Notes

Motivation:

Motivation is what drives people to perform certain actions toward achieving certain goals. Different people have different motivations. Motivation leads to the desire to act toward satisfying specific wants and needs or accomplishing certain goals or objectives. Some motivations just involve minimizing physical discomfort. Other motivations may involve achieving emotional or psychological satisfaction.

Need and wants: A person’s need is a necessity or a requirement for survival, such as food, water, and shelter. A want is not the same as a necessity. A person can do without satisfying a want, but feels the urge to satisfy the same nonetheless. For instance, the desire to buy a car or a big house is not a need but a want. A goal is what a person works toward to satisfy a need or want. For example, if you need some food, your goal is to get something to eat. In other words, getting something to eat is your goal to satisfy your need—hunger. You may be similarly motivated to satisfy your wants. If you want a new music player, you’ll start saving your money every week until you have enough to buy the music player. Here, your goal is to save up enough money to buy the music player, driven by your want. So you can see that wants and needs influence goals.
Drives: A drive is an action or behavior that’s aimed at achieving a particular goal to satisfy a need. Drives are internal and come from your motivation to satisfy your needs.

According to the drive theory, all humans (and other organisms) are born with certain needs. A person feels a deficiency or an imbalance when a need goes unsatisfied. A drive works to reduce or remove this imbalance and return the person to a state of balance (also known as homeostasis). A drive acts as a motivator, which enables people to perform certain actions to satisfy needs.

When humans are unable to satisfy their needs, it leads to tension. In 1943, the American psychologist Clark Hull developed the drive reduction theory. According to this theory, people are motivated to take an action in order to reduce such tension. For example, if you are very thirsty (need), you’ll drink water (action) to reduce the tension caused by your thirst.
When people’s needs are satisfied, they achieve a state of equilibrium and are not driven to action. However, when people have a need, whether physiological (such as hunger) or psychological (such as the need for love), they are driven to satisfy these needs.

The need for survival motivates some drives such as hunger and thirst. These are examples of survival needs or physical motivators. These needs can take a toll on an individual if they remain unfulfilled for a prolonged period, such as malnutrition and dehydration.

Drives not related to survival, which are also called psychological motivators, stem from specific needs. Some non-survival drives may include curiosity, where the drive-reducing behavior would be to work toward eliminating the curiosity. For example, children are typically curious about the things in their environment, which is why their drive-reducing behavior compels them to touch, move, or even break objects in their vicinity. These actions help children explore and understand various objects that they are encountering for the first time. Think about when you watch the trailer for a movie and are driven to go watch it—the trailer has managed to rouse your curiosity enough to want to satisfy it by watching that movie.

The need for achievement is also a non-survival need, where the drive-reduction behavior is to achieve a set goal. For example, a student driven to achieve good grades will study hard. A musician who wants to excel at playing an instrument will be driven to practice.
Intrinsic motivation is when the motivation comes from within a person. It’s usually driven by the need to achieve a certain goal for personal satisfaction or because achieving that goal will make the person happy. For example, a tennis player may practice for several hours a day, not because his coach tells him to, but for his own love of the sport and his desire to play better.

Extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, involves a person being driven by external factors to achieve a goal. This behavior is driven by a reward or punishment. For example, the need to make some extra pocket money, which is an extrinsic factor or a reward, may drive you to do chores around the house. Another example is that you may not pass notes during class because you are driven by the need to avoid being punished.

Students who have an intrinsic desire to do well academically, and are not motivated by external factors such as the desire for a reward or to avoid punishment, typically do better academically than those who are extrinsically motivated. That’s why educators and psychologists are continuously working on how to motivate students intrinsically. How about you? Think about whether you’re intrinsically or extrinsically motivated to get good grades.
According to the incentive theory of motivation, a person is motivated to do a certain action and then repeat it by receiving an incentive (or a reward) after performing the action. The incentive is to try to ensure that the individual will repeat the action hoping for a reward again. This process builds a positive association between the action and the reward. An example of an incentive is the bonus (rightly also called an incentive) that employees receive for their efficiency or productivity at work. Such a reward drives the employees to continue to be efficient and productive at work. An incentive need not always be an object. It could also be a positive stimulus. For instance, a basketball player may practice shooting hoops for hours to improve her accuracy and chances of scoring just for the reward of self-achievement.

