Psychology 1215 Chapter 11: Motivation and Work – Flashcards
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Motivation
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A need or desire that energizes and directs behaviour. Our motivation arises between the interplay between nature and nurture.
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Instinct
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A complex behaviour that is rigidly patterned throughout a species and is unlearned. Such behaviours are also common in other species and in human species such as unlearned fixed patterns, including infants innate reflexes for rooting and sucking. Although instinct theory failed to explain most human motives, the underlying assumption that genes predispose species-typical behaviour remains as strong as ever. Evolution influences our phobias, helping behaviours, and romantic attractions.
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Motivation and the Nervous System
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The more complex the nervous system, the more adaptable the organism. Both humans and weaverbirds stays their needs for shelter in ways that reflect their inherited capacities. Human behaviour is flexible; we can learn whatever skills we need to build a house. The birds behaviour pattern is fixed; it can build only this kind of nest.
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Instinct Theory
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A perspective for viewing motivated behaviours, now replaced by the evolutionary perspective, focuses on *genetically predisposed behaviours*.
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Drive-Reduction Theory
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The idea that a psychological state need creates an aroused tension state (a drive) that motivates an organism to satisfy the need. When the original instinct theory of motivation collapsed, it was replaces with this theory. A perspective for viewing motivated behaviours, focuses on how our inner pushes and our external pulls interact. When a physiological need increases, so does the physiological drive- an aroused motivated state. The physiological aim of drive-reduction is homeostasis.
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Arousal Theory
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A perspective for viewing motivated behaviours, focuses on finding the right level of stimulation.
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Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
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A perspective for viewing motivated behaviours, describes how some of our needs take priority over others.
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Homeostasis
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A tendency to maintain a balanced or constant internal state; the regulation of any aspect of body chemistry, such as blood glucose, around a particular level.
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Incentive
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A positive or negative emotional stimulus that motivates behaviour. This is one way that our individual histories influence our motives. When there is both a need and an incentive, we feel strongly driven.
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Optimum Arousal
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Some motivated behaviours actually increase arousal. Baby monkeys and young children are fascinated by things they have never handled before. Their drive to explore the relatively unfamiliar is one of several motives that do not fill an immediate psychological need but are driven by curiosity. Human motivation aims not to eliminate arousal but to seek optimum levels of arousal. Having all our biological needs satisfied, we feel driven to experience stimulation and hungry for information. Lacking stimulation, we feel bored and look for a way to increase arousal to some optimum level. However, with too much stimulation comes stress, and we then look for a way to decrease arousal.
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A Hierarchy of Motives
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Some needs take priority over others. Abraham Maslow described these priorities as a *hierarchy of needs*. At the base of the pyramid are our psychological needs, such as food and water. Only if these needs are met are we prompted to meet our need for safety, and then to satisfy the uniquely human needs to give and receive love and to enjoy self-esteem. Beyond this, said Maslow, lies the need to actualize ones full potential.
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(6) Self-Transcendence Needs
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The need to find meaning and identity beyond the self.
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(5) Self-Actualization Needs
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The need to live up to our fullest and unique potential.
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(4) Esteem Needs
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The need for self-esteem, achievement, competence, and independence; need for recognition and respect from others.
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(3) Belongingness and Love Needs
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The need to love and be loved, to belong and be accepted; need to avoid loneliness and separation.
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(2) Safety Needs
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The need to feel that the world is organized and predictable; need to feel safe.
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(1) Psychological Needs
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The need to satisfy hunger and thirst.
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Hierarchy of Needs
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Maslow's pyramid of human needs, beginning at the base with psychological needs that must first be satisfied before higher level safety needs and then psychological needs become active. Maslow's hierarchy is somewhat arbitrary; the order of such needs is not universally fixed. Today's evolutionary psychologists concur with the four basic levels of the pyramid but they note that gaining and retaining mates, and parenting offspring, are also human universal motives. Nevertheless, the simple idea that motives are more compelling than others provides a framework for thinking about motivation.
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After hours of driving alone in an unfamiliar city, you finally see a dinner. Although it looks deserted and a little creepy, you stop because you are really hungry. How would Maslow's hierarchy of needs explain your behaviour?
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According to Maslow, our drive to meet the physiological needs of hunger and thirst take priority over safety needs, promoting us to take risks at times in order to eat.
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Hunger
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You feel hunger because of a homeostatic system designed to maintain normal body weight and an adequate nutrient supply. People and other animals automatically regulate their caloric intake to prevent energy deficits and maintain a stable body weight. One resource of this is the blood sugar glucose.
