Cast Away

I have watched this movie a couple times before, long enough ago to where the details were blurry. Upon watching this time, however, I saw it in a completely different light.
The first principle I would like to discuss is the prevalence of physiological needs in the movie. Because the character Chuck is trying to survive, his physiological needs of thirst and hunger are very strong. Chapter four discusses the physiology of thirst and says that thirst may arise because we are continuously losing water through sweating, urinating, breathing, bleeding, vomiting, and sneezing. I believe one of the reasons Chuck is so thirsty is because he has lost his water mainly through sweating (it seems like the island he’s on is somewhat tropical) and bleeding (he injures himself in the plane crash and we can see blood on his face after he wakes up on the island).
It is obvious to us that Chuck is thirsty because one of the first things he does after waking up on the island is to break coconuts. Chuck is very motivated to get the coconuts open so he tries multiple ways to break them open (throwing them at a boulder, hitting a rock on them, and trying to cut them open with sharp rocks). Chuck’s intraorganismic mechanisms were at work directing his motivations to find and consume some kind of water. Because he was so water deprived, his full attention was on finding any way to open the coconut. Another scene in the movie does a very good job of depicting Chuck’s motivation to find something to drink. After Chuck has tried to get off the island with the blow up boat, he injures his leg pretty badly and ends up finding shelter in a cave. While Chuck sits there for a minute analyzing his surroundings, he sees a small stream of water pooling into a puddle a few feet away. Chuck realizes how thirsty he is and painfully crawls over to the dirty puddle and drinks, much like a wild animal, from the puddle of water. He is also shown drinking rainwater out of leaves. At this point, environmental influences had no influence on Chuck’s motivation to drink. The taste of the water made no difference to him.
Another physiological need Chuck had was hunger. Because it had been so long since he had last eaten, Chuck’s blood glucose levels were probably low leading his lateral hypothalamus to signal to his body that it was time to eat. A few scenes in the movie show Chuck’s motivation to find food. The first is the scene where he tries to fish for food by spearing the fish. The first fish Chuck catches is a tiny little fish about the size of his pinky. Because he is so hungry, he eats the fish whole and alive. In another scene, Chuck eats a crab he catches. In this case, too, environmental influences have no influence on Chuck’s motivation to eat and find food. He is very limited in the variety of food he can eat and he has no social influences.
The second principle I wanted to talk about in relation to this movie and chapter 4 was the idea of social needs. According to chapter 4, social needs include such things as achievement, intimacy, and power. Chuck has the need for nurturance and social interaction so he gets motivated to create “Wilson”, his volleyball friend. Throughout Chuck’s stay on the island we see multiple conversations with Wilson, some pleasant and others not. In a specific scene, Wilson gets blown off the raft and we see Chuck’s attempt to “rescue” him and how he grieves his friend’s loss after he realizes he will not reach him. Moreover, Chuck’s longing for Kelly is another example of his need for intimacy and this may explain why Chuck was so motivated to keep the watch/picture she gave to him before he left.

Terms: physiological needs, intraorganismic mechanisms, environmental influences, social influences, blood glucose levels, social needs, lateral hypothalamus

We learned in chapter 1 that motivation is not simply present or nonexistent, but rather falls along a continuum. With this idea comes the concept that greater irritation leads to greater motivation to alter our behavior, and we see this concept develop throughout the first part of the movie with Chuck’s toothache. The movie begins by Chuck telling his girlfriend that he needs to visit the dentist, but that he was dreading it. Once he is stranded on the island, we see him grab his mouth in pain when he tries to eat a coconut, yet he is still not motivated to try to fix it. Later, the tooth bothers him enough that he checks its condition in the ice skate blade, and Chuck eventually ends up in so much pain that he knocks the tooth out of his mouth in order to feel relief. This sequence began with Chuck having little motivation to solve his problem, and eventually having so much motivation to get rid of his tooth that he could hardly function anymore until he did so.

Chapter 1 also discusses different types of motivation, and a number of them were present in Chuck’s character as he tried to stay alive while he was on the island. Perceived competence was the most obvious to me, and it occurred after Chuck finally got a fire started. His small victory caused him to jump up and down and whoop with delight, and this was the first time that Chuck was in a good mood since he became stranded. Introjection was also a motivator for Chuck, and I saw this when he left his cave in the middle of a storm in order to retrieve Wilson, whom he had just thrown out in frustration. No one that I know would willingly get drenched by the rain in order to retrieve a volleyball; Chuck’s action was definitely motivated by guilt.

In chapter 3 we learned about how neurotransmitters and hormones underlie motivation, emotion and behavior. One hormone – oxytocin – is often called the “tend and befriend stress response” (pg. 67), because it causes people to seek others during times of stress. Chuck underwent a traumatic experience when his plane crashed, and when he ended up all alone on the island. He did not have anyone around to offer him support with all of the stress that he was feeling, so he ended up turning a volleyball into his best friend, “Wilson”. Chuck confided in Wilson as though he were a real person, which helped him to keep as much sanity as he could during his isolation. Oxytocin is the reason that Chuck behaved the way that he did; his companion-seeking actions were biologically-based.

Chapter 4 talks about basic physiological needs. A need is something that is “essential and necessary for life, growth, and well-being” (pg. 77), such as water and food. When we have everything that we need, we are said to have homeostasis, which means that our bodies are at a stable, internal equilibrium. When we are deprived of what we need, we begin to behave in ways that allow us to obtain whatever our bodies are lacking; this is the basic idea of the drive theory. Chuck’s need for water drove him to drink coconut milk, even though it was a natural laxative. He drank water from the leaves of plants, and also drank the water that ran off the cave walls into a muddy puddle. Were his need for water not so great, or were his homeostasis not so displaced, Chuck would have abstained from these behaviors. However, he had such a strong need for water that he did not care about the condition that the fluid was in, but cared only that he had something to drink at all. It took him a long time to figure out how to open up the coconut shells for the milk inside, and until he solved that problem, cracking the shells was all that Chuck could focus on.

In addition to a strong need for water, Chuck also needed food. After reading the text, we know that the lack of nutrients that Chuck’s body was facing caused a release of a hormone called ghrelin; the ghrelin sent signals to Chuck’s hypothalamus which made him consciously aware that he was hungry and should search for food. Chuck was so hungry on the island that he was driven to stick an entire live, raw fish into his mouth as soon as he caught it. He continued to eat raw fish throughout his stay there, which is something that he would not have done had he not been so strongly motivated to eat due to his hunger.

Terms: perceived competence, introjection, oxytocin, needs, homeostasis, drive theory, ghrelin, hypothalamus

Wow. I had never seen this movie before. Someone described it to me and I thought it was going to be awful the way it sounded. Turns out it was amazing! Looking at it from a motivational and emotional standpoint was interesting as well.

Right off the bat I noticed when he got onto the island he was dripping with sweat. You can see through his t-shirt and forehead that he is losing water throughout the day. This automatically triggered what I had just read in chapter four about thirst and hunger. Through his perspiration, urination, and bleeding, he had to have lost his 2% of water plus more to feel thirsty and dehydrated. This caused intense motivation to try and open the coconut. Even though he was hot and tired, he spent hours and hours trying to open one. He had a physiological need caused by dehydration. His intracellular and extracellular deficits were causing extreme thirst that he could not ignore. If he didn’t have motivation at this point in time, he could’ve easily died from dehydration. This is the case throughout the entire movie. Without his motivation, he could have easily given up and just died.

After a while, Chuck’s body is not able to maintain homeostasis, or equilibrium, so he becomes hungry, tired, irritable, and a “little” delusional. Signals were sent to his hypothalamus to indicate that he needed food and water as soon as possible. Once Chuck finally got the coconuts open, he had eaten them for days and days. Therefore, he became satiated, and thus did not want to eat any more coconuts. Chuck became so hungry that he had enough motivation to go out in the water and attempt to catch fish. He attempted to catch fish with a net he invented and he only caught a minnow. But he was to the point where he didn’t care, and he ate the minnow raw. He also wanted to start a fire to cook his food but he couldn’t get it started. He was in an approach orientated motivational state when he was hopeful to start the fire. His hope kept him going along with the hope that he would see his wife again. His drive, or the psychological discomfort stemming from the underlying and persistent biological deficit, is what kept him going even when he wanted to give up. He even planned his suicide, but somehow stayed motivated to continue on. There was some intrinsic motivation taking place inside him that pushed him to continue on, even after 4 years. It had to have been very difficult for him to stay social and psychologically stable since there were no day to day events that came about socially to stir his biochemical agents relating to social events.

