Addiction and Motivation

Lecture 1: Intro to Motivation

• The Ultimatum Game investigates the sources of motivation affecting decision-making
• The demonstration uses $100 imaginary dollars
• In the procedure, students group into threes: proposer, responder, and experimenter
• The proposer divides the $100, and the responder decides to accept or reject the division
• If the responder accepts, the money is divided as proposed; if rejected, neither gets money
• There is no discussion or negotiation, the proposer makes one offer and the responder accepts or rejects
• Traditional economic theory says the proposer would follow Rational Maximization by taking more for themselves
• Economic theory suggests the responder would accept any offer because any offer is greater than zero
• Experiments show the proposer will give around 40%-50% of their money to the responder
• Responders tend to reject offers lower than 30% of the proposer's money
• The experiment demonstrates that human behavior is not as complete as people would like to believe
• Decisions incorporate more than economic theory, including altruism, fairness, and fear of rejection
• Dopamine can hit when the responder rejects the money as a form of revenge, replacing the feeling of loss

Chapter 1. Introduction to Motivation and Emotion

• Possible motivations for a chicken crossing the road include reaching the other side, running from a chef, curiosity, or personality traits
• The scenario demonstrates the diverse and layered nature of motivation
• Human motivation encompasses deeper aspirations and social constructs than a chicken's basic needs

To be Moved in Action

• Motivated is to be moved to action/behavior or change in action/behavior
• Examples: studying for an exam, avoiding heavy traffic, family gathering, submitting work early for praise
• Three primary elements of motivation are Motive, Goal, and Incentive
• Motive: Internal disposition to approach or avoid an incentive or particular outcome
• Example: desire to eat or need to belong
• Goal: Mental representation of a valued future outcome a person plans to achieve
• Example: achieving a career
• Incentive: Anticipated reward or threat that contributes to goal motivation
• Example: late fee or promotion
• Motives push a person into action toward an end state based on bio/psych needs
• Example: Loneliness
• Incentives pull a person toward an end state based on external incentives or goals
• Example: Good grades
• Emotion: A universal multi-channelled reaction by which a person copes with a stimulus change
• Serve to address challenges

Purpose of a Motivation Psychology

• Motivation depends on personal history, preferences, and personality
• Purpose in education, workplace, and used for personal growth
• Used In Education to enhance student engagement
• Used In the Workplace to align workers' personal goals
• Used in Personal Growth to align our lives with our choices
• Motivation varies within a person (ex. hunger) and among people (ex. extraversion)

Motivation as Anticipation of the Future

• Motivation anticipates end of a journey for satisfying a need or achieving a goal
• Consummatory behavior marks the end of the motivation journey, accompanied by emotional feelings
• Example: wanting to go to a cafe after work
• Cognitive Motivation visualizes end state as concrete goal (ex. a pizza restaurant)
• Next, execute a plan or follow a script to achieve the goal (ex. ordering pizza)

Anticipatory Behavior and Simulation

• Anticipatory response mechanism: minuscule consummatory responses elicited by the goal
• These responses guide a person to a goal and maintain motivation toward the goal
• Example: dog wagging tail
• Simulation: anticipated psychological experiences that resemble the end state
• Simulation feels as if you actually handle, eat, taste and enjoy the pizza
• Can mentally rehearse event before it happens
• Example: preparing to host dinner
• Affective forecasting: a forecast or prediction of one's feelings when the goal is achieved through forecast of feelings that arise from consummatory behavior
• Can forecast the extent of pleasure from an indoor vs outdoor walk
• Forecasting errors occur, participants overestimated pleasure of indoor walk and underestimated pleasure of outdoor walk

Hedonism

• Hedonism is to pursue pleasure and avoid pain when averaged over time
• Pleasure is to exceed pain when averaged over time
• Important to teach us balance through moderation which helps us find sustainable paths to happiness

Aspects of Motivation as a Journey

• The future motivates the present, but the closer the incentive or goal, the stronger the motivation
• Further the incentive or goal, the weaker the motivation
  • Ex. deadline that is sooner than later

Indicators of Motivated Behavior

• Choice: to select among motives to satisfy, the incentive to attain or goals to achieve
• Instrumental Behavior: Behavior that is activated and results in satisfying the motive or attaining the incentive or goal
• Activation: an individual is spurred or induced into action from a previously inactive state
• Frequency: is how often (rate) a specific behavior occurs during a fixed time
• Example: How many times you check your phone
• Intensity: is the effort, exertion, force or vigor used with motivated behavior
• Example: Harder work with a closer deadline
• Persistence: Revealed by the duration of motivated behavior