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Glucose and Hunger
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The form of sugar that circulates in the blood and provides the major source of energy for body tissues. When its level is low, we feel hungry. Increase in the hormone *insulin* (secreted by the *pancreas*) diminish blood glucose, partly by converting it to stored fat. If your blood glucose levels drop, you won't consciously feel this change. But your brain, which is automatically monitoring your blood chemistry and your bodies internal state, will trigger hunger. Signals from your stomach, intestines, and liver (indicating whether glucose is being deposited or withdrawn) all signal your brain to motivate eating or not.
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Hunger and The Brain
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The brain signals hunger or not by several neural areas, some housed deep in the brain in the hypothalamus. This neural traffic intersection include areas that influence eating. Blood vessels connect the hypothalamus to the rest of the body, so it can respond to our current blood chemistry and other incoming information. One of its tasks is monitoring the levels of appetite hormones, such as *ghrelin*, a hunger arousing hormone secreted by an empty stomach. Our appetite hormones include *leptin and PYY (both decrease hunger), and orexin (triggers hunger). The complex interaction of appetite hormones and brain activity may help may help explain the bodies apparent predisposition to maintain itself at a particular weight level.
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Bypass Surgery
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During bypass surgery for severe obesity, surgeons seal off part of the stomach. The remaining stomach then produces much less ghrelin, and the persons appetite lessens.
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Arcuate Nucleus
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A neural arc that has a centre the secretes appetite stimulating hormones, and another centre that secretes appetite suppressing hormones. Explorations of this and other neural areas reveal that when an appetite-enhancing centre is stimulated electrically, well-fed animals begin to eat. If the area is destroyed, starving animals have no interest in food. The opposite occurs when electrically stimulating an appetite suppressing area: animals will stop eating. Destroy this area and animals will eat and eat, and become extremely fat.
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Set Point
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The point at which an individuals "weight thermostat" is supposedly set. When the body falls below this weight, an increase in hunger and a lowered metabolic rate may act to restore the lost weight. In humans and rats, heredity influences body type and set point.
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Basal Metabolic Weight
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The body's resting rate of energy expenditure for maintaining basic body functions (at rest). Slow, sustained changes in body weight can alter one's set point, and that physiological factors also sometimes drive our feelings of hunger. Given unlimited access to a wide variety of foods, people and other animals tend to overeat and gain weight. For these reasons, some researchers have abandoned the idea of a biologically fixed set point and now prefer the term *settling point* to indicate the level at which the persons weight settles in response to caloric intake and expenditure (which are influenced by the environment as well as biology).
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Hunger occurs in response to ____ blood glucose and ____ levels of ghrelin
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low, high
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The Appetite Hormones
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- *Insulin* is secreted by the pancreas and controls blood glucose. - *Ghrelin* is secreted by an empty stomach and sends "I'm hungry" signals to the brain. - *Orexin* is secreted by the hypothalamus and also triggers hunger. - *Leptin* is secreted by fat cells, and *PYY* from the digestive tract both decrease hunger.
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The Psychology of Hunger
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Our eagerness of eat is indeed pushed by our physiological state, our body chemistry and hypothalamus activity. Part of knowing when to eat is our memory of our last meal. As time passes since we last ate, we anticipate eating again and start feeling hungry.
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Taste Preferences: Biology and Culture
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Body chemistry and environmental factors together influence not only the when of hunger but also to what (our taste preferences). *Carbohydrates help boost levels of neurotransmitter serotonin*, which has calming effects. Our preferences for sweet and salty tastes are genetic and universal. Other taste references are conditioned, as when highly salted foods develop a liking for excess salt or when people who have been sickened by food develop and aversion to it. Culture affects taste too. Exposure to one set of novel foods increases our willingness to try another. Other taste preferences are also adaptive, such as spices (hot cultures/climates like hot spices). Pregnancy-related nausea and food aversions peak about the tenth weak, when the developing embryo is most vulnerable to toxins. So, there is a biological wisdom to our taste preferences. Cultural trends can also influence the human genetics that affect diet and taste.
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Neophobia
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The dislike of things unfamiliar was adapted from our ancestors, protecting them from potentially toxic substances.
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Situational Influences on Eating
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To a surprising extent, situations also control our eating. People eat more when eating with others. The presence of others tends to amplify our natural behavioural tendencies (a phenomenon called *social facilitation*). Another aspect of the ecology of eating called *unit bias*, occurs with similar mindlessness. *Food Variety* also stimulates eating which makes biological sense as when foods are more abundant and varied, eating more provides needed vitamins and minerals and produces fat that protects us during winter colder famine. When a bounty of varied of foods is unavailable, we eat less, which extends the food supply until winter of the famine ends. Cooking shows increase appetites but not healthful home cooking.
