Unit 9 Motivation and Behaviour
Overview
Units 9 and 10 focus on behaviours related to motivation and emotion. Motivation concerns the physiological and psychological processes underlying the initiation of behaviours that direct organisms toward specific goals (Krause et al., 2018). Emotion is a bit more of a challenging concept to define as there is not yet agreement as to what emotion actually is. Despite this complexity, in psychology emotion is often defined as being an experience with the following three components: a) a subjective thought and/or experience (I am excited/afraid) with (b) accompanying patterns of neural activity and physical arousal (i.e., breathing and heartrate changes), and (c) an observable behavioural expression (e.g., an emotional facial expression or changes in muscle tension) (Krause et al., 2018). So from this definition it is clear that emotion involves thoughts, feelings, and physiological activity, and all three must be considered during any emotional experience. Now, back to motivation. Motivating factors can take many forms; for example it can be as straight forward as feeling thirsty and then obtaining a liquid to satisfy that need. At the same time, motivation is also complex, as when sorting through the myriad factors that shape relational and vocational desires. Moreover, the fact that you are reading about motivation and emotion in these units and in your university textbook shows you the breadth of this concept—you are likely motivated to achieve academic success. Whether the motivational factors are simple or complex, all motivation related activities will be a behaviour that is being initiated in order to complete some sort of goal-directed behaviour. This unit will look at motivational concepts, hunger and body image related motivational factors, and achievement motivation. Unit 10 will explore motivations related to sex and look more closely at emotion.
Topics
This unit is divided into the following topics:
- Motivational Concepts
- Hunger and Weight Change
- Obesity and Weight Control
- Achievement Motivation
Learning Outcomes
When you have completed this unit, you should be able to:
- Define, and apply, the key terminology of motivation and hunger, sexual motivation, social and achievement motivation, and emotion.
- Understand the biological, cognitive, and social processes that shape eating patterns, and the causes of common eating disorders.
- Apply your knowledge of hunger regulation to better understand and evaluate your own eating patterns, and research on sex and advertising to the commercials and Internet ads you see each day.
- Analyze the role of the media on people’s body image and different explanations for what influences sexual orientation.
- Describe the similarities and differences in sexual responses in men and women, how people experience a need to belong, and the different forms of love.
- Apply theories of motivation to understand your personal motivation to achieve in school or your career and apply your knowledge of theories of emotion to new examples.
- Analyze claims that a sense of belonging is something people need versus something they want, and what purpose(s) facial expressions serve.
- Explain how the nervous system responds to emotions, and the cultural similarities and differences in emotional expressions.
Activity Checklist
Here is a checklist of learning activities you will benefit from in completing this unit. You may find it useful for planning your work.
Learning Activities
- Read and Reflect – Chapter 11
- Review the Unit 9 – Course Notes (found on Course Notes tab)
- Complete the Advertising and Human Needs activity
- Complete the Applying What You Have Learned activity.
- Complete the Eating Disorder Information activity.
- Review the Culture and Achievement activity
Note
The course units follow topics in the textbook, Revel for An Introduction to Psychological Science by Krause et al. (4th Edition). For each unit, please read the pertinent chapter(s) before completing the assessment for the unit.
Assessment
In this course you demonstrate your understanding of the course learning outcomes in different ways, including papers, projects, discussions and quizzes. Please see the Assessment section in Moodle for assignment details and due dates.
9.1 Motivation: Concepts and Theory
Motives are constructs used to explain variability in behavior. Imagine your friend comes to school or work wearing some bizarre piece of clothing. You would probably ask yourself, “Why?” You would look for motives. Unusual responses imply an unusual inner state; they imply a motive behind the behavior.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
To help get a grasp on Maslow’s theory, you might examine various common situations in light of the theory. For example, you might interview someone, or simply observe people’s behavior and try to judge the level of motivation at which each person is operating.
How would a manager of a store use the hierarchy of needs to understand the employees and alter conditions to increase morale and productivity? How could it be applied in various marriage difficulties? In child-rearing problems? In your own life?
A Spiritual Motive?
Where does religious motivation fit into the study of motivation?
An important limitation of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (as it is popularly known) is that it does not include an acceptable account of spiritual needs. Perhaps we might simply propose a higher sixth level in the hierarchy beyond self-actualization needs. We might suggest that once the individual’s lower needs are reasonably well-satisfied, spiritual needs come to the fore. However, this conceptualization really adds little to our understanding, since many people experience spiritual needs long before self-actualization needs are even reasonably well satisfied, and many find the satisfaction of “lower” needs an important by-product of having spiritual need met.
Gordon Allport (1950) and William James (1902), and many other psychologists who have studied religion, say its roots within the individual are many and deep. As Allport puts it,
Most psychologists who have written on religion seem agreed that there is no single unique religious emotion, but rather a widely divergent set of experiences that may be focused upon a religious object.
Some of the experiences which commonly enter into the formation of the religious emotion (or sentiment as Allport calls it) are (a) bodily needs, (b) temperament and mental capacity, (c) psychogenic interests and values, (d) the pursuit of rational explanation, and (e) the response to the surrounding culture.
