Walking Tall

Debi R. was a relatively healthy woman in her

early fifties when her back began to bother her. Her doctor

recommended surgery to relieve two bad disks in her back.

Her disks had begun to slip out of place, causing the pain

in her back.

After the surgery, the pain was still there. The

surgeon operated again the next day, saying that another

disk had ruptured. When Debi began to recover, she found

that she could not move her legs or feel her feet- she was

partially paralyzed. Several months later the truth was

revealed that the doctor had operated on the wrong side of

her disks the first time and then made matters worse by

operating again while her tissues were still swollen. Debi

was told that she might never walk again.

That was over a year ago. Today Debi still has

pain but can walk with only a cane to aid in her balance.

She still has numbness in her feet, but she is no longer

confined to a wheelchair. How did she do it? She refused to

accept the predictions of the doctors and she work extremely

hard to achieve the goal of walking again. She did

everything that therapists told her to do, and when the

therapy was stopped, she continued on her own. She is

finally at the point where she can walk for short distances

with no help at all.

Debi was able to overcome her disability because

she was highly motivated to do so. She also overcame her

fears about not being able to walk and manages her feelings

about the pain and the unfairness of what happened to her so

that her outlook on life remains sunny and joyful. Each day

brings a new hope that more progress will be made. Debi

isn’t even close to giving up.

Why Study Motivation And Emotion?

The study of motivation not only helps us

understand why we eat and drink the way we do but also why

some people are more driven to achieve than others. Emotions

are a part of everything we do, affecting our relationships

with others and our own health, as well as influencing

important decisions. In this chapter, we will explore the

motives behind our actions and the origins and influences of

emotions.

Approaches to Understanding Motivation

How do psychologists define motivation, and what are the key

elements of the early instinct and drive –reduction

approaches to motivation?

Motivation is the process by which activities are

started, directed, and continued so that physical or

psychological needs or wants are met. The word itself comes

from the Latin word movere, which means “to move”.

Motivation is what “moves” people to do the things they do.

For example, when a person is relaxing in front of the

television and begins to feel hungry, the physical need for

food might cause the person to get up, go into the kitchen,

and search for something to eat. If the hunger is great

enough, the person might even cook something. The physical

need of hunger caused the action (getting up), directed it

(going to the kitchen), and sustained the search (finding or

preparing something to eat). Hunger is only one example,, of

course. Loneliness may lead to calling a friend or going to

a place where there are people. The desire to get ahead in

life motivates many people to go to college. Just getting

out of bed in the morning is motivated by the need to keep a

roof over one’s head and food on the table by going to work.

There are different types of motivation.

Sometimes people are driven to do

Something because of an external reward of some sort (or the

avoidance of an unpleasant consequence), as when someone

goes to work at a job to make money and avoid losing

possessions such as a house or a car. When the motivation is

external (coming from outside the self), it is called

extrinsic motivation. In extrinsic motivation, a person

performs an action because it leads to an outcome that is

separate from the person. Other examples would be giving a

child money for every “A” on a report card, offering a bonus

to an employee for increased performance, or tipping a

server in a restaurant for good service. The child,

employee, and server are motivated to work for the external

or extrinsic rewards. In contrast, intrinsic motivation, is

the type of motivation in which a person performs an action

because the act itself is rewarding or satisfying in some

internal manner. You might remember that in the Classic

Studies in Psychology Section in Chapter One, Psychologist

Teresa Amabile found that children’s creativity was affected

by the kind of motivation for which they worked: Extrinsic

motivation decreased the degree of creativity shown in the

experimental group’s artwork when compared to the creativity

levels of the children in the intrinsically motivated

control group.

Instinct Approaches

One of the earliest approaches to motivation

focused on the biologically determined and innate patterns

of behavior that exist in both people and animals called

instincts. Just as animals are governed by their instincts

to do things such as migrating, nest building, mating, and

protecting their territory, early researches proposed that

human beings may also be governed by similar instincts.