Internal Sources of Motivation

• Sources inside the person that motivate behavior (biological/psychological)
• Biological Source: in biological needs of brain/body
• Psychological source: psychological needs or motives of the mind
• Drive created by depriving organisms of a necessary substance
• Thirst created by the need for water
• Drive is an internal push, urge or desire toward a goal to satisfy or reduce the drive

External Sources of Motivation

• Sources outside of the person that motivates behavior (incentives and goals)
• Valence: positive or negative quality of an outcome (incentive or goal)
• Positive incentives motivate approach behaviors (ex. study to earn good grades)
• Negative incentives motivate avoidance behavior (ex. obey speed limit to avoid a ticket)
• Incentive Motivation: Incentives motivate Behavior such that positive incentives are approached, since they evoke pleasure
• Principle of Utility: Incentives are useful; can increase happiness or decrease unhappiness

Internal and External Motivation Combined

• Internal (push): behavior flows naturally
• External (pull): valued often motivates to act even if internal motivation is weak
• Interoception is the perception of sensations coming from inside the body
• Sensations guide Behavior towards incentives
• Associationism: Internal sensation associates with complementary incentive (ex. hunger with food)
• Selection by consequences- successful consequences select that behavior and explains why some behaviors stay while others go
• Agentic Theory: not slaves to environments; agents who seek out or create their own circumstances
• Theory of Motivational Readiness: Expectancy that a want will be satisfied by affordances (possible incentives that can fulfill the wants
• The stronger the match between the want and affordance, the stronger the motivation

The Past as a Source of Motivation

• The evolutionary past is shared by all humans (behavioral, motivational, and emotional similarities)
• Human nature resulted from evolution in the form of variation (differences and traits in a population) and selection where environment favors some traits
• Sexual selection occurs as one sex selects traits in the other for mating

Lecture 2: Evolutionary Perspectives of Motivation

• Each domino that falls is a metaphor on how the past continues to inform and change the present
• Our current behaviors, choices and traits have been determined through a long chain of historical things

What Shaped Human Nature?

• By passing genes to the next generation through the process of finding a mate, producing children, raising them (successfully), behaviors can affect the success of this method
• Examples: emotion disgust or jealousy
• Evolutionary history (long term past of humans that determines human nature)
• Personal history interacts with experience contributed to determining human nature
• Heredity and nurture contribute to the motivation of behavior
• Even innate behaviors require some environmental influence

Evolutionary Psychology

• Seeks to study the Link between our evolutionary past and our current behaviour and to analyzes human motivation in terms of evolution (survival and reproduction)
• Psychological mechanisms are dispositions, behaviors and preferences that evolved to solve problems of adaptation
• Natural selection has allowed organisms to be more responsive to ancestral challenges
• These adaptations can influence universals, or motives that exist across nearly all facets of life

Evolutionary Roots and Modern Impact

• Ancestors suffered with food scarcity and would often seek out high calorie food for survival.
• Modern Impact: Leads to over consumption of these high calorie foods

Sex and Relationships

• Women are attracted to men with resources
• Men look for signs in women that signal fertility and good health.
• Humans use social bonds since they are key to our survival
• Humans engage in behaviors and relationships in accordance to sexual desire, romantic love, mate choice, and jealousy
• It is our genes interaction with our environment that determines our behaviour

Evolutionary Mismatch Hypothesis

• Some evolved psychological mechanisms do not fit well into our current environments
• Showcases how certain adaptations can hurt rather than help us

The Importance of Mate Value in Reproduction

• Traits signal "I have good genes, mate with me!" by addressing people's tendencies of attraction with the goal of producing offspring with success
• Mate value relates to one's characteristics that makes them desirable to another person as a partner, with higher values leading to higher chances of attraction

A Taste For Beauty

• One belief indicates that the most powerful aspect of beauty is in the brain of the beholder, with sexual selection as a basis of beauty that may not signal underlying traits
• Universal standards of beauty include averageness, balance, symmetry, and sexual diamorphism signal positive outcomes

Long-Term Mate Selection

• Women select mates based on traits that increase survival for their few offspring, like financial prospects + industriousness to raise a family
• It is said that men prefer mates possessing good looks and fertility to have offspring
• Biosocial theory states that evolved sex differences interact with social experiences.
• Women may look for good financial prospects because they do not have enough financial power because of their gender

Guarding Relationships

• Achieved through guarding against mate poaching (attracting a taken individual), by inciting instances of jealousy
• Niceness signals dependability and kindness and gains importance for selection for partner in economically successful communities
• Men are generally more concerned with sexual exploits over emotional affairs

