Conclusion

Throughout this semester, we have learnt a lot about motivation and emotion gaining a greater understanding about what influences our motivation and emotions and how we can influence them. Motivation research and theory helps us to understand why we do what we do and behave the way we do. Many theories have been formulated which suggest that it is biological drives for things such as hunger and sex which motivate us. Others suggest that psychological drives for autonomy competence and relatedness, or socialized drives for achievement affiliation and power motivate us. Each of these theories is in part correct with interplay of these different drives motivating us at different times.

Such theories and greater understanding of motivation help us to try and increase our own and others motivation. I found information on intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation really resonated with me when trying to increase my own motivation. If tasks can be seen as enjoyable and interesting then we will be intrinsically motivated to do them. Thus, as is also mentioned when discussing growth motivation, one should seek to engage in tasks that are intrinsically motivating, interesting to them and utilizing their unique sets of skills. Further, having an explanation about the meaning or importance of a task will also increase motivation. Finally I think breaking tasks down into achievable goals is also very motivating as the positive reinforcement gained from completing each goal motivates you to keep going on the task.

Overall this unit has helped me to have a greater understanding of motivation and apply it to many areas of my own life in which I may need more motivation. It has helped me to understand why at times it might seems like there is no motivation, and how I might go about trying to improve these situations.

Growth Motivation and Positive Psychology

Growth psychology and humanistic psychology emphasises that we all have a higher motivation towards personal growth and development. It looks at motivation in holistic way in that it considers that people as a whole are motivated to behave, not that parts of themselves motivate behaviour. The example which Reeve (2009) gives which states it is John Smith who desires food, not John Smith’s stomach, helped me to clarify this perspective.

The idea of self actualization is central to growth psychology.  I remember first hearing about self actualization in high school and since then have heard many different explanations about what it actually means.  This may be because self actualization actually means different things to different people because, as Reeve (2009) suggests, it is a process of realization of one’s talents capacities and potentials. It involves both becoming autonomous in regulating one’s own thoughts feelings and behaviours as well as being open to new experiences and to potentially anxiety provoking challenges.

In order to achieve self actualization Maslow suggested 6 behaviours which encourage self actualization. Firstly, make growth choices, that is to approach challenges rather than to avoid them or take the easy way out. Be honest rather than conform to social norms, conform to what you truly believe, enjoy and value.  Situationally position yourself for peak experiences, that is to set up conditions which foster your talents and interests and not to waste time on activities that you are not interested in or good at. Give up defensiveness be open to make mistakes or be in anxiety provoking situations and see them as opportunities to change. Let the self emerge instead of looking to others for guidance on how to live look to yourself and listen to your inner voice and aspirations. Be open to experience, experience things fully and without being self conscious, become absorbed in what you do. If one follows these guides as well as fostering rich relationships with others they can reach their full potential and become self actualised (Reeve, 2009). Although I think these guides are great advise and agree that they would most likely lead to self actualisation, I think they are quiet broad and simplistic. In real life applications, I think smaller behaviour change steps would be needed first, to begin to make the behaviour changes suggested my Maslow.

Maslow believed in a hierarchy of needs which once fulfilled, lead to the highest (and rarest) need of self actualization. Carl Rodgers, however, suggested that all needs have the collective purpose of fulfilling the ultimate need to actualize and reach ones full potential, thus from birth one has the tendency to strive towards actualization. Rodger’s also suggested that as one develops they begin to form a self-concept through interaction with others. If during childhood ones parents show unconditional positive regard, loving of the individual as they are without placing conditions of worth on them, then a positive self concept develops. Conditions of worth include implying that one is only worth ones love and affection if they behave in particular ways or follow particular rules and norms. Although it sounds like a nice idea to provide ones children with love and support no matter how they behave, in reality it may not be very realistic. Inevitably parents must enforce rules and regulations about how their children behaves and although I can understand the idea that one should not label a child as bad but their behaviour as bad, I think it would be difficult to find any people who experienced completely unconditional positive regards when growing up. In saying that, I still believe that conditions of worth, if excessive, would defiantly be damaging to one’s self concept and wellbeing. 