According to these instinct approach theorists, in humans

the instinct to reproduce is responsible for sexual

behavior, and the instinct for territorial protection may be

related it aggressive behavior.

William McDougall proposed a total of 18

instincts for humans, including curiosity, flight (running

away), pugnacity (aggressiveness), and acquisition

(gathering possessions). As the years progressed,

psychologists added more and more instincts to the list

until there were thousands of proposed instincts. However,

none of this early theorists did much more than give names

to these instincts. Although there were plenty of

descriptions, such as “submissive people possess the

instinct of submission,” there was no attempt to explain why

these instincts exist in humans, if they exist at all.

Freud’s psychoanalytic theory still includes

the concepts of instincts that reside in the id (the part of

the personality containing all the basic human needs and

drives). Even so, instinct approaches have faded away

because, although they could describe human behavior, they

could not explain it. But these approaches did accomplish

one important thing by forcing psychologists to realize that

some human behavior is controlled by hereditary factors.

This idea remains central in the study of human behavior

today.

Drive-Reduction Approaches

The next approach to gain support involved the

concepts of needs and drives. A need is a requirement of

some material (such as food or water) that is essential for

survival of the organism. When an organism has a need, it

leads to a psychological tension as well as a physical

arousal that motivates the organism to act in order to

fulfill the need and reduce the tension. This tension is

called a drive.

Drive-reduction theory proposes just this

connection between internal physiological state and outward

behavior. In this theory, there are two kinds of drives.

Primary drives are those that involve survival needs of the

body such as hunger and thirst, whereas acquired (secondary)

drives are those that are learned through experience or

conditioning, such as the need for money or social approval,

or the need of recent former smokers to have something to

put in their mouths. If this sounds familiar, it should. The

concepts of primary and secondary reinforces from Chapter

Five are related to these drives. Primary reinforces satisfy

primary drives, and secondary reinforces satisfy acquired,

or secondary, drives.

This theory also includes the concept of

homeostasis, or the tendency of the body to maintain a

steady state. One could think of homeostasis as the body’s

version. Of a thermostat-thermostats keep the temperature of

a house at a constant level, and homeostasis does the same

thing for the body’s functions. When there is a primary

drive need, the body is in a state of imbalance. This

stimulates behavior that brings the body back into balance,

or homeostasis. For example, if Jarrod’s body needs food, he

feels hunger and the state of tension/arousal associated

with that need. He will then seek to restore his homeostasis

by eating something, which is the behavior stimulated to

reduce the hunger drive.

Although drive-reduction theory works well to

explain the actions people take to reduce tension created by

needs, it does not explain human motivation. Why do people

eat when they are not really hungry? People don’t always

seek to reduce their inner arousal either-sometimes they

seek to increase it. Bungee-jumping, parachuting as a

recreation, rock climbing, and watching horror movies are

all activities that increase the inner state of tension and

arousal, and many people love doing these activities. Why

would people do such things if they don’t reduce some need

or restore homeostasis? The answer is complex: There are

different types of needs different effects of arousal,

different incentives, and different levels of importance

attached to many forms of behavior.

Different Strokes For Different Folks: Needs

Obviously, motivation is about needs. Drive-

reduction theory talks about needs, and other theories, most

needs are the result of some inner physical drives (such as

hunger or thirst) that demands to be satisfied. Harvard

University psychologist David C. McClelland proposed a

theory of motivation highlights the importance of three

psychological needs not typically considered by the other

theories: achievement, affiliation, and power.

Need for Achievement: How to Succeed by Excelling at

Everything

The need for achievement involves a strong desire

to succeed in attaining goals, not only realistic ones but

also challenging ones. People who are high in nAch look for

careers and hobbies that allow others to evaluate them

because these high achievers also need to have feedback

about their performance in audition to the achievement of

reaching the goal. Although many of these people do become

wealthy, famous, and publicly successful, others fulfill

their need to achieve in ways that lead only to their own

personal success, not material riches- they just want the

challenge.

