Motivation and Emotion
Chapter 9
Motivation and Emotion
Motivational Concepts
 Drive-Reduction Theory
 Arousal Theory
 A Hierarchy of Needs
Motivation and Emotion
Hunger
 The Physiology of Hunger
 The Psychology of Hunger
 Obesity and Weight Control
The Need to Belong
 The Benefits of Belonging
 The Pain of Being Shut Out
 Social Networking
Motivation and Emotion
Theories of Emotion
Embodied Emotion
 Emotions and The Autonomic
Nervous System
 The Physiology of Emotions
 Cognition and Emotion
Motivation
• Motivation describes a
need or desire that
energizes and directs
behavior
• Aron Ralston was
motivated by survival
needs when he cut his arm
off to free himself
– Basis of the film 127 Hours
Key Perspectives on Motivation
• Drive-reduction theory
• Arousal theory
• Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs
Pushed by Drives, Pulled by Incentives
• Drive-reduction theory: We have an inner
drive to meet physiological needs such as
hunger or thirst; unsatisfied needs lead to an
aroused state, which becomes feeling of
motivation to reduce the craving/drive
• We are also pulled by incentives, positive or
negative stimuli that motivate behavior
– What works as incentive depends on our individual
learning history
Arousal Theory
• Some motivated behaviors
increase arousal
– Well-fed animals will leave
shelter to explore
– Related to curiosity
– Motivates explorers and
adventurers
– Those who enjoy high arousal
most likely to enjoy intense
music, novel foods, and risky
behaviors
Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
• Some needs are
more important
than others. Basic
needs must be
satisfied first
• Exceptions: Some
people deny basic
needs for selftranscendent
reasons (hunger
strike)
Specific Motivations
• Basic level: Hunger
• Higher level: The need to belong
• In the case of both drives/motives watch
for ways that psychological incentives
(“pull”) interact with physiological needs
(“push”)
Hunger: A Basic Need
• Men started conserving energy, weight
stabilized at 75% of initial weight
• They became food-obsessed: talked food,
daydreamed food
• With this basic need unmet, they lost
interest in sex and social activities:
“Nobody wants to kiss when they are
hungry.”
Physiology of Hunger
• The ‘pang’ of hunger is a stomach contraction,
sending a message heard by the brain as “time
to eat!”
Hunger without Pangs
• Researchers removed the stomachs from
rats (new path directly to small intestines)
• Rats continued to eat
 Stomach contraction pangs are not the
only source of hunger
Body Chemistry and the Brain
• If levels of blood glucose drops, a
message is sent to the brain from the
stomach, intestines, and liver to trigger
hunger
• The hypothalamus:
– Activity in the lateral hypothalamus brings on
hunger and eating behavior
– Activity in the ventromedial hypothalaus
depresses hunger – stops eating behavior
Hunger and the Hypothalamus
• Destruction of the ventromedial hypothalamus
disables an animal’s ability to stop feeling
hungry
Appetite Hormones
• Ghrelin: secreted by empty
stomach; signals “I’m hungry”
• Insulin: secreted by pancreas;
controls blood glucose
• Leptin: protein secreted by fat
cells; increases metabolism and
decreases hunger
• Orexin: secreted by
hypothalamus; triggers hunger
• PYY: used in digestive tract;
signals “I’m not hungry”
Weight, Intake, and Metaboliam
• Body has a “weight thermostat”
• Animals tend to hover around set point – a
stable weight influenced in part by heredity
– May not be totally fixed, depends on caloric intake
and other lifestyle factors
• We vary in our basal metabolic rate, the resting
rate of energy output
– Metabolic rate drops from decreased food intake
The Psychology of Hunger
• Psychology influences eating behavior
• Memory of the last meal eaten
– Patients without ability to form new memories
ate three lunches 20 minutes apart, unaware
they had already eaten
• Environmental stimuli matter
– We eat more when given larger containers,
bigger servings, and more variety
Taste Preference:
Biology or Culture
• Preferences for sweet and
salty tastes are universal and
genetic
• Other taste preferences are
influenced by culture and
experience
• Survival/adaptive strategy: we
avoid certain foods if they are
unfamiliar or if we got sick
after eating them
More Adaptive Taste Preferences
• It may be adaptive to
learn to prefer some
tastes
• In hot climates, recipes
often use spices that
inhibit the growth of
bacteria
• Food dislikes (and
nausea) peak at 10th
week of pregnancy, when
developing embryo is
most vulnerable to toxins
Obesity and Weight Control
• We evolved to deal with periods of scarce food:
we eat fats and sugar, and store this as fat, and
slow down metabolism (harder to lose weight).
