Chapter Review: Motivation and Emotion

Test yourself by taking a moment to answer each of these Learning Objective Questions (repeated here from within the chapter). Research suggests that trying to answer these questions on your own will improve your long-term memory of the concepts (McDaniel et al., 2009).

Motivational Concepts

Question 9.16

What is motivation, and what are three key perspectives that help us understand motivated behaviors?

  • Motivation is a need or desire that energizes and directs behavior.
  • Drive-reduction theory: We feel motivated when pushed by a physiological need to reduce a drive (such as thirst), or when pulled by an incentive in our environment (an ice-cold drink). Drive-reduction’s goal is homeostasis, maintaining a steady internal state.
  • Arousal theory: We also feel motivated to behave in ways that maintain arousal (for example, curiosity-driven behaviors).
  • Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: Our levels of motivation form a pyramid of human needs, from basic needs such as hunger and thirst up to higher level needs such as self-actualization and self-transcendence.

Hunger

Question 9.17

What physiological factors cause us to feel hungry?

  • Hunger’s pangs correspond to the stomach’s contractions, but hunger also has other causes. Neural areas in the brain, some within the hypothalamus, monitor blood chemistry (including level of glucose) and incoming information about the body’s state.
  • Appetite hormones include insulin (controls blood glucose); ghrelin (secreted by an empty stomach); orexin (secreted by the hypothalamus); leptin (secreted by fat cells); and PYY (secreted by the digestive tract).
  • Basal metabolic rate is the body’s resting rate of energy output. The body may have a set point (a biologically fixed tendency to maintain an optimum weight) or a looser settling point (which is also influenced by the environment).

Question 9.18

How do psychological, biological, cultural, and situational factors affect our taste preferences and eating habits?

  • Hunger also reflects our memory of when we last ate and our expectation of when we should eat again.
  • Humans as a species prefer certain tastes (such as sweet and salty), but our individual preferences are also influenced by conditioning, culture, and situation.
  • Some taste preferences, such as the avoidance of new foods, or of foods that have made us ill, have survival value.

Question 9.19

What factors predispose some people to become and remain obese?

  • Genes and environment interact to produce obesity.
  • Twin and adoption studies indicate that body weight is genetically influenced.
  • Environmental influences include too little sleep and exercise, an abundance of high-calorie food, and social influence.
  • Those wishing to lose weight are advised to make a lifelong change in habits: Get enough sleep; boost energy expenditure through exercise; limit variety and minimize exposure to tempting food cues; eat healthy foods and reduce portion sizes; space meals throughout the day; beware of the binge; monitor eating during social events; forgive the occasional lapse; and connect to a support group.

The Need to Belong

Question 9.20

What evidence points to our human need to belong?

  • Social bonds are adaptive and help us to be healthier and happier. Feeling loved activates brain regions associated with rewards and satisfaction.
  • When shunned by others, people suffer from stress and depression and may engage in self-defeating or antisocial behavior. Social isolation can put us at risk for mental decline and ill health.

Question 9.21

How does social networking influence us?

  • We connect with others through social networking, strengthening our relationships with those we already know. When networking, people tend toward increased self-disclosure.
  • Working out strategies for self-control and disciplined usage can help people maintain a healthy balance between social connections and school and work performance.

Emotion: Arousal, Behavior, and Cognition

Question 9.22

What are the three parts of an emotion, and what theories help us to understand our emotions?

  • Emotions are psychological responses of the whole organism involving bodily arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience.
  • James-Lange theory: Emotional feelings follow our body’s response to the emotion-arousing stimuli. (We observe our heart pounding and feel fear.)
  • Cannon-Bard theory: Our body responds to emotion at the same time that we experience that emotion. (Neither causes the other.)
  • Schachter-Singer two-factor theory: Emotions have two ingredients, physical arousal and a cognitive label, and the cognitive labels we put on our states of arousal are an essential ingredient of emotion.
  • Richard Lazarus agreed that many important emotions arise from our interpretations or inferences. Robert Zajonc and Joseph LeDoux, however, believe that some simple emotional responses occur instantly, not only outside our conscious awareness, but before any cognitive processing occurs. This interplay between emotion and cognition illustrates our two-track mind.

Embodied Emotion

Question 9.23

What are some basic emotions?

  • Carroll Izard’s basic emotions are joy, interest-excitement, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, fear, shame, and guilt.

Question 9.24

What is the link between emotional arousal and the autonomic nervous system?

  • The arousal component of emotion is regulated by the autonomic nervous system’s sympathetic (arousing) and parasympathetic (calming) divisions.
  • In a crisis, the fight-or-flight response automatically mobilizes your body for action.

Question 9.25

How do our body states relate to specific emotions? How effective are polygraphs in using body states to detect lies?

  • The large-scale body changes that accompany sexual arousal, fear, and anger are very similar (increased perspiration, breathing, and heart rate), though they feel different. Emotions may be similarly arousing, but some subtle physiological responses (such as facial muscle movements) distinguish them.
  • Emotions use different circuits in the brain. For example, greater activity in the left frontal lobe signals positive rather than negative moods.
  • Polygraphs (lie detectors) attempt to measure physical evidence of emotions, but they are not accurate enough to justify widespread use in business and law enforcement.
  • The use of guilty knowledge questions and new forms of technology may produce better indications of lying.

Expressed and Experienced Emotion

Question 9.26

How do we communicate nonverbally? How do women and men differ in these abilities?

  • We are good at detecting emotions from body movements, facial expressions, and voice tones. Even seconds-long video clips of behavior can reveal feelings.
  • Women tend to read emotional cues more easily and to be more empathic. Their faces also express more emotion.

Question 9.27

How are nonverbal expressions of emotion understood within and across cultures?

  • The meaning of gestures varies by culture.
  • Facial expressions, such as those of happiness and fear, are roughly similar all over the world. Research on the facial feedback effect shows that our facial expressions can trigger emotional feelings and signal our body to respond accordingly. We also mimic others’ expressions, which helps us empathize.

Question 9.28

How do facial expressions influence our feelings?

  • Research on the facial feedback effect shows that our facial expressions can trigger emotional feelings and signal our body to respond accordingly. We also mimic others’ expressions, which helps us empathize.

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