Latest / Professor Peterson’s Psychology Classroom / Inside Your Emotions: Drives, Motivations, and Feelings Explained

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Inside Your Emotions: Drives, Motivations, and Feelings Explained · Professor Peterson’s Psychology Classroom

0:05
Welcome to Professor Peterson's Psychology Classroom,
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connecting the science of human behavior to everyday life.
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Here's Dr. Curtis Peterson.
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So as I mentioned, today we're going to explore something every
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one of us experiences, but something that is surprisingly
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difficult to explain, and that's our worlds of emotions.
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We all know what it means to be happy, angry,
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afraid, excited, or frustrated. At least
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we believe we do. But when psychologists begin
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examining these experiences, we discover
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that what seems simply and is actually
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quite complicated. Okay. For example,
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have you ever been upset about something and struggled
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to explain why?
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Maybe someone said something to you that bothered you.
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You knew you were irritated, but when someone asked
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you what was wrong, you couldn't quite explain it. Or perhaps
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you've experienced the opposite. You felt physically uncomfortable.
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Maybe your heart was racing or your stomach was unsettled,
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but you weren't sure Whether you were nervous,
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excited, or afraid. Okay,
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these experiences raise an important psychological question, and this
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is one of the first questions I'd like you to kind of jot down.
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Are our emotions and our feelings actually the
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same thing for you?
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Can you repeat the question? Are our emotions
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and feelings actually the same thing according to
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how you conceptualize them? No right
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or wrong answer. Again, this is your personal reflection.
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Thank you.
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And I'd like to explain a little bit behind this question too,
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is because most people, including myself, use these words
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interchangeably, uh, in everyday
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conversation. That is perfectly understandable. But the thing we have
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to ask when really looking at this from a psychological percept—
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uh, perspective Is, does distinguishing
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them help us understand how human behavior
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develops? Okay, so today we're going to explore 5
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concepts: drives,
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motivations, emotions, feelings, and mood.
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We'll examine affect as a term psychologists
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use in several related ways. You probably heard
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this word many times when you've done papers
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and you put the word effect, uh,
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the, the word correction thing recommends the word affect
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instead. I know I've experienced that.
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But rather than studying each concept in isolated definitions,
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we're going to kind of examine how all of these kind of different
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concepts work together. Okay.
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So I want you to imagine that 2 students
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walk into a classroom. Both discover
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that they are— that there is an unexpected exam,
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you know, one of those famous pop quizzes. Um,
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the first student becomes anxious. Their heart begins
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beating faster. They start thinking about everything
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that they may have forgotten. And let's say the
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second student becomes excited.
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They studied extensively and believed examination
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will provide an opportunity to demonstrate what they
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know. Now consider this, though.
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Both students are in the same classroom.
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Both have received the same information.
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Both are about to take the examination.
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Yet their emotion experience is quite differently.
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So I want you to kind of think about this on an emotional level
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and just write down your answer of why.
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Why in the same exact condition are
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the 2 emotions that they're experiencing different from
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each other?
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So let's take a closer look at this, and I want you to think about
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it in the context of your answer. Let's say one student
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might have had a negative experience with examinations in the past,
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right? That famous test anxiety.
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Another might feel confident because of previous academic
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successes. But let's dig a little bit deeper because perhaps
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one of the students is exhausted, hungry, or experiencing stress
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outside the classroom. The event— the events
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are the same, but the meaning of that event is
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much different. And this brings us
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to one of the central ideas behind what we're going to
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talk about today: is human emotional
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experience developed through interacting among our biology,
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our previous experience, and interpretation
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of current environment? Okay, so,
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uh, I'd like you to answer this question as
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well. And I'll give you about a minute to
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kind of think about it. Is, can you think of a situation where
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2 people experienced the same event but reacted very
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differently? And if you feel like it, you could
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also put your answer in the chat or just kind of blurt out,
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but this can also be a personal journey.