• This is no longer adaptive, leads to obesity, if
experiencing scarcity followed by fat and sugar
(more available in modern world)
• In the USA, 34% of all adults are obese
Obesity
• U.S. guidelines
encouage BMI < 25
• WHO defines obesity
as BMI > 30
Weight in kg
BMI 
2
(Height in meters)
Weight in pounds
BMI 
 703 *
2
(Height in meters)
*(conversion factor, for inches, kg, meter, etc)
Social Stigma of Obesity
• Obese people may be stereotyped as slow, lazy,
and sloppy
• Wider people are rated as looking less sincere,
less friendly, meaner, and more obnoxious
• Women who are obese make an average of
$7000 less per year than equally qualified nonobese women
• Weight discrimination is found at every stage of
the employment cycle
The Losing Battle:
Why Starvation Diets Backfire
Study: Severely restricting
calories starting on day 8 causes
some weight loss but metabolism
slows down starting day 9, which
limits the weight loss
• Sluggish metabolism – our
bodies are designed to survive
periods of famine
• Explosion of fat cells – fat
takes fewer calories to maintain
than other tissue, and can shrink
and swell, but rarely disappear
The Losing Battle
The effects of a severe diet on obese patients
The Losing Battle
• A genetic handicap: obesity is partially
heritable. Identical twins are more similar
in weight than fraternal twins, even if
reared apart
• Environmental influences: the
developing world promotes sedentary
lifestyles with wide availability of high-fat
foods
Environmental Influences
• Too little activity: Watching TV, traveling
by car.
More Environmental Influences
• Too much unhealthy food
• Sleep loss – people who skimp on sleep
are more vulnerable to obesity
• Social influence – people are more likely
to become obese when a friend becomes
obese
Next Area of Basic Drives:
The Need to Belong
• Aristotle called humans the social animal
• The need to belong seems to be a basic
human motivation
The Benefits of Belonging
• Social bonds boosted our ancestors’
chances of survival
– Kept children close to caregivers
– Cooperation helped in finding food, defending
territory
• Those who felt a need to belong survived
and reproduced most successfully, and
their genes are present in us
Belonging and self-esteem
A feeling of belonging increases our selfesteem – how value and accepted we feel
When balanced by a sense of personal
control (autonomy) and competence,
self esteem supports a feeling of wellbeing.
When Belonging is Missing…
• People suffer when relationships end,
even bad relationships
• Children who grow up in institutions
without a sense of belonging may become
withdrawn, frightened, and even
speechless
The Pain of Being Shut Out
• Social exclusion threatens one’s need to belong
• Can be used as punishment
• Some may react violently
The Pain of Being Shut Out
• In some experiments participants were told that
they weren’t wanted, or were likely to “end up
alone”
– More likely to engage in self-defeating behaviors
– Underperformed on aptitude tests
– More likely to act mean or aggressively
• Social isolation fosters depressed moods or
emotional numbness, and can trigger
aggression
Social Networking
Conclusion of a lifelong study of college
graduates: “The only thing that really
matters in life are your relationships to
other people.”
Zulu quote: “a person is a person through
other persons.”
This describes the basic human need, but
are we meeting that need the same way
today?
Mobile Networks and Social Media
• There have been many changes to how we
connect with each other
• Texting and email
– displacing phone talking
– In 2009, 90% of teen cell-phone users text, with
females sending more texts
• Social networking sites
– As of 2009, 75% of online teens and under-30 adults
use sites like Facebook, and the numbers are
growing in all age groups.
Social Effects of Social Networking
• Social networkers are less likely to know
their real-world neighbors
• But, social networking is mostly
strengthening our connections with people
we already know
Social Effects of Social Networking
• Self-Disclosure
– Confiding in others can be healthy. Online, we
are less inhibited. Though this is sometimes
exteme (hate groups, “sexting”), but usually
increased serves to deepen friendships
• Do profiles and posts reflect actual
personalities?
– Generally yes – profiles are closer to actual
personalities than to “ideal”
Issues with Social Networking
• Narcissism: as seen online
– People who like to be the center of attention
collect more superficial “friends” and post
more glamorous pictures. They are often
easily identified as narcissistic, even to
strangers viewing their pages.
– Still, spending too much time focusing on your
own profile can lead to narcissistic tendencies
Maintaining Balance and Focus
• Monitor your time
– Does my time use reflect my priorities?
• Monitor your feelings
– When I get up from my computer, how do I feel?