Do we have a single need for God, which drives us to be religious? Or is the nature of our experience in the world such that we are driven from many directions to seek God? (adapted from Psychology and Christianity, by Ronald Philipchalk)
In Ecclesiastes 3:11, Psalm 19, and Romans 1:20, the bible indicates a universal awareness of God. Augustine said “Our hearts are restless ’till they find their rest in Thee.” Pascal spoke of a “God-shaped vacuum.” How do these ideas relate to the concept of motivation? Is it innate? Acquired? How is it satisfied? How does it relate to other motives?
Activity: Read and Reflect
Take a moment to read through chapter 11 of your textbook and review the Course Notes for this unit. Consider how some of the themes and concepts you read about apply to what you have learned in this section.
Activity: Advertising and Human Needs
This activity is designed to help you understand the long-standing relationship between psychology and advertising. Take a moment to reflect on which kinds of advertisements you consider appealing. What is it about these ads that makes them so attention grabbing for you? Put another way, which levels of motivation are the appeals directed to—both overtly and covertly? It is likely that, the advertisement is trying to connect with some form of need or desire (perceived or real) to persuade you to use or buy their product.
The following articles delve more deeply into how psychology is used in advertising:
After exploring the resources above, consider the following questions:
- How could you use your knowledge of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs or other motivational knowledge to make connecting with people at home or internationally more effective? If you are a Christian (or other faith background), how could you use motivational knowledge to be a more effective witness?
Be prepared to share your thoughts and insights with other members of the class
9.2 Operant Hunger and Weight Change
“What are you eating that for?”
Cultural influences are obvious when it comes to eating. Consider the following quotation from sociologist Ian Robertson:
Americans eat oysters but not snails. The French eat snails but not locusts. The Zulus eat locusts but not fish. The Jews eat fish but not pork.The Hindus eat pork but not beef. The Russians eat beef but not snakes. The Chinese eat snakes but not people. The Jale of New Guinea find people delicious (Robertson, 1987, p. 67).
Have you eaten unusual foods? What prevents you from eating some things other people consider delicious? It should be obvious that our ideas about what is good to eat and what is not are given to us by our culture.
Excess Weight as a Health Risk
Research indicates that being obese is a greater health risk than smoking and drinking alcohol combined. That is, a person that is 20 percent or more over his or her ideal body weight is more likely to experience health problems than someone who both smokes and drinks alcohol. (Though recent research indicates those health risks are greatly reduced if an obese person has an active lifestyle.)
Activity: Applying What You Have Learned
Use the principles discussed in the textbook and in the articles below to consider how would you (if you wanted to) design a program for weight loss. How would it be different from other weight loss programs you know about? Have you ever tried a so-called “fad diet” (Keto, Paleo, Mediterranean, etc.? Give some examples of the diet(s) you have tried and the effects from it/them.
After reading through the section above, consider the following questions:
- Concerning eating and weight change what responsibility do people share in this area? Should body weight matter to a person with religious convictions? What does the bible (or principle text(s) of your religious/faith perspective) say?
- Why have North American evangelical Christians singled out alcohol consumption as a behavioural taboo and ignored biblical and contemporary health warnings about gluttony and obesity? If you’re not a Christian, what unhealthy behavioural choices (those that are contrary to health warnings) have you allowed into your eating practices?
Be prepared to share your thoughts and insights with other members of the class
9.3 Eating Disorders: Fear of Fat?
An important component in the cause of eating disorders appears to be the fear of obesity. Goldfarb and colleagues have developed a scale to measure this fear. They call their scale the “Goldfarb Fear of Fat Scale” (GFFS). It includes the following questions which subjects are asked to rate as 1 = very untrue; 2 = somewhat untrue; 3 = somewhat true; 4 = very true:
- My biggest fear is of becoming fat.
- I am afraid to gain even a little weight.
- I believe there is a real risk that I will become overweight someday.
- I don’t understand how overweight people can live with themselves.
- Becoming fat would be the worst thing that could happen to me.
- If I stopped concentrating on controlling my weight, chances are I would become very fat.
- There is nothing that I can do to make the thought of gaining weight less painful and frightening.
- I feel like all my energy goes into controlling my weight.
- If I eat even a little, I may lose control and not stop eating.
- Staying hungry is the only way I can guard against losing control and becoming fat.
Of course this scale cannot diagnose problems. It is useful only to help identify possible irrational thinking. Below are some of the average scores found by Goldfarb. Goldfarb and colleagues report the following mean totals:
| Subjects | Mean GFFS Score |
|---|---|
| Random sample of San Francisco high school girls | 25.5 |
| Random sample of college females | 18.3 |
| Group of anorexics undergoing treatment | 35.0 |
| Group of bulimics | 30.0 |
| Group of repeated dieters (3 or more diets but not bulimic) | 23.9 |
| Group of non-dieters (happy with current weight, not bulimic | 17.3 |
*From: Goldfarb, L., Dykens, E. M., & Gerrard, M. (1985). The Goldfarb Fear of Fat Scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 49, 329-332.
