SUMMARY OF THE SEMESTER

This semester has quite honestly been a whirlwind. It only felt like it started yesterday and yet last week was our final week of lectures!!! I have learnt a great deal during this semester while studying motivation and emotion with James Neill. It goes without a doubt to say that I have taken motivation for granted most all my life. I believed I understood why I made the choices I made, but after taking this unit it was clearer to me that understood little about the why. Moreover, understanding the deeper side of our physiological needs, intrinsic-extrinsic motivation and one’s sense of self (to name a few!) has given me a much better understanding not only of my own motivation and emotions, but also why I may lose motivation and much much better ways to address and deal with these drops. Admittedly, during the semester I had drops of motivation (I would find it strange if one didn’t…) and had slack moments, but I don’t believe I would have been able to pull myself up were it not for what I had learnt during the course of this unit.

Additionally, what I feel needs to be mentioned about this unit in particular is the method of assessment. For those of you know don’t know.. us students had to create a text book chapter for wikiversity <LINK> on a particular element of either motivation, emotion or both. I chose narcissism, you can read it here <LINK>.  We also had to create a multimedia presentation to accompany and summarise our chapter and… you can watch mine here <LINK>. What I felt was special about this was the fact that it wasn’t a KRAMMING test. That is, to write a text book chapter one has to research…. Think critically and show this in their writing. My personal belief is that for a test that one simply crams facts and small bits of information (factual knowledge as compared to concrete knowledge) into their head to regurgitate during the test and then it all slips out of the mind. Do you find that yourself? I personally feel I retain knowledge gained from an essay for much much longer than I do from a test. Furthermore, as the chapter and multimedia components are hosted on world wide web (www), ANYONE can read it! Anyone can comment! We are open to feedback and comments on our work from the whole world. When a final exam is complete, the learning (in some ways) may simply stop there for that particular subject/aspect, however, as the chapter and multimedia are on the web, what effectively happens is that the learning experience goes on. Wikiversity will always be able to be edited and commented on and the same goes for the multimedia. So this effectively creates an ongoing learning experience for those who still check or better yet, maintain their wiki chapters!

Additionally, some people felt daunted by having to use technology for the assessment in this unit, this didn’t bother me as I am a bit of a tech head, I like technology and computers, I have studied programming code (html, c++ etc) and I have a CIT certificate in computer animation and graphics. It would do those of us who don’t yet know how to use this technology to learn, as the technology around us continues to grow and evolve we too must be a part of that! As this WILL become an integrated part of how learning is delivered in the future. Granted, there are those teachers who have not yet embraced it yet, however, the way this unit was delivered was very innovative and I feel has given us a much richer and absorbing learning experience. I am happy to say that even though the semester is over for this unit, the learning most certainly doesn’t end here.

Emotion - Aspects of emotions

In this part of our learning of emotion we looked into the biological, cognitive and social aspects of emotion. In my haste in recording these reflections what should have been the introduction to this topic was the conclusion for the last! Anyway… if it’s still fresh in your mind, let take it from there!

As mentioned in my last entry, emotions are (although not entirely!) partly a biological reaction to events and situations around us. At some time or another all of us should be able to relate to the following… when we are about to face an important life even, a situation of personal significance the body does indeed prepare itself to cope. For example, this situation could be a job interview, the reason for your study and now so near to the dream! Your waiting for your interview, your big chance in life! As you wait you become aware, as defined by Reeve (2009, pp. 330-1), of the following:

·         Biologically, your heart starts to beat, your breathing increases and your muscles become a little tense.. you may even start to sweat. That would be your autonomic nervous system (ANS) responding. Your hormones (endocrine system) start to fire a little. Could be cortisol and adrenaline.. Of course this is mediated somewhat by the amygdala (neural brain circuits) and neural activity and the rate of information flow increases, perhaps to a dizzying rate or at least… that’s how it feels. Finally, there are discrete expressions within the facial muscles,  a nervous twitch in the eye or a nervous smile that can barely hold itself steady.

·         Cognitively, your emotions are regulated via past appraisals (or lack of…), your current knowledge, attributions, social history and cultural identity.

