Defining Characteristics

322
Chapter 8 Motivation and Emotion
working hours and relocation to a miserable climate. The other boasts advancement opportunities, fringe benefits, and a better climate, but it doesn’t pay as
much and involves an unpredictable work schedule. This is an example of a multiple approach-avoidance conflict, in which two or more alternatives each have
both positive and negative features. Such conflicts are especially difficult to
resolve, partly because the features of each option may not be easy to compare.
For example, how many dollars a year does it take to compensate you for living
in a bad climate?
permissions restrictions.
doing
2
learn
The difficulties associated with resolving each of these conflicts can create stress, a
topic explored in the chapter on health, stress, and coping. Most people who have motivational conflicts are tense, irritable, and more vulnerable than usual to physical and
psychological problems. These reactions are especially likely when no choice is obviously “right,” when varying motives have approximately equal strength, and when a
choice can have serious consequences (as in decisions to marry, to split up, or to place
an elderly parent in a nursing home). Some people may spend a long time agonizing
over these conflicts, whereas others may make a choice quickly, impulsively, and
thoughtlessly, simply to end the discomfort of uncertainty. Even after resolving the conflict on the basis of careful thought, people may continue to experience stress responses,
such as worrying about whether they made the right decision or blaming themselves
for bad choices. These and other consequences of conflicting motives can even lead to
depression or other serious disorders.
A STRESSFUL CONFLICT
Think back to when you were
deciding which college to attend. Was the decision easy and obvious,
or did it create a motivational conflict? If
there was a conflict, was it an approachapproach, approach-avoidance, or multiple approach-avoidance conflict? What
factors were most important in deciding
how to resolve the conflict, and what
emotions and signs of stress did you experience during and after the decisionmaking process?
by
The emotions associated with motivational conflicts provide just one example of the
close links between motivation and emotion. Motivation can intensify emotion, as
when hunger leads a normally calm person to angrily complain about slow service at
a restaurant. But emotions can also create motivation. Happiness, for example, is an
emotion that people want to feel, so they engage in whatever behaviors—studying, artwork, investing, beachcombing—they think will achieve it. Similarly, as an emotion that
most people want to avoid, anxiety motivates many behaviors, from leaving the scene
of an accident to avoiding poisonous snakes. Let’s take a closer look at emotions.
The Nature of Emotion
䉴 How do feelings differ from thoughts?
Everyone seems to agree that joy, sorrow, anger, fear, love, and hate are emotions. However, it is often hard to identify the shared features that make these experiences emotions rather than, say, thoughts or impulses.
Defining Characteristics
Most psychologists in Western cultures tend to see emotions as organized psychological and physiological reactions to changes in our relationship to the world. These reactions are partly private, or subjective, experiences and partly measurable patterns of
behavior and physiological arousal. The subjective experience of emotion has several
characteristics:
1. Emotion is usually temporary. In other words, it tends to have a relatively clear
beginning and end and a relatively short duration. Moods, by contrast, tend to
last longer.
2. Emotional experience can be positive, as in joy, or negative, as in sadness. It can
also be a mixture of both, as in the bittersweet feelings of watching one’s child
leave for the first day of kindergarten (Larsen et al., 2004).