PSY 100 – General Psychology
Lecture Guide 11: Motivation and Emotion
Michael L. Thomas, PhD
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1 Motivation
1.1 Defining Motivation
Motivation is the internal process that initiates, directs, and sustains goal-directed behavior. It functions at both conscious and unconscious levels, providing purpose and direction to actions. Psychologists commonly classify motives into two broad categories: primary (physiological or biological) motives, such as hunger, thirst, and sleep; and secondary (personal or social) motives, such as affiliation, achievement, competition, and individual goals.
A distinction is also often made between intrinsic motivation—the drive to engage in an activity because it is inherently enjoyable or interesting (e.g., enrolling in a college course out of genuine curiosity)—and extrinsic motivation—the drive to engage in an activity due to external rewards or pressures (e.g., taking a course only because it fulfills a graduation requirement).
To maintain balance in the body—a principle known as homeostasis—the nervous system has evolved motivational drives that encourage behaviors to meet basic biological needs, as described in drive reduction theory. Brain regions such as the hypothalamus monitor internal states and initiate drive states when imbalances are detected. These signals activate the brain’s mesolimbic reward system, particularly the ventral striatum, including the nucleus accumbens, which processes incentive salience and reinforces behaviors that restore balance. When a basic need is unmet, the drive intensifies; once fulfilled, it diminishes—promoting adaptive behavior that supports survival and well-being.
1.2 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Understanding motivation requires not just looking at biology, but also recognizing how needs are organized and prioritized. One of the most influential models in this regard is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, proposed by Abraham Maslow (1908-1970), which frames motivation as a progression from fundamental survival needs to the desire for personal fulfillment.
The theory, as typically presented, suggests that human behavior is motivated by a progression of needs, arranged in a pyramid-like structure. According to Maslow, individuals are driven to satisfy the most basic needs first, and once those are fulfilled, they move up to higher-level psychological and self-fulfillment needs. Motivation increases when a particular level of need is unmet, and decreases as it becomes satisfied.
In order of importance, Maslow’s hierarchy includes:
Physiological Needs: These are the most basic biological requirements for human survival, such as food, water, oxygen, sleep, and shelter. Without meeting these foundational needs, the body cannot function properly, and all other motivations become secondary.
Safety Needs: Once physiological needs are met, individuals are motivated by the need for security and protection. This includes personal safety, financial security, health and well-being, and a stable environment free of threat or danger.
Belongingness and Love Needs: After securing safety, people seek social connections and interpersonal relationships. This includes friendship, romantic relationships, family bonds, and a sense of belonging within groups or communities. Social isolation or loneliness can strongly motivate behavior at this level.
Esteem Needs: At this level, motivation is driven by the desire for respect—both self-respect and the respect of others. Individuals seek recognition, achievement, status, and independence. Satisfying these needs fosters confidence and feelings of accomplishment.
Self-Actualization Needs: At the top of the hierarchy, individuals are motivated by a desire to realize their full potential. This includes pursuing personal growth, creativity, moral understanding, and peak experiences. According to Maslow, self-actualization represents the fulfillment of one’s unique capabilities and purpose.
Maslow believed that lower needs must be at least partially satisfied before higher-level needs begin to exert a strong motivational force. While not all psychologists agree with the strict hierarchy, the model remains influential in psychology, education, and organizational behavior.
🎥 Watch this!
Follow this link to a YouTube video overview of a modern update of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs by Scott Barry Kaufman.
1.3 Effort
What drives people to keep working toward a goal, even when it’s difficult or progress is slow? Psychologists have long been interested in what explains variations in effort, especially when a task isn’t immediately rewarding or easy. While motivation gives us the reason to act, effort refers to how much energy, focus, and persistence we apply toward that action—especially over time.
Several psychological concepts help explain individual differences in effort:
Need for Achievement: Psychologist David McClelland proposed that people vary in their need for achievement—a stable personality trait that influences how motivated someone is to accomplish challenging goals. Individuals high in this trait tend to choose moderately difficult tasks that allow them to demonstrate success. They value feedback, take ownership of outcomes, and persist longer when pursuing goals.
Grit: Psychologist Angela Duckworth popularized the concept of grit as a psychological trait, defined as a combination of passion and perseverance for long-term goals. Gritty individuals may not be the most talented or naturally gifted, but they work diligently and consistently over long periods—even when facing boredom, failure, or setbacks. Grit has been associated with success in education, sports, and demanding careers.
Need for Cognition: Psychologist John Cacioppo introduced the concept of need for cognition. This trait reflects a person’s enjoyment of—and willingness to engage in—effortful cognitive activities. Individuals high in need for cognition tend to seek out mental challenges and persist in problem-solving, analysis, and critical thinking, even in situations where these tasks are not required.
