Motivation and emotion/Nuggets of truth/Previous years

Summary

These are the main themes highlighted by students:

Motivation

• Dopamine can motivate in unexpected ways; caution is needed
• Implicit motives: Achievement, affiliation, and power are acquired psychological needs
• Psychological needs (autonomy, competence, relatedness) are crucial for optimal motivation.
• Intrinsic motivation vs. extrinsic motivation offers insight into personal interests
• Mastery goals and personal values align for better motivation and performance.
• Growth mindset fosters better achievement and well-being
• Motivation is personal and situational, requiring flexible application of theories

Emotion

• All emotions serve a survival purpose; no emotion is inherently bad
• Negative emotions have evolutionary roles in survival
• Emotions, even negative ones, are valuable for growth and resilience
• Emotions have adaptive purposes and can be used for emotional literacy
• Anger is normal, but managing its expression is important
• Pride has two forms: authentic (prosocial) and hubristic (antisocial)
• Cognitive appraisal influences emotional experience, and perspective can alter emotions
• Synthetic happiness shows that people can create happiness in adverse situations

Process (learning/reflection)

• Exposing oneself to varied theories enhances practical application
• Working early and managing word limits improves academic work
• Reflecting on life and congruence between personal and academic goals supports well-being
• Wikiversity offers valuable learning opportunities and inspiration for teaching and research
• Ongoing reflection and learning can lead to major personal or professional breakthroughs

2024

2023

Motivation

1. People are driven by implicit motives for achievement, affiliation, and/or power which can be viewed as acquired psychological needs U3168525 (discuss • contribs)
2. Dopamine motivates us in strange ways, be careful how it motivates you. U3220114
3. Most optimal freedom for motivation is supporting autonomy and direction within a boundary/constraint. u3217955
4. In regard to what motivates people to believe in conspiracy theories the 2 take-home messages that I found to be most profound were:
   1. That psychological needs, such as the desire for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, drive individuals to seek explanations that provide a sense of control and understanding, particularly during times of uncertainty and distress.
   2. That social identity and group dynamics contributes as a motivating factor, as people tend to adopt conspiracy theories to strengthen their sense of belonging or to defend their in-group, especially when they’ve experienced social exclusion. U3223114 (discuss • contribs)
5. Continued idea that everyone is different, so exposure to all the varied mini-theories has helped me to feel better equipped to apply and assist, where the general theories had not so far provided enough distinction for me to apply effectively. JorjaFive (discuss • contribs)
6. Learning that motivation can be increased by fulfilling your psychological needs (automony, competence and relatedness) is useful for starting to new projects/jobs etc. u3226381.
7. Fascinating to trace the roots of components in self-determination theory. Relatedness for example, traces back to the work of Karen Horney’s work on relatedness, and links across to attachment (part of object relations theory), with further links to neuro & oxytocin. It’s a web of roots – and just one part of SDT!! Richard Ryan and Edward Deci are growing what may become an old-growth forest giant U891419.
8. The time perspective concepts-> really thought more about how I view my past and if that’s actually how I want to view it (it isn't) so I have started focusing on ways I can alter this moving forward. It also gave me some insight into how I move through time in the present and I've realised I'm prone to living in the past and future so that grounding technique mentioned about doing something for each of your senses everyday has proven to be really helpful!
9. I found the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation intriguing. Understanding whether motivation comes from an external force, a desire to do the right thing or to please someone else as opposed to doing out of interest or passion gives us a lot of insight into our own interests.

Emotion

1. I have learned through this unit that there is no such thing as a bad emotion, they all have their own purpose for our survival.
2. Pride can be separated into authentic pride; pride in one's success, promotes prosocial behaviour, or hubris pride; overconfidence, arrogance, manipulation of others, promotes antisocial behaviour U3168525 (discuss • contribs)
3. Synthetic happiness, the idea that people have the ability to create happiness and contentment even in situations that may not naturally lead to happiness, and the concept that our brain systematically misjudges what will make us happy, is fascinating! U3223114 (discuss • contribs)
4. Feeling anger is normal. Remember this when having kids so they understand it is ok to be angry, we just don't let our anger hurt others. U3220114
5. It pays for communities to possess the resources and social connectedness they need to be resilient. However, we must also address the issues populations face so that the onus is not only on them to cope. U3213682 (discuss • contribs) 02:42, 25 October 2023 (UTC)
6. The adaptive purpose of emotions has been really interesting. Learning this makes me feel as though you can use it to your advantage in terms of emotional literacy gains. u3226381
7. I found the cognitive appraisal approach to emotional experience quite interesting. I have started noticing how people react very differently to the same event. I suppose the positive element about this process is that we have some ability to change the way we feel by challenging the way we see the situation.
8. That emotions, even one which are universally perceived as negative are evolutionarily designed to aid in survival.

