Chapter 26 Chapter 15 Motivational and Emotional Psychologist-2

Researchers in other fields of psychology have been providing some evidence since the 1930s, mainly since the 1950s, that cognitive processes are the main source of human motivation and emotion.To-introduce these various research results one by one, it needs to be written in volumes and volumes.We pick only four examples here and list a few paragraphs: In the mid-1930s, as we have seen, Harvard personality researcher Henry Murray created the Thematic Awareness Test (TAT) to test various aspects of personality, especially unconscious ones.Using psychoanalytic theory, he compiled these into 35 needs: neatness, control, compliance, aggressiveness, derogation, education, friendly connections (belonging and friendship), and others. Each of the 35 needs is a motivating force, and many others have been investigated from this perspective in subsequent years.

Perhaps the most well-studied is the need for achievement, or, as it is termed in the psychological literature, the desire to achieve (nAch).In the 1950s and 1960s, David McClelland and his colleagues at Wesleyan University in Connecticut conducted a series of valuable studies on the character and behavior of people with a strong need for achievement and their sources.Among their findings: High achievers prefer jobs that provide specific feedback, and thus tend to choose jobs that have the potential for advancement and expansion... High achiever boys must be expected to be independent by their mothers from an early age , live on their own, and do not place as many restrictions on their children as mothers of children with low achievement goals... A survey of 23 modern societies found that a society's value of achievement is reflected in children's stories, and compared with the most recent Several years of increase in electricity production are correlated.

All of this points to the fact that motivation for achievement comes from one's mother and society and is therefore also cognitive in nature. Freud believed that the ego, or largely the conscious ego, develops slowly as the child learns to control his impulses for immediate gratification, or to postpone it for greater rewards or because it is socially unacceptable.Thus, motivation in older children and adults, although influenced by the force of the drive to obtain pleasure, is cognitive in its direction. In the 1950s and later, some experimental evidence gathered by developmental psychologists supported Freud's theory of self-development.For example, Walter Michel and collaborators asked children to choose between immediate, but lesser gratification and delayed, but greater reward. At age 7, most children choose immediate gratification, but by age 9, most choose delayed but larger rewards.

Meanwhile, the work of psychologists Anna Freud and Heinz Hartmann has been changing the focus of psychodynamic psychology.People discover that the ego is more powerful and influential than originally thought, while the id is less powerful.For psychologists with a psychodynamic orientation, this means that adults are largely motivated by conscious desires, self-preservation mechanisms, and values.Thus, by the 1950s, psychotherapists and academic psychologists were enthusiastically exploring the positive cognitive power that the ego uses to overcome stress, especially the hope of counteracting anxiety in situations of indecision, And solutions to problems rather than irrational defensiveness and self-defense.

Most psychologists of the 20th century, from Freud to Skinner, were determinists.As scientists, they believe that human behavior, like all phenomena in the real world, has a cause; that every thought and action is the result of preceding events and forces.This premise seemed to them to be fundamental to the status of psychology as a science.On this view, if people can act in the way they wish to choose—if some or most of their behavior is determined by will, free to operate, and not by past experience and present forces — a strict legal system of conduct cannot be produced.Correspondingly, the word "will" disappeared from psychology by the middle of this century, and is not even mentioned incidentally in most modern textbooks today.

Yet the concept is unwilling to die; it survives under a different name, and with good reason. On the one hand, the goal of psychotherapy is to liberate the patient from the grip of unconscious forces.This can only mean that the patient will be able to consciously weigh and judge some alternative and decide his own course of action.But what is a decision if it is not an act of the will? Developmental psychologists, on the other hand, have found that a key feature in children's mental development is the slow emergence of "metacognition" -- awareness of one's own thought processes and the ability to manage them.Children slowly discover that there are many ways to remember things, develop strategies for problem-solving, and classify objects, and they begin to exercise conscious and voluntary control over their thought processes.

