User:Haddo

About me
I am currently completing my second degree, which is a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. I have preiously completed a Bachelor of Education in Primary teaching with a major in Physcial Education.

Week 1: Introduction
The two main questions that have been asked in relation to motivation are:


 * 1. What causes behaviour


 * 2. Why does it vary

The study of motivation concerns those processes that give behaviour its energy and direction. Energy implies that behaviour has strength and direction implies that it has purpose.

This lecture also defined the following:
 * Needs = conditions within the individual that are essential and necessary for the maintenance of life and for nurturance of growth and well being
 * Cognition = mental events such as thoughts, beliefs and expectations
 * Emotions = Short lived subjective-physiological-functional-expressive phenomena that orchestrate how we react adaptively to the important events in our lives

This lecture introduced us to terms and basics of motivation. From the content that is listed I think the overall course will give an in depth and segregated overview of what causes emotion and motivation and what each encompasses.

Week 2: Assessment Tasks and Skills
Motivation is viewed as being the process by which we exert energy and the direction it takes as well as the needs and desires that energise behaviour.

The functioning of chemicals and transmitters in this lecture gave a greater insight into the inner workings of our bodies and how our motivation and emotion are affected. Dopamine is released which in turn causes positive emotion and results in enhanced functioning.

There are also 3 are integral to motivation and emotion:


 * 1. Cortisol = aka the stress hormone and is associated with societal evaluation threats


 * 2. Testosterone = steroid hormone and is associated with high sexual motivation


 * 3. Oxytocin = the bonding hormone that helps explain why people seek council and confide in friends

For me this will be one of the most interesting components of the course as my belief for why people exert emotions and motivations are very much entrenched in the biological workings of the body.

Week 3: Brain and Physiological Needs
A need is any condition within a person that is essential and necessary for life, growth and well being. Motivational states provide a way to act before damage occurs to psychological and bodily wellbeing.

It is theorising that a needs structure consists of the following:


 * 1. Physiological need = which are inherent within the workings of biological systems eg sex or thirst


 * 2. Psychological need = which are inherent within the strivings of human nature and healthy development eg autonomy and relatedness


 * 3. Social needs = which are internalized or learned from our emotional and socialization histories eg power and intimacy

All needs generate energy. If needs are satisfied optimal well being occurs. If needs are not being satisfied then they become frustrated and destructive to well being.

This lecture set out process by which each need can be encountered. It was intriguing to see that individuals have gone so far as to set out a process by which we encounter thirst. The section that discussed self regulation and what can occur if it fails was an aspect of the lecture I agreed with. When people are not experiencing a motivational force they can underestimate its power. Additionally people that have unrealistic goals will fail with self regulation as they cannot see the fruits of their work and therefore view the task of self regulation as without reward. The final reason why people fail at self regulation is being overwhelmed, distracted or intoxicated. When concentration lapses it is easy to become lax on goals.

Week 3: Tutorial 1- Introduction
Today we had our first tutorial for Motivation and Emotion. This was a very informative tutorial as we gained insight into many different aspects of the motivation and emotion unit. I found it particularly interesting that we needed to use Wikiversity for all of our assessment items.

To start off the tutorial the class took part in a range of Ice Breaker activities, which were very useful to get to know other students in the class. These activities involved a variety of different topics in which we had to answer certain questions or place ourselves into certain categories. Activities such as these can prove to be very useful to get to know others whilst having a laugh and fun during the learning process. Upon completion of these activities we formed small groups to go into further discussion that would take place during the rest of the tutorial.

Firstly, we individually came up with our own definition for motivation; mine was “an internal force that drives us to complete tasks”. Once we created our individual meaning we then came up with a group meaning for motivation. This was a very interesting process as there were many different viewpoints as to what motivation was. This created a lot of interesting and worthwhile discussion.

In our small groups, we then followed the same process for emotion. This again brought about lots of interesting discussion and different viewpoints from individual people. Although in saying this emotion was much harder to define as many people believe and describe emotion as how an individual is feeling.

Upon completion of these activities we moved on to discussing our textbook chapters and our likely topics. At this stage I was still a little unsure of my exact topic though I knew it was going to be based around exercise. From this I found that a topic available to us was ‘exercise motivation’. Once I discovered this I was able to come up with a few questions for my textbook chapter, which were:


 * What is exercise?


 * What is motivation?


 * How can we be motivated to exercise?


 * What motivated us to exercise?


 * How can individuals become more motivated to exercise?


 * What are the main theories behind motivation and exercise?

