AP Psychology: Motivation and Emotion Notes

These AP Psychology notes review what you’ve learned about motivation and emotion in your AP Psychology class. Motivations are feelings or ideas that cause us to act toward a goal. Some motivations are obvious and conscious, but others are subtler. This guide gives a brief overview of some of the key concepts and terms you should know about motivation and emotion for the AP Psychology exam. 

[ READ NEXT: AP Psychology Notes: Personality ]

AP Psychology Motivation and Emotion: Key Takeaways 

Review some key motivation and emotion concepts you should know for the AP Psychology exam.

1. While psychologists debate whether humans are born with any instincts, they agree that our behavior is also motivated by other biological and psychological factors.
   
2. Even a seemingly simple motivation such as hunger involves several biological, psychological, and social factors.
   
3. Sexual motivations are vital for the continuation of any species. One of the primary tasks for most living organisms is reproduction. Since humans are one of the most complex living organisms, our sexual motivations are correspondingly complex. Like hunger, sex is motivated by both biological and psychological factors.
   
4. What motivates the more complicated behaviors, such as taking the AP Psychology exam? Your attitudes and goals, the society you live in, and the people you surround yourself with also affect what you are motivated to do.
   
5. Emotion influences motivation, and motivation influences emotion. Psychologists investigate emotional states and create theories that try to explain our emotional experiences.
   
6. Many psychologists researching emotions find that the ways we express emotion nonverbally (through facial expressions, and so on) are universal. No matter what culture we grew up in, we are likely to use the same facial expressions for basic emotions like happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, surprise, and fear.

AP Psychology Motivation and Emotion: Key Terms 

Review the following key terms related to motivation and emotion for the AP exam.

• Instincts: Automatic behaviors performed in response to specific stimuli.
• Drive reduction theory: One early theory about how our physiology motivates us was drive reduction theory, the theory that our behavior is motivated by biological needs. A need is one of our requirements for survival, such as food, water, or shelter. A drive is our impulse to act in a way that satisfies this need. 
• Arousal theory: Some motivations that seem to violate biological theories of motivation can be explained by arousal theory (or sensation-seeking theory), which states that we seek an optimum level of excitement or arousal.
• Incentives: Incentives are stimuli that we are drawn to due to learning. We learn to associate some stimuli with rewards and others with punishment, and we are motivated to seek the rewards.
• Self-determination theory: The self-determination theory of motivation grew out of research on intrinsic (rewards we get internally) motivations for behavior. Researchers have long known that intrinsic motivations are an important element of our overall psychological health and sense of well-being. Self-determination research indicates that three elements are related to intrinsic motivations involved in what they call self-determination: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
• Bulimia: People with bulimia eat large amounts of food in a short period of time (binging) and then get rid of the food (purging) by vomiting, exercising excessively, or using laxatives. Bulimics are obsessed with food and their weight. The majority of people with bulimia are women.
• Anorexia nervosa: People with anorexia starve themselves to below 85 percent of their normal body weight and refuse to eat due to their obsession with weight. The vast majority of people with anorexia are women.

• Achievement motivation: Achievement motivation is one theory that tries to explain the motivations behind these more complex behaviors. Achievement motivation examines our desires to master complex tasks and knowledge and to reach personal goals. Humans (and some other animals) seem to be motivated to figure out our world and master skills, sometimes regardless of the benefits of the skills or knowledge.
• Extrinsic motivations: Rewards that we get for accomplishments from outside ourselves (for example, grades, salary, and so on).
• Intrinsic motivations: Rewards we get internally, such as enjoyment or satisfaction.
• Facial feedback hypothesis: The facial feedback hypothesis is a related idea that suggests that we infer our emotions from our facial expressions. Thus, if I smile, I will feel happy, and if I frown, I will feel sad.

Test what you’ve learned in our AP Psych quiz!