Week 5: Motivation Flashcards
What is “motivation”?
The influences that account for the initiation, direction, intensity and persistence of a behaviour.
What do psychologists think of motivation as?
An intervening variable - something that is used to explain the relationships between environmental stimuli and behavioural responses. We have to infer, or presume, that motivation is present from what we can observe.
In order to be considered a motive, an intervening variable must…
Have the power to change behaviour in some way
True or false: motives can help explain why different stimuli can lead to the same response, and why the same stimulus can elicit different responses
True
What are the four motives for human behaviour?
- Physiological (or biological) factors: such as the need for food and water. 2. Emotional factors: such as panic, fear, anger, love and hatred. 3. Cognitive factors - perceptions of the world, self beliefs, expectations and consequences. 4. Social factors - influence of parents, teachers, siblings, friends or situations.
What are the three components of motivation?
Direction: what a person is trying to do Effort: how hard a person is trying Persistence: how long a person continues trying
What type of factors do Instinct Theory, Drive Reduction Theory, and Arousal Theory focus on?
Biology or internal factors
What type of factor does Incentive theory focus on?
External factors
What is instinct theory of motivation?
This theory posits that instincts (evolutionary behaviour that is pre-programmed into a species) drive behaviour. The basics of this theory are depicted in the following simple video along with it’s limitations. E.g hunger - instinct to eat. Or tired - instinct to sleep. It completed dismisses emotions and free will. So has been disregarded - lack of scientific evidence. Motivation stems from more complicated factors.
What are Maslow’s 5 stages in the hierarchy of needs?
Physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self actualisation
What is the drive reduction theory of motivation?
The key elements to this theory are that; a) a lack or shortage of some biological essential that is required for survival creates a biological need, and b) the brain responds by creating a psychological state called a drive, a feeling that prompts one to take action to restore balance. The health of any living organism is optimised when the internal environment is balanced. If the internal environment becomes imbalanced for some reason (depicted as the scales on the left), then signals are sent to the organisms brain that it needs to take action to restore equilibrium (depicted as the scales on the right). The drive reduction theory attempts to explain motivation at a general species level e.g., the ideal internal environment for humans and deviations away from that as a prompt for action. Similar to the instinct theory, drive reduction theory does not take individual differences into account.
What is arousal theory?
Arousal theory states that people are motivated to behave in ways to maintain or restore their optimal level of arousal, increasing arousal when it is too low and decreasing it when it is too high. In general, people perform and feel best when arousal is moderate.
What is Yerkes-Dodson law?
That a simple task is performed best when arousal levels are relatively high and complex tasks are best performed when arousal levels are lower
What is incentive theory?
The premise of this approach is that we are motivated to behave in ways that will result in rewards (i.e. a positive incentive) and that we are also motivated to behave in ways that allows us to avoid punishment or something unpleasant (i.e., negative incentives). Decades of research suggests that the more rewards people are offered does not necessarily mean greater motivation, however and findings such as this has implications for understanding what motivates employees in an organisation. Incentive theory is also known as the “carrot and stick” approach to motivation.
According to maslow’s hierarchy of needs, what are our main primal motivators?
The need to drink water, and eat food – because they are necessary for our survival. These are our physiological needs
Motivation is said to be an _______________, a way of linking various stimuli to the behaviours that follow them.
Intervening variable
Motivation follows from
Instinctive behaviours, which are automatic, involuntary and unlearned action patterns consistently ‘released’ by particular stimuli.
Similarities and Differences among the drive reduction theory and instinct theory of motivation:
The drive reduction theory of motivation is similar to the instinct theory of motivation insofar that they both focus on internal factors. The point of difference is that drive theory revolves around the concept of homeostasis.
Homeostasis
Is a tendency to maintain equilibrium in a physical or behavioural process.
Which Theory is based on the Homeostasis?
Drive reduction theory
According to __________ people are motivated to behave in ways that maintain a level of physiological arousal that is optimal for their functioning.
The Arousal Theory.
Instinct doctrine
View that explains human behaviour as motivated by automatic, involuntary and unlearned responses.
