MOTIVATION AND EMOTION

Chapter 9

Psychology in Everyday Life David G. Myers • C. Nathan DeWall | Sixth

MOTIVATIONAL
CONCEPTS
(PART 1)
• Motivation
• Need or desire that
energizes and directs
or pushes behavior
• Arises from the
interplay between
nature and nurture

• Perspectives used to
understand motivated
behaviors
• Drive-reduction theory
• Arousal theory
• Hierarchy of needs
MOTIVATIONAL
CONCEPTS
(PART 2)
• Drive-reduction theory
• Physiological need
creates an aroused state
that motivates an
individual to satisfy the
need.
• Assumptions:
• Individuals have
physiological
needs.
• If a need is not met,
it creates a drive.
• Drives push
individuals to
reduce the need.
Strong drives result
from both a need
and an incentive.
MOTIVATIONAL • Motivation for drive-reduction
CONCEPTS arises from homeostasis.
(PART 3) • Tendency to maintain balanced or
constant internal state; the
regulation of any aspect of body
chemistry
 • Arousal theory
• Describes the search for
arousal level that energizes
and directs behavior
MOTIVATIONAL • Aroused individuals are either
CONCEPTS physically energized or tense.
(PART 4) • Some motivated behaviors
increase rather than
decrease arousal.
• Too much stimulation or
stress motivates us to look
for ways to decrease arousal.
 MOTIVATIONAL
CONCEPTS (PART 5)
• Yerkes-Dodson Law
• Moderate arousal leads to optimal performance.
• Optimal arousal levels depend on the task.
• Difficult tasks require lower arousal to provide the best
performance.
 MOTIVATIONAL
CONCEPTS (PART 6)
• Abraham Maslow
• Viewed human motives as five levels of human needs.
• Physiological needs lie at the base.
• As needs become met, our focus shifts to the next level.
• Highest human needs (self-transcendence) occupy the
peak.
• Meaning in life is related to having purpose, significance,
and coherence.
 MOTIVATIONAL
CONCEPTS (PART 7)
Theory Its Big Idea
Drive- Physiological needs (such as
reduction hunger and thirst) create an
theory aroused state that drives us to
reduce the need (for example, by
eating or drinking).

Arousal Our need to maintain an optimal

theory level of arousal motivates MOTIVATIONAL
behaviors that meet no
physiological need (such as our
CONCEPTS
yearning for stimulation and our (PART 8)
hunger for information).

Maslow’s We prioritize survival-based

hierarchy of needs and then social needs
needs more than the needs for esteem
and meaning.
HUNGER (PART
1)
• "Hunger, real hunger,
provokes desperation and
leads to choices that might
otherwise be
unfathomable."
–Mikki Kendall, "Hood
Feminism," 2020

• Hunger is triggered by the

pangs of an empty
stomach…anything else?
HUNGER (PART
2)
• Walter Cannon and A. L.
Washburn
• Washburn agreed to
swallow a balloon that was
attached to a recording
device.
• When inflated, the balloon
tracked stomach
contractions and helped
supply information about
feelings related to hunger.
• Hunger is triggered by the
pangs of an empty
stomach.

• But some hunger persists in

humans whose stomachs have
been removed due to ulcers.
• So…pangs of an empty
stomach are not the only
source of hunger.
HUNGER (PART 3)
HUNGER (PART 4)
• Body chemistry and the brain
• Glucose: A form of sugar that circulates
in the blood
• Major source of energy for body
tissues
• Triggers a feeling of hunger when
levels are low

• Sounding the hunger alarm

• Hypothalamus and other brain
structures
• The arcuate nucleus contains
appetite-stimulating and appetite-
suppressing hormones.
• Blood vessels connect hypothalamus
to rest of body and monitor appetite
hormone levels.
HUNGER (PAGE 5)
 HUNGER (PART 6)
• The appetite
hormones
• Increase appetite
• Ghrelin
• Orexin
• Decrease appetite
• Leptin
• PYY
 • Set point and basal metabolic rate
• Set point (settling point): Point
at which an individual’s weight
thermostat may be set
• When the body falls below this
weight, the increased hunger
and the lowered metabolic
rate may combine to restore
HUNGER lost weight.