• “Hide” your more distracting online friends
• See if you’ve developed an inability to live
without constant connection. Try turning off,
putting aside internet device
• Try using social networking time as a reward for
getting something done
Motivation and Emotion
Theories of Emotion
Embodied Emotion
 Emotions and The Autonomic
Nervous System
 The Physiology of Emotions
 Cognition and Emotion
Expressed Emotion
 Detecting Emotion in Others
 Culture and Emotional Expression
 The Effects of Facial Expressions
Experienced Emotion
 Anger
 Happiness
Emotion
Motivated behavior is often connected to
powerful emotions, which are mix of
• Bodily arousal (heart pounding)
• Expressive behaviors (crying, clapping,
yelling, hurrying)
• Conscious experience, including
thoughts (“I’m stupid,” “this is gonna be
great,” “he’s out to get me”) and feelings
(threatened, grief, joy, confidence)
Two Major Questions
1. Does bodily arousal come before or after
emotional feelings?
2. How do thinking and feeling interact?
Does cognition always come before
emotion?
Arousal Comes Before Emotion
James-Lange theory
(proposed by William James
and Carl Lange) suggests that
emotional experience is our
awareness of physiological
responses to emotionarousing stimuli
Even facial expressions and body positions
come first: we smile, then feel happy. “We feel
sorry because we cry… afraid because we
tremble” (James, 1890).
Arousal and Emotion Happen at
the Same Time
• Cannon-Bard theory (named for Walter
Cannon and Philip Bard); emotion-arousing
stimuli simultaneously trigger (1) physiological
responses and (2) the subjective experience of
emotion
• In this view: During a frightening event, your
sympathetic nervous system gets your heart
pounding while your mind experiences the
emotion of fear
James-Lange vs. Cannon-Bard
• Testing Cannon-Bard: if body responses are
decreased, C-B says we still have the same
emotional responses happening. Studies of
people with spinal cord injuries disprove this:
– Emotions experienced in the body below the injury,
such as anger, were less intense, those felt above the
injury (crying, lump in throat) were felt as more intense.
– Body makes a difference in emotion.
• Challenging James-Lange: Most researchers
now agree that our experienced emotions involve
cognition. It’s not just the body.
Two-Factor Theory
• We do more than read our body’s
responses – we interpret them
• Schacter and Singer proposed two-factor
theory – to experience emotion we must
be both (1) physically aroused and (2)
cognitively label the arousal
• Anger, agitation, fear, and love all involve
a state of arousal, but we label them
differently depending on what’s going on
Theories of
Emotion
Emotions and the Autonomic
Nervous System
• In a crisis, the ANS mobilizes your body for action
• When the crisis passes, the ANS gradually calms the
body
Physiology of Emotions
• Different emotions do not have sharply different
biological signatures like perspiration, breathing,
or heart rate; However, they do feel different
• Research has uncovered some distinct patterns
of body activation and/or brain activity
– Right frontal lobe more involved in negative emotions
and depression
– Left frontal lobe is more active for positive moods
• These findings challenge or modify Two-factor
theory: Emotions are different types of arousal,
not just different labels
Cognition and Emotion
• Sometimes arousal spills over from one event
to the next, influencing our response
• Through this spillover effect, we can “catch” the
emotions of others around us
• A physiological state can be interpreted as
different emotions depending on the cognitive
context
• This supports Two-factor theory; Arousal fuels
emotion, cognition channels it
Emotion and the Two-Track Brain
• We can have emotional reactions apart from,
even before, interpretation (Zajonc, 1984)
• Exception to two-factor model of emotion
Sensitivity to Threats
• The “low road” amygdala
response may be too fast to
consciously perceive
• When the eyes at right were
presented too briefly to be
noticed, the amygdala was
still activated by the
stimulus, but only for the
fearful-looking eyes
fearful
happy
Amygdala and Emotion
• Amygdala sends more neural projections
to the cortex than it receives
• This means the amygdala, after
responding quickly to threat, may still
prompt the cortex for feedback
• Lazarus (1998): Emotions arise when our
minds unconsciously appraise a situation
as good or bad (e.g. harmless or
dangerous)
Detecting Emotion in Others
• We all communicate without
words: glances, stares, loving
gazes; most of us can also read
feelings in the eyes
• Women are more skilled than
men at detecting emotional cues,
– One study: women were better
detecting whether two people are a
romantic couple
– Another: Women were better and
guessing what an upset person was
talking about
Detecting Emotion in Others
• Women are generally seen as more expressive of most
emotions than men
• Anger, however, is perceived as a more masculine
emotion
What gender is this person?
Angry face was more often perceived as male than smiling face
Empathy and Expression:
A Gender Gap?
• Study (right): Women showed more
outward expressions of empathetic
responses (crying, shock, concern,
happy) than men when watching
videos of others.
