PSY 202 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Delayed Gratification, Social Comparison Theory, Albert Bandura
Week 4 Class 1
Motivation
How does motivation activate, direct, and sustain behavior?
● motivation is defined as the area of psychological science concerned with the factors that
energize, or stimulate behavior
● emotions play a prominent role
Need Hierarchy - start on the bottom (5) and once you accomplish those you can move up to the
next level
1. Self-actualization: living to full potential, achieving personal dreams and aspirations
2. esteem: good self opinion, accomplishments, reputation
3. belonging and love: acceptance, friendship
4. safety: security, protection, freedom from threats
5. physiological: hunger, thirst, warmth, air, sleep
Multiple Factors Motivate Behavior
● Biological and social needs are defined as a state of deficiency
● Drives
○ Drives are psychological states that encourage behaviors that satisfy needs
○ Homeostasis is the tendency of the body to maintain constancy of the internal
environment
○ needs create arousal that motivated behavior (ex: need=water, drive=thirst,
behavior=drinking)
● Incentives
○ external objects or external goals. rather than internal drives, that motivate behaviors
● Arousal and performance
○ The Yerkes-Dodson law dictates that performance increases with arousal up to an
optimal point and then decreases with increasing arousal
● Pleasure
○ animals prefer to eat sweets; sweetness usually indicates that food is safe to eat
○ most poisons and toxins taste bitter, so it is not surprising that animals avoid bitter
tastes
● Extrinsic Motivation
○ Emphasizes the external goals an activity is directed toward, such as reducing drive
or obtaining a reward (ex: getting given money to do something)
● Intrinsic motivation
○ refers to the value or pleasure that is associated with an activity but has no apparent
biological goal
People set Goals to Achieve
● Self-efficacy and achievement motivation
○ Albert Bandura argued that people’s personal expectations for success (self-efficacy)
play an important role in motivation
○ achievement motive is the desire to do well relative to standards of excellence
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Motivation is defined as the area of psychological science concerned with the factors that energize, or stimulate behavior. Biological and social needs are defined as a state of deficiency. Drives are psychological states that encourage behaviors that satisfy needs. Homeostasis is the tendency of the body to maintain constancy of the internal environment. Needs create arousal that motivated behavior (ex: need=water, drive=thirst, behavior=drinking) External objects or external goals. rather than internal drives, that motivate behaviors. The yerkes-dodson law dictates that performance increases with arousal up to an optimal point and then decreases with increasing arousal. Animals prefer to eat sweets; sweetness usually indicates that food is safe to eat. Most poisons and toxins taste bitter, so it is not surprising that animals avoid bitter tastes. Emphasizes the external goals an activity is directed toward, such as reducing drive or obtaining a reward (ex: getting given money to do something)