Achievement motivation appears to be strongly

related to success in school, occupational success, and the

quality and amount of what a person produces. The chapter-

opening story of Debi R. is a good example of the need for

achievement. Debi’s desire to overcome her physical

difficulties and walk once again had nothing to do with

becoming successful or wealthy, but she certainly showed a

strong desire to achieve a challenging goal.

Need for Affiliation: Popularity Rules

Another psychological need is for friendly

social interactions and relationships with others. Called

the need for affiliation (nAff), people high in this need

seek to be liked by others and to be held in high regard by

those around them. This makes high affiliation people good

team players, whereas a person high in achievement just

might run over a few team members on the way to the top.

Need for Power: The One Who Dies with the Most

Toys Wins

The final psychological need proposed by

McClelland is the need for power (nPow). Power is not about

reaching a goal but about having control over other people.

People high in this need would want to have influence over

others and make an impact on them. They want their ideas to

be the ones that are used, regardless of whether or not

their ideas will lead to success. Status and prestige are

important, so these people wear expensive clothes, live in

expensive houses, drive fancy cars, and dine in the best

restaurants. Whereas someone of is a high achiever may not

need a lot of money to validate the achievement, someone who

is high in the need for power typically sees the money (and

cars, houses, jewelry, and other “toys”) as the achievement.

The subtitle for this section is a saying from a popular

bumper sticker but is really a comment on the more negative

aspect of the need for power. For the person high in the

need for power, it’s all about who has the most expensive

“toys” in the end.

Personality and nAch: Carol Dweck’s Self-Theory

of Motivation

How do people get to be high achievers?

According to motivation and personality psychologist Carol

Dweck, the need for achievement is closely linked to

personality factors, including a person’s view of how self

can affect the understanding of how much a person’s actions

can influence his or her success. (Dweck defines self as the

beliefs one holds about one’s abilities and relationships to

others.) This concept is related to the much older notion of

locus of control, in which people who assume that they have

control over what happens in their lives are considered to

be internal in locus of control, and those who feel that

their lives are controlled by powerful others, luck, or fate

are considered to be external in locus of control.

Dweck has amassed a large body of empirical

research, particularly in the field of education, to support

the idea that people’s “theories” about their own selves can

affect their level of achievement motivation and their

willingness to keep trying to achieve success in the face of

failure. According to this research, people can form one of

two belief systems about intelligence, which in turn affects

their motivation to achieve. Those who believe intelligence

is fixed and unchangeable often demonstrate an external

locus of control, leading them to give up easily or avoid

situations in which they might fail-often ensuring their own

failure in the process. They are prone to developing learned

helplessness, the tendency to stop trying to achieve a goal

because past failure has led them to believe that they

cannot succeed. Their goals involve trying to “look smart”

and outperform the others (“See, at least I did better than

she did”). For example, a student faced with a big exam may

avoid coming to class that day, even though that might mean

getting an even lower score on a makeup exam.

This does not mean that students with this

view of intelligence are always unsuccessful. In fact,

Dweck’s research suggests that students who have had a long

history of successes may be most at risk for developing a

learned helplessness after a big failure precisely because

their previous successes have led them to believe in their

own fixed intelligence. For example, a child who had never

earned anything less than an “A” in school who then receives

his first “C” might become depressed and refuse to do any

more homework, ensuring future failure.

The other type of person believes that

intelligence is changeable and can be shaped by experiences

and effort in small increases, or increments. These people

tend to show an internal locus of control, believing that

their own actions and efforts will improve their

intelligence. They work at developing new strategies and get

involved in new tasks, with the goal of increasing their

“smarts”. They are motivated to master tasks and don’t allow

failure to destroy their confidence in themselves or prevent

them from trying again and again, using new strategies each

time.

