PSY 1115 Assessment 2 PDF

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Assessment 2 Tyla Francois 10441385 Edith Cowan University PSY1115 Psychology of Motivation and Emotion Dr Craig Harms 30th April, 2021Tyla Francois 10441385Case Study: Margaret Section 1 Losing weight is not an easy task and for Margaret, a 35 year old woman, she has struggled most of her adult lif...

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Assessment 2 Tyla Francois 10441385 Edith Cowan University PSY1115 Psychology of Motivation and Emotion Dr Craig Harms 30th April, 2021

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Tyla Francois 10441385 Case Study: Margaret Section 1

Losing weight is not an easy task and for Margaret, a 35 year old woman, she has struggled most of her adult life with her weight. Since the age of 21 Margaret has been classified obese and while dieting on and off for the past 14 years has some what worked, it appears the weight is always gained back after some time. Herman and Polivy (1984) suggest that most diets fail due to the inability to suppress or restrain themselves and they continue to exceed their own dietary boundaries set cognitively by them.

Section 2 The boundary model developed by Herman and Polivy in 1984, suggested that people who go on diets often have shifted their biological satiety and hunger thresholds, replacing them with a cognitive dietary limit that imposes rules on food intake which help in achieve a desired weight (Stroebe et al., 2008). For example, if a person ever crosses their cognitive boundary by consuming chocolate, the ‘what the hell effect’ sets in, and they will eat until they are satisfied and hit their physiological limit, which is higher than for non-restrictive eaters. The likelihood of failure grows when the diet becomes increasingly restrictive or if one is emotionally distressed, since the enforced self-control is put to the test more and more; whereas in eaters who are unrestrained, their eating is controlled more automatically by satiety cues and internal hunger (Herman & Polivy, 1984). Herman and Polivy (1984) state that restrained eaters are often less receptive to bodily appetite and satiation signals as a result of their excessive dieting and overeating. Eating behaviour is cognitively regulated that necessitates the use of cognitive resources, all of which is a controlled process. Restrained eaters are capable of sticking to their diet rules if they are willing and driven to focus on the !

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control of their food, overeating, on the other hand, will occur if their desire or ability to control their eating is compromised. The boundary model proposes two types of variables that can hinder restrained eaters' ability to regulate their eating and lead to overeating, namely the experience of intense emotions and a prior diet boundary breach (Herman & Polivy, 1984). Restrained eaters, according to Herman and Policy (1984), have a greater zone of biological indifference, meaning they feel hungry much more easily but take longer to feel full.

Section 3 Margaret describes her experiences with dieting and how she always puts weight back on while she is still on a diet and thinks that the diet is working. Margaret diets often, meaning she would be setting herself constant goals and rules in her head of what she needs to accomplish in order to lose weight. For someone that has been dieting for 14 years, the automatic response your body has to feeling hungry and full would have been shifted around continuously, with Margaret becoming oblivious to hunger and satiation stimuli as a result of her habit of constantly ignoring her bodily signals. With Margaret being stressed at work, emotional anguish according to Herman and Polivy (1984), undermines the motivation of dieting by foisting issues that seem more pressing than weight management. This can lead Margaret to violating her diet boundary, giving up all attempts at eating control, and continue until her satiety boundary is reached, resulting in a cycle of binging, re-gaining and dieting again.

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Tyla Francois 10441385 Case Study: Mark Section 1

According to the Australian Government Department of Health (2020), men should be drinking no more than 10 standard drinks per week to reduce health risks. Mark, a 35 year old man, discloses that on average he consumes around twenty-four standard drinks a week, about four standard drinks, six days a week. Mark uses alcohol to de-stress at the end of each day after working full-time, while also advising he’s a heavy social drinker, insisting he will have a better time after consuming more alcohol. Alcohol and drugs are commonly sought because of their hedonic effects, according to motivational models of addiction (i.e., increasing pleasure or decreasing stress). The incentive-sensitization theory put forward by Dr. Kent Berridge and Dr. Terry Robinson in 1993, on the other hand, claims that wanting and liking motivation are separate, and that motivation changes from liking to wanting after regular substance use (Robinson & Berridge, 2008).

