Week 10 — Motivation & Emotion

Welcome to your Week 10 Start Here page.

Why this matters

A coach reading a runner at the start line and a hospital nurse tracking appetite after surgery both work with what moves people to act and how feelings form.

In plain language

Some forces push you to act, like the empty feeling that sends you to the fridge, and some pull you, like a prize you want to win. Motivation is the word psychologists use for those pushes and pulls: a need or desire that gets you moving and points you at a goal. This week you will compare four ways of explaining motivation and look closely at one everyday motive, hunger. When you take a feeling apart, you will see that an emotion, in this course, is a whole-person response with three parts: what your body does, what your face and body show, and what you think the moment means. Finally, you will run one scary moment through three competing theories of emotion and see exactly where they disagree.

• Already covered: Week 3 mapped the brain; Week 6 showed how rewards shape behavior; Week 9 covered how you think.
• This week: what moves you to act, and what a feeling is made of.
• How they connect: the hypothalamus and amygdala return in hunger and fear.
• Where we're going next: Week 11, Development Across the Lifespan.

Focus

What pushes and pulls you to act, and what is a feeling made of?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• [ ] trace need, drive, behavior, homeostasis, and tell a push from a pull
• [ ] apply the Yerkes–Dodson law and state the limits of Maslow's hierarchy
• [ ] explain how the hypothalamus, ghrelin, and leptin help regulate hunger
• [ ] contrast James–Lange, Cannon–Bard, and two-factor on one event

To-do

Plan your week

1. Read Chapter 10 (about 45 minutes), then the lecture and the slides.
2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes) and the practice set (about 20 minutes).
3. Do the Analysis Workshop (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
4. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: say which theory of emotion fits a racing heart that you label as fear.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor early if a step snags.

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