Complete and Detailed Summary: Motivation and Performance (SOW-PSB2SP50E)
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Course
Motivatie en prestaties (SOWPSB2SP50E)
Institution
Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen (RU)
This is a detailed and fully complete summary of the lectures from the course Motivation and Performance (SOW-PSB2SP50E) at Radboud University. It is all you need to successfully complete the class and pass the exam with a good grade.
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Performance: The action or process of performing a specific task or function
Motivation: is not as clear!
Some believe success is reached by believing in oneself others in going for challenges, persistence,
how you deal with failure, the journey etc
So there are many ideas on what motivation involves
The gurus: there are people giving advice and motivational task but they can be confusing as well as
motivation is rather vague
One definition is that it is a process that energises, directs and regulates behaviour
Central aim of the course: knowledge and understanding of motivation theories and application of
those in practice
CHAPTER 1 YOU NEED TO KNOW EVERYTHING THE REST ARE RECOMMENDED ONLY
Why do people do what they do?
- Hedonic Axiom
o People want to avoid aversive outcomes and achieve pleasant ones
Determinism
- Every event is an unavoidable and necessary consequence of prior circumstances
- It does not mean that the world can be understood and explained by humans
o Even very simple causal rules can have very complicated consequences that are hard
to explain
o Game of Life -> simple rules but the consequences can be very complex and difficult
to understand; it is much more complex in real life even
- If we understand the causes of behaviours, we can predict behaviour
The mind-body relationship
- A material world is an immaterial world
- Material world: the body (brain) -> tangible, can be studied
- Immaterial world: the mind -> intangible, more difficult to study
,How are they connected?
Very relevant for motivation science because if you look for the causes of behaviour you need to
know where to look
However, the common approach is a sloppy mix of biology and psychology
But it shows that mind and brain seem to influence each other
There are two opposing perspectives on how to solve this dilemma
Dualism
- Mind and body are different
- Interactionistic dualism
o The mind and the body are two different things, but they also interact
- Parallelistic dualism
o The mind and body are two different things, and they are not interacting, the mind
doesn’t influence the body, it’s all the sensory input going to the brain and leading to
a response
Monism
- Mind and body are the same
- Mentalistic monism (idealism) -> mind only, everything is a construction of the mind; the
mind is our experiences and if we know the world through experiences, then the mind may
be all there is
, - There’s no clear evidence on how this works, we can only measure sensory input and
behaviour
- Materialistic monism -> the mind is a construction of the brain
This is often used in papers and by psychologists as it is regarded the safest option, it’s still monism
but it also saying that the brain is producing the mind
There also arrows leading nowhere as many processes cannot be explained yet
So where should we start looking for the causes of behaviour?
- Mind
- Brain
- Mind & Brain, however you need to understand how they are related (mostly the
materialistic monism perspective is used)
What is motivation?
Core concepts:
- Needs
- Rewards
- Goals
Viewpoints of motivation
Regulatory approach
- People as responders, we respond to our needs
- Core concept: homeostasis
- (survival) needs lead to behaviour
- Drive -> people are driven to behaviour
Purposive approach
- People as predictors, they determine their own behaviour
- Core concept: Mental representations (of what we want)
- The pursuit of valuable outcomes
- Goals lead to behaviour
, - Goals represent what we strive for
Hedonic Continuum
- Based on the hedonic axiom
- What is an aversive outcome and what is a pleasant one?
- A continuum would assume that there is a neutral point but in reality, this is difficult to
pinpoint
Ways of establishing the positivity of an outcome
- Look at preferences/choices: if a person always prefers cola over water, cola will be more
positive for the individual
- Maximum effort: people put in more effort if they really want something, for instance pupil
size increases if we see something we really want (sympathetic nervous system)
- Persistence: people are more persistent about things that they truly want
- Self-reporting: people can indicate themselves what they enjoy for instance on a scale from
very pleasant to very unpleasant
Core Concepts of Motivation
- Need: Necessary condition for well-being, innate property of an organism
- Goal: mental representation of a pleasant outcome, which influences evaluations, emotions
and behaviour
- Reward (incentive or reinforcer)
Physiological Needs
Homeostasis
- The body has to do its work under varying circumstances, but the internal condition must
stay relatively stable
- Internal conditions must therefore be regulated well (temperature etc.)
- Mechanisms on how that happens differ
Eating
- What motivates people to eat?
- Example of mechanism: one of the feedback loops for eating -> eating behaviour leads to
feeling full, so consequently the reward value of food may become smaller
- Eating is not only driven by homeostasis and feedback mechanisms aren’t necessarily needed
- Humans already prevent disturbances in homeostasis by eating when there is food, having
food as a social habit and visual cues (good, yummy looking food)
- The visual cues fit with the Materialistic Monism Model as it’s a sensory input that leads to
behaviour
- If you are hungry or are presented with unhealthier/fattening food compared to healthy
one, your reaction is much stronger
- Striatum and other brain regions related to needs and rewards were activated when seeing
the food
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