Download Module1_PPT_AudioTranscription_08.29.16

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Slide 1
○ This is your instructor, Dr. Nichole Lighthall, from the Department of Psychology.
Let’s get started!
Slide 4
○ To begin, we are going to define motivation. Specifically, motivation are the
forces that act on or within an organism to initiate or direct behavior. Since
psychology is actually the study of behavior and the mind, you can see that
motivation’s playing a large role in psychology. That’s because it represents the
forces that drive behavior. Without these drives, we see no behavior. We’ll
discuss specific forces later on. Something else that’s important to note here is
that, motivation varies from moment to moment. In that sense, it is a state of
being not a trait meaning I am not a motivated person or an unmotivated person
but I have different levels of motivation from time to time directed at different
things.
Slide 4
○ To demonstrate this idea, take the two examples of behavior here:
■ The same person might have very low motivation or no motivation for
running to get in shape, but at the same time very high motivation to eat
some delicious fresh baked cookies when they’re really hungry.
■ However, as that person eats cookie after cookie, their motivation to eat
more will decline. So, even behaviors that are initiated easily will not
continue forever because motivational states are constantly shifting with
changes to internal and external factors.
Slide 5
○ The history of motivation theory can be traced back to early philosophers such as
Aristotle.
■ Aristotle contributed the idea that the blank slate, or tabula rasa.
● His idea was that when a baby is born their mind is blank like a
tablet with no writing. Over time, the tablet is filled with knowledge
based on one’s life experience.
● According to Aristotle, behavioral patterns are not innate but
learned. Thus, in the nature vs. nurture debate, Aristotle would
align on the nurture side as he believed that we are born without
pre-programmed behaviors.
Slide 6
○ Much later, Descartes contributed to motivation theory through his idea of human
dualism.
■ Descartes view is that human behavior was driven by two different
competing forces.
● First, the soul, or the rational mind and second, the body.
○ In his view, the body reactions were machine-like
(automatic, innate, instinctive).
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Descartes believed that either course could become dominant
such that people may be driven by mental goals or automatic
instincts at any given time.
This influenced psychology with the idea that behavior can be
driven by instincts. That’s the nature side of the nature vs. nurture
debate.
Slide 7
○ Finally, John Locke, the British philosopher, contributed the idea of associations.
■ Just like Aristotle he believed that people are born with essentially a blank
slate, but through learning and experience they built the elements of the
mind. He called these elements ideas.
● His concept of association is based on thought that ideas can be
linked together such that simple ideas can become more complex
ideas through association. These complex ideas may represent
things like high-level goals maybe like a career goal.
● Still, in modern psychology, we have the idea that high level
motives are developed from simple motivations that are linked
together with experience in learning.
Slide 7
○ So, for early motivation theory I have been focusing on philosophy. There is also
a section in your textbook that speaks about physiological antecedents of
modern motivation theory and study. I am not going to cover that here because
we are going to do a big block on physiology next week. But, you should
definitely read the section of your textbook and be prepared because these kinds
of things could be on your exam for this section later in the semester.
Slide 8
○ By in large, the psychology field is an agreement that human behavior is driven
by some combination of nature and nurture, that is genetically programmed
behaviors and learned behavior from experience. We will be covering both
aspects of motivation during this course.
Slide 9
○ To move from a philosophical to scientific approach requires systematic
measurement and analysis of motivation but here we encounter a problem. This
is because motivation itself is not observable. It is an internal state and an
invisible factor. For this reason, we can’t measure motivation directly. Instead,
psychological scientists measure it indirectly by manipulating stimuli that they
believe alters motivation and then measure those manipulation effects on specific
behavioral responses.
■ Here motivation is an intervening variable. That is, a link between
behavioral manipulations and behavioral change.
Slide 10
○ To get an idea of how this works, I will give you the following example:
■ Imagine you want to know how offering a cash prize for winning a race
affects the motivation to run. So here we can’t measure the motivation to
run itself but we can measure indicators of motivation activation. Here are
three of those:
● First, initiation or production of behavior. That is something like the
likelihood that you’ll actually sign up for the race if there is a cash
prize. If we see more people signing up we will conclude that
offering cash prize increases motivation.
● Second, persistence of behavior. For that we can measure
something like the distance that people completed in a race.
