RETRIEVAL PRACTICE Take a moment to answer each of these Learning Objective Questions (repeated here from within this section). Then click the 'show answer' button to check your answers. Research suggests that trying to answer these questions on your own will improve your long-term retention (McDaniel et al., 2009).

Motivation is a need or desire that energizes and directs behavior. The instinct/ evolutionary perspective explores genetic influences on complex behaviors. Drive-reduction theory explores how physiological needs create aroused tension states (drives) that direct us to satisfy those needs. Environmental incentives can intensify drives. Drive-reduction’s goal is homeostasis, maintaining a steady internal state. Arousal theory proposes that some behaviors (such as those driven by curiosity) do not reduce physiological needs but rather are prompted by a search for an optimum level of arousal. The Yerkes-Dodson law states that performance increases with arousal, but only to a certain point, after which it decreases. Performance peaks at lower levels of arousal for difficult tasks, and at higher levels for easy or well-learned tasks. Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs proposes 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.