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As well.
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I guess I would have an example of that.
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Yeah. So one of my
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sisters has
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a very I
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guess negative kind of—
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I don't know how to explain it, but mostly she's the negative
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feeling type of person. Um, we both
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went to dinner at Chili's.
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Um, I felt the service was
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good. I felt the meal was great. The atmosphere was good,
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but she had a totally different experience.
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She wasn't happy with the waitstaff. She wasn't happy with her food.
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Um, and so it— I,
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I was confused by it because,
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um, I had a good time, but she
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didn't, and it was hard to understand.
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Yeah, Lenora, and I don't want to overstate your example
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by kind of bringing this up, but one thing that you said is that she's
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consistently negative across situations.
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Is that what I heard? Yes, that's correct.
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So a, a potential personality feature,
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and I'm not— I don't want to put this either in positive terms
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or negative terms is that your sister has
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maybe what we would consider a pessimistic
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personality, that the lens that everything
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is viewed through is, uh,
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looks for its deficits instead of its opportunity.
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Would that be a correct assumption? Yes,
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that's a very correct assumption. Okay, so this is
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a very good example of things
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like stable traits in individuals,
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like, like their personality,
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because that influences the way
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I can put it. It influences the lens in
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which they view everything, right?
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So, and Felicia put, you could possibly
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be because something didn't go her way or was not centered.
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Of being pleased, right? And so there's all these other
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potential situational explanations.
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So you have the stable explanation that you've noticed this
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happen across situations,
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um, but we also can't discount the possibility
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of other situational variables before going
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to the restaurant as well, right? So maybe a combination
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of both. But you bring up an
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important perspective in that the way we
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kind of view the world, the lens in which we
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view the world, can influence our emotions and feelings.
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All right, um, any other examples?
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Okay, that was a great one. Okay, but to kind
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of go deeper into these, I want to first distinguish
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the internal forces that influence our behaviors from
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emotional responses that accompany our experience.
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Okay. So let
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us begin with these 3 concepts. And they're
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very closely related, but they're not really interchangeable.
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Okay. The first is a drive.
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A drive is an internal state associated
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with a need. Things like hunger and thirst are
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probably the most familiar examples. But if we
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look at where drives are driven within the
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brain, which tends to be within the brainstem going
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up into portions of the limbic system,
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we could include things like sex and intimacy
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and warmth and connection.
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Okay, now imagine that you woke up late this
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morning and skip breakfast. As the
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morning progresses, your big— your body begins to signal
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the need for food, right? So you might notice
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this, your stomach growling. You may have difficulty concentrating.
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Perhaps you become increasingly aware of food-related
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thoughts, right? So let's go
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through this scenario. These experiences can be associated
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with hunger, which is a function as a drive.
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A drive does not necessarily— though a drive doesn't necessarily
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tell us exactly what to do, it only signals a
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need. And this is where we introduce
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the second concept, which is motivation.
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Motivation involves the process of energizing
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and directing our behavior towards a goal. Of some type.
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So if hunger is a drive, deciding to, for example,
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leave campus or work and purchase
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lunch illustrates motivated behavior.
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Okay. Notice that we have moved from
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an internal need to a goal-directed action.
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But the issue with motivation is it's more complicated
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than simply satisfying some biological need.
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For example, think about why you're attending
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college. Okay, if we think about
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that, some students want to earn a degree for
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their employment opportunities. Others want to pursue
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some profession they find meaningful. Some are motivated
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by family expectations or personal achievements,
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financial security. Or the desire to
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help others. These are all
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examples of motivational influences,
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but they do not necessarily begin with our biological drives.
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Okay, so psychologists
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recognize that motivation can involve biological needs,
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learned expectations, incentives, values, and personal goals.
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Okay, and so that's an important thing to say is that our motivation
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isn't always motivated by our drives. Going back
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to that hunger example, okay, some individuals
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who have some important project may
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not decide to go satisfy that hunger need
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at that moment. Their motivation is to finish
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some project that is important to them. Okay,
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but now let's connect motivation to emotions.