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Levels of Analysis for our Hunger Motivation/Eating Behaviour
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*Biological Influences*: hypothalamic centres in the brain monitoring appetite, appetite hormones, Stomach pangs, Weigh set/settling point, attraction to sweet and salty tastes, and adaptive wariness toward novel foods. *Psychological Influences*: The sight and smell of food, variety of foods available, memory of time elapsed since last meal, stress and mood, food unit size. *Social-Cultural Influences*: Culturally learned taste preferences, responses to cultural preferences for appetite.
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After an eight hour hike without food, your long awaited favourite dish is placed in front of you, and your mouth waters in anticipation. Why?
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Through classical conditioning, you have learned to respond to the sight and aroma that signal the food about to enter your mouth. Both physiological cues (low blood sugar) and psychological cues (anticipation of the tasty meal) heighten your experienced hunger.
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Obesity and Weight Control
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Our bodies store fat for good reasons. Fat is an ideal form of stored energy, a high calorie fuel reserve to carry the body through periods when food is scarce. In most developing societies today, obesity signals affluence and social status, and people find heavier bodies attractive. There are estimations that over 1 billion people worldwide are now overweight, and 300 million are clinically obese (defined by WHO as a body mass index of 30 or more). In the US, the adult obesity rate has more than doubled in the last 40 years and child-teen obesity has quadrupled. Being slightly overweight is a real but modest health risk. Fitness matters more than being a little overweight. But significant obesity increases the risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, gallstones, arthritis, and certain types of cancer, thus increasing health care costs and shorting life expectancy. Recent research has also linked women's obesity to their risk of cognitive decline, including Alzheimers disease and brain tissue loss. Obese live 8-10 years less, on average.
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Body Mass Index (BMI)
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Although the BMI is criticized for not distinguishing between extra body weight from muscle rather than fat, US government guidelines encourage a BMI under 25. The World Health Organization and many countries define *obesity* as a BMI of 30 or more.
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The Social Effects of Obesity
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Obesity can also be social toxic, by affecting how you are treated and also by how you feel about yourself. Widen people images on a video monitor and observers suddenly rate them as less sincere, less friendly, meaner, and more obnoxious. Obesity has been associated with lower psychological well-being, especially among women, and with a marked increase in being diagnosed for depression. Obesity and depression feed each other as in longitudinal studies it has been revealed that obesity contributes to depression, and that depression fosters obesity.
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Weight Discrimination
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Weight bias and discrimination is stronger against women. This prejudice appears early in life. Children scorn fat children, and even normal weight children who are seen with an obese child. Obese 6 to 9 year olds are 60% more likely to experience bullying. When women applicants were made to look overweight, university students were less willing to think that they would hire them. Among men applicants, weight mattered less.
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The Physiology of Obesity
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Challenges the stereotype of severely overweight people being weak-willed gluttons. First, consider the arrhythmic weight gain: People get fat by consuming more calories than they expend. The energy equivalent for a pound of fat is 3500 calories; therefore, dieters believe they will lose a pound for every 3500-calorie reduction in their diet which is *FALSE*.
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Set Point and Metabolism
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Once we become fat, we require less food to maintain our weight than to attain it. Fat has a lower metabolic rate than does muscle, it takes less food energy to maintain. When an overweight persons body weight drops below it previous set point, the persons hunger increases and metabolism decreases. Thus, the body adapts to starvation by burning off fewer calories. Lean people are naturally predisposed to move about. Thus they burn more calories than do energy-conserving overweight people who tend to sit still longer. These individual differences in resting metabolism help explain why two people of the same height, age, and activity level can maintain the same weight, even if one eats much less than the other does.
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The Genetic Factor of Obesity
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Studies do reveal a genetic influence on body weight. Peoples weights resemble those of their biological parents. Identical twins have closely similar weights even when reared apart suggesting that genes explain two-thirds of our varying body mass. Given an obese parent, a boy is three times, and a girl is six times, more likely to be obese than their counterparts with normal-weight parents. Scientists have discovered many different genes that influence body weight, most of which have small effects. The gene FTO if present nearly doubles the risk of becoming obese. Other research indicates that people who are genetically disposed to a sluggish brain-reward system may eat more to boost its activity. Researchers hope that identifying culprit genes will lead them to the trail of the hunger-signalling proteins encoded by those genes. So, the specifics of our genes predispose the size of our genes. But the genetic influence is surely complex, with different genes.
