Game Plan

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Chapter 13

• Motivation Emotion

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Game Plan
Basically, this chapter (and my lectures) focus
on two related issues motivation and
emotion. With respect to motivation, we will
discuss what it is, and how it is relevant to
our basic biological needs such as eating,
sex, and agression. gt The pleasure center
story We will then turn to emotion and try to
understand what roles emotions serve, and how
they make come about.
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What is Motivation?
Motivation is often seen as the driving force
that moves us to perform some action. Stimuli
previously associated with pleasurable
consequences encourage an approach response in
the future. Those that were associated with
negative consequences support an avoidance
response. If you ever are deprived of some
reinforcing stimulation, you become especially
motivated to engage in activities that
may provide it you become especially motivated.
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Basic Biological Needs
There are certain things we need to survive
basically these things are air, food, water,
vitamins minerals, and protection from extremes
in temperature. If we are deprived of any of
these for very long, we will be VERY motivated to
satisfy them as the text says, people have
killed others for food and when food is scarce,
the strong take it. We all possess certain
regulator behaviours that are meant to keep these
needs in check such as eating, drinking,
building shelter. The purpose of this behaviours
is to achieve a level of homeostasis in our system
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The Regulatory System
In order to keep our system at or near a
homeostatic level we require a system that has
certain characteristics (think of a
thermostat). The system variable is the
characteristic we wish to regulate The set
point is the optimal level for that variable.
We need a detector that can tell what the level
of the variable is at any given time.
And finally, we need a correctional mechanism
that restores the system to the set point when
it gets too far away from it.
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The Drive Reduction Hypothesis
The drive reduction hypothesis was one of the
first theories linking motivation to
reinforcement. According to it The
physiological changes that go along with being
deprived of a biological need are unpleasant
(e.g., being hungry or cold). This unpleasant
state that serves as a drive to seek a
stimulus that will eliminate the unpleasantness
(e.g., food or heat). When such a stimulus is
found, the drive is reduced, and this reduction
of the drive serves as negative reinforcement for
the behaviour that caused the reduction. As a
result, that behaviour is likely to be repeated.
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Beyond Survival Needs
Clearly, we are not only motivated by those most
basic biological drives we are also motivated
to perform behaviours that do things other that
satisfying our basic needs. For example, why do
people listen to music, watch soap
operas, exercise, read, go to psychology class at
9 am? One of our strongest drives is a drive to
have sex. Believe it or not, you would not die
without sex so why are most of us so motivated
to get it? Reinforcement may explain many of
these behaviours (when done right, sex gives
positive reinforcement) but the strong
drive reduction notion seems not to explain them.
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Other Problems with Drive Reduction
There are two other problems with the drive
reduction hypothesis. First, there is no
independent way to measure drive. Without some
independent way to measure it, it is very hard to
do proper experiments to test the
hypothesis. Second, many of our behaviours seem
not to be directly aimed at reducing drive. For
example, if drive reduction were the whole story,
there would be no foreplay foreplay increases
arousal (and drive), it doesnt decrease it.
Other behaviours also fall into this category,
all of which cause problems for drive reduction.
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Physiological Basis of Reinforcement
Clearly, from what weve talked about already,
motivation has a lot to do with
reinforcement. How does reinforcement work?
What makes us like or want certain experiences
over others? One answer to this lies in the
pleasure center things we typically
associated with being good tend to excite this
pleasure center somehow that center makes us
feel very good. It appears that a
neurotransmitter called dopamine may also play a
role as pleasureable experiences are typically
linked with a release of dopamine perhaps it is
the drug that causes excitation of the pleasure
center.
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Optimum-Level Theory
A potential complication in all this is that a
certain behaviour or activity may be highly
desirable sometimes, but not so desirable at
others. That is, there are times when we want to
do certain exciting activities (say, go out
dancing) and there are other times when we would
rather just relax. One explanation of this comes
from optimum-level theory which states that we
all have an optimum level of arousal when
our current level of arousal is below this level
we will seek stimulation, when our current level
