Chapter 9- Motivation and Emotion

Nature of Motivation

● The concept of motivation focuses on explaining what “moves” behavior.

● The term motivation is derived from the Latin word ‘movere’ referring to movement of
activity.
● Most of our everyday explanation of behavior is given in terms of motives.
● Motives also help in making predictions about the behavior.
● Motives are the general states that enable us to make predictions about behavior in many
different situations.
● In other words, motivation is one of the determinants of behavior.
● Instincts, drives, needs, goals and incentives come under the broad cluster of motivation.

❖ The Motivational Cycle

● Psychologists use the concept of need to describe the motivational properties of
behavior.
● A need is lack or deficit of some necessity. The condition of need leads to drive.
● A drive is a state of tension or arousal produced by a need. It energizes random
activity.
● When one of the random activities leads to a goal, it reduces the drive, and the
organism stops being active.
● The organism returns to a balanced state. Thus, the cycle of motivational events
occurs.
Types of Motives

● Basically, there are two types of motives: biological and psychosocial.

● Biological motives are also known as physiological motives as they are guided mostly by
the physiological mechanisms of the body.
● Psychosocial motives are primarily learned from the individual’s interactions with the
various environmental factors.
● Both types of motives are interdependent on each other.
● In some kind of situations, the biological factors may trigger a motive whereas in some
other situations, the psychosocial factors may trigger the motive.
● No motive is absolutely biological or psychosocial rather they are aroused in the
individual with varying combinations.

❖ Biological Motives
● The biological or physiological approach to explain motivation is the earliest
attempt to understand causes of behavior.
● The approach adhering to the concept of adaptive act holds that organisms have
needs (internal physiological imbalances) that produce drive, which stimulates
behavior leading to certain actions towards achieving certain goals, which reduce
the drive.
● The earliest explanations of motivation relied on the concept of instinct.
● The term instinct denotes inborn patterns of behavior that are biologically
determined rather than learned.
● Some common human instincts include curiosity, flight, repulsion, reproduction,
prenatal care, etc.
● Instincts are innate tendencies found in all members of a species that direct
behavior in predictable ways.
● The term instinct approximately refers to an urge to do something.
● Instinct has an “impetus” which drives the organism to do something to reduce
that impetus.
● Some of the basic biological needs explained by this approach are hunger, thirst
and sex, which are essential for the sustenance of the individual.

HUNGER

● When someone is hungry, the need for food dominates everything else.
● It motivates people to obtain and consume food.
● Studies indicated that many events inside and outside the body may trigger hunger
or inhibit it.
 ● The stimuli for hunger include stomach contractions, which signify that the
stomach is empty, a low concentration of glucose in the blood, a low level of
protein and the amount of fats stored in the body.
● The liver also responds to the lack of bodily fuel by sending nerve impulses to the
brain.
● The aroma, taste or appearance of food may also result in a desire to eat.
● It may be noted that none of these alone gives you the feeling that you are hungry.
● All in combination act with external factors to help you understand that you are
hungry.
● Thus, it can be said that our food intake is regulated by a complex feeding-satiety
system located in the hypothalamus, liver and other parts of the body as well as
the external cues available in the environment.
● Some physiologists hold that changes in the metabolic functions of the liver result
in a feeling of hunger.
● The liver sends a signal to a part of the brain called hypothalamus.
● The two regions of hypothalamus involved in hunger are the lateral
hypothalamus (LH) and the ventro-medial hypothalamus (VMH).
● LH is considered to be the excitatory area.
● Animals eat when this area is stimulated. When it is damaged animals stop eating
and die of starvation.
● The VMH is located in the middle of the hypothalamus, which is otherwise
known as hunger-controlling area which inhibits the hunger drive.

THIRST

● When we are deprived of water for a period of several hours, the mouth and
throat become dry, which leads to dehydration of body tissues.
● Drinking water is necessary to wet a dry mouth. But a dry mouth does not
always result in water drinking behavior.
● The processes within the body itself control thirst and drinking of water.
● Water must get into the tissues sufficiently to remove the dryness of mouth and
throat.
● Motivation to drink water is triggered mainly by the conditions of the body:
loss of water from cells and reduction of blood volume.
● When water is lost by bodily fluids, water leaves the interior of the cells.
● The anterior hypothalamus contains nerve cells called ‘osmoreceptors’ which
generate nerve impulses in case of cell dehydration.
● These nerve impulses act as a signal for thirst and drinking.
● When thirst is regulated by loss of water from the osmoreceptors, it is called
cellular dehydration thirst.
 ● Some researchers assume that the mechanism which explains the intake of
water is also responsible for stopping the intake of water.
● Some pointed out that the role of stimuli resulting from the intake of water in
the stomach must have something to do with stopping of drinking water.
● The precise physiological mechanisms underlying the thirst drive are yet to be
understood.

