NCERT Class 11 Psychology Motivation and Emotion

Motivation and Emotion

Introduction

Sunita, a girl from a little known town, puts in 10-12 hours of hard work everyday in order to get through the various engineering entrance examinations. Hemant, a physically challenged boy, wants to take part in an expedition and trains himself extensively in a mountaineering institute. Aman saves money from his scholarship so that he can buy a gift for his mother.

These are just a few examples, which indicate the role motivation plays in human behaviour. Each of these behaviours are caused by an underlying motive. Behaviour is goal-driven. Goal-seeking behaviour tends to persist until the goal is achieved. For achieving their goals people plan and undertake different activities. How is Sunita going to feel if after all the hard work she has put in, she does not succeed or Aman’s scholarship money gets stolen. Sunita, perhaps, will be sad and Aman angry.

This chapter will help you to understand the basic concepts of motivation and emotion, and related developments in these two areas. You will also get to know the concepts of frustration and conflict. The basic emotions, their biological bases, overt expressions, cultural influences, their relationship with motivation, and some techniques to help you manage your emotions better will also be dealt with.

NATURE OF MOTIVATION

The concept of motivation focuses on explaining what “moves” behaviour. In fact, the term motivation is derived from the Latin word ‘movere’, referring to movement ofactivity. Most of our everyday explanation of behaviour is given in terms of motives. Why do you come to the school or college? There may be any number of reasons for this behaviour, such as you want to learn or to make friends, you need a diploma or degree to get a good job, you want to make your parents happy, and so on.

Some combination of these reasons and/or others would explain why you choose to go in for higher education. Motives also help in making predictions about behaviour. A person will work hard in school, in sports, in business, in music, and in many other situations, if s/he has a very strong need for achievement. Hence, motives are the general states that enable us to make predictions about behaviour in many different situations. In other words, motivation is one of the determinants of behaviour. Instincts, drives, needs, goals, and incentives come under the broad cluster of motivation.

The Motivational Cycle

Psychologists now use the concept of need to describe the motivational properties of behaviour. A need is lack or deficit of some necessity. The condition of need leads to drive. A drive is a state of tension or arousal produced by a need. It energises random activity. When one of the random activities leads to a goal, it reduces the drive, and the organism stops being active. The organism returns to a balanced state. Thus, the cycle of motivational events can be presented as shown in Fig.9.1.

Are there different types of motives? Are there any biological bases explaining different kinds of motives? What happens if your motive remains unfulfilled? These are some of the questions we will discuss in the following sections.

TYPES OF MOTIVES

Basically, there are two types of motives :

biological and psychosocial. Biological motives are also known as physiological motives as they are guided mostly by the physiological mechanisms of the body. Psychosocial motives, on the other hand, are primarily learned from the individual’s interactions with the various environmental factors.

However, both types of motives are interdependent on each other. That is, in some kind of situations the biological factors may trigger a motive whereas in some other situations, the psychosocial factors may trigger the motive. Hence, you should keep in mind that no motive is absolutely biological or psychosocial per se, rather they are aroused in the individual with varying combinations. Biological Motives

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