(PART 7) • Basal metabolic rate: Body’s

resting rate of energy output
• Humans differ in their basal
metabolic rate, but our rate
drops in response to
decreased food intake.
• It is doubtful that our bodies
have a preset tendency to
maintain a given weight.
 HUNGER (PART 8)
• Taste preferences: biology and culture
• Body cues and the environment
• Influence taste preferences and feelings of hunger
• Preferences for sweet and salty tastes
• Are genetic and universal
• Other preferences are learned.
• Acceptability of foods
• Culturally influenced; based on adaptive taste preferences
HUNGER (PART 9)
 HUNGER (PART 10)
• Tempting situations that influence eating
• Friends and food

• Serving size

• Stimulation selections

• Nudging nutrition
 HUNGER (PART 11)

• Obesity and its health effects

• Obesity is associated with:
• Physical health risks, including
diabetes, high blood pressure, heart
disease, gallstones, arthritis, and
certain types of cancer

• Increased depression, especially

among women

• Bullying, outranking race and sexual

orientation as the biggest reason for
youth bullying in Western cultures
 HUNGER (PART 12)
Obesity: How did we get here?

• Physiology factors • Environmental

• Adaptivity of fat factors
storage • Sleep loss
• Importance of set point • Social influences
and metabolism • Food and activity levels
• Genetic influence
 HUNGER (PART 13)
Tips for healthy eating and weight
management
• Begin only if you feel • Time your intact.
Begin motivated and self-
disciplined. • Beware of bad moods.
• Eat unhurriedly.
• Exercise and get enough
Exercise and get
sleep. • Before eating with
others, decide what and
• Minimize exposure to how much you want to
Minimize
food cues. eat.
• Allow for an occasional
Limit
• Limit variety and eat treat.
healthy foods.
• Chart and share your
• Reduce portion sizes
progress online.
Reduce and relabel your
portions.
• Connect to a support
group.
 THE NEED TO
BELONG (PART 1)
• Benefits of belonging
• Social bonds and cooperation support
survival.
• Group membership fosters social
identity, self-esteem, health, and well-
being.
• Humans strive to satisfy three needs (self-
determination theory): competence,
autonomy, and relatedness.
• Self-determination is critical to human
motivation explanation (self-determination
theory).
 THE NEED TO BELONG
(PART 2)
• Effects of dissolving social ties
• When an event or an individual threatens to dissolve
social ties, people experience:
• Anxiety
• Loneliness
• Jealousy
• Guilt
 THE NEED TO BELONG
(PART 3)
• The pain of being shut out
• Ostracism
• Deliberate social exclusion of individuals or groups
• Many forms are used around the world.

• Ostracism is a real pain.

• Brain scans depict increased activity in areas that activate
the response to physical pain.
• Acetaminophen, a pain reliever, helps lessen social pain.
 THE NEED TO BELONG
(PART 4)
• Effects of ostracism
• Initial efforts to restore acceptance, followed by
depressed mood, and finally withdrawal into solitude.
• May make people disagreeable, uncooperative, and
hostile.
• Same words used across cultures (for example, hurt,
crushed)

• Feeling loved activates brain areas associated with

rewards and satisfaction and may temper pain of
ostracism.
 THE NEED TO BELONG
(PART 5)
• White cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West
Point ostracized Henry Flipper for years, hoping he
would drop out.

• He somehow resisted their cruelty and in 1877

became the first African American West Point
graduate.
• Connecting and social networking
• Mobile phone
• Texting and instant messaging
• The internet
• Social networking

THE NEED TO BELONG

(PART 6)
 THE NEED TO BELONG
(PART 7)
The Net Result: Social Effects of Social
Networking
• Triggers envy and
depressed feelings via
Serves as
Provides
information
social comparison
social and
amplifier supportive
connections • Contributes to decreased
face-to-face
Often
communication and
increases
Can aid in
sleep and increased
self-
disclosure finding a loneliness, depression,
related to romantic
partner
and suicide
friendships

• Supports narcissistic
behaviors
THE NEED TO
BELONG (PART
8)
• Maintaining balance
and focus
• Monitor your time.
• Monitor your
feelings.
• Hide from from
your more
frequently online
friends when
necessary.
• Break the phone-
checking habit.
• Refocus by taking
a nature walk.
 ACHIEVEMENT
MOTIVATION (PART 1)