SEX

● One of the most powerful drives in both animals and human beings is the sex
drive.
● Motivation to engage in sexual activity is a very strong factor influencing
human behavior.
● Sex is far more than a biological motive.
● It is different from other primary motives (hunger, thirst) in many ways like:
a) Sexual activity is not necessary for an individual’s survival.
b) Homeostasis (the tendency of an organism as a whole to maintain
constancy or to attempt to restore equilibrium if constancy is disturbed) is
not the goal of sexual activity.
c) Sex drive develops with age, etc.
● In case of lower animals, it depends on many physiological conditions: in
case of human beings, the sex drive is very closely regulated biologically,
sometimes it is very difficult to classify sex purely as a biological drive.
● Physiologists suggest that intensity of the sexual urge is dependent upon
chemical substances circulating in the blood, known as sex hormones.
● Studies on animals as well as human beings have mentioned that sex
hormones secreted by the gonads, i.e. testes in males and the ovaries in
females are responsible for sexual motivation.
● Sexual motivation is also influenced by other endocrine glands, such as
adrenal and pituitary glands.
● Sexual drive in human beings is primarily stimulated by external stimuli
and its expression depends upon cultural learning.

❖ Psychosocial Motives
● Social motives are mostly learned or acquired.
● Social groups such as family, neighbourhood, friends and relatives do contribute a
lot in acquiring social motives.
● These are complex forms of motives mainly resulting from the individual’s
interaction with his/her social environment.

NEED FOR AFFILIATION

 ● Most people need company or friend or want to maintain some form of
relationship with others.
● Nobody likes to remain alone all the time.
● As soon as people see some kinds of similarities among themselves or they
like each other, they form a group.
● Formation of group or collectivity is an important feature of human life.
● Often people try desperately to get close to other people, to seek their help,
and to become members of their group.
● Seeking other human beings and wanting to be close to them both physically
and psychologically is called affiliation. It involves motivation for social
contact.
● Need for affiliation is aroused when individuals feel threatened or helpless and
also when they are happy.
● People high on this need are motivated to seek the company of others and to
maintain friendly relationships with other people.

NEED FOR POWER

● Need for power is an ability of a person to produce intended effects on the

behavior and emotions of another person.
● The various goals of power motivation are to influence, control, persuade, lead
and charm others and most importantly to enhance one’s own reputation in the
eyes of other people.
● David McClelland (1975) described four general ways of expression of the
power motive.
● First, people do things to gain feeling of power and strength from sources
outside themselves by reading stories about sports stars or attaching
themselves to a popular figure.
● Second, power can also be felt from sources within us and may be expressed
by building up the body and mastering urges and impulses.
● Third, people do things as individuals to have an impact on others. For eg, a
person argues or competes with another individual in order to have an impact
or influence on that person.
● Fourth, people do things as members of organizations to have an impact on
others as in the case of the leader of a political party; the individual may use
the party apparatus to influence others.
● However, for any individual, one of these ways of expressing power
motivation may dominate, but with age and life experiences, it varies.

NEED FOR ACHIEVEMENT

 ● Achievement motivation refers to the desire of a person to meet standards of
excellence.
● Need for achievement, also known as n-Ach, energizes and directs behavior as
well as influences the perception of situations.
● During the formative years of social development, children acquire achievement
motivation.
● The sources from which they learn it, include parents, other role models, and
socio-cultural influences.
● Persons high in achievement motivation tend to prefer tasks that are moderately
difficult and challenging.
● They have stronger-than-average desire for feedback on their performance, that
is to know how they are doing, so that they can adjust their goals to meet the
challenge.