Rodgers also suggested that to be fully functioning and healthy one must have congruence between their actual self and their perceived self. I found the study in which the extent to which people’s adult temperaments was congruent to their parent rated childhood temperament related to their psychological wellbeing, was really interesting. Being true to yourself is thus very important to ones mental health so encouraging people to behave in ways that might be socially desirable but incongruent with their self will be damaging. I think this relates to the idea of validation seeking versus growth seeking which was discussed later in the material. People most often changed their behaviours or act in ways incongruent with their true self in order to gain social approval and validation from others. Whether it is to fit into the popular social group or to please ones parents, behaviour motivated by validation seeking is increases anxiety and fear of failure and is related to other mental health difficulties.

Similar to humanistic and growth psychology is positive psychology. Positive psychology focuses on building strengths and competencies to increase one’s self esteem based on achievement of skills. I defiantly agree that building skills and confidence is more important that solely concentrating on inflating self-esteem.

I found the discussion of the existential approach very interesting. Existential approaches emphasise the search for meaning in life and the idea that one must create their own meaning. This approach also emphasises an internal locus of control orientation and suggests that mental health problems come from looking towards external meanings, as there is no innate meaning to life but that each individual has to create a unique meaning  (Yalom, 1980).

Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Yalom, I., D. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. New York, USA: Yalom Family trust.

Unconsious Motivation

Psychoanalytic and psychodynamic theories of motivation suggest that unconscious forces and drives motivate behaviour, and that conflict exists between basic animalistic drives and socialised norms for behaviour. This conflict leads to anxiety and other psychological disorders if poorly managed. Freud suggested that we have 2 basic instincts; one is Eros which drives us towards life and nourishment needs such as hunger sex and affiliation needs. The other is Thanatos which is our instinct for destruction as well as withdrawal, relaxation and homeostasis with the ultimate state of homeostasis being death.  Freud suggest that these 2 drives help explain seemingly paradoxical behaviour such as suicide and self sabotaging as well as aggression, which do not serve life, as these two instincts are constantly in competition to motivate behaviour.

Although many of Freud’s ideas about unconscious motivations are questioned by a more modern and scientific age of psychology, it is undeniable that unconscious drives operate and influence behaviour. It was interesting to consider the idea that if we are guided by unconscious drives that we are not in control of our own behaviour and our own lives, a scary thought. However if we didn’t operate with unconscious or reflexive behaviour life would be much more difficult for us. There are some things that would be a waste of time and energy to bring into our conscious awareness and thus unconscious processes are vital.

Contemporary psychodynamics do not have a strictly deterministic view of these unconscious drives motivating behaviour. Instead they emphasise that if one can understand these unconscious drives they can change them and this can lead to a more positive wellbeing.

I certainly agree with the basic concept of object relations which suggest that unresolved issues from the past, and ones upbringing, effect current relationships and can motivate us to behave in maladaptive ways. Particularly in romantic relationships, I think its quit common for people to bring issues and maladaptive patterns of behaviour from their last relationships or relationships with their parents and family members into a new relationship.

I found it interesting to consider the fact that the ID seems to closely resemble the limbic structures of the brain that are more animalistic and emotion driven and emphasise rewards and punishment, pleasure and anxiety. While the ego resembles the neo-cortex in that it regulates these animalistic drives to be expressed in rational and socially acceptable ways. It’s fascinating that although much of Freud’s theory is considered unscientific or just plain incorrect, that this part of his theory may actually be partially correct with the structure of the brain alluding to his concepts of ID and Ego.

The idea of defence mechanisms is also an important part of psychoanalytic/dynamic theory. Defence mechanisms are put in place to protect one’s self from the anxiety from not being able to satisfy all the desires of the ID, as they may not be socially acceptable or rational. These defence mechanisms can be immature and maladaptive like denial or can be mature and productive like sublimation. Sublimation channels undesirable impulses into something productive such as creative energy. At times, I think everyone uses immature defence mechanisms such as denial and rationalisation. Although as a whole they may be maladaptive, I think there are times when these defence mechanisms are warranted and actually helpful for ones well being, at least for the short term. In the long term however being able to utilise more mature defence mechanism would be useful, however I don’t think it happens all too often in reality as the ease of using the less mature defence mechanisms makes them more appealing.

