What did Maslow mean when saying that the needs that motivate human behavior form a hierarchy?

Maslow meant that needs exist at different levels and a person has to fulfill lower-level needs (e.g., biological survival needs like eating) in order to progressively move up to the highest level, self-actualization.

Does hunger alone motivate us to eat?

No. Set-point theories of hunger and eating propose that we eat to maintain an energy homeostasis, but they can’t explain why we eat when we are not hungry. Hedonic hunger arises when delicious-looking food whets our appetite. This hunger was likely naturally selected, because it caused us to eat when food was available, thereby protecting us for times when food was unavailable.

What characterizes eating disorders? What causes them?

Anorexia nervosa is characterized by a fear of being fat, which results in individuals starving themselves, often so severely that they experience bone thinning and loss of muscle mass. Bulimia nervosa is characterized by a fluctuating pattern of binging and purging, often through self-induced vomiting. It can result in dehydration and tooth decay, among other problems. Binge eating disorder is characterized by binging without purging and can cause obesity. Eating disorders can be caused by factors that include social pressures for thinness, parental criticism, and perfectionism.

How does sexual motivation differ from the motivation to eat?

First, a person can live without sex but cannot live without food. Second, the diversity of behaviors associated with sexual motivation exceeds that associated with hunger; there is a diversity of people to whom sexual desires are directed and a diversity of stimuli that trigger sexual arousal. Moreover, sexual desires motivate diverse activities, including a range of behaviors that are not inherently sexual. Finally, there is a greater diversity of reasons for having sex.

What is the biological basis of sexual desire?

Experimental research indicates that testosterone plays a role in motivating sexual desire.

Is everyone equally motivated to achieve? How can we measure the need for achievement?

People differ in the strength of their need to achieve. Researchers assess these individual differences through indirect measures, such as asking participants to tell stories in response to pictures. People who tell stories about characters striving to achieve and who are concerned about success are people high in the need for achievement.

What kind of person is most likely to seek out challenges?

Research indicates that participants who are high in need for achievement and low in need to avoid failure tend to seek out greater challenges, relative to those who are low in need for achievement and high in the need to avoid failure, who tend to be more cautious.

B-29

Does everyone feel the need to belong?

Yes. Research suggests that the need to belong is universal. Many argue that this need is rooted in our evolutionary past. People who felt a need to belong benefited from the safety advantages of group living.

Are we satisfied with a vague understanding of events?

No. In pursuit of our need for understanding, we want to achieve not merely a vague grasp of events, but cognitive closure, a firm understanding that resolves ambiguities and eliminates confusion.

How do we benefit from having control over outcomes?

The need for control encompasses a need for autonomy and a need for mastery. Students whose teachers give them more autonomy over their classroom experiences show greater interest in school material. Cancer patients who respond to their diagnosis with feelings of mastery are better able to battle the disease. They report less pain and fatigue during treatment.

What kinds of behaviors are explained by the need to enhance the self?

The need to enhance the self can help us understand why we pursue goals related to spiritualism. For example, in medieval Europe, most citizens lived in relative poverty but societies spent hundreds of millions of dollars building great cathedrals. In the contemporary world, many people expend great time and effort on spiritual aims. These expenditures can’t be explained by suggesting that we are only motivated by biological needs.

What are everyday examples of our uniquely human need for trust?

Much of everyday social life rests on trust. A grocery store gives you food in exchange for your signature on a piece of paper. You give money to bank tellers, trusting they will deposit it.

What is the biological basis of trust?

Experimental research suggests that the biochemical basis of trust is oxytocin, a hormone released into the body and the brain whose primary function is to aid the birth and survival of children. However, as you saw in This Just In, the effect of oxytocin can further depend on individual difference variables, such as one’s level of social skills and the degree to which one is anxious about relationships.

What kinds of goals are most motivationally powerful?

The most motivationally powerful goals are specific and challenging, yet within the confines of your potential abilities. In addition, the proximity of goals is important. Proximal goals are those that specify what you should do in the short-term future and seem more manageable than distal goals, which specify what you should do in the distant future and can be overwhelming.

How important is feedback in motivation?

Experimental research indicates that having specific goals and specific feedback can be highly motivating because they provide people with the opportunity to become angry with themselves when they fall short and to feel proud when they succeed.

What type of goals can impose organization on our lives?

Personal projects are goals that (1) incorporate a number of different actions with a common purpose that (2) extend over a significant period of time. An example is getting into graduate school. One must engage in several diverse activities toward that goal, over a period of time. Personal projects lend organization to life by giving meaning to what might otherwise seem to be a series of disconnected behaviors.

Can features of the environment activate goals that affect our behavior without our awareness?

Yes. For example, in one study, participants who had been exposed to achievement-related words via a word-search puzzle later worked harder on a subsequent task than those who had been exposed to neutral words.

