Psy 352 – Motivation

Chapter 4 Physiological Needs

Physiological needs, biological systems, motivational states, and behavior act together to achieve stable physiological regulation.

• Any condition within the person that is essential and necessary for life, growth, and well-being.
• Physiological needs involve biological systems such as neuron development, hormones and organs. When unmet, physiological needs constitute life-threatening emergencies.
• All needs generate energy.

Fundamentals of Regulation

• Hull’s drive theory – physiological deprivation and deficits create biological needs. The biological deprivation generates psychological drive.
• Figure 4.2 describes the cyclical pattern of the rise and fall of psychological drives involving 7 core processes:
• Physiological need – deficient biological condition.
• Psychological drive – drive has motivational properties.
• Homeostasis –the body’s tendency to maintain a steady state.
• Negative feedback – homeostasis’ physiological stop system.
• Multiple Inputs/Multiple Outputs – Drive arises from a number of different sources, and motivates a number of different goal-directed behaviors.
• Intra-Organismic Mechanisms – all the biological regulatory systems within the person that act together to activate, maintain and terminate the physiological needs that underlie drive.
• Extra-Organismic Mechanisms – all the environmental influences that contribute to activating, maintaining, and terminating psychological drive.

Thirst

• Our body is comprised of 2/3 water. Thirst is a motivational state that prepares the body to perform behaviors necessary to replenish a water deficit.
• Physiological regulation – two types of thirst:
• Intracellular – Osmotic
• Extracellular –Volemic
• Thirst Satiety – thirst has a negative feedback system to prevent us from drinking too much water.
• Hypothalamus and Liver –hypothalamus monitors when our body has low water levels, and releases a hormone that sends a message to the liver to conserve its water.
• Environmental Influences
• 3 extra-organismic influences on drinking behavior:
• Perception of water available
• Adherence to drinking schedules
• Taste
• Five taste receptors
• Drinking occurs for 3 reasons:
  • Water replenishment to satisfy physiological needs
  • Sweet taste
  • Addiction to a substance in the water

Hunger

• Hunger regulation involves both short-term daily processes operating under homeostasis, and long-term processes operating under metabolic regulation and stored energy.
• Hunger and eating are also affected by cognitive, social and environmental influences
• Two models:
  • Glucostatic hypothesis – immediately available energy is constantly monitored.
  • Lipostatic model – long term model, stored energy is available and is used as a resource for supplementing glucose-monitored energy regulation
• Short-term appetite (glucostatic model)– when blood glucose drops, people feel hunger and want to eat.
  • Lateral hypothalamus
  • Ventromedial hypothalamus
  • Appetite increases and decreases based on environmental cues. With a full stomach, people report no hunger. With a stomach that is 60% empty, people report a hint of hunger.
  • Long-term energy balance (lipostatic model) – fat also produces energy.
    • Adipose tissue
  • Environmental influences that affect appetite – time of day, stress, sight, smell, appearance and taste of food.
  • Restraint-release situations – dieters attempt to bring eating behavior under cognitive, rather than under physiological, control.
  • Cognitively-regulated eating style – successful dieting requires that you turn off your responsiveness to internal cues and substitute conscious cognitive controls.
  • Weight gain and obesity – obesity is a medical term that includes high risks.

Sex

• Physiological regulation
  • Our sexual behavior is influenced by hormones, not determined.
  • Sexual desire and hormones steadily decline in our 20’s
  • The correlation between men’s erectile response and their self-reported desire is very high. Women’s sexual desire is highly responsive to relationship factors
• Facial metrics – The strongest external stimulus that affects sexual motivation is physical attractiveness. Some physical characteristics are viewed as universally attractive
  • Newborn features – large eyes, small nose.
  • Mature features – prominent cheekbones, thick hair
  • Expressive features – wide smile/mouth, eyebrow height
• Sexual scripts – one’s mental representation of the sequence of events that occur during a typical sexual episode.
  • Sexual schemas – beliefs about the sexual self that are derived from past experiences that feature both positive approach-oriented thoughts and behaviors as well as negative avoidance-oriented thoughts and behaviors
  • Sexual arousal – a combination of competing excitatory and inhibitory tendencies
• Sexual orientation – one’s preference for sexual partners of the same or other sex.
• Evolutionary basis of sexual motivation – Men have shorter-term sexual motivations, impose less stringent standards, value sexual accessibility, and chastity in mates. Women value signs of a man’s resources, social status and ambition, and promising career potential.
• Failures to self-regulate physiological needs
• Trying to exert conscious mental control over our physiological needs often does more harm than good.
• People fail at self-regulation for 3 primary reasons:
  • People routinely underestimate how powerful a motivational force biological urges can be
  • People can lack standards, or they have inconsistent, conflicting, unrealistic, or inappropriate standards
  • People fail to monitor what they are doing as they become distracted, preoccupied, overwhelmed, or intoxicated.
• Mental control that focuses on realistic standards, long-term goals, and on monitoring what one is doing generally leads to self-regulation success.