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Okay, emotions involve coordinated response to events
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or circumstances that are meaningful to us.
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These responses may include things like changes of attention,
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body activity, subjective experience,
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and the tendency towards what we would call action.
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And so I'm going to pause here because there is a good question from Felicia
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going towards motivation. Can you be motivated
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in a situation to satisfy others but not yourself?
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And the answer is, is absolutely dependent upon what
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your psychological need is in that moment.
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And that can go back to personality factors such as conscientiousness,
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um, or the need to satisfy the
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needs of others before ourselves. And so,
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and it can go back to things like family expectations.
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And we'll, when we get into culture, we'll dig into that. A little
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bit deeper, because there's some
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cultures that kind of, in a sense,
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demand sacrifice of the self for
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the community or for the family. Okay.
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So what I'm hoping, especially from that
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great question, is that you're seeing the complexity
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of trying to really understand how
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these work. Within a given system.
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Okay. All right, so let's
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return to emotions for a minute, and let's return to
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our hungry student. Suppose the
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student finally reaches, for example, the campus
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cafeteria or your local go-to place from
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work and discovers that it has closed early.
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What might happen? Okay, in this,
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the student, the student or you could experience
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frustration. Uh, I know that happened to, uh,
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uh, this reminds me, this, this example I use in
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this reminds me a couple weeks ago I went to a restaurant
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and they were closed for renovations,
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and it was incredibly frustrating because of the biological
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craving I was having. Okay, um,
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uh, but perhaps like
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I did, I became irritated. Uh, you feel the tensions of
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muscles, you begin thinking negatively about that,
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uh, cafeteria or that, um, uh,
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watering hole, as, as it used to be called.
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Their hunger remains a drive, and that's an important
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aspect of this. Their desire to obtain
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food remains a motivation.
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Their frustration is the emotional response
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to an obstacle that interferes with their goal. Okay,
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these concepts again are related, but each
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explain a different part of our experience.
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Okay, another example to kind of explore this a
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little bit more is things like academic
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achievement. Okay, so again, I'd encourage you to consider a student preparing
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for a major exam. Let's go back to that example.
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The student wants to earn a high grade.
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The goals provide their motivation, and let's say
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the student spends several evenings studying.
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Um, during the preparation, the student may experience
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anxiety about failing or excitement about
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succeeding. But after the examination,
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the student might experience relief, disappointment,
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or pride. Notice that motivation
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and emotion can influence one another. Anxiety may
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encourage preparation, but excessive
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anxiety may interfere with concentration.
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And pride following a successful examination
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may increase the motivation to— for next
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time. So what
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I hope this kind of shows in this part is that our
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psychological processes are very interconnected. And I
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think that probably in our broader culture and our everyday
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interaction with each other, we tend to use these terms
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very, um,
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interchangeable.
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Okay, so I want to present a scenario to you.
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So someone has been awake for 18 hours,
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has an important assignment due tomorrow, and decides to continue studying
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rather than getting sleep.
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What I would like you to do is identify the
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different processes that are going on with the student.
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For example, the need for sleep represents
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a biological need. Associated with sleep pressure.
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The desire to complete the assignment
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represents a motivation. Worry about the
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deadline may involve emotions. The decision
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to keep studying reflects competing motivational influences.
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Okay, so what
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I'd like you to do is kind of think about this. Explain the behavior
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rarely results from a single cause.
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Our needs, our goals, our interpretations, and emotions can
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compete with one another.
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All right, so I want you to think about—
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if you can kind of think about the differences
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between a drive,
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motivation, and emotion, and think
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about that in the context of your own life. So what I would
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encourage you to do is write down a scenario
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for yourself, and then later on try to
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categorize each of those in these 3
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different domains, remembering that they
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are all one complete experience. Okay.