There were so many types of aversive motivational situations taking place that it was only a matter of time until he cracked (and started talking to a volleyball). All of these events like pain, hunger, and distress, caused Chuck to use avoidance motivational techniques to avoid threatening, anxiety-provoking situations. For example, Chuck’s feet kept getting cut up by rocks and sticks throughout the island. This motivated him to find materials to create shoes with, so that he could avoid this pain and distress. He did the same thing when he got both cuts on his body. He avoided further injury by wrapping the wound. With this, he avoided infection as well as more loss of blood, which again would further his dehydration as well. Chuck also clearly needed social interaction, a psychological need, to the point where he started talking to himself and Wilson, his volleyball.

One of my favorite parts of the movie was when Chuck was trying to create a fire. He had tried and tried to the point where he was losing hope. When he finally saw that flame, it’s like all of his dopamine, which generates good feelings, released at once. He was screaming and jumping up and down like he just won the lottery.

In conclusion, this was an amazing movie that showed motivation and emotion in many different situations. Some if it was good while a lot was motivation just to keep himself alive. The willingness to live for himself and for his girl kept him going throughout the movie.

Terms: thirst, hunger, physiological need, motivation, intracellular and extracellular deficits, homeostasis, hypothalamus, satiated, approach orientated motivational state, drive, intrinsic motivation, biochemical agents, aversive motivational situations, avoidance motivation, psychological need, dopamine

This was my first time watching Cast Away. It is a great movie in which to apply motivation and emotion terms and principles.

Chuck’s amygdala plays an important role in Cast Away as he perceives other people’s emotions, facial expressions, and mood. At the dinner table with his girlfriend, his beeper rings and he realizes, by her facial expression, that she is upset about having to leave their current setting. Additionally, Chuck’s amygdala helps him interpret the facial expressions, mood, and emotions of the pilots on the plane before it crashes. His amygdala allows him to understand the severity of the situation and thus take precautionary measures such as grabbing a life-raft.

Ghrelin plays a major role in Chuck’s life as he tries to adapt to living on the island. A day or two after the crash, ghrelin sends a message to Chuck’s hypothalamus and is registered as hunger. Once Chuck realizes how hungry he is (he is unsure of the progress of any rescue crews) his hypothalamus begins to regulate his eating and drinking. This can be seen in the scene when Chuck is attempting to crack open the coconuts to drink the fluid inside. The act of Chuck attempting to open the coconuts is described by the drive theory. The drive theory states that physiological deprivations and deficits create biological needs. If needs continue unsatisfied, the biological deprivation becomes potent enough to occupy attention and generate psychological drive (his decision to obtain fluids). An additional term that can be used here is physiological need. Chuck’s physiological needs of thirst and hunger are present because they are deficient in his biological system. His physiological needs are not being met when he is first stranded on the island, and thus his physiological needs become present. Another important point to make is that of thirst activation. For the reason that Chuck’s cells were dehydrated, his osmometric thirst arose in order to cause thirst activation and force him to find a way to hydrate his cells (drink fluids/water).

Another need that can be seen in Cast Away is social need. Social needs are those needs fulfilled by achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power. Chuck is deficient in his social needs as he is the only human on the island. To fulfill his social needs he creates Wilson. Through Wilson, Chuck is able to maintain affiliation and intimacy as he strives to survive. Another reason that Chuck creates Wilson the hormone called oxytocin. This bonding hormone helps to psychologically explain why Chuck created Wilson – in order to have “someone” to confide in during the stressful time on the island.

Within the movie Cast Away, Chuck finds means of creating positive stimulation. When Chuck finally has success with making a fire, his neurotransmitter, dopamine, generates good feelings associated with his reward, fire (thus his excited expression and ecstatic behavior when flames appear). Another contributor to this pleasure for Chuck is his medial forebrain bundle. When this “pleasure center” is stimulated, it creates positive feelings upon receiving positive reinforcement. Another point in the movie in which his medial forebrain bundle is activated is upon using the “sail” in his attempt to overcome the tide. Positive feelings are present and a feeling of accomplishment accompanies the positive reinforcement received.

Chuck’s orbitofrontal cortex also plays a key role in this movie. The orbitofrontal cortex is active when people consider their options. After realizing that his stay on the island will be exceptionally long, Chuck tracks the days and years and also tracks the tides. Upon finding the “sail,” Chuck considers his options and likelihood of escaping the island. For the reason that this brain structure processes incentive-related information (the chance to get off the island), Chuck is able to make a choice between his options of when to make it past the tides.

Intraorganismic mechanisms as well as extraorganismic mechanisms are present in Cast Away. Intraorganismic mechanisms include all biological regulatory systems within a person that act in concert to activate, maintain, and terminate, physiological needs. The biological regulatory systems analyzed in this blog post are those including such structures as: amygdala, hypothalamus, medial forebrain bundle, and orbitofrontal cortex. Each of these structures and their systems served as means to activate, maintain, and terminate Chuck’s physiological needs. Extraorganismic mechanisms include all environmental influences that play a part in activating, maintaining, and terminating psychological drive. One of the main extraorganismic mechanisms present in this film was Wilson. Wilson served to satisfy Chuck’s cognitive and social needs while stranded on the island.

A final and vastly important term is drive. Drive, to service bodily needs, was essential in Chuck’s escape as he realized that he would not be able to live on the island forever. He did not have the means to forever fulfill his physiological and psychological needs. Thus, Chuck’s drive and motivation allowed him to cast away from the island and find his way back to civilization.

Terms: amygdala, ghrelin, hypothalamus, drive theory, physiological need, thirst activation, osmometric thirst, social need, oxytocin, neurotransmitter, dopamine, medial forebrain bundle, orbitofrontal cortex, intraorganismic mechanisms, extraorganismic mechanisms, drive

I had totally forgotten how great of a movie this is. Tom Hanks is such an astounding actor. He plays roles in movies that only a select few can (Forrest Gump, Cast Away, The Green Mile). But let’s get back to the real point of the movie. This movie reflects the first four chapters of our book so well. The first concept that you notice is that correlation of physiological needs in the movie. Since Tom Hank’s character Chuck is trying to survive during the whole course of the movie, his physiological needs of thirst and hunger are very relevant. The chapter tells us that thirst arises because we are always losing water in our bodies. This happens through sweating, urinating, breathing, sneezing, bleeding, ect…. During his time on the island it is obvious that he is very thirsty at times. He is very keen at wanting to try and break open coconuts. A couple factors that affected him are that he cuts his hand early and had to make a homemade wrap around it. So along with him bleeding, he is on a tropical island which makes him sweat more than if it was not such a Caribbean place. The whole time on this uninhabited island, he thrives for liquids many times. Chuck had a “drive” and was determined to satisfy his need of liquid. This was very clear when he had a leg injury, found a cave, and was crawling as best he could to a little stream of water that looked very dirty. For him, it did not matter how sanitary or tasteful the water was, it was just a matter of being able to find some.

A scene that I really like and get a heartwarming feeling is when he finally gets that first fire started. Right when you see that little flame start to build up, not just for Chuck but for me too, you feel accomplished. During that time, Chuck is experience dopamine release. Dopamine signals the prospect of an upcoming reward and teaches us when specified events in the environment are rewarding. Dopamine release is greatest when they are unpredicted. Along with this, your mind is also told that you will be rewarded again in the future when an event like this happens again.

Like mentioned before, hunger had a huge role in this movie too. There were times where he would go without eating for an extended period, so his blood levels were low which prompted him to want to eat. Ghrelin would send a message to Chuck’s hypothalamus and it then triggers hunger. Over the course of the movie it hunting skills get much better. He has to figure out and adapt to what the best way is. If he sits back and waits, he may starve. So he has to be determined at getting food any way possible. This reflects his determination and motivation to live. At first, when he is spear fishing, he catches a tiny fish, but that did not matter to him, as he eats it anyway. With the circumstances with him on the island by himself and the environmental influences, Chuck is not picky. He knows he does not have much choice, so he has to eat what he can when the opportunity arises.

The last principle I would like to talk about is social needs. WILSON. Enough said. In chapter four, social needs preserve our identities, beliefs, values, and interpersonal relationships. When Chuck finds the volleyball, he is in severe need for companionship. So throughout the whole movie, he talks to him, he argues with him, he yells at him. He does all these things that two real humans can do. For Chuck’s sake, it does not matter that it is only a volleyball because he just wants an excuse for social interaction. He builds a special bond with Wilson and it is very clear when Wilson gets blown off the raft and Chuck cannot reach him. Chuck really takes it to heart and grievances in his friend’s loss.

