Sunday, December 11, 2011

Final Project Post

To be motivated is, “to be moved to action/behavior or change in action/behavior.” This semester we learned about the history, types and what drives our behavior. Our motives is what pushes us to reach a goal. This can be for example, hunger is a push towards food. We also learned a lot about emotions being, “a universal multi-channeled reaction by which a person adapts to stimulus change.”

As early as the 1600s philosophers have been studying motivation. One of the earliest sources of motivation is hedonism which is when a person strives for pleasure but will avoid pain. Evolutionary psychologists also had reasonings behind motivation. They believe that there are universal motives. These are shared motives that come from evolution. Examples of these shared motives are, sex, food and fear.

Another interesting topic we discussed was addictions. By learning about different drugs and alcohol we were able to understand how these can play a huge role in our behavior. In understanding addictions we are able to help people that have them. What was also intriguing about this subject was how your personality can play a huge factor about whether your more liking to become addicted to something or not. Our personality traits determine how we react to certain situations. One trait that we talked about the most in class was, sensation seeking. This is when there is, “a willingness to take various risks for the sake of such sensations and experiences.” We watched a video on people from a tribe doing bungee jumping. But it wasn’t just normal bungee jumping, they would build a huge tower out of sticks and then by using just rope they would jump.

Finally, we learned about incentives and the cost behind our motives. First off an incentive is an external stimuli that motivates our behavior to occur. This can be anything from money to grades. By having reinforcers and punishers our incentive can increase or decrease. Thus, every goal comes with a cost. These costs could be anything from physical, psychological energy to opportunity costs.

Overall, in this class we discussed many different topics. Much more then what I wrote above. What I wrote above is sort of just an overview. What I liked the most about this class is how everything is related to real life. It was easy to understand the topics this way. I also liked how Professor Berg always had a video that related to a topic. My favorite topic we covered in class was mate selection. It was interesting to understand the ways we pick mates. In finding our mate we look at a mates value. When your value is higher you are more appealing to others. People who are physically attractive tend to have an easier time finding someone. But it is not just about being physically attractive, when selecting a mate psychological and values also factor in. From our textbook the author defines good genes hypothesis as, “the member of the other sex selects an attractive individual based on the assumption that attractiveness signals genes for health, fertility, and intelligence.” Women and men both look for different traits in the opposite sex. Research has shown that women look for men that are financially stable and ambitious. On the other hand men look for women who have good looks which relates to fertility. What intrigued me the most was the video we watched in class. In the video, men and women were dressed in body suits. They were then asked to find someone of the opposite sex. It was interesting because each person picked a mate that had around the same mate value as themselves.

One video that I thought that would be really funny is, “How to trick people into thinking your good looking” by Jenna Marbles. I picked this video because it shows that girls do to be attractive in a hilarious way. I thought it related to the subject in the sense that it shows how someone can change quickly change their mate value.

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