2. General Overview Before taking this course I was convinced that the concept of motivation was the process of someone wanting to do something and the extent of what they are willing to go through to do it. Never would I have thought that there are so many aspects of motivation. This class has taught me that with every situation there is either an internal or external incentive that has pushed or pulled someone to take certain actions. It discusses how emotions is a multi channeled reactions by which people adapt to certain stimulus. Depending on the feeling they experience people create an incentive to attract or repel them towards a certain situation. Motivation is being moved to an action or a behavior, and a motive is an internal disposition to not only approach, but also to avoid, an incentive. The class goes on to discuss different aspects of motivation down to people’s everyday life, such as eating certain things, sleeping, working, going to school, doing drugs, stress etc. The class then breaks down the biological aspect of motivation, the affect of the nervous system and the influence it has to allow people to act a certain way. It also discusses the effect of stress and how it can cause physical and psychological damage. The class then goes on to discuss how people’s personality traits and temperaments can really play a major role in their aspect of motivation.
3. My Favorite Part My favorite part of the class was chapter 4 “Addiction and Addictive Behavior.”For most of my life I was always curious as to why people got addictive drugs and in this chapter they go on to explain the different incentives people have to make them continuously abuse a certain drug. The chapter goes on to break down the difference between a voluntary drug user opposed to a drug addict. Voluntary drug users can quit the use of drug voluntarily and just use the drug occasionally. Drug addicts experience an intense uncontrollable craving to seek out a particular drug, that will relieve them from the unpleasant feeling of withdrawal from the drug. I found it interesting how the process of initiation is what people go through when they transforms from a experimental drug user to a habitual drug user. However people who come from a family of drug addicts are more vulnerable towards certain drugs and skip right over the experimentation stage and go right into addiction. High sensation seekers are more vulnerable towards psychoactive drugs such as, marijuana, cocaine, alcohol , and caffeine and people who are impulsive and have high sensitivity of drug affects and low awareness of the negative affects of drugs tend to lean more towards drug abuse. My favorite topic of the entire chapter was the reward deficiency syndrome which is when a persons pleasure center is less sensitive to dopamine, which is the a natural chemical in the brain that creates pleasure. People who have a lower sensitivity to dopamine don’t experience pleasure often so they rely on psychoactive drugs to produce that pleasure sensation for them . This is something that goes on with many individuals, people do not know how to experience that sense of pleasure alone because of the lack of the dopamine chemical so they use drugs to get that sense of pleasure and rely on it to have fun or enjoy life. I really appreciated this chapter because drug addiction is huge problem in America many of us have lost someone to drug abuse or experienced someone lose themselves to drugs and understanding the reasons why people go about these behaviors has really allowed me to gain a new sense of understanding.
