Motivation and Emotion
Motivation and Emotion influence seeking excitement in stimulus motives like skydiving and horror movies to pursuing personal growth. Psychological perspectives, like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, provide insight into how different motivations interact.
By the end of this chapter, you should know about:
- Stimulus Motives—Skydiving, Horror Movies, and the Fun Zone
- Learned Motives—The Pursuit of Excellence
- Motives in Perspective—A View from the Pyramid
- Inside an Emotion — How Do You Feel?
Let’s take a closer look at them
Test Your Knowledge
At the end of this section, take a fast and free pop quiz to see how much you know about Motivation and Emotion.
Stimulus Motives—Skydiving, Horror Movies, and the Fun Zone
Pleasant emotions such as curiosity and the need to explore help individuals and animals engage with their environment. These types of incentives are closely related to the number of incentives that have the greatest impact on motivation and performance.
Motivation and Emotion: Stimulus Motives and Survival
Motives include information needs, exploration, manipulation, and sensory input. They go beyond entertainment and are necessary for survival, as they encourage individuals to identify food, danger, and shelter.
Infancy and early exploration: Motivation begins early in life. By the time children can walk, they are more involved in their surroundings and exploring.
Animal Behavior: Animals like monkeys display motivated motives, solve puzzles or manipulate objects simply for the pleasure and stimulation it provides.
Arousal Theory: Maintaining Optimal Levels
Arousal theory suggests that people try to maintain an optimal level of motivation. This theory assumes discomfort when the stimulus is too low (boredom) or too high (anxiety or fear).
What is Arousal?
Arousal refers to physiological and neural activity, from very low levels (sleep) to very high levels (panic). Most people find a balance of activities such as play, sleep, and socializing that stimulates them in a healthy and comfortable way.
Sensation Seeking: Preferences for High or Low Stimulation
Individuals differ in their stimulus preferences, which can be understood through the concept of sensation seeking.
High Sensation Seekers: refer strenuous activities such as skydiving, bungee jumping, or cage diving with dogs. They tend to be adventurous, independent and fun-loving but can engage in risky behaviors such as substance abuse or unprotected sex.
Low Sensation Seekers: prefer quiet activities, enjoy a structured environment, are nurturing and highly social.
Whether a person is high or low in sensation seeking is related to the body’s response to new, strong stimuli.
Motivation and Emotion: Levels of Arousal and Performance
Performance is best at moderate stimulation levels, which gives an inverted U curve:
Low Arousal: Makes you feel aroused or sleepy, and reduces productivity.
Moderate motivation energizes and focuses the individual, optimizing performance.
High Arousal: Causes fear or disorganization, reduces productivity.
Task intensity and motivation: The ideal level of motivation depends on the intensity of the task.
Simple tasks, such as jogging, benefit from high levels of enjoyment.
Complex tasks such as golf or problem solving do not need much stimulation for peak performance.
This relationship is known as the Yerkes-Dodson law.
Motivation and Emotion: Coping with Test Anxiety
Excessive arousal during an exam can lead to a combination of exam anxiety, physiological reactions (sweating, heart palpitations) and anxiety. This anxiety distracts students and reduces their performance.
Strategies to Manage Test Anxiety
Preparation: Study early and thoroughly and overprepare. Students who are prepared are less anxious and more productive.
Relax: Learn ways to relax and calm down. Emotional support from teachers or peers can also help.
Practice yourself: Mentally practice problems that may arise during the test (e.g. going free) and plan a calm and focused response.
Reframe ideas: Replace disruptive ideas with logical synthesis. For example:
Negative thinking “I will fail, everyone will think I am stupid”.
Reasonable response: “If I clean up and stay calm, I might pass. Even if I don’t, I can improve next time.”
Building confidence: Practice and preparation can boost confidence, reducing anxiety and improving test performance. With effort, most students can overcome test anxiety and do their best.
Learned Motives—The Pursuit of Excellence
Motivation often extends beyond biological motivation and innate curiosity and includes learned motivation, in which these motivations are shaped by personal experiences, cultural norms, and social expectations play an important role the pursuit of success, coping with challenges, or immersing oneself in extreme experiences.
Motivation and Emotion: Opponent-Process Theory
Psychologist Richard L. Solomon’s adversarial-process theory provides insight into why people engage in initially unpleasant activities such as drug use or extreme sports
Emotional Reactions: When a stimulus evokes a strong emotion (e.g., fear, excitement), the opposite emotional response occurs when the stimulus is discontinued.
Examples:
Relief occurs when the pain is over.
Desire or relief follows a happy ending.
Motivation and Emotion: Habituation and Repetition
Repeated exposure facilitates initial emotional responses (e.g., fear or pain), while reinforcing later affects (e.g., relief or happiness).