Process

1. Continued idea that everyone is different, so the exposure to all the varied mini-theories has helped me feel better equipped to apply and assist, where the main theories had not so far provided enough distinction
2. I really enjoyed the book chapter and wikiveristy. I was a little apprehensive at the start, and it seemed overwhelming, but I found it engaging and it was really cool to see other pages and learn a little bit about a lot of things.

2022

Motivation

1. Motivations and emotions are closely intertwined.
2. Motivations and emotions link to other psychological disciplines (e.g., health, organisational etc.), not just clinical psychology.

Emotion

1. Emotions are a big and complex process which deserves as much respect and understanding as thoughts and other mental processes - don't sweep emotions under the proverbial rug; listen to yourself.
2. Understanding the significance of microexpressions in detecting leakage is essential for emotional intelligence and deception detection. Following the lecture, I began watching the "Lie to Me" series to better understand how the display of personal emotions indicates an individual's intentions in a social situation. U3211603 (discuss • contribs) 04:11, 15 November 2022 (UTC)
3. When we don't get what we want, we produce synthetic happiness; this is similar to learned helplessness. It was fascinating to learn about how immersive feelings can make an individual believe that everything is fine on the inside through the use of synthetic happiness. U3211603 (discuss • contribs) 04:11, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Process

1. Treat the chapter and presentation as one assessment piece. By that, complete both, before the former's due date. In honing the latter, I realised the former's focus wasn't sharpened and articulated well enough.
2. Start early, and continue researching throughout writing your chapter. Don't just stick to the first couple of articles you found in your first search.
3. Its okay to completely change your chapter. It may feel big and scary at the time but sometimes its necessary.
4. Monitor your word limit as you progress through writing the book chapter. I found it so easy to just keep writing as I found new and interesting information however, I ended up having to remove a lot of content as a result of being 2000 words of the limit.
5. I loved the Grades page for Motivation and Emotion unit as it clearly gave me an idea of the progress on the overall grades. It gave me the motivation to work harder and keep my grades good. It would be super nice if this becomes a standard across other unit pages as well. There won't be any need to do any grade calculation. U3211603 (discuss • contribs) 04:08, 15 November 2022 (UTC)
6. Discussion in the tutorials has assisted me in applying motivation and emotion theories to real-world problems. Thank you Jtneill for those engaging conversations and for assisting in broadening the horizon. U3211603 (discuss • contribs) 04:18, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

2021

Motivation

1. A lot of motivators in society are extrinsic (e.g., legal systems, schooling etc.)
2. Using extrinsic motivators to try and foster development can be counterproductive.
3. Intrinsic motivation is REALLY diminished by extrinsic motivation/incentives
4. Extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation - how they correlate, also trying to use intrinsic motivators for trivial things like trying to go to the gym.
5. Autonomy, competence, relatedness. Very interesting and ties into so many things.
6. Connect with others.
7. Low and high achievers have differences in taking responsibility for successes and failures - an aspect I wasn't aware of.
8. Growth mindset vs. fixed mindset - become aware of own fixed mindset and been moving towards a more growth-oriented mindset
9. Gained insight into how people are primarily driven by what matters to them most - maintaining a consistent self-image (e.g., meaning of having to put in effort academically - in a growth mindset it does not mean low intelligence, but learning).
10. Learned helplessness
11. Motivation is 'individualistic' in the sense that a lot of it is self-directed and self-motivated. Even if there are social/cultural influences, a lot of how we understand motivation is based on individual perceptions in relation to those social/cultural factors.
12. Positive psychology
13. Unconscious motivation
14. So many interesting facts about motivation (Intrinsic vs extrinsic) to acknowledge, understand and adopting in real world. It is very fascinating.
15. There are many elements and factors involved in this area, and all are important and relevant for survival and growth
16. We like to think that we are rational even when we are not.