Based on this and other research, Dweck

recommends that parents and teachers encourage children to

value the learning process more than “looking smart” by

always having the right the answer (and only responding when

sure of that answer, for example). Errors should not be

viewed as failures but as a way to improve future

performance on the road to mastering whatever the goal in

question is. Essentially, this means praising efforts and

the methods that children use to make those efforts, not

just successes or ability. Instead of saying, ”You’re right,

how smart you are”, the parent or teacher should say

something such as, “You are really thinking hard”, or “That

was a very clever way to think about this problem”. In the

past, teachers and parents have been told that praise is

good and criticism is bad-it might damage a child’s self-

esteem. Dweck believes that constructive criticism, who

linked with praise of effort and the use of strategies, will

be a better influence on the child’s self-esteem than

endless praise that can become meaningless when given

indiscriminately.

Another explanation for human motivation

involves the recognition of yet another type of need, the

need for stimulation. A stimulus motive is one that appears

to be unlearned but causes an increase in stimulation.

Examples would be curiosity, playing, and exploration.

In arousal theory, people are said to have

an optimal (best or ideal) level of tension. Task

performances, for example, may suffer if the level of

arousal is too high (such as severe test anxiety) or even if

the level of arousal is too low (such as boredom). For many

kinds of tasks, a moderate level of arousal seems to be

best. This relationship between task performance and arousal

is called the Yerkes-Dodson law. However, this effect is

modified by the difficulty level of the task: Easy tasks

demand a somewhat “high moderate” level for optimal

performance, whereas difficult tasks require a “low-

moderate” level.

Maintaining an optimal level of arousal,

then, may involve reducing tension or creating it. For

example, husbands and wives who are underaroused may pick a

fight with their spouse. Students who experience test

anxiety (a high level of arousal) may seek out ways to

reduce that anxiety in order to improve test performance.

Students who are not anxious at all may not be motivated to

study well, lowering their test performance. Many arousal

theorists believe that the optimal level of arousal for most

people under normal circumstances is somewhere in the

middle, neither too high nor too low.

Even though the average person might require

a moderate level of arousal to feel content, there are some

people who need less arousal and some who need more. The

person who needs more arousal is called a sensation seeker.

Sensation seekers seem to need more complex and varied

sensory experiences than do other people. The need does not

always have to involve danger. For example, students who

travel to other countries to study tend to score higher on

scales of sensation seeking than do students who stay at

home. Sensation seeking may be related to temperament.

In one study, researches found evidence of

“sensation-seeking” behavior in children as young as age 2.

In this study, 90 children were studied at the ages of 6,

12, 24, and 25 months. In a test of the youngest

participants, the babies were shown to sets of toys: a

block, a plate, and a cup; or a flashing light, a toy

beeper, and a wind-up dragon. The first set was considered a

low-intensity stimulus whereas the second set was labeled a

high-intensity stimulus. The infants who reached out for the

toys more quickly, and reached for the high-intensity toys

in particular. Were labeled “approach motivated”.

The same children at age 2 were given an

opportunity to explore a black box with a hole in one side.

The children who were labeled “low approach motivated” at 6

and 12 months were unwilling to put their hands into the

hole to see what might be in the box, whereas the “high-

approach-motivated” children not only put their hands in but

also in some cases tried to climb into the box.

In sensation seeking something people have

when they are born? Although it is tempting to think of 6-

month-old children as having little in the way of

experiences that could shape their personalities, the fact

is that the first six months of life is full of experiences

that might affect children’s choices in the future. For

example, a very young infant might, while being carried,

stick a hand into some place that ends up causing pain. This

experience might affect that infants willingness in the

future to put his or her hand in something else through the

simple learning process of operant conditioning. Determining

the origins of sensation seeking will have to wait for

further research.