Terms: physiological needs, thirst, hunger, drive, dopamine, blood levels, ghrelin, hypothalamus, environmental influences, social needs

The movie “Cast Away” has many relevant scenes with regard to motivation and emotion. The first scene I would like to focus on was one of the beginning scenes where Chuck (Tom Hanks) is setting up a clock/timer on the wall at the FedEx station. Chuck is raising his voice and changing tones because he wants to get packages delivered on time. Chuck could have numerous types of motivation in this scene. He could have extrinsic motivation just because he is paid to do the job, or he could be motivated because his goal is to have a fast time upon delivery. Chuck could be competing with other mail delivery companies so that is why he wants his employees to work as fast as they can. In that same scene, the young boy delivers Chuck’s own package back to him in Russia. Chuck rewards the kid with a candy bar and a CD player. The boy is reinforced with these gifts; therefore his medial forebrain bundle is stimulated.

The scene where Chuck and Kelly were at the dinner table with their families on Christmas displayed several motivational acts. Not only was everyone eating to meet their needs, but they were eating and sharing conversation because of relatedness. This was a family get together, and everyone was socializing with each other. When you socialize you are more likely to engage in eating behaviors. I also noticed that when Chuck took a mouthful of food that he experienced some pain. He had previously stated that he was having trouble with his mouth and needed to go to the dentist. Chucks body provided him with negative feedback because he felt pain in his mouth, so he stopped eating. His right prefrontal cortex was stimulated after because he felt the need to avoid the pain that would continue if he ate more food.

The next scene I would like to evaluate is where the plane is going down. Here, emotions are running high for all the people in the plane. While the passengers in the plane, Chuck, may have feelings of fear, pilots display physiological preparedness. They have to be trained for situations like these where motions are high, but they need to react to the situation to meet the demand of survival. While the plane was descending, I can only image that everyone was in fear of this potentially life-threatening situation. The amygdala was probably stimulated while their anxiety was high. When Chuck was in the water right after he surface, he noticed that the engine was fire and about to explode. He made the decision to dive under water so he would be unharmed from the explosion and debris. In this situation, his nucleus accumbens was active as he had a choice, and realized what he needed to do.

Physiological needs were displayed numerous times throughout the movie, especially when Chuck was stranded on the island. Chuck was hungry and thirsty while on his island so his hypothalamus told him he needed to eat. As Chuck went longer without food while he already had that emotion, his hunger and thirst became a drive. According to the drive theory (pg. 79), when Chuck couldn’t satisfy his hunger or thirst, he was driven to find food and water. I like the scene where he had to open the coconuts and spear the fish. After he was able to get food and water, his body returned to homeostasis since his physiological needs had been satisfied.

Terms: emotion, feelings, physiological preparedness, amygdala, nucleus accumbens, physiological needs, hypothalamus, drive theory, medial forebrain bundle, extrinsic motivation, relatedness, right prefrontal cortex

After watching this movie again I never realized all the small details I did the second time around and how much it relates to our class! The actor Tom Hanks plays a guy named Chuck who owns a FedEx company. He shows motivation about his job in the beginning of the movie. He was trying to get his employees motivated to work faster. He was motivated to stay alive after the plane crash and did whatever he had to do to stay alive. He was also motivated trying to start a fire. He was so motivated that he even cut his hand open in the process. On the other hand, Chuck was not motivated to go to the dentist and said he had put off going for years. After dealing with his tooth pain for so long and struggled to eat he used his resources by using the ice skate blade as a mirror to evaluate the problem. He eventually couldn’t stand the pain any longer and used a rock and the ice skate blade to knock out the tooth and relieve the pain.

I was surprised at how fast Chuck reacted when the plane went down. He used his instinct to decide what to do in a split second decision. His instincts kicked in when he had to adapt to the environment as well. After spending the first night in the rain on the island he then made a shelter out of the raft and other items he could find on the island. He wrote help in the sand but after the waves washed it away, he used his resources and used tree branches to spell out help. When he kept getting cut up doing various things such as breaking open coconuts, starting fires, or getting cut up on the coral after an unsuccessful attempt to leave he used the ice skate laces and bubble wrap from the packages to cover his injuries. He adapted to the environment because he had to, it was life or death.

When Chuck got stranded he had to adapt to the environment and the little resources he had around him. Psychological needs became present and survival mode kicked in with food and thirst. You could tell Chuck was thirsty because he was trying to break open coconuts anyway he could. He was determined. During one of the rain storms he found a little cave to seek shelter in. In that cave there was a little opening where water was trickling in forming a puddle. Chuck drank the water out of the puddle because he was extremely thirsty and had no other option at that point. Food deprivation activates hunger. The text discusses ghrelin which is the hormone released sending a signal to Chuck telling him he is hungry. Thirst, hunger and sex are psychological needs. Need is a condition within a person that is vital and crucial for life and well-being. The book states that when needs are met, well-being is maintained. If the needs are not met, the need will become damaging. This statement makes me think about Chuck wanting to commit suicide. He was so lonely and wanted to give up because his needs weren’t being met.

He eventually opened the FedEx packages that had floated to shore a while back and found tools to help him survive such as the ice skate blades, VHS tapes and a couple clothing items he used in various ways. In one of the packages he found a Wilson made volleyball. Chuck desired social needs. Chuck named the ball Wilson and eventually starting talking to the ball as if it was an actual human. Chuck would even respond as if Wilson was responding back to him. He also drew pictures on the side of the cave he found so he could have some other company to look at and talk to. He always kept his compass open so he could look at the picture of Kelly. He longed to be with her again. In one part of the movie he got mad and threw Wilson out of the cave, it took him a second to realize what he had done but after that second he ran out of the cave in search for Wilson. At first he couldn’t find Wilson back and he began to panic. Once he found Wilson, he hugged and comforted the ball as if he and an actual person had just had a fight. He even apologized to Wilson and told him it would never happen again. When Chuck left the island on the raft for the second and final time Wilson somehow fell off the raft. Chuck jumped off the raft and tried to save Wilson but he was too far out of his reach. Chuck got back on the raft and started to cry as if he was grieving an actual death of a human.

Terms used- psychological needs, environmental needs, social needs, ghrelin, thirst, hunger, instinct

It is easy to find examples of motivation and emotion principles in Cast Away when one simply looks at Tom Hanks' character Chuck. Perhaps the easiest and most obvious are his motivations are his physiological needs, and more specifically those of hunger and thirst. In chapter four the textbook explains our bodies need for food and water to survive. Because we loose water through things like breathing, bleeding, urinating, and sweating (all things Chucks body went through while on the island) our body is physiologically driven to find water to replenish the water lost, otherwise we will die. Chuck spends an ample amount of his time on the island (especially the first few days) breaking coconuts for water, searching for rain water, and collecting it for later because the drive for thirst is so important to his brain and body that it comes above all else.
A perfect example of this is when Chuck cuts his leg on the coral while trying to raft to the boat in the distance. His body is loosing a lot of blood, and thus a lot of water, so when he finally crawls back to shore, the fist thing he does is drink the available water. The only available water to Chuck is a dirty puddle, however his need and drive for water are so great that it doesn't matter what it tastes like, Chuck just needs water, any water, right now to replenish what he's lost from his injury.
Hunger also plays a major role in Chucks motivated behaviors while on the island.
Hunger is also a major motivation for Chuck while on the island. When an individual lacks food/nutrients, as we learned in chapter three, the stomach releases gherlin, which stimulates the hypothalamus to create the feeling of hunger. Much like the way Chuck was forced to seek out water, his physiological needs eventually forced him to find a way to get those nutrients, originally from the coconut meat and eventually from the crab and fish.
We also learned in chapter three about a hormone called Oxytocin, also referred to as the 'tend and befriend stress response' because it is released in times of stress, and causes us to bond with the people around us. This explains Chucks relationship with Wilson the volleyball. Chuck had no one on the island to bond to in these times of extreme stress, so was forced to he create someone with whom he could seek counsel, support, and nurturance. It is obvious both in his 'fight' with Wilson in the cave, and later during Wilsons 'death' how strong this bond with Wilson has become over the 4+ years.
Terms: Physiological Needs,Ghrelin, Motive, Drive, Hypothalamus, Oxytocin

I think we watched this film too early in the semester. Although part of this film portrays the satisfaction of physiological needs, it also demonstrates details of psychological and social needs, as well as cognition aspects of motivation. We can understand the movie better after we read those chapters.

Before I dig into the concepts on the textbook, I would also like to point out that the author of the book spent too little space to write about pain, which is the main theme of this movie. We can certainly see all the blood along with the physical pain of the character. Yet I also noticed the emotional pain, or depression, shown to the audience throughout the film. Pain is an important topic in health psychology, and I don't see why it should not be influential to human motivation, especially in a society where many seniors suffer from chronic illness instead of dying quick and clean.

On Page 11 the author talks about engagement, which is demonstrated in the film through the actions to a volleyball. As shown in Figure 1.3, the behavioral engagement includes attention and effort, such as the way he keeps the ball around as a company. The emotional aspect is shown as the character puts much interest in the ball like it is a living person. The cognitive aspect starts when he draws a face on the ball and converts an lifeless item to a supposed animal. In a way that is a really creative learning strategy. And finally, he talks to the ball all the time, which demonstrates the voice aspect of engagement.