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The Food and Activity Factors of Obesity
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Genes tell an important part of the obesity story, but environmental factors are mighty important too. Studies show that children and adults who suffer from sleep loss are more vulnerable to obesity. With sleep deprivation, the levels of leptin (which reports body fat to the brain) fall, and ghrelin (the appetite stimulating stomach hormone) rise. *Social Influence* is another factor as one is more likely to become obese if a friend becomes obese. If the obese friend was a close one, the odds of being obese almost tripled. Moreover, the correlation among friends weights was not simply a matter of seeking out similar people as friends. Friends matter. *The strongest evidence that environmental influences weight comes from our fattening world*. Although the developed nations lead a trend, people across the globe are getting heavier. This is because changing food consumption and activity levels are at work as we are eating more and moving less. Genes mostly determine why one person is heavier than another. Our eating behaviour also demonstrates the now familiar interaction among biological, psychological and social-cultural factors.
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Losing Weight
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Nearly two-thirds of women and half of men say they want to lose weight. With set points, metabolism, and genetical and environmental factors all tirelessly conspiring against weight disposal losing weight is difficult. For most people, permanent weight loss requires a career of staying thin: a lifelong change in eating habits combined with increased exercise. Excursive empties fat cells, builds muscles, speeds up metabolism, and helps lower your setting point. Eating more slowly leads towards eating less. We do well to note that researchers have *not* identified guilt, hostility, oral fixation, or any similar personality misjudgement as causing obesity. Nor is obesity a matter of lack of willpower. The relentless pursuit of thinness puts people at risk not only for binge eating and food obsession, but also for weight fluctuations, malnutrition, smoking, depression, and harmful side effects of weight loss drugs.
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Sexual Motivation
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Sex is part of life. Sexual motivation is natures clever way of making people procreate, thus enabling our species survival. When two people feel an attraction, they hardly stop to think of themselves guided by their genes. Life is sexually transmitted. Like hunger, sexual arousal depends on the interplay of internal and external stimuli. To understand sexual motivation, we must consider both.
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Sexual Response Cycle
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The four stages of sexual responding described by Masters and Johnson: *excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution*.
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Excitement Phase
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Men's and women's genital areas become engorged with blood, an women's vagina expands and becomes engorged with lubricant, and her breasts and nipples may enlarge.
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Plateau Phase
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Excitement peaks as breathing, pulse, and blood pressure rates continue to increase. The penis becomes fully engorged and some fluid, frequently containing enough live sperm to enable conception, may appear at its tip. Vaginal secretion continues to increase, the clitoris retracts, and orgasm feels imminent.
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Orgasm Phase
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There is observed muscle contraction all over the body accompanied by further increases in breathing, pulse, and blood pressure rates. At orgasm pulse rate surges from about 70 to 115 beats per minute. A women's arousal and orgasm facilitate conception by helping propel semen from the penis, positioning the uterus to receive sperm, and drawing the sperm to swim further inward. A women's orgasm therefore not only reinforces intercourse, which is essential to natural reproduction, it also increases the retention of deposited sperm. The pleasurable feeling of sexual release apparently is much the same for both sexes.
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Resolution Phase
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The body gradually returns to its unaroused state as the engorged genital blood vessels release their accumulated blood, relatively quickly if orgasm has occurred, relatively slowly otherwise. During this resolution phase, the male enters a refractory period, lasting from a few minutes to a day or more, during which he is incapable of another orgasm. The females much shorter refractory period may enable her to have more orgasms if restimulted during or soon after resolution.
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Refractory Period
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A resting period after orgasm, during which a man cannot experience another orgasm.
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Sexual Dysfunction
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A problem that consistently impairs sexual arousal or functioning. Some involve sexual motivation, especially lack of sexual energy and arousability. For men others include *erectile disorder* (inability to have or maintain erection) and *premature ejaculation*. For women, the problem may be *pain* or *female organismic disorder* (distress over infrequently or never experiencing orgasm). In surveys, 4 of 10 women reported having a sexual problem yet only 1 in 8 reported that this caused personal distress. Most women who experience sexual distress relate it to their emotional relationship with their partners during sex. Through identical and fraternal twin studies it has been found that women's orgasm frequency is genetically influenced. The genetic factor accounted for 51% of the variation in frequency of orgasm via masturbation but for only 31% of the variation in frequency of orgasm via intercourse. When theres a partner, emotional closeness, security, and intimacy also matter.
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Therapy and Sexual Dysfunction
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Men and women with sexual dysfunction can often be helped through therapy. In behaviour oriented therapy, for example, men learn ways to control their urge to ejaculation and women are trained to bring themselves to orgasm. Starting with the introduction of Viagra in 1998, erectile disorder has been routinely treated by taking a pill. Equally, effective drug treatments for female sexual interest/arousal disorder arrant yet available.
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Paraphilias
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Experiencing sexual arousal from fantasies, behaviours, or urges involving non-human objects, the suffering of self or others, and/or non consenting persons. People with Paraphilias do experience sexual desire, but they direct it in unusual ways. The American Psychiatric Association (2013) only classifies such behaviour as disordered if: - A person experiences distress from their unusual interest - or it entails harm or risk of harm to others.