Incentive Approaches

Last Thanksgiving, I had eaten about all I

could. Then my aunt brought out a piece of her wonderful

pumpkin pie and I couldn’t resist-I ate it, even though I

was not at all hungry. What makes us do things even when we

don’t have the drive or need to do them? It’s true that

sometimes there is no physical need present, yet people

still eat, drink, or react as if they did have a need. Even

though that piece of pie was not necessary to reduce a

hunger drive, it was very rewarding, wasn’t it? And on past

occasions, that pie was also delicious and rewarding, so

there is anticipation of that reward now. The pie, in all

its glorious promise of flavor and sweetness, becomes an

incentive to eat. Incentives are things that attract or lure

people into action. In fact, the dictionary lists incentive

as meaning the same thing as motive.

In incentive approaches, behavior is

explained in terms of the external stimulus and its

rewarding properties. These rewarding properties exist

independently of any need or level of arousal and can cause

people to act only upon the incentive.

One of the earliest incentives approaches

clearly demonstrate the relationship to learning,

particularly the early cognitive learning theories found in

the work of Edward Tolman. Expectancy-value theories are a

class of incentive theories based on the work of Tolman and

others. In general, these theories assume that the actions

of humans cannot be predicted or fully understood without

understanding the beliefs, values, and the importance that

people attach to those beliefs and values at any given

moment in time. Tolman’s work with animals demonstrated that

organisms are capable of remembering what had happened in

the past, anticipating future events, and adjusting their

own actions according to those cognitive expectancies (a set

of beliefs about what will happen in the future based on

past experiences). Kurt Lewin applied these concepts to the

estimated likelihood of future success or failure in his

field theory of decision making. Julian Roter’s social

learning theory included expectancy as one of the three

factors that predict people’s behavior-if Terry’s past

experiences with writing papers, for example, have led to an

expectancy of failing to get a high grade, Terry is unlikely

to take on the task of an extra term paper to earn bonus

points.

By itself, the incentive approach does not

explain the motivation behind all behavior. Many theorists

today see motivation as a result of both the “push” of

internal needs or drives and the “pull” of a rewarding

external stimulus. For example, sometimes a person may

actually be hungry (the push) but choose to satisfy that

drive by selecting a candy bar instead of a rice cake. The

candy bar has more appeal to most people and it, therefore,

has more “pull” than the rice cake. (Frankly, to most

people, just about anything has more pull than a rice cake).

Humanistic Approaches: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

A final approach to the study of motivation is

based on the work of Abraham Maslow. Maslow was one of the

early humanistic psychologists who rejected the dominant

theories of psychoanalysis and behaviorism in favor of a

more positive view of human behavior. Maslow proposed that

there are several levels of needs that a person must strive

to meet before achieving the highest level of personality

fulfillment. According to Maslow, self-actualization is the

point that is seldom reached at which people have satisfied

the lower needs and achieved their full human potential.

These needs include both deficiency needs and

growth needs. Deficiency needs are needs of the body, such

as the need for food or water, whereas growth needs are for

desires like having friends or feeling good about oneself.

For a person to achieve self-actualization, which is the

highest level of growth needs, the primary, basic needs must

first be fulfilled.

The lowest level of the pyramid consists of

psychological needs such as food, water, and rest. Once

those needs are met, safety becomes important and involves

feeling secure. Belongingness and love are the needs for

friends and companions as well as to be accepted by others,

and self-esteem is the need to feel that one has

accomplished something good or earned the esteem of others.

Although Maslow’s original hierarchy included only one more

level of self-actualization needs, Maslow later inserted two

other needs just below this level. Just above the esteem

needs on the hierarchy come the cognitive needs, or the need

to know and understand the world. This need is typical of an

academic person who learns for the sake of gathering

knowledge, and all people have a natural curiosity. Above

the cognitive needs are the aesthetic needs, which include

the need for order the beauty and are typical of artistic

people. (It should be noted that all people also seem to

like to express themselves artistically-even if it’s only

graffiti on a wall). Once all these needs are met, it is

possible to be concerned about self-actualization needs, or

needs that help a person reach his or her full potential and

capabilities as a human being. Maslow also added a higher

need called transcendence above the self-actualization

needs. Transcendence involves helping others to achieve

their full potential. This aspect of Maslow’s hierarchy is

very similar to a stage in another theorist’s work. Erik

Erickson theorized a stage in personality development called

generativity, in which people focus on helping the next

generation through earlier crisis of personality

development.

