c. Adaptive Response
Adaptive function of emotions is to strengthen the social ties between individuals and group.
Adaptive behavior refers to behavior that enables a person to get along in his or her environment with greatest success and least conflict with others. In
education, adaptive behavior is defined as that which 1 meets the needs of the community of stakeholders parents, teachers, peers, and later employers and 2
meets the needs of the learner, now and in the future. Specifically, these behaviors include such as effective speech, self-help, using money, cooking, and reading.
Atwater 1983:82
2. Awareness of Our Emotions
a. Intensity of Arousal
This intense emotional reaction serves to arouse or motivate us to action. But when we fell little or nothing is demanded of us. The intensity of our
emotions is probably influenced be hereditary factors, such as the characteristics of our nervous system and glands. Age is also a factor. Children and adolescents
level of emotion is also influenced by our learning experiences Atwater, 1983: 83.
b. Personal Meaning
In general, the pleasant emotions such as joy, ecstasy, and love accompany the satisfaction of our needs and desires, while the unpleasant emotions such as
fear, anger, and jealously accompany interference or deprivation. In other words the personal significant an emotion has for us tell us which kind of change is
occurring in our inner motivational sate in turn provides us with intuitive cues for an appropriate response to the stimuli around us Atwater, 1983:84.
Plutchick’s model of emotions, each section of the cone represents a specific emotion. The horizontal dimension refers to the type of emotional
meaning, and vertical dimension refers to the intensity of arousal. The eight types of emotional meaning arranged to the top of the cone according to how similar or
different they are in relation to each other. Positive emotions are ecstasy, acceptance, and amazement. Negative emotions are rage, vigilance, loathing, grief
and terror. Some emotions are so different from each that they are polar extremes or opposites, such as ecstasy and grief. The vertical dimension represents the
differences among emotions according to their intensity. Notice that the feeling of pensiveness is less intense than grief, but has a similar meaning for us Atwater,
1983: 85. c.
Momentary Experience
Knowing this adult can help us to experiences and express our emotions more fully at the moment, realizing that our emotions may change. When our
moods resist change without sufficient reason in our circumstance, we may begin to suspect the presence of
pathological factors, which may be either physical or psychological Atwater, 1983:86.
D. Concept of Motivations
In a sense, the entire field of psychology has to do with explaining behavior in terms of its underlying causes. But in traditionally been called
motivation refers specifically to the study of inner causes. Motivation refers to the inner conditions that energize and direct us toward purposive, goal seeking
behavior Atwater 1983:23.
1. Motive
