Motivation and

Emotion
Fahria Karim
Lecturer
NSU
Suppose you are locked in a room
with handcuff in your left hand. No
help is coming. There is no food. You
can see the keys of the room door at
the other end of the big room. You
know, the only way to escape is to
break your wrist bones and uncuff
yourself.

What will you do?

 • Motivation: The factors that
direct and energize the behavior
of humans and other organisms

Motivation
 • Instinct approaches: The explanation of
motivation that suggests people and
animals are born preprogrammed with
sets of behaviors essential to their survival

• An exploratory behavior may be motivated

Instinct by an instinct to examine one’s territory, a
sexual behavior may be a response to an
Approaches instinct to reproduce

• The approach has several difficulties: how

many primary instinct exist? Some found
18, some even found 5759 distinct
instincts!
 • Theories suggesting that a lack of some basic
biological need produces a drive to push an
organism to satisfy that need

• For example, lack of water produces thirst

Drive- (drive), hence we seek to drink (drive reduction)

Reduction • A drive is motivational tension, or arousal that

energizes behavior to fulfill a need
Approaches
• Primary drives: Basic drives which fulfill
biological needs e.g. Hunger, thirst, sleep, and
sex

• Secondary drives: Behavior fulfills no obvious

biological need. Here, prior experience and
learning bring about needs e.g. Achievement
need
 • In drive-reduction approach, the body
seeks for homeostasis (the tendency to
maintain a steady internal state)

• Many fundamental needs such as need for

food, water, stable body temperature,
sleep operate via homeostasis

Cont. • This approach provides good explanation

of how primary drives motivate behavior

• However, they can’t fully explain behavior

in which the goal is not to reduce a drive
rather to maintain or even increase a level
of excitement
• Example?
 • Arousal approaches seek to explain
behavior in which the goal is to
maintain or increase excitement

• Like drive-reduction model, this

approach suggests that if our
Arousal stimulation and activity levels become
too high, we try to reduce them
Approaches
• Unlike drive-reduction model, it also
suggests that if levels of stimulation or
activity are too low, we try to increase
them by seeking stimulation
• Example?
 • Theories suggesting that motivation
stems from the desire to attain
external rewards, known as incentives

• In this view, the desirable properties

Incentive of external stimuli- whether grades,
money, affection, food, or sex-
Approaches account for a person’s motivation
• Example?

• Drives and incentives may work

together in motivating behavior
 • The approach suggests that motivation is the
outcome of people’s thoughts, beliefs,
expectations, and goals

• For instance, the degree to which students

are motivated to study for a test is based on
Cognitive their expectation of how well studying will
pay off in terms of good grades

Approaches • Intrinsic motivation: Causes us to participate

in an activity for our own enjoyment rather
than any actual concrete reward

• Extrinsic motivation: Causes us to do

something for money, a grade, or some other
actual concrete reward
• Example?
Attendance
Maslow’s
Hierarchy: • Maslow’s model places motivational
needs in a hierarchy and suggests that

Ordering before more sophisticated, higher-

order needs can be met, certain
primary needs must be satisfied
Motivational
Needs
Cont.
 To be
continued…
 • Although hunger may be one of the most
potent primary drives, there are powerful
secondary drives that have no clear
biological basis and they also motivate us

• The need for achievement is a stable

The Need for learned characteristic in which a person
Achievement obtains satisfaction by striving for and
achieving challenging goals

• They seek for situations in which they can

compete against some objective
standards e.g. grade, money, winning a
game and prove themselves successful
 • People with high need for
achievement are selective in
picking challenges

• Tend to avoid situation where

Cont. success is too easy, or success is
highly unlikely to come

• They generally choose tasks that

are of intermediate difficulty
 • In contrast, people with low
achievement motivation tend to be
motivated primarily by a desire to avoid
failure

• They seek out easy tasks, so they are

sure to avoid failure

Cont. • Or they seek out very difficult tasks for

which failure has no negative
implication because almost everyone
would fail at them

• People with high fear of failure will stay

away from the tasks of intermediate
difficulty because they may fail where
others have been successful
 • The measuring instrument most
frequently used is the Thematic
Apperception Test (TAT)