On Page 17 a title says that motivation includes both approach and avoidance tendencies. Hunger and helplessness are good examples in the film that show the avoidance in motivation. On the other hand, hope, goal establishment, planning and the desire to relate to others are all demonstrations of approach tendency. More examples will be presented below.

Page 58 shows us the function of hippocampus as a comparator of reality versus expectation. When it detects unexpected event it alerts the person and raises the level of anxiety. I think this mechanism is related to the drawing in the cave made by the character. I suppose an active artist expects some things in the space around, so the presence of these desired items, or the images of them, will bring comfort to the person. This is the reason why he keeps the picture of his fiancee and draws her on the wall. He is also inspired by the slogan "the world on time" so he marks a calendar on the wall, which may have helped reducing anxiety.

Page 63 introduces the powerful influence of dopamine. The release of this neurotransmitter makes the person feel "high" when a reward is expected. Thus it motivates people to engage in behavior such as leaving an island or hunting for food. These two activities take up much of the time in the film.

The desire to leave the island is a good example of extraorganismic mechanism, shown on Page 83. This approaching drive starts with a hope to leave the island. It then becomes a time limit to complete a boat, planning for required material, and perhaps coming back to the civilization of homeland. In the quest of this external reward, he also avoids the helplessness of dying alone on the island without a choice.

Finally, the environmental influences on hunger, shown on Page 91, also explain his behavior of getting food. At first he spent a lot of time trying to get coconut juice. Yet as he had more he got tired of its taste. Then he ate little raw seafood and realized that he needed fire to cook. He developed a taste for seafood and learned to shoot fish from meters away. Eventually his skill allowed him to conquer hunger and he began storing food. The funny thing is that he did not like seafood that much. When he came back to the civilization and saw the big crab leg, he didn't even want to eat it! He had better choices among the food variety in the new environment.

Terms: physiological needs, psychological needs, social needs, engagement, approach and avoidance tendencies, hippocampus, dopamine, neurotransmitter, extraorganismic mechanism, environmental influences on hunger

Cast Away portrays many of the ideals in chapter 4 as well as chapter 3. I will reflect on both.

First I will analyze the main character (Tom Hanks) and his need for water. Need, as described in our book, is "any condition within the person that is essential and necessary for life, growth, and well-being". If the need is met, then the well-being is put back into place and maintained. If the need is neglected or not met, our bodies send out signals through neurotransmitters (tiny messengers with in our body) to motivate us to full fill our need. Hanks need for water is of great proportion when he becomes stranded on a small island by himself. The book describes three different motivational states that illustrate the types of needs we have. "Physiological Needs", "Psychological Needs", and "Social Needs". Physiological needs is what prompts us towards thirst, hunger, and sex. We see many physiological needs with in Hank's time on the island.
I noticed different kinds of emotion emanating from Hanks as he suffered on the island. Many of them are defined, according to our book, as deficiency needs - "needs that typically generate tension-packed, urgency-laden emotions, such as anxiety, frustration, pain, stress, and relief". When the first storm came to the island once he was already on the island, he had climbed up to into a cave. By this point he had only found coconut milk and sparing amounts of water on leaves. Once he climbed up into the cave, he had been sweating, and bleeding, which according to the book are two ways to lose water in our bodies. He passed out once he got into the cave, in front of water that he attempted to drink. This shows sign of the deficiency needs he was being faced with.
Because of his needs, he is being motivated by what Clark Hull's theory describes as, "drive theory". According to this theory, Hank's deprivation of food, water, and sleep has resulted in biological needs. If the needs become strong enough, Hank's biological deprivation will result in a psychological drive. This was seen when he came to the island, and after the first night, he went searching for water, and later, food. (Water is the most important in survival, next to eating. The book states that we can only live 2 days without it.) Drive is "a theortical term used to depict the psychological discomfort stemming from the underlying and persistent biological deficit", according the our book.

Other parts of the movie really made me think about what we had learned in Chapter 3 on dopamine release. For instance when Hank makes the fire. You could see the dopamine release happening when he starts the fire. This is the first time that you really see happiness come from within him from making this fire. The happy feelings he was having was from the dopamine release that his body was giving him.

Terms: Dopamine, neurotransmitters, need, physiological needs, psychological needs, social needs, deficiency needs, drive.

This was the first time I had ever seen Cast Away, and I actually really enjoyed it! It was kind of a slow-paced movie, but it was interesting for me to try to tie in everything I was seeing with different motivation and emotion concepts.

Physiological needs, which describe a deficient biological condition, were evident throughout the entire movie. These needs can occur from loss of water, nutrient deprivation, or physical injury, and Chuck went through situations involving each of these. For example, Chuck’s thirst was completely obvious. There were multiple instances throughout the movie where he would struggle to break open coconuts to drink the milk, pour the collected water from leaves into his mouth, or even drink from a waterhole in a cave. His body was not maintaining a steady state of equilibrium due to Chuck’s new and stressful environmental conditions, so he therefore felt the need to bring himself back to homeostasis. Drinkable water was not readily available on the deserted island, so with Chuck sweating constantly, getting cut on rocks and bleeding, and urinating, homeostasis was difficult to reach.

On top of thirst, hunger was also an apparent issue for Chuck when he was on the deserted island. The movie depicted scenes of Chuck relentlessly trying to break open a coconut, Chuck attempting to go fishing with a spear, and Chuck breaking open a live crab in the hopes of having some kind of meat to eat. Intraorganismic mechanisms were obviously at work here in the effort to activate Chuck’s physiological need of hunger. As Chuck lived on the island longer and learned how to use the land, he was able to master the skills of cracking open coconuts, spear fishing, and being able to start a fire to cook crab meat. Once he was able to do all of those things, his hunger was more easily satiated.

Another scene that I would like to discuss was at the beginning of the movie when the plane was crashing. Here, the pituitary gland was most likely activated by the hypothalamus to release hormones such as epinephrine and norepinephrine, which trigger the “fight-or-flight” response in stressful situations. The amygdala, which detects and responds to threatening and emotionally significant events, was probably also at work during this scene.

Neurotransmitters and hormones also played a pretty important role in this movie. The neurotransmitter dopamine, which generates good feelings, was definitely at work during the scene where Chuck was finally able to start a fire. He was finally reinforced for furiously rubbing two sticks together, and this made him literally jump for joy. He was dancing around and beating his chest in front of the fire he made, and he seemed to be really happy and proud of what he had done for the first time since he had been on the island. I think that dopamine release was also present when Chuck finally had a friend, Wilson. Even though Wilson was merely a ball, he made Chuck happy and gave him something to talk to.

The hormone oxytocin, which is known as the bonding hormone, is known to help explain why people seek counsel and confide in friends during the stressful events of their life. Throughout the movie, there is definite bonding going on between Chuck and his volleyball, Wilson. Wilson is the only thing on the island that Chuck is able to talk to. Wilson becomes more like a best friend to Chuck rather than just an inanimate object. Another part of the movie that the hormone oxytocin plays a role is when Chuck constantly looks at his picture of Kelly. This shows that he obviously has strong feelings for Kelly and that her picture sort of keeps him company while he is alone on the island.

A final concept from the textbook that played a large role throughout the movie Cast Away was social needs and psychological needs. Chuck needed some kind of social interaction so that he would not go crazy while he was alone on the island. That is why he created his friend Wilson, who was a volleyball. He painted the front of Wilson with his own blood, and from there on out, Wilson went everywhere with Chuck. Chuck talked to Wilson, and created conversations with Wilson even though Wilson never responded. Wilson kept Chuck company throughout his years on the island, and that is why it was so difficult for Chuck when Wilson fell off the raft and drifted away into the ocean. That was like losing his best friend.

Obviously, the movie Cast Away was a good example of a multitude of motivation and emotion concepts that we have covered thus far. I liked the movie, and I thought that it was especially neat to make all the connections between the textbook and the movie!