 Overall I find the concept of unconscious motivation really interesting and am pleased that as psychology becomes more sophisticated some of Freud’s concepts that were once considered to be impossible to test, may now be also to be tested scientifically.

 Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Personality, Motivation and Emotion

The 5 factor model of personality suggests that all the different traits which make up ones personality fall into 5 factors, which exist on a continuum from high to low so that each individual varies in the amount they express each of the traits. These traits include neurotism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness.

Of these factors both neurotism and extraversion relate closely to motivation and emotion, particularly ones affect. People who tend to be very unhappy are high on neurotism and low on extraversion while very happy people are high on extraversion and are emotionally stable. Because both of these traits have been found to be at least in part genetically determined (Keller, Coventry, Heath, & Martin, 2005) it make me wonder how much our affect may be pre-determined?

Indeed the idea of a happiness set point seems to suggest that life circumstances do not affect levels of happiness as much as one would think. Some of the economically poorest nations in the world are considered some of the happiest, while studies have shown that a year after a particularly aversive event (such as a car accident) happiness levels are roughly the same as someone a year after a particularly lucky or joyous event (such as winning the lottery) (Reeve, 2009). I found this idea really interesting and thought this is one case where having an slightly elevated perception of ability to control, in this case ones level of happiness, would definitely be good for well being as discussed in week 6.

One possible biological mechanism for this set point, Gray's BIS BAS system was also discussed. Gray’s theory suggests that those who are high on extraversion have a more sensitive behavioural approach system (BAS) while thought high on neurotism have a more sensitive behavioural inhibition system (BIS). This means that extraverts are more sensitive to rewards and experience more pleasure in response to rewards or happy events than those low on extraversion. They are thus more motivated to approach potentially rewarding experiences than those with low extraversion.

Those high on neurotsim however are more sensitive to punishment and are sensitive to negative emotionality with negative events being perceived as more negative to those high on neurotism. This means that neurotics are more motivated to avoid potentially harmful or punishing events and thus are less likely to take risks or approach particularly challenging tasks for fear of failure.

participants in sensory deprivation experiment

Arousal levels also effect motivation with ideal amounts of arousal relating to motivation and performance while too much (stress) or too little (boredom) lead to poor motivation.  Experimental evidence for the effects of low arousal on many aspects of one’s behaviour and function came from the 50s and 60s sensory deprivation studies. In these studies people were to stay in a room without any sensory input at all, i.e. wearing blind folds and ear muffs etc, for as long as they could last. Most people only lasted 2-3 days in these conditions and suffered from hallucinations and cognitive deficits as a result of the sensory deprivation.  Although these experiments were considered too cruel to recreate, in 2008 these studies were recreated for a television show on BBC in the UK. I remember watching this show (as it screened on SBS in Australia) a couple of years ago and finding it fascinating. This replication was shorter in duration (just 48 hours) but found very similar results to those of the 50s. Participants became highly distressed, began hallucinating and suffered many cognitive deficits. It is thought that because the brain is used to functioning in a highly stimulating environment, when deprived from stimulation it creates its own forms of stimulation (such as hallucinations) and decreases in functioning. More information and highlights from the show can be found on the BBC website and a news article on the show at timesonline

What is particularly interesting from these studies is that some people cope much better than others under sensory deprivation. Theory suggests that some people have higher baseline arousal than others and thus may last longer than those with low baseline arousal. This lead to research into sensation seekers, those with low levels of baseline arousal. Sensation seeking is a trait related to extraversion, with extraverts having lower arousal levels and seeking arousal from the external and social environment while introverts have a higher baseline arousal and thus avoid overly arousing environmental situations. This need to increase arousal means sensation seekers will be more likely to take physical, social and financial risks and be motivated by novel and intense situations.