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And we— so we've discussed emotions as
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a broad psychological response.
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Now let's examine something that often included within the
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response, and that is our conscious feelings about them.
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Okay,
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I think this slide— I've always liked this slide within
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these lectures because it kind of helps us give this emotion this,
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uh, broader perspective or this visual.
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And it emphasizes the idea that emotion is a broader
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response to meaningful events. And feelings
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is a conscious subjective experience of that response.
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Okay. To understand these differences,
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what I would imagine, what I would like you to do is imagine that you're
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walking across a parking lot.
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Suddenly you hear a noise behind you.
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Before you fully identify what happened,
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your attention shifts towards that sound.
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You may be startled, your muscles might be tightening,
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your heart rate may increase. These reactions involve
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processes associated with emotional responses.
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A moment later, you recognize that someone has
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dropped a large metal object. You become
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consciously aware of your experience, that you might think,
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that scared me. This conscious experience
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is what we describe as a feeling.
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Okay, so I'm
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gonna kind of go to this next one and maybe come back to that tree
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metaphor in a moment. But I want you to
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kind of think about a theater
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metaphor.
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Okay, so one way to think is
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emotions, uh, is first the
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theater of the body. I'm trying to clear my thoughts here.
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And so in this— there in this theater, we observe changes
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in physiological activity.
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So this is our heart increasing, our breathing
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patterns may change, muscles may become tense,
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and the autonomic nervous system may become activated.
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Okay. The second is the
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theater of the mind. Here,
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we become consciously aware of what we are experiencing.
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We recognize fear, anger, excitement,
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sadness, and other feelings.
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However, there is an important qualification,
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is that these theaters are not completely separate.
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One does not always finish the performance before
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the other begins. Okay? And so what I mean by this
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is that our physical responses,
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interpretations, conscious experience, and behavioral tendency
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often develop together. And influence
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one another differently.
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Um, different psychological theaters propose different
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relationships among these processes.
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So I want to pause here, and for this class, I want
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to bring up some examples from your class
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project where we're looking at the different compartments
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of different societies. And the
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first compartment is the family structure.
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And in that reading, I hope you noted that the family structure really
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influences the emotional
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and feeling output of individuals.
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Probably one of my most
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relevant examples is how emotions
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are labeled through feelings. Okay,
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so, uh, if you all remember,
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I don't know if we've talked about this in this class, one of my earliest
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experiences after graduating college
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was working in the field of relationship violence
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and domestic, uh, domestic violence.
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And One of the more difficult
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and challenging situations when working with survivors
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of domestic abuse was
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some, not all, tended to
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have this tendency to get into one
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bad relationship after another,
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okay? Now, there's many, many reasons why that
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can occur. And so I don't want you to have an assumption
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that this is a causal root for all individuals
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who tend to get in bad relationships
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over and over and over. But a portion of those individuals
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can be really rooted into their early
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childhood experiences. So some of these
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individuals would come to me and say something like,
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yeah, I just, I'm ready to get in a healthy relationship,
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but I'm fearful of my past experiences.
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And when we explore this,
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some of the individuals would also note
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that their childhood tended to have
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primary caregivers— caregiver or
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caregivers— who were abusive
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and neglectful and created a very chaotic
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world for that child, and eventually
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leading that into adulthood. Okay,
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so coming to this feeling and emotions diagram
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or ideas of theaters of the body and the mind.
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All right. One thing that we find pretty consistently
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across cultures is the representation
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of a mother. Even in
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societies where the biological mother does not
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take direct care of the child, I can
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think of a society, I think in New Guinea,
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somewhere around there, where the biological
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mother is really absent in the childcare.
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It's usually the aunts and the uncles who take over the care of the child.