Mindset Theory: According to Carol Dweck’s influential mindset theory, beliefs about intelligence and ability shape motivation and effort. People with a growth mindset believe that abilities can improve with effort and practice, and they tend to view challenges as opportunities to grow. In contrast, those with a fixed mindset believe abilities are static, and may avoid effort for fear it signals low ability.
“In one world, effort is a bad thing. It, like failure, means you’re not smart or talented. If you were, you wouldn’t need effort. In the other world, effort is what makes you smart or talented.”
— Carol Dweck
Taken together, these ideas suggest that effort is more than a momentary exertion—it reflects enduring beliefs, personality traits, and goals that influence how hard, how long, and how smartly we work toward our objectives.
🌐 Explore This:
Visit Psychology Today’s Growth Mindset page to learn more about how beliefs about intelligence and ability can shape motivation, learning, and personal development.
1.3.1 Worth the Effort?
Below you’ll be asked to complete a quick version of the Effort Expenditure for Rewards Task (EEfRT), originally developed by Michael Treadway and colleagues to study how people decide whether a reward is “worth” the effort. In the classic EEfRT you pick between an easy/low-reward option and a harder/high-reward option, often with some uncertainty about whether you’ll actually get the reward. The balloon version below works the same way in spirit: on each trial you’ll see a chance to earn more points, but it will cost you more effort (more clicks / more time / more “work”) and sometimes the reward isn’t guaranteed (it is govered by a probability). Your job is simply to decide, over and over, “Do I go for the easy-but-small payoff, or do I invest more effort for a bigger—but maybe not certain—payoff?”
📝 Complete the EEfRT test! You may complete as many rounds of the task as you wish (it will not end on its own).
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A good real-world example is studying for an exam. The more time you spend studying—reviewing notes, practicing problems, memorizing terms—the higher your chances of earning a good grade. But, especially on multiple-choice exams, there’s always some uncertainty: you might study Topic A and the test emphasizes Topic B. So you can put in a lot of effort and still not get the exact outcome you wanted. In other words, you can study a little and be pretty sure you’ll get an okay grade, or you can study a lot and probably get a higher grade—but not with 100% certainty. That’s the basic point: effort doesn’t guarantee success, but it usually increases the probability of success.
2 Emotion
2.1 Defining Emotion
Emotion is most commonly understood as referring to conscious feelings—states like love, jealousy, contempt, anger, or despair. These are the types of experiences we intuitively associate with the word emotion in everyday life.
However, defining emotion strictly as a subjective feeling presents problems for scientific study, especially in cases where individuals cannot communicate their experiences. For example, this definition makes it challenging to study nonverbal populations—such as infants or individuals with severe developmental disabilities. Requiring that emotion be communicated also poses challenges for studying emotion in non-human animals, even though many species clearly exhibit behaviors resembling human emotions—for instance, a dog cowering in fear or a chimpanzee displaying excitement.
Because of this, psychologists tend to define emotion more broadly. Rather than focusing only on internal feelings, most researchers describe emotion as a composite of at least three elements: subjective experience (what it feels like), expressive behavior (such as facial expressions or body language), and physiological arousal (like heart rate, respiration, or hormonal responses).
Some theories suggest that emotions can be understood as categories, with distinct basic and complex types. Basic emotions–such as happiness, anger, and fear–are thought to be innate, universally recognized across cultures, and evolutionarily ancient. They are often shared with other species and tied to specific patterns of physiological arousal and facial expression. In contrast, complex emotions—such as grief, regret, or jealousy—are typically learned through social and cultural experience. They are evolutionarily newer, most evident in humans, and usually involve combinations of the basic emotional response patterns.
While categorical theories focus on distinct emotions, other approaches argue that emotions are better understood as dimensions. For example, emotions can be classified based on their level of arousal (i.e., the degree of physiological and psychological activation or alertness) and their valence (i.e., the emotional value of a stimulus—specifically, whether it is experienced as pleasant or unpleasant).
2.2 James Lange Theory
William James (1842-1910) proposed a theory of emotion that challenges common sense. Most people would say we run from a bear because we are afraid. But James posed the opposite: are we afraid because we run? He suggested that our bodily arousal comes first, and emotion is our interpretation of that arousal.
In other words, we don’t tremble because we’re afraid—we’re afraid because we tremble. According to this idea, the physiological response (e.g., increased heart rate, fast breathing, sweating) leads to the emotional experience. So, when you’re running from a threat and feel your heart pounding, your brain interprets that bodily state as fear.
This idea is known as the James-Lange Theory of Emotion, named because Danish physiologist Carl Lange (1834–1900) independently proposed a similar concept to that proposed by James, but placed even greater emphasis on the physiological basis of the emotional sequence.
However, there’s a problem. For this theory to work, our brain would need feedback from the body—from organs like the heart and lungs—to produce emotion. This has been tested in deafferentation experiments, where animals were altered so they couldn’t sense internal signals like heart rate. In contrast to predictions from the James-Lange theory, these animals still showed emotional responses, suggesting that such feedback is not essential for emotion.
