Motivation and Emotion
Motivation and emotion play a crucial role in shaping our actions, guiding everything from basic survival needs to complex decision-making. This chapter explores the push and pull forces behind motivation, the biological and psychological factors influencing hunger, overeating, and eating disorders, and the role of thirst, sex, and pain as fundamental biological motives.
By the end of this chapter, you should know about:
- Motivation—Forces That Push and Pull
- Types of Motives
- What Is Homeostasis?
- What Causes Hunger, Overeating, and eating disorders?
- Biological Motives Revisited— Thirst, Sex, and Pain
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.
Motivation—Forces That Push and Pull
We will know what is motivation and if there are different types of motives?
What Is Motivation?
Motivation explains why we act, and it focuses our attention on how actions are initiated, sustained, directed, and completed. For example, hunger can interfere with attention, causing a person to seek food until a need is met. Motivation drives our actions by satisfying our internal needs and external goals.
How Motivation Works?
Need: An internal need, such as hunger or thirst.
Vehicle: An energetic state driven by need, such as hunger.
Responsiveness: Actions aimed at meeting needs, such as obtaining food.
Objective: To achieve the desired result, which completes the move and satisfies the need.
For example, a hungry individual may continue to forage until a goal is reached and the vehicle is processed.
Motivation and Emotion: Needs vs. Drives
While needs and drives are related, they are different. Need (e.g., dehydration) may occur without an associated drive (e.g., thirst in older adults).
Motivation and Emotion: The Role of Incentives
Intrinsic needs and extrinsic motivations can influence motivated behavior. Motivation is an external “pull” aimed at a goal, reflecting its attraction rather than the fulfillment of a need. For example, eating a sweet treat after a large meal illustrates how extrinsic stimuli can drive behavior.
Motivation and Emotion: Incentive Value
Motivation is influenced by a desired goal, or its motivational value:
A high-value stimulus (such as his favorite candy) can trigger action independent of need.
Inexpensive incentives (such as bland but nutritious foods) may not stimulate even when necessary.
Types of Motives
Biological stimuli are intrinsically necessary for survival, such as hunger, thirst, temperature regulation, and sleep. These sensations help to maintain homeostasis, or body balance, and enhance productivity.
Motivation and Emotion: Stimulus Motives
Motivation reflects the need for stimulation and exploration such as curiosity, physical interaction, and activities. While these motivations are also natural, they are not necessary for survival.
Motivation and Emotion: Learned Motives
Learned motives are shaped by experience and are often related to the desire for social goals such as power, status, or recognition. These emotions explain behaviors such as running for objects or trying to win.
What Is Homeostasis?
Homeostasis is the body’s ability to maintain balance, such as controlling temperature or blood pressure. When equilibrium is disturbed, spontaneous body reactions restore equilibrium. For example, sweat cools the body when it gets too hot. However, longer periods of imbalance may lead to subjective behaviors such as seeking food or water.
Motivation and Emotion: The Thermostat Analogy
Homeostasis works like a thermostat, adjusting bodily systems to maintain a steady state. When levels deviate from the ideal, corrections are made automatically or through behavior.
Circadian Rhythms
Definition: Circadianities are biological cycles that follow a 24-hour pattern, affecting motivation, alertness, and physical activity. Body temperature, blood pressure, and other parameters rise and fall during the day.
Day People vs. Night People: People’s performance generally matches their circadian rhythms:
Day people: alert in the morning, tired before evening.
Nocturnal people: aggressive in the morning, energetic later in the afternoon.
Jet Lag and Shift Work
Impact of Time Shifts: Schedule changes, such as jet lag or shift work, disrupt circadian rhythms. These problems can lead to fatigue, irritability, and decreased productivity. Flight delays are especially noticeable when traveling across time zones, making it difficult to adjust to travel east to west.
Adapting to Rhythm Changes: Disturbances take time to adjust but can be improved by:
Exposure to bright light that improves melatonin production.
Gradual adjustment of schedule (pre-adaptation) prior to departure or change in employment.
What Causes Hunger, Overeating, and eating disorders?