Week 4: Psychological and Social Needs
This week’s lecture is on psychological needs.

Self determination theory encompasses:


 * 1. Individuals are inherently active


 * 2. Person-environment dialectic

Individuals are inherently active refers to the ideal that individuals have goals, curiosities and different forms of motivation and person-environmental dialectic refers to the idea that the relationship between individuals and their environment is a two way interaction.

Self determination theory has 3 components. They include:


 * 1. Autonomy – Which influences self direction and endorsement of an individual’s behaviour
 * 2. Competence – The need to be active in ones environment
 * 3. Relatedness – The need to be socially and emotionally connected to others

These aspects all work in conjunction with each other and each covers important ground. To fulfil psychological needs you cannot look at one part of a functioning mechanism and single it out as the most important. To be fulfilled you do need to look at self, others and environment.

Week 5: I-E Motivation and Goal Setting
Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation further defines the influences on motivation and individuals outputs.

Intrinsic motivation finds its basis in psychological needs satisfaction uses the concepts of incorporates autonomy, competence and relatedness. It is thought that intrinsic motivation can have an influence on creative mind frames and learning.

Extrinsic motivation is an environmental reason to engage in something such as an incentive. This form of motivation is examined in terms of consequences, rewards and incentives that an individual may encounter whilst trying to reach a goal.

For me extrinsic motivation is by far the stronger motivator. When I set a task I like to be able to view my progress and possibly reinforce my behaviour schedule with a small reward. I can see why extrinsic motivation may at times undermine intrinsic motivation and I can also see why at time extrinsic motivation can act as a way to reinforce behaviour that is desired. As a school teacher I use extrinsic motivators to achieve optimal results from my students by way of sport time or extra play.

Week 5:Tutorial 2- Needs
During the tutorial this week we spent a large amount of time discussing our textbook chapters. This was a very useful part of the tutorial as it gave me a chance to gauge other people’s opinions on the direction of my textbook chapter. From this I was able to amend the direction I was taking for my textbook chapter and gain a further insight and image of how I am going to structure my work.

During the rest of the tutorial we were able to discuss needs. We continued to do this in our small groups within which our first task was to create a definition for the question, what are needs? Once we came up with this group definition we looked at Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, this was very interesting as it explained what needs had to be met to lead a fulfilling lifestyle. From this it was very interesting to discover that our physiological needs seem to be directly related with our basic survival needs.

Our discussions about needs were very interesting as you start to think are my own needs being met? From this I had a brief think and discovered that I am very confident that my needs of love and belonging are being met, along with my basic survival needs. Therefore I discovered that these discussions around the various needs topics are very interesting and related to each individual on a day to day basis. This was also interesting as it related to my textbook chapter, which led me to think, what need is being met when we exercise?

Week 6: Personal Control and The Self
Self efficacy is the opposite of self doubt and indicates how well a person will deal in particular situations. This lecture also examined self which I always find particularly interesting. Self constructs are made up of 4 components:


 * 1. Self esteem = An individual’s feelings of self worth


 * 2. Self efficacy = An individual’s belief about how they can perform tasks


 * 3. Self confidence = An individual’s belief that they will be able to do things well


 * 4. Self concept = beliefs of self

The idea of a possible self was one of interest. The notion that an individual can experience motivation to move their present perception of self towards a bettered self can be viewed every single day. You see the people at the gym aiming to be the self they have in their mind. You see people at university studying to place them into a future that they want. These types of motivation push people every single day and are clearly visible. I also found it interesting that the possible self is motivated by social forces and that it is based on a self an individual models off others.

Week 7: Tutorial 3- Self & Goals
During this week’s tutorial we discussed the notion of motivation for students attending university. This was a very interesting topic for me personally as I am currently mid way through completing my second degree and I started to think about my motivation firstly for my first degree in Education and then secondly for my second degree in Psychology, in which I will disclose my findings shortly. These reasons can either be intrinsically motivated (driven internally) or extrinsically motivated (due to external/environmental factors). As a group we discussed the following reasons as to why people attend university:


 * Careers and qualifications; completing university for the degree or so the individual can get a better job.


 * Self-Exploration/ Learning: going to university for the learning factor, out of curiosity or for the knowledge-seeking.


 * Social Opportunities: people will attend university to meet new people, make and explore friendships and enjoy the social environment that is involved in the university lifestyle.


 * Altruism: individuals attend university to become better able to help the world, society, other people and the planet.


 * Social pressure: people attend university due to the expectations of family friends and the social pressures of life.