Maybe we had different races of different lengths like ten miles, or
five miles, or one mile. Would people be more likely to complete
the longer races for a cash prize? If so, we might believe that the
cash prize altered persistence and therefore that aspect of
motivation activation.
● Finally, intensity or vigor. Do people run faster during the race of
the same length if they are offered a cash prize? That is they’re
more motivated to win the race so they are going to put in more
intensity into their behavior.
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Slide 11
○ We’ve already discussed the concept of motivation activation, but there is
another characteristic to motivation that we haven't discussed which is the
direction of behavior.
■ By looking at direction, we can make inferences about motivation by
looking at how people initiate behaviors for specific options among others.
To do this we use a preference test. Here we look at which options are
more motivating in specific scenarios.
● For example, if people are sleepy at work are they more likely to
drink coffee or take a nap? If people are hungry after 1 day
without any food, are they more likely to eat a salad or a piece of
cake? If people are thirsty after exercise, are they more likely to
go for a glass of water or a glass of milk?
● By looking at the likelihood of making these decisions in the
preference test we can make inferences about which option is
more motivating.
Slide 12
○ As we’ve already discussed, scientists who study motivation are often focused on
different categories and sometimes disagree about which categories are most
important for understanding motivation. Here you will see four categories that
may be used to study motivation. Each with its own dimensional scale.
■ The first category is concerned with how we should study motivational
forces. The nomothetic approach is focused on determining general rules
or universal laws while on the other end of the spectrum, the idiographic
approach is focused on what we can learn about motivation from studying
what makes individuals unique.
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The middle two categories we have already discussed previously. You
can also read more about these in your textbook. These have to do with
where different behaviors come from. Whether they are innate on one
end of the spectrum vs acquired or learned. Also, the forces that guide
development of behavior being internal or external.
Within the fourth category, we’ve discussed a bit already the mechanistic
approach and that is that behavior arises through some kind of reflex or
an automatic/unconscious process. But, on the other end of that spectrum
is the cognitive viewpoint which states that behavior is the result of some
cognitive interpretation, that the mind actually plays a role in how
behavior comes about.
Slide 13
○ Scientists also study motivation at different levels of analysis, and as with
categorization, any one orientation or approach isn’t going to tell you everything
that you want to know about the topic. A real deeper understanding of motivation
is going to require integrating all of these different orientations and approaches.
So for this first level of analysis we can consider how physiology, that is our
nervous system function, relates to motivation.
■ We can use different methods like measurement of neuron activity or
direct stimulation of neuron activity through implanted electrodes. This is
most commonly done with animals but it can also be done with humans if
they’re in an ongoing brain surgery situation. We can also look at
peripheral nervous system functions like heart rate through EKG. Other
things we can measure are respiration and sweating. We can look at
effects of brain damage from lesions and tumors. How that alters
motivational states and behaviors. We can look at brain anatomy and
brain function through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI or fMRI). And
finally, the function of different neurotransmitter systems through PET
imaging and with this we can look at, for example, the difference in
dopamine receptor activity or controlled participants vs people with
different types of addictions that affect the motivation system.
Slide 14
○ The individual level of analysis is interested in changes to motivation, alteration
to internal or external conditions. We looked at this sort of set up for an
experimental design earlier where we can’t measure motivation directly because
it’s an intervening variable. But we can do different manipulations, put people in
different conditions or animals in different conditions and then look at how that
later affects their behavior or even sometimes brain activity. So to see an
example, I put a link here for a very famous experiment that’s also discussed in
your book that’s Bandura’s “Bobo Doll” experiment on aggression in children. So
if you watch that video it will give you an idea of how these different
manipulations can be done and how the behavioral outcomes are measured.
Slide 14
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It’s also worth mentioning that the individual level of analysis is usually done with
groups of people or animals and this is done because we want to look at some
small population that we think represents the larger populations so we may look
at a small group of people in some study at a university but the hope is that
effects we see there will actually generalize the larger population of say people in
that same age category so even though it’s called individual level of the studies
on this level are often done in groups.
Slide 15
○ So you’ll notice right off the bat that we have a really similar figure here for the
social level, that’s our third level of analysis, its looking really similar to the
individual level. However, in this case the manipulation that people are going to
be exposed to or animals will be exposed to will be social:
■ that is something to do with a social environment, a social scenario or
situation, and so that is actually the specific factor that we think is going to
affect motivation and then related behaviors.
