Chapter 1: Introduction to Motivation PDF

# Chapter 1: Introduction to Motivation ## What is Motivation? Motivation is wanting. Motivation is a condition inside us that wants or desires a change — a change in the self or change in the environment. This definition identifies the active ingredient within any motivational state (i.e., wantin...

# Chapter 1: Introduction to Motivation ## What is Motivation? Motivation is wanting. Motivation is a condition inside us that wants or desires a change — a change in the self or change in the environment. This definition identifies the active ingredient within any motivational state (i.e., wanting change) - I want to change my behavior, my thoughts, the way I feel, my self-concept, my surrounding environment, the quality of my relationships, and so forth. Motivation is concerned with explaining all forms of behavior. It deals with the causes of people's behavior and it attempts to explain why we behave in the way that we do. Essentially, when we ask why a person or animal acts in a particular way, we are asking about their motivation. In order to understand motivation properly, an assessment of internal, physiological needs and external, situational demands must be made. Theories of motivation try to explain our behavior with reference to instincts and drives, incentives and rewards, and the desire to change one's level of arousal. These theories have been applied to fairly mundane activities, such as eating and drinking, as well as to more adventurous activities, such as bungee-jumping. Motivation is concerned with goal-directed behavior, what it is that pushes us towards certain forms of behavior and not others. Motivation is concerned with the complex processes that move individuals towards some goal, to try and understand the forces that push them into action. The idea of forces pushing us into action is generally linked to the notion of biological drives and instincts, which compel us to adopt certain forms of behavior. However, if we see motivation as involving mental processes then it appears to be linked more closely to cognitive factors, which involve a logical assessment of the situation before we decide to act. ## Is motivation study important? There are many benefits, but consider two key reasons: 1. First, learning about motivation and emotion is a very interesting and personally satisfying thing to do. Anything that tells us about what we want and desire, why we want what we want, and how we can improve our lives is going to be interesting. To give us these insights, we can turn to theories of motivation to learn about topics such as human nature, goal setting, desires for biological sex and psychological intimacy, and emotions like anger and compassion. These theories explain how to increase effort, change behavior, develop talent, spark creativity, grow interest, and function more effectively. 2. Second, motivation and emotion fuel important life outcomes. Motivation helps us get things done. So, learning about motivation - learning how to get things done - is quite a useful thing to do. It can be useful to know where motivation comes from, why it changes, how to change it, and whether some types of motivation are better than other types. Knowing such things, we can empower employees, coach athletes, counsel clients, raise children, engage students, or change our own ways of thinking and behaving. We can improve performance, enhance well-being, and realize personal growth. If motivation and emotion study can show us how to improve our lives and the lives of others, the journey will be time well spent. As a case in point, consider exercise. Think about it for a moment: Why would anyone want to exercise? Can you explain this? Can you explain why one person might be more willing to exercise than another? Can you explain why the same person sometimes wants to but other times does not want to exercise? Why exercise when life offers so many other interesting things to do? These questions ask about exercise, but they could just as easily ask about the motivation underlying any activity. If you play the piano, why? If you work all night to complete a project, why? If you went through all the effort to learn a foreign language, then why? ## Motivational Science: The study of motivation and emotion is a behavioral science (or a social science). "Science" means that answers to motivational questions require objective, data-based, empirical evidence gained from well-conducted and peer-reviewed research findings. Motivational science does not accept quotes from famous basketball coaches as definitive answers; however, inspirational and attention-getting those quotes may be. Instead, motivational science embraces rigorous empirical methods: Testable hypotheses, clear conceptual and operational definitions of each construct, observational methods, and statistical analyses to evaluate each hypothesis objectively. Research seeks to construct theories about how motivational and emotional processes work. A theory is an intellectual framework that organizes a vast amount of knowledge about a phenomenon so that the phenomenon can be better described, understood, and explained. Motivation and emotion theories exist to answer