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Necrophilia
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A sexual attraction to corpses
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Pedophilia
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People who experience sexual arousal towards children who haven't entered puberty.
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Exhibitionism
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Those who derive pleasure from exposing themselves sexually to others, without consent.
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Hormones and Sexual Behaviour
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Sex hormones have two effects: they direct the physical development of male and female sex characteristics, and (especially in nonhuman animals) they activate sexual behaviour. In most mammals, nature neatly synchronizes sex with fertility. The female becomes sexually receptive when secretion of the female hormones, the estrogens peak during ovulation. Male hormone levels are more consistent and so hormone injection does not so easily manipulate the sexual behaviour of male animals. In humans, hormones loosely influence sexual behaviour, although sexual desires rises slightly at ovulation among women with mates. When at peak fertility in their menstrual cycle, they express increased preference for masculine faces and ability to detect sexual orientation, but also increased apprehensiveness for men potentially perceived as sexually coercive.
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Human Sexuality and Testosterone
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Women sexuality differs from that other mammalian females in being more responsive to testosterone levels. If a women's testosterone level drops, as what happens with removal of ovaries or adrenal glands, her sexual interest may wane. But testosterone-replaced therapy sometimes restores diminished sexual appetite. For men with abnormally low testosterone levels, testosterone-replaced therapy often increases sexual desire and also energy and vitality. In men, normal fluctuations in testosterone levels, from man to man and hour to hour, have little effect on sexual drive. These fluctuations are partly a response to sexual stimulation. In the presence of an attractive female, testosterone surges, increasing sexual arousal. Studies have found that married fathers with children tend to have lower testosterone levels than as unmarried men with no children.
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Hormonal Changes
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Although normal short-term hormonal changes have little effect on men and women's desire, large hormonal shifts over a life span have a greater effect. A persons interest in dating and sexual stimulations usually increases with the pubertal surge in sex hormones. When adult men are castrated, sex drive typically falls as testosterone levels decline sharply. In later life, as sex hormone levels decline, the frequency of sexual fantasies and intercourse declines as well.
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Estrogens
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Sex hormones, such as estradiol, secreted in greater amounts by females than by males and contributing to female sex characteristics. In nonhuman female mammals, estrogen levels peak during ovulation, promoting sexual receptivity.
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Testosterone
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The most important of the male sex hormones. Both males and females have it, but the additional testosterone in males stimulates the growth of the male sex organs in the fetus and the development of the male sex characteristics during puberty.
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The Psychology of Sex
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Hunger and Sex are different sorts of motivation. Hunger responds to need while sex responds to desire. Similarities are the both depend on internal physiological factors and reflect the interplay of excitatory and inhibitory responses. And both are influenced by external and imagined stimuli, and by cultural expectations.
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Levels of Analysis for Sexual Motivation
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Biological influences: sexual maturity, sex hormones especially testosterone Psychological influences: exposure to stimulating conditions, sexual fantasies Social-Cultural influences: family and society values, religious and personal values, cultural expectations, media
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External Stimuli
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Many studies confirm that men become aroused when they hear, see, or read erotic material. Women experience nearly the same amount of arousal tot he same stimuli. People may find sexual arousal either pleasing or disturbing. With repeated exposure, the emotional response to any erotic stimulus lessens, or *habituates*. Depictions of women being sexually coerced, and liking it, tend to increase viewers acceptance of the false idea that women enjoy rape, and they tend to increase mens willingness to hurt women. Viewing images of sexually attractive women and men may also lead people to devalue their partners and relationships.
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Imagined Stimuli
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The brain, it has been said, is our most significant sex organ. The images in our head can influence sexual desire and arousal. Sleep researchers have discovered that genital arousal accompanies all types of dreams, even though most dreams have no sexual content. But in nearly all men and some 40% of women, dreams sometimes contain sexual imagery that leads to orgasm. In men, nighttime orgasm and nocturnal emissions (wet dreams) are more likely when orgasm has not occurred recently. Wide-awake people become sexually aroused not only by memories of prior sexual activities but also by fantasies. About 95% of men and women say they have sexual fantasies. Men fantasize about sex more often, more physically, and less romantically. They also prefer less personal and faster-paced sexual content in books and videos. Sexual active people have more sexual fantasies.
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Adolescent Sexuality
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Adolescent physical maturation fosters a sexual dimension to their emerging identity. Yet sexual expression varies dramatically with time and culture. Given the wide variation across time and place, its not suppose that twin research has found that environmental factors accounted for almost three-fourths of the individual variation in age of sexual initiation. Family and cultural values matter.