Terms: physiological needs, thirst, homeostasis, hunger, intraorganismic mechanisms, satiation, pituitary gland, hypothalamus, epinephrine, norepinephrine, amygdala, neurotransmitter, hormone, dopamine, oxytocin, social needs, psychological needs

The plot of Cast Away is filled with an array of motivation related scenes. Then again, so are a bunch of movies I’m sure. However, Cast Away is a great example of physiological needs. Need that our body signals us that we need to meet. Being stranded on an island without easy access (to say the least) to food and water and shelter really bumps up the physiological need for food and water. When left unsatisfied (or not satiated), the urge to consume food and water increases. Chuck’s body is in need of nutrients energy and hydration. He is motivated to satisfy his physiological need yet since living alone on an island is completely new to him, he doesn’t know how to satisfy his needs. His search for food becomes more frantic the hungrier he gets and in turn the longer he is on the island. Therefore, not only is he simply motivated to find food, he is motivated to learn how to find good food (e.g. catching fish, making a fire to prepare the fish). Because Chuck lacked a healthy intake of food while on the island (especially originally), his body was not in a pleasant state of homeostasis like it would like to be. Basically, his body was not being kept stable (i.e. he was hungry and needed food). Therefore, the hypothalamus in Chuck’s brain (a region of the brain involved in hunger, thirst, sex drive and hormone secretion) was trying it’s best to motivate Chuck to act in ways that would bring his body back to a safe level of homeostasis: i.e. motivating Chuck to find food and to eat that food. Due to the lack of food and the subsequent physiological need for food, Chuck’s hypothalamus began producing a chemical that signals the body that you need food. This chemical is called ghrelin. Ghrelin is an example of a way in which the body tries to chemically signal to us that we need food. It chemically motivated Chuck to seek out food. Satisfying our hunger is not the root of the physiological motivation to eat however. The motivation to keep the body alive is what ultimately leads the brain (and therefore us) to eat (at least when we are on the verge of starvation…not necessarily when we just think we’re hungry).
Beyond the physiological need for food and water, Chuck faced many social needs (e.g. belonging and friendship). He had no one to be social with. There was no one else on the island. What an eerie and lonely feeling. Lacking human contact for so long could easily lead to some insanity. While the need for social interaction is not as life threatening or as immediately felt as the need for hunger, it is nonetheless an important need. As we learned in the book and talked about a little bit in class, the chemical oxytocin is released when we bond with others. Interestingly, even though Chuck had no contact with any humans, he did have a volleyball. Cue Wilson! It’s likely that Chuck developed a strong bond to Wilson because his brain was seeking out someone to bond with. While Wilson is no human, Chuck needed the support provided by a pseudo buddy via oxytocin. As we discussed in class, the presence of oxytocin can help us get through stressful situations. I think that support from a friend (or a volleyball) can chemically strengthen our will power. In class we listened to the audio on will power and learned that glucose can increase our will power. Well, I’d also like to think that the release of oxytocin can increase our will power. It can make us feel strong and give us hope that we will overcome the stressful situation. This is how I like to see it: stressful event produces cortisol (a hormone release in stressful situations), we confide in someone/something, oxytocin is released, we are encouraged to make it through the stressful time (will power).
Terms: physiological needs, satiated, homeostasis, hypothalamus, ghrelin, social need, oxytocin, will power, glucose, cortisol.

Man oh man, I forgot how sad this movie is! I definitely bawled a couple of times like a little baby. But after you take away from the heartbreak we see at the end, it really is a very good hit that has many examples of where motivation is in our everyday, and not so everyday, lives.

One part I really like about psychology is the biological standpoint. I came into UNI as a biology major, as I believe I have stated in previous blogs, and so when we read about the brain, hormones, neurotransmitters, etc. in chapter three it was very interesting to me. An example of a hormone that the text book used in a lot of its examples was Ghrelin. Ghrelin is a hormone that is produced and circulated in the bloodstream to stimulate the hypothalamus. Once stimulated, the hypothalamus then tells you that you are hungry. So in short, Ghrelin is the hormone that tells you when you are hungry and need to replenish. This is a pretty obvious example that was in the movie. Chuck is quite literally starving (much different than what I say I am the time noon rolls around everyday) and therefore looks for food that he wouldn’t normally eat. We see him carving out a coconut with a rock, and he doesn’t look too thrilled about eating it. We also see him attempt to fish and then settle on crab – yet the crab meat is liquid. He is performing these behaviors because he is hungry. So let’s look at this example from the a motivated brain standpoint (why you want to do something). First we have the environmental event – in this case, it is food deprivation. Chuck has gone days without food, and so he has been deprived of it. Next is the biochemical agent – these can be hormones, neurotransmitters, etc. In this example the hormone Ghrelin is the biochemical agent. Next we have the brain structure, and as I said earlier, Grelin stimulates the brain structure, the hypothalamus. Finally we have the aroused motivation, which is the feeling of being hungry in this case.

Another thing I thought was interesting in the movie and that tied a lot with what we talked about in our last lecture was will power. Before the lecture, I never really knew that will power could get worn out. I mean, it makes complete sense, but I never really thought about that a whole lot, or even realized it, until it was brought up to us. The will power to stay alive by yourself for YEARS is exponential. I honestly cannot imagine the strength it takes to go on for that long. Chuck was on the island by himself for over four years. I don’t think the movie every actually says how long he is on there, at least I didn’t catch it, but we do know that he was for sure stranded for at least four years. And at one point in time we learn that Chuck had thought about suicide. He climbed to the very top of the mountain and tested it out (hung a log of his weight on a noose). So we do see that his will power was almost completely worn out. I would say you are at ZERO will power when you commit suicide. However Chuck must have had like, 0.36 will power if he was willing to make a “dry run” of a suicide. He said that the dry run failed and that he would have died slowly by falling on the rocks by bleeding out. This predicted outcome gave him more willpower to keep living and find an escape.

I really enjoyed reading Chapter 4 because it still tied along with the biological standpoint, at least to some degree. I’ve already discussed Chucks hunger from a biological standpoint, so now I can discuss his thirst from a physiological standpoint.

They say that the most common and cruel way that someone can die either stranded in the ocean (say on a life raft) or on a deserted island is by dehydration. You are completely surrounded by water, yet drinking salt water will not only not satiate your thirst, but increase it from all of the salt you’re drinking. Chuck is thirsty. If we all tried not drinking anything for a day (including foods with juices and such), I bet we wouldn’t make it a full day without caving in and drinking something. Chuck’s resources are limited, and we see how the need for water drives him to do odd behaviors. We see him drink water off of leaves, beat furiously on coconuts for their milk, and at one point in time we watch him lap up muddy water from a pool like a dog in order to relinquish his thirst. This can all be explained by the Homeostatic Mechanism. You start with your current internal state, and Chuck’s isn’t good. He is becoming more dehydrated by the minute as water is scarce. So then we move on to the intraorganismic mechanisms that monitor and regulate our homeostasis (neural, hormonal, and physiological). When the conditions are too low, as it is in Chuck’s case, it creates a physiological need that activates drive. The drive is what motivates Chuck to behave in such primitive ways.

Terms:
Grhelin, hypothalamus, behavior, neurotransmitters, motivated brain, environmental event, biochemical agent, brain structure, aroused motivation, will power, homeostatic mechanism, intraorganismic mechanisms, homeostasis, physiological needs, thirst, hunger, satiate

Castaway, a movie about a man who gets stranded on an island after the Fed Ex plain he was on crashes in the middle of the ocean, is filled with different aspects of motivation and emotion. A few areas of motivation that were prevalent throughout the entire movie was the concept of drive theory and the sub divisions of the drive theory including physiological needs, psychological needs and social needs.
Motivation is defined as being moved into action and can come from multiple different sources wither it being intrinsic, extrinsic, achievement oriented ect. Motivation is seen throughout this entire movie in many different forms. Right from the beginning when the main character Chuck washes up on the shore of the isolated island in his rescue raft, it is evident that he is showing signs of both motivation and drive. The drive theory is defined as physiological deprivations create biological needs (Reeve 79). Physiological needs include deprivation of water, a lack of nutrients, or physical injury. After Chuck wakes up on his first day on the island, his physiological needs of food and water motivate him to get up and moving in search of such things. Once he discovers coconuts, the same physiological need for food and a source of liquid is what drives him to figure out how to open the coconut. In the scene where Chuck tries to paddle in his raft out to the ship that he sees and ends up puncturing his leg is another example of physiological need. Even though Chuck is in extreme pain he manages to climb up into the cave which provides protection during the storm and while in the cave he manages to crawl over to a small puddle of water to fulfill the physiological need of thirst.
Another aspect of drive theory that is seen in this movie is psychological and social needs. After a few days of being lost on the island while on a walk around the island, Chuck notices a body in the water from a distance away. He runs to the body in hopes to find a surviving companion but to his disappointment he finds a dead body. Later in the movie, Chuck begins to open Fed Ex boxes that washed up on shore from the cargo plane he was on. In one of the boxes he finds a new Wilson volleyball. While trying to make fire, Chuck cuts his hand and out of rage throws the volleyball leaving a bloody handprint which looked like a face on the ball. He begins to call the ball Wilson and as the movie progresses, the more and more he talks to Wilson, the more Wilson becomes his one and only companion. Both of these scenes are examples of psychological and social need. At first Chuck is so eager and hopeful to find another survivor from the plane crash as a companion. When he doesn’t find anyone he begins to talk to a volleyball, and treats the volleyball as a human being in order to fulfill the social need for social interaction and to silent the need for affiliation.
Terms: Drive, Physiological Needs, Psychological Needs, Social Needs, Motivation

I have seen this movie a handful of times, but a movie's different when you're looking closely for certain aspects. Watching Cast Away, knowing that it was going to somehow be tied to motivation & emotion, really made me pay attention to the small details, that would otherwise go unnoticed. The main character, Chuck, was motivated throughout the entire movie. He demonstrated it in the beginning, trying to motivate his coworkers to work harder & by traveling for his job. He was motivated to stay alive when he first got on the island, when he could have easily given up. He was motivated trying to get help & stay alive by not giving up when he cut his hand, or his feet, and when he could only find coconut water.