the Why? questions of behavior, thought, and feeling, such as Why did she do that? and Why does she feel that way? Without the answer to Why, we are left only with the description of behavior, and description without explanation is unsatisfying. How a theory explains a phenomenon may or may not be correct, or complete. So researchers use the working theory to generate new, testable hypotheses. A hypothesis is a prediction about what should happen if the theory is correct. For instance, one hypothesis about well-being is that "not all goals are equal". Pursuing some types of life goals (e.g., those for personal growth and relationship growth enhance well-being while pursuing other types of life goals (e.g., those for fame and fortune) do not, and they may even put well-being at risk. With a hypothesis in hand, a research study is carried out to collect the data necessary to evaluate the accuracy of the hypothesis. For instance, the researcher can (1) ask college students what sort of goal they will try to attain over the holiday break, (2) categorize those goals as intrinsic or extrinsic, and then, after the break is over, (3) assess for any change in students' well-being. After a theory has been sufficiently and objectively validated, it becomes useful. A validated theory serves as a tool to recommend practical applications that can improve people's lives. A validated theory can inform interventions and real-world applications. With a valid theory in hand, the motivation scientist can translate discovered knowledge into useful applications in schools, work-places, and society and enhance people's motivation and emotion in applied settings. ## Expressions of Motivation: How do you know motivation when you see it? Watch someone for a few minutes to ask yourself about this person's motivational state. For instance, as you watch two people—say, two teenagers playing a tennis match - how do you know that one person is more motivated than the other? Do the two players have the same type of motivation, or do they have two different types of motivation? Motivation is a private and unobservable (internal) experience. You cannot see another person's motivation. That is, as you walk down the street, you cannot look at the passer-byes and actually see their thirst, grit, interest in art, or the goals they strive for. Instead, we observe what is public and measurable to infer such motivations. Below are the five tell-tale ways that you can know (or measure) motivation when you see it — behavior, engagement, psychophysiology, brain activations, and self-report. ### Behavior: Seven aspects of behavior express the presence, intensity, and quality of a motivational state: - **Effort** (exertion put forth during a task, percentage of total capacity used), - **Persistence** (time between when a behavior first starts until it ends), - **Latency** (duration of time a person waits to get started on a task upon first being given an opportunity to engage it), - **Choice** (when presented with two or more courses of action, preferring one course of action over the other), - **Probability of response** (number or percentage of occasions that the person enacts a particular goal-directed response given the total number of opportunities to do so), - **Facial expressions** (facial movements, such as wrinkling the nose, raising the upper lip, and lowering the brow, e.g., a disgusted facial expression), and - **Bodily gestures** (bodily gestures, such as intentionally moving the legs, arms, and hands, e.g., a clenched fist). When behavior shows intense effort, long persistence, short latency, high probability of occurrence, facial or gestural expressiveness, or when the individual pursues one specific goal-object instead of another, such is the evidence to infer the presence of an underlying motive. When behavior shows lackadaisical effort, fragile persistence, long latency, low probability of occurrence, minimal facial and gestural expressiveness, or when the individual pursues an alternative goal-object, such is the evidence to infer an absence of an underlying motive, or at least a relatively weak one. ### Engagement: Engagement refers to how actively productively a person is involved in a task. Engagement is a multidimensional construct that consists of the three distinct, yet intercorrelated and mutually supportive, aspects of behavior, cognition, and agency. Engagement provides a broad multidimensional portrait that expresses or reveals the underlying quality of the person's motivational state. **Behavioral engagement** refers to being on-task and exerting effort and persistence, especially in the face of challenge and difficulty. **Cognitive engagement** refers to mental effort in terms of concentration, problem-solving, and using sophisticated learning strategies and critical thinking to meet the demands and challenges of the task. **Agentic engagement** is the proactive and constructive initiative the person shows to catalyze their own learning and create a more supportive learning environment for themselves, such as by asking questions, offering input and suggestions, expressing their interests and preferences, and letting others know what they want and need. For one example, to infer