Motivation Lectures - Ch. 7 - Psych 2230

CHAPTER 7: HEDONISM AND SENSORY STIMULATION 1. Hedonism as seeking pleasure and avoidance of pain. a. Early Greek philosophers such as Democritus and Epicurus during the Platonic era (429-347 BC) agreed we behave in order to achieve pleasure. b. Hobbes (1588-1679)...

CHAPTER 7: HEDONISM AND SENSORY STIMULATION 1. Hedonism as seeking pleasure and avoidance of pain. a. Early Greek philosophers such as Democritus and Epicurus during the Platonic era (429-347 BC) agreed we behave in order to achieve pleasure. b. Hobbes (1588-1679) believed all c. Spencer (1820-1903) influenced by Darwin proposed that pleasurable behaviours have survival value, are adaptive, have evolved, and that random responses that led to pain were reduced in probability. Spencer’s approach was a forerunner of Thorndike’s (1874-1949) Law of Effect in psychology. d. Troland (1932) believed that the nervous system is attuned to pleasurable and aversive events. 1. Beneception occurs when pleasant feelings arise by stimuli;  3. Neutroception occurs when feelings are neither + or – (p. 206- 207). e. Beebe-Center (1932) said instructions can change the perceived pleasantness or unpleasantness of stimuli. Instructional set alters actions of sense organs rather than altering perception. 2. P. T. Young: Sign, Intensity, Duration: research on food preferences led him to agree with Beebe-Center that and duration. a. Sign is determined by whether the organism approaches (+) or avoids (-) the situation. b. Affective intensity is noted through a preference test: hedonically more intense S chosen over a less preferred Stimulus. c. Hedonic duration reveals that some hedonic processes last briefly, while others outlast the stimulation. d. Hedonic continuum represents the range of affective processes from a  system is constructed to maximize positive affect (p. 208). Organisms learn behaviours that lead to positive affect and move away from negative affect. Positive affect is associated with approach behaviours and negative affect with withdrawal. Affective processes activate and guide behaviour and affective processes lead to the development of stable motives (p. 208). 3. Motivational Influences of Sensations: Pfaffmann suggested that  intensity are not equivalent. Recording of the chorda tympani --- a cranial nerve sending taste information to the brain --- showed that as salt concentration increased so does electrical activity of the nerve increase. However, hedonic value at first increases and then decreases as salt concentration becomes greater (see Figure 7.2, p. 209). 4. Pain: may seem out of proportion to the size of an injury. Small injuries may be terribly painful and other types of a. Melzack and Wall propose a theory of pain that challenges the notion that pain is exclusively the result of pain receptors sending messages to specific sites in the brain. Perception of pain is much more variable and modifiable than people thought. For example, 65% of men wounded in battle brought to a field hospital report no pain, yet 80% of civilians with similar injuries report severe pain. Similarly, football players, boxers, athletes continue to play with injuries. Thus,  experienced. Attention, for example, to painful procedures often leads to more pain experienced. Hall and Stride reported that the word pain in a set of instructions caused anxious subjects to report an electric shock as more painful even though other participants who had word pain absent reported less pain  influences how much pain information reaches the brain. Endogenous opiates modulate pain (p. 211). Cheng’s research showed that removing the pituitary of mice led to reduced analgesic effects of electro-acupuncture. Pituitary produces pain-killing endorphins. c. Epidemiologic studies show that women are at greater risk for clinical pain and postoperative pain may be more severe for women than men. Portions of the thalamus, limbic 5. Novelty, Curiosity, and Exploratory Behaviour: External stimuli motivates behaviour. Motives generated by external stimuli include curiosity, exploratory, manipulation motives, stimulus hunger, and need for stimulation (p. 212-213). 6. Behaviours Released by Stimulation: a. Much of human behaviour according to Harlow is motivated by nonhomeostatic mechanisms. Solving problems, playing games, that  reward and another group food reward. Food actually disrupted the subjects on the puzzles and the rewarded group lost interest in the puzzles sooner than the non-reward group (p. 213). b. Berlyne says exploratory activity has the function of altering the stimulus field. Such behaviour reflects state of the organism and incentive of stimulus such as surprise, change, ambiguity, incongruity, uncertainty (p. 213). Novelty and uncertainty have motivational  disturbing and organism motivated to decrease, too little is under-arousal and organism is motivated to increase level. Berlyne noted that infants 3 to 9 months old looked at figures that had the greatest contour, and adults were attracted to complex and incongruous pictures that would produce small changes in arousal that was pleasurable. c. Hebb said moderate changes in arousal is reinforcing. By habituating to the familiar,  to arousal that is pleasurable. Both Hebb and Berlyne believe that motivation can be triggered when stimulus conditions are either too high or too low. Deviations from optimal arousal level trigger motivational behaviours to return to arousal level that is optimal (p. 214). 7. Need for Stimulation: Sensory Deprivation leads to disruption of normal behaviours. a. Thompson and Melzack studied effects of sensory restriction on dogs.  after the non-isolated group became bored (p. 214). Early sensory restriction for years altered the motivational patterns of the isolated- restricted group. In avoidance learning the normal group learned to escape from an aversive stimulus whereas the isolated group did not (p. 215). b. The dogs were deficient in problem solving such as locating food hidden under a box when they observed the food being hidden. On maze tasks they made 50% more errors than c. The isolates seemed hyperexcitable and unable to direct their behaviour and thus sensory restriction may induce emotionality when normal levels of stimulation are provided. d. Riesen’s work revealed that kittens raised in a visual restricted environment show perceptual deficits and violent emotionality. Dark-reared animals showed extreme fear and cats showed convulsions when normal pattern vision was allowed (p. 215). Thus sensory