Motivation

Motivation:

• can't directly observe motivation, so must infer it from people's behavior.

e.g. hunger motive:

Sources of Motivation:

• drive-reduction theory: (Clark Hull, 1943)

  • need:

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  • drive:

e.g.

example:

Your body loses water (as when you sweat).

Receptor cells in hypothalamus respond and make you feel thirsty.

Thirst arouses you, signaling you that your body lacks water, and directs you to drink.

By drinking, you reduce your thirst and restore your body's normal water level.

 

 

• explains drives such as thirst, hunger, and sex.

 

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e.g.

• Incentives and Motivation:

  • Incentive:

   

  • we learn that certain stimuli are desirable and other stimuli are not.

e.g. puppies

e.g. elevator music

 

 

 

2 types of incentives:

1. Intrinsic Motivation:

 

 

 

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• e.g. a child who likes doing puzzles.

   

   

   

   

   

2. Extrinsic Motivation:

 

 

 

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• Drives and Incentives can be combined to influence motivation

e.g. hunger drive motivates you to replenish your body's energy from food

your favorite flavor would pull you towards a particular food (pizza instead of a hamburger)

 

e.g. plane crash in Andes where passengers cannibalized the bodies of dead passengers

extreme hunger drive made them respond to a very weak or negative incentive (human flesh)

 

e.g. Can be full and have no hunger drive, but the pull of a strong incentive (ice-cream) can motivate you to eat.

 

 

 

 

 

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs:

e.g. choose 1: either have food to eat or straight A's?

 

 

 

• Criticism:

The Hunger Motive: impels you to eat to satisfy your body's need for nutrients.

• Factors that Regulate Eating:

• Bodily Factors:

  • Mouth

   

  • Stomach
    

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  • Small intestine

   

   

e.g.

 

 

 

• Brain Factors:

• Ventromedial Hypothalamus (VMH):

 

 

 

 

 

• Lateral Hypothalamus (LH):

 

 

 

• Neurotransmitter Seratonin:

 

 

 

e.g. when people take medications that block Seratonin receptors they tend to gain weight.

when people take medications that activate these receptors, they tend to lose weight

 

• Environmental Factors:

• Seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, and thinking about food can induce hunger.

 

 

 

• Obesity:

• Biopsychological Factors:

  • Heredity:

     

    • there is a genetic basis for thinness vs obesity

       

      e.g. twin studies

       

       

       

       

      e.g. adoption studies

       

       

       

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  • Set Point:

     

     

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  • Basal Metabolic Rate:

     

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• Behavioral Factors

  • Eating Cues: how people respond to external food cues.
    

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  • Stress:

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      e.g. pigs given a drug that blocks the effects of endorphins

The Arousal Motive:

e.g. when nervous or excited have higher levels of physiological activation (more adrenaline)

when sleepy have very low levels of physiological activation

What is the Optimal Arousal?

• Yerkes-Dodson Law:

 

 

• performance on a task is best for an intermediate level of arousal, and performance gets worse for extremely low and high levels of arousal

e.g.

 

 

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e.g. the optimal arousal level for doing a simple addition problem would be higher than for doing a complex geometry problem.

 

 

• optimal arousal is also higher for well-learned tasks than for novel tasks.

 

 

 

• the optimal arousal level for a given task will vary from person to person depending on their background.

 

 

e.g. an outstanding math student will have a higher optimal level of arousal for doing arithmetic than would a poor math student. (so an outstanding student may have to "psych up" before an exam and the poor student might have to relax)

 

 

 

 

• Optimal Arousal and Sports Performance:

• if have too much arousal

 

 

e.g. Basketball: if think about movements on how to shoot a free throw, then the normal automatic process will be disrupted.

 

 

• if have too little arousal

 

 

 

• Sonstroem & Bernardo (1982) Research on female collegiate basketball players

 

 

 

Sensory Deprivation -

 

 

e.g. studies of reports from Arctic explorers, prisoners in solitary confinement, and shipwrecked sailors.

 

 

• though people differ in the amount of arousal they prefer, all people require at least a minimal amount for our brains to function properly.

• if deprived of sensory stimulation

 

 

 

• due to brain's attempt to restore its optimal level of arousal.

 

• Bexton, Heron & Scott (1954) -- Participants were confined to a bed in a soundproof room (only hum of a fan). They wore translucent goggles to reduce visual sensations and cotton gloves and cardboard tubes over their arms (reduce touch sensations). They were permitted to leave the bed only to eat or to use the toilet. Their task was to stay in the room for as long as they could tolerate.

  Results:

 

 

 

• Was a tactic used in "brainwashing" by Chinese communists during the Korean War. Deprived prisoners of social and physical stimulation and it was so unpleasant, they cooperated with their captors just to receive more stimulation.

 

Flotation Restricted Environmental Stimulation: (a.k.a. sensory deprivation tank)

• participants float in a dark, soundproof tank filled with warm salt water. (for limited periods)

 

 

• used to reduce arousal without causing distress or cognitive impairment

 

 

Sensation Seeking -

 

e.g. Would you prefer to ride a roller coaster or lie on a beach?

e.g. Would you prefer to attend a lively party or have a quiet conversation?

 

 

 

 

• People with high sensation seeking prefer activities that increase their arousal levels while low sensation seekers prefer activities that decrease arousal.

   

  • high sensation seekers are more likely to participate in risky activities

   

   

  • McNamara & Ballard (1999) - found college students who scored higher in sensation seekend preferred more arousing music than those who scored lower in sensation seeking.

   

  • high sensation seekers are more likely to engage in dangerous habits

   

   

 

Note: these are all correlational designs and so we cannot infer causality. It is not necessarily the case that sensation seeking causes risky behaviors.