 * Rejection of alternatives: university is a better option than working or doing nothing at all.

All of these factors were very interesting and eye opening as I was forced to think about my motivators and reasons for coming back to university. From this I believe that I am driven by the careers and qualifications aspect as well as altruism. Once we looked at these aspects we then went on to complete a Learned Optimism test (Seligman 1991). From this I found that I was intrinsically motivated to attend university and satisfied thus far with my university experience.

Week 10: Aspects of Emotion
The primary questions that surround emotion are:


 * What is emotion?


 * What causes emotion?


 * How many types of emotion are there?


 * What are good emotions?


 * What is the difference between emotion and mood?

There seems to be no one set definition for emotion however it can be viewed as a way to regulate behaviour and encompasses biological, cognitive and social elements. Emotion and mood tend to vary in definition as emotion has its parameters specified and tends to last only a short period of time, whereas moods are ill defined and last for long periods of time.

Each emotion has its own unique facial expression, neural activity and feeling.

Izard classified 10 fundamental emotions which include:


 * Positive emotions = Interest and joy


 * Neutral emotions = surprise


 * Negative emotions =Fear, anger, disgust, contempt, guilt and shame.

When I first looked at these classifications I agreed what was listed after each. Upon closer inspection I found it quite strange that surprise is listed as a neutral emotion. There was also a line in this lecture that made me think of an age old adage. ‘Does smiling make you happy’, made me think of when you are not in a good mood and people say ‘Smile’. I wonder if this found it basis in the thought that if you smile the simulation of that emotion would overcome the negative.

Week 10: Tutorial 4- Emotion
Previous to this tutorial I hadn’t given much thought to the different emotions and the way that people express them. I believe it is obvious the way people express the most common emotions of happiness and sadness as it usually shows as facial expressions, other than that my thought processes had gone any deeper into how people and other species express emotion.

This activity was very interesting as it brought up many emotions that I was previously unfamiliar with. We completed this activity using the six categories outlined in Reeve (2009) which were: interest, anger, joy, disgust, sadness and fear. It was very interesting to discover that many of the definitions didn’t fit into just one category of emotional feelings and states, though they seemed to be able to be placed into two or three categories. Therefore we found ourselves placing these into a section where it was discoverable that they came under more than one category.

During this tutorial we also took part in a PANAS (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule). This structure was very similar to personality scales that I have previously seen in my experiences. Though it was very interesting to discover how positive and negative states of emotions can be interpreted by ourselves as well as other people.

After the completion of this activity James ran through a short session on working with images and the layout of Wikiveristy. This will more than likely be a very useful session when it comes to putting my textbook chapter up on the Wikiversity.

Week 11: Personality, Motivation & Emotion
This week’s lecture was on Personality, Motivation and Emotion

The question that was asked at the start of this lecture really made me wonder why it is that individuals can have different emotional reactions when faced with the same situation. Personality traits allow an individual to approach a situation in a differing manner and are accompanied by different coping mechanisms.

The sensation seeking scale that was proposed in this lecture can easily be examined in light of addictive behaviour. This scale suggests that individuals that have a low tolerance to boredom will seek out novel situations to engage sensation and release inhibitions. Engaging in an activity that causes heightened sensation would eventually lead to desensitisation and seeking of a new activity. Following this thought process you can easily see how addictive types of activities would be sought out in order to increase sensation.

Week 12: Unconscious Motivation
Subliminal motivation made me laugh in this lecture. It is described as being stimuli that is presented to an individual at a below threshold frequency. It is information that is processed at the unconscious level and can elicit emotional reactions. The lecture states that much to the disappointment of advertisers this concept does not work. I found this funny as I have heard of many occasions ranging from old marketing campaigns to government advertisements that have tried to utilise the effects of subliminal motivation.

Psychodynamics describes psychological forces as a clashing between the conscious and unconscious. This clash is thought to be a struggle between our desires and wishes with the force that encourages inhibition and repression.

Week 12: Tutorial 5- Personality
This tutorial proved to be quite effective and useful for me as we spent a large quantity of time on discussing and gaining help with our textbook chapters. During this time James spent most of his time helping us with enquiries about submitting the textbook chapter and answering questions about using Wikiversity as well as the final content which should be included in the textbook chapter. I have found the whole process of using Wikiversity a very interesting one to say the least. I am much more familiar with using Microsoft word, though using Wikiversity I have become a bit more technologically advanced. In saying this I would have liked to include many more things and interesting arrangements in my textbook chapter and this has led me to gain further insight into the workings of Wikiversity. James also helped us briefly with the Multimedia assessment and after he had explained a few details about the process in which we could complete this assessment I was very pleased that I was already familiar with Microsoft Power point.

