NATURE OF MOTIVATION
The concept of motivation focuses on explaining what “moves'' behaviour. In fact, the term motivation is derived from the Latin word ‘movere’, referring to movement of activity. Most of our everyday explanation of behaviour is given in terms of motives.
Why Do you come to school or college?
There May be any number of reasons for this behaviour, such as you want to learn or to make friends, you need a diploma or degree to get a good job, you want to make your parents happy, and so on. Some combination of these reasons and/or others would explain why you choose to go in for higher education. Motives also help in making predictions about behaviour. A person will work hard in school,in sports, in business, in music, and in many other situations, if s/he has a very strong need for achievement. Hence, motives are the general states that enable us to make predictions about behaviour in many different situations.
In other words, motivation is one of the determinants of behaviour. Instincts, drives, needs, goals, and incentives come under the broad cluster of motivation.
The motivation cycle
Psychologists now use the concept of need to describe the motivational properties of behaviour. A need is a lack or deficit of some necessity. The condition of need leads to driving. A drive is a state of tension or arousal produced by a need. It energises random activity. When one of the random activities leads to a goal, it reduces the drive, and the organism stops being active. The organism returns to a balanced state.
TYPES OF MOTIVE
Basically, there are two types of motives :-
Biological
Psychosocial
Biological motives are also known as physiological motives as they are guided mostly by the physiological mechanisms of the body. Psychosocial motives, on the other hand, are primarily learned from the individual’s interactions with the various environmental factors. However, both types of motives are interdependent on each other. That is, in some kind of situations the biological factors may trigger a motive whereas in some other situations, the psychosocial factors may trigger the motive. Hence, you should keep in mind that no motive is absolutely biological or psychosocial per se, rather they are aroused in the individual with varying combinations.
Biological Motives
The biological or physiological approach to explain motivation is the earliest attempt to understand causes of behaviour. Most of the theories, which developed later, carry traces of the influence of the biological approach. The approach adhering to the concept of adaptive act holds that organisms have needs (internal physiological imbalances)that produce drive, which stimulates behaviour leading to certain actions towards achieving certain goals, which reduce the drive. The earliest explanations of motivation relied on the concept of instinct. The term instinct denotes inborn patterns of behaviour that are biologically determined rather than learned. Some common human instincts include curiosity, flight, repulsion,reproduction, parental care, etc. Instincts are innate tendencies found in all members of a species that direct behaviour in predictable ways. The term instinct most approximately refers to an urge to do something. Instinct hasan “impetus” which drives the organism to do something to reduce that impetus. Some ofthe basic biological needs explained by thisapproach are hunger, thirst, and sex, which are essential for the sustenance of the individual.
Hunger
When someone is hungry, the need for food dominates everything else. It motivates people to obtain and consume food. Of course we must eat to live. But, what makes you feel hungry? Studies have indicated that many events inside and outside the body may trigger hunger or inhibit it. The stimuli for hunger include stomach contractions, which signify that the stomach is empty, a low concentration of glucose in the blood, a low level of protein and the amount of fats stored in the body. The liver also responds to the lack of bodily fuel by sending nerve impulses to the brain.The aroma, taste or appearance of food may also result in a desire to eat. It may be noted that none of these alone gives you the feeling that you are hungry. All in combination act with external factors (such as taste, colour,by observing others eating, and the smell of food, etc.) to help you understand that you are hungry. Thus, it can be said that our food intake is regulated by a complex feeding-satiety system located in the hypothalamus,liver, and other parts of the body as well as the external cues available in the environment. Some physiologists hold that changes in the metabolic functions of the liver result in a feeling of hunger. The liver sends a signal to a part of the brain called hypothalamus. The Two regions of hypothalamus involved in hunger are - the lateral hypothalamus (LH)and the ventro-medial hypothalamus (VMH).LH is considered to be the excitatory area.Animals eat when this area is stimulated. When it is damaged, animals stop eating and die of starvation. The VMH is located in the middle of the hypothalamus, which is otherwise known as the hunger-controlling area which inhibits the hunger drive.
