates to an instinct into motivated behavior (goal-directed).
stimulus
According to James, without instincts human beings would _________
inert lumps, bodies without any impulses to action.
Circular explanation:
attempts to explain an observation in terms of itself.
The cause explains the behavior, but the behavior is used as evidence of its cause (behavior instinct).
_________ motivates the behavior that serves body’s needs
Drive
Theory of drive originated with __________
Woodworth, 1918
As a biological imbalance occurs animals psychologically experience these bodily deficits as ________
drive
Two people who had drive theories:
- Freud (1915)
2. Hull (1943)
Freud’s Drive Theory
The nervous system tries to maintain a constant and low
energy level. Biological urges (e.g., hunger) produce energy buildups
within the nervous system. These buildups upset nervous system stability and produce
psychological discomfort (or anxiety). It is this anxiety that motivates the behavioral search for an
object capable of removing the bodily deficit (food).
According to Freud, __________ quiets anxiety.
Satisfaction of the bodily deficit
Criticisms of Freud’s drive theory
- overestimation of the contribution of biological forces to
motivation (a relative underestimation of the contribution of
learning and experience); - data taken from case studies of disturbed individuals
(not from experimental research with representative
samples); - ideas that are not scientifically (experimentally) testable.
Hull’s Drive Theory
• Needs for food, water, sex, sleep, and so forth summed to constitute a “total bodily need”.
• Motivation can be predicted before it occurs.
• If an animal is deprived of food, water, sex or sleep, then
drive would increase in proportion to the duration of the
deprivation.
In the 1960s two new motivational principles were introduced:
incentive and arousal.
an external stimulus that energizes and directs approach or avoidance behavior.
Incentive:
Incentive based motivational theories asserted that ____________
people are motivated by the incentive value of various objects in their environment that “pulls” them toward these objects.
Variations in level of arousal has a ________
relationship to behavior.
curvilinear (the inverted-U shape)
Unstimulating environments generate ________ and _______ performance.
low arousal, negative emotions
‣ Performance: poor
Stimulating environments generate_________ arousal, _______ emotions
and _________ performance.
optimal arousal, positive emotions
(interest).
‣ Performance: good
Overly stimulating environments generate _______ arousal, ______
emotions and ________ performance.
high arousal, negative
emotions (stress, fear).
‣ Performance: poor
__________ try to explain a specific motivational phenomenon, rather than all motivation.
MINI-THEORIES
Three historical trends explain why motivation study left behind the grand theories to embrace the mini-theories:
- Active Nature of the Person
- Cognitive Revolution
- Applied, Socially Relevant Research
Active Nature of the Person
a person is always active, always motivated.
the Cognitive Revolution emphasized _________ as the primary causes of behavior and deemphasized biological ___________.
Cognitive Revolution
Emphasized internal mental processes (thought, beliefs, and judgment) as the primary causes of behavior.
Deemphasized biological and mechanical constructs (drive, homeostasis, arousal)
Applied, Socially Relevant Research from the cognitive revolution resulted in:
- interdisciplinary contact with other fields
- focus on questions that were relevant to solving the
motivational problems people face in their lives (at work, in school, in
coping with stress, and so on)
Three types of needs that motivate behavior
- Physiological Needs
- Psychological Needs
- Implicit Needs
Physiological needs include _______ and are ________.
- thirst, hunger, and sex.
- they maintain bodily well-being.
- They are inborn.
__________ is any condition within the person that is essential and
necessary for life, growth, and well-being.
A need
Examples of psychological needs and their effects
- autonomy, competence, and relatedness
- they promote personal growth, social development, and psychological well-being.
- They are inborn and present in each of us (everyone needs autonomy, competence..)
- achievement, affiliation, and power
- they preserve our identities, beliefs, values, and interpersonal relationships
- They are acquired, through social interaction.
- They arise from our unique personal experience and thus vary from person to person (a person can have a high need for power, and others not at all)
are examples of implicit needs
Maslow suggested two types of needs:
Deficiency needs and growth needs
Deficiency needs:
• ex. 10 hours without eating
‣ the behavior is aimed to quiet the deficit (i.e., consume food)
- They usually generate emotions, such as anxiety,
frustration, pain, stress, and relief.
- Growth needs
- behavior is aimed to advance development (e.g., the need for competence promotes a desire to seek out opportunities to improve our skills, the need for relatedness leads us to log onto Facebook to find supportive interpersonal relationships).
- They generate emotions, such interest, enjoyment, vitality.
When our water volume falls by about ________ we feel thirsty.
2%,
Intracellular fluid
all the water inside the cells (approximately 40% of body weight)
Extracellular fluid
all the water outside the cells in blood plasma and interstitial fluid (approximately 20% of body weight). It can become low when we lose blood.
The primary cause of thirst activation is when ______ fluid is low. Thirst comes mostly from ______. The ______ system prevents drinking too much water.
intracellular
dehydrated cells
negative feedback
Hunger and eating involve both short-term (_________ hypothesis)
and long-term (_______ hypothesis) regulation.
glucostatic
lipostatic
hypothesis: regulation of the initiation of meals, the size of meals, and the termination of meals
Glucostatic hypothesis
Glucose deficiency stimulates eating by activating the _________
lateral hypothalamus
• Glucose excess inhibits eating by activating the _______ (brain structure involved in the termination of meals – negative feedback).
ventromedial hypothalamus
___________ hypothesis: regulation of the balance between food intake, energy expenditure, and body weight.
Lipostatic hypothesis
________ theory:
- Each individual has a biologically determined body weight of “fat termostat” that is set by genetics either at birth or shortly thereafter.