• Women also see themselves as more
empathetic than men and have
deeper memory and experience of
emotions in general
• However, measuring the inner, body
experiences of empathy shows a
smaller gap between men and
women.
Culture and Emotional Expression
• The meaning of gestures varies with
culture
• Musical expression (whether music feels
happy or sad) feels similar across cultures
• What about facial expressions?
Culture and Emotional Expression
• Different cultures tend to categorize emotions,
and facial expressions thereof, in similar ways
The Evolution of Facial Expressions
• Darwin wrote The Expression of Emotions in
Man and Animals in 1872
• He suggested that in prehistoric times, preverbal
man communicated threats, greetings, and
submission with facial expressions
– Such expressions helped them survive
• Many are linked with adaptive behaviors
– Surprise widens our eyes, to take in more informaiton
– Disgust wrinkles our nose, shutting out odors
The Effects of Facial Expressions
• Facial feedback effect – facial muscle
states tend to trigger corresponding
feelings (e.g., fear, anger, happiness)
The Effects of Facial Expressions
• There is also a behavior
feedback effect
– Walk with short, shuffling
steps, eyes downcast  bad
mood
– Walk with long strides, arms
swinging, eyes straight ahead
 good mood
Ten Basic Emotions
(Izard, 1977)
1. Joy
2. Interest-excitement
3. Surprise
4. Sadness
5. Anger
6. Disgust
7. Contempt
8. Fear
9. Shame
10. Guilt
Most are present in
infancy
Anger
• Most people become at least mildly angry
several times a week or more
• Often a response to friends’ or loved ones’
perceived misdeeds
• Teen responses to dealing with anger
– Boys tend to walk away or work it off with exercise
– Girls tend to talk to a friend, listen to music, or write
Anger Can Be Harmful
• Can fuel regrettable physical or verbal
abuse
• Can prime prejudice
– More intolerance for immigrants and Muslims
post-9/11
• Chronic anger linked to heart disease
What to Do About Anger
• Some believe by “venting” our angry
feelings, we can calm down through
catharsis
• More often, expressing anger can magnify
the anger (behavior feedback)
– People who had been provoked could hit a
punching back while thinking of their provoker
– Later, they were more aggressive when given
the chance for revenge
Feeling and Expressing Anger
• The emotion of anger is not wrong, but we
have seen some problems with expressing
anger
• But even expressing anger can sometimes
be constructive, if done right
– Can communicate strength and confidence
– Can be beneficial when expressed in a way
that allows a conflict to be solved
Anger and Forgiveness
• What do you do if someone has hurt you
and your anger gives you no help in
making things right?
• Your only option for peace of mind might
be to let it go
• Forgiveness: NOT saying that “it’s okay”;
instead, saying that it’s over with.
• Study: rehearsing forgiveness led to a
calmer body than rehearsing grudges
Happiness
• College students’ happiness is a predictor
– Women who smiled in 1950s yearbook photos were
more likely to be happily married in middle age
– Students who were happier in 1976 made more
money than their unhappy peers 20 years later
• Feel-good, do-good phenomenon – we tend to
more helpful toward others when we are in a
good mood
– Doing good also promotes a good feeling
Happiness
• Part of happiness research
involves the study of well-being
– our self-perceived happiness
or satisfaction with life.
• This is used along with
measures of objective well-being
(e.g., physical and economic
indicators) to evaluate quality of
life
Emotional Ups and Downs
• Emotional ups and downs
tend to even out, both in
the long run and even over
the course of a day
• Humans are resilient –
even those who experience
tragedy are usually not
permanently depressed
Wealth and Well-Being
• In most countries, especially poor ones, those
with lots of money tend to be happier than those
struggling to afford basic needs
• People in rich countries are more satisfied and
somewhat happier than those in poor countries
Wealth and Well-Being
• First Year College Students, starting when the
60’s were over, have increasingly viewed
weather as more important than a meaningful
life philosophy
Wealth and Well-Being
• Once one has enough
money for comfort and
security, piling up more
and more does not
increase happiness
Why Can’t Money Buy Happiness?
• My happiness is relative to my own experience.
– The adaptation-level phenomenon is our tendency
to form judgments relative to past experiences
• My happiness is relative to your success
– We may experience relative deprivation – the
perception that we are worse off relative to those with
whom we compare ourselves
– To counteract this: thinking about those worse off can
reduce our discontent
Predictors of Happiness
Predictors of Happiness
• Nature interacts with nurture
• Genes matter
– identical twins raised apart are often similarly
happy
• Personal history and culture matter
– Groups vary in the traits they value