PSY 103 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Job Satisfaction, Diabetes Mellitus Type 2, Hunger (Motivational State)
13 Jun 2018
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Chapter 11: Motivated Behaviors
Module 11.1: Work Motivation
Views of Motivation
• Motivation is the process that determines the reinforcement value of an outcome
• Motivated behavior is goal oriented
• Drive theories
o Drive is a state of unrest or irritation that energizes one behavior after another
until one of them removes the irritation
▪ Ex: splinter in your finger— the discomfort motivates you to try various
actions until the splinter is removed
o Drive-reduction theory: humans and animals eat to reduce their hunger, drink to
reduce their thirst and have sexual activity to reduce their sexual drive
▪ By this view, if you satisfy all your needs you become inactive
▪ Theory implies that the ultimate goal is to have nothing to do
o Homeostasis: the maintenance of an optimum level of biological conditions
within an organism
▪ Recognizes that we seek a state of equilibrium which is not zero
stimulation
▪ Revised concept of homeostasis is allostasis: maintain levels of biological
conditions that vary according to an individual’s needs and circumstances
• Acts to prevent difficulties instead of correcting them after they
occur
o Incentive theories: incentives are external stimuli that attract us even if we have
no biological need for them
▪ Most motivated behaviors are controlled by a combination of drives and
incentives. Ex: you eat because you’re hungry (a drive) and because you
see appealing food (an incentive)
o Extrinsic motivation: is based on the rewards the act might bring or the
punishments it might avoid. Ex: a drive of hunger, water or a comfortable temp.
o Intrinsic motivation: based on the pleasure the act itself provides. Ex: working on
a crossword or playing a video game
o Most acts are a combination of both
Conflicting Motivations
• Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs: an organization from the most insistent needs to the ones
that receive attention only when all others are under control
o Bottom to top: physiological needs, safety needs, belongingness and love needs,
esteem needs, self-actualization needs (need for creative activities to fulfill your
potential)
o Lower-level needs usually take priority over the higher needs
Goals and Deadlines
• A goal should be specific because a vague goal does not tell you what to do
• Goal should be difficult otherwise it inspires no work
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• A goal must also be realistic
• Necessary conditions for an effective goal: take the goal seriously, preferably by
committing to it publicly
• Overcoming Procrastination
o Make a detailed plan of when, where, and how you will do something
o Mere measure effect: simply estimating your probability of doing some desirable
activity increases your probability of that action
o Another strategy is to make a decision about something else first, even something
unimportant. You get into the mindset of making a decision and become more
likely that usual to take action of other kinds
• Temptation
o Delay of gratification: declining a pleasant activity now in order to get greater
pleasure later; “want” vs “should”
o To overcome temptation, one should commit to an action well in advance
o Whenever you use self-control to resist a temptation in one situation, you become
less likely to resist temptation in a second situation soon after it.
Job Design and Job Satisfaction
• Two Approaches to Job Design
o Scientific-management approach/ Theory X: you should experiment to find the
best way to do a job, select appropriate workers and train them well to do it the
right way. Workers do not take much initiative and show no creativity
o Human-relations approach/ Theory Y: employees like variety in their job, a sense
of accomplishment and a sense of responsibility. They perform enriched jobs and
report a greater satisfaction. Disadvantage in employer’s standpoint is that it takes
longer to train the workers and workers expect to be paid more
• Job Satisfaction
o High job satisfaction improves performance and good performance improves job
satisfaction and highly conscientious people tend to be satisfied with life and
successful on their job
▪ Correlation is not very high because some of people who do a job well are
not highly satisfied because they want a better job
o Job satisfaction depends largely on the job itself, including the interest level, the
pay, coworkers and management and worker’s personality
o Job satisfaction is highly heritable
o On average older workers express higher job satisfaction than younger workers do
▪ Probably b/c older workers have better, higher-paying jobs and also
today’s younger people are harder to satisfy. Also many young workers
start in the wrong job and find a more suitable one later
• Job Burnout
o Refers to a long-lasting sense of mental and physical exhaustion and
discouragement
o People feel detached from their job and their coworkers and they lack any sense
of accomplishment; they become less effective on the job and their health
deteriorates
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o Cause: exhaustion and discouragement; when people become depressed for any
reason they blame their jobs; shattered-leg theory: after sustaining that kind of
injury you never completely recover, and it doesn’t take much to reinjure that leg
o Especially common among people in helping professions such as nurses, teachers
and therapists who are expected to be encouraging and supportive all the time
o People prone to depression are also prone to job burnout
• Leadership
o A good leader has the right combination of personality, intelligence, expertise,
motives, values and people-handling skills
o Transformational leader: articulates a vision of the future, intellectually stimulates
subordinates and motivates them to use their imagination to advance the
organization
o Idea of a visionary leader is more of a myth because in reality an organization
functions well if leadership is shared throughout the organization with various
people taking the lead as the situation changes
o Transactional leader: tries to make the organization more efficient at doing what it
is already doing by providing more rewards for effective work
Module 11.2: Hunger Motivation
The Physiology of Hunger and Satiety
• Short-Term Regulation of Hunger
o You feel full when your stomach and small intestine signals its distention
o When the stomach is empty, it stimulates hunger by releasing the hormone ghrelin
o Drop in glucose also induces hunger
o Insulin promotes the movement of glucose and other nutrients out of the blood
and into the cells
o When blood glucose level drops, the pancreas secrete glucagon that stimulates the
liver to release stored glucose back into the blood
o Insulin effects hunger partly by controlling the flow of glucose and also by
stimulating neurons of the hypothalamus that signal satiety
• Long-Term Hunger Regulation
o Set-point is a level that body works to maintain aka your mean weight
o Leptin is a hormone that maintains constant body weight and is released by fat
cells in amounts proportional to their mass
▪ When the boy gains fat, the extra leptin alters activity in neurons of the
hypothalamus, causing meals to satisfy hunger faster
▪ Also triggers the start of puberty
• Brain Mechanisms
o In the hypothalamus, the area called arcuate nucleus has one set of neurons that
receive hunger signals and other neurons that receive satiety signals
▪ Output from the arcuate nucleus direct other parts of the hypothalamus to
enhance or weaken salivation responses, swallowing, digestion, and the
pleasure of eating
o Damage to the hypothalamus impairs regulation of eating
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Document Summary
Ex: you eat because you"re hungry (a drive) and because you see appealing food (an incentive: extrinsic motivation: is based on the rewards the act might bring or the punishments it might avoid. Ex: a drive of hunger, water or a comfortable temp: intrinsic motivation: based on the pleasure the act itself provides. Ex: working on a crossword or playing a video game: most acts are a combination of both. Workers do not take much initiative and show no creativity: human-relations approach/ theory y: employees like variety in their job, a sense of accomplishment and a sense of responsibility. They perform enriched jobs and report a greater satisfaction. In the seventh or eighth week after conception, male fetuses secrete higher levels of the hormone testosterone than do females and causes the tiny fetal structures to grow into a penis and a scrotum. Nature does not distinguish between emotions and motivations any more than it does between weeds and flowers.