Example: A novice skydiver experiences a scare on his first jump, followed by a brief recovery. Over time, the fear subsides, and the post-jump boom becomes a permanent “run.”
This theory helps explain why individuals engage in potentially painful or dangerous activities such as skydiving, rock climbing, or horror movies because there is an initial cost is less and the results are more practical and the enjoyment is effective.
Motivation and Emotion: Social Motives
Social motivation comes from cultural and interpersonal experiences. It includes achievement, ability, skill, and status goals. These motivations influence individual aspirations, careers, and social relationships.
Need for Achievement (nAch)
The need for achievement reflects a desire to meet internal standards of excellence.
Characteristics of High Achievers: Strive for excellence in any context where they are evaluated (e.g., academics, art, sports). Enjoy challenges and testing their abilities. Often driven by intrinsic goals, such as personal mastery, rather than external rewards like wealth.
Achievement vs. Power: Unlike those motivated by power, high achievers may excel without seeking dominance or visibility.
Motivation and Emotion: Need for Power
The need for power involves a desire to influence, control, or have an impact on others.
Traits of Power Seekers:
Seek visible markers of importance, such as luxury possessions or prestigious titles.
May prioritize wealth and control over relationships or personal well-being.
Excessive focus on power and financial success often correlates with unhappiness.
Motivation and Emotion: The Role of Nurture in Achievement
Psychologist Benjamin Bloom’s research emphasizes the importance of early exposure, encouragement, and responsiveness in fostering higher levels of achievement.
Beginning: Parents introduce children to activities that are “just for fun,” such as music, sports, or science.
Skill development: As children show interest and growth, parents provide specialized training and structured opportunities.
Dedication: Over time, children begin to live for their chosen activity, putting in hours each day to study.
The 10-year rule: High-level music, sports, and performing arts require at least ten years of intensive study and professional guidance.
Talent vs. Hard Work: hard work: While natural forces play a role, studies show that commitment, practice, and support are crucial in achieving success.
Motives in Perspective—A View from the Pyramid
Abraham Maslow proposed a hierarchy of human needs, which organizes purposes based on importance. Some needs are more important than others, and these lower level needs must be satisfied before higher level needs can be pursued Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is often represented as a pyramid, with basic survival needs at the base and self-realization above.
Motivation and Emotion: The Levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy
Maslow’s pyramid consists of five levels, categorized into basic needs and growth needs. The lower four levels are considered basic needs, while the top level is categorized as a growth need.
Motivation and Emotion: Physiological Needs
Basic human needs for survival, such as food, water, heat and rest, are placed at the bottom of the pyramid. These needs must be satisfied first, and they are considered dominant, that is, they control human behavior until they are satisfied. For example, when you’re hungry, it’s hard to focus on anything else.
Motivation and Emotion: Safety and Security Needs
Once physiological needs are met, individuals seek safety and security. This includes the need for stability, freedom from fear, and protection from danger. Safety can involve both physical security (such as protection from harm) and emotional security (such as financial stability or a safe home environment).
Motivation and Emotion: Love and Belonging Needs
At this point, people want emotional connections like friendship, intimacy, and family. Love and a sense of belonging are essential to psychological well-being. They inspire people to connect with others, to seek love and companionship.
Motivation and Emotion: Esteem Needs
Respect needs are associated with a desire for acceptance, respect, and a sense of competence. These needs are divided into two categories: external esteem (such as social recognition, status, and respect from others) and internal esteem (such as self-respect and confidence). When these needs are unmet, individuals may feel inferior or inadequate.
Self-Actualization Needs
At the top of the pyramid, self-actualization refers to the drive to realize one’s full potential and pursue personal growth. Unlike the deficiency needs below, self-actualization is considered a growth need, meaning it is not driven by a lack but by a desire for fulfillment and development. Maslow viewed self-actualization as the realization of personal potential, creativity, and self-expression.
Meta-Needs and the Pursuit of Personal Growth
Maslow described self-actualization as a manifestation of meta-needs, which are higher order needs that reflect the pursuit of personal growth. Meta-needs include such qualities as integrity, perfection, justice, beauty, uniqueness, and truth. These are not basic survival needs but are very important for personal growth and satisfaction.
When these meta-needs remain unmet, Maslow suggested that individuals may experience “decay symptoms,” where they feel hopeless, apathetic, or withdrawn This is emphasized that simply having basic needs like food and security is not enough for a full life. Human motivation extends beyond existential life to personal control, and the satisfaction of meta-needs is an integral part of this process.
