Motivation And Cognition

Total assignment should be 6 pages plus a title and reference page

1.  People with a deliberative mindset are very good at thinking about what they need to do, whereas people who have developed an implemental mindset have the ability to narrow in on a specific goal or facets of a specific goal.  Considering an example from your own life, how might you develop a deliberative or implemental mindset to complement the mindset that you already use?

2.  What is your understanding of the difference between self-efficacy and ability?  Is there a difference?  Is the difference important? Give an original example to support your response.

3.  Imagine being a cognitively oriented therapist who has two clients. One client suffers from severe self-doubt about his capacity to cope successfully with the demands of college.  College is an overwhelming experience.  What strategies might you use to reverse his high doubt and replace it with high confidence?  The other client suffers from severe helplessness about her capacity to cope successfully with her boyfriend relationship.  Her boyfriend is unresponsive, and everything she tries to do to improve the relationship seems to fall on a deaf ear.  What strategies might you use to reverse her high helplessness and replace it with mastery motivation?

4.  Suppose you are a counselor at a summer camp for delinquent pre-teenage boys who lack any occupational aspirations and exhibit antisocial interaction styles.  You are having a meeting to brainstorm how to use the possible selves literature to provide these boys with an expanded view of their future selves.  Would this meeting be a good idea or a bad idea, and why? Include a discussion of the biological basis of antisocial behavior.

5.  In the following example, explain why the emotion of fear/terror rather than the physiological need for air is the primary motivator: A child puts a sweater on over his head, it gets stuck, and the child experiences a moment of air deprivation.  He then shows panic-like emotion and finally coping behavior. Differentiate between the emotional and biological aspects of the child’s reaction.

6.  Discuss the “cognition versus biology” debate in the study of emotion.  Outline first the cognitive position and then the biological position.  Discuss one possible, satisfying resolution to the cognition versus biology debate, using an original example to illustrate this resolution.