Understanding Psychology (10th Ed)

 
Looking
Ahead 
Actress Kirstie Alley’s notorious up-and-down battle with 
obesity—at one point she dieted down to 145 pounds, only to 
gain back the weight—is just one very public example of the 
struggles that hundreds of millions of people have maintaining 
an appropriate weight. But why is it so diffi
cult to maintain an 
appropriate weight? Why do the natural mechanisms that regulate 
our other bodily functions often fail when it comes to regulat-
ing our eating behavior? These questions and many others are 
addressed by psychologists who study the topics of motivation 
and emotion. Psychologists who study motivation seek to discover 
the particular desired goals—the motives—that underlie behavior. 
Behaviors as basic as drinking to satisfy thirst and as inconsequential 
as taking a stroll to get exercise exemplify motives. Psychologists 
specializing in the study of motivation assume that such underlying 
motives steer our choices of activities. 
While motivation concerns the forces that direct future 
behavior, emotion pertains to the feelings we experience 
throughout our lives. The study of emotions focuses on our 
internal experiences at any given moment. All of us feel a variety 
of emotions: happiness at succeeding at a diffi
cult task, sadness 
over the death of a loved one, anger at being treated unfairly. 
Because emotions not only play a role in motivating our behavior 
but also act as a refl ection of our underlying motivation, they 
play an important role in our lives. 
We begin this set of modules by focusing on the major concep-
tions of motivation, discussing how diff erent motives and needs 
jointly aff ect behavior. We consider motives that are biologically 
based and universal in the animal kingdom, such as hunger, as 
well as motives that are unique to humans, such as the need for 
achievement. 
We then turn to emotions. We consider the roles and functions 
that emotions play in people’s lives and discuss several approaches 
that explain how people understand their emotions. Finally, we 
look at how nonverbal behavior communicates emotions.
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In just a moment, 27-year-old Aron Ralston’s life changed. An 800-pound boulder dis-
lodged in a narrow canyon where Ralston was hiking in an isolated Utah canyon, pinning 
his lower arm to the ground. 
For the next fi ve days, Ralston lay in the dense, lonely forest, unable to escape. An 
experienced climber who had search-and-rescue training, he had ample time to consider 
his options. He tried unsuccessfully to chip away at the rock, and he rigged up ropes 
and pulleys around the boulder in a vain effort to move it. 
Finally, out of water and nearly dehydrated, Ralston reasoned there was only one 
option left short of dying. In acts of incredible bravery, Ralston broke two bones in his 
wrist, applied a tourniquet, and used a dull pen knife to amputate his arm beneath 
the elbow. 
Freed from his entrapment, Ralston climbed down from where he had been pinned 
and then hiked fi ve miles to safety (Cox, 2003; Lofholm, 2003). 
What motivation lay behind Ralston’s resolve? 
To answer this question, psychologists employ the concept of  motivation,  the 
factors that direct and energize the behavior of humans and other organisms. Moti-
vation has biological, cognitive, and social aspects, and the complexity of the concept 
has led psychologists to develop a variety of approaches. All seek to explain the 
energy that guides people’s behavior in specifi c directions.
Instinct Approaches: 
Born to Be Motivated
When psychologists fi rst tried to explain motivation, they turned to  instincts,  inborn 
patterns of behavior that are biologically determined rather than learned. According 
to instinct approaches to motivation, people and animals are born preprogrammed 
with sets of behaviors essential to their survival. Those instincts provide the energy 
that channels behavior in appropriate directions. Hence, sexual behavior may be a 
response to an instinct to reproduce, and exploratory behavior may be motivated by 
an instinct to examine one’s territory.
This conception presents several diffi culties, however. For one thing, psycholo-
gists do not agree on what, or even how many, primary instincts exist. One early 
psychologist, William McDougall (1908), suggested that there are 18 instincts. Other 
theorists came up with even more—with one sociologist (Bernard, 1924) claiming 
that there are exactly 5,759 distinct instincts! 
Furthermore, explanations based on the concept of instincts do not go very far 
toward explaining why one specifi c pattern of behavior, and not others, has appeared 
in a given species. In addition, although it is clear that much animal behavior is based 
on instincts, much of the variety and complexity of human behavior is learned and 
thus cannot be seen as instinctual. 
As a result of these shortcomings, newer explanations have replaced conceptions 
of motivation based on instincts. However, instinct approaches still play a role in