Motivation and Emotions

Emotions and motivation

From a detailed analyzation of “Understanding Motivation and Emotion” (Reeve, J.M.), emotion is shown to be a big factor towards stimulating motivation. Motivation acts as the stimulus to get through a challenge, which is fired up fom a emotion felt, where action is then taken place.

There are two fundamental questions:

What causes behavior?

 

Why does behavior vary in its intensity? (why is desire strong at one time yet weak at another, why does the same person show strong and persistent motivation at one time yet weak and unenthusiastic motivation at another time?)

Any motivation, which partly comes from emotions as one of the stimuli, has energy and direction- has a strength and purpose towards a goal/outcome.

Emotions are one of the four factors of motivation, and as an internal motive:

• Emotions: short-lived subjective-physiological-functional-expressive phenomenon that orchestrate how we react adaptively to important events in our lives.
• Emotions organize four aspects of experience:

o   feelings (subjective, verbal descriptions of emotional experience)

o   physiological preparedness (how our body physically mobilizes itself to meet situational demands)

o   function (what we want to accomplish at that moment)

o   expression (how we communicate our emotional experience to others)

The various themes of motivation have some of the same qualities and benefits of maintaining emotional health:

Adaptation- helps people cope successfully with life’s demands

Gives direction towards our thoughts, feelings and behaviour

Varies in influence over time

Reveals what people want- become more aware of themselves as individuals

To ‘flourish’, motivation needs support from others

There are various expressions of motivation that link to the factors of maintaining emotional health.  For one, Reeves mentions that motivation can come from engagement in a task. (Relate to experiences dancing, not doing as much is less motivating) The idea of being aware too could help promote alertness in the activity, to gain the full experience and thus keep motivated.

History of the study of motivation and emotions

Mainly derives from the theory of some philosophers (Plato, Socrates and Aristotle). Later their theories reduced to dualism:

“…the passion of the body and the reason of the mind. It stated the difference between the irrational, impulsive and biological (body) versus the rational intelligent and spiritual (the mind). Descartes added to this the presence of the will. The mind possessed the will that was capable of controlling the body. This the first grand theory of motivation.”

Very interesting how the body is very much a factor of how it is involved in the ‘impulse’ of an action, same as the basic idea of what emotions are. It thus shows the importance of being strong in the mind in order to ‘physically’ do well.

 Instinct- relates back to Darwin’s theory on evolution and how we act upon instinct from the feelings we get (imposed by emotions). It links to how actual behaviour occurs because of the presence of stimulus. Cant define however why we react upon instinct- becomes a circular explanation. Therefore evolved into looking more into how stimulus, like an impulse, drives us forward.

A new paradigm

Currently motivation has multiple perspectives. Current belief focuses on the fact that all these different perspectives/causes have an effect on behavior.  There are many small influences instead of one grand influence. This means that you can look at behavior from different perspectives (neurological, physiological, cognitive, cultural, evolutionary etc)

Cherry. K. Theory of Motivation, About.com Psychology, (online) Available at:

http://psychology.about.com/od/psychologytopics/tp/theories-of-motivation.htm

Reeve, J. (2008). Understanding Emotion and Motivation. 5th ed. [ebook] Wiley, pp.1-80. Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zfOyBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=understanding+motivation+and+emotion.descar