Emotion And Motivation Essay

In order to successfully discover what the relationship between emotion and motivation is, it can be seen as necessary to look at both emotion and motivation individually including the theoretical perspectives surrounding both. This will therefore help us to identify the possible link between the two as well as the psychological significance of this.

Motivation as defined by the oxford dictionary is a reason or reasons for acting or behaving in a particular way and therefore can be our drive to reach our goals, and is what prompts us to take action upon achieving those goals. There are many theoretical perspectives of motivation and those include: Instinct theories, drive reduction theories, arousal theories, psychoanalytical theories and humanistic theories

Instinct theories completely highlight the biology of motivation and state that this kind of motivation comes from our individual biological programming that is the same amongst individuals of the same species. This theory is therefore about our motivation to survive and that all organisms are born with specific hereditary knowledge about how to survive. Instincts can thus be called actions that arise from our genetic code.

Drive reduction theories state that humans need to try and maintain a constant calmness or homeostasis within their bodies by trying to reduce the internal state of tension that will drive a person to act upon this tension.

Drive theories of motivation are sometimes described as “push” theories as drive is often defined as pushing something towards its goal. However, many psychologists do believe that not all motivation requires a “push”, instead, what they suggest are incentives or rewards that can “pull” an organism towards their goal. These rewards may ...

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...-feedback theory formulated by William James if you just smile, you could possibly remedy your depression due to the fact that the brain can work cognitively and exert a top-down influence on our emotions and motivations.

Motivations and Emotions both have in common their ability to arouse someone or something and stimulate a behavior but, motivation on the other hand can accomplish this in a much more direct and precise manner than emotions do. In contrast, people who are motivated by a goal go and achieve that goal while an emotion may stimulate a behaviour and that behaviour may display itself in a variety of forms, and the way people respond can be very different.

It can also be interpreted though that the difference between emotion and motivation is that motivations tell the organism what it should do and emotions tell the organism what it should have done.