Week 2

Question 1

Fundamental questions

Answer 1

What causes behaviour?

Why does behaviour vary in its intensity?

Question 2

2 aspects of motivation

Answer 2

energy: implies the bhvr has strength: intensity, persistence, etc.
direction: implies the bhvr has purpose: aimed to acheive goal, outcome, etc.

Question 3

Internal motives

Answer 3

motives are internal processes that energize and direct bhvr; specific types of motives: needs, cognitions, and emotions

Question 4

needs

Answer 4

conditions within the individual that are essential and necessary for the maintenance of life and for the nurturance of growth and well-being

Question 5

cognitions

Answer 5

mental events: thoughts, beliefs, expectations, and self-concept

Question 6

emotions

Answer 6

short-lived subjective-physiological-functional-expressive phenomena

Question 7

external motives

Answer 7

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

Question 8

ways to infer a person’s mtvtion

Answer 8

• through their observable bhvr (bbhvral manifestations)

- through antecedents known to give rise to motivation states

Question 9

How bhvr is expression

Answer 9

bhvr, engagement, physiology, self-report

Question 10

bhvral expression of mtvtion

Answer 10

attention, effort, latency, persistence, choice, probability of response, facial expression, bodily gestures

Question 11

engagement

Answer 11

four interrelated aspects of engagement:

• behavioural (attention, effort, persistence)
• emotional (interest, enjoyment)
• cognitive (strategies, self-regulation)
• voice (self-expression, participation)

Question 12

Brain activity and physiology

Answer 12

use scans and blood tests to test brain activity, hormonal activity, heart rate, etc.

Question 13

self-report

Answer 13

problem with discrepancies between what people say they do and what they actually do

Question 14

themes in the study of motivation

Answer 14

• 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

Question 15

grand theories of motivation

Answer 15

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)

Question 16

The Will

Answer 16

comes from a philosophical perspective (Descartes)

• understanding motivation = understanding the will (the motivator)
• acts of willing: choosing, striving, resisting

Question 17

The Instinct

Answer 17

• 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)

Question 18

Freud’s Drive Theory

Answer 18

• 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)

Question 19

The Drive

Answer 19

comes from a functional biology perspective (Woodworth)

- biological imbalances generate bodily deficits or drives

Question 20

Hull’s drive theory

Answer 20

• 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

Question 21

Post-Drive years

Answer 21

• a need to step pout of the boundaries of the grand theories for the field to progress
• concepts of incentive and arousal

Question 22

Mini-Theories

Answer 22

• 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

Question 23

typical development of a scientific discipline

Answer 23

• 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

Question 24

the new paradigm

Answer 24

• 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)