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Sexually Transmitted Infections
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Unprotected sex has led to an increase in STIs. 2/3rds of new infections occur in people under the age of 25. Teenage girls, because of their not yet fully mature biological development and lower levels of protective antibodies, are especially vulnerable. Condoms offer limited protection against certain skin-to-skin STIs, such as herpes. They have also been 80% effective in preventing the spread of HIV from an infected partner. STI facts of life have also lead to a greater emphasis on teen abstinence.
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Predictors of Sexual Restraint
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- *High Intelligence*: Teens with higher rather than average intelligence scores more often delay sex, partly because they appreciate possible negative consequences and are more focused on future achievement than now pleasures. - *Religious Engagement*: Actively religious teens and adults are more often to reserve sex for marital commitment. - *Father Presence*: A fathers absence was linked to sexual activity before the age of 16 and to teen pregnancy. These associations held after adjusting from adverse influences such as poverty. Close family attachments: families that eat together and where parents know their teens' activities and friends, also predict later sexual initiation. - *Participation in Service Learning Programs*: Several experiments have found lower pregnancy rates among teens volunteering as tutors or teachers aids or participating in community projects, than found among comparable teens randomly assigned to control conditions. Researchers are unsure why.
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Sexual Orientation
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An enduring sexual attraction toward members of either one's own sex (homosexual orientation) or the other sex (heterosexual orientation). We experience this attraction in our interests, thoughts, and fantasies. Cultures vary in their attitudes toward homosexuality. Sexual orientation is not an indicator of mental health. Peoples orientation is so basic to who they are that it operate subconsciously. Compared to mens sexual orientation, women's tend to be less strongly felt and potentially more fluid and changing and are more likely to act on bisexual attractions (erotic plasticity). In men, a high sex drive is associated with increased attraction to women (if heterosexual) or men (if homosexual). In women, a high sex drive is associated with increased attraction to both men and women. Women respond more nonspecifically to depictions of sexual activity involving males or females.
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Origins of Sexual Orientation
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Most children raised by gay or lesbian parents grow up straight and well adjusted. Men who have older brothers are also somewhat more likely to be gay. The reason for this phenomenon known as the *fraternal birth order effect* is unclear. Blanchard suspects a defensive maternal immune response to foreign substances produced by male fetuses. With each pregnancy with a male fetus, the maternal antibodies may be stronger and may prevent the fetus's brain from developing in a male typical pattern. Consistent with this biological explanation, the fraternal birth order effect occurs only in men with older brothers born to the same mother. Sexual orientation is unaffected by adopted brothers and is not found among women with older sisters, who were womb mates with brothers, and men who are not right handed. One theory proposed that people develop same sex erotic attachments if segregated by gender at the time their sex drive matures. But even in tribal cultures in which homosexual behaviour is expected of all boys before marriage, heterosexuality prevails.
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The Brain and Sexual Orientation
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It was found that one cell cluster was removedly larger in heterosexual men than in women and homosexual men. Brains differ with sexual orientation. Everything psychological is simultaneously biological. Sexual behaviour patterns may influence the brains anatomy. The neuroanatomical correlates of male homosexuality differentiate very early postnatally, if not prenatally. Responses to hormone-derived sexual scents also point to a brain difference.
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Genes and Sexual Orientation
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Evidence does indicate a genetic influence on sexual orientation. Identical twins are somewhat more likely than fraternal twins to share homosexual orientation. With humans, its likely that multiple genes, possibly in interaction with other influences, shape sexual orientation.
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Prenatal Hormones and Sexual Orientation
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Elevated rates of homosexual orientation in identical twins and fraternal twins suggest that not just shared genetics but also a shred prenatal environment may be a factor. In some instances prenatal environments have altered a fetus' sexual orientation. A critical period for the human brains neural-hormonal control system may exist between the middle of the second and fifth months after conception. Exposure to the hormone levels typically experienced by female fetuses during this time appears to predispose the person (whether female or male) to be attracted to males in later life. Prenatal sex hormones control the sexual differentiation of brain centres involved in sexual behaviours. Thus, the female fetuses most exposed to testosterone, and male fetuses exposed to less testosterone, appear to most likely to exhibit gender atypical traits and experience same-sex desires.
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Gay-Straight Trait Differences
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Lesbians cochlea and hearing systems develop in a way that is intermediate between those of heterosexual male and females, which seems attributable to prenatal hormone influence. Gay men tend to be shorter and lighter than straight men, while women in same sex marriages tended to be heavier even at birth. Fingerprint ridge counts may also differ: Although most people have more fingerprint ridges on their right hand than on their left, some studies have found greater right-left differences in heterosexual males than in females and homosexual males. Also possibly due to prenatal hormones as fingerprints are formed by the sixteenth fetal week. Gay mens spatial abilities resemble those of women. The scores of gays and lesbians fall between those of heterosexual females and males. But straight women and gays both outperform straight men at remembering objects spatial locations in tasks like those found in memory games.