restriction may alter 8.Attachment: Maternal deprivation due to absence or inconsistent care for, mothering provides a rich source of stimulation as Harlow’s research on maternal deprivation with rhesus monkeys revealed. a. The mother-infant attachment is lifelong and is a derived motive that is based on closeness and attention to need reduction. With ‘surrogates,’ cloth and wire, the wire feeding the monkey, the monkey preferred to spend ‘contact  attachment along with lactation, temperature, and rocking movement. However, the surrogate reared animals showed abnormalities. b. There may be a critical period for normal development since isolation from birth to three months is reversible but beyond three months to six months and the monkeys showed lifelong disturbance, such as fixed staring, rocking, pacing, compulsive habits of chewing or  c. Female isolated monkeys at sexual maturity would not mate and behaved viciously if approached by a normal male. d. Monkeys raised with their mothers and isolated from other monkeys developed abnormally (p. 217). 9. Protest, despair, Detachment, and Ambivalence: a. Children upon separation from parents go through a set of four predictable behaviours following separation. Bowlby documents  Detachment: as shown by iii) indifference when returned to parents. iv) Ambivalence: both, hostility, rejection, defiance, and clinging, crying, demanding behaviour. Familiar people and objects reduce extent of any one of the four behaviour patterns as well as ‘mothering’ (p. 218). b. Spitz showed that institutional children  c. Deprivation Dwarfism may result from inadequate home conditions where there is a reduction in bone maturation and growth and child’s physical maturation is below normal. Passively neglectful parents may contribute to psychosocial dwarfism (p. 219). 10. Maternal Deprivation and emotional and social disorder reduce physical development. A growth hormone (somatotrophin)  disruption of normal sleep pattern. In the first two hours of sleep most of the growth hormone is secreted. If child has disrupted sleep it may be deprived of complement of the hormone and child has reduced growth (p. 219-220). Further, a critical period for physical and mental development exists and if child has abusive, negligent, indifferent parents, a disordered social environment, growth is compromised. 11. Sensory Deprivation in Adults:  1960s students were paid to be in a 24 hour deprivation study. Patterned vision was reduced, light was diffuse, an air conditioner screened out other auditory inputs and cotton gloves were worn to reduce tactile sensations. b. Several tests done during and after deprivation revealed lower performance than normal and most  easily persuaded by propaganda (p. 221). d. Sensory deprivation is aversive, people need a certain level of stimulation to function normally and are motivated to increase insufficient levels of stimulation. e. In children, by virtue of home circumstances, if deprived of adequate stimulation will lack the ‘models’ or strategies for evaluating information and social contact stimulation in providing complex sensory environment (p. 222).  especially related to hearing messages while subjects were in a quiet darkened room that discouraged eating certain foods for weight loss and smoking cessation. 12. Sensation Seeking: following sensory restriction people seek out stimulation. The optimal level of stimulation varies from person to person. a. Zuckerman developed a sensation b. The SSS is scored on four subscales: TAS - thrill seeking; ES - experience seeking; DIS - disinhibition; and, BS - boredom suscep- tibility. c. Age and sex are two factors related to sensation seeking. Risky behaviours are related to sensation seeking with high sensation seekers showing less anxiety than low sensation seekers. Sports are related and Risky vocations (police, firefighters, 13. Opponent-Process Theory: Hedonism Revisited: hedonism related to sensory input, and input is experienced as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. a. Homeostatic model of hedonic quality. Model proposes that both pleasant and aversive hedonic states are ‘opposed’ by the central nervous system that reduces both pleasant and aversive states (p. 225). Hedonic states are followed by an ‘opposing’ state; thus stimuli that b. 5 step process: stimulus is detected. It produces: A state that quickly peaks leading to B adaptation phase during which hedonic process declines and reaches C a steady level. If stimulus disappears there occurs D a peak affective after- reaction opposite to the original hedonic state at A. After-reaction slowly E decays until the after- opposite reaction returns to zero or base line homeostatic neutral level (see Figure 7.7 on p. 226).  affective state becomes smaller with many stimulations and the opposite (opponent) reaction B hedonic affective state grows larger and decays slowly. Further, repeated elicitation of the B hedonic state, following the A hedonic state, will lead to a strengthening of the B hedonic state. 14. Drug Addiction: Incentive- Sensitization View and Opponent-Process Theory: an  A state declines and the addicted individual will maintain drug use to avoid or cut short the negative B affective state, an aversive state to be avoided (p. 226-227). 15. Thrill Seeking: the persistence of thrill seeking activities results from the reduction of the initial fear – state A hedonic state – and the strong, positive B hedonic state that occurs  exhilarating. Parachutists report reduced fear after the first few jumps and increasing exhilaration with repetition of the jumping experience because the B positive hedonic state grows and the A negative hedonic state diminishes (p. 227). 16. Social Attachment: Opponent- Process Theory 2. Remove the object and animal shows distress; thus object is a sought after stimulus experience and this is the B negative hedonic state. 3. The time interval between successive presentations of the sought-after stimulus is a factor in the development of the B negative hedonic state. Conclusion: if interval is short between presentations of the sought-after stimulus, the B negative hedonic state grows as  hedonic state does not grow stronger for the B state has time to decay and the A positive hedonic state retains its quality of producing pleasure when presented. Does ‘distance make the heart grow fonder’??? Perhaps, according to this application of the opponent-process theory. As long as the B negative hedonic state has time to decay, the A positive hedonic state will retain its