is above the optimum we will avoid stimulation.
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Perseverance Learned Helplessness
Why do some people persevere in some tasks even
when they are seldom reinforced, whereas others
give up? The text mentions a number of ways in
which perseverance is linked to reinforcement
I will focus on just one section. A number of
studies with animals have shown that when an
animal is exposed to some unavoidable negative
experience (e.g., shock), it will learn that it
is helpless to avoid it. After it has learned
this helplessness, it will be less likely to
try to avoid future negative experiences, even
when those experience are avoidable it will
learn to be helpless.
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Detailed Examinations
At this point, the text goes on to examine the
link between motivation and a number of human
behaviours. Specifically, it focuses on eating
behaviour, sexual behaviour, and aggressive
behaviour. We will not be discussing all of
these in class rather, we will focus on the one
that is most likely to keep your attention
and get you thinking you guessed it SEX!
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Sexual Behaviour
Sexual behaviour is an interesting topic because
sex is one of the few things that we are strongly
motivated to attain, but that is not a basic
biological need. Why is does the motivation for
sex tend to be so strong? Well, although an
individual does not need to have sex to survive,
the species needs individuals to have sex if the
species is to survive. Thus, we are likely the
descendants of humans who, for some reason, were
motivated to have sex. Those individuals had a
much higher likelihood of reproductive success
and therefore played the strongest role in the
gene pool we come from.
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Those Dastardly Hormones
In humans, especially in men, sexual drive and
performance is largely the function of
testosterone levels. Early in development, this
hormone has organizational effects in that in
controls the development of sexual
organs. Post-puberty, it has what are called
activation effects, meaning in controls the
activation of the male genitals. Men with low
levels of testosterone have difficulties
obtaining erections, or orgasms. In no
testosterone is generated, sexual drive will
disappear.
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Testosterone, Women Homosexuals
Interestingly, testosterone also effects womens
sexual experience women who receive an
injection of testosterone prior to sex feel that
certain critical parts of their bodies are more
sensitive, and the general sexual experience is
better. What happens if you give a male
homosexual testosterone, will he suddenly become
interested in women? Not at all, he will feel
more driven to have a sexual interaction, but the
interaction he seeks will still be in line with
his sexual orientation
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Sex Women
For most animal species, the females are only
receptive to sex when that sex will have a good
chance of leading to conception sex is for
procreation purposes only. However, when the
female is ready for sex, she is often
the instigator for example female rats will
wiggle their ears at male rats which, apparently,
drives the male rats crazy! Human women (and
Dolphins at least) are not like this
instead they are sometimes willing to have sex
for pleasure. One theory says that this human
female perspective is critical for supporting
monogamous relationships.
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The Role of Female Hormones
While female sex hormones (e.g., Progesterone
Estrogen) do seem to play a role in the sexual
drive and behaviour of many animal species, they
do not seem to play as strong a role (if any) for
human females. One theory about this is that the
human female sexual response is so complicated
(i.e., it involves things like affection and
love) that other factors override the affects of
the hormones (all studies were conducted with
married couples). Perhaps these hormones would
have a stronger affect if tested on unattached
women seeking sex for pleasure.
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Sexual Orientation
Most humans have a natural attraction towards
members of the opposite sex which seems
reasonable if the goal is procreation. However,
some individuals are attracted to same-sex
partners. Such homosexual behaviour also occurs
in animals, though there is much less exclusive
homosexuality in animals instead the majority
of animals that engage in homosexual acts are
actually bi-sexual. In humans, more people
attest to being exclusively homosexual than to
being bi-sexual.
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Homosexuality Nature or Nurture
Is an attraction towards same-sex partners
something that people are born with or is it
something that is either learned or chosen? A
firm answer to this question is not yet
available, but what evidence is available points
to a biological foundation. gt incorrectness of
parenting theories gt onset of feelings
studies gt twin studies gt link to early
gender-specific behaviours gt silliness of choice
notion This all suggests that homosexuality is
really just an alternate set-up of the human
system and should not be viewed as wrong.
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Chapter 13 - Part 2

