Cognition, Emotion and Motivation Psychology Coursework

Reeve, J (2018). Understanding motivation and emotion. (7th ed). Wiley.
Your writing should illustrate knowledge of the concepts through an original personal and/or professional integration of the assigned text material. Sociocultural factors must be included when relevant. This is covered throughout the course text. You are encouraged to use outside, current research to enhance sociocultural integration.
Your response to each question should be approx. 1 page per question
1. Motivation arises from both internal motives (i.e. needs, cognitions, emotions) and external events (i.e. incentives, consequences, social contexts). Is one of these sources of motivation more potent or more effective in motivating people than is the other? Are people primarily motivated by internal motives or by external events, or are people motivated about equally by internal motives and external events? Justify your response by giving examples from your own life.
2. Selecting one physiological need (e.g. hunger, thirst, sex) as an example, explain, how the biological beginnings of this need eventually manifest themselves as a psychological drive in a person’s subjective awareness. In other words, explain how a biological event becomes a psychological motive. Give an original example to support your explanation.
3. How does self-determination theory explain how external events (e.g. rewards, praise) sometimes produce positive effects on motivation but other times produce negative effects? Give an original example to support your explanation.
4. Learned helplessness theory relies on the components of contingency, cognition, and behavior to explain the motivational dynamics underlying helplessness. Explain what these three components mean and provide an original illustrative example of each.
5. Consider the origins of the need for achievement. Discuss and provide original examples from your own life, of each of the following three sources of high need for achievement: its socialization influences, its cognitive influences, or its developmental influences.
6. Differentiate the motivational and performance-based advantages versus disadvantages for performers who adopt a short-term goal (e.g., eat less than 2000 calories today) versus performers who adopt a long-term goal (e.g. lose 20 pounds this year) and offer a recommendation as to whether performers should adopt a short-term or a long-term goal. Explain/justify your recommendation.
7. People with a deliberative mindset are very good at thinking about what they need to do, whereas people who have developed an implemental mindset have the ability to narrow in on a specific goal or facets of a specific goal. Considering an example from your own life, how might you develop a deliberative or implemental mindset to complement the mindset that you already use?
8. What is your understanding of the difference between self-efficacy and ability? Is there a difference? Is the difference important? Give an original example to support your response.
9. Imagine being a cognitively oriented therapist who has two clients. One client suffers from severe self-doubt about his capacity to cope successfully with the demands of college. College is an overwhelming experience. What strategies might you use to reverse his high doubt and replace it with high confidence? The other client suffers from severe helplessness about her capacity to cope successfully with her boyfriend relationship. Her boyfriend is unresponsive, and everything she tries to do to improve the relationship seems to fall on a deaf ear. What strategies might you use to reverse her high helplessness and replace it with mastery motivation?
10. Suppose you are a counselor at a summer camp for delinquent pre-teenage boys who lack any occupational aspirations and exhibit antisocial interaction styles. You are having a meeting to brainstorm how to use the possible selves literature to provide these boys with an expanded view of their future selves. Would this meeting be a good idea or a bad idea, and why? Include a discussion of the biological basis of antisocial behavior.
11. In the following example, explain why the emotion of fear/terror rather than the physiological need for air is the primary motivator: A child puts a sweater on over his head, it gets stuck, and the child experiences a moment of air deprivation. He then shows panic-like emotion and finally coping behavior. Differentiate between the emotional and biological aspects of the child's reaction.
12. Discuss the "cognition versus biology" debate in the study of emotion. Outline first the cognitive position and then the biological position. Discuss one possible, satisfying resolution to the cognition versus biology debate, using an original example to illustrate this resolution.