Hunger may seem simple, but it involves complex internal and external interactions. Understanding hunger allows us to examine similar motivations such as thirst and reveals how behavior is influenced by biological and environmental cues.
Motivation and Emotion: Internal Factors in Hunger
Walter Cannon and A. L. Washburn (1912) examined the role of gastric contraction in starvation. Washburn swallowed a balloon to measure stomach activity and found that its contraction correlated with hunger pains. However, later research showed that the stomach is not important for hunger, as individuals without a stomach still feel hunger due to signals from other body systems.
Motivation and Emotion: Role of the Brain
The hypothalamus, a small part of the brain, regulates hunger and other survival-related stimuli.
Lateral hypothalamus (food system): Stimulates appetite. For example, the production of the hormone ghrelin by an empty stomach activates this area.
Ventromedial hypothalamus (satiety system): indicates fullness. Wasting here leads to overeating, as seen in cats when ballooning to excess weight.
Paraventricular nucleus: regulates food intake and balances blood sugar. It responds to neuropeptide Y (NPY) receptors, as well as chemicals such as GLP-1, which cause food withdrawal after a large meal.
The hypothalamus regulates hunger and satiety by integrating signals from hormones, the digestive system, and blood.
Motivation and Emotion: Long-Term Weight Regulation
In addition to immediate hunger signals, the brain helps maintain body weight over time by responding to chemicals similar to those found in marijuana, which can trigger hunger (“munchies”) Development a occurs in understanding these symptoms may lead to better treatments for obesity and eating disorders.
External Factors in Hunger and Obesity
Environmental and Social Influences: Hunger is not just natural. External factors—such as food availability, living conditions, and cultural norms—may trump internal needs. These effects contribute significantly to overeating and obesity, which affects nearly all U.S. populations. 65% of adults are most affected by children. Obesity is a serious health risk, often leading to social stigma and low self-esteem.
Understanding Eating Behaviors and Disorders: Eating behavior is influenced by a mixture of biological, emotional, and sociocultural factors. These factors determine how we eat, why we overeat, and how problems like anorexia and bulimia arise. This summary examines the most important points in understanding these practices.
External Eating Cues: The Influence of Environment
External cues, such as the visibility and availability of food, greatly influence how much people consume. For example, casual and all-you-can-eat options at college cafeterias are associated with overeating, as seen in “Frosh 15” weight gain Lifestyle situations also affect eating habits influence—people may eat less based on group dynamics and the desire to impress others.
Motivation and Emotion: Taste and Its Role in Overeating
High levels of high-calorie sweet foods can lead to overconsumption in countries with high food choices. The sweetness and high fat content are particularly appealing and encourage consumption even when full. However, the body has mechanisms like leptin, which dulls sensitivity to sweet tastes when one is satiated, helping maintain dietary variety. Taste aversion is another mechanism—if a food causes nausea, a person may develop a lasting dislike for it, as seen in experiments with coyotes conditioned to avoid tainted lamb.
Emotional Eating: A Response to Stress
Emotions such as anxiety, anger, or sadness often trigger overeating. This tendency is especially evident in people who struggle with weight issues, which leads to a cycle of grief, and who overeat significantly. Overweight individuals may experience life stressors that exacerbate emotional eating.
Cultural Influences on Eating
Cultural norms determine what foods are considered desirable or aversive. For example, some cultures glorify thin bodies, leading to eating habits, while others value the perfect figure. These cultural differences influence food habits and body image perceptions, and affect how people approach food and weight management.
Dieting and Its Challenges
Diet aims to control weight but often fails in the long run. The “yo-yo diet” of repeated weight loss and weight regain slows body fat loss and raises body fat set points. This evolutionary change makes energy reserves in the absence of food difficult to achieve consistent weight loss. Avoiding this cycle requires sustainable lifestyle changes, including healthy eating and exercise.
Eating Disorders: Anorexia and Bulimia
Anorexia nervosa is characterized by severe weight loss due to independent starvation. Although sufferers may experience physical hunger, the pressure to control their weight violates this instinct. Malnutrition often begins with diet but escalates to compulsive behavior, leading to malnutrition and, in severe cases, a higher risk of death.