The instinct doctrine are seen in evolutionary accounts of
Helping, aggression, mate selection and other aspects of social behaviour.
Instinctive behaviours
Are innate, automatic dispositions towards responding in a particular way when confronted with a specific stimulus.
Needs
Are biological requirements for wellbeing that are created by an imbalance in homeostasis.
Drives
Are psychological state of arousal created by an imbalance in homeostasis that prompts an organism to take action to restore the balance and reduce the drive.
Primary drives
Are drives that arise from basic biological needs.
Secondary drives
Are drives that arise through learning and can be as motivating as primary drives.
Primary drives are _________; secondary drives are _______.
Unlearned; learned.
Hunger
Is the general state of wanting to eat.
Satiation
The satisfaction of a need such as hunger.
Satiety
The condition of no longer wanting to eat.
Appetite
The motivation to seek food’s pleasures.
The most important signals about the body’s fuel level and nutrient needs are sent to the brain from:
The blood
More recent research has shown that the brain constantly monitors both the level of food nutrients absorbed into the bloodstream from
The stomach and the level of hormones released into the blood in response to those nutrients and from stored fat.
The nutrients that the brain monitors include
Glucose (the main form of sugar used by body cells), Fatty acids (from fats) and amino acids (from proteins). The brain also monitors hormone levels to regulate hunger and satiety. For example, when a lack of nutrients is detected by the stomach, the hormone ghrelin is released into the bloodstream and acts as a ‘start eating’ signal when it reaches the brain.
When the level of blood ________ drops, eating increases sharply.
Glucose.
What happens when glucose levels rise?
The pancreas releases insulin, a hormone that most body cells need in order to use the glucose they receive. Insulin itself may also provide a satiety signal by acting directly on brain cells.
The hormone leptin appears to be a key ________ to the brain.
Satiety signal; Unlike glucose and insulin, whose satiety signals help us know when to end a particular meal, leptin appears to be involved mainly in the long-term regulation of body fat.
The _______________ play a primary role in detecting and reacting to the blood’s signals about the need to eat. It also detect leptin and insulin; these regions generate signals that either increase hunger and reduce energy expenditure or else reduce hunger and increase energy expenditure.
Hypothalamus
Neuromodulators
Are substances that modify the action of neurotransmitters .
Set Point Theory
Is the view that activity in the ventromedial and lateral areas of the hypothalamus interact to maintain some homeostatic level, or set point, based on food intake, body weight or other eating-related signals.
The lateral hypothalamus contains networks that stimulate:
Eating. When the lateral hypothalamus is electrically or chemically stimulated, rats eat huge quantities, even if they just had a large meal. When the lateral hypothalamus is destroyed, however, rats stop eating almost entirely.
The paraventricular nucleus in the hypothalamus
As with the ventromedial nucleus, stimulating the paraventricular nucleus results in reduced food intake. Damaging it causes animals to become obese .
Hunger and the eating of particular types of food is related to the effects of various neurotransmitters on certain neurons in the brain. For example:
The neurotransmitter, called neuropeptide Y: stimulates increased eating of carbohydrates. Serotonin, suppresses carbohydrate intake. Galanin motivates the eating of high-fat food. Whereas enteristatin, the neurotransmitter reduces it. Endocannabinoids stimulate eating in general, especially the eating of tasty foods. They affect the same hypothalamic receptors as the active ingredient in marijuana, which may account for the ‘munchies’, a sudden hunger that marijuana use often creates. Peptide YY3-36 causes a feeling of fullness and reduces food intake
Problems in the processes of regulating hunger and eating may cause eating disorders such as:
Anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa, or a level of food intake that leads to obesity.
Obesity
Is a condition in which a person is severely overweight, as measured by a body mass index (BMI) greater than 30. People whose BMI is between 25 and 29.9 are considered overweight.
BMI is determined by:
Taking a person’s weight in kilograms and dividing that number by the square of the person’s height in metres.
Anorexia nervosa
Is an eating disorder characterised by a combination of self-starvation, self-induced vomiting, excessive exercise and laxative use that results in a body weight that is below 85 per cent of normal.