CURIOSITY AND EXPLORATION

● Often people engage in activities without a clear goal or purpose but they
derive some kind of pleasure out of it.
● It is a motivational tendency to act without any specific identifiable goal.
● The tendency to seek for a novel experience, gain pleasure by obtaining
information , etc. are signs of curiosity.
● Curiosity describes behavior whose primary motive appears to remain in the
activities themselves.
● Certain questions stimulate intellectuals to find answers.
● Studies show that this curiosity behavior is not only limited to human beings,
animals too show the same kind of behavior.
● We are driven to explore the environment by our curiosity and our need for
sensory stimulation.
● The need for varied types of sensory stimulations is closely related to
curiosity.
● It is the basic motive, and exploration and curiosity are the expressions of it.
● Our ignorance about a number of things around us becomes a powerful
motivator to explore the world.
● We get easily bored with repetitive experiences, so we look for something
new.
● In the case of infants and small children, this motive is very dominant.
● They get satisfaction from being allowed to explore, which is reflected in their
smiling and babbling.
● Children become easily distressed, when the motive to explore is discouraged.

MASLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS

● Abraham H. Maslow attempted to portray a picture of human behavior by arranging the
various needs in a hierarchy.
● The theory is known as “ Theory of Self- Actualization”.
● Maslow’s model can be conceptualized as a pyramid in which the bottom of this
hierarchy represents basic physiological or biological needs which are basic to survival
such as hunger, thirst, etc.
● Only when these needs are met, the need to be free from threatened danger arises. This
refers to the safety needs of physical and psychological nature.
● Next comes, the need to seek out other people, to love and to be loved.
● After these needs are fulfilled, the individual strives for esteem, i.e. the need to develop a
sense of self-worth.
● The next need reflects an individual’s motive towards the fullest development of
potential, i.e. self-actualization.
● A self- actualized person is self-aware, socially responsive, creative, spontaneous, open
to novelty, and challenge.
● She/ He also has a sense of humor and capacity for deep interpersonal relationships.
● Lower level needs (physiological) in the hierarchy dominate as long as they are
unsatisfied.
● Once they are adequately satisfied, the higher needs occupy the individual’s attention and
effort.
● Only very few people reach the highest level because most people are concerned more
with the lower level needs.

Frustration and Conflict

❖ Frustration
● Frustration occurs when an anticipated desirable goal is not attained and the
motive is blocked.
 ● It is an aversive state and no one likes it.
● Frustration results in a variety of behavioral and emotional reactions which
includes aggressive behavior, fixation, escape, avoidance and crying.
● Frustration- aggression hypothesis proposed by Dollard and Miller states that
frustration produces aggression.
● Aggressive acts are often directed towards the self or blocking agent, or a
substitute.
● Direct aggressive acts may be inhibited by the threat of punishment.
● The main sources or causes of frustration are found in: 1) environmental forces-
which could be physical objects, constraining situations or even other people who
prevent a person from reaching a particular goal. 2) personal factors- like
inadequacies or lack of resources that make it difficult or impossible to reach
goals. 3) conflicts between different motives.

❖ Conflict
● Conflict occurs whenever a person must choose between contradictory needs,
desires, motives or demands.
● There are three basic forms of conflicts: approach-approach conflict,
avoidance-avoidance conflict and approach-avoidance conflict.
● Approach-approach conflict comes from having to choose between two positives
and desirable alternatives.
● Avoidance-avoidance conflict comes from choosing between two negatives, or
mutually undesirable alternatives. In real life, these involve dilemmas like
choosing between roadside food and starvation, etc.
● Approach- avoidance conflict comes from being attracted to and repelled by the
same goal or activity.
● These types of conflicts are also difficult to resolve, as they are more troublesome
than avoidance conflicts.
● A central characteristic of approach-avoidance conflict is ambivalence, a mix of
positive and negative conflicts. Eg, planning to marry someone his/her parents
strongly disapprove.
● Many of life’s important decisions have approach-avoidance dimension.
● A major source of frustration lies in motivational conflict.
● The simultaneous existence of multiple wishes and needs characterize conflict.
● The selection of one option against the other depends on the relative strength/
importance of one over the other, and environmental factors.
● Conflicting situations should be resolved after due consideration of the pros and
cons of each of the choices.
● Conflicts cause frustration which in turn can lead to aggression.
NATURE OF EMOTIONS