On the other hand, cognitive psychology has always needed to devise a modern equivalent of volition to explain the phenomenon of decision-making, which has been observed many times in countless thought and problem-solving studies.AI experts like "manager functions" in some programs that stimulate thought, that is, many parts of a program that can measure the results achieved at any point and determine what steps to take next.Some theorists say that the human mind also has management functions and can make decisions.However, decisions made by AI programs are completely predictable, whereas predictions of human decisions are often wrong.Why?In the choice of human beings, are there any areas of freedom?Is there some kind of free will in voluntary control?We will explore this mystery further in the next chapter.For the moment, it suffices to note that, whether human beings perceive decision-making as a perfectly predictable managerial process or as a voluntary action, its motivations are cognitive in origin.

Murray proposed in the 1930s that social factors are often the source of motivation, but this proposal has not received much attention.In the 1950s, with the development of social psychology and humanist psychology, psychologists became more and more interested in "social motivation".It is an important part of an integrated theory of motivation proposed in 1954 by Abraham Maslow, the leader of the humanist psychology movement during the 1950s and 1960s. Maslow (1908-1970) was a complex, passionate, and deep man whose life made him an excellent candidate for theorizing about human motivation.One of seven children from an immigrant family in Brooklyn, he had an unhappy childhood, a neurotic and a chronic outsider.This drives him to higher grades, academically, largely to overcome his unhappiness and loneliness.He worked his way up the academic ladder at Normal University, Brooklyn University, and Brandeis University, collaborating closely with colleagues—behaviourists, animal psychologists, a leading neurophysiologist, format Tower psychologist and psychoanalyst (who himself has experienced analysis) - hoping to understand human motivation and assemble everything he has learned into an all-encompassing whole.He died of a heart attack at the age of 62, but that was after fulfilling a lifelong ambition.

Maslow believed that human needs and motivations derived from them are a structure or pyramid.Its broad base consists of the biological needs on which everything else is built; the second high level consists of the safety needs (safety, stability, no longer being afraid, etc.); and the still higher level consists of the psychological needs. Yes, much of it here is social in nature (belonging, love, connection, and acceptance; needs for respect, approval, and recognition); (to satisfy the ego's need, "to make oneself whatever one can be"). Research on social motivation by others has explored many of these topics and clearly shows how social motivation is closely related to an individual's personality.For example, people with unstable personalities have a great need for approval; as a result, they have a constant need to convey traits that are socially desirable.On personality tests, they will claim to have admirable but rarely true sentiments, such as: "I'm not really one to say I don't like people very much." But often true habits, such as: "Sometimes I like to gossip." Most people seek social approval in this way, but people who especially need approval do so in such a way that others Think they are prudish and extremely unattractive.

Two other aspects of social motivation that have been the subject of considerable experimentation are the need for friendly connection (research shows that anxious people need it more than non-anxious people) and the need for a sense of self-worth (research showed, not surprisingly, that children with high self-worth were more willing to take social risks in order to achieve leadership than children with low self-worth).In both cases, social behavior is partly determined by cognitive factors: the former by the feeling that one feels less anxiety among friends, the latter by one's conscious assessment of one's self-worth .