In Chapter 1, it talks about how we have internal motives that energize our approach and avoidance tendencies. The first part of this internal motive is the needs part, which is simply what our body essentially needs for the maintence in life. For an example, food and water are both something we need to be able to survive. In the scene where they're all eating dinner together for Christmas, you see a long table piled with food. This food was easily available and unkowingly taken for granted. When Chuck is stuck on the island, we see him attempting to catch fish with a sharp stick and he has no luck. It isn't until later on when he makes the net that he catches the fish and crab. The first fish we saw him eat was a tiny one, but it was still alive. We saw him show his disgust on his face, but he ate it because his body needed food and his hypothalamus triggered the hunger sensation. I think the big moment for him displaying these internal motives is when he is laying on his stomach and licking the small amount of water from a leaf because he is thirsty. We also see Chuck take several minutes to be able to finally break open a cocunut, he was motivated when he could have easily quit after the first few tries. The second internal motive is cogitions, our thoughts/beliefs/expectations. Chuck knows after his first S.O.S. sign was destroyed that getting off of this island alive, is not going to be easy. However, behind his motivation of staying alive is his belief that he will get off the island alive and that help will come for him. We see him making another help sign out of logs, attempting to flag down a ship far, far away with a flashlight and going over the huge waves in his small raft, which fails. Chuck is very emotional while being on the island, but who wouldn't be. However, we don't really see him break down and cry. Instead, we see him show his anger by throwing the sticks and volleyball. We see him mourning his coworker by giving him a proper burial. We also see his emotion of being lonely and afraid when he starts to talk to the volleyball also known as Wilson.

Before being stuck on this island, we can only assume that Chuck has had little, to no, great outdoors "trip" like the one he is on now. However, his instict to stay alive kicked in and with or without experience, he was able to find ways to survive. He made a small hut, he made a help sign out of logs, he caught food, he searched for coconuts, he started a fire without matches. His instint is what kept him motivated through it all. Another attribute is his drive. His drive for survival, hunger, thirst, friends....his motivational drive was to get back to Kelly. Freud's Drive Theory is that behaviors are motivated and the purpose of them is to serve the satisfaction of needs. I've already talked about Chuck's need for hunger, but that fits in here as well. Freud went on to say that drive aimed for satisfaction and caused our body anxiety on a psychologocial level. The only way to rid ourselves of the anxiety is to fulfill the need. We see Chuck full of anxiety when he first arrives on the island. He is alone & doesn't know where he is. Although he is not expressing his anxiety, you can tell by the way his head turns quickly whenever he hears a noise and his voice instantly gets louder, asking who's there, when there is nobody, but him. Hull also had a drive theory. His stated that motivation was based on our bodily needs, such as hunger, thirst, sex, sleep and so forth. The drive starts with an increase of monotonic function after hours of deprivation. Chuck is so lonely on the island, that he begins to talk to Wilson and treat him like a human being. Chuck has been deprived of human interaction for multiple days and his way of expressing this biological need is by giving the volleyball human qualities, when in reality, it's still just a ball.

The very first thing that happened to Chuck when he woke up in the raft and was on the island, was the amygdala stimulating and activating neighboring brain structures. The amygdala detects and responds to threating and emotionally significant events, such as being stranded on an island. This allows us to fear environmental dangers, which is the entire island to Chuck. It's new territory, he's alone and has no idea what is on this island. We see his anxiety the first couple nights, as he isn't able to sleep, because his fear of something getting him. The amygdala allows Chuck to feel his fear and anxiety, but also allows him to stay motivated on finding a way off the island.

Terms: internal motives, needs, cognitions, emotions, motivation, instinct, drive, hunger, thirst, hypothalamus, monotonic function, deprivation, amygdala, brain structures

Castaway is a movie about needs. Almost all needs are touched upon throughout the movie at some point or another. A movie like this one naturally relies on the cues that we have as a society to drives, the more physical tells of what our body needs.
Early in the movie, and often throughout when the character wakes up he often licks and smacks his lips to indicate thirst. They show cracked and dry lips in the cave scene, indicating extreme dehydration. Osmometric Thirst is causing death of certain tissues. The longer time he spends on the island, the greater his thirst becomes, and the wider the sources of water he is willing to try, things that he wouldn't have dreamt of considering as a source of water until his thirst reached that point.
At the end of the movie, after Chuck has made it back to the United States he is shown coveting ice and water from water bottles at great length. He is thirsty in a way we can and hopefully never will know, and cherishing his easy access to clean fresh water.

Chuck is shown to have an aversion to the coconuts after a certain point. This is in part explained to Wilson as coconuts have natural laxative effects. It promotes waste elimination at an accelerated rate and we are shown several tells throughout the movie. This makes finding sources of water imperative as this is probably detrimental to survival since it increases the rate that dehydration occurs.
In a strange, hot and sunny climate where dehydration is already a threat, a laxative only really poses a threat to continued homeostasis. Increasing one's need for water when water is already a scarce resource is almost suicidal.

The coconuts serve as the primary source of hunger satiation for a portion of the movie and probably serve to supplement the diets in small ways throughout. It proves inadequate in the long term so Chuck experiments with spearfishing. At first, he is almost worthless, but his competence increases over time. The very first fish he catches he eats raw to try it out. It seems to Chuck that he absolutely needs fire if he wants to hope to survive because without it he can not prepare food properly.
When he finally achieves fire he makes a roaring one and dances around it extolling what he has created, and he uses the fire to cook a crab. Over time, his competence increases at tons of survival oriented tasks. Later, he is shown to acclimatizing to the island by eating fish raw without a hint of distaste on his face.
Ironically, when he returns to stateside, the buffet they provide for him is nothing but sushi, crab legs and things like that. It is not something that Chuck finds as good or as funny as the rest of his coworkers.

On the island, Chuck is completely alone. He knows this, utterly. Despite that, he invents someone to talk to in the form of Wilson, a volleyball with a bloody handprint he gave eyes and a nose. Wilson helps him to talk to several of his problems, but interestingly enough becomes the representation of negative thoughts of getting off the island. Wilson often plays a pessimistic role insisting that there is not much that Chuck could do right, even when it comes to hanging himself.
The pessimistic nature of the volleyball comes from Chuck himself. It works to curb his pipe dream and keep him more grounded. It gives him someone to try and maintain polish on his social skills though he definitely suffers severe impairment as he is shown as awkward when reintroduced into society at the end of the movie.

Terms

Need-Any condition within the person essential for life, growth and well being.

Drive- Awareness triggers for unconscious underlying biological needs.

Thirst- The drive representing a need for water.

Negative feedback-Physiological signals that occur when a need is met so the behavior can be stopped.

Satiety-The negative feedback that stops activation of needs.

Dehydration- The process of cells beginning to break down and fail due to a lack of proper fluid intake.

Osmometric thirst- The thirst that arises from poor fluid content in the very cells of the body.

Aversion- A fixed intense dislike.

Waste Elimination- A process that supports homeostasis by removing products that our body can no longer use.

Homeostasis- The stable state within a system that many functions strive to maintain.

Hunger- The drive representing a need of nutrition.

Competence- A sliding scale of one's ability to perform a task successfully.

