Invitation to Psychology

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Chapter 14 The Major Motives of Life: Food, Love, Sex, and work 521

Chapter 14

t

he Major Motives of Life: Food, Love, Sex, and Work

The Competent Animal: Motives to Achieve

The Effects of

Motivation on Work

Industrial/organizational

psychologists have measured the

psychological qualities that

spur achievement and the

environmental conditions that

influence productivity and

satisfaction.

The Importance of Goals

People achieve more and feel better

about themselves when goals are:

• specific rather than vaguely defined.


• challenging but achievable.


• framed as approach goals rather
  than as avoidance goals.


• mastery (learning) goals, learning
  the task well, rather than perfor-
  mance goals, showing off for others.
  Expectations of success or failure play
  an important role in motivation:


• They can create a self-fulfilling
  prophecy.


• Expectations of success stem in part
  from feelings of self-efficacy.

The Effects of Work on Motivation

Working conditions can increase employees’

satisfaction and motivation, especially when

employees:

• feel their work is meaningful.


• have control over many aspects of their work.


• have varied tasks.


• have supportive relationships.


• get useful feedback.


• have opportunities to learn and advance.

INTRINSIC MOTIVATION

Contextual Factors

(e.g., working conditions,opportunities)

Perceived Goal

(e.g., vague or specific,easy or challenging,

for performance or mastery,avoidance or approach?)

Expectations, Self-efficacy

Personality Factors

(e.g., achievementmotivation)

The Social Animal:

Motives to Love

The Biology of Love

Biological origins of

passionate love may begin

in infancy. The mother–

infant bond involves the

release of vasopressin,

which are involved in

pleasure and reward.

The Psychology of Love

The two major predictors of whom people will

love are:

• proximity: The people nearest are most likely
  dearest.


• similarity: Like attracts like.
  Attachment theory views adults’ love relationships,
  like those of infants, as taking one of three forms:


• secure.


• avoidant.


• anxious-ambivalent.

Gender, Culture, and Love

• In Western societies, the sexes
  do not differ in their feelings of
  love but may differ in how they
  express those feelings.


• Gender differences in love
  often reflect economic and
  social forces, such as whether a
  person can afford to marry for
  love or must marry for financial
  reasons.

Motives, Values, and the

Pursuit of Happiness

In setting goals, most people are not very good at

predicting what will make them happy or miserable.

• The good is rarely as good as people imagine, and the
  bad is rarely as terrible because people adjust quickly
  to happy changes and fail to anticipate that they will
  handle bad experiences just as quickly.


• Having positive, intrinsically enjoyable experiences
  makes most people happier than having things.


• People who are motivated by the intrinsic satisfaction
  of an activity are happier and more satisfied than those
  motivated solely by extrinsic rewards.

Three kinds of motivational conflicts can cause distress. They are:

• Approach–approach conflict: A person is equally attracted to two
  goals.


• Avoidance–avoidance conflict: A person is equally repelled by two
  goals.


• Approach–avoidance conflict: A person is both attracted to and
  repelled by the same goal.
  Abraham Maslow believed that human motives could be ranked in a
  hierarchy of needs, from basic safety to personal transcendence, but
  this theory has had little empirical support.

oxytocin, and endorphins,