Motivation and Smartphones

• Perceived partner responsiveness promotes social relationships
• Smartphones disrupt relationships
• People are often phubbed and distracted by outside apps that devalue their personal and communal connections

Fear and Survival

• Preparedness Theory details that humans are biologically predisposed to fear certain dangers for survival, which can shape responses

Taste

• Over time a preference over sweet became associated more with nutrition and safety
• As such, preference over flavor is evolutionary, rather than learned

Music

• Music can bring about a sense of social support and expression.
• Furthermore, through the process of entrainment (vocal mimicry) or vocal identification, can enhance emotional expression

Lecture 3: Addictions & Addictive Behaviours

• Psychoactive drugs are so rewarding that they tend to overshadow any natural motivators which work to reenforce survival and other important activities
• As such, psychoactive drugs have changed the function of pleasure in human's lives, which now are used more so to be absent of support to other functions

Characteristics of Addictions

• Displayed with substance use disorders (Impaired control, social impairment, risky use), become central to motivation and how they overtake our healthier goals in life.
• Lead to the development of a state of craving, which is an uncontrollable urge for the intake of a used substance
• As a result of continued exploitation of substances, the user can build up tolerance, which can lead to withdrawal or pain
• The process between use and addiction, one can often start out as being recreational for reasons in search of social acceptance or belonging
• With continued exploitation for social reasons, one can find them self's stuck in a state of dependence as genetic predispositions present them selves

Types of Social and Environmental Triggers

• Can present itself through the form of environmental cues (easily being around high rate drug users within communities), or
• social triggers (promotion of drug through the form of advertising and societal glamorization).
• Additionally, those presenting certain personality traits (high novelty and sensation seekers) enjoy the stimulation psychoactive drugs provide, that quickly become habits and addictions Impulsiveness and addiction: those who are highly impulsive and don't consider consequences have are more likely to engage in these behaviors

Forecasting Errors & Treatment

• Smokers or nicotine users are likely to underestimate dependency and have misconstrued ideals about the need for quitting.
• Users often have a lack of control and disconnect in the power of one's cravings, especially after periods of abstinence.
• Psychological treatment involves explaining the process from experimentation to addiction through highlighting reinforcement, modeling, and desensitization

Models of Reinforcement

• Positive reinforcement- using drugs to experience the pleasurable side effects Negative reinforcement- drugs have the ability to abate the withdrawal symptoms
• The positive and negative outcomes quickly lead to the development of powerful cycles of dependence.
• Also, people may be motivated to reduce actual and negative affect through the usage of psychoactive drugs as withdrawal occurs Psychactive drugs create two-phase response in the brain, labeled procces A and B, as continued use brings a need to maintain chemical balance

The Brain and Addiction

• All incentives, whether be them survival tactics or something like artificial drugs, all rely on the reward system to take hold
• Addiction occurs as neurons in the circuits of the brain get activated from feelings of artificial pleasure
• Those feelings can become easily hijacked as individuals get used

Cues and Addiction

• Over time, those behaviors present both an unconditioned stimulis (drug use- pleasure) and will have an urge in presence of conditions stimulis, or triggers.
• Conditions stimulis, for example seeing drug like actions in television, increase use to the increase in dopamine
• Those stimulis also may initiate cravings if around conditioned ones
• High levels of stress, especially in those with underlying circumstances have a higher chance of initial addiction
• In order to avoid stress and other triggers, individuals avoid engaging in triggering situations which can lead to a more intense trigger and stress.

Behavioral and Gambling Addictions

• rather than drug use, or material things, everyday actions can turn into cycles and behaviors that are addictive in nature
• Gambling can be an example of where something that is typically seen a leisurely action is hijacked can has it's use turned into an addictive pattern
• This also can be seen in online gaming and applications- these issues can cause an intense amount of problems and a lack of consideration is often linked to heavy use, and heavy activity in areas of reward in brain structure
• Addiction can exist in a spectrum (negative- detrimental to relationships) and positive (working out intensely)
• Can exist throughout varying forms
• Those who are addicts can fall into all varying forms

Gambling Addiction Cues

• Can all be related to the brain reward and dopamine
• Common among those who suffer from impulse related problems, and tolerance
• Common problems include;
• Exercise
• Heavy work loads

Explores the incentive sensitization theory of addiction, the role of neurotransmitters, and the brain areas involved in motivation. Examines negative reinforcement in exercise and symptoms of Internet addiction. Discusses the need to run longer distances to get a runner's high.