After watching the movie castaway, the first thing that became apparent to me after watching Chuck Nolan on the island is that he was demonstrating three kinds of needs. A need is defined as any condition that exists within the person that is necessary for life, growth, and well-being. The first need I noticed was physiological, and for his situation, it was primarily for hunger and thirst. The drive- theory tells us that lack of physiological needs (water, food, sleep) create biological needs. Physiological needs are part of our biological system and include neural brain circuits, hormones, and organs. Physiological needs can also be sexual but we don’t notice the character struggling in that way, except for when he makes it home after 4 years and gets to kiss Kelly for the first time. At that point we can see how much he was missing that part of his physiological needs. When Chuck is first on the island one of the first things we witness him do is try to break open a coconut using as many techniques he can think of before he discovers one that works. He smashes it on rocks, throws it at a wall, and chisels at it until he finally discovers the use of a sharp rock. His physiological need for thirst was so strong that he trying a couple times and then giving up was not an option. His physiological need for food was also incredibly strong. We watch him try to catch different kinds of food like crabs and fish, but he ends up settling on coconut shavings because he hasn’t been as successful. Throughout the movie we get to see how his hunting and cooking skills develop and you can see the progress he makes. His physiological need for food would not quit. The next two needs I noticed happening at different intervals throughout the movie. I didn’t really notice all psychological needs and then all social needs, but for the purpose of going in order with the book I will next discuss the psychological needs we notice Chuck develop in the film. Psychological needs include autonomy, competence, and acceptance. Although is hard to imagine that Chuck desires autonomy or freedom while he is on the island. We do see this change in his girlfriend, Kelly. We do not see the changes she goes through but we do see her four years later and she has a new life with a husband and a child. We hear characters discuss how she had to “let him go” and by her actions we can see that she desired freedom from what was probably the memory of Chuck. When we look at the psychological need of competence, we can see Chuck using different materials that he found from FedEx packages and uses them for things like knives, nets, and material to make bandages. When it comes to relatedness we see the example of Wilson. Chuck uses Wilson to become someone else on the island that would apparently feel and think the same way that he does. The final need, which is social and includes achievement, intimacy, and power, has many examples in this film. The first thing that I thought of when I read “achievement” was when Chuck built the fire. We see him become extremely handy and make use of different materials from the FedEx packages, but nothing seemed to make him more proud or more excited than building his fire. He stands around it shouting “I made fire!” and dances and cooks and plays. We know this is a big success for him because he had been trying so long to get it to work. For intimacy or affiliation, we watch as Chuck develops a close bond with a volleyball that he names Wilson, and we also see how attached he is the pocket watch photo of Kelly. He uses her as his motivation to return home because he loves her so much and wants her to know he is alive. His relationship with Wilson is so strong that he actually tries to take Wilson on his voyage home with him, and is completely devastated when he falls off the raft.
I absolutely loved this movie and ended up buying it after we watched some of it in class on Tuesday. It obviously had amazing examples the whole way through for motivation, emotion, and human needs.

Terms: thirst, need, physiological, social, psychological, drive-theory

I had watched this movie a few times before, never paying so much attention as I had for this class. The detail I so immidately picked up on was one I had not noticed before. When the package arrives in Russia to the man in the cowboy hat, he says it is from his wife, the lady whose wing symbol continues through the whole movie. The delivery man calls him a cowboy and seems to know of him and I assumed he had been living there awhile. A woman comes to the door in a robe, with him dressed similarly. Since the package was from another woman than this, she isn't his wife. We're led to believe they're an intimate couple by the kiss she gives him. The evolutionary basis for sexual motivation would show that she's younger and attractive, the two biggest desires for men in their sexual partner. The need for sex is one of the base physiological needs although it is more complex than that. A need is anything that is essential for life and personal well-being. A physiological need is the most basic kind of need, one that must be satisfied before others of psychological and social natures can be fully satisfied. The physiological needs are those based in biologial systems. Hunger, thirst, and sex are the three major physiological needs we have. As in my first example, the need for sex jumped out at me. There are obviously a lot of other motivation and emotion complications with the relationship we see so little of but even thousands of miles away from his wife, the need for sex arises and he seems to have met it. Definitely more of a conscious choice than an absolute need, it none the less is a basic physiological trait. This type of relationship will be explained in more detail in later chapters but it was the biggest missing piece that I put together in this particular viewing of the movie.

The most obvious and prevalent example in this movie comes from the most recent chapter. The chapter on physiological needs includes large sections on hunger and thirst, the first problems one might experience when stranded on an island. Chuck tackles these issues in the movie in ways we could never understand without experiencing them ourselves. The lengths he goes to in order to obtain water and food are further than any of us have probably ever had to (or will have to) go. He goes to the effort of smashing open coconuts and then devises tools for opening them more efficiently and begins storing rain water in them by using leaves as funnels and collecting even the smallest cache from leaves. Hunger is quite a bit more complex than thirst, however. His hunger is shown by his catch of some minnows and popping one in his mouth, live. I don't know anyone who would eat a whole, live fish. At that level of hunger, he was in such need of it that he could do it without hesitation. He does a lot of things in order to more easily get food, such as his attempt to make fire so he doesn't have to eat raw crab. He makes fire but hurts his hand in the process, continuing his effort even after the injury. These physiological deficets lead to drives, the felt discomfort that motivates action. Drive theory states that deprivation of food and water creates the need for those things which motivates a drive state and motivates an organism to act upon those drives to satisfy themselves. This occurs in a specific cyclical pattern to maintain your body's homeostasis and keep it at the optimum levels of nourishment.

In the very end, Chuck drives all the way to Texas to hand deliver the package to the lady from the beginning of the movie. This is an intrinsic motivation from chapter one. It could also be a goal he set for himself on the island, to deliver the package. He's getting no external reward out of doing it but he has held onto the package the entire time he lived on that island, using the wing motif to bolster his spirits and remind him of life. He could have easily made it his goal to return the package to its sender and thank them. I'm sure he went to a lot of trouble to hold onto it while he escaped since he tried to hold on to Wilson and lost him so traumatically. He must have felt some great relief to have delivered that final package. It doesn't matter what's in it, just that he's held onto it and it helped him survive.

Terms: need, physiological need, hunger, thirst, sex, evolutionary basis, drive theory, homeostasis, intrinsic motivation, goal

When seeing Cast Away for the first time, my initial reaction towards the movie was interest. I would have like to seen more than an hour of the film but could not find anywhere to continue it. Within the first hour that I saw, Chuck, the main character of the film was experiencing physiological needs that were being unmet. In chapter four, physiological needs are everyday needs that have to be met in order for growth. Physiological needs are things like thirst, hunger, and sex. After Chuck makes it to shore, we soon see him trying to beat a coconut open to satisfy his thirst. He tries several methods to open up the coconut. Once the coconut was cracked open he spilled all the liquid out, so had to figure out a better way of cracking a coconut open without spilling the liquid inside. I believe it was his drive to have something to drink which made his brain function and come up with a better way to opening the coconut. Another situation we see Chuck strive for water is when reuses the coconut shell is to hold the rain water the leaves catch. Chuck never reaches a satiety level for thirst, because he is constantly dehydrated. He was continuously losing water though urination, breathing, sweat and bleeding.
The book does explains how needs are different when strived for. We tend to give different amounts of energy towards meeting specific needs. In the film Chuck’s need for something to drink was more motivated than finding something to eat. We do not see Chuck try for food until the next day. On day two of the Island, is where we begin to see Chuck try to catch fish to eat. He is not very good at it and his hypothalamus, a central area of the brain releases hormones, is telling him he needs to eat. The more he goes without eating the more the hungrier he is getting. Chuck’s body is producing more Ghrelin; a hormone manufactured in the stomach, which by now is telling him he needs to eat something, anything. So as Chuck is stranded on this island, his body is going into food deprivations, which is releasing Ghrelin in his blood stream, that is stimulating the hypothalamus part of the brain, and he is experiencing hunger. Because his is experiencing this need, he is then forced to create items to help him eat. For example, he has to learn to make a fire in order to cook what he is catching, he has to learn how to catch fish so he will not starve and he has to other thing to survive along the way. When Chuck conquers the thing he must do in order to survive he receives a good feeling out of it. And what happens is, when Chuck experienced an unexpected event (i.e. stranded on an island), he now has to come up with a survival solution to get off this island. When Chuck finally made fire Dopamine was relapsed into the brain, which them stimulated limbic structures and cause the ecstatic feeling.
Another aspect of the book I would like to look at is external event. Chuck became stranded on an island with just a raft. “External events are environmental, social, and cultural sources of motivation that have the capacity to energize and direct behavior.” Chuck’s environment drastically changed, and because he had to survive out there, some of his behaviors were directed. When Chuck was fishing he had to make a sharp stick in order to catch the fish without making those object he would not have been able to eat. Because he was stranded with no food or water Chuck had to grow with the environment. When it rained he had to climb to a cave with nothing but his bare hands and feet to get shelter, the first time he had to climb up he had all sorts of bumps, cuts and bruises. Chuck had a lot of adjusting to do given the environment he had to survive in.