Measuring • An examiner shows a series of

ambiguous pictures and tells
Achievement participants to write a story that
describes what is happening, who the
Motivation people are, what led to the situation,
what the people are thinking or
wanting, and what will happen next
Cont.
 • An interest in establishing and
maintaining relationships with other
people

• Individuals with a high need for

The Need for affiliation write TAT stories that
emphasize the desire to maintain or
Affiliation reinstate friendships and show
concern over being rejected by friends
 • A tendency to seek impact, control, or influence
over others and to be seen as a powerful
individual

• People with strong needs for power tend to work

The Need for in professions in which their power needs may be
fulfilled such as business management and
Power surprisingly-teaching

• Even in college, they are more likely to collect

prestigious possessions such as electronic
devices, sport cars

• Some significant gender differences exist in the

display of need for power. Example?
Understanding • Emotion: Feelings that generally have
both physiological and cognitive
Emotional elements and that influence behavior

Experiences • Example?
 • What would it be like if we didn’t
experience emotion?

• The most important functions of

emotions are:
The Functions
of Emotions • Preparing us for action

• Shaping our future behavior

• Helping us interact more effectively

with others
 • If we were to list the words in English
that have been used to describe
emotions, we would end up with at
least 500 examples, ranging from such
obvious emotions as happiness and
Determining fear to less common ones as
adventurousness and pensiveness
the Range of (expressing or revealing
thoughtfulness, usually marked by
Emotions some sadness)

• There are lists of emotions suggested

by several researchers
 • One approach to organizing emotions is to use a
hierarchy, which divides emotions into
increasingly narrow subcategories

Cont.
Cont.
 • Consider the experience of fear. What
happens? (Example)

• Along with different kinds of thought,

something dramatic will be happening
The Roots of to your body

Emotions • Of course all those physiological

changes are likely to occur without
your awareness (work of Autonomic
nervous system)
 • Some theories suggest that specific physiological
reactions cause us to experience a particular
emotion

• For example, when the heart is pounding and we

are breathing deeply, we then experience fear
Cont.
• In contrast, other theories suggest the opposite
sequence that is, we experience an emotion, and
that causes us to have a physiological reaction

• In this view, as a result of experiencing the

emotion of fear, our heart pounds and breathing
deepens
 • The belief that emotional experience is
a reaction to bodily events occurring as
a result of an external situation
• I feel sad because I am crying

The James- • I feel afraid because I tremble

Lange
Theory James-Lange suggested that for every
emotion there is an accompanying
physiological or ‘gut’ reaction of internal
organs called- Visceral experience
Think-Pair-
Share
What can be the possible drawbacks of
the James-Lange theory?
Attendance
 • The belief that both physiological
arousal and emotional experience are
produced simultaneously by the same
nerve stimulus

The Cannon- • This theory rejects the James-Lange

view that only physiological arousal
Bard Theory alone leads to perception of emotion
 • The theory states: First we perceive an
emotion-producing stimulus, the
thalamus sends a signal to autonomic
nervous system, thereby producing a
visceral response

Cont. • Simultaneously, thalamus also

communicates a message to the
cerebral cortex regarding the nature of
the emotion being experienced

• Recent research has made some

important modification of the theory:
we now understand that Hypothalamus
and Limbic system not Thalamus play
major role of emotional experience
 • The belief that emotions are
determined jointly by a nonspecific
kind of physiological arousal and its
interpretation, based on
environmental cues

The Schachter- • This approach to explaining emotions

Singer Theory emphasizes that we identify the
emotion we are experiencing by
observing our environment and
comparing ourselves with others
 • Schachter-Singer’s classic Experiment?

• The result of the experiment supported a

cognitive view of emotion

Cont. • Schachter and Singer were right in the

following assumption:

• When the source of physiological arousal is

unclear, we may look to our surroundings to
determine what we are experiencing
 • As new approaches to emotion
continue to develop, it is reasonable to
ask why so many theories of emotion
Making exist

Sense of the • Actually, we have only scratched the

Multiple surface

Perspectives • In short, emotions are such complex

on Emotion phenomena, encompassing both
biological and cognitive aspects

• Hence, no single theory has been able

to explain fully all the factors of
emotional experience
The End...