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But those aunts and uncles, as defined
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by that child, have a very similar structure
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to mothers in other countries where
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the biological mother becomes that object
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of care and nurturing. Okay,
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and so there's this psychological concept of mothers,
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and if we were to put that psychological representation
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into terms of emotions and feelings,
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we would use terms like nurturing,
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caring, secure,
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um, and we can use the term love,
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uh, in this context. And that really becomes the
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representation or the psychological representation of
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mother and the expectations. Okay,
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now in any society, that include— can include the primary
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caregiver. In some situations, it can be the
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the father that becomes to represent that if the mother
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is absent. But we're going to use mom as kind of this
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kind of term for the representation,
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and we're going to use the broader term of love, which includes nurturing,
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caring, and the like. Okay,
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so, um,
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So Felicia, you have an interesting question.
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When this happens, would it be considered as well-being
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male or female? In most,
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uh, cultures that we, we examine,
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it is usually females that represent this,
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uh, psychological archetype of mother.
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Mainly based on the idea that the mother represents
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birth, represents the continuation of life.
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And so, yeah, if we were to put it in kind of
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cultural historical terms, usually mothers are
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represented in a female form. So,
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yeah, and we'll look at some of that, I think, a little bit later
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too. In this section. Okay,
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um, so let,
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let's play this scenario with this idea that
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mom equals love,
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okay, which we're gonna put in the terms of
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the theater of the body. So when you think of someone you love,
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your heart starts to race, your brain starts
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to think about them, you have these bodily changes,
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okay, based on that representation.
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All right, but let's, uh,
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go with the example of some of the
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individuals who tend to get in and out
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of really bad relationships. Some of them came
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to represent this idea their mothers were very
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abusive, neglectful,
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um, emotionally unavailable.
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So in early childhood, as that child
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starts to label their emotions on
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their feelings, there becomes a mislabeling
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that instead of love equaling
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caring, compassion, and concern,
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love equals pain. All right,
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so we have a mismatch between emotions,
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that bodily reactions, and the
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feelings, the labels that we give
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that emotion. All right,
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so As the individual grows
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and develops, and if their environment doesn't incredibly
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change significantly to provide
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better representations, some individuals
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can then go into adulthood and
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physiologically seek out those individuals that
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represent that pain because
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it's mislabeled as love.
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All right, and they can be completely physiologically
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and emotionally rejecting to
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individuals who are caring, concerned,
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and loving. And so we have this attraction
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aspect. Um, and I
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will tell you that this takes an incredibly long time
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to change. It's not something that happens
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overnight. But with some of the individuals
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that I've worked with, I encouraged them that
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they needed to start relabeling their experience
34:26
of love. And so instead of encouraging them to
34:30
date people that they were completely physically
34:35
attracted to and got their
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heart racing, I encouraged them to date the individuals
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that they kind of saw was— normally they would
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skip across, right? Um,
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and I will, I will say that in a lot of cases this
34:54
was very successful, but in many cases
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One example comes to mind. She was in abusive relationships
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over and over and over. In fact,
35:08
at our center, when she left,
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I know this sounds horrible, remember this was the '90s,
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they, providers would make bets on when she would return.
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And the one that got closest to the date won the bet.
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I know that's horrible, but remember, it was the 1990s.
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All right, I want to put that in context.
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Um, and eventually she got
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out and she was done. She was tired of it.
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And so we sat down and we talked about her
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history. We talked about those things, and this
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was the advice that was given. And she did
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it. She, she came back to me years after.
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And she said it took her 2 years
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to actually feel emotionally in love with
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her partner. But she knew her new partner was healthy
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for her. And that he was safe.
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And he met that definition of what we normally
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would call love. But it took her
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2 years to adjust her physiology.
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And I like this story because she had 3 daughters
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who no longer needed IEPs
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because of the emotional trauma that they were put through and the attachment
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issues they were put through. She actually became an elementary school
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teacher and finished college. All of these things.
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But I just want to note this— why
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we separate these ideas between feelings and emotions—
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because emotions can easily be mislabeled
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by our feelings and our experience with that emotion.