In the tutorial the class took the sensation seeking scale which contains four factors. I was surprised to score quit high on 2 of the factors (disinhibtion and the experience seeking factors ) because I do not consider myself to be a sensation seeker. For me personally I think these 2 factors represent more of a fun loving rather than risk taking aspect of my personality. Experiencing seeking in particular is very important to me as I love to travel and experience other cultures, even though this does put me outside my comfort zone at times.  I was not surprised to score low on the thrill and adventure seeking as well as susceptibility to boredom. I have always had a great ability to keep myself amused in situations which others find boring and I actually don’t think I’d fair too badly in the sensory deprivation studies personally.

References

Keller, M. C., Coventry, W. L., Heath, A. C., & Martin, N. G. (2004). Widespread evidence for non-additive genetic variation in Cloninger’s and Eysenck’s personality dimensions using a twin plus sibling design. Behavior Genetics, 35, 707-721.

Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Aspects of Emotions

The biological James Lang Theory originally suggested that each emotion should correspond to a unique physiological reaction, for example a raised heart rate, pupil dilation, and increased sweating might indicate fear. However it was found that this was not the case as the physiological flight fight response which induces either fear or aggressive emotions both arise from the same increase in sympathetic nervous activity rather than unique physiological responses inducing either fear or aggression. It was also found that in some cases emotions can be experienced before the physiological reactions to this emotion kick in. It was then proposed that some emotions that are especially important for survival are physiologically based, while for other emotions the autonomic nervous system reactions add to emotional experience.

Another biological theory is Gray’s BIS/BAS/FFS theory which suggests that there are specific neural circuits for anxiety and avoidance emotions (BIS), rewarding approach based emotions like joy (BAS) and fear or aggressive emotions (FFS). Gray’s theory has been extensively tested throughout the research with some support being found for separate brain structures being involved in anxiety related to behavioural inhibition and joy related to behavioural approach using EEG readings (Amodio, Master, Yee, & Taylor, 2008).

Other theories suggest that it is the rate of neural firing that determines which emotion is experienced. For example a medium constant rate of firing will produce distress but if it’s a high and constant rate of firing this will produce anger. Izard supports this view stating 10 emotions which are considered to have unique neural activity associated with them. He also states these 10 emotions cause unique experiences/feelings, are associated with unique facial expressions and generate distinctive motivational properties. These include two positive emotions, interest and joy, one neutral emotion, surprise and 7 negative emotions, fear, anger, disgust, distress, contempt, shame and guilt. Izard suggests that each of these emotions enables one to deal effectively with life tasks and problems in an adaptive manner.

Finally the facial feedback hypothesis suggests that emotions can be caused by facial expression, for example smiling will cause happiness, due to the muscle movements sending signals to the brain to induce happiness. I found this a really interesting idea and found one study in support for it by Soussignan (2002). This study had participants hold a pen in their mouth in such a way to facilitate a regular smile, a duchenne smile and to inhibit smiling. The duchenne smile, a wide smile which activates more muscles than regular smiling, was found to significantly increase self reported positive experience. This study lends support for the facial feedback hypothesis however other studies demonstrate that people with full facial paralysis (Möbius syndrome) still experience emotions (Miller 2007 as cited in Kalat, 2009) , which seems to contradict this theory. Reeve (2009) suggests that although facial expressions probably don’t cause emotion they certainly can add to the experience of emotions.

Young Girl with Mobius Syndrome

The cognitive view of emotion focuses on the appraisals that one makes about an event and how these appraisals cause the emotional experience. Cognitive theory suggests that because different people experience the same situation with different emotional reactions, it must be their appraisal of the situation which causes their emotional response. Thus if one can control their thoughts and cognitions they can control their emotions, as is demonstrated cognitive behavioural theory, which has great support in treating many psychological disorders.

Arnold’s cognitive theory suggests that we simply appraise things as either positive or negative while Lazarus suggests an event must first be appraised as relevant to attend to and then one must assess if they have the coping ability to deal with the event. Other theories emphasize expectancy, responsibility, and legitimacy appraisals of events as influencing emotional reactions with different patterns of appraisal causing different emotions.

These theories also take into account the idea that as humans we have a need to explain why events occur and make attributions which can be external to self or internal to self. For example if one sees their failure as internal to themselves this can cause feelings of sadness.