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Sex and Human Values
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Recognizing that values are both personal and cultural, most sex researchers and educators strive to keep their writings value free. Sex education separated from the context of human values may also give some students the idea that sexual intercourse is simply a recreational activity. One significance of sexual intimacy is the expression four profoundly social nature. Sex is a socially significant act. Men and women can achieve orgasm alone, yet most people find greater satisfaction and experience a greater surge of the prolactin hormone associated with sexual satisfaction and satiety after intercourse and satisfaction with a loved one. With the satisfaction of intimacy and relationship surpassing the satisfaction of self-stimulation, there is a yearning for closeness in sexual motivation. Sex at its human best is life-uniting and love-renewing.
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Aiding Survival
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Social bonds boosted our ancestors' survival rate. By keeping children close to their care givers, attachments served as a powerful survival impulse. As adults, those who formed attachments were more likely to reproduce and to co-nurture their offspring to maturity. Survival was also enhanced by cooperation. Those who felt the need to belong survived and reproduced more successfully, and their genes now predominate. We are innately social creatures.
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Wanting to Belong
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Our need to belong colours our thoughts and emotions. The satisfaction of self esteem and relatedness-belonging were the top two contributors to the peak moment. The need to belong runs deeper than the need to be rich. When our need of relatedness is satisfied in balance with two other basic psychological needs: *autonomy* (a sense of personal control) and *competence*, the result is a deep sense of well being. To feel connected, free, and capable is to live a good life. Like sexual motivation, which feeds both love and exploitation, the need tabling feeds both deep attachments and menacing threats.
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Sustaining Relationships
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Our fear of being alone has some basis in reality. When something threatens or dissolves our social ties, anxiety, loneliness, jealousy or guilt may overwhelm us. Social isolation also puts us at risk for mental decline and ill-health. But if feeling of connection and acceptance increase, so will self-esteem, positive feelings, and desires to help rather than hurt people.
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The Pain of Ostracism
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Sometimes our need to belong is denied due to social exclusion (ostracism). Worldwide, humans control social behaviour via the punishing effects of severe ostracism of exile, imprisonment, and solitary confinement. For children. a brief time in isolation can be punishing. Being ostracized threatens ones need to belong. Ostracism elicits increased activity in brain areas, such as the *anterior cingulate cortex*, that also activates in response to physical pain. Psychologically, we seem to experience the same social pain with the same emotional unpleasantness that marks physical pain. Pain, whatever it source, focuses our attention and motivates corrective action.
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Feeling of Love (the opposite of Ostracism)
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The opposite of ostracism, feelings of love, activate brain reward systems. The pleasure of love is a natural pain killer.
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Social Networking: Mobile networks and social media
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As social creatures, we live for connection. The changes in how we connect are fast and vast. By connecting like-minded people, the internet serves as a social amplifier. It also functions as an online dating matchmaker. As electronic communication become part of the new normal, researchers are exploring how these changes affect our relationships.
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Motivation and Work
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Work helps us satisfy several needs identified in Maslow's pyramid of needs.
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Job
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The view towards work as an unfulfilling but necessary way to make money
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Career
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The view towards work as an opportunity to advance from one position to a better position.
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Calling
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The view towards work as a fulfilling and socially useful activity. These people report work the highest level of satisfaction with their work and with their lives.
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Flow
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A completely involved, focused state of consciousness, with diminished awareness of self and time, resulting from optimal engagement of one's skills. Flow experiences boos of self-esteem, competence, and well-being. Busy people are happier.
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Psychological Contract
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The sense of mutual obligations between workers and employers
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Industrial-Organizational (I/O) Psychology
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The application of psychology concepts and methods used to optimize human behaviour in the workplace. Includes the subfields of Personnel psychology, organizational psychology, and human factors psychology.
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Personnel Psychology
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A subfield of I/O psychology that focuses on employee recruitment, selection, placement, training, appraisal, and development.
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Organizational Psychology
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A subfield of I/O psychology that examines organizational influences on worker satisfaction and productivity and facilitates organizational change.
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Human Factors Psychology
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A subfield of I/O psychology that explores how people and machines interact and how machines and physical environments can be made safe and easy to use.
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Structured Interviews
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Interview process that asks the same job-relevant questions of all applicants, each of whom is rated on established scales. These interviews allow for a disciplined method of collecting information. Structured interviews reduce bias towards applicants.