Section 2 The incentive sensitisation theory of addiction holds that constant subjugation to addictive substances can alter brain cells and circuits that control the attribution of incentive salience to a stimulus (Robinson & Berridge, 1993). Incentive salience is a strong type of desire that arises when the brain forms a strong link between a stimulus and a reward. While this correlation is formed subconsciously, it can quickly begin to influence external actions. The desire to obtain more of this stimuli can be extremely intense. This is why, even though an addict no longer enjoys alcohol, they feel obligated to consume it according to (Robinson & Berridge, 1993). Individuals who are constantly subjected to these substances, such as !

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alcohol, can become hypersensitive. Robinson and Berridge (1993) suggests that the substance will trigger neurobehavioral processes even more intensely in the future, and when this occurs the person will have higher gratification from using the substance. This hypersensitisation causes incentive salience as well as signs of symptoms of addiction, rather than simply enjoying it, the individual now has a sense of want and need for it.

Robinson & Berridge (2008) state that excessive wanting can be activated by drug related cues or mental representations after sensitisation of brain mesolimbic systems, particularly in contexts where alcohol has been experienced before or in other particular situations such as when a person is under stress or similar circumstances. Sensitised wanting responses may be facilitated by particular situations, triggers, or mood states. When coupled with a lack of control over your executive functions and behaviour, such as that caused by substance abuse prefrontal cortex dysfunction, incentive sensitisation leads to the classic symptoms of addiction (Robinson & Berridge, 2008).

Section 3 Mark wants to understand the psychological factors that underly the want and need that lead to problem drinking. When referring to the incentive sensitisation theory, mark has subjected himself to a large amount of alcohol for such a long period of time that his responses to the substance have become hyper-sensitised, in that each time his response to the drink got better and felt more euphoric, associating his stress free state after work for example, to alcohol. This euphoria leads to a state of unconscious correlation between the stimulus and reward. Subconsciously after some time, Mark has developed the need for that feeling, for what he originally associated alcohol with, regardless of enjoying the actual !

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beverage. The same goes for when mark enjoys a night out with friends, he insists that he has more fun after he’s had a few drinks. Mark may have experienced a night with his friends after a lot of alcohol was consumed that he holds in his memory as one of the best nights, this could lead to a sensitised wanting response or excessive want, that being out with his friends triggers every time he goes out, he believes he needs alcohol in order to have the same experience. Although, when combined with the disruption alcohol has on your prefrontal cortex which controls self monitoring, self control and impulse inhibition, this is what then leads to problem drinking and addiction.

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Tyla Francois 10441385 References

Australian Government Department of Health. (2020). How much alcohol is safe to drink?. Australian Government. https://www.health.gov.au/health-topics/alcohol/aboutalcohol/how-much-alcohol-is-safe-to-drink Herman, C., & Polivy, J. (1984). A Boundary Model for the Regulation of Eating. Psychiatric Annals, 13(12), 918-927. https://doi.org/10.3928/0048-5713-19831201-03 Robinson, T., & Berridge, K. (1993). The neural basis of drug craving: An incentivesensitization theory of addiction. Brain Research Reviews, 18(3), 247-291. https:// doi.org/10.1016/0165-0173(93)90013-p Robinson, T., & Berridge, K. (2008). The incentive sensitization theory of addiction: some current issues. Philosophical Transactions Of The Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 363(1507), 3137-3146. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2008.0093 Stroebe, W., Mensink, W., Aarts, H., Schut, H., & Kruglanski, A. (2008). Why dieters fail: Testing the goal conflict model of eating. Journal Of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(1), 26-36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2007.01.005

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