Unit Wrap Up

What was your something that you learned in the unit? What other points do you want to share about the unit?

Wow! What an interesting unit. I learned tons about motivation. Motivation is a need or desire that actually energizes our behavior and directs it toward a particular goal. There are three perspectives to keep in mind because they are influential on motivation: the instict theory (replaced by evolutionary theory), drive-reduction theory, and the arousal theory. We can also use Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a fouth perspective. The first module in our unit talked about the motivation of hunger. Hunger is a lower-level need on Maslow's chart and is a physiological need. Sexual motivation was the next module where I learned about Alfred Kinsey's sex studies. Kinsey conducted 18,000 confidential interviews with people where he asked them 350 questions. At the beginning of the interview, he would ask questions about family background, health, and education to make people feel more comfortable and then he would ask them sexually explicit questions. In the next module I learned about motivation at work. Most of us don't get too excited about work and yearn for vacation time but I learned that work does help us satisfy several of our needs.Work helps support us, connect us, and defines who we are!

In the next module, I learned about the debate about emotional response. William James and Carl Lange believed that humans feel emotion after we notice our physiological responses.Walter Cannon and Philip Bard disagreed and thought that we feel emotion at the same time that our bodies responsed. Today, most researchers agree with Cannon and Bard! In module 30, I learned about the effects of facial expressions. This is important in everyday life because you don't want to accidently make a rude face at a teacher or boss! The next module was all about stress and believe me, I knew what that was! I thought the most interesting section in the module was about Stress and AIDS, it is devastating that 22 million people have died in the last century.It is so important to know about because it spreads so easily because people usually don't know right away that they have it. The last module was about promoting health. The module definately inspired me to exercise more because many studies suggest that it can reduce stress, depression, and anxiety.