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Hedonism and Sensory Stimulation
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Provides information on hedonism, sign, intensity, & duration, novelty, curiosity, & exploratory behaviour, attachment, and sensory deprivation.
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Conceptualizing and Measuring Motivation and the Role of Evolution in Motivation
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Genetic Contributions to Motivated Behaviour
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PSYC2230: Chapter 7 PowerPoint + Theories of EmotionHedonism and Sensory Stimulation [pg. 206 - 231]
Hedonism [pg. 206 - 207]
Seeking pleasure and voidance of pain
Early Greek philosophers such as Democritus and Epicurus during the Platonic era (429-347 BC) agreed
we behave in order to achieve pleasure
Hobbes (1588-1679) believed all actions are motivated by desire for pleasure and to avoid pain
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
Troland (1932) believed that the nervous system is attuned to pleasurable and aversive events
o Beneception occurs when pleasant feelings arise by stimuli
o Nociception occurs when unpleasant feelings arise
o Neutroception occurs when feelings are neither positive or negative
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
P.T. Young: Sign, Intensity, Duration [pg. 207 - 208]
Research on food preferences led him to agree with Beebe-Center that there is a continuum with
maximum negative affect at one end and maximum positive affect at the other end
For Young, affective processes have 3 properties:
1. Sign is determined by whether the organism approaches (positive)or avoids (negative) the
situation.
2. Affective intensity is noted through a preference test: hedonically more intense stimulus chose
over a less preferred stimulus.
3. Hedonic duration reveals that some hedonic processes last briefly, while others outlast the
stimulation.
Hedonic continuum represents the range of affective processes from a negative end (distress) to
neutral to the positive end (delight)
Young maintains that the nervous system is constructed to maximize positive affect. 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
Motivational Influences of Sensations [pg. 209
Pfaffmann suggested that sensory stimulation is motivating and leads to approach or withdrawal
Research showed that hedonic intensity and sensory 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 (fig. 7.2)
, PSYC2230: Chapter 7 PowerPoint + Theories of Emotion
Pain [pg. 210 - 212]
May seem out of proportion to the size of an injury; small injuries may be terribly painful and other
types of pain (phantom limb) where the body part has been amputated
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.
o 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, no simple and direct relationship between severity of injury
and the amount of pain experienced.
o 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 over participants who had the word pain absent
reported less pain or none at all. Thus, the psychological aspects of pain indicate that higher
brain processes can alter the experience of pain.
Gate Control Theory: Higher brain processes control the experience of pain and a modulating system
within the spinal cord influences how much pain information reaches the brain. Endogenous opiates
modulate pain. Cheng’s research showed that removing the pituitary of mice led to reduced analgesic
effects of electro-acupuncture. Pituitary produces pain-killing endorphins.
Epidemiologic studies show that women are at greater risk for clinical pain and postoperative pain may
be more severe for women than man. Portions of the thalamus, limbic system, prefrontal cortex,
somatosensory cortex, and cingulate cortex are involved in perception of pain.
Novelty, Curiosity, and Exploratory Behaviour [pg. 212 - 213]
External stimuli motivates behaviour
Motives generated by external stimuli include curiosity, exploratory, manipulation motives, stimulus
hunger, and need for stimulation
Behaviours Released by Stimulation [pg. 213 - 214]
Much of human behaviour, according to Harlow, is motivated by non-homeostatic mechanisms.
Solving problems, playing games, that have no utility, not motivated by hunger or thirst, humans are
active in manipulating their environments. Harlow gave monkeys mechanical puzzles to solve with no
food 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.
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. Novelty and uncertainty have motivational properties for they increase arousal level and
the organism finds pleasure in arousal within a band of tolerance. Too much arousal is disturbing and
organism is motivated to decrease, too little is under-arousal and organism is motivated to increase
level. Berlyne noted that infants 3 - 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
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