- Hunger activation and satiety depend on the size of one’s fat cells.
- When fat cell size is reduced (e.g., through dieting), hunger arises and persists until feeding behavior allows the fat cells to return to their natural (set-point) size.
Set point theory
People eat about __________ when they are in the presence of others (who are also eating), especially when they are ________ (De Castro, 1994).
50%
Family and friends
A person’s chance to becoming obese increases by over _______ if he or she has friends who recently became obese.
50%
fuck off
Children prefer the same food eaten by those they ______ (Birch &
Fisher, 1996).
admire
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR is influenced by these hormones:
- Androgens (e.g., testosterone)
* Estrogens
• The sex hormones of a 40-year-old are about _______ of that of a 20-year-old.
half
the study of the people’s judgment about the
attractiveness of facial characteristics.
Facial metrics
3 categories explain which faces are judged attractive:
- Neonatal features;
- Sexual maturity features;
- Expressive features.
features associated with a newborn infant (large eyes and small nose). They
communicate youth and agreeableness.
Neonatal features
________ features include prominent cheekbones and, for males, thick facial and eyebrow hair, associated with strength, status, and competency
Sexual maturity features:
__________ features include wide smile/mouth and higher-set eyebrows, associated with happiness and
openness.
Expressive features
Intrinsic Motivation
behavior emerges spontaneously and is not done for any instrumental (extrinsic) reason.
benefits of intrinsic motivation
persistence, creativity, conceptual understanding, and subjective well-being.
Extrinsic Motivation:
arises from environmental incentives and consequences (food,
money, praise, attention, privileges, candy, prizes, awards, smiles).
It is an environmentally created reason to initiate an action.
Extrinsic motivation is based on ________ conditioning.
operant
Baldwin and Baldwin (1986) offered the following conceptualization of motivated action:
S : R - C
S stimulus (i.e., incentive)
R response
C consequence
S : R - C definitions
The : means that S sets the occasion for (but does not cause) R
The - means that R causes a C
environmental event that attracts (or repels) a person toward (or away) from initiating a particular course of action.
Incentive
Examples: of a positive incentive
a smile, an inviting aroma, the presence of friends
Difference between incentive and consequence:
- when each occurs
2. how it motivates behavior
_________ precede behavior (S:R) and excite or inhibit the ______ of behavior.
Incentives
initiation
______ follow behavior (R - C) and increase or decrease the _______ of behavior.
Consequences
persistence
Two types of consequences:
Reinforcers and Punishers
any extrinsic event that increases the probability of a desired behavior
Reinforcers
positive reinforcers
any environmental stimulus that, when presented, increases the future probability of the desired behavior (e.g., approval, paychecks, trophies).
A person who receives the positive reinforcer becomes more likely to repeat the behavior than a person who receives no such attractive consequence.
negative reinforcers
any environmental stimulus that increases the future probability of the desired behavior (e.g., crying, deadlines, whining). Like positive reinforcers, they increase the probability of the desired behavior. Unlike positive reinforcers, they are aversive, irritating stimuli.
any environmental stimulus that decreases the probability of a certain (undesired) behavior. ________ decrease the probability that the behavior will recur in the future.
Punishers
a _________ suppresses behavior by imposing the cost of losing some attractive resource if one engages in the undesirable behavior.
response cost
Side effects of punishers
- negative emotionality (crying, screaming, feeling afraid)
- impaired relationship
- negative modeling of how to cope with undesirable behavior in others
any offering from one person to another one in exchange for his/her service or achievement
rewards
Distinction between positive reinforcers and rewards:
• all positive reinforcers are rewards
‣ only some rewards function as positive reinforcers (because not all
rewards increse behavior).
The imposition of an extrinsic reward to engage in an intrinsically interesting activity undermines intrinsic motivation =
“hidden cost of reward”
After a history of always being rewarded for doing something (e.g., cleaning your room) it is difficult to __________ when not offered the reward.
regulate behavior
________ and his colleagues nicely illustrate the hidden cost of rewards
Mark Lepper;
Preschool children with high intrinsic interest in drawing
were grouped into one of 3 experimental conditions:
- expected reward
- no reward
- unexpected reward
reward: a Good Player certificate featuring the child’s
name and a big blue ribbon
One week later, the experimenters provided the children
with another opportunity to draw during their free time
Results: Children who draw in order to win the certificate spent significantly
less time drawing than did children in the other two conditions.
These findings have been replicated with adults, different tasks, and different rewards (see Deci et al., 1999)
Conclusion:
the extrinsic rewards do generally undermine intrinsic motivation, but not always.
Two factors explain which types of rewards decrease intrinsic motivation:
- tangibility
* Expectancy
_________ decrease intrinsic motivation when the person expects them
rewards
rewards that one can see, touch, feel, and taste generally decrease intrinsic motivation
tangibility
_______ (i.e., intangible) do not decrease intrinsic motivation (e.g., praise)
Verbal rewards
Study: Cordova & Lepper, 1996
Students worked together on a computer software program that placed a boring fraction lesson within a “Space Quest” game. Students who worked within a fantasy context and with stimulating
friends found the lesson more interesting and they showed better learning compared to students who learned fractions in a more traditional way.
How to motivate others to do uninteresting activities (2 ways)
One way is to offer a rationale, a verbal explanation.
Another way - a boring task does not always have to be a boring task
One way to minimize their detrimental effect on intrinsic motivation is to use rewards that are ______ and ______.
unexpected and verbal.
________ regulation is not always bad or counterproductive.
External
