PSY 1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Homeostasis, Konrad Lorenz, Starship Troopers
15 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
March 28, 2018
MOTIVATION
Motivation: all factors that arouse, direct and maintain behavior towards a goal.
A. Sherrington on reflexes:
1. They are innate, they lack spontaneity, are stimulus bound and
stereotyped.
II. INSTINCT THEORY
Instinct: a behavior, characteristic of a species, that is possessed by all members of the
species (Instincts are innate)
A. Releasing Stimuli
1. How to test for an instinct?
a) Present appropriate releasing stimulus
b) By exaggerating the features of the stimulus that catch
attention
→
super stimulus
B. McDougall: Primary Human Instincts
1. Primary instincts have emotions associates with them
a) Instinct: Emotion:
flight fear
Repulsion disgust
Curiosity wonder
2. Others: self-abasement, self-assertion
C. Freud
1. Life Instincts: Nurturing
a) Sublimation: we do things without knowing why
b) Bad impulses
→
repression
→
sublimation
2. Death Instincts: Aggression
III. DRIVE REDUCTION THEORY
A. Homeostasis
1. Bodily deficit → Drive → Activity → Goal
Need Calories → Hunger → Search for Food → Eat
B. Drives: internal state of Arousal
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Motivation: all factors that arouse, direct and maintain behavior towards a goal. Sherrington on reflexes: (cid:498)they are innate, they lack spontaneity, are stimulus bound and stereotyped. (cid:499) Instinct: a behavior, characteristic of a species, that is possessed by all members of the species (instincts are innate) By exaggerating the features of the stimulus that catch attention super stimulus. Bodily deficit drive activity goal. Need calories hunger search for food eat. Example: urge to get money to buy food/ drinks. Intrinsic motivation: the increasing tendency to perform a behavior as a function of the time since it was last performed. Describes the relationship between arousal and performance as an inverted (upside down), u-shaped function. Performance increases with increased levels of arousal up to a point, and then performance drops off as arousal increases further. Different tasks (different kinds of behavior) have different levels of optimal arousal.