The Role of Society and Achievement
While some people may focus primarily on satisfying basic needs, self-fulfillment and meta-needs tend to emerge when people feel the basis of physical safety needs has been adequately met Research shows that people who in contemporary society tend to focus on respect, love, and protection is limited in the pursuit of lofty goals such as worthy self-knowledge
For example, college students often focus on money, social identity, or their own physical appearance, which can reduce their sense of well-being and purpose. People who are motivated by the pursuit of wealth or social status may score lower in areas such as self-awareness, strength, and well-being. Thus, a life focused only on primary or external goals tends to yield more satisfaction compared to a life aimed at personal growth.
Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation
Intrinsic motivation refers to doing something for the sheer pleasure or personal growth it brings, without expecting external rewards. This type of motivation is driven by internal factors like curiosity, learning, or the joy of an activity. Extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, is influenced by external rewards such as money, grades, or social approval.
Research shows that intrinsic motivation tends to lead to greater satisfaction, creativity, and personal fulfillment. People who are intrinsically motivated are more likely to invest time and energy in activities and achieve higher quality results, as they engage deeply with the task. Intrinsic motivation encourages creativity, while extrinsic motivation is often linked to external pressures, such as deadlines or performance evaluations.
The Impact of Extrinsic Rewards
While external rewards can encourage motivation, they can sometimes backfire, especially when they overshadow intrinsic interest. Studies show that offering excessive rewards can reduce intrinsic motivation by turning enjoyable activities into tasks that must be performed for external rewards. For instance, children who are overly rewarded for activities like drawing may lose interest in those activities when rewards are removed.
At the workplace, excessive extrinsic rewards like money or constant surveillance can decrease creativity and overall job satisfaction. People who feel constrained by external expectations are less likely to approach problems innovatively.
Balancing Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation
Though intrinsic motivation is often more beneficial, extrinsic rewards can still play a role, especially in the early stages of learning or skill development. Extrinsic motivation can help focus attention, build foundational skills, and introduce new interests. Over time, however, it is important to phase out these rewards in favor of fostering intrinsic motivation.
In work settings, managers should strive to create an environment that supports intrinsic motivation by offering employees tasks that are challenging, interesting, and personally fulfilling. Understanding each employee’s interests and goals can lead to better engagement and higher creativity.
Inside an Emotion — How Do You Feel?
Emotions play a significant role in shaping our daily activities, relationships, and even survival. From the physical responses to emotional stimuli to the psychological effects, emotions drive much of human behavior. But what exactly happens when we experience emotion?
Key Components of Emotion
1. Physiological Arousal:
Physical changes occur within the body during a sensory experience. These include increased heart rate, sweating, and respiratory changes, usually triggered by the sympathetic nervous system. Hormones such as adrenaline and noradrenaline, which are secreted by the adrenal glands, enter the bloodstream and trigger the body to respond. These physiological reactions are what we mean when we say that we have been “moved” by an event such as a sad moment or a happy moment in a game.
2. Motivation to Act:
Emotions often push us to action. Fear can motivate us to escape, while excitement can motivate us to engage in social activities. Emotions such as anger or frustration cause us to express dissatisfaction or seek solutions to a problem. So, emotions are not just emotions—they have a profound effect on our behavior. They are an integral part of basic adaptive behaviors such as fighting, fleeing, seeking comfort and even reproduction.
3. Emotional Expressions:
Emotional cues such as facial expressions, gestures, posture, and changes in our voice are external cues that reflect what we are feeling inside. For example, fear often causes the hands to tremble, the face to twitch, and to stand up in defense. These words not only reveal our emotional state, but also communicate our feelings to others. This is important for maintaining social relationships and understanding each other’s emotional state.
4. Subjective Feelings:
These are the most familiar private emotional experiences—our inner feelings of happiness, sadness, anger, or fear. These feelings are subjective and can vary in intensity depending on the situation. This is the emotional part we experience in our consciousness, and it is often the most prominent part of emotional states.
The Amygdala and Emotion
The amygdala, a small part of the brain, plays an important role in processing emotions, especially fear. It works quickly and directly, often bypasses the cortex (the thinking part of the brain), and allows us to react to danger before we can fully manage the situation
This classical fear response explains why people can feel fear without being fully aware of the source of the fear, which is common in individuals with fear or anxiety Damage to the amygdala can lead to emotional blindness, including not feeling fear feel in dangerous situations or experience emotional cues from which others also Deeply affect their social relationships.
Emotions and Their Role in Social Survival
Emotions help people adapt and survive in social situations. Positive emotions such as love and trust are central to building social bonds, cooperation, and strong interpersonal relationships. Conversely, negative emotions such as anger, fear, and disgust can undermine social interaction, but they also serve a protective function, helping us avoid danger or cope with threats
While emotions can sometimes be destructive—like stage fright or anxiety during a performance—they are often beneficial for survival. Emotions help people connect, protect each other and navigate the complex social environment in which they live.