Motivation

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Motivation

• Motivation -- Purpose for or cause of an action
• Energizes behaviors,
• Directs that energy toward a goal
• Human behavior directed by physiological needs
  and psychological needs/wants
• Hunger/thirst
• Need for connection/contact/sex?
• Need for stimulation/exploration?
• Need to improve self? Or to live up to ones
  potential?
• Hedonic Principle we are motivated to maximize
  pleasure and minimize pain

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Abraham Maslows theory
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Love in bloom
Amidst the festivities of a grand party, a
young guy notices a strikingly beautiful girl and
is immediately smitten. He approaches her and
begins to flirt boldly. She tries to rebuff
him but is flattered by his attention and finds
him quite attractive
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Romantic feelings kindle rapidly.
By the time he departs the scene, with a
kiss followed by a second kiss, these two
have exchanged fewer than a hundred words yet,
both are swooning with sensations of falling,
desperately, in love. All mental processes
thinking, planning, goals, feelings, and
motivations have been suddenly transformed.thes
e brains have been completely gripped by this
brief encounter.
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Longing, obsession, and desire
In the hours after this meeting, these two can
not stop thinking about each other The
intensity of desire is so strong that each would
happily forego food, sleep, comfort, and all
competing pleasures, simply to be in each others
presence again Shakespeare (1595) was
dramatizing one of the normal tensions of
adolescence and development of sexual
motivations.
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Sexual Motivation
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Sexual Motivation

• GET READY, HERE COMES A GRAPHIC PICTURE OF YOUR
  SEX ORGAN!!!!!

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Sexual Motivation

• Energizing and directing arousal
• Interplay of internal and external stimuli
• Internal Hormones, brain structures,
  neurotransmitters, imagined stimuli
• External Environmental and sociocultural
  factors

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Hormones and Sexual Motivation

• Dihydroepiandosterone (dhea) seems to be involved
  in initial onset of sexual desire
• Both males and females produce testosterone and
  estrogen
• Testosterone involved in sex drive for both
  men and women
• Estrogen in female mammals, estrogen levels
  peak during ovulation, promoting sexual
  receptivity (but not a major factor in human
  females)

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Key brain regions mediating human sexual behavior

• Subcortical
• Septal region -- Pleasurable response and orgasm
• Hypothalamus -- Neuroendocrine and autonomic
  aspects of sexual drive, sexual orientation
• Cortical
• Frontal lobes -- Motor components of sexual
  behavior, control of sexual response
  (disinhibition)
• Parietal lobes -- Genital sensation
• Temporal lobes sexual drive (hypo/hypersexuality,
  impotence)
• Baird et al., 2007 J of Neurology, Neurosurgery,
  and Psychiatry

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Sexual Response Cycle
Desire Phase
Resolution
Arousal - Excitement
Plateau
Orgasm
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Motivation for Eating

• As with sex, eating is an interplay of internal
  and external stimuli
• Internal Hormones, brain structures,
  neurotransmitters, imagined stimuli
• External Environmental and sociocultural
  factors
• Primary receiver of hunger signals is
  hypothalamus

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Genetic influences on eating

• ob gene
• Regulates production of leptin
• Leptin is secreted by fat cells and has dual
  activity of decreasing food intake and increasing
  metabolic rate
• Mice born without the ability to make leptin
  (ob/ob mice) eat without restraint

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ob/ob mouse
normal mice
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ob/ob mouse
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ob/ob mouse
ob/ob mouse injected with leptin
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So, just give obese humans leptin!

• In fact, this works in leptin-deficient humans,
  but
• 99.99 of obese humans have HIGH levels of
  leptin, but have become insensitive to it.
• Something else is going on (obesity trends
  powerpoint)

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Other kinds of motivation

• Extrinsic motivation
• Intrinsic motivation
• extrinsic motivators can harm intrinsic
  motivation
• Self-determination theory
• Autonomy, competence, and relationship

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