Once we had finished these in depth and useful discussions it was time to complete some other interesting activities. We went through and completed a personality test which was focussed on the main five personality traits. We wrapped up the tutorial by looking at 4 main factors of the sensation seeking scale (Zuckerman 1971) which were:


 * Thrill and adventure seeking: this is the desire to engage in sport or activities which involve some degree of physical danger such as sky diving or speeding in a car.


 * Experience seeking: this is the desire to seek new experiences through the mind and senses by living in a nonconforming life style with unconventional friends, and through travelling.


 * Disinhibition: the need to disinhibit behaviour in the social sphere by doing such activities as drinking and partying.


 * Boredom and susceptibility: this is the aversion to repetitive experiences of any kind.

This was a very interesting activity and led me to thinking a great deal about my own lifestyle and what traits I exhibit.

Week 13: Growth Psychology
Chapter 15 set out an exercise that I really liked. It is based in positive psychology and it is called a happiness exercise.


 * 1. Gratitude visit = This exercise entails an individual writing a letter of gratitude and giving it to someone who they feel has been particularly nice to them but has never really received the appreciation they deserved


 * 2. Three good things in life = Each day individuals are encouraged to write down three good things that have occurred and identify why they worked


 * 3. You at your best = Recount a time when you performed at your best. Reflect on what you did to be able to achieve this


 * 4. Identify your strengths = Identify five of your strengths and new ways they could be applied.

These happiness exercises may seem overly optimistic (which is a criticism of positive psychology), however even reading them does put a small smile on your face.

Week 14: Summary and Conclusion
This has been a very intersting, eyeopening and intuative unit to be involved in. I believe we have covered a vast array of topics which have not only informed my learning but also led to deeper thought processes about my own personal life. I have had to complete assessment tasks in a method previous to which I have never encountered and this was a fantastic learning curve.

I have learnt a lot during this unit. I was able to write a textbook chapter bout a topic that I have passionate about and thereforen was able to be more motivated about the assessment task than I otherwise could have been. Thie has bee a great learning curve throughout which I have learnt a lot of interesting fact along the way.

Week 14: Tutorial 6- Growth Psychology
This week was a final tutorial for motivation and emotion. During this tutorial we discussed the differences between positive and humanistic psychology. This provided for some very interesting conversation as many personal opinions were discussed. This was followed up by a further interesting discussion on raising a child with a socially unacceptable temperament. In my personal opinion the child needs to take responsibility for his or her own behaviour and only thereafter will the unsocial behaviours begin to diminish.

After discussing these topics we viewed a checklist for self-actualisation characteristics according to Maslow. The topics covered were as follows:

Priority of Values such ads truth, love and happiness.


 * Acceptance of self, of others, of nature: this relates to accepting things the way that they are whether they are good or bad.


 * Identification with human species: this relates to individuals indentifying with not only their own culture, family and friends abut also all of humanity.


 * Emphasis on higher level values: this relates to self-actualisation where people tend to spend most of their time focussing on higher values.


 * Perception of reality-greater perceptual accuracy of reality: this is the ability to perceive the truth and relate to people on a deeper level.


 * Discrimination between means and ends, between good and evil: this relates to seeing the bigger picture of life.


 * Resolution of dichotomies (Conflicts): the ability to be less phased by smaller conflicts, less likely to retaliate to momentary surroundings.

Internally controlled


 * Autonomy and resistance to enculturation: in control of your own life to a certain degree.


 * Detachment and desire for privacy: comfortable with their own lives and able to enjoy themselves.


 * Spontaneity, simplicity, naturalness: goes about their day to day life according to values and habits.

High involvement, productivity and happiness


 * Problem-centering: is very absorbed in the tasks they are engaging in.


 * Creativeness: retains a child like view of life.


 * Freshness of appreciation and richness of emotional reactions: very aware of their emotions and reactions due to them.


 * High frequency of peak experiences: being completely engaged in the present task.

High quality interpersonal relationships


 * (Intimate) Interpersonal relationships: very selective person with who their friends are but everyone wants to be friends with them.


 * Democratic character structure: person is centred on equality of life and their general status is unimportant to them as an individual.


 * Philosophical unhostile sense of humour

This was a very interesting process which leads to a deeper thought process of how I live my own life. This subject led me to think deeper about my own life and the way i do things.