Motivation, Emotion, and Behavior

Topics: Emotion, Psychology, Mind  Pages: 3 (740 words) Published: November 26, 2013

Motivation, Emotion, and Behavior;
According to Dictionary.com, motivation is an arousal of an organism that acts toward a desired goal. Emotion is the state of consciousness of what one experiences such as love, hate, happy and sad. Behavior is an action or reaction under certain circumstances. The relationship between the three is feelings that one receives under each. For instance, a cold rainy day, on such a day, one’s motivation may be to lie around all day and possibly not change out of their pajama’s, which could lead to a sad and depressive day, (emotions) which leads to an “I don’t care” behavior.

Emotions can affect motivation negatively or positively. As previously stated, emotions are a state of consciousness and sets how one is motivated. If I am happy, this gives me a positive motivation to which I would be able to accomplish most anything. If I am sad, then my emotions would be negative, therefore, I would not be motivated to accomplish anything. This state could be justified as a depressive state of mind.

An example of a specific behavior and the motivators and emotions that can be behind that behavior is “anger”, many could say anger comes from an attitude, and while attitudes and behaviors can go hand in hand, one’s behavior is the physical manifestation of your attitude and an attitude is an inner thought about what’s around you. The motivators and emotions behind anger is the state of being one has or the environment and situation one is in and how it makes them feel. Theories of Emotion;

The four major theories of emotion are: The James-Lange theory, the Cannon-Bard theory, the Schacter-Singer theory and the Lazarus theory. The James-Lange theory proposes that an event or stimulus causes a physiological arousal without any interpretation or conscious thought, and you experience the resulting emotion only after you interpret the physical response. (Ruud, M.) The Cannon-Bard Theory suggests that the given stimulus evokes both a...

References: Ruud, M. (nd), article, The Four Theories of Emotion – What, Why, and How? Retrieved October 21,
2013 from www.maddieruud.hubpages.com
www.dictionary.com