User:Allong22/sandbox

Affective states are considered psychophysiological constructs and are splint up into three main categories, valence, motivational intensity, and arousal. Valence is the positive-to-negative evaluation of the subjectively experienced state. Emotional valence is defined as referring to the emotion’s consequences, eliciting circumstances, or subjective feel or attitude. Motivational intensity is the strength of urge to move toward or away from a stimulus. It is the impulse to move toward, without knowing the specific valence of stimuli toward which the impulse is directed, and without the requirement of any evoking stimulus. Motivation focuses on peoples’ desired urge to act; simply moving is not approach motivation without a motivational urge present. Arousal is by the activation of the sympathetic nervous system and can be measured subjectively. Arousal is a construct that is closely related to motivational intensity but they differ because motivation requires action implications while arousal does not. All three of these categories are important when looking at cognitive scope as a whole.

The Motivational Intensity theory states that the difficulty of a task combined with the importance of success determine the energy invested by an individual. There are three main layers to the motivational intensity theory. The innermost layer says human behavior is guided by the desire to conserve as much energy as possible. This is simply stating that individuals aim to avoid wasting energy so they invest only the energy that is required to complete the task. The middle layer focuses on the difficulty of tasks combined with the importance of success and how this affects energy conservation. This layer focuses on energy investment in situations of clear and unclear task difficulty. The last layer looks at predictions for energy invested by a person when they have several possible options to choose at different task difficulties. The person is free to choose among several possible options of task difficulty. The motivational intensity theory offers a logical and consistent framework for research. Researchers can predict a person’s actions by assuming effort refers to the energy investment. The motivational intensity theory is used to show how changes in goal attractiveness cause changes in energy investment.

Researchers connected motivational intensity to clinical applications and found that when individuals possess strong motivation to consume alcohol; stimuli associated with alcohol are more likely to attract attention
 * Addition to Kayla's part about clinical applications***

The Alcohol Myopia Theory (AMT) states that alcohol consumption reduces the amount of information available in memory, which also narrows attention so only the most proximal items or striking sources are encompassed in attentional scope. This narrowed attention leads intoxicated persons to make more extreme decisions than they would when sober. Researchers provided evidence that substance-related stimuli capture the attention of individuals when they have high and intense motivation to consume the substance. Motivational intensity and cue-induced narrowing of attention has a unique role in shaping people’s initial decision to consume alcohol.

Allong22 (talk)