I found James-Langes theory of emotion to be very interesting. He asked… did different emotions each have a unique biological reaction associated with them? For example, we clearly know (feel?) the difference in our bodies when we experience fear as compared to joy or love. But does the biological reaction actually cause the emotion? He suggested that our biological reactions do not follow the emotional experience…

Stimulus -> Emotion -> Biological Response

Rather that the emotional experience follows the biological change. In this case, the flow should then look like the following:

Stimulus -> Biological reaction -> Emotional Response

Hence, he suggests that biological are responsible for the emotional experience. His theories (as stated in Reeve, p. 331) rested on two assumptions:

·         The body reacts uniquely to different emotion-stimulating events; and

·         The body does NOT react to non-emotion-stimulating events.

Essentially, emotion was seen as a way to make sense of bodily changes. From the cold water in the shower example, this made sense. Say for example you are having a nice warm shower, suddenly the water runs cold! Your muscles contract, your heart rate increases! The emotion of shock explains the changed you felt in your body. But from here we also see flaws in this theory. The biological reactions are strikingly similar to fight-flight responses… is it shock? Or is it fear? Ultimately, the response did not vary between emotions. Additionally, emotion is experienced faster than biological reactions (Neill, 2010). However, James-Lange was not completely incorrect…. Later contemporary perspectives DID find that certain emotions had distinct ANS patterns, those which had survival value and would help to facilitate it, via fighting or fleeing.

Further research looked for emotion specific patterns of brain activity. Notably that of Jeffrey Grey, he found a three distinct areas (in nonhuman mammals) which each regulated a different pattern of emotional behaviour. Firstly, the opportunity seeking behavioural approach system, the fight-flight system & finally the behavioural inhibition system (Reeve, 2009, p. 334). This was further added to by Silvian Tomkins, who believed that neural firing increased, decreased or remained constant. To conceptualise this.. he felt that fear/shock was a sudden rise in neural firing, a high constant level of firing was anger and that a drop in neural firing was joy/happiness (Reeve, 2009, p. 334). I have chosen to include a slide from our lecture (Neill, 2010) which I felt gives a great visualisation of the emotions that these rises, drops and constants can cause.

What I felt gave a nice explanation of emotion was Izards Differential emotions theory. What struck me about this, as stated in Reeve (2009, p. 335), is that it suggests:

·         Each emotion has its own unique, subjective and phenomenal quality,

·         Each emotion has its own unique facial-expressive pattern,

·         Each emotion has its own neural rate of firing that activates it,

·         Each emotion has a unique purpose that seeks to motivate or serve as an adaptive function.

To me this takes away from the cold feeling that biological explanations give, while not denying the importance of biology either!

Ekman the facial feedback hypothesis – primary emotions

The picture below should give you a humorous example of the number of different emotions that can be expressed via facial expressions. Additionally, it also proves what most of us have known for a long time….

Cognitive aspects of emotion – appraisal theory

References

Neill, J. (2010). [Aspects of Emotion Lecture]. Lecture presented at the University of Canberra, ACT. [Lecture notes]. Retrieved from http://learnonline.canberra.edu.au/

Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion. USA: Wiley.

Emotion - Nature of emotions

Well.. we all know what emotions are, but how easy does one find it do discuss or define what an emotion is, perhaps they are more complex than we first believe. Clearly we know the emotions of anger, sadness and joy, all of us feeling these emotions at some point in our lives, or maybe even a combination of these! It would be wise to understand that emotions are multi-dimensional. We cannot deny beyond any real doubt that they are a combination of subjective, biological and purposeful phenomenon. We react with joy to seeing a loved one, with anger toward an injustice and fear if we are threatened. There are those would like to believe that emotions are a purely spiritual occurrence… but this is simply not the case. It is not my intention to imply that emotion is a chemical reaction in our bodies (even I would react with anger to that suggestion!) what I AM implying is that chemical reactions DO occur in our bodies when we experience emotion, although that is not the be all and end all of experiencing emotion.

As defined in our lecture by James, (Neill, 2010), there are four key processes to the experience of emotion, these are:

·         Feelings, our subjective experiences, our state of awareness and our cognitions (+/-)

·         Bodily arousal, physiological reaction, a preparedness for action, be it fight/flight or other forms of excitement. Activation of our motor responses, our body and its skeletal muscles.

·         Social expression, how we interact socially, our mannerisms and facial expressions and of cause our vocal expressions (important element of communication).