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Interviews and Performance
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Interviewers tend to feel confident in their ability to predict long-term job performance from an unstructured interview. These predictions made are extremely error-prone. Interviewers judgements are weak predictors. For all less-skilled jobs, general mental ability best predicts on-the-job performance. Subjective overall evaluations from informal interviews are more useful than handwriting analysis but informal interviews are less informative than aptitude tests, work samples, job knowledge tests, and past job performance.
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The Interview Illusion
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Interviews disclose the interviewees good intentions, which are less revealing than habitual behaviour. Interviewers more often follow the successful careers of those they have hired than successful careers of those they have rejected and lost track of. This missing feedback prevents interviewers from getting a reality check on their hiring ability. Interviewers presume that people are what they seem to be in the interview situation. How we behaviour not only reflects our enduring traits, but also the details of the particular situation (such as wanting to impress in a job interview). Interviewers preconceptions and moods colour how they perceive interviewee's responses. If told that applicant have been prescreened, interviewers are disposed to judge them more favourably.
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Unstructured Interviews
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Traditional unstructured interviews do provide a sense of someone's personality but they also give interviewee's considerable power to control the impression they are making in the interview situation. The interview may then thus create a false impression of the interviewees behaviour towards others in different situations.
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Appraising Performance
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It helps decide who to retain, how to appropriately reward and pay people, and how to better harness employee strengths, sometimes with job shifts or promotions. Also serve as individual purposes as feedback affirms workers strengths and helps motivate needed improvements. Performance appraisal methods include: Checklists, Graphic Rating Scales, and Behaviour Rating Scales
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Checklists
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On which supervisors simply check specific behaviours that describe the worker
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Graphic Rating Scales
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On which a supervisor checks, on perhaps a five point scale, how often a worker is dependable, productive and so forth
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Behaviour Rating Scales
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On which a supervisor checks scaled behaviours that describe a workers performance.
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360 Degree Feedback
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Feedback on which you will rate yourself, your manager, and your other colleagues, and you will be rated by your manager, other colleagues, and customers. The net result is more open communication and more complete appraisal.
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Halo Errors
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Occur when one's overall evaluation of an employee, or of their personal trait such as their friendliness, biases ratings of their specific work-related behaviours, such as their reliability.
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Leniency and Severity Errors
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Reflect evaluators tendencies to be either too easy or too harsh on everyone.
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Recency Errors
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Occur when raters focus only on easily remembered recent behaviour.
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Achievement Motivation
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A desire for significant accomplishment, for the mastery of skills or ideas, for control, and for rapidly attaining a high standard. Discipline outdoes and refines talent.
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Grit
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Passionate dedication to an ambiguous, long-term goal. It tells us that achievement involves much more than raw ability.
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Satisfaction and Engagement
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Satisfied employees more contribute to successful organizations. Positive moods at work enhance creativity, persistence and helpfulness. There is a positive correlation between individual job satisfaction and performance.
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Employee Engagement
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The extent of workers involvement, enthusiasm, and identification with their organizations. Employee attitudes may predict future business success.
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Three types of employees
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1. *Engaged*: working with passion and feeling a profound connection to their company or organization. 2. *Not Engaged*: putting in the time but not investing passion or energy into their work. 3. *Actively Disengaged*: unhappy workers undermining what their colleagues accomplish.
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Managing Well
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Managers who excel spend less time trying to install talents that are not there and more time developing and drawing out what is there. They reinforce positive behaviour through recognition and reward, start by helping people identify and measure their talents, match tasks to talents and then give people freedom to do what they do best, and care how people feel about their work.
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Subgoals and Implementation Intentions
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Action plans that specify when, where, and how they will march towards achieving those goals. People best sustain their mood and motivation when they focus on immediate goals rather than distant goals.
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Task Leadership
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Goal-oriented leadership that sets standards, organizes work, and focuses attention on goals. Being goal oriented, task leaders are good at keeping a group on its mission. They typically have a directed style, which can work well if the leader is bright enough to give good orders.
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Social Leadership
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Group-Oriented leadership that builds teamwork, mediates conflict, and offers support. They often have a democratic style: the delegate authority and welcome the participation of team members.
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Great-Person Theory of Leadership
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The theory that all great leaders share certain traits
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Good Leaders
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Effective leaders show charisma. Their charisma blends a goal based vision, clear communication, and optimism that inspires others to follow.
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Transformational Leadership
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Motivates others to identify with and commit themselves to the groups mission. Transformational leaders, whom many are natural extraverts, articulate high standards, inspire people to share their vision, and offer personal attention. The frequent result is more engaged, trusting, and effective workers.
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Voice Effect
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If given a chance to voice their opinion during a decision-making process, people will respond more positively to the decision. They will also feel more empowered and more creative.