In previous chapters we read about two other areas of social motivation that have been actively researched: Social facilitation (the tendency for people to perform tasks better when other people are present, or watched) and social fudge (the tendency for people not to do their best to complete tasks if one individual's contribution cannot be distinguished from the collective effort). There are many other social motives, indeed, social motives are a subject too broad to be covered without a great deal of space.But perhaps a curious little study will show just how complicated this is. In 1987, Susan Pater of the University of Amsterdam set out to study stunt performers.Facing danger triggers fear, and fear often triggers avoidance behavior.So why do stunt performers deliberately seek out dangerous situations?Pater interviewed six world-class stunt performers and found that their maneuvers were partly personal and partly socially formed.With their "thrill-seeking" personality type, combined with a low boredom threshold and a desire for intense experiences, it is personally necessary to prove their technical prowess and meet the challenges involved, while socially In other words, they will be recognized by people and get money from their performances. We've come a long way, from some half-starved mice squeaking through an electric fence trying to get a little food, to Cannon's cat angrily hissing at a barking dog, though Their guts have been severed from their brains. As we go along with the story, it appears that earlier theories were denied and discarded in favor of new ones by later experimental studies, however, the reality is more complicated: the later evidence Often old theories are proven valid again and again, while new ones don't seem to match the evidence.It now appears to be yet another proof that in psychology very few theories are proven to be completely wrong, and conversely, they appear limited and incomplete, but when strung together with other theories form an Incoherent, but highly accommodating theoretical quilts are valuable. A good example of an early theory is the James Lange theory, which still occupies the theoretical quilt today.It seems to have been discarded by Cannon's work, which located the source of emotions in the thalamus, and by the Schachter-Singer experiment, which found that the source of emotions is in the mind, but, In 1980, a noted researcher and scientific challenger, Robert Reinz, revived this doctrine in a new form, building on his discovery that sensory states precede cognitive assessment. Born in Poland, Reinz fled the German invasion in 1940 at the age of 17; his life was disrupted and he did not complete his doctorate studies until he was 35.However, despite his late start, he has done a lot of very meaningful research work, especially in social psychology, and won many honors.He has a restless heart.He likes to work out some of the questions that "bug" him, answer them roughly, and then move on and let someone else work out the details.Now in his late twenties, he remains as enthusiastic as ever, while he has served as dean of the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research since 1989. In the late 1970s, Reinz conducted several experiments on the "familiarity effect"; the "familiarity effect" is the tendency of human beings to gradually develop a certain stimulus, which is familiar to us, even though it has no meaning for us. Also has no value.Reinz asked the volunteers to look at some Japanese trademarks, some only once, and some as many as 27 times.He then asked the volunteers which ones they knew and which ones were their favourites.They like the logos they've seen many times, even though they don't mean anything to them—and even though they don't recognize them at all. Leaving aside the troubling implications of these findings—that we might turn to certain products or people simply because their names or images are repeated too often—Reintz Something of scientific importance is seen in these discoveries.Sensory responses (feeling states) can occur without cognition, can occur between cognitive assessments, and are more responsible for what we do than cognition.In the American Psychologist he has an article so provocatively titled that only he can take it: "Sensations and Thoughts: Preferences Need No Inferences." In it he speaks flatly of The Importance of Physiological Sources of Emotions: Feelings should not be treated as unchangeable and final and unchanging post-cognitive phenomena.The evolutionary roots of the emotional responses pointing to their survival value, their different freedom from strict control, their speed, the importance for man to make emotional distinctions, the extreme shapes of action that kindness can call upon - all these Both indicate certain special circumstances of affection.The reasons why people marry, divorce, kill or commit suicide, or give up their lives in pursuit of freedom do not follow a detailed, cognitive analysis of these actions. The article outraged many cognitive psychologists and sparked fierce controversy.Richard Lazaros of the University of California, Berkeley, became Reinz's main opponent and vehemently attacked Reinz's views.In the same journal he presented a great deal of evidence to the contrary, most notably his own data on how emotions were evoked in subjects by the film and altered by a number of vocal channels that sent out different messages.Lazaros had previously experimented