the underlying motivation of the student who sits next to you during class, observe their on-task attention, effort, and persistence (behavioral engagement), how much input, initiative, and personal voice they contribute into the ongoing flow of the class (agentic engagement). These are the reliable tell-tale signs of the presence, intensity, and quality of the person's underlying class-specific motivation. ### Psychophysiology: As people engage in various activities, the nervous and endocrine systems manufacture and release various chemical substances (e.g., neurotransmitters and hormones) to provide the biological underpinnings of motivational and emotional states. The term **psychophysiology** refers to the process by which psychological states (motivation and emotion) produce downstream psychological and biological changes. For example, during a public speech (or a first date, or athletic performance), the brain and body manufacture and release into the bloodstream various hormones, such as epinephrine (adrenaline and the fight-or flight hormone) and cortisol (the stress hormone), and these hormonal changes produce changes throughout the body, such as increased heart rate, blood pressure, respiration rate, and sweating, that can be picked up and measured by blood tests, saliva tests, and various types of psychophysiological equipment. Using these measures, motivation researchers monitor a person's hormonal activity, heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, pupil diameter, skin conductance, skeletal muscle activity, and other indicators of physiological functioning to infer the presence, intensity, and quality of underlying motivational and emotional states. It is through all these psychophysiological changes that the brain and body translate motivation and emotion into acting, coping, and performing. There are five psychophysiological expressions of motivation and emotion: 1. **Hormonal activity** (chemicals in blood or saliva, such as cortisol -stress- or catecholamines -fight-or-flight reaction), 2. **Cardiovascular activity** (contraction and relaxation of the heart and blood vessels -as in response to an attractive incentive or a difficult/challenging task), 3. **Ocular activity** (eye behavior -pupil size; extent of mental activity, eye blinks -changing cognitive states, and eye movements -reflective thought), 4. **Electrodermal activity** (electrical changes on the surface of the skin; as in response to a significant or threatening event), and 5. **Skeletal activity** (activity of the musculature, as with facial expressions, bodily gestures, and behavioral engagement). ### Brain Activations: Brain activations underlie every motivational and emotional state. When thirsty, the hypothalamus activates. During disgust, the insular cortex activates. When angry, the amygdala activates. Because motivational and emotional states all arise out of a pattern of neural activity, researchers use very sophisticated equipment (e.g., EEG, or electroencephalograph) and machinery (e.g., fMRI, or functional magnetic resonance imaging) to detect, monitor, and measure these brain activations. Thus, by observing a rise in hypothalamic, insular, and amygdala activity, researchers can see the brain in the process of generating thirst, disgust, and anger, respectively. ### Self-Report: A fifth and final way to collect the data needed to infer the presence, intensity, and quality of a motivational or emotional state is simply to ask the person. People can typically self-report their motivation, as in an interview or on a questionnaire. An interviewer might assess anxiety, for instance, by asking how anxious the interviewer feels in particular settings or by asking the interviewee to report anxiety-related symptoms, such as an upset stomach or thoughts of failure. Questionnaires (paper-and-pencil, and online) have several advantages. They are easy to administer, can be given to many people simultaneously, and can target very specific information. But questionnaires also have pitfalls that raise a red flag of caution as to their usefulness. Many researchers lament the lack of correspondence between what people say they do and what they actually do. Furthermore, there is also a lack of correspondence between how people say they feel and what their psychophysiology indicates that they probably feel (e.g., "Oh, I'm not tired, I'm not hungry, I'm not afraid."). What conclusion, for instance, can one draw when a person verbally reports low anger but shows a rapid acceleration in heart rate and a facial expression in which their eyebrows clinch together downwardly? Because of such discrepancies, motivation and emotion researchers typically trust and rely on behavioral, engagement, psychophysiological, and brain-based measures more than they trust and rely on self-report measures. Self-reports can be useful and informative, but they always need to be backed up and verified by the person's behavior, engagement, psychophysiology, and brain activity. ## Framework to Understand Motivation and Emotion: Antecedent conditions affect (cause, facilitate, and diminish) the person's underlying motive status. The rise and fall of these motives (needs, cognitions, and emotions) is