PSYCH 111 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Ventromedial Nucleus Of The Hypothalamus, Casual Sex, Internet Pornography
Document Summary
Paradox: modern society seems obsessed with dieting, exercise, and weight loss, but the prevalence of obesity has risen in recent decades. Hull"s concept of drive was derived from walter cannon"s (1932) observation that organisms seek to maintain homeostasis, a state of physiological equilibrium or stability. A drive is an internal state of tension that motivates an organism to engage in activities that should reduce this tension. Drive theories were not able to explain all motivation (berridge, 2004). An incentive is an external goal that has the capacity to motivate behavior. Drive theories emphasize how internal states of tension push people in certain directions. Incentive theories emphasize how external stimuli pull people in certain directions. Evolutionary analyses of motivation are based on the premise that motives can best be understood in terms of the adaptive problems they solved for our hunter-gatherer ancestors (tooby & cosmides, 2005).