● So here I have another example which is ash line experiment on social
conformity if you watch this experiment you’ll see how people tend to behave
differently when they see the opinions of others or when they’re in groups
compared to when they’re sort of able to think their own thoughts and guide their
own behavior individually
Slide 16
○ The last level of analysis that we’ll look at is the philosophical level. You might
remember from our discussions of the philosophical roots of motivation from
before that it’s often difficult to test theories about motivation that arise from
philosophy. This is because these concepts are more theoretical rather than
observable and measurable.
■ So, for one example, Sigmund Freud had the idea that motivational states
are essentially aversive. That is when people are motivated, they are
trying to escape/avoid/reduce/diminish negative feelings. Those are the
primary drivers of behavior.
■ Whereas, Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers on the other hand, thought
that motivation is essentially positive state. People are trying to become
the best human beings they can be. They are trying to self-actualize.
■ There may be validity to both points of view but in order to prove or
disprove these is actually very difficult. They, nonetheless, can be
informative and guide our orientation to motivation for proper scientific
studies.
Slide 16
○ It’s worth mentioning that Maslow and Rogers were both strong proponents of a
sort of growth orientation to human motivation so that is this idea of being the
best you can be. So this does relate to your module one discussion and Carol
Dweck’s work: the idea that human being’s can become better and better over
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time. These large scale goals that can be worked out over an entire lifetime and
they were strong proponents of that growth orientation.
Slide 17
○ The specific constructs in motivation, I’m going to ask you to go to your textbook
on page 13, and read through these different constructs. I’ve already mentioned
several of these before and talked about some of them more in depth, but these
are terms or ideas that are going to come up many times throughout the course
so make sure you familiarize yourself with these and the related ideas, so just
very quickly:
■ A construct is essentially a concept so that is, it’s not some observable
thing but more like an idea is an explanatory variable.
○ so go ahead and read through each of these make sure you understand them
because again these ideas will come up over and over again throughout the
course.
Slide 18
○ Now we’re gonna switch gears to talk about evolution and natural selection and
how these affect human motivations. First I want to start by defining a couple of
terms.
○ So right now we are gonna be discussing ultimate explanations for different
behaviors.
■ Ultimate explanations within human evolutionary theory have to do with
why a behavior exists, that is, how it affected individual's reproductive
fitness.
○ But next week we are gonna discuss proximate explanations
■ These are mechanisms that give rise to the behavior, things like actual
biological processes.
Slide 18
○ At the bottom of the page you’ll see a few examples of proximate and ultimate
explanations for certain types of behavior that we see across cultures and
history, so universal behaviors in humans and this is not an exhaustive list , but
just to give you some ideas of the types of behaviors that we’ll be discussing and
how they fall into these different categories
Slide 19
○ So Evolution in brief
■ By definition evolution is the progressive change of organisms through
time and the idea based on the original propositions by Darwin and
Wallace says that organisms who are most able to cope with their
environment will survive and pass along their genes and with this the
related phenotypes or traits into reproduction and the following
generations
Slide 19
○ All living organisms share two basic characteristics:
■ The first is the ability to reproduce: that is to pass along the individual's
genes to the next generation
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The second is metabolism: that’s the ability to convert energy in order to
keep the organism alive, that’s the ability to survive basically.
○ Now what’s important here is: A species will not continue to exist across history
unless the genes for the species continue on so in that sense the ability to
survive or to metabolize food into energy are secondary they are always in the
service of making sure that those genes get passed along,
○ So reproduction is the most important function, metabolism really just serves to
keep those genes in the population.
Slide 19
○ So some students might be wondering at this point how could people possibly
decide not to have children if reproduction is such an important and evolutionarily
determined drive, well that’s probably more than we can discuss in this brief intro,
but I will say that we’re gonna discuss many drives that are related to sexual
reproduction and just the idea of engaging in any sexual activity or having
specific preferences about mates often times these behaviors are none the less
related to the basic evolutionary drive to reproduce and pass along one’s genes.
So I’m gonna leave that there if we have more thoughts and questions about this
you can definitely email me or add them in your discussion posts.