● Joy, sorrow, hope, love, excitement, anger, hate and many such feelings are experienced
in the course of the day by everyone.
● The term emotion is often considered synonymous with the terms ‘feeling’ and ‘mood’.
● Feeling denotes the pleasure or pain dimension of emotion, which usually involves bodily
functions.
● Mood is an affective state of long duration but of lesser intensity than emotion.
● Emotions are a complex pattern of arousal, subjective feeling and cognitive
interpretation.
● As we experience emotions, it moves us internally, and this process involves
physiological as well as psychological reactions.
● Emotion is a subjective feeling and the experience of emotions varies from person to
person.
● Psychology identified 6 basic emotions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and
surprise.
● Izard proposed a set of 10 basic emotions: joy, surprise, anger, disgust, contempt, fear,
shame, guilt, interest and excitement with combination of them resulting in other
emotional blends.
● According to Plutchik, there are 8 basic or primary emotions. All other emotions result
from various mixtures of these basic emotions.
● He arranged these emotions in four pairs of opposites, i.e., joy-sadness,
acceptance-disgust, fear-anger and surprise-anticipation.
● Emotions vary in their intensity (high-low) and quality (happiness, sadness and fear).
● Subjective factors and situational contexts influence the experience of emotions.
● These factors are gender, personality and psychopathology of certain kinds.
● Evidence indicates that women experience all the emotions except anger more intensely
than men.
● Men are prone to experience high intensity and frequency of anger.
● This gender difference has been attributed to the social roles attached to men
(competitiveness) and women (affiliation and caring).

EXPRESSION OF EMOTIONS

● Emotion is an internal experience not directly observable by others.

● Emotions are inferred from verbal and non-verbal expressions which act as the channel of
communication and enable an individual to express one’s emotions and to understand the
feelings of others.

❖ Culture and Emotional Expression

 ● The verbal channel of communication is composed of spoken words as well as
other vocal features of speech like pitch and loudness of the voice.
● These non-verbal aspects of the voice and temporal characteristics of speech are
called ‘paralanguage’.
● Other non-verbal channels include facial expression, kinetic (gesture, posture,
movement of the body) and proximal (physical distance during face-to-face
interaction) behaviors.
● Facial expression is the most common channel of emotional communication.
● The amount and kind of information conveyed by the face is easy to comprehend
as the face is exposed to the full view of others.
● Facial expressions can convey the intensity as well as the pleasantness or
unpleasantness of the individual’s emotional state.
● Facial expressions play an important role in our everyday lives.
● Research supports Darwin’s view that facial expressions for basic emotions are
inborn and universal.
● Bodily movements further facilitate the communication of emotions.
● Theatre and drama provide an excellent opportunity to understand the impact of
body movements in communicating emotions.
● The roles of gestures and proximal behaviors are also significant.
● The dancers are trained rigorously in the grammar of body movement and
non-verbal communication to express joy, sorrow, love, anger and various other
forms of emotional states.
● The processes involved in emotions have been known to be influenced by culture.
● Current research has dealt more specifically with the issue of universality or
culture specificity of emotions based on studies related to facial expression.
● Emotions are conveyed not only via face. A felt emotion may be communicated
through other non-verbal channels as well.
● The emotional meaning conveyed through gestures varies culture to culture.
● Silence has also found to convey different meanings for different cultures.
● Cultural differences have also been found in the gaze behavior, physical spaces,
etc.

❖ Culture and Emotional Labeling

● Basic emotions also vary in the extent of elaboration and categorical labels.
● There are certain basic emotions that are expressed and understood by all despite
their cultural and ethnic differences and there are certain others that are specific to
a particular culture.
 ● Culture plays an important role in all processes of emotion.
● Both expression and experience of emotions are mediated and modified by culture
specific ‘display rules’ that delimit the conditions under which an emotion may be
expressed and the intensity with which it is displayed.

MANAGING NEGATIVE EMOTIONS

● Emotions are a part of daily life and existence.