Bulimia nervosa requires binge eating followed by purging with vomiting or laxatives. This behavior stems from weight-related guilt and anxiety, including physical health risks such as dehydration, heart problems, and tooth loss. Unlike anorexia, bulimics tend to maintain a healthy weight but experience severe emotional distress.
Men and Eating Disorders
Although eating disorders are common in women, they are increasing in men. Many men suffer from arthritis and worry too much about their muscles. This leads to changes in overeating and exercising. Today, men represent 10% of anorexia and 25% of bulimia.
Causes of Eating Disorders
Root causes of anorexia and bulimia include dissatisfied body image, low self-esteem, and negative perceptions of weight. Cultural perspectives such as those promoted by the media and fashion exacerbate these issues. The life pressures of sports and fitness also help, especially activities that don’t require a small amount of body fat such as gymnastics or boxing.
Treatment Approaches
Including a combination of therapeutic, psychosocial treatment for eating disorders. It begins with medication for the fear of gaining weight, followed by counseling to manage emotional conflict. For bulimia, self-supervised diet and cognitive behavioral therapy are effective in modifying destructive thoughts and behaviors. But many victims, especially men, are resistant to asking for help.
Cultural Perspectives on Dieting
Eating behavior is influenced by cultural assumptions. Western culture emphasizes thinness, leaving many women to see themselves as objects judged by their physical appearance. In contrast, some groups, such as African Americans and Pacific Islanders, celebrate perfect accountability. These cultures emphasize that beauty standards vary widely, shaping how people perceive and manage their bodies.
Biological Motives Revisited
Biological motivators such as desire, pain avoidance, and sexual desire are important for understanding human and animal behavior. Although craving and hunger overlap in normative and cultural influences, pain avoidance and sexual desire exhibit distinct characteristics.
Thirst: Two Types and Their Triggers
Appetite is controlled by mechanisms of the hypothalamus and is only partially associated with dry mouth. It is also shaped by academic and cultural practices. There are two main types of thirst:
Extracellular thirst: This occurs when the body loses water from the fluid surrounding its cells. Side effects include sweating, bleeding, vomiting, diarrhea and alcohol. When water and minerals are lost, slightly salty water tends to be more swallowable than plain water because the body must replenish, for example, both animals and colonists prefer salty drinks when dehydrated.
Cellular thirst: This thirst caused by eating salty foods occurs when excess salt draws water from the cells, causing them to shrink. This type of thirst is best quenched by plain water.
Pain Avoidance: An Episodic Drive
Unlike hunger and thirst, pain avoidance is episodic and occurs only in response to immediate or potential bodily injury. Pain acts as a protective mechanism, motivating the individual to prevent harm or avoid injury.
People’s reactions to pain are shaped by cultural and academic responses. Example:
- Some tolerate pain steadily, making it more resistant to pain.
- Others react strongly to minor pain, reducing their threshold.
Social norms influence pain perceptions, as seen in cultures that practice painful rituals such as tattoos or nose piercings to express suffering.
The Sex Drive: A Unique Biological Motive
The sexual drive differs from other biological drives in that it is essential not for individual survival but for the survival of the species.
Hormonal influence: Sexual orientation of animals is closely related to reproductive cycle. For example, female animals generally only respond to estrogen-induced periods. Males are generally ready to mate and are triggered by hormonal signals and the behavior of receptive females.
Humans and hormones: Androgens (testosterone) While hormones like estrogen affect human sex drive, the relationship is not as straightforward as in animals Men’s sex drive increases when androgen levels, especially during puberty. Female sex drive is influenced by estrogens and, to a lesser extent, androgens. Metabolic changes, such as declining testosterone levels with age, can reduce libido, but supplements can restore libido in some cases.
Sexual love is less homeostatic, which means it is not based on physiological needs. Like hunger and thirst, sexual desire can arise at any time and is influenced by many different factors. For example, desire for sexual activity is not rejected, and new stimuli can readily rekindle interest, as seen in the Coolidge effect. This act demonstrates how new sexual partners can rekindle interest even after apparent satisfaction.