expressed through a display of behavior, engagement, psychophysiology, brain activation, and subjective self-report that then contributes constructively to producing important life outcomes. The framework explains what causes motivation and emotion (antecedent conditions), illustrates the subject matter of motivation study (needs, cognitions, and emotions), articulates how motives publicly express themselves and can be measured (behavior, engagement, psychophysiology, brain activations, and self-report), and explains why the study of motivation and emotion is so important to people's lives (important life outcomes). ## Ten Unifying Themes: The scientific study of motivation and emotion includes a wide range of assumptions, hypotheses, theories, findings, and domains of application. All of this information can be a bit overwhelming at first. Fortunately, 10 unifying themes help to bring all this information together in a sensible and cohesive way, including: 1. Motivation and emotion enable effective functioning. 2. Motivation and emotion are "intervening variables". 3. Types of motivation exist. 4. Motivation study reveals human nature (what people want). 5. We are not always consciously aware of the motivational basis of our behavior. 6. Motivational and emotional states are dynamic and often reciprocally related to the events and outcomes that cause them. 7. To flourish, motivation needs supportive conditions. 8. Some motivational strategies work better than others. 9. Needs, emotions, cognitions, and well-being interrelate. 10. There is nothing so practical as a good theory. ## Motivation and Emotion Enable Effective Functioning: Circumstances, relationships, activities, and feedback constantly change, as do the environments we live in (at home, school, and work). Demands on our time rise and fall, opportunities come and go, threats emerge, and previously supportive relationships turn sour. When faced with a constantly changing stream of opportunities and threats, people need the means to take corrective action. Motivations and emotions enable such corrective action. The rise and fall of motivational and emotional states allow people to function as complex adaptive systems. For instance, when others treat us unfairly, we often get angry and that anger motivates corrective action to do what it takes to counter the exploitation. Or when a stranger goes out of her way to help us when we really need it, we feel gratitude and that warm glow motivates corrective action to develop a new friendship or to "pay forward" that kindness. Take away the corrective motivational and emotional states, and people would lose a vital resource to adapt effectively, function productively, and maintain well-being. When motivation depletes, personal adaptation, functioning, and well-being all suffer. People who feel helpless in exerting control over their fates tend to give up when challenged. When the social environment and relationships are supportive, our benevolent nature arises and regulates our ongoing stream of behavior, but when the social environment is thwarting and when our interpersonal relationships neglect and frustrate us, our malevolent nature arises and regulates our ongoing stream of behavior. Because environments can be both benevolent and hostile, it helps to have a complex human nature that prepares us well for whatever comes our way. ## We Are Not Always Consciously Aware of the Motivational Basis of Our Behavior: Motives vary in how accessible they are to consciousness and to verbal report. Some motives originate in language structures and the cortical brain (e.g., goals) and are thus readily available to our conscious awareness (e.g., "I have a goal to sell three insurance policies today."). For these motives, if you ask a person why he or she selected that particular goal, the person can confidently list the rational and logical reasons for doing so. Other motives, however, have their origins in nonlanguage structures and the subcortical brain and are therefore much less available to conscious awareness. Not many people, for instance, say they feel hungry because of low leptin in the bloodstream, and not many people say they acted violently because it was so hot. These are the motives that originate in the unconscious subcortical brain rather than in the language-based cortical brain. Many experimental findings can be offered to make the point that motives can and do originate in the unconscious. Consider that people who feel good after receiving an unexpected gift are more likely to help a stranger in need than are people in neutral moods. People are more sociable on a sunny day than on a cloudy day. People are more violent in the summer months than at other times of the year. Major league baseball pitchers, for instance, are more likely to intentionally hit batters on the opposing team when the temperature is hot rather than when the temperature is cold or moderate. In each of these examples, the person is not consciously aware of why he or she committed the prosocial or antisocial act. Few people would say they committed murder or hurled baseballs at the heads of opponents because of the hot temperature. Still, these are conditions that cause motivations. The