Activity: Eating Disorder Information
Just as culture can influence eating behaviours, it can also have a tremendous impact on body ideals. Have you thought about how you’ve decided what is acceptable and unacceptable concerning your appearance. Cultural influences can be overt or subtle and you may not even realize that you have absorbed certain (unhealthy) biases concerning human bodies. If you or a friend did the GFFS and were concerned or curious about your score, or if you have a general interest in this topic, below is some helpful information about eating disorders, their definition, incidence, and treatment:
- ANRED.
- Eating Disorder Help.After exploring these resources, consider the following questions:
- The North American ideal female of an earlier era was heavier than the ideal today. Which way is the female ideal moving? How about for males in NA, which direction is the male ideal moving? If you’re not from NA, which direction is the ideal female and male body image moving?
- What kind of models do you see in commercials, movies, store displays, and on social media?
- Does the usually female focused fitness movements (i.e., thinspiration, fitsperation, fitspo) affect current female ideals? What about physical standards for males; what are they?
Be prepared to share your thoughts and insights with other members of the class
9.4 Achievement Motivation
Why do you do what you do? An even better question is, “What do you want?” Famous American Psychologist and pioneer of the study of achievement motivation, David McClelland believed that people were motivated by three needs: achievement, authority (power), and affiliation. He developed a method for discovering what kind of need people most naturally gravitated towards. It has been coined the ring-toss experiment, whereby a group of people are told that they can (or choose not to) play a game of ring-toss. McClelland believed that where people chose to participate from, and how they participated, indicated what kind of need they were motivated by. McClelland was most interested in people who were motivated by the need for achievement; they tended to stand far enough away to make the game challenging, but not too far away as to not succeed. McClelland proposed that achievement oriented individuals make things happen and have a strong desire to succeed. They also tend to be good leaders. Do you want to try a simple variation of David McClelland’s ring-toss experiment? Ask two or three people to toss a crumpled up piece of paper into a waste-paper basket. Let them choose where they stand. Based on McClelland’s research, you would predict that those highest in motivation to achieve would stand at a middle distance—far enough back to make it interesting, but not so far back that success was almost impossible.
You might even try predicting where the subjects in your experiment will stand, or at least who will stand in the middle range. Read about the concepts in the textbook and online resource then apply them to your subjects before you run the experiment.
Activity: Culture and Achievement
Culture is an important influence on achievement motivation. David McClelland believes that cultural values that emphasize achievement translate into economic growth at a national level. But how do cultures teach motivation such as the need to achieve? McClelland believes that one important method is through children’s readers. In several studies in different countries he has found a significant correlation between achievement motivation in children’s readers and economic progress over the following years. Can you think of examples from stories you heard, books you read or that were read to you as a child? What about from children’s television/movies?
If culture is such an important influence on achievement motivation, how do you think culture might affect people differently? For example, what about male versus female differences in achievement motivation? Do the books/stories you remember from childhood show mainly males striving to achieve? What types of characters did you most admire from your childhood books/stories? How do you think this might have affected you? What about minority cultural groups such as first nations groups, or recent immigrants? Do different cultures see achievement, as we have been discussing it, in a different way?
If you are interested in learning more about McClelland’s Human Motivation Theory, check out this link:
After reviewing the information above, consider the following questions:
- Do the books/stories you remember from childhood show mainly males striving to achieve? What types of characters did you most admire from your childhood books/stories? How do you think this might have affected you?
- Do the books/stories you remember from childhood include minority cultural groups such as first nations groups, or recent immigrants? What effect might this have?
Be prepared to share your thoughts and insights with other members of the class
Assessment
Refer to the course schedule for graded assignments you are responsible for submitting. All graded assignments, and their due dates, can be found on the “Assessment” tab.
In addition to any graded assignments you are responsible for submitting, be sure to complete all the Learning Activities that have been provided throughout the content - these are intended to support your understanding of the content.
Checking your Learning
Before you move on to the next unit, you may want to check to make sure that you are able to:
- Define, and apply, the key terminology of motivation and hunger, sexual motivation, social and achievement motivation, and emotion.
- Understand the biological, cognitive, and social processes that shape eating patterns, and the causes of common eating disorders.
- Apply your knowledge of hunger regulation to better understand and evaluate your own eating patterns, and research on sex and advertising to the commercials and Internet ads you see each day.
- Analyze the role of the media on people’s body image and different explanations for what influences sexual orientation.
- Describe the similarities and differences in sexual responses in men and women, how people experience a need to belong, and the different forms of love.
- Apply theories of motivation to understand your personal motivation to achieve in school or your career and apply your knowledge of theories of emotion to new examples.
- Analyze claims that a sense of belonging is something people need versus something they want, and what purpose(s) facial expressions serve.
- Explain how the nervous system responds to emotions, and the cultural similarities and differences in emotional expressions.