Thirst
What would happen to you, if you were deprived of water for a long time? What makes you feel thirsty? When we are deprived of water for a period of several hours, the mouth and throat become dry, which leads to dehydration of body tissues. Drinking water is necessary to wet a dry mouth. But a dry mouth does not always result in water drinking behaviour. In Fact processes within the body itself controls thirst and drinking of water. Water must get into the tissues sufficiently to remove the dryness of the mouth and throat. Motivation to drink water is mainly triggered by the conditions of the body: loss of water from cells and reduction of blood volume. When water is lost by bodily fluids,water leaves the interior of the cells. The Anterior hypothalamus contains nerve cells called ‘osmoreceptors’, which generate nerve impulses in case of cell dehydration. These Nerve impulses act as a signal for thirst and drinking; when thirst is regulated by loss of water from the osmoreceptors, it is called cellular-dehydration thirst. But what mechanisms stop the drinking of water? Someresearchers assume that the mechanism which explains the intake of water is also responsible for stopping the intake of water.Others have pointed out that the role of stimuli resulting from the intake of water in the stomach must have something to do with stopping of drinking water. However, the precise physiological mechanisms underlying the thirst drive are yet to be understood.
Sex
One of the most powerful drives in both animals and human beings is the sex drive. Motivation to engage in sexual activity is a very strong factor influencing human behaviour. However, sex is far more than a biologicalmotive. It is different from other primary motives (hunger, thirst) in many ways like,
(a) sexual activity is not necessary for an individual’s survival;
(b) homeostasis (thetendency of the organism as a whole tomaintain constancy or to attempt to restore equilibrium if constancy is disturbed) is not the goal of sexual activity; and
(c) sex drive develops with age, etc.
In case of lower animals, it depends on many psychological conditions:
in case of human beings, the sexdrive is very closely regulated biologically,sometimes it is very difficult to classify sexpurely as a biological drive. Physiologists suggest that intensity of the sexual urge is dependent upon chemical substances circulating in the blood, knownas sex hormones. Studies on animals as well as human beings have mentioned that sex hormones secreted by gonads, i.e. testes in males and the ovaries in females are responsible for sexual motivation. Sexual motivation is also influenced by other endocrine glands, such as adrenal and pituitary glands. Sexual drive in humanbeings is primarily stimulated by externalstimuli and its expression depends upon cultural learning.
Psychosocial Motives
Social motives are mostly learned or acquired. Social groups such as family, neighbourhood,friends, and relatives do contribute a lot in acquiring social motives. These are complex forms of motives mainly resulting from theindividual’s interaction with her/his social environment.
Need for Affiliation
Most of us need company or friends or want to maintain some form of relationship with others. Nobody likes to remain alone all the time. As soon as people see some kind of similarities among themselves or they like each other, they form a group. Formation of group or collectivity is an important feature of human life. Often people try desperately to get close to other people, to seek their help, and to become members of their group. Seeking other human beings and wanting to be close to them both physically and psychologically is called affiliation. It involves motivation for social contact. Need for affiliation is aroused when individuals feel threatened or helpless and also when they are happy. People high on this need are motivated to seek the company of others and to maintain friendly relationships with other people.
Need for power
Power is an ability of a person to produce intended effects on the behaviour and emotions of another person. The various goals of power motivation are to influence, control,persuade, lead, and charm others and most importantly to enhance one’s own reputation in the eyes of other people. David McClelland (1975) described four general ways of expression of the powermotive.
First, people do things to gain a feeling of power and strength from sources outside themselves by reading stories about sports stars or attaching themselves to a popular figure.
Second, power can also be felt from sources within us and may be expressed by building up the body and mastering urges and impulses.
Third, people do things as individuals to have an impact on others. For Example, a person argues, or competes with another individual in order to have an impactor influence on that person.
Fourth, people do things as members of organisations to have an impact on others as in the case of the leader of a political party; the individual may use the party apparatus to influence others. However,for any individual, one of these ways of expressing power motivation may dominate, but with age and life experiences, it varies.
Need for Achievement
You might have observed some students work very hard and compete with others for good marks/grades in the examination, as good marks/grades will create opportunities for higher studies and better job prospects. It is the achievement motivation, which refers to the desire of a person to meet standards of excellence. Need for achievement, also known as n-Ach, energises and directs behavior as well as influences the perception of situations. During the formative years of social development, children acquire achievement motivation. The sources from which they learnit, include parents, other role models, and socio-cultural influences. Persons high in achievement motivation tend to prefer tasks that are moderately difficult and challenging.