The incentive is not necessarily positive. Sometimes, negative incentives are used to deter people from repeating an undesirable action using a negative incentive. For example, being pulled over by a policeman and getting a ticket for speeding will help to deter people from repeating the offense of driving over the speed limit, which can be dangerous for both them and others.
Abraham Maslow, an American psychologist, believed that different types of needs motivate human actions. Maslow discussed his hierarchy of needs in his paper A Theory of Human Motivation published in the 1940s. According to his hierarchy, people fulfill their basic needs and then move on to meet more refined needs. His hierarchy of needs is represented as a pyramid. According to his theory, people move up the pyramid of needs.

At the base of the pyramid are physiological needs, such as food, water, sleep, and so on. The next level is safety needs, such as employment, family, health, etc. The third level of needs includes the need for love and belonging, such as forging friendships, having a family, and so on. As you move higher, there is esteem needs, such as confidence, achievement, respect, etc. The top of the pyramid consists of self-actualization needs that include creativity, morality, and so on. However, according to the theory, sometimes a person may not be able to move up the pyramid due to certain setbacks like the loss of a job or the death of a family member, which can result in fluctuations between the levels of the pyramid or getting stuck at the lowest levels.
Maslow’s five-level pyramid model was expanded during the 1960s and 1970s. Initially, two more levels of needs were added to the pyramid after the esteem needs. These were cognitive and aesthetic. Cognitive needs include aspects such as knowledge, meaning, etc. Aesthetic needs encompass the need for appreciation, search for beauty, balance, and so on. Later, another level of needs, was added at the top of the pyramid, after self-actualization. This was known as transcendence needs. According to Maslow, transcendence needs refer to a self-actualized person’s desire to help others to achieve self-actualization as well.

Critics of Maslow’s theory do not agree that humans move progressively from one level of needs to the next. Studies and research have proven that people do not necessarily have to meet lower-level needs to meet higher-level needs. The psychologist Edward Diener conducted a study that found people do give the highest priority to meeting their most basic needs when they are unfulfilled, such as hunger. However, these needs do not have to be met in the order that Maslow proposed. For example, a starving person (where the physiological need of hunger has not been met) can still meet belonging needs (such as loving another person, enjoying the company of friends and family, etc.).
The psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven F. Maier discovered the concept of learned helplessness while observing how animals behaved in certain situations. When subjected to a negative stimulus, the animals would try to escape. However, if escape was impossible, the animals would eventually stop attempting to escape despite the negative stimulus.

Further research revealed that learned helplessness is a mental state. This state is also seen in humans. If a person develops a global and stable attribute of “the problem is external and out of my control” then it leads to helplessness in that person. On the other hand, if the person has a global and stable attribute of “the problem is internal and in my control,” then learned helplessness does not happen. Here, the attribution theory comes into play.

Suppose you keep failing a test, although you’ve studied for it. You might conclude that the outcome of the test is out of your control no matter what (externally global and stable). This causes learned helplessness. On the other hand, if you decide you’re approaching the test wrong and try harder knowing you’ll do better, you don’t develop learned helplessness. This is because you see the problem as internally global and stable.
According to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the needs from the most basic to higher-order are:

self-actualization needs
esteem needs
safety needs
physiological needs
belonging needs
People experience different emotions every day. An emotion is a feeling. However, it’s one of the most difficult and abstract concepts to explain. Let’s give it a try anyway. Emotions can be defined as a complex feeling or response that can result in physical arousal, outward gestures (facial expressions and body language), and psychological changes that influence thoughts and behaviors.