brief lesson is that the motives, cravings, appetites, desires, moods, needs, and emotions that regulate human behavior are not always immediately obvious or consciously accessible. That is, we are not always consciously aware of the motivational basis of our behavior. ## Motivational and Emotional States Are Dynamic and Often Reciprocally Related to the Events and Outcomes That Cause Them: Motivational and emotional states are dynamic. They change constantly—from one moment to the next and from one day to the next. One reason they change is because of the environmental circumstances that caused them change. If the situation were different (interaction with a friend or an enemy), then the motivation or emotion would be different. Similarly, if the motivation or emotion were different (interest vs. boredom), then the situation you put yourself in would be different. In other words, motivational and emotional states are dynamic and often reciprocal with the events that cause them. Consider the reciprocal relation between teacher support and student motivation. The more supportive teachers are, the more motivated students become. Similarly, the more motivated students are, the more supportive teachers become. Of course, the opposite is equally likely. The less supportive teachers are, the less motivated students become; and the less motivated students are, the less supportive teachers become. It is a chicken-and-egg thing. It is hard to say if teacher support causes student motivation or if student motivation causes teacher support. It is hard to say because both effects are true (i.e., teacher support and student motivation are reciprocally related: a causes b, and b causes a). Actually, many motivational and emotional states are like this. Consider self-concept and achievement. If self-concept improves, then achievement rises. If achievement rises, then self-concept improves. The same for self-efficacy and anxiety: As people increase their self-efficacy (or confidence), anxiety goes down; and as anxiety goes down, people gain self-efficacy. The same relation exists for achievement and the emotions of enjoyment, boredom, and anxiety—namely, greater enjoyment and lesser boredom and anxiety all increase future performance, just as greater performance increases future enjoyment and decreases future boredom and anxiety. Reciprocal causation is important because many people think of motivation as a singular personal event that exists wholly inside the individual (e.g., "I am motivated, I am interested, I am confident, I am angry, I am anxious"). But our motivations and emotions are so interwined with our environmental surroundings that it is difficult to disentangle one from the other. Environments and motivations move together like a flock of birds—when one moves the other follows right behind. If you are lonely, your social interaction partners become more distant, which increases your loneliness, and so forth. Thus, to understand motivation and emotion, you also need to understand how environments affect and are affected by those motivations and emotions. ## To Flourish, Motivation Needs Supportive Conditions: A person's motivation cannot be separated from the social context in which it is embedded. This means that motivational and emotional states are often "situated", which means that the motivation or emotion the person is experiencing at that moment depends on the situation they are in. For instance, a child's motivation is affected by and somewhat dependent on the social context provided by his or her parents. Environments can be nurturing and supportive or they can be neglectful, frustrating, and undermining. People in supportive environments tend to thrive motivationally and emotionally. Recognizing that motivation needs supportive conditions to flourish, four environmental domains of application are particularly important: - Education - Work - Sports and exercise - Therapy In education, the situated nature of motivation, emotion, and engagement puts a spotlight on how supportive teachers, classroom climates, and school cultures are. At work, when organizations would like to promote employees' efficacy, goal striving, productivity, and job satisfaction, they need to make a special effort to provide optimal challenges, variety, opportunities to exercise personal control, and cooperative interpersonal relationships. In sports, athletes flourish (develop interest, skills, talent, and a sense of belongingness) when environments provide challenges, feedback, and supportive interpersonal relationships. In therapy, people gain greater mental and emotional well-being when the therapist listens, understands, and provides unconditional positive regard. If these same settings were to provide frustrations and toxic interpersonal relationships, motivation and emotion would sour and suffer in kind. ## Some Motivational Strategies Work Better Than Others: All motivational strategies are designed to energize and engage people to give behavior purpose. However, some motivational strategies do this better than others. For example, the "Tiger Mom" approach appears to be very motivating at first, as the Tiger Mom pushes and pressures her child to succeed, win, and be the