NATURE OF EMOTION
The term emotion is often considered synonymous with the terms ‘feeling’ and ‘mood’. Feeling denotes the pleasure or pain dimension of emotion, which usually involves bodily functions. Mood is an affective state of long duration but of lesser intensity than emotion. Both these terms are narrower than the concept of emotion. Emotions are a complex pattern of arousal, subjective feeling, and cognitive interpretation. Emotions, as we experience them, move us internally, and this process involves physiological as well as psychological reactions. Emotion is a subjective feeling and the experience of emotions varies from person to person. In psychology, attempts have been made to identify basic emotions. It has been noted that at least six emotions are experienced and recognised everywhere.These are: anger, disgust, fear, happiness,sadness, and surprise. Izard has proposed a set of ten basic emotions, i.e. joy, surprise,anger, disgust, contempt, fear, shame, guilt,interest, and excitement with combinations of them resulting in other emotional blends. According to Plutchik, there are eight basic or primary emotions. All other emotions result from various mixtures of these basic emotions. He arranged these emotions in four pairs of opposites, i.e. joy-sadness, acceptance-disgust, fear-anger, and surprise-anticipation. Emotions vary in their intensity (high, low)and quality (happiness, sadness, fear).
Now we are going to deal with psychological changes that happen when we experience emotion.
When we are excited, afraid or angry, these bodily changes might be relatively easy to note. All of you must have noted the increase in heart rate, throbbing temples, increased perspiration,and trembling in your limbs when you're angry or excited about something.
Sophisticated equipment has made it possible to measure the exact physiological changes that accompany emotions.
Both autonomic as well as somatic nervous systems play important roles in the emotional process. The experience of emotions is a result of a series of neurophysiological activations in which thalamus, hypothalamus, limbic system, and the cerebral cortex are involved significantly. Individuals with extensive injury in these brain areas have been known to demonstrate impaired emotional abilities. Selective Activation of different brain areas has been experimentally shown to arouse different emotions in infants and adults.
One of the earliest physiological theories of emotion was given by James (1884) and supported by Lange, hence, it has been named the James-Lange theory of emotion. The theory suggests that environmental stimuli elicit physiological responses from viscera (the internal organs like heart and lungs), which in turn, are associated with muscle movement. For Example, startling at an unexpected intense noise triggers activation in visceral and muscular organs followed by an emotional arousal. Put in other words, James-Lange theory argues that your perception about your bodily changes, like rapid breathing, pounding heart, and running legs, following an event, brings forth emotional arousal. The Main implication made by this theory is that particular events or stimuli provoke particular physiological changes and the individual's perception of these changes results in the emotion being experienced.
Another theory was proposed by Cannon (1927) and Bard (1934).The Cannon-Bard theory claims that the entire process of emotion is mediated by thalamus which after perception of the emotion-provoking stimulus, conveys this information simultaneously to the cerebral cortex and to the skeletal muscles and sympathetic nervous system. The cerebral cortex then determines the nature of the perceived stimulus by referring to past experiences. This determines the subjective experience of the emotion. At the same time the sympathetic nervous system and the muscles provide physiological arousal and prepare the individual to take action.
The ANS is divided into two systems, sympathetic and parasympathetic. These two systems function together in a reciprocal manner. In a stressful situation the sympathetic system prepares the body to face the situation. It strengthens the internal environment of the individual by controlling the fall in heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar, etc. It induces a state of physiological arousal that prepares the individual for fight or flight response in order to face the stressful situation. As the threat is removed the parasympathetic system gets active and restores the balance by calming the body. It Restores and conserves energy and brings the individual back to a normal state. Though acting in an antagonistic manner,the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems are complementary to each other in completing. the process of experience and expression of emotion.
COGNITIVE BASE OF EMOTION
Most psychologists today believe that our cognitions, i.e. our perceptions, memories,interpretations are essential ingredients of emotions. Stanley Schachter and JeromeSinger have proposed a two-factor theory in which emotions have two ingredients:
physical arousal
cognitive label.
They presume that our experience of emotion grows from our awareness of our present arousal. They also believed that emotions are physiologically similar.