2.3 Cannon-Bard Theory
In the 1920s, physiologist Walter Cannon (1871-1945) and his student Philip Bard (1898-1977) proposed an alternative to the James-Lange theory of emotion. They argued that the body’s autonomic nervous system response was too general to account for the wide range of emotional experiences. For instance, skin flushing can occur during embarrassment, anger, or sexual arousal, making it difficult to interpret feelings based solely on bodily states. Cannon and Bard instead suggested that emotions and physiological arousal occur simultaneously, not sequentially. According to their model, the thalamus and hypothalamus play crucial roles in processing emotional stimuli. The thalamus rapidly relays sensory input along two separate pathways—one to the cortex for emotional interpretation and another to the hypothalamus for triggering physiological responses.
2.4 Schachter-Singer Two-Factor Theory
The Schachter-Singer Two-Factor Theory (also called the cognitive arousal theory) proposes that emotion arises from a combination of physiological arousal and cognitive interpretation. According to this theory, the experience of emotion involves two steps: 1. Physiological Arousal — First, the body experiences arousal (e.g., increased heart rate, sweating); and 2. Cognitive Labeling — Then, the brain interprets the cause of the arousal based on the surrounding context or situation. In other words, this theory is similar to the James-Lange theory, except it adds a cognitive labeling step between the physiological response and the experience of emotion.
2.5 Two-Road Theory
Building on the idea that emotional experiences involve both brain-based processing and physiological responses, Joseph LeDoux (1949-) proposed a dual-route theory of emotion. This model highlights the role of the amygdala—a structure known to be especially important in the experience of fear—and suggests that emotional signals follow two distinct neural pathways: a “low road” and a “high road.”
In this model, the low road is a fast, automatic pathway from the visual thalamus directly to the amygdala. It allows for quick detection of potential threats without conscious awareness. For example, a hiker who sees a snake might instinctively jump back before even realizing what they saw. This rapid response bypasses the cortex and involves subcortical structures such as the superior colliculus and the pulvinar nucleus, which send coarse visual information straight to the amygdala.
The high road, by contrast, is slower and more deliberate. For example, in the context of vision, it routes information from the visual thalamus to the visual cortex, allowing for detailed analysis of the stimulus before sending signals to the amygdala. The same hiker, after the initial reaction, might realize the snake poses no danger (e.g., is not poisionous) and proceed calmly.
According to this model, sensory input activates emotional memories and responses via both the low road and the high road. The amygdala—thought to store threat memories—triggers autonomic reactions like increased heart rate and also influences decision-making through connections to the frontal cortex. While the low road enables immediate, reflexive fear, the high road provides context and control, helping modulate or override that initial emotional response.
2.6 Emotion Identiificaiton
🌐 Explore This!
Test your ability to recognize basic emotions by following this link to an interactive quiz hosted by the Paul Ekman Group. Note: You do not need to provide your name or email to receive a score. However, you will need to enter this information if you’d like detailed feedback on which items you got right or wrong. This is a website for Paul Ekman who is widely regarded as one of the most eminent psychologists of the twentieth century.
Paul Ekman’s influential theory has been foundational in the scientific study of emotion. Originally, he identified six basic emotions—anger, happiness, disgust, surprise, sadness, and fear—each with its own distinct facial expression that could be reliably recognized across diverse cultures. These core emotions were considered evolutionarily ancient and universally shared.
More recently, Ekman has expanded the list to include a seventh basic emotion: contempt. This addition reflects growing evidence that contempt, like the others, has a distinctive expression and cross-cultural recognition. These seven emotions are commonly used in emotion assessment tools, such as facial coding systems and self-report scales, because of their biological and psychological significance.
Emotion identification in others relies heavily on facial expressions; however, humans integrate information from multiple sensory channels to make accurate judgments. In addition to visual cues, such as facial features, people draw on auditory cues (e.g., tone of voice, pitch, and cadence), tactile cues (e.g., firmness or quality of touch), and postural cues (e.g., body language and gesture). When interpreting emotion from the face, particular attention is typically paid to the eyes and mouth, as these regions convey especially rich emotional information. For example, the eyes are critical for detecting fear or sadness, while the mouth plays a key role in identifying happiness or disgust.
🏥 Clinic Note:
Some individuals—including those who are neurodivergent (such as people with autism spectrum disorder) or those who have experienced brain trauma or neurodegenerative disease—may have difficulty identifying emotions in others. This can affect social communication and interpersonal relationships. A well-known clinical case is that of SM, a woman with rare bilateral damage to her amygdala. Although she could recognize many emotions, she consistently failed to identify fear in others. Researchers believe this may have been related to her difficulty focusing on the eyes, a critical area for detecting fear-related facial expressions.
🌐 Explore This:
Follow this link to a Atlas of Emotions website, an interactive tool that visually maps out different emotional experiences and how they relate to one another.
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