best. Such a laser-focus on achievement and results (e.g., high grades, get into a prestigious school) paired with admonishments to "toughen up" and "be a winner" can be motivating (energizing). So, it is understandable to ask, ""What is so wrong with pushing students hard to make good grades, get into Harvard, become an M.D., and make the family proud?"" The problems start when one person begins to force another to sacrifice their personal interests, intrinsic motivation, self-set goals, and even their well-being in order to achieve these desired outcomes (e.g., ""I don't care whether you like it or not. Just do what I told you to do!""). Sacrificing one's interests, goals, and well-being are serious side-effects. Motivational psychologists take these side effects very seriously because (1) the sacrificed interests, personal goals, and well-being are the very sources of motivation the person needs most (e.g., killing the goose that lays the golden eggs) and (2) these sacrifices are totally necessary. A parent (or teacher, coach, and therapist) does not have to pressure, threaten, coerce, or yell to motivate the child. There are other motivational strategies that empower both (1) productivity and achievement and (2) interest and well-being. A good analogy occurs in the development of new pharmaceutical drugs. New drugs are developed to produce a particular benefit, but they often produce other unintended (side) effects. For instance, Benadryl eases allergies, but it also creates drowsiness. Opioids alleviate pain, but they also cause nausea, vomiting, constipation, and dizziness and can be addictive. Given these side effects, a fair question is whether the benefits of the drug are worth it. When translated into motivation research, what practitioners (parents, teachers, coaches, managers, doctors, and therapists) want are motivational strategies that enhance both achievement and well-being. A motivational strategy that facilitates "productive and happy" is the equivalent of "effective and safe" in pharmaceutical research. A motivational strategy that yields "productive" but sacrifices "happy" is problematic. Yelling, threatening, bribing, or shaming may grab the other person's attention and energize them into immediate action, but they also produce side effects that can be so detrimental that they overwhelm any potential benefit from the motivational strategy - side effects such as crushing the person's interest and poisoning the interpersonal relationship. Similarly, a motivational strategy that yields "happy" but sacrifices "productive" is also problematic, but in a different way. Here the issue is not of side effects, but effectiveness. A motivational strategy that does not spark interest and engagement is about as effective as an aspirin that does not alleviate a headache. ## Needs, Emotions, Cognitions, and Well-Being Interrelate: There are many different motivations and emotions. The sheer number of motivations to learn about might seem a little overwhelming. But there is actually an organized number that blinds all these pieces of the puzzle together into a comprehensible whole. The organized flow that integrates needs, emotions, cognitions, and well-being is as follows: - Motivation begins with basic human needs, including both biological and psychological needs. - These needs are present at birth. They are often rooted in brain structures and biological systems (e.g., neuroscience). - The desire for need satisfaction gives rise to goals. - During goal pursuits, people develop expectations and beliefs. - These cognitions -expectations, values, beliefs, strategies, attributions, schemas, mindsets, self-concept, identity, meaning, and mental models of the world- guide and inform future goals. - As they pursue goals, people differentiate supportive from non-supportive environments and relationships. - Need satisfaction, goal attainment, and cognitive dissonance generate ill-being and maladaptive functioning. - These motivational ad emotional dynamics contribute to development, personality, and lifestyle. Each motivation class you attend can feel like opening one of those boxes with 1000 different jigsaw puzzle pieces. It may take a while and it is not obvious which puzzle pieces go together. But you start with the border pieces (needs, emotions, cognitions, and well-being) and gradually figure out where all those individual pieces go. In the end and over time, needs birth goals, which generate constructive cognitions, which open the door to well-being and flourishing. ## There Is Nothing So Practical as a Good Theory: Consider how you might answer a motivational question, such as "What causes Sally to study so hard and for so long?" To generate an answer, you might begin with a common-sense analysis (e.g., "Sally studies so hard because she has high self-esteem."). Additionally, you might recall a similar instance from your personal experience when you studied very hard and then generalize that experience to this particular situation (e.g., "The last time I studied that hard, it was because I had a big test the next day."). A third strategy might be to find an expert on the topic and ask her (e.g., "My neighbor is a veteran teacher. I'll ask her why she