Chapter 9

Motivation is defined as the factors that energize, direct or sustain a behavior. So it is basically why we do what we do. Most of the time we do things in hopes of some kind of reward. We may go to work everyday to get money to pay for food which we need. It could be because something sparked our interest or to get back to homeostasis by trying to return ourselves to a comfortable position. There are two different types of motivation intrinsic and extrinsic. Extrinsic motivation would be doing something for an outside reward, for example working to earn a paycheck. Intrinsic would be doing something because it is rewarding itself, such as listening to music. What we do is driven by one or the other of these motives. Emotion is defined as feelings that involve subjective evaluation, physiological processes, and cognitive beliefs. Emotions are also adaptive because they prepare and guide behaviors, such as running from a dangerous animal. Also getting away when your scared. There are several different types of emotion including guilt and embarrassment which are used in the book. It talks about guilt as being when a person feels responsible for another persons negative state. According to the book embarrassment represents submission to and recognition of an unintentional social error. These different emotions seem to be liked in our self perception, how we view ourselves. There is evidence that damage to the prefrontal cortex effects emotion in people. There is an example in the beginning of the chapter of a man who had tissues removed from that area stopped showing signs of emotion after surgery. It has been found that the amygdala is also very important in emotions with fear. One patient that had this structure removed showed no fear even when she knew something was associated with a shock she didn't shy away from it. Negative feedback can affect motivation by telling us that we need to return ourselves back to a pleasant state. This is shown in the book with a person being in a cold room turning on the heat in hopes of returning to homeostasis. Very good supporting evidence for optimal level of arousal is athletic competition. If you are too over stimulated you become nervous and unable to focus on your task. If you aren't aroused you don't care and therefore tend to give little effort and not perform well. A very important thing about setting goals is we need to make sure they are realistic that we can actually obtain them. Another helpful idea is to make steps to reach your goal make it a process to simplify it. Flavor an variety are big factors in our motives for eating. We tend to eat more if it tastes good and we get bored of one food therefore stop eating before we are full. A study proved this when rats that were presented with a variety of food consumed more then the one food diet rats. One hormone that seems to have a big effect on human sexual motivation is testosterone. It has been shown that males need a certain level of testosterone to have sex and the more testosterone women have the more likely they are to have sexual thoughts and desires.