The psychologist William McDougall believed that emotions are a result of biological instincts. Look at the table for McDougall’s seven basic instincts associated with corresponding emotions.
The psychologist Robert Plutchik developed a multidimensional model of emotions. This model consists of eight basic bipolar emotions. This includes four emotions and their polar opposites. These emotions are joy, trust, fear, and surprise. Their respective opposites are sadness, disgust, anger, and anticipation. Plutchik created a wheel of emotions to represent these eight emotions. The wheel also represented eight other advanced emotions, which are a combination of two basic emotions. In the table below, the first feeling is the opposite of the last, the second of the second last, and so on.
Other than developing the wheel of emotions, Robert Plutchik also worked with the psychologist Henry Kellerman to develop the Emotions Profile Index (EPI). This index consists of mapping a number of traits, such as affection and caution, to one or more of the eight basic emotions. The EPI is a forced-choice test. In this test, subjects must pick traits from a given set and their scores are based on these eight emotions.

The American psychologist Carroll Izard, who contributed to the differential emotions theory, identified ten universally recognizable primary emotions. He believed these emotions develop between the second and seventh month of life. These emotions include fear, anger, shame, contempt, disgust, guilt, distress, interest, surprise, and joy. In Izard’s opinion, these were the most basic emotions. However, they could produce other emotions when more than one emotion was felt. He believed that each emotion has its own neural network in the brain and a particular corresponding expression (usually a facial expression).
Across the world, people communicate nonverbally in various ways. For example, through gestures and facial expressions. Certain gestures may be considered friendly in one part of the world. However, the same gestures may be considered rude in another part of the world. This is, however, not true for basic emotions. Studies show that the six basic emotions are universally recognized across cultures and countries. These emotions are anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise. A smile is a smile and represents joy, whether in a city in America or a village in Africa.

Now let’s look at some theories that have been developed to explain what causes emotions in people.

The James-Lange theory was proposed by psychologists William James and Carl Lange. This theory suggests that emotions are not felt just by perceiving something. They are felt by the physiological reaction or the bodily response to the event or situation. According to this theory, in order to feel a certain emotion, a person has to first feel the bodily response. For example, if you see an armed burglar in your home, your palms will likely become sweaty and your heart will beat faster. These bodily reactions lead your brain to understand that you are experiencing fear.
he physiologists Walter Cannon and Philip Bard developed the Cannon-Bard theory. This theory questions the James-Lange theory. They discovered that a person can experience an emotion and the bodily response to that emotion at the same time. Let's take the same example, of seeing a burglar in your home. Cannon and Bard found that emotions occur when the thalamus sends a message to the cerebral cortex (which results in showing the emotion of fear) at the same time as it sends information from the surrounding (burglar in the house) to the autonomic nervous system (which results in physiological changes, such as sweaty palms).

The Lazarus theory was developed by the psychologist Richard Lazarus. According to this theory, an event leads to a thought, which leads to an emotional arousal. For example, if you see an armed person in your home, you realize that there is a burglar in the house. This makes your palms sweat and, at the same time, you feel fear. The psychologists Paul Ekman, Robert Levenson, and Wallace Friesen developed the facial feedback hypothesis. According to this theory, facial movement can affect the emotions that a person feels. For example, when forced to smile at a reunion, a person will enjoy the reunion. The change in facial muscles provides a cue to the brain. This lays the foundation for emotions.
The Schachter-Singer theory was developed by the psychologists Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer. It was also called the two-factor theory. This theory states that an event causes a physiological response. In other words, you identify the reason for the response, and then experience the emotion. Let’s examine the event of seeing a burglar in the house again. This event causes a physiological response, such as sweaty palms and a racing heart. When you notice this response, you realize that it has come from seeing the burglar in your home. You then you experience the emotion of fear.

The psychologists Richard Solomon and John Corbit proposed the opponent-process theory of emotion. According to this theory, emotions appear as pairs of opposites, such as pain-pleasure, fear-relief, depression-elation, etc. This theory also states that the initial emotional reaction to a stimulus is followed by its opposite emotional reaction. When a person experiences one emotion, the opposite emotion is suppressed at the time. However, after the initial emotion subsides, the person naturally experiences the opposing emotion, and both of the emotions are balanced out. For example, while bungee jumping, a person attempting it for the first time would typically feel extreme fear before the jump. However, after the activity is over, the person would feel great relief, which is the polar opposite emotion of fear.
The opposite of surprise is anticipation. The opposite of joy is sadness. Anger is the opposite feeling of fear. Disgust is the opposite feeling of anger.