Achievement Motivation impact

motivation
Desire for significant Self-discipline surpassed
accomplishment, for mastery of intelligence test scores in
skills or ideas, for control, and for predicting school performance,
attaining a high standard attendance, and graduation
• Grit: In psychology, passion and honors.
perseverance in the pursuit of
long-term goals
• Extrinsic and intrinsic
motivation
 ACHIEVEMENT
MOTIVATION (PART 2)
• Research-based strategies for achieving
goals
• Do make that resolution.
• Announce goals to friends and family.
• Develop an action plan.
• Create short-term rewards that
support long-term goals.
• Monitor and record progress.
• Creative a supportive environment.
• Transform a hard-to-do behavior into a
must-do habit.
 EMOTION: AROUSAL, BEHAVIOR,
AND COGNITION (PART 1)
• Emotions are a mix of:
• Bodily arousal
• Expressive behaviors
• Conscious experiences and feelings resulting from one’s
experiences (most important)
• Two big questions:
• Does bodily arousal come before or after emotional
feelings?
• How do thinking and feeling interact?
 EMOTION: AROUSAL, BEHAVIOR,
AND COGNITION (PART 2)

• James-Lange theory
• Arousal comes before emotion.
• Cannon-Bard theory
• Arousal and emotion happen at the same time.
• Schachter-Singer two-factor theory
• Arousal + label = emotion; spillover effect
• Arousal fuels emotion; cognition channels it.
• Zajonc, Ledoux, and Lazsarus

Let’s take a closer look at each of these.

 EMOTION: AROUSAL, BEHAVIOR,
AND COGNITION (PART 3)
• James-Lange theory
• Emotional experience is the awareness of one’s
physiological responses to an emotion-arousing
stimulus.

• Cannon-Bard theory
• An emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers
two responses:
• Physiological responses
• Subjective experience of emotion
 EMOTION: AROUSAL, BEHAVIOR,
AND COGNITION (PART 4)
• According to the James-Lange theory, we do not just
smile because we share our teammates’ joy.

• We also share the joy because we are smiling with

them.
 • Schachter and Singer’s two-
factor theory
• To experience emotion,
individuals must:
EMOTION: • Be physically aroused
• Cognitively label the arousal
AROUSAL, • Appraisal or
BEHAVIOR, interpretation of
experiences matter,
AND
COGNITION • Spillover effect
• Arousal spills over from one
(PART 5) event to the next, thereby
influencing a response.
• Arousal fuels emotion, and
cognition channels it.
 EMOTION: AROUSAL, BEHAVIOR,
AND COGNITION (PART 6)
• Zajonc, LeDoux, and Lazarus theories: Emotion
and the two-track brain
• Some emotions, especially more complex feelings,
travel the high road via the thalamus to the brain’s
cortex.
• Sometimes emotional responses take a neural shortcut
(low road) that bypasses the cortex and goes directly to
the amygdala.
• Enables lightening-quick emotional response before brain
interprets exact source of danger.
• Reappraisal of stress
 • Lazarus
EMOTION: • Agreed that the brain processes a lot of
AROUSAL, information without conscious
awareness.
BEHAVIOR, • Some emotional responses do not
AND require conscious thinking.
• Emotions arise when an event is
COGNITION appraised as harmless or
(PART 7) dangerous.
 EMOTION: AROUSAL,
BEHAVIOR, AND COGNITION
(PART 8)
THEORY E X P L A N AT I O N O F E M O T I O N S EXAMPLE

James-Lange Our awareness of our specific bodily responses to We observe our heart racing after a threat and then feel
emotion-arousing stimuli. afraid.

Cannon-Bard Bodily responses and simultaneous subjective Our heart races at the same time that we feel afraid.
experience.

Schachter-Singer Two factors: general arousal and a conscious We may interpret our arousal as fear or excitement,
Two-Factor cognitive label. depending on the context.

Zajonc-LeDoux Some embodied responses happen instantly, We automatically feel startled by a sound in the forest
without conscious appraisal. before labeling it as a threat.

Lazarus Cognitive appraisal (“Is it The sound is “just the wind.”

dangerous or not?”)—sometimes without our
awareness—defines
emotion.