thinks Sally might be studying so hard."). These are all fine and informative resources to answer motivational questions, but a truly golden resource is a good theory. A theory is a set of variables (e.g., self-efficacy, goals, and effort) and the relationships are assumed to exist among those variables (e.g., strong self-efficacy beliefs encourage people to set goals, and once set, goals encourage high effort). Theories provide a conceptual framework for interpreting behavioral observations, and they function as intellectual bridges to link motivational questions and problems to satisfying answers, solutions, and applications. With a motivation theory in mind, the researcher approaches a question or problem along the lines of, "Well, according to goal-setting theory, the reason Sally studies so hard is because...". The heart and soul of a motivational analysis of behavior is its theories. Instead of existing as dry and abstract playthings of scientists, a good theory is a practical, usable tool for solving the problems faced by students, teachers, workers, employers, managers, athletes, coaches, parents, therapists, and clients. "There is nothing so practical as a good theory." Theories are useful because they provide evidence-based guidance for how to understand and solve a motivational problem. Second, you can use theories to monitor your growing familiarity with contemporary motivation and emotion study. At the present time, you probably recognize few of these theories, but your familiarity will grow week by week. When you know motivation theories, you know motivation. ## Summary: Basically, motivation is wanting. People who are motivated want to change—in themselves or in the environment. The term "motivational science" means that answers to motivational questions require objective, data-based, empirical evidence gained from well-conducted and peer-reviewed research findings—findings that are used to develop, evaluate, refine, and apply theories of motivation and emotion. The perennial question in the study of motivation and emotions is this: What causes behavior? This general question invites more specific questions: What starts behavior? How is behavior sustained over time? Why is behavior directed toward some ends but away from others? Why does behavior change its direction? Why does behavior vary in its intensity? Why does behavior stop? Motivation and emotion exist as scientific disciplines to answer these questions. Motivation's subject matter concerns those internal processes that give behavior its energy, direction, and persistence. **Energy** implies that behavior has strength—that it is relatively strong, intense, and hardy or resilient. **Direction** implies that behavior has a purpose—that it is aimed toward achieving some particular goal or outcome. **Persistence** implies that behavior has endurance—that it continues and sustains over time. The three internal motivational processes are needs, cognitions, and emotions. **Needs** are conditions within the individual that are essential and necessary for the maintenance of life and for growth and well-being. **Cognitions** are mental events, such as beliefs, expectations, and the self-concept, that represent ways of thinking. **Emotions** are complex but coordinated feeling-arousal-purposive-expressive reactions to significant life events, such as threats and challenges to our goals or well-being. ## Thirty-Seven Theories In The Study of Motivation and Emotion: These theories are: achievement goals, achievement motivation, arousal, attribution, big fish — little pond, broaden-and-build, cognitive dissonance, cognitive evaluation, differential emotions, drive, dynamics of action, effectance motivation, ego depletion, ego development, emotion regulation, expectancy x value, facial feedback hypothesis, flow, goal setting, implicit motives, interest development, learned helplessness, mindsets, motivation intensity, opponent process, positive affect, psychodynamics, reactance, regulatory focus, self-actualization, self-concordance, self-determination, self-efficacy, self-schemas, sensation seeking, stress and coping, and terror management. ## Motivational and Emotional States Express Themselves in Five Ways: 1. **Behavior** (i.e., effort, persistence, latency, choice, probability of response, facial expressions, and bodily gestures); 2. **Engagement** (i.e., behavior, cognition, and agency); 3. **Psychophysiology** (i.e., changes in heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, and the discharge of hormones such as epinephrine and cortisol); 4. **Brain activations** (i.e., increased activity in particular regions of the cortical and subcortical brain); and 5. **Self-report** (i.e., questionnaire or interview). These self-reports can be useful and informative, but they also need to be backed up and verified by the person's behavior, engagement, psychophysiology, and brain activity. ## Exercises: 1. Motivational and emotional states express themselves in five ways. What are they? 2. List TEN theories in the study of motivation and emotion. 3. Discuss ""There is nothing so practical as a good theory"". 4. Define ""theory"". 5. Discuss ""Needs, emotions, cognitions, and well-being interrelate"".