People move up the pyramid as they go through

life, gaining wisdom and the knowledge of how to handle many

different situations. But a shift in life’s circumstances

can result in a shift down to a lower need. For example,

someone might be near the top, fulfilling the need for

growth in ways that lead to self-actualization (appreciation

of beauty, need for truth and justice, and helping others to

grow, for example). But if that person loses her job and

cannot find another one for quite some time, her money will

start running out. She might take a job that is not good for

her self-esteem out of love for her family and the need to

provide a safe place for them to live (by being able to make

the house payments) and food for them to eat. She would be

starting at the level of love and working her way back up.

Moving up and down and then back up can occur frequently-

even from one hour to the next. Times in a person’s life in

which self-actualization is achieved, at least temporarily,

are called peak experiences. For Maslow, the process of

growth and self-actualization is the striving to make peak

experiences happen again and again.

Here’s an example that might help in

understanding this hierarchy. In the movie Castaway, Tom

Hanks’s character is stranded on a deserted island. His

first concern is to find something to eat and fresh water to

drink-without those two things, he cannot survive. Even

while he is building a crude shelter, he is still thinking

about how to obtain food. Once he has those met, however, he

gets lonely. He finds a volleyball, paints a handprint and

then a crude face on it, and names it “Wilson”. He talks to

the volley ball as if it were a person, at first as a kind

of way to talk out the things he needs to do and later as a

way of staying relatively sane. The need for companionship

is that strong.

Maslow’s theory has had a powerful influence on

the field of management. Douglas McGregor, in his

explanations of two different styles of managements, relates

the older and less productive “Theory X” (workers are

unmotivated and need to be managed and directed) to Maslow’s

lower needs and the newer, more productive style of

management called “Theory Y” (workers want to work and want

that work to be meaningful) to the higher needs. In spite of

this influence, Maslow’s theory is not without its critics.

There are several problems that others have highlighted, and

the most serious is that there is little scientific support.

Like Sigmund Freud, Maslow developed his theory based on his

own personal observations of people rather than any

empirically gathered observations or research. Although many

people report that while they were starving, they could

think of nothing but food, there is anecdotal evidence in

the lives of many people, some of them quite well known,

that the lower needs do not have to be satisfied before

moving on to a higher need. For example, artists and

scientists throughout history have been known to deny their

own physical needs while producing great works (a self-

actualization). Abraham Lincoln and Edgar Allen Poe both

suffered from a severe mood disorder called bipolar

disorder, which causes the sufferer to have severe periods

of depression and insecurity. This should have placed them

on the lowest levels of the hierarchy, yet Lincoln and Poe

are responsible for some of the most memorable deeds and

works in history.

Maslow’s work was based on his studies of

Americans. Cross-cultural research suggests that the order

of needs on the hierarchy does not always hold true for

other cultures, particularly those cultures with a stronger

tendency than the culture of the United States to avoid

uncertainty, such as Greece and Japan. In those countries

security needs are much stronger than self-actualization

needs in determining motivation. This means that people in

those cultures value job security more than they do job

satisfaction (holding an interesting or challenging job). In

countries such as Sweden and Norway that stress the quality

of life as being of greater importance than what a person

produces, social needs may be more important than self-

actualization needs.

Other theorists have developed and refined

Maslow’s hierarchy. Clayton Alderfer developed one of the

more popular versions of this refinement. In his theory, the

hierarchy has only three levels: existence needs, which

include the physiological needs and basic safety needs that

provide for the person’s continued existence; relatedness

needs, which include some safety issues as well as

belongingness and self-esteem needs and are related to

social relationships; and growth needs, which include some

self-esteem issues and the self-actualization needs that

help people develop their full potential as human beings.