Emotion

1. Emotions are a broad topic and there are lots of different types of emotions.
2. The basic emotions and the specific roles they have; no emotion is unuseful.
3. Eudaimonic well-being such as life pursuits and quality relationships.
4. People who experience emotions can be nonverbal and verbal.
5. Terror management theory: Death and conscious awareness.
6. Emotions are a great way of expressing feeling from inside your body to outside world.
7. Humans are not the only ones who experience emotions, it is also present in animals as well! It is such a complex area of study but yet very fascinating.
8. Optimism by definition describes a certain degree of irrationality in the way we see and think. However, perhaps the only way in which to create a fundamentally better reality is through this irrationality and the corresponding belief that we are good (and getting better)!

Process

1. Experiment with other platforms to see how it's useful.
2. Find the leaders in the research - to see what they're saying on the topic - reach out for feedback
3. Re: book chapter - it's great to start from a point of curiousity in selecting a topic as it will likely be most rewarding.
4. Learning such an amazing artwork such as wikiversity. very rewarding for present and future as well.
5. Take home message: Never stop learning and putting your ideas out there because you could be the reason a major breakthrough occurs and makes the world a better place.
6. Career insight: this unit inspired me to consider a job as a professor/lecturer. I loved how exciting the content was and how this was translated into cool assignments. I also now want to write a whole textbook; but maybe one step at a time…

2020

Motivation

1. What makes for a good day - to meet needs in Self determination theory
2. Psychological needs (autonomy/competence/relatedness) and seeing how they look in the workplace
3. Intrinsic motivation leads to better performance and persistence
4. Being able to understand what motivates me and relate to content personally
5. I didn’t realise how often I don’t satisfy my psychological needs in a day (feeling incompetent with uni, not having a choice over what I do because of either work or uni, having to isolate myself to get work done)
6. You should be trying to incorporate satisfaction of your psychological needs into everyday life, e.g. giving yourself a choice, partaking in something you will be able to feel competent in, and connecting with others.
7. How motivation influences everything we do, and how we can optimize it
8. Explanatory styles: much of motivation is not so much about reality, than perceptions. Negative perceptions undermine performance and happiness.
9. Being controlling when someone is being disruptive is detrimental to their motivation and can actually make them more defiant!!
10. Expression of motivation
11. Optimism can be learned, and having a belief in perceived control can help with a growth mindset
12. Cognitive evaluation theory - explains how all events have two functions (controlling behaviour and informing competence)
13. The relationship between attitudes and motivation
14. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs - suggesting that humans can be organised in a hierarchy (physiological and then psychological)
15. The large part that motivation plays into our cognitions and it’s level of importance.
16. Formalising intrinsic and extrinsic thought (SDT)
17. Extrinsic and intrinsic motivators. How to use extrinsic effectively and the importance of intrinsic in motivation.
18. We have autonomy, competence, relatedness needs
19. Partnership between goals, needs and well-being.
20. Learning about mastery vs. performance goals made me reassess my approach to uni -- previously used to approach it as “I can get better grades than my siblings to show everyone I’m the better child”, but have now approached it in a way that is more focused on what I’m actually trying to achieve.
21. That Ted talk about the people with amnesia who still preferred their painting was wild
22. Power needs, affiliation/relatedness needs, achievement needs
23. Choice is vital to motivation; students who are allowed agency to choose assignment topics tend to feel more motivated.
24. Working towards having mastery goals (rather than performance goals) and a growth mindset (rather than a fixed one) is an incredibly worthwhile pursuit - both for one’s well-being and success.
25. It’s important that your goals are both challenging and within your abilities.
26. A lot of motivation is unconscious.
27. Performance can be enhanced by being selective about goals rather than having too many goals.
28. Goals aligned with personal values are congruent and easier to pursue than incongruent goals which are not aligned with personal values.
29. Learning how to activate flow states and experience them more often will benefit both your mental health and the quality of your work.