How detailed should we be in our goal setting?

Very detailed, according to research on implementation intentions. In one study, most participants who specified when and where they would write a report actually wrote the report, whereas two-thirds of the participants with no implementation intentions failed to do so.

Can implementation intentions motivate you to save for retirement?

Not easily. It’s difficult to focus on the when and where of behavior for goals that are distal and abstract. In one study, however, researchers were able to increase participants’ willingness to save for their retirement by digitizing photographs of participants to make them look older. The participants who viewed their “older selves” were led to see their future selves as less abstract and put more hypothetical money into a retirement plan than did other participants.

Can your belief in your own capacity for growth influence motivation?

Yes. Unlike people with a fixed mindset, who believe intelligence is fixed, those with a growth mindset see intelligence as something that can be changed; they consequently tend to interpret difficult tasks as opportunities to learn, seeing challenges and setbacks as opportunities to grow their skills. Those with a fixed mindset tend to interpret setbacks as signs that they don’t have enough intelligence. Consequently, they experience discouragement and reduced motivation.

B-30

Why does motivation decrease when we receive external rewards for activities we enjoy?

When people are intrinsically motivated to engage in an activity, and then receive an external reward for doing so, their intrinsic motivation goes down because those rewards reduce their sense of autonomy. However, as you saw in Cultural Opportunities, this general finding may not replicate across all cultures. In one Asian American sample and two Indian samples, autonomy actually decreased motivation.

When working toward a goal, should you focus on strategies that can help you achieve your goal or strategies that can help you avoid failure?

That depends on whether you are promotion- or prevention-focused. If you are promotion-focused, a better regulatory fit for you would be to select accomplishment strategies, such as completing your work on time. If you are prevention-focused, a better regulatory fit for you would be to select avoidance strategies, such as to stop procrastinating.

How can you achieve a “flow” state?

The two key ingredients for creating flow states are the presence of (1) activities that are challenging yet do not exceed people’s skills, and (2) clear task goals and feedback. Any activity with these ingredients can provide a sense of flow. Our knowledge of flow states has benefited greatly from research that employs experience sampling methods, as you saw in Research Toolkit.

Does the presence of others improve or worsen performance?

It can do both. The presence of others increases the strength of a dominant response, which is the response that is most likely in a given setting. On tasks in which you have less skill, this response is the wrong response, and so the presence of others will decrease performance. On tasks for which you’re highly skilled, the presence of others should enhance performance.

Do school grades measure intelligence or self-discipline?

Research indicates that self-discipline is often a more important predictor of grades than is intelligence.

How can teachers increase students’ motivation?

They can do so by helping students set a goal of learning and mastering material, rather than merely earning high grades. They can also adopt a mindset program, in which they teach students that the brain changes with experience. Research indicates that doing so decreases students’ concern with “smarts” and encourages them to put more effort into learning material. However, if students do not associate academic success with their personal worth or if they live in settings in which school success is not valued in their peer group, they may be less personally invested in school success.

What payment plan should you adopt if you want to motivate your employees?

In settings in which employees work individually, companies can maximize productivity by paying individuals according to the amount of work each individual has produced. In settings in which people work in coordinated teams, companies can maximize productivity by paying everyone in the group roughly the same amount of money, and providing pay raises based on the success of the group as a whole.

What type of leadership style is most motivating?

Transformational leadership predicts greater employee motivation and greater satisfaction with the leader, relative to transactional leadership, in which the leader simply appeals to workers’ self-interest by providing rewards to them if they meet objectives.

What are the biological bases of approach and avoidance motivation?

Signals of reward activate the behavioral approach system, energizing the organism to seek out those stimuli. The neurotransmitter dopamine is the biochemical key to this system and the exact neural structures within the brain are the brain stem and limbic system. Dopamine travels along a bundle of nerve fibers, the medial forebrain bundle, to a set of neurons that is central to the pursuit of rewards, the nucleus accumbens. Signals of punishment activate the behavioral inhibition system, prompting the organism to attend to environmental threats. The most important neurotransmitter is serotonin, and the key neural systems are in the hippocampus and the amygdala.

What is the biological basis of addiction?

Addictive substances affect the brain’s reward system by increasing dopamine activity. Addiction can reduce the normal functioning of the brain’s reward system so that naturally occurring events become less rewarding and people lose motivation for everyday activities. Addiction can also increase the activity of brain systems that produce emotionally negative withdrawal states when a person’s levels of an addictive substance are low.

B-31

What brain regions are active during goal processing?

One brain-imaging study indicated that two different brain regions were active during goal processing: the posterior cingulate cortex, which is known to be active when people think about future events, and the ventral medial prefrontal cortex, which is involved in computing the degree to which a piece of information is valuable to oneself. Activation in these two areas of the brain is consistent with a psychological analysis of goal processing.