Final Post

During the course of this semester, I learned different aspects of human motivation. This class included everything from history of the study to recent experiments. We learned the cognitive, social, and biological aspects of motivation. We discussed how motivations develop our personalities and how studying these can help predict individual’s actions. From these experiments and studies, you can also begin to understand individual and cultural preferences and drives. Many parts of this class greatly helped me in understanding and relation to my cognitive psychology course this semester.

A few different chapters in this class were especially interesting to me. I enjoyed learning about human drives and needs. It is part of what first interested me in psychology; what underlying motives do humans possess? I also enjoyed the chapter on emotion and moods. They play such an important role in the psychology field and understanding our motivations. Decisions can be greatly influenced by current and previous mood states.

Understanding motivation is important in many different occupational fields. For instance, in the field of Criminal Justice or Investigations, it is necessary to know human motivation behind actions. In investigations, it shows how considering all the different societal and self-motivations of a personal can help draw conclusions to cases.