The cognitive theory has had much success at explaining emotion, however emotions cannot be fully explained by cognitive appraisals. Thus interactions between ones cognitions, biology as well as social and cultural influences are needed to fully explain the experience of emotion (Reeve, 2009).

Social influences on emotions include ones socialised ways of dealing with emotions. Social events almost always include discussion of emotional events and include feedback from others on how they would respond and what is the appropriate emotional reaction to these events. Thus people are influenced by how their friends and family deal with emotions and modify their reactions to be in line with social norms.

I found Reeve’s (2009) discussion on the way emotions are experienced in different cultures very interesting. The concept that Chinese show more emotional restraint than people from the US was not surprising but it was interesting to consider how different cultures may experience emotions differently. One study found that people from Japanese collective culture tendencies to experience socially engaging emotions related to connectedness more strongly than those of an individualist US culture. While those from the US experienced socially disengaging emotions related to personal achievement more strongly than Japanese participants. Thus although across cultures the definitions or explanations for emotions may be the same, the actual experience of that emotion, for example the intensity of the emotion, may differ cross-culturally (Kitayama, Karasawa, & Mesquita, 2006).

References

Amodio, D. M., Master, S. L., Yee, C. M., Taylor, S. E., (2008). Neurocognitive components of the behavioral inhibition and activation systems: Implications for theories of self-regulation. Psychophysiology, 45, 11–19. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2007.00609.x

Kalat, J. W. (2009) Biological Psychology (10th ed.) Belmont USA: Wadswoth.

Kitayama, S., Mesquita, B., & Karasawa, M. (2006). Cultural affordances and emotional experience: Socially engaging and disengaging emotions in japan and the united states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(5), 890-903. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.91.5.890

Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Soussignan, R. (2002). Duchenne smile, emotional experience, and autonomic reactivity: A test of the facial feedback hypothesis. Emotion, 2(1), 52-74. doi:10.1037/1528-3542.2.1.52

The Nature of Emotion

What is emotion? I find it interesting that a word so often used and completely understood is so hard to define. Reeve (2009) suggest that emotions have four components, bodily arousal, social expressiveness, sense of purpose and feelings, which interact to form ones reaction to eliciting events. Because this reaction is so subjective for each individual it makes emotion hard to define.

The idea that there is no way of knowing for certain that one’s experiences of a particular emotion is the same as other peoples experience of that emotion, is something I have considered many times previously. It may be that what I perceive as anger or happiness, for example, may be experienced differently by another person, making it difficult to create objective measures of one’s emotions.

Although I think physiological reactions are good objective measures of emotions, these measures can only be first associated with emotion by self report methods of emotion or by inducing emotions which again is limited by the subjective nature of emotional experiences.

It was interesting to think about the adaptive purpose of emotions and the idea that emotions cannot be bad due to their adaptive value of helping indicate to us if a behaviour is adaptive and rewarding, inducing positive emotions, or if a behaviour is maladaptive and thus induces negative emotions as a punishment so that this behaviour is less likely to be performed again. It was also interesting that highly adaptive emotions are more easily triggered suggestive of the genetic component of emotional sensitivity in some individuals.

What causes emotions? The adaptive value of emotions is clear and thus it would make sense that emotions are caused by physiological responses to events in sub-cortical areas, that we then process and label as specific emotions in the cerebral cortex. This idea is supported in that infants and even animals experience emotions when they do not have developed cognitive skills to be making complex appraisals of situations and events that might cause emotion. However, as one develops and more complex cognitive appraisals are possible it may be that our experience of emotions becomes more complex. In support of the cognitive appraisal theories the same physiological experience can be attributed to different emotions by different people and the same event can cause different emotions from different people. Most research suggests then that it is an interaction of cognitive appraisals and biological mechanisms which cause emotion. I found Buck’s two system theory particularly appealing. It suggests that an innate and involuntary system activates the limbic system response to some emotional stimuli producing more innate emotions such as fear and aggression, while other times more complex emotions such as gratitude or hope stem from a more cognitive, social and experienced based system in the cortex.