Bulimia nervosa
Like anorexia, bulimia involves an intense fear of being fat, but the person may be thin, normal in weight, or even overweight. Bulimia involves eating huge amounts of food (say, several boxes of biscuits, a litre of ice-cream and burgers) and then getting rid of the food through self-induced vomiting or strong laxatives. These ‘binge-purge’ episodes may occur as often as twice a day.
Why are bulimia and anorexia are different disorders?
For one thing, most people with bulimia see their eating habits as problematic, whereas most individuals with anorexia do not. In addition, bulimia nervosa is usually not life-threatening. There are health consequences, however, including dehydration, nutritional problems and intestinal damage. Many people with bulimia develop dental problems from the acids associated with vomiting. Frequent vomiting and the insertion of objects to trigger it can also cause damage to the throat.
Non Biological factors that stimulate eating:
The sights and smells of particular foods elicit eating because of prior associations; family customs and social occasions include norms for eating in particular ways. Stress also is often associated with eating more.
Sexual arousal
Physiological responses that arise from sexual contact or erotic thoughts.
Sexual response cycle
Is the pattern of physiological arousal during and after sexual activity.
People’s motivation to engage in sexual activity has biological roots in sex hormones. For example:
The female sex hormones include oestrogens and progestational hormones (also called progestins; the main ones are oestradiol and progesterone). The male hormones are androgens; the main one is testosterone. Each sex hormone flows in the blood of both sexes, but the average man has more male than female hormones, and the average woman has more female than male hormones.
Sex hormones have both organisational and activational effects on the brain:
The organisational effects are permanent changes that alter the brain’s response to hormones. The activational effects are temporary behavioural changes that last only as long as a hormone level remains elevated, such as during puberty or in the ovulation phase of the monthly menstrual cycle.
Sex hormones
Are chemicals in the blood of males and females that have both organisational and activational effects on sexual behaviour.
Sexual orientation
The nature of a person’s enduring emotional, romantic or sexual attraction to others
Heterosexuality
Sexual motivation that is focused on members of the other sex.
Homosexuality
Sexual motivation that is focused on members of one’s own sex.
Bisexuality
Sexual motivation that is focused on members of both sexes.
What shapes sexual orientation?
Sexual orientation most likely results from the complex interplay of both genetic and non-genetic mechanisms, both nature and nurture. The evidence available so far suggests that genetic factors, probably operating through prenatal hormones, create differences in the brains of people with different sexual orientations. However, the manner in which a person expresses a genetically influenced sexual orientation will be profoundly shaped by what that person learns through social and cultural experiences.
Role of Sex
Sex is not necessary for an individual’s survival, but it is vital for improving the chances that an individual’s genes will be represented in the next generation.
Sexual Scripts
Sexual scripts are patterns of behaviour that lead to sex.
Achievement motivation
Is the degree to which a person establishes specific goals, cares about meeting those goals, and experiences feelings of satisfaction by doing so. People with a high achievement motivation seek to master tasks – be they sports, business ventures, intellectual puzzles or artistic creations – and obtain intense satisfaction from doing so. They strive for excellence, enjoy themselves in the process, and take great pride in achieving at a high level.
Achievement motivation develops in:
Early childhood, under the influence of both genetic and environmental (parental and cultural) forces
Wellbeing
Is a combination of a cognitive judgement of satisfaction with life and the frequent experiencing of positive moods and emotions: also known as subjective wellbeing.
____________ is the degree to which a person establishes specific goals, cares about meeting those goals, and experiences feelings of satisfaction by doing so
Achievement motivation
Achievement and success in the workplace include:
Factors such as the importance of job satisfaction and extrinsic rewards such as money. Clear goals are one way of increasing both job performance and job satisfaction.
Oponent processes
Any reaction to a stimulus is followed by an opposite reaction; for example, being startled by a sudden sound is typically followed by relaxation and relief. After repeated exposure to the same stimulus, the initial reaction weakens and the opponent process becomes quicker and stronger.
