Psychologists have often expressed a causal relationship between motivation and emotions; this implies that motivation is the precursor or the trigger to generating emotions. Different behavioral research studies have yielded varied definitions of ‘motivation’; however, one enduring aspect has been that motivation is the energy or drive that causes people to act or behave .
It is important to understand that most actions are driven by the need to achieve a certain goal or accomplish a certain objective. For instance, in order to achieve the goal of excelling in a healthcare profession to serve their patients better, doctors and nurses are often ‘motivated’ to take up additional learning courses, engage in research studies and strive to expand and perfect their skill set.
Emotions are the resultant feelings after an individual has already performed an action; whether these feelings are positive or negative depend on how a person sees and evaluates the outcome of his/her behavior and these feelings are expressed through both verbal as well as non-verbal cues (facial expressions and body language).
When perceived as a success, i.e. the behavior enabled the person to accomplish the desired goal, results in feelings of happiness and contentment; failure on the other hand, causes disappointment, sadness and sometimes even anger. These post-action feelings in turn, are actually a major determinant of how the person will behave next. Interestingly, recent research has revealed that the most accurate way to interpret these emotions is by studying a person’s body language, instead of only judging the facial expressions .
Ghose explains that expressions often are confusing or provide incomplete information about how an individual is actually feeling at a particular time, for instance a tennis player who has won or lost a crucial set. People used to being in the spotlight often learn to control their expressions to not betray their feelings, but even the most well-trained actors are unable to completely master their body language cues . So chances of analyzing emotions accurately requires a combined analysis of expressions and body language, even if people mistakenly give more weightage to what they see on people’s faces.
Behavioral theorists such as E. Tory Higgins have classified this cause and effect relationship as the Self-Regulatory Theory. Higgins proposed that different individuals are motivated to pursue different lines of action in pursuit of the same goal; during this process, they continuously modify their actions depending on how closer or further they feel they are from the intended goal.
An important element to understand is the role that the environment plays in influencing people’s motivations, their actions and the end feelings; interaction with class mates, co-workers, family, friends and the extended social circle have been known to significantly affect all of the three. The priorities and goals we have from early on in life are determined by what we see around us and how we feel about it . The importance of education for instance, or the value attached to financial standing is influenced by what people see others around them deem important. Evaluations of success and failure are also relative; we often end up using either our reference groups or the set we believe we belong to as comparison points.
I will use an example from my work life (I work in the healthcare sector) here to illustrate this. I had been having problems with one of my co-workers for quite some time. Her attitude and behavior always made me feel that she was purposefully being discriminatory towards me by talking to me with condescension, questioning my judgement and knowledge and in general behaved in a very insulting manner. Usually I am a very calm person and do not like to confront people but on one instance she angered me so much that I told her I would report her to authorities and then left the room.
Later on I realized that instead of losing my cool, if I had asked her to step aside and then tried talking to her as to why she treated me this way, I think I would not have felt as helpless and immature as I did, when I just walked out of the room. In fact, I am quite certain that the immediate flash of anger on my face further aggravated the situation since it prompted my co-worker to escalate things. A more positive body language would have resolved the problem or at least increased the likelihood for it.
Works Cited
Ghose, Tia. "Is Your Partner Sad? Body Language Speaks Volumes." 29 November 2012. Livescience. Online. 2 April 2016.