with a film about Aboriginal Australians.In the film, Aboriginal people use sharp stone flakes to open the penis of teenage males.This incisive ritual made some viewers extremely uncomfortable when the vocal track emphasized its pain and cruelty, but the audience's response was balanced when the vocal track emphasized that the juvenile went through the ritual without looking away, thereby earning status and adult benefits too much.Lazarus concluded: Cognitive activity is a necessary prerequisite for emotion, because, to experience an emotion, people have to understand—whether primitive evaluative perception or a highly different symbolic process—that their benefits are contained within a transformation. , whether good or bad.An animal that is unaware of the significance of what is happening for its own good does not respond emotionally. In fact, he now says that he takes "the most determined position" on the cognitive role of emotions, that is to say, it is a necessary and a complete condition. "The word complete means that a thought is capable of producing an emotion; the word necessary means that an emotion cannot arise without the participation of some thought." Reinz and Lazaros debated endlessly, but the work of others seemed to indicate that both were right and that their findings were not incompatible. One such hint is the discovery of developmental psychologist Michael Lewis and colleagues.We have spoken of the findings earlier that the six basic emotions (joy, fear, anger, sadness, disgust, and surprise) are present at or shortly after birth, however, the other six emotions (embarrassment, empathy, jealousy, pride, shame, and guilt) do not appear until after the child develops cognitive abilities and self-awareness.Lewis and his group did not discuss the Reinz-Lazaros debate, but their observations leave room for both noncognitive and cognitive explanations of emotion. (Carol Izard's baby photos document the very same development of emotions and expressions.) Ross Burke said the dispute was resolved by acknowledging that there was more than one kind of cognition: "knowledge through familiarity," or direct sensory awareness, and "knowledge through description," the knowledge of sensory Cognitive interpretation of data, a distinction that was elaborated decades ago by the philosopher Bertrand Russell.Sensations may come first, says Burke, but knowledge through the mind is transformed into cognitive judgments about the information they convey—which in turn modifies the sensations.This process is a continuous interaction process. "Sensation, expression, physiological responses, cognition, and goal-related behavior are all interconnected processes that play synthetic and interactive roles in motivation and emotion." According to Robert Pluchick, both Reinz's and Lazaros' ideas are just parts of a larger whole.He defined emotion as a chain of phenomena in a complex system of feedback loops.A stimulus initiates the process, but from then on there is an interplay between cognitive assessments, sensory and physiological changes, action urges, and surface actions, the consequences of which alter their own cause.According to Pluchick, both the Reinz and Lazaros data are products of research methods that miss the forest for the trees: One could insert an electrode inside the brain of a mouse or a human and then produce an emotional response without eliciting a cognitive evaluation of external phenomena... It is clearly possible to focus on this chain on any link.Then, one can come up with theories, such as emphasizing primacy of arousal, or emphasizing primacy of expressive behaviour. The age-old theory that emotions are a major source of motivation, often influencing the mind to make better judgments, seems outdated in the face of Darwinian evidence.This evidence is a signal and a cue for the need for survival-worthy behaviors.However, the Darwinian point of view is that we are often disturbed by some useless or harmful emotions - panic, depression, jealousy, self-delusion, chronic grief for lost love, fear and even more sad and tortured emotional disturbances - —How can such a large amount of evidence reach a consensus? This problem is a dangerous state from which you cannot escape.Let's be careful.Let's just glance at it from a distance. Although there is no consensus, many prominent figures in the field have adopted a new Darwinian theory of emotions.They see these as sources of information that allow us to evaluate a situation and decide what actions to take to achieve a worthwhile purpose.But the classic antagonism between emotion and intelligence is pretty much over; according to cognitive psychology, both emotion and cognition serve the same purpose, self-preservation.Robert Pluchick said that in the lower animals, emotions are action cues to generate survival activities.And in higher complex animals, including humans, cognitive abilities serve the same function, a prerequisite for correcting or amplifying emotions—although we still need their power to generate behavior. The right emotional response can make the difference between life and death.This whole cognitive process involves millions of years of evolution in order to make the assessment of the stimulus phenomenon more correct, to make the prerequisites more accurate, so that the resulting emotional behavior will be adaptively related to the stimulus phenomenon.Emotional behavior is thus the most recent basis for the highest outcome of