Human Motivation
Chapter 11
Goal-Congruent (Positive) Emotions
Goal-Congruent Emotions
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Facilitate and sustain the attainment of personal
goals
Positive emotions
Example: Happiness
Defined in two ways: rate how good/positive person
feels at given moment; series of questions of how
people evaluate their lives both
affectively/cognitively (subjective well-being)
Myths of happiness: life is difficult and few people
are happy, money makes people happy, we cannot
become happier.
Happiness
The Biological Component:
About half the variance of subjective well-being is the
result of heritability
Positively related to the personality trait of extraversion
and negatively related to neuroticism.
Positively related to good social relationships.
Positive emotions linked to an active left prefrontal
cortex, and negative emotions linked to the right
prefrontal cortex.
Pursuit of happiness in universal quality of humans.
Happiness
The Learned/Cognitive Components:
A result of learning to conquer fear and make plans, our
ancestors were less under the direction of fight-flight
response; they came to experience positive emotions
more of the time.
Likely provided the incentive/motivation to think and
plan.
Results in avoiding pain and helping achieve goals.
Comes from doing things that are satisfying in
themselves (intrinsic motivation); occurs most strongly
when person has finished a flow activity.
Happiness and Coping
Coping: sometimes the best we can do is make
reasonable progress toward dealing with
external demands as well as goals.
Even in state of ambiguity, people can and do
experience happiness.
Four main qualities linked to happiness:
extraversion, optimism, self-esteem, and
personal control.
Happiness and Coping
The Biological Component:
Many of our daily interactions can be
characterized as moving between fear and
happiness (coping)
Once learning occurs, decrease in epinephrine
and drop in arousal; norepinephrine remains
high.
Positive affect is often triggered as result of
successful coping, leads to increase in
dopamine levels.
Happiness and Coping
The Learned/Cognitive Component:
We learn faster in subsequent situations; develop
generalized belief or expectation such that if we were
able to cope in one situation, we can cope in other
situations -> self-efficacy.
Positive affect/emotions facilitate approach or continued
behavior.
Positive affect is highly adaptive; motivates and rewards
behaviors that lead individual to explore; gives more
accurate/better knowledge about environment.
People who are resilient in the face of adversity are good
at triggering positive emotions.
The Question of
Uncertainty and Coping
Uncertainty- lack of certainty how we should deal with
new situation; unable to fully understand something of
to fully know the outcome of an act.
One of the major reasons we experience stress is that
we don’t have a coping response available.
From evolutionary perspective, when there is no
certainty, survival is threatened; people need to know
about their environment and how to effectively interact
with it (coping)
Often we refrain from doing what will lead to
happiness because of the fear/uncertainty.
The Question of
Uncertainty and Coping
Fear alerts us to threats to our survival.
Uncertainty leads to high arousal
Uncertainty alerts us that we are not fully
prepared to deal with our environment and
typically elicits anxiety.
The most common regret is that of inaction.
Commons reasons that people fail to take
action is that they are anxious of afraid.
The Question of
Uncertainty and Coping
The Biological Component:
Behavioral coping: To deal with unpredictability,
humans typically engage in behaviors that will make
things more predictable.
Norepinephrine is released in large amounts, and our
mood improves; occurs especially when animals
learn about a situation.
Epinephrine levels remain high, indicating the stress
of uncertainty in dealing with new situations.
The Question of
Uncertainty and Coping
The Learned/Cognitive Component:
People get significantly more satisfaction from
exercising a coping response when the task is difficult
than when it is easy; reward value higher.
Personal control appears to be a powerful source of
motivation for humans; inability to control is often
source of stress.
People can reframe/reinterpret a negative situation by
adopting a positive perspective; leads individuals to
experience positive emotions and cope better.
Mistakes may produce momentary pain, but regrets tend
to outweigh any memory of failure.
Self-Efficacy Theory
and the Dual Route to Anxiety Control
Self-efficacy: people’s beliefs in their capabilities to
mobilize the motivation, cognitive resources, and
courses of action needed to exercise control over
given events.
Determines what challenges people undertake, how much
effort they will expend, how long they will persevere, and
how much stress and despondency they will endure.
People avoid threatening situations; they fear that
they will be unable to cope (behaviorally/cognitively)
Cognitive coping: people operate under the belief
that they can manage their thinking or cognitions.
Optimism and Hope
Optimism: generalized expectancy that good, as
opposed to bad, outcomes will generally occur when
one is confronted with problems across important life
domains.
When people see desired outcomes as attainable, they
are inclined to continue to exert efforts to attain those
outcomes.
Optimists and hopeful people tend to view all desired
outcomes as attainable; tend to persist; tend to put
forth more effort.
Optimism and Hope
The Biological Component:
Evolutionary perspective: it was biologically
adaptive for our ancestors to develop a sense
of optimism; carry them through adverse
circumstances, including injury.
Leads to release of endorphins- pain reducing
and euphoric benefits.
Optimism is a positive/active emotion- makes
us turn to our environment for resources we
need.
Optimism and Hope
The Learned/Cognitive Component:
Optimism and hope may merely be ways that people
have learned to think about the world.
Pessimism is a risk factor for poor achievement and a
predictor of depression.
Optimistic people are healthier than pessimistic
people: improved immune response, reduction in
negative mood, better health promoting behaviors.
Optimists are more inclined to consider their coping
alternatives.
The Concept of Hope
Hope in conceptualize in terms of two major elements:
Pathway thinking: conceptualizing one or more
routes to a desired goal.
Agentic thinking: thoughts that have to do with
initiating movement along one’s chosen path.
Hopeful people believe they can attain goals (agency)
and generate alternatives (pathways).
Higher hope is related to better outcomes in academics,
athletics, physical health, psychological adjustment, and
psychotherapy; hopeful people tend to set more goals,
more difficult goals, and are more likely to attain high
goals.
The Role of Early Experience:
The Question of Attachment
Parent-child interaction influences wide range
of adaptive emotions such as happiness,
optimism, and self-worth; also influences
adaptive behaviors such as coping with stress
and self-regulation of motivation.
A secure parent-child bond encourages the
child to explore, develop feelings of
confidence, and learn how to interact socially.
Three Parent-Child
Attachment Styles
1. Secure attachment: sensitivity and responsiveness to
child’s need for contact.
 Children characterized by self-confidence and
emerging independence.
2. Anxious/ambivalent attachment: inconsistency in
meeting the child’s need for contact.
 Children tend to be inhibited, dependent, and have
low self-confidence.
3. Avoidant attachment: avoidance or rejection of child’s
need for contact.
 Children tend to explore, but behavior motivated
more by desire to avoid mother.
The Role of Early Experience:
The Question of Attachment
The Biological Component:
Infants evolved a number of mechanisms to securely
bond with parents/caretakers: crying, smiling, and
hugging.
Two fundamental social motives: the need to follow or
exceed expectations and the need to be loved.
Responsible for flexibility we observe in behavior.
Securely attached children explore more and are better
able to cope with a variety of life distresses.
The Role of Early Experience:
The Question of Attachment
The Learned/Cognitive Component:
Humans learn to reduce fears/anxieties be becoming
securely attached.
Need for attachment in children is a prototype for
need for attachment in adults.
Securely attached adults have highest interest in jobs,
experience greater job satisfaction, lowest in terms of
being fearful of evaluation; appear to be intrinsically
motivated; more inclined to seek social support
(which tends to lead to quicker recovery).