Motivation and Emotion
Psychology · Section 3.2 · 18 study cards
Theories of motivation, hunger and belonging, the four classic theories of emotion, and what actually predicts happiness.
Practice this set → Spaced repetition, card by card. No account needed.
Method
Sort motivation theories by where the force comes from
- Instinct and evolutionary: behaviour is built in and served an adaptive function.
- Drive reduction: an internal need pushes, and homeostasis is restored.
- Incentive: an external stimulus pulls.
- Arousal: we seek an optimum, raising as well as lowering stimulation.
- Hierarchy and self-determination: motives are ordered or qualitatively different, not just stronger or weaker.
A scenario question is asking which of these the described behaviour cannot be explained by. Eating when full defeats drive reduction; exploring a new place defeats it too.
Answer hunger questions on three levels
- Short-term signals: stomach distension, blood glucose, ghrelin rising before a meal.
- Long-term signals: leptin from fat stores reporting energy reserves to the hypothalamus.
- Psychological and cultural: portion size, variety, the presence of others, learned preferences and availability.
Obesity questions want the interaction of all three plus genetics, not a single cause.
Tell the emotion theories apart with one sentence each
- James-Lange: body first, emotion is the perception of the body.
- Cannon-Bard: body and emotion at the same time, independently.
- Schachter-Singer: arousal plus a cognitive label, so the same arousal becomes different emotions.
- Zajonc: some emotion needs no conscious appraisal at all.
- Lazarus: appraisal comes first, even when it is not conscious.
Then check the scenario for its diagnostic feature. Arousal that is misattributed to the wrong source points to Schachter-Singer. An instant startle before recognition points to Zajonc and to the fast amygdala route.
Treat expression and experience separately
Expression questions concern Ekman, universality, display rules and facial feedback. Experience questions concern anger, catharsis, adaptation and what predicts happiness. Keeping them apart stops universality evidence being offered as an answer about wellbeing.
Definitions and theorems
Worked example
A student runs up four flights of stairs to reach a seminar, arrives with a pounding heart and short breath, and is immediately introduced to someone she finds attractive. She reports unusually strong attraction. A second student, hearing a sudden crash behind him, is already turning and flinching before he can say what the noise was. Explain each episode using the appropriate theory of emotion, and say which theory each episode argues against.
Break the first episode into the three components. Physiological arousal came from the stairs, the conscious experience was attraction, and the two have different sources.
Apply two-factor theory. Arousal is general and undifferentiated, so it must be labelled, and the only salient explanation available is the attractive person. The leftover stair-climbing arousal is attributed to her, which intensifies the reported emotion.
Name the mechanism precisely as misattribution of arousal, or arousal spillover, and note that this is the signature prediction of Schachter-Singer.
Say what it argues against. James-Lange holds that each emotion arises from a distinct bodily pattern; if that were so, exercise arousal could not be felt as attraction, so this episode counts against it.
Turn to the second episode. The response begins before identification is possible, so conscious appraisal cannot have caused it.
Apply the two-route account. The thalamus sends a fast, crude signal straight to the amygdala, producing a response before the cortical route has identified the stimulus. This supports Zajonc's claim that some emotional reactions precede cognition.
Close by reconciling them. The two episodes are not in conflict: simple, fast reactions can run without appraisal, while ambiguous arousal in a social situation is labelled cognitively, so the theories describe different routes rather than competing answers to one question.
Common mistakes
- Confusing James-Lange with Cannon-Bard. James-Lange puts the body strictly first and makes the emotion the reading of the body. Cannon-Bard makes arousal and feeling simultaneous and independent. If a question emphasises order, it is testing this; if it emphasises labelling ambiguous arousal, the answer is Schachter-Singer.
- Stating Maslow's hierarchy as an established fact. The hierarchy is a useful organising picture with weak empirical support and clear cultural limits. An answer that presents the order as a law, without noting that people pursue higher needs while lower ones are unmet, misses the evaluation marks.
- Saying the polygraph is unreliable because it gives inconsistent readings. The measures are consistent; the problem is validity. It records sympathetic arousal, which innocent anxiety produces just as readily as guilt, so it cannot detect lying as such.
- Claiming emotions are universal without qualification. Recognition and expression of a small set of basic emotions are largely universal, while display rules governing when and how emotions are shown are culturally learned. The examinable answer states both halves.
- Recommending venting to reduce anger. The catharsis hypothesis is not supported; expressing aggression tends to maintain or increase it. Waiting out the arousal, reappraising the event or addressing the problem directly are the evidence-based answers.
Practice it
Reading the method is not the same as being able to recall it under pressure. This set drills 18 cards one at a time and schedules each card separately, so the ones you keep missing come back sooner.