● They form the very fabric of our life and interpersonal relations.
● Emotions exist on a continuum.
● There are various intensities of an emotion that can be experienced by us.
● Most of us normally maintain a balance of emotions.
● When faced with a conflicting situation, individuals attempt to adjust and derive a coping
mechanism either with task or defense oriented reactions.
● These coping patterns help them prevent abnormal emotional reactions such as anxiety,
depression, etc.
● Anxiety is a condition that an individual develops in case of failure to adopt an
appropriate ego defense.
● Anxious individuals find it difficult to concentrate or to make decisions even for trivial
matters.
● The state of depression affects an individual’s ability to think rationally, feel realistically
and work effectively.
● The condition overwhelms the mood state of the individual.
● Under demanding and stressful conditions, a lot of negative emotions like fear, anxiety,
disgust, etc. develop in an individual to a considerable extent.
● Such negative emotions, if allowed to prevail for a long time, are likely to affect
adversely the person’s psychological and physical health.
● This is why stress management programs emphasize emotion management as an integral
part of stress management.
● The major focus of emotion management techniques is the reduction of negative
emotions and enhancing positive emotions.
● Positive psychology concerns the study of features that enrich life like hope, happiness,
creativity, courage, optimism, cheerfulness etc.
● Effective emotion management is the key to effective social functioning in modern times.
● For achieving the desired balance of emotions:
❖ Enhance self-awareness
● Be aware of your own emotions and feelings. Try to gain insight into the ‘how’
and ‘why’ of your feelings.

❖ Appraise the situation objectively

 ● It has been proposed that emotion is preceded by evaluation of the event. If the
event is experienced as disturbing, the sympathetic nervous system is activated
and we feel stressed. If we do not experience the event as disturbing, then there is
no stress. Hence, it is us who decides whether to feel sad and anxious or happy
and relaxed.

❖ Do some self-monitoring
● This involves constant or periodic evaluation of your past accomplishments,
emotional and physical states, real and vicarious experiences. A positive appraisal
would enhance your faith in yourself and lead to enhanced feeling of wellness and
contentment.

❖ Engage in self-modeling
● Be the ideal for yourself. Repeatedly observe the best parts of your past
performance and use them as an inspiration and motivation to perform better in
the future.

❖ Perceptual reorganization and cognitive restructuring

● Try viewing the events differently and visualize the other side of the coin.
Restructure your thoughts to enhance positive and reassuring feelings and
eliminate negative thoughts.

❖ Be creative
● Find and develop an interest or a hobby. Engage in an activity that interests and
amuses us.

❖ Develop and nurture good relationships

● Choose our friends carefully. In the company of happy and cheerful friends we
will feel happy in general.

❖ Have empathy
● Try understanding other’s feelings too. Make your relationships meaningful and
valuable. Seek as well as provide support mutually.

❖ Participate in community service

 ● Help oneself by helping others. By doing community service, we will gain
important insights about our own difficulties.

Managing your Anger

● Anger is a negative emotion.

● The person loses control on behavioral functions during the state of anger.
● The major source of anger is the frustration of motives.
● Anger is not a reflex, rather it is a result of our thinking.
● It is the self-induced choice the individual makes and is controlled by our
thoughts only.
● Key points in anger management are:
❖ Recognize the power of our thoughts.

❖ Realize we alone can control it.

❖ Do not engage in ‘self-talk that burns’. Do not magnify negative feelings.

❖ Do not ascribe intentions and ulterior motives to others.

❖ Resist having irrational beliefs about people and events.

❖ Try to find constructive ways of expressing our anger. Have control on the degree and
duration of anger that we choose to express.
❖ Look inward not outward for anger control.

❖ Give oneself time to change. It takes time and effort to change a habit.

ENHANCING POSITIVE EMOTIONS

● Our emotions help us adapt to the ever-changing environment and are important for our
survival and well-being.
● Negative emotions like fear, anger or disgust prepare us mentally and physically for
taking immediate action towards the stimulus that is threatening.
● Though negative emotions protect us in certain situations , excessive or inappropriate use
of these emotions can become life threatening to us, as it can harm our immune system
and have serious consequences for our health.
● Positive emotions such as hope, joy, optimism, contentment, and gratitude energize us
and enhance our sense of emotional well-being.
● When we experience positive affect, we display a greater preference for a large variety of
actions and ideas.
● Positive emotions give us a greater ability to cope with adverse circumstances and
quickly return to a normal state.
● They help us set up long term plans and goals and form new relationships.
● Various ways of enhancing positive emotions are given below:
❖ Personality traits of optimism, hopefulness, happiness and a positive self-regard.

❖ Finding positive meaning in dire circumstances.

❖ Having quality connections with others, and supportive network of close

relationships.
❖ Being engaged in work and gaining mastery.

❖ A faith that embodies social support, purpose and hope, leading a life of purpose.

❖ Positive interpretations of most daily events.