Motivation Discovering Psychology Series Tape 12 1:35 - 17:10 BFR 121 .D57 2001

Motivation starts, maintains, and stops behavior. What motivates us to do good things? What triggers us to do evil? Motivation is about action. What makes us act? It is about moving toward something and the motivation to move away from something. When we can't help moving toward something we have an addiction. When we have an aversion from something we have a phobia. Motivations shape our daily lives. They are about the preferences for doing things, the intensity of what we do, and persistency of our action. Evolution has been on the side of those who are motivated. Culture helps us define what is good and what is bad. There is a clash between seeking pleasure and the constraints that society places on our behavior, between desire and restraint. We get into trouble when pleasurable are bad for us and when difficult things are good for us. Socialization retrains the tension between desire and constraint. Freud emphasized concealed motives. Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow added the more positive motives by studying the motivations of "normal" people. For example, Maslow's (1970) Theory of the Hierarchy of Needs is discussed on pages 457-458.

Norman Adler spoke about reproductive behavior and noted that physiology affects behavior while behavior also affects physiology. Romantic love is fragile and not always sensible.

Motivation and emotion are intertwined. Emotion instigates motivation, but we tend to experience motivation and emotion together.

Martin Seligman discussed explanatory style. Explanatory style is about how we explain bad events. How we explain (1-internal vs. external, 2-stable vs. unstable, and 3-global specific) determines whether we are an optimist or a pessimist. Pessimism leads to depression, decrements in achievement, and chronic illness.