Final Project

Motivation : Final Project 

Throughout the course of our motivational psychology class, I have learned many terms that I can use in my everyday life. One new idea I learned is what encourages a person to strive to accomplish their goals, as well as why the value of finishing their goals increases and decreases. I always thought it was just pure determination, but there are other aspects that contribute to a person’s motivation.  For example, an individual’s personal history plays a role based on their own personal experiences since conception. Everyone has different incentives and drives in their lives. People have different extrinsic and intrinsic motivation depending on the situation.  

 An interesting aspect of the class was how the novel Endurance connected with the class. The amount of willpower and incentives these men had was incredible. It helps to understand what motivation and incentive really means. Their main drive in the book is survival. Their survival comes down to their physiological needs of food, water, and shelter. At the end of the day, everyone in society tries to accomplish this as well. You can apply Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs to these men.  This hierarchy starts with physiological needs, and then goes through safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization.  Many of these stages can apply to them. For example, safety is absence of fear, and if the men were constantly scared, they wouldn’t have had a chance at survival or continued on their journey.

I personally feel like mate value can be applied outside of class because there are relationships being formed all the time.  Mate value is a person’s characteristics that make him or her desirable to another person as a partner. What I found interesting is why, in the end, one person chooses another mate. On what basis makes him or her good enough for the person choosing?  Women usually choose mates based on increased chances of survival. Men choose based on increased chances of producing children. Physical attractiveness also plays a role in mate value for both genders. In class we discussed that a person with higher physical attractiveness is better at attracting mates, so they likely will not settle until they find what they want. An individual who has more trouble attracting a mate will, in a way, settle for what they can find. The media directly effects women’s perception of what beauty is, which also changes the perception of what they feel their mate value is. What surprised me about this was a video of how they edit women but also men. This can also affect how a man values himself and affects what women feel men should look like. It is all illegitimate and unrealistic like a Barbie doll. In the end, people end up pairing with a mate that has a similar mate value. I find this fascinating because after studying this in class, I starting noticing friends that are together that could possibly, in my opinion, match up in mate value.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5BDDgmWkw8&feature=relmfu

 

Women who was edited and facial features changed.

http://www.google.com/imgres?q=female+model+pictures&hl=en&tbo=d&biw=1280&bih=628&tbm=isch&tbnid=N6UKAXp_T7wJZM:&imgrefurl=http://fashion.blogorganization.co

                My favorite part of the course was discussing regret and how that can affect your life. Regret is the emotion experienced when reflecting on rejected opportunities. In my life, I personally regret quitting gymnastics. I was a competitive gymnast and had won the New Jersey Compulsory Athlete of the Year in 2001. I feel that if I stuck with gymnastics, I could have competed in college and that could have given me more options for colleges and possibly more scholarship opportunities. I enjoyed this course because a majority of the information could either allow us to learn something new about ourselves or learn how to handle new situations differently to accomplish our goals.