Alderfer believed that more than one need could

be active at a time and that progression up and down the

hierarchy is common as one type of need assumes greater

importance at a particular time in a person’s life than

other needs. This makes Alderfer’s hierarchy of needs less

rigid and more in line with observations about life’s “ups

and downs.”

Self-Determination Theory (SDT)

Another theory of motivation that is similar

to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is the self-determination

theory (SDT) of Ryan and Deci. In this theory, there are

three inborn and universal needs that help people gain a

complete sense of self and whole, healthy relationships with

others. The three needs are autonomy, or the need to be in

control of one’s own behavior and goals (i.e., self-

determination); competence, or the need to be able to master

the challenging tasks of one’s life; and relatedness, or the

need to feel a sense of belonging, intimacy, and security in

relationships with others. These needs are common in several

theories of personality; the relatedness needs is, of

course, similar to Maslow’s belongingness and love needs,

and both autonomy and competence are important aspects of

Erickson’s theory of psychosocial personality development.

Ryan, Deci, and their colleagues believe that

satisfying these needs can best be accomplished if the

person has a supportive environment in which to develop

goals and relationships with others. Such satisfaction will

not only foster healthy psychological growth but also

increase the individual’s intrinsic motivation (actions are

performed because the act is internally rewarding or

satisfying). Evidence suggests that intrinsic motivation is

increased or enhanced when a person not only feels

competence (through experience positive feedback from others

and succeeding at what are perceived to be challenging

tasks) but also a sense of autonomy or the knowledge that

his or her actions are self-determined rather than

controlled by others.

Previous research has found a negative impact

on intrinsic motivation when an external reward is given for

the performance, but a more recent paper discusses the

results of other studies that find negative effects only for

tasks that are not interesting in and of themselves. When

the task itself is interesting to the person (as might be an

assignment that an instructor or manager has explained in

terms of its importance and future value), external rewards

may increase intrinsic motivation, at least in the short

term. Although this recent finding is intriguing, further

research is needed to determine if the long-term effects of

extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation are consistently

negative, as the bulk of the research has shown up to now.

But don’t we sometimes do things for both

kinds of motives? There are usually elements of both

intrinsic and extrinsic motives in many of the things people

do. Most teachers, for example, work for money to pay bills

(the extrinsic motive) but may also feel that they are

helping young children to become better adults in the

future, which makes the teachers feel good about themselves

(the intrinsic motive).

The first section of this chapter has looked

at the motives that drive human behavior. But people do more

than just behave-there are feelings than accompany every

human action. The second section of the chapter explores the

world of human emotions and how those emotions are connected

to both thinking and actions.

Emotions

What part does the way we feel about things

play in all of our daily activities-what exactly causes

feelings? Human beings are full of feelings, or emotions,

and although emotions may be internal processes, there are

outward physical signs of what people are feeling.

What is emotion? A feeling? These terms are

difficult to define and even more difficult to understand

completely. People have been attempting to understand this

phenomenon for thousands of years, and will most likely

debate for a thousand more.

The mainstream definition of emotion refers to a

feeling state involving thought, physiological changes, and

an outward expression or behavior. But what comes first? The

thought? The physiological arousal? The behavior? Or does

emotion exist in a vacuum, whether or not these other

components are present or not?

Functions of Emotions

To appreciate the value and worth of emotions,

try living a single day without feeling or expressing any

emotion. It will be one of the worst days in your life

because emotions have three functions. Emotions send

powerful social signals about how you feel; emotions help

you adapt and survive in your world; and emotions cause

physiological arousal and motivate many of yours behaviors.

Let us examine these functions.

1. Social Signal

How does one know that a child is in pain,

hungry, distressed or feeling uncomfortable and needs the

sympathy, attention or compassion from significant others?