• Emotion

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Motivation Emotion
Throughout most of the chapter so far we have
been focussing on the issue of what motivates us
to perform certain behaviours. Typically,
motivating events also produce an emotional
reaction in addition to a motivational one. In
fact, the emotional reaction may go hand in hand
with the physiological changes (or, perhaps,
expected physiological changes) that serve as the
reinforcement underlying motivation. Thus,
emotion and motivation do go hand in hand for
the next little while we will focus on the
emotion side of this union.
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Emotion
Emotions are clearly the spice of life it truly
is better to have loved and lost than never to
have loved. Usually when we think of emotions we
think of feelings which are often very complex
and difficult to describe gt compare being in
love with winning the lottery Psychologist
typically think of emotions as containing three
components gt Behavioural component --gt
muscular movements gt Autonomic component --gt
sympathetic nervous system gt Hormonal component
--gt work to support autonomic
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Conditioned Emotional Responses
Many of our emotional responses are actually
learned via conditioning. The textbook describes
one example of this, but I will give you another
my one time fear of dogs. Direct experience is
not always necessary to condition
emotional responses, sometimes stories or movies
can do it as well. gt e.g., JAWS! Conditioned
emotional responses can become unconditioned (i.e.
, extinguished) as can any conditioned response
but they sometimes are harder to extinguish.
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Fear, Stress, the Amygdala
One brain region called the amygdala seems
especially important with respect to conditioned
fear or stress responses. Damage to this region
causes animals to no longer show any fear or
stress to stimuli that had been earlier paired
with aversive events. They also are more
comfortable being handled by humans and release
less stress hormones. Conversely, if the
amygdala is stimulated in some fashion, animals
show signs of fear, and are more likely to suffer
from stress related problems (e.g., ulcers)
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Emotion, Personality Orbitofrontal
Another, now infamous, part of the brain related
to emotional responses is the orbitofrontal
cortex. The first case of a human with damage to
this area is the story of a railroad worker from
the 1800s named Phineas Gage. gt story
emphasizing personality change. This area was
then highlighted again as a result of a monkey
study showing that removal of the frontal lobes
appeared to reduce extreme emotional reactions in
a rowdy monkey. This lead a neuropsychiatrist
named Egas Moniz to suggest that a similar
procedure might be used on humans ...
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Frontal Lobotomy
The refined version of Moniz procedure came to
be known as frontal lobotomy. The procedure
basically involves severing the frontal lobes
from the rest of the brain sometimes simply by
sticking a spatela up there and swishing it
around (nice thought eh?). This procedure was
very popular for a while (see One Flew Over the
Cuckoos Nest) as it most definitely does stop
any strong emotional reactions. However, it was
eventually discovered that it was not the
cure that was claimed patients have huge
problems with planning and with performing
socially appropriate behaviors despite seeming
to know what those behaviours would be.
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Lie Detectors
As mentioned earlier, emotions often go
hand-in-hand with physiological changes. This
leads to the possible of detecting emotions by
measuring physiological states. Thus, if people
feel bad, guilty, or threatened when they lie,
these emotions could lead to physiological
changes that could be detected. This is the
basic logic underlying lie-detectors which
measure such things as heart rate and the
electro-conductivity of the skin (GSR)
as potential perps are questioned.
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The Control Question Test
One methodology used with lie detector apparatus
is to first ask the suspect to give some set
yes/no answer (say no) to simple questions
where the correct answer is known. E.g. Monday
is the day after Tuesday, right? With those
control questions, the investigator can then,
supposedly, identify the physiological patterns
for a given individual when the lie versus when
they tell the truth. They then ask them
crime-related questions and compare
their physiological responses when they answer to
those associated with lying or telling the
truth.
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Problems with Control Question Test
It seems that interpreting the data acquired
using the control question test is as much an art
as a science that is, deciding whether a
physiological response is more like a truth or a
lie. Often everyone appears to lie a fair amount
because pointed questions to someone hooked to a
lie-detector make them very nervous, and this
also leads to physiological changes that
may resemble those associated with lying. Not
surprisingly then, this technique produces a high
number of false alarms (concluding someone is
lying when they are not) hence the
inadmissibility of lie detector data.
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The Guilty Knowledge Test
Recently, a new methodology has been devised that
may provide quite convincing evidence of guilt in
certain situations. In this test, the suspect is
asked a number of multiple-choice type questions
about the crime with respect to evidence that
only the crime investigators and the criminal
would know about. gt e.g., hat left behind at
crime scene If the suspect consistently shows
the strongest emotional reaction to the correct
alternative, that would suggest he is the
criminal. Works best if conducted double-blind.
That is, if the person asking the questions does
not know the right answer.
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James-Lang Theory
A somewhat counter-intuitive theory of emotion
was simultaneously proposed by researchers named
James and Lang. The basic idea of this theory is
that emotions do not come before the behavioural
and physiological changes associated with
them, they are the result of them. E.g. you
see a bear, your sympathetic nervous system
kicks in, you run, then you interpret all this
as fear. This notion is at least partially
supported by studies examining patients with
spinal cord damage the higher the damage,
the more the loss of emotion ... sort of.
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Emotional Homeostasis
Another notion I always liked that is not
presented in the textbook is the notion of
emotional homeostasis. The idea is that just
like many other things, we have some
optimal level of emotionality that we try to
sustain. If some event or stimulus pushes our
emotionality one way or the other, processes kick
in that try to counteract the effect. If the
original stimulus suddenly disappears, the
counteracting effect can then result in a
temporarily reversed emotional state. This idea
was originally used to explain risk-taking
behaviours to me like skydiving.