Week 2 Flashcards
Fundamental questions
What causes behaviour?
Why does behaviour vary in its intensity?
2 aspects of motivation
energy: implies the bhvr has strength: intensity, persistence, etc.
direction: implies the bhvr has purpose: aimed to acheive goal, outcome, etc.
Internal motives
motives are internal processes that energize and direct bhvr; specific types of motives: needs, cognitions, and emotions
needs
conditions within the individual that are essential and necessary for the maintenance of life and for the nurturance of growth and well-being
cognitions
mental events: thoughts, beliefs, expectations, and self-concept
emotions
short-lived subjective-physiological-functional-expressive phenomena
external motives
sources of mtvtion that are environmental, social, or cultural and that have the capacity to energize and direct bhvr; they can be specific or general
- specific stimuli or events
- general situations or culture
they precede bhvr and are funcitonal in either pulling approach bhvr out of the person or pushing avoidant bhvr out of the person
ways to infer a person’s mtvtion
- through their observable bhvr (bbhvral manifestations)
- through antecedents known to give rise to motivation states
How bhvr is expression
bhvr, engagement, physiology, self-report
bhvral expression of mtvtion
attention, effort, latency, persistence, choice, probability of response, facial expression, bodily gestures
engagement
four interrelated aspects of engagement:
- behavioural (attention, effort, persistence)
- emotional (interest, enjoyment)
- cognitive (strategies, self-regulation)
- voice (self-expression, participation)
Brain activity and physiology
use scans and blood tests to test brain activity, hormonal activity, heart rate, etc.
self-report
problem with discrepancies between what people say they do and what they actually do
themes in the study of motivation
- mtvtion benefits adaptation and functioning
- mtves direct attention and prepare action
- mtvs vary over time and influence the ongoing stream of bhvr
- types of mtvtions exist
- mtvtion includes both approach and avoidance tendencies
- mtvtion study reveals what people want
- we are not always consciously aware of the motivational basis of our bhvr
- mtvtion needs supportive conditions to flourish
grand theories of motivation
All encompassing theories that seek to explain the full-range of motivation action
1 - the will (descartes)
2 - the instinct (Darwin, James, McDougall)
3 - the drive (Woodworth, Freud, Hull)
The Will
comes from a philosophical perspective (Descartes)
- understanding motivation = understanding the will (the motivator)
- acts of willing: choosing, striving, resisting
The Instinct
- comes form a physiological perspective (darwin)
- could explain where the motivational force came from
- James: physical and mental instincts
- McDougall: instincts as irrational and impulsive motivational forces that orient a person toward a particular goal (no instinct = no action)
Freud’s Drive Theory
- production of energy buildups withing the nervous system upsetting its stability and producing psychological discomfort
- may threten physical and psychological health (drive as an emergency warning)
- four components: source (bodily deficit); imptus (force coming from the experience of anxiety); object (what will satisfy the bodily deficit); aim (successful satisfaction of the bodily deficit that quiets anxiety)
The Drive
comes from a functional biology perspective (Woodworth)
- biological imbalances generate bodily deficits or drives
Hull’s drive theory
- drive has a purely physiological basis
- new feature (motivation could be predicted before it occurred - could be known from antecedents)
- beginning of a scientifitc study of mtvtion
- drive energized bhvr, but habit directs it (learning approach - drive reduction was reinforcing and produced learning)
- the incentive value of a goal object also motivated bhvr (mtvtion could arise from both internal (drive) and external (incentive) sources
Post-Drive years
- a need to step pout of the boundaries of the grand theories for the field to progress
- concepts of incentive and arousal
Mini-Theories
- have very narrow focus
- seek to understand: one particular motivational phenomenon, particular circumstances that affect mtvtion, groups of people, theoretical questions
- the shift from grand to mini because of the active nature of the person, the cognitive revolution, applied, socially relevant rsrch
typical development of a scientific discipline
- preparadigmatic: disagreements about what should be its methods, problems and solutions
- paradigmatic: emergence of a consensus on the discipline’s methods, problems and solutions (accumulation of knowledge and incremental advances)
- crisis and revolution: emergence of an anomaly that cannot be explained by the existing paradigm (clash between old way and new way of thinking)
- new paradigm: brings discipline-changing progress with a new concensus
the new paradigm
- bhvvr is energized and directed not by a single grand cause but, instead, by a multitude of multilevel ad co-acting influences
- in practice, tendency to rely on a single perspective
- many perspectives (neurological, bhvral, physiological, cognitive, social-cognitive, cultural, evolutionary, humanistic, psychoanalytical)