This is through facial expression.

Facial expressions that accompany emotions

communicate the state of your personal feelings and provide

different social signals that elicit a variety of responses

from those around you.

Such expressions may also accurately signal a

person’s emotional state or mood even though a person may

deny his or her feelings. Lack of emotional expressions may

indicate mental disorders like depression or schizophrenia.

2. Adaptation and Survival

Charles Darwin scientifically formulated the

existence of universal emotions that has inspired modern day

researches to study universal emotional expressions.

According to Charles Darwin, our early

ancestors evolved the ability to smile, cry, laugh and

display other emotional expressions because each facial

expressions helped the species to adapt and survive. From

Darwin’s idea, current researches proposed the

psychoevolutionary theory of emotions.

This theory says that we inherit the neural

structure and physiology to express and experience emotions

and that we evolve emotional patterns to adapt to our

environment and solve problems important for our survival.

Some emotions that have survival value are:

expressing anger may help one escape or survive a dangerous

situation; showing disgust may signal a presence of rotten

food; crying may indicate the need for help.

Emotions have also adaptive value: one may

smile as a gesture of friendliness, and sociability; one may

look angry to settle some conflicts; and look hurt when

jealous over someone.

3. Arousal and Motivation

An individual may spend hours playing video

games because such activity is arousing and motivates one to

work harder. However, studying foreign language may decrease

your arousal and motivation level because it is boring.

These examples show how emotions functions to arouse or

depress one’s behavior. There is a relationship between

emotional arousal and performance on a task. This is called

the Yerkes-Dodson Theory.

This law states that performance on a task is

an interaction between the level of physiological arousal

and the difficulty of a task; Example: For difficult tasks,

low arousal results to better performance; for most tasks,

moderate arousal helps performance; for easy tasks, high

arousal may facilitate performance.

Physiological Aspects of Emotions

Most of the physiological changes that take

place during emotional arousal result from the activation of

the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system as

it prepares our body for emergency action. The sympathetic

division is responsible for the following involuntary

physiological changes that accompany emotional experience.

1. Blood pressure and heart rate increase

2. Respiration becomes more rapid

3. Pupils Dilate

4. Perspiration increases while secretion of saliva and

mucous decreases

5. Blood sugar level increases to provide more energy

6. Blood clots more quickly in case of wounds

7. Blood is diverted from the stomach and intestines to

the brain and skeletal muscles

8. Raising of the hairs on the skin causing goose bumps

As the emotion subsides, the parasympathetic

system- the energy – conserving system takes over and

returns us to normal state.

These activities of the autonomic nervous

system are themselves triggered by activity in certain

critical regions of our brain, including the hypothalamus

and parts of the limbic system. The heightened physiological

arousal galvanizes us for action, to prepare us to fight or

flee.

Other Parts of the Brain that Make Emotions

Recent research conducted by Lane, et. al

and Reiman et. al, demonstrated the association between

emotional feelings and brain activity by injecting subjects

with nonharmful radioactive glucose solution that travels

through the subject’s bloodstream. Afterwhich, the subjects

were shown a film to make them feel a specific emotion

(sadness, happiness, disgust) or asked to recall a situation

that made them feel specific emotion. While the radioactive

glucose circulates through the subjects’ brain being

absorbed by the neuron, the researches at the same time are

taking PET scans that measure the amounts of radioactive

solution being absorbed by the neurons. Thus, PET scan

identify those areas of the subjects’ brain that are active

while feeling each different emotions.

Based from the study, the researches found

the areas of the brain, prefrontal cortex and thalamus were

activated when subjects felt any of the three emotions:

sadness, happiness, disgust. These two areas seem necessary

for processing information about any emotional feelings.

They also found out that certain areas were specific to

certain emotions: sadness was associated with activity in

“cerebellum”; and happiness and sadness with the activity in

the “medial temporal areas”.