There is some evidence that differing emotions such as _____________ and __________ can affect how successful our efforts are in relation to achievement motivation leve
Anticipation and worry.
In revising Maslow’s model, ___________ can be replaced by three other needs: the need to find a mate, the need to keep a mate, and the need to become a parent
Self-actualisation.
Emotional experience alters ________.
Thought processes.
Emotional experiences are ________ that you feel, usually whether you want to or not.
Passions.
The risks associated with Anorexia are severe and can be life threatening. They include:
Anaemia (iron deficiency) Compromised immune system (e.g. getting sick more often) Intestinal problems (e.g. abdominal pain, constipation, diarrhoea) Loss or disturbance of menstruation in girls and women Increased risk of infertility in men and women Kidney failure Osteoporosis– a condition that leads to bones becoming fragile and easily fractured Heart problems (e.g. cardiac abnormalities, sudden cardiac arrest) Death
Pansexuality
Sexual motivation that is not influenced by ones gender identity, or sex.
Asexuality
A lack or low level of sexual motivation.
Kris is taking the TAT test. She looks at a picture and says, ‘The woman in the picture is trying to solve a problem at work. She is thinking hard. She knows if she thinks about it long enough, she’ll be able to figure it out.’ This response reflects ___________ motivation.
Achievement
Tom carried a C average throughout his high school career until his last semester, when he achieved an A average. He had discovered that he would be ineligible to accept a football scholarship to the university of his choice without at least an A average in that semester. This example illustrates the role of motivation in
Explaining fluctuations in behaviour over time
Dr Luze-Moore is working on a drug that will curb people’s appetite for high-fat foods. Based on your reading of the textbook, Dr Luze-Moore would do best to focus on a way to block the stimulation of which neurotransmitter?
Galanin
According to drive reduction theory, an imbalance in homeostasis creates a(n) ___________ to which the brain responds by creating a psychological state called a(n) ___________.
Need; drive
Ashley suffers from the most common eating disorder in Australia. She is a picky eater and often cannot accurately assess how much she has eaten. Ashley is suffering from
Obesity
Juan is a CEO of Hoola-Hoops, Inc. He sees his employees as lazy, untrustworthy creatures with no interest in their work. Thus, he offers a highly structured, heavily supervised work environment. Juan assumes that his employees are primarily motivated by ___________ rewards.
Extrinsic
Chef Devon is publishing a new book of recipes. Which of the following words would best capture his subtitle ‘The motivation to seek food’s pleasures’?
Appetite.
Which are the Four basic types of motivational conflict?
Approach–approach conflicts. Avoidance–avoidance conflicts. Approach–avoidance conflicts. And Multiple approach avoidance conflicts.
Approach–approach conflicts.
When a person must choose only one of two desirable activities – say, going with friends to a movie or to a party – an approach– approach conflict exists.
Avoidance–avoidance conflicts
An avoidance–avoidance conflict arises when a person must pick one of two undesirable alternatives. Someone forced either to sell the family home or to declare bankruptcy faces an avoidance–avoidance conflict.
Approach–avoidance conflicts.
If someone you dislike had tickets to your favourite group’s sold-out concert and invited you to come along, what would you do? When a single event or activity has both attractive and unattractive features, an approach–avoidance conflict is created.
Multiple approach–avoidance conflicts.
Suppose that you must choose between two jobs. One offers a good salary with a well-known company, but it requires long hours and relocation to a less preferable climate. The other boasts advancement opportunities, fringe benefits and a better climate, but also lower pay and an unpredictable work schedule. This is an example of a multiple approach–avoidance conflict, in which two or more alternatives each have both positive and negative features. Such conflicts are difficult to resolve partly because it may be hard to compare the features of each option. For example, how much more money per year does it take to compensate you for living in a climate you hate?
Rosa is trying to decide where to go to university. She could go to the University of Queensland where the weather is beautiful, but the tuition is high and she would be a long way from home. She could also go to the University of Melbourne where she would be close to her family and have a scholarship, but she’s tired of the cold winters and would like to live in a different state. Rosa is faced with a(n) ___________ conflict.
Multiple approach-avoidance