enhanced, more generalized adaptation. This still doesn't answer the question we ask: Why do we often experience emotions that mislead us, that are useless, or that hurt us?Nicol Friguida of the University of Amsterdam, a leading emotion researcher, offers several answers, among them that dysfunctional emotions sometimes result from miscalculations of situations, and sometimes From some accidental event, which cannot be handled by one person, sometimes from the emergency response of some special situations, in which case a slower and deeper evaluation is more beneficial to us. Psychosomatic research also shows that when we cannot escape or take action to deal with a threatening or stressful situation, our emotions are not a guide to action but a source of pain and disease.The hostages held by some lunatics, the front-line soldiers, and terminal cancer patients cannot benefit from their emotions, but can only be damaged by their own emotions.Finally, we experience pathological emotions when we have conflicting or incompatible desires, or desires that run counter to social taboos. Many motivation and emotion researchers have been digging a small mine in recent years, and while they haven't found bonanzas or surprises, they've provided plenty of evidence for the fledgling multivariate theory. For example, some have been exploring how specific neurotransmitters affect motivation and mood.A cluster of neurotransmitter molecules can block certain nerve receptors, thereby affecting appetite; obese people who take this chemical eat less.However, this doesn't disprove Schachter's finding that obese people are motivated to eat by cues to the mind, it just means that their eating is influenced by more than one factor. Others have followed an even older approach of identifying different physiological responses to emotions.In a recent study, 172 volunteers named where they felt different emotions in their bodies: Shame was mainly in the face, fear was felt in many places but could be concentrated in the anus, and hate was felt in the stomach and throat etc.However, these researchers say, this does not mean that complex experiences are primarily based on physical experiences.Instead, they see somatic information as part of a combined process that includes awareness, cognitive evaluation, and bodily sensations, all of which influence each other. Then there are those who observe children over a long period of time, looking for the emergence and development of empathy and altruism.They found that a baby would cry when it heard another baby cry, apparently because of some primitive form of empathy (the same baby would not cry if it heard itself cry on a tape recorder). ; also, as we have already mentioned, children who are almost one year old will also show pain when they see or hear another human being in pain, and children who are two or three years old will try to comfort or even help another person in pain. People in the middle, after a while, develop complex and selfless helping behaviors.These results lead to a complex theory: the tendency to express pain in response to another's pain is innate, but the emotions of sympathy and consequent altruistic behavior are the result of character development and socialization, which Growing on the basis of empathy. One can provide an almost infinite number of such examples.Can these results be put together into a pure theory of motivation and emotion, in addition to the kaleidoscope of discoveries that have been made over the past 70 years?There are theories that say it is possible, and some such theories are proposed.In several theories, such as Ross Burke's, emotions are considered readouts of the state of the motivational system or a flow report; that is, they are signals and cues that direct the flow of motivational energy .In other theories, such as that of Robert Pluchick, emotions are considered to be a series of behavioral phenomena that produce needs that seek to be satisfied and thus balanced.These two views are closer than they sound: In both views, emotions are an integral part of the mechanisms of motivation and gratification. Burke's theory of motivation and emotion is the most developed today, it accommodates almost all the major phenomena we have seen, from physical to cognitive, and best represents the current state of the theory. The motivation in Burke's theory - the most basic element of the emotional system is what he called "prime element" - the physiological basis process developed by evolution.They affect reflexes, primal drives (physiological needs), and primal emotions, and affect a person on three levels: physical changes (via the limbic system, hypothalamus, ANS, and pituitary projections), external behavior (via ANS and CNS) and cognition.Each in turn has feedback effects on the other parts. The flowchart below is Burke's illustration of this complex motivation-emotion theory. Unless you want to try it yourself, there is no need to solve the mystery.However, even if you don't want to unravel it, you can still see at a glance that it organizes the physical, thalamus-limbic, and cognitive theories of motivation and emotion theory into a unified and diverse theory. theory.This image is one of the answers to the question "Why are we doing this?"It is complex and incomprehensible, yet those who desire a simple answer that is easily understood have to abandon psychology and seek it in astronomy, numerology, or some similar explanation of human behavior.