Slide 20
○ The take home from this slide is that reproduction via meiosis allows for diversity
of traits within a species that is offspring share genetic information with both
parents but they are also genetically unique this is important because this allows
for new traits to arise which might be more adaptive in the current environment
and those adaptive traits can be passed along to the next generation increasing
the evolutionary fitness of those offspring.
Slide 20
○ Additional benefits of sexual reproduction are that it allows for repair of genetic
information through recessive and dominant gene pairings and also there’s ability
for rapid expansion of beneficial mutations within the gene pool again because
each person has two copies of a chromosome. I’ll let you read more about these
additional benefits in your textbook.
Slide 21
○ As I mentioned earlier, even when people make the decision to not have children
they probably nonetheless still experience things like sexual drive the complete
absence of sexual drive is actually clinically pathological it indicates some form of
illness. So why this exists? Well the primary operating principle, as we
discussed, of living organisms is to reproduce. So genes that have succeeded to
this point- they ensure their own survival by coding for phenotypes or traits that
make sex very pleasurable so even if people want to not have children they may
nonetheless engage in sexual activity that could get them pregnant and we see
this quite a lot, there is a show by the way called ‘teen mom’. So we also see sex
drives across all species, we don’t see many animals that don’t engage in sexual
activity, again, that would be some indication of illness, sickness, or some kind of
mutation; and we even see some animals that will sacrifice their lives to copulate.
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So, in the case of the Australian Redback spider, he immediately becomes food
for his female mate after copulation. Why does this behavior continue to exist? If
it compromises their survival? Well he’s already reproduced and passed along
his genes, so that behavior can continue because again, the primary operating
principle of living things is to pass along their genes into the next generation.
○ That’s not to say that there aren’t other potentially useful purposes for sex, that
can even help to increase one’s evolutionary fitness. So in primates, for example,
in bonobos it’s been shown that sexual activity:
■ Reduces aggression
■ Increases social bonding
■ And helps partners gain access to resources within their troops
○ We can imagine that many of these things are helpful in humans also, and you
may even come up with some other functions for sex that help increase
evolutionary fitness on your own.
Slide 22
○ So, there’s our man Charles Darwin and the definition of natural selection, that is
that: organisms who are better adapted to their environment are more likely to
survive and produce more offspring. So, the important, one important point here
is that environments can change- so something that's adaptive now, may not be
adaptive later. So that’s one of the reasons that natural selection exists, it allows
species to change to changing environments, and with diversity in the gene pool,
there should be some in the species that can adapt even when environments
change dramatically.
○ It's been proposed that natural selection affects gene selection through three
primary mechanisms:
■ The first has to do with viability, and that is genes that increase the
likelihood of survival to reproduction will be selected for, while those that
decrease survival to reproduction will be selected against. Now notice
that the important part is survival to reproduction, and the reason why is
that genes that say- help you live to age 200 are not going to be selected
for unless you are actually having babies at age 200 and raising those
offspring. So the key times when genes have the most potential to be
selected for, is when they enhance your survival abilities within the
reproductive years, or maybe even extending that to the years in which
you’re going to be raising offspring and making them, getting them to the
level to be independent.
■ The second point has to do with fertility: genes that increase the likelihood
of mating will be selected for, while those that decrease the likelihood of
mating will be selected against.
■ And finally fecundity is a less common term, and that is: genes that
increase the number of offspring produced will be selected for, while
those that decrease the number of offspring will be selected against.
Slide 23
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So given the importance of reproduction, there are many selection pressures on
different aspects of mating and partner selection. So we’re going to discuss that
here. So first is the idea of sexual selection – this happens in competitive mating
environments, and what happens is it tends to be the case that one sex, either
male or female, will tend to choose the other sex, meaning that they get the
selection advantage. They’re going to pick from among different possible
candidates and decide who to reproduced with. Across species, this is typically
females, the female is typically the “chooser”, and this is basically true in humans
as well- although it is more complicated. What ends up getting selected is “good
genes in the males” so that is- body types or other different personality traits, and
other propensities that will be discussed in the linked video. So, I’d like you to
end today by watching this wonderful TED talk on the evolution of human mating.
The video raises a lot of really interesting questions, and shows different
scientific ways that you can study the evolution of some of these very challenging
concepts like mate selection.