PSYC 2230 Lecture Notes - Nomothetic, Septal Nuclei, Cognitive Dissonance

• School: York University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 2230
• Professor: Frank Marchese

Document Summary

Motivation, concepts and measurement: concept of motivation (m): forces acting on or within an organism to initiate action (p. 4). Increasing arousal: motivation is a performance variable (pv): when enough is present, b is performed. Characteristics of motivation: activation as in the production of overt and covert behaviour (p. 6), persistence as in ongoing performance of b, vigor as in forceful behaviour, direction as in which choice of goal is made. Measure direction in terms of preference test of possible choices (p. 7). Categories of analysis: study motivation from different viewpoints: nomothetic: a search for general laws by studying large groups and what holds for one group may hold for other groups (species; p. 7-8). Idiographic: a search of individual differences or how organisms differ from each other: innate vs acquired: mcdougall and james saw motivated behaviour as controlled by innate motives called instincts. Deprivation brings about needs as internal sources of motivated behaviour.