Emotion

1. "Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions." Dalai Lama XIV. Linking with Reeve chapter 17: motivation and emotion are flexible to apply, but require long-term application.
2. Take-home from my book chapter: being congruent. Considering our life as a whole: our working/studying life and home-life being complementary or leading to conflict. Reflecting on Ryff's 1995, 6 facets of well-being: self-acceptance, interpersonal relations, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life and personal growth and how they all link together. The outcomes of being incongruent may lead to psychological distress and how often do we not realise this link?
3. All emotions are good and have a meaning/reason for why we feel them
4. Incorporating compassion into your everyday life can impact you in the best possible ways. Feelings of guilt, shame and other negative emotions diminish.
5. Increasing your emotional vocabulary helps you understand how you’re feeling.
6. All our emotions have evolved to help us
7. That we should experience emotions, but work towards managing them effectively.
8. The four components of emotion and how they work together to influence our emotions. And that we can make changes by intercepting at these points.
9. Core emotions, self conscious emotions , and the cognitively complex ones
10. The most significant thing for me when it came to emotion was that for once the psychodynamic perspective actually sounded reasonable.
11. We underestimate well-being and the effects on/in our life.
12. All emotions serve a purpose - negative emotions are just as valuable as positive ones.
13. Part of emotional literacy is learning to become friends with all of our emotions - they have a place in our lives.
14. One of the strategies for enhancing happiness is to learn how to broaden-and-build on the experience of positive emotions.
15. A lot of our emotional lives are triggered by encounters with other people.
16. One of the most challenging emotions to learn is compersion (rather than jealousy) - feeling good about someone else’s pleasure.

Other

1. Delving into motivation and emotion has given me more to reflect on. Tutorials and lectures were very interesting and useful in general. SDT - intrinsic and extrinsic motivators, James said this theory was the most applicable and I now see why!
2. TED talks and similar have been great. They have provided further insights into a very interesting and thought-provoking unit. I have forwarded them on to others (not involved in psychology). Thank you James.

2019

1. Approach behaviour is stronger than avoidance behaviour.
2. "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose that response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." (Viktor E. Frankl)
3. Exercise regularly - it has many health benefits including enhancing mood.
4. Focus on intrinsic motivation more and extrinsic less.
5. In the face of challenges, keep going.
6. Intrinsic motivation stronger than extrinsic motivation.
7. In workplaces and education: encourage autonomy, competence, relatedness.
8. Motivation can be both conscious and unconscious. We aren't always aware of our motivations.
9. People who feel they have no control, or little control, over their environment don't fare well!
10. Positive moods enhance creativity on short tasks, negative emotions enhance creativity on tasks of longer duration.
11. Thrive on your success.
12. When you achieve something really acknowledge it! Self-efficacy.

2018

1. By identifying how we respond to unexpected changes we may influence our emotional reactions and better adapt to our environment.
2. Designing and writing a book chapter on a topic you're interested in was a valuable experience that I enjoyed and I'm proud of.
3. Emotions vs. mood.
4. Even when people are in bad/unpleasant situations, being able to change the situation so they can become more happy isn't as simple as it seems.
5. Goal-setting and goal-striving: gave me some tips for my own life
6. How to make stress your friend language=en - Really enjoyed this ted talk from earlier on in the semester
7. I want a carrot for this comment James
8. Ideologies - how these can motivate people through humanistic psychology and how people are "evil".
9. Impacts of goal sharing (findings from book chapter).
10. Intrinsic motivation is a more effective form of studying. Focusing on things you're interested in increases productivity.
11. Mindfulness has a significant effect in psychological therapy (from book chapter).
12. Motivation is private and can usually only come from yourself.
13. Self-awareness about link between job choice (interests) and personality and need satisfaction (book chapter).
14. The surprising science of happiness (TED talk in Tutorial 6).
15. The work done in the book chapter - will take its knowledge into my profession.
16. Time perspective has a significant influence on the human experience.

2016-2017

1. Pearls of wisdom / Nuggets of truth 2016-2017: What we learnt from this unit (padlet.com)

2015

1. Pearls of wisdom / Nuggets of truth 2015: What we learnt from this unit (padlet.com)

2014

1. Pearls of wisdom / Nuggets of truth 2014: What we learnt from this unit (padlet.com)

2013

1. Pearls of wisdom / Nuggets of truth 2013: What we learnt from this unit (padlet.com)

2011

1. 2011