Emotions and Motivation

Today we’re going to be talking about motivation and emotion.

There are three main motivation theories that we’ll be covering: Drive-Reduction Theory, Arousal Theory, and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Drive-Reduction theory is all about reducing our drive and needs. As our physiological need increases, so does our psychological drive. We have a need, like food, which leads to drive, or hunger, then we behave to reduce the drive, like eat.

Some researchers believe that humans are motivated by some arousal- not too much because that causes stress but an optimal level of arousal that would motivate us. If all of our bodily needs are taken care of, we still seek out intellectual needs and we seek out other stimulation. Arousal theory believes that we seek to maintain an optimal level of arousal that motivates us to behave to meet our non-physiological needs.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs was developed based on the belief that we prioritize our needs. We first need our basic, survival-based needs met before our other needs can be met. After our survival-based needs, we have to have our safety needs met. We have to feel personally safe, that our property is safe, that our community and living space is safe. Then we have the need for love and belonging. We have a need to be loved and feel loved, to belong to something. Then we have our esteem needs. We need achievement, competency, independence, and respect. Finally, we have self-actualization needs. This would include our need to live up to our full potential.

Since motivation is connected to intense emotions, we’re going to cover the three main emotion theories: James-Lange theory, Cannon- Bard Theory, and Schachter- Singer Theory.

The James- Lange theory of emotion believes that our emotions are based on our interpretation of our physiological response. Let’s say we hold our new niece or nephew for the first time, which gives you warm-fuzzy happy feelings. The James- Lange theory, holding your new niece or nephew caused a physiologic response of releases neurotransmitters, your heart rate and pulse probably changed, you probably gazed in their eyes as they looked back at you. James- Lange believed that the interpretation of those physiologic responses is what determined happiness as the outcome. They would state it wasn’t holding your niece or nephew that caused your happiness but what bodily changes holding your niece or nephew caused that made you happy.

Some researchers disagreed that physiological responses triggered emotion, and Cannon- Bard were two of them who eventually created the Cannon- Bard theory of emotion. A major disagreement they had was their belief that a person could experience physiological response without feeling a particular emotion or that a physiological response does not correlate to one specific emotion. For example, your heart may race if you’re excited, scared, or you just completed a run. Cannon- Bard believed that physiologic response happens at the same time as emotion.

The Schachter- Singer theory of emotion discusses the role physiologic response and cognition play into emotion. These two concepts- physical response and cognition, create emotion according to Schachter- Singer. They believed that a emotional experience requires a conscious interpretation of arousal, or interpretation of the physiological response. In our example of holding our niece or nephew, our bodies reacted to this, but Schachter- Singer would say that it was our cognitive appraisal or label our of that experience that gave us the happiness emotion. The cognitive ability to think through “this is really special” or “this feels nice” plays a role in the outcome being happiness.

We’ve covered many theories. The key things to remember from this lesson are that motivation theories are to detail how we get our drives and desires met- both physically and non-physically. Emotion theories try to explain how and why we have emotions, which can come from physiological responses, interpretations, and cognitive labels.