How many emotions are there? Reeve (2009) suggest that there may be an infinite number of emotions but that there are some which are core or fundamental. Researchers disagree about the specific number of core emotions but Reeve suggest most are similar to these 6 which are Fear, Anger, Disgust, Sadness, Joy and Interest. I found it really interesting that in all the models discussed, more negative emotions than positive emotions were considered core. This may relate to the adaptive value of emotions with it being more important to stop harmful behaviours from causing injury or even death, relying on negative emotions, than to appreciate adaptive behaviours, relying on positive emotion.

What good are emotions? I found it really interesting to consider the idea that emotions may be a consequence of adaption passed down for their adaptive value for our ancestors but may now be redundant or even maladaptive in today’s society. For example the flight or fight response to threat which may have helped our ancestors from the threat of attack be predators may cause us to be unnecessarily aggressive in situations that do not require such an intense emotional response.

The social function of emotions becomes very obvious when you consider interactions with friends most often involve expressing your emotional reactions to events and these expressions make one feel closer or more intimately involved with others. Personally the relationships I have that do not involve sharing of emotional experiences are the ones I see as more superficial and less intimate relationships.

Finally this week we discussed the difference between emotions and mood. Reeve (2009) suggest that moods differ from emotions in their antecedent, action specificity and time course. Thus moods are usually not caused by a specific event like an emotion generally is, do not direct behaviour in a specific manner and last for a longer period time than emotions do.


Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Personal Control Beliefs and The Self

This week we discussed how the self and how personal control beliefs influence motivation. Firstly expectancy of our own capabilities and abilities to perform a task and our expectancy that performing this task will lead to a positive result, both influence one’s motivation. As such one can believe they have the skills to complete a task but if completing the task doesn’t lead to desired outcomes then they will lose motivation to perform.

Self efficacy refers to the cognitively held belief that one can cope with a situation given their set of skills. One can acquire a high self efficacy from referring to their history of performance with repeated success in a domain influencing high self efficacy as well as being influenced by other people’s success in the domain and through acts of encouragement from others.  Those with high self efficacy are then more motivated in that domain and thus are more likely to persevere when the task becomes difficult. High self efficacy also positively influences creativity as well as increasing positive emotions.

Related to self efficacy is mastery beliefs; the perceived control one has over attaining desirable outcomes and presenting aversive ones. If one perceives that their actions will influence outcomes they will be more motivated to act and will be more likely to see negative feedback or failures as information which they can use to improve their performance rather than internalise the failure and becoming helpless.

Learned helplessness refers to the idea that if one persistently experiences situations where their behaviour does not effect outcomes they begin to believe they have no control over what happens to them, thus they learn to be helpless. This causes one to have very low motivation to act and can lead to depression. It is interesting to consider that this is an adaptive response that stops one from wasting energy on tasks or situations that are indeed out of their control however they perceived lack of control is then generalised to all aspects of one’s life.

Learned Helplessness was originally studied using chambers like this one

I found it very interesting that learned helplessness research lead to the finding that those with depression are more likely to realistically assess when they actually do have no control. Thus, it appears to be good for one’s wellbeing to perceive one has control in situations where they do not, or perceive they are more capable at coping that they actually are.  

Perceptions of one’s self also influence motivation. I found Reeve’s (2009) discussion on self esteem very interesting as it does seem intuitive that raising self esteem would positively influence motivation and achievement however the research suggest this is not the case. Rather that increases in achievement increase self esteem not the other way round. This doesn’t detract from the positive influence self esteem can have on wellbeing but questions the assumption that self esteem motivates one to perform well.

The different aspects of the self can greatly influence one motivation. We are motivated to act in ways that are consistent with ones cognitive schema of one’s self and motivated to consistently improve ourselves by differences between out ideal self and our actual self. This motivates us to approach tasks that we believe will confirm our self schema’s but also to avoid tasks that might disconfirm them. Thus this relates to self efficacy as described earlier because if we have a strong belief in our abilities we are more likely to try and achieve things consistent with our self schema than to be motivated to avoid failing at such tasks.

Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.