Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Final Post

When I first thought of the word "motivation: all that came to mind was goal setting and achieveing goals. Now I understand that there is so much more behind that one simple word and relates to so many different aspects of a person's daily lifestyle. Motivation has been an extremely interesting and informative course. I have learned so much from the hisotry of motivational psychology & types of motivational psychology to the cognitivie process and emotions involved with this particular type of psychology. I feel as if the course incorporated a lot of topics I have already covered and learned about in previous courses and also gave inisight to completely new topics.


For example, in chapter 3, evolutionay antecedents of motivation were discussed. It was stated on page 69 that " fear has been used to illustrate a universal motive that is shaped by evolution. It is a prepared tendency or psychological mechanism in mammals that is ready to occur in response to certain stimuli." The chapter on Goals (11) also discussed different fears associated with attaining goals. This was interesting to read because it made me realize that a lot of my motivation to do things spurs from fear, particullarly the fear of failure or being unsuccessful.

In chapter 4, the economics of motivation was discussed and this was completely eye-opening for me! I had no idea that psychology could be related to economics. We learned about the differences between a variety of motivational costs. For example, physical energy costs can be seen as the use of oxygen and glucose such as when calories are burned. A psychological energy cost can be self-control to keep on a task and not giving into temptations. Some of the other topics we covered included addictions, behavior, stress & coping, personality, extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, and drives and needs.


My favorite topic was that on Homeostasis: Temperature, thirst, hunger, and eating. I'm a biochemistry major and I'm also currently taking Anatomy & Physiology. It amazed me how similar this chapter in the book was to everything that I am currently learning now in Anatomy and to other topics I've learned in previous Biochemistry courses. Homeostasis refers to the constant and normal conditions maintained in the body. The maintainance of this depends on a negative feedback system, a self-correcting process that reduces the discrepancy between a desired state and an actual satate. The example they give in the book is the operation of a furnace. Another example is when your body goes through a negative feedback inhibition such as when a person gets cold. Your body temperature intitially drops, you get cold, start to shiver, and this triggers your body temperature to rise in order to maintain a homeostatic balance between the weather outside and the temperature inside your body.


Another example is cellular thirst. In order for all of the cells in your body to work properly the cells must constantly replace the fluid they are losing while working. Intracellular fluid refers to the water contained within a cell ( approximately 67% of it is H2O! ) Extracellular fluid refers to remaining water that surrounds the outside of the cells. Both fluids containt concentrations of salt particales that must be maintained at a balance on both sides due to homeostasis! In anatomy we learned that this balance in maintained through the output and intake of the fluids through processes called diffusion & osmosis.


Here is a college I made demonstrating the relationship between biology & psychology:






Sources: Textbook: Motivation- third edition- Lambert Deckers.

I really enjoyed posting on this blog and I hope all of you enjoyed posting and reading as much as I did! Take care! :)

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