For example your heart beats faster when you are excited or scared or angry. You are physiologically aroused and look to the external world for explanation. Thus, in their view an emotional experience requires a conscious interpretation of the arousal.If you are aroused after physical exercise and someone teases you, the arousal already caused by the exercise may lead to provocation. To test this theory, Schachter andSinger (1962) injected subjects with epinephrine, a drug that produces high arousal. Then these subjects were made to observe the behaviour of others, either in an euphoric manner (i.e. shooting papers at a waste basket) or in an angry manner (i.e.stomping out of the room). As predicted, the euphoric and angry behaviour of others influenced the cognitive interpretation of the subjects' own arousal.
CULTURAL BASES OF EMOTION
We will examine the role of culture in emotions. Studies have revealed that the most basic emotions are inborn and do not have to be learned. Psychologists largely have a notion that emotions, especially facial expressions, have strong biological ties. For Example, children who are visually impaired from birth and have never observed the smile or seen another person’s face, still smile or frown in the same way that Children with normal vision do.
MANAGING NEGATIVE EMOTION
Try living a day in which you do not feel any emotion. You would realise that it is difficult even to imagine a life without emotions. Emotions are a part of our daily life and existence. They form the very fabric of our life and interpersonal relations. Emotions exist on a continuum. There are various intensities of an emotion that can be experienced by us. You can experience extreme elation or slight happiness, severe grief or just pensiveness. However, most of us usually maintain a balance of emotions. When faced with a conflicting situation,individuals attempt to adjust and derive a coping mechanism either with task or defense-oriented reactions. These coping patterns help them prevent abnormal emotional reactions such as anxiety, depression etc.
ANXIETY
Anxiety is a condition that an individual develops in case of failure to adopt an appropriate ego defense. For example, if the individual fails to adhere to a defense of rationalisation for his immoral act (like cheating or stealing), he may develop intense apprehension about the outcomes of such an act. Anxious individuals find it difficult to concentrate or to make decisions even for trivial matters. The state of depression affects an individual's ability to think rationally, feel realistically, and work effectively. The condition overwhelms the mood state of the individual. Because of its enduring nature, the individual who suffers from depression develops a variety of symptoms like difficulty in falling asleep,increased level of psychomotor agitation or retardation, decreased ability to think or concentrate, and loss of interest in personal or social activities, etc.In daily life, we are often faced with conflicting situations. Under demanding and stressful conditions, a lot of negative emotions like fear, anxiety, disgust, etc. develop in an individual to a considerable extent. Such negative emotions, if allowed to prevail for along time, are likely to affect adversely the person's psychological and physical health.This is the reason why most of the stress management programmes emphasise emotion management as an integral part of stress management. The major focus of emotion management techniques is the reduction of ofnegative emotions and enhancing positive emotions.Though most researchers focus their attention only on negative emotions like anger,fear, anxiety, etc., recently the field of ‘PositivePsychology’ has gained much prominence. As The name suggests, positive psychology concerns itself with the study of features that enrich life like, hope, happiness, creativity,courage, optimism, cheerfulness, etc. Effective emotion management is the key to effective social functioning in modern times.
The following tips might prove useful to you for achieving the desired balance of emotions :-
Enhance self-awareness : Be aware of your own emotions and feelings. Try to gain insight into the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of your feelings.
Appraise the situation objectively : Ithas been proposed that emotion is preceded by evaluation of the event. If the event is experienced as disturbing, your sympathetic nervous system is activated and you feel stressed. If you do notexperience the event as disturbing, then there is no stress. Hence, it is you who decides whether to feel sad and anxious or happy and relaxed.
Do some self-monitoring : This involves constant or periodic evaluation of your past accomplishments, emotional and physical states, real and vicarious experiences. A Positive appraisal would enhance your faith in yourself and lead to enhanced feelings of wellness and contentment.
Engage in self-modeling : Be the ideal for yourself. Repeatedly observe the best part of your past performance and use them as an inspiration and motivation to perform better in the future.
Perceptual reorganisation and cognitive restructuring : Try viewing the event differently and visualise the other side of the coin. Restructure your thoughts to enhance positive and reassuring feelings and eliminate negative thoughts.
Be creative : Find and develop an interest or a hobby. Engage in an activity that interests and amuses you.
Develop and nurture good relation-ships: Choose your friends carefully. In The company of happy and cheerful friends you will feel happy in general.
Have empathy : Try understanding others feelings too. Make your relationship meaningful and valuable. Seek as well as provide support mutually.
Participate in community service: Help Yourself by helping others. By doing community service ( for example helping intellectually challenged children learn an adaptive skill), you will gain important insights about your own difficulties.
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