·         Sense of purpose, emotional incentive, goal directed behaviour.

So… what causes an emotion then?? Basically  when we encounter a significant life event our cognitive processes will engage and our biological processes will activate which then engages the four key components above (Reeve, 2009, p. 303).

So once again, the most basic primary emotions are: Fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy and interest. The first four clearly fall into the category of negative emotions, while the last two are positive emotions.

What is the point of emotions? How do they benefit us? Essentially, life is full of stressors, challenges and problems to be solved and hence… emotions exists as solutions to dealing with these (Reeve, 2009, p. 320). Some people may suggest that becoming ‘emotional’ during problem solving is a hindrance and that emotions should be kept out of the equation. However, after studying this topic I have found this to be a half truth. We need emotions in order to respond, learn and adapt to the various situations in our lives. The only time that emotions might become a problem is if they hinder this development rather than help to facilitate it.

At this point I found myself thinking, what is the difference between emotion and mood… To clarify this… There are different antecedents. In the case of emotion, these arise from life events and situations. Whereas moods arise for processes which are not able to be well defines and often are unknown. There is action-specificity between emotion and moods. Emotions generally influence behaviour and specific actions and reactions, whereas mood influences ones cognition and what one thinks about. Finally, the time course between the two is very different. Emotion arise from short lived events and generally only last for seconds or minutes, whereas mood arises from mental events which can last for hours to days and are a more permeating and enduring sense of being (Reeve, 2009, p. 322). I have included a lecture slide (Neill, 2010) from our lecture on this topic to add a visual representation to this concept.

The three most central aspects of emotion are: biological, cognitive & socio-cultural. The first two I believe we have covered well enough and it would do well to consider that one’s culture is going to play a central role in determining ones emotions. For example, I was reading a travel guide on Thailand quite recently and on reading the section about local customs, do’s and don’ts I found out the following. It is considered very rude to touch someone on the head or to show the soles of ones feet. Now for myself, growing up in Australia and having the cultural influences of Poland and Holland, being touched on the head would not elicit an emotional response of anger… perhaps… confusion (why are you doing that?). However, were one to touch someone’s head in Thailand

I have a pretty solid feeling that the emotional response would be one of anger. Someone correct me if im wrong about this fact!

Before finishing up on this section of my reflection I feel it would be beneficial to define negative and positive affect in regards to emotion. Affect reflects ones engagement. If one is displaying positive affect they are generally enthusiastic, energetic, alert and quite optimistic! Those who display negative affect will usually always be dissatisfied, nervous and irritable. Positive and negative affect are broadly tied to motivation, biology and behaviour. Positive affect will support one to stay motivated and push on despite adversity, whereas one with negative affect will support withdrawal and giving up on such challenges.

References

Neill, J. (2010). [Nature of Emotion Lecture]. Lecture presented at the University of Canberra, ACT. [Lecture notes]. Retrieved from http://learnonline.canberra.edu.au/

Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion. USA: Wiley

The Self & Goals: The self

In this part of the lecture we looked at the concept of the self. That is… how does one deinfe/create their sense of self, how does one relate this sense of self to society at large, how does one actually discover and develop their personal potential and finally, how does one manage/regulate this sense of self?

Who am I? In our quest to define the self we wonder who we are and how others see us and we reflect on how we are different from others (Self-esteem). We also contemplate on what social position we would like to hold (lead or be lead?) and what roles we could play in society (Self-efficacy).  We investigate what interests us and what doesn’t, what we like and what we don’t, while also seeking to develop our skills and talents (Self-confidence) (Reeve, 2009, pp. 265-266). Altogether, this should collectively lead to developing ones sense of Self-concept.

Essentially a self-concept is  a set of beliefs that one uses in order conceptualise themselves. For example, during the tutorials I felt it hard to speak up as I felt uncomfortable and quite self-conscious. More broadly a self-concept is essentially a cluster of specific self-schemas. Self-schemas are domain specific cognitive generalisation about the self and are learnt from past experience. For example, being self-conscious does not represent the self-concept as a whole, but it represents an element of one’s self, social relationships with other (Reeve, 2009, p. 268).