SUMMARY OF EMOTION THEORIES

EMBODIED
EMOTION (PART
1)
• The basic emotions
• Carroll Izard (1977)
• Isolated ten basic
emotions: joy, interest-
excitement, surprise,
sadness, anger,
disgust, contempt,
fear, shame, and guilt.

• Paul Eckman (2016)

• Proposed most
emotion scientists
agree that anger, fear,
disgust, sadness, and
happiness are basic
emotions.

• Alan Cowen and Dacher

Keltner (2020) and others
• Believe pride and love
are also basic
emotions.
EMBODIED EMOTION
(PART 2)
EMBODIED EMOTION
(PART 3)
 EMBODIED EMOTION
(PART 4)
• Emotions and the autonomic nervous system (ANS)
• The sympathetic division of the ANS mobilizes the body
for action.
• The adrenal glands are triggered to release stress
hormones.
• Sugar is released from the liver into the bloodstream to
provide energy.
• Breathing rate, heart rate, and blood pressure increase.
• Digestion slows to permit movement of blood toward
the muscles.
• Hormones gradually leave the bloodstream when the
crisis passes.
EMBODIED EMOTION
(PART 5)
 EMBODIED EMOTION
(PART 6)
• Physiology of emotions
• Different emotions can share common biological
signatures.

• Subtle indicators depict the physiology of different

emotions.
• Fear versus rage: Finger temperature and hormone
secretions display the difference.
• Fear versus joy: Different facial muscles are stimulated.
 EMBODIED EMOTION
(PART 7)
• Physiology of emotions: Brain scans
• Brain scans and electroencephalograms (EEGs) reveal
that some emotions differ in their brain circuits.
• The right frontal lobe is active when an individual is
depressed and experiences negative emotions.
• The left frontal lobe is active when an individual
experiences positive moods.

• Differences in emotions from tracking heart rate,

breathing, and perspiration cannot be easily seen.
• But facial expressions and brain activity can vary from one
emotion to another.
• Lie detection
• Polygraph: Measures emotion-linked changes in
breathing, heart rate, and perspiration

• There is considerable skepticism related to the

effectiveness of polygraphs.
• Humans have similar bodily arousal in response to
anxiety, irritation, and guilt.
• Many innocent people do get tense and nervous
when accused of a bad act.

• Guilty knowledge test is more effective.

EMBODIED EMOTION (PART

8)
 EMBODIED EMOTION
(PART 9)
• Detecting emotion in others
• Humans communicate without words.
• Gazes can communicate intimacy.
• Darting eyes may signal anxiety.
• A firm handshake is evident of an outgoing, expressive
personality in Western societies.

• Humans have the ability to detect nonverbal threats.

• It is difficult to detect deceiving emotions, despite the
brain’s emotion-detecting abilities.
• Is there a female advantage in emotion detection?
• An emotion detection advantage emerges early in
female development.
• Tendency to respond with and express greater
emotion
• More likely to express empathy; smaller gender
gap
• Experience emotional events deeply and tend to
remember scenarios better than men

• One exception
• Anger strikes most people as a more masculine
emotion.

EMBODIED EMOTION (PART

10)
EMBODIED
EMOTION (PART
11)
• Researchers
manipulated a
gender-neutral face.
• People were more
likely to see it as
a male when it
wore an angry
expression, and
as a female when
it wore a smile.
 EMBODIED EMOTION
(PART 12)
• Culture and emotion
• The meaning of gestures varies from culture to culture.
• Prehistoric ancestors communicated threats, greetings,
and submission with gestures before words evolved.

• Facial expressions also have different meanings in

different cultures.
• Some emotional categories are clear universals: Smile,
laughter, sadness.
• People everywhere can discriminate real from fake laughs.
• Facial expressions are cultural events with display rules.
 EMBODIED EMOTION
(PART 13)
• Effects of facial expressions
• Outward expressions and movements trigger inner
feelings and emotions.
• Facial feedback effect: The tendency of facial muscle
states to trigger corresponding feelings (for example, fear,
anger, or happiness)
• The face displays and feeds an individual’s feelings.
• Behavior feedback effect: Going through the motions
awakens the emotions.