A clear sense of self, which in turn I believe would suggest a well-developed series of self-schema is very beneficial for the one to have. Why is this? From our lecture (Neill, 2010), is allows one to:

·         Process information about the self with ease, I am good at long distance running, but not at short sprints.

·         Quickly retrieve self-related behavioural information from a specific domain. I am good with computers (technical ability) but not so good at talking to people (social ability).

·         Confidently predict ones future behaviour in a specific domain (I know I can fix this problem with my PC, but I still lack social skills); and

·         Resist contrary information about themselves (Hey! You don’t know how to use a computer, untrue).

Importantly, a benefits of self-schemas is their motivational properties. They allow for:

·         Consistent self, self-directed behaviour to confirm ones sense of self and prevent events that give feedback which may contest that self-view.

·         Motivating the possible self, self-schemas help to generate motivation to improve oneself and move from your present self toward achieving your desired self.

Despite this I find myself asking… can someone hold beliefs about the self that are inconsistent/contradictory to each other… and if so… what is the outcome? Of cause this question was answered very well in both our lecture and in the textbook. The occurrence of contradicting beliefs in the individual is knows as cognitive dissonance.

Most people who like to believe that they are competent, moral and good people, who have a rational outlook on life. However, this is surprisingly contradicted in how people behave! Think for a minute of someone who believes that they are a healthy individual… they exercise and they eat healthy! So in this instance it fits their concept of what a healthy person is…. Yet.. despite all this, during the day they routinely have cigarette breaks. Which strikes one as hypocritical and contradictory. So what happens now? The scenario which I have detailed above is thought of as a dissonance-arousing situational event. In this instance the choice is made to smoke, compared to other factors of their healthy life style there is insufficient justification for this behaviour. This then leads to inconsistency between cognitions and this motivates a sense of dissonance. In turn a dissonance reduction strategy is implemented.

This reduction strategy aims to remove the dissonant belief by:

·         Removing the belief, smoking is not that bad…

·         Decreasing the importance of the belief, it doesn’t matter if I smoke, so long as I exercise MORE!

·         Increase the importance of the constant belief, smoking is my release from stress, therefore it is ok… right?

After looking at cognitive dissonance, we then turned our attention to affect control theory, or what was referred to in our readings as Identity-confirming behaviours. Essentially, people with nice or powerful identities engage in nice (powerful) behaviour, and passive people to behave in … well… passive behaviours (Reeve, 2009, p. 280-1). As we have seen in the above, in the reduction of dissonant beliefs, affective deflections energise behaviour. That is, when people behave in ways which conflict with their identity, affective deflection occurs to motivate identity restoring action (Neill, 2010).

Additionally, from this point on it is quite important to consider a concept called Agency. We learnt that the self is made up of cognitive and social elements. Although the self is considerable more than cognitions and relationships with our environment! Reeve (2009, p. 281) defines agency as “an action and development from within, as innate processes and motivations.” That is, we posses a core self that is energised and innately motivated and directed by inherent developmental processes of differentiation & integration. Being aware that… not all self-structures represent the self… be aware that other reflect and reproduce the expectations of society around us. So essentially these are inborn developmental needs, preferences and motivations, which energise out social, emotional and also our physical development. Two important elements of this core self are differentiation and integration. So….

·         Differentiation, occurs as the individual exercises existing interests, preferences and capacities in order for the self to become specialised in certain domains. For example, you learn that not all sports are alike, that they differ and you develop a preference for which one your prefer.

·         Integration, is then the organisation of the emerging complexity (of differentiations) into a coherent whole and a satisfactory self-concept.

To conclude for this reflection, I have learnt that Self-concordance is the pursuit of life goals that eminate out of the integrated, or what we now know as the ‘core self.’ Self-congruence between ones-self and ones-goals generates effort that usually leads to mastery and satisfying experiences, which promote happiness (psychological well-being) and greater gains in self-confidence.

Personal strivings represent the goals that one is trying to accomplish and they are directed by self-concordance. Self-regulation involves the process of one’s own ability to monitor how their actual goal achieving is going in relation to their goal setting.

References

Neill, J. (2010). [Personal Control Beliefs  & The Self & Its Strivings Lecture]. Lecture presented at the University of Canberra, ACT. [Lecture notes]. Retrieved from http://learnonline.canberra.edu.au/

Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion. USA: Wiley.