Terms: Physiological needs, External events, Drive, satiety, hypothalamus,Ghrelin, Dopamine

Cast Away is a fantastic film that presents motivational elements very clearly. Going back to chapter one, we learned that one specific type of motives is needs. Needs are conditions within the individual that are essential and necessary for the maintenance of life and for the nurturance of growth and well-being. Basic, physiological needs such as food and water were the most important needs and internal motives for Chuck when he first arrived on the island. When physiological needs are unmet for an extended period of time, they can be life threatening and therefore generate motivational states that can dominate consciousness. According to drive theory, physiological deprivations and deficits create biological needs. If the need continues to be unsatisfied, the biological deprivation becomes strong enough to occupy full attention and generate psychological drive. This drive is what energizes someone into action. Chuck was extremely deprived of food and water after being on the island for a short time. These biological needs became strong enough to occupy his full attention and generate the psychological drive. In other words, he would do anything to get food and water into his body. First we saw this intense motivation when Chuck attempted to open the coconut. His need for water overcame his entire self. Even though he was physically exhausted, he continued to use his strength to open that coconut. We continued to see Chuck go to great lengths to get water. From drinking out of a muddy puddle to squeezing a few water droplets from a leaf into his mouth, it was obvious that thirst was the most important physiological need at that time.

Chapter four gives a more in depth look at how the need and motive of thirst is generated. When we lose about 2% of our water volume, we feel thirsty; losing 3% of our water volume is when we experience dehydration. When our water level drops below an optimal homeostatic level, the physiological need that underlies thirst is created. We lose water though sweating, urination, breathing, bleeding, vomiting, and even sneezing. Not only does Chuck not have an easy source for water, but he is also losing extreme amounts when he first arrives on the island. Because of the tropical climate, he is constantly sweating. He also encounters many injuries that cause him to lose large amounts of blood. The mouth, stomach, cells, kidneys, hypothalamus, and specific hormones are all involved in coordinating thirst activation.

The only environmental influence that normally affects us and our thirst is taste. Clearly, the environmental influence of taste had nothing to do with Chuck’s motivation to drink. His need for water was purely physiological and the taste did not matter to him. If he had been less thirst, he probably would not have drank out of a muddy puddle. There were obviously no social or cultural influences either.

The other need I want to talk about comes from our relationship to the social world. Motives arise from social needs to preserve our identities, beliefs, values, and interpersonal relationships. I saw a clear need for achievement in this movie. Chuck desperately wanted to make fire. Fire would enable him to cook the only source of food he had – crab legs – during the time being. Fire would also serve as a source of heat, protection, as well as a signal for help. He tried desperately to create fire with his own two hands and a stick. When he successfully created fire for the first time, there was genuine joy in his eyes, voice, and actions. He playfully jumped, danced, sang, and yelled around his achievement – clearly proud of himself for overcoming the odds. Chuck meets his social need for intimacy through Wilson, his volleyball friend. This source of companionship becomes extremely important for him throughout the movie. When Wilson is drifting away from the raft, Chuck fights between two competing motives. He overtly and internally struggles with his need for safety – coming from the raft, and his need for companionship – coming from Wilson. Ultimately, he chooses safety, but it is obvious that the loss of his friend is impacts him deeply.

What a great movie and way to show our physiological and other types of motives. I absolutely loved this movie!

Terms: motives, physiological needs, thirst, drive theory, psychological drive, homeostasis, hypothalamus, social need, need for achievement, need for intimacy

The movie Cast Away portrays many examples of motivation. In the movie, Chuck, played by Tom Hanks, becomes stranded on an island after his plane goes down over the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He is stranded there for four years and is forced to develop new methods of survival. The development of these new methods is influenced greatly by motivation. Two areas of motivation that can be found in the movie are the brain’s involvement in motivation and drive theory.
When Chuck becomes stranded on the island, he is in a new world and does not know exactly what to expect in this new world. At this time, he is very fearful of his surroundings. One example from the movie that illustrates this is one night when he is awakened by a noise that startles him, generating fear, and he begins ducking and hiding within his raft with a large stick as a means of protecting himself. The brain is producing emotional responses in this scenario. The amygdala and the prefrontal cortex are two key components in this emotional response. The amygdala, “a collection of interconnected nuclei associated with emotion and motivation (pg 57),” is responding to the threatening event (the startling noise). Because it is the regulator of emotions involved in self-preservation, it generates the emotion of fear in Chuck. The prefrontal cortex is also related to Chuck’s reaction to this situation. According to the textbook, the prefrontal cortex is associated with a person’s conscious goals (pg 61). Stimulation of this brain structure can either elicit positive, approach-oriented feelings (left prefrontal cortex) that encourage further involvement in a particular situation, or negative, avoidance-oriented feelings (right prefrontal cortex) that lead to avoiding the situation. In this case in particular, the right prefrontal cortex is stimulated and generates avoidance-oriented feelings, which, in turn, lead him to take cover.
Drive theory is another concept from the book that can be seen all throughout the movie Cast Away. Drive theory, created by Clark Hull, states that “physiological deprivations and deficits create biological needs (pg 79).” These physiological deficits can include lack of food, water, or sleep. The example from the movie that I will use is when Chuck finds himself hungry and looking for anything that may satisfy his hunger. At one point, he constructs a makeshift net out of pieces of a dress and begins to fish, only catching very small fish. He is so hungry at this point that he picks up one of the fish live and eats it. In essence, his physiological need for food drove him to eat a raw, live fish. Now most people would probably not even consider doing such a thing, but in his desperation for food and nutrients, he ate the fish. According to the lipostatic hypothesis discussed in the book, the lack of food in his system led to adipose tissue secreting ghrelin, a hormone that stimulates hunger and motivation to seek out food (pg 90). Because of this physiological need, Chuck experiences a psychological drive to obtain food. Psychological drive is the conscious addressing an unconscious biological need (pg 80). The body wants to reach homeostasis, a stable internal state, and it cannot do so without food intake. Had Chuck been able to attain an adequate amount of food, his body would have at some point received enough and would begin negative feedback, that is the physiological stop system that initiates when homeostasis is achieved (pg 81).
The examples I pointed out are just a few of the many examples of motivation that can be seen throughout the movie. It was very interesting to watch the movie after reading the chapter. You really do notice things that you may have never noticed or thought about before and this gives you a new perspective of the movie.

Terms: Amygdala, prefrontal cortex, right prefrontal cortex, left prefrontal cortex, approach-oriented, avoidance-oriented, drive theory, ghrelin, physiological need, psychological need, homeostasis, negative-feedback, multiple inputs/outputs.

Cast Away is an excellent movie containing many elements physiological and psychological needs. We have not yet discussed the psychological needs in depth yet there are parts in the movie portraying them are easy to pick out. Good examples of psychological needs are when he "creates" Wilson and when he does everything he can to get his gift from his girlfriend when the plane is crashing. He put himself in danger to get it. A good example of extraorganismic mechanism is when he starts talking to Wilson. This is extraorganismic because it involves social and cognitive influences. When talking to Wilson, Chuck would ask him what he thinks, then he would reply. Many of his talks with Wilson end up being arguments of what he should do. This shows that Chuck is seeing every angle of the choices he makes. When he talks about leaving the island in the cave, he gets angry at Wilson and kicks him out of the cave, only realizing that he needs him and then chases after him. Also a good example is when he finds one of the pilots dead. He then gives the pilot a proper burial.
The physiological needs that were discussed in the book were thirst, hunger, and sex. Thirst and hunger are easily seen in the movie, while sex not so much, but there was part where he implied it. Towards the beginning when he called his girlfriend and left a message, he said how much he misses her and can't wait to get back. But at the end of the phone call, he implies something sexual.
Signs that Chuck's thirst activation has started was when he was trying to break open the coconut after discovering that there is fluid in there. He does everything he can to try breaking it open from throwing it against the big rock to smashing it with a rock. He eventually breaks a rock with a sharp edge and utilizes it to cut the outer shell of the coconut and gets to the fluids within.
Chuck is really thirsty for water when he finds a leaf with water in it and puts his face into the ground to get as much as he can. Also when he goes to the cave during the storm to find the water pouring into the puddle. Although it was dirty, he still drank it because he was thirsty. When Chuck was thirsty, his hypothalamus communicated with the kidneys to conserve the water in the body. It is the hypothalamus that generates the urge to drink.
You can see that Chucks ghrelin levels are high when he tries searching for food. High levels of ghrelin indicate that a person is hungry. The short-term appetite in Chuck is activated when he tries spear fishing (but failed), then resorted to eating the coconut meat.
His motivation to make fire is also a great example of hunger. With fire, he could do many things, and one of them was cooking his food. He cooked a crab he had speared and got much satiety from it. He eventually got good at spear fishing and was able to cook his food he had captured, satisfying his hunger. He also uses the items that floated on shore to his advantage, such as making a net, using ice skates to break the coconut.
This movie was full of examples of motivation and emotion. From being motivated to get off of the island to having conversations/arguments with Wilson. Although there were many physiological needs, there were plenty of psychological needs that we have not discussed yet in the movie.
Terms: short-term appetite, hypothalamus, ghrelin, hunger, thirst, sex, extraorganismic mechanism, satiety.

Cast Away was a great movie. It had great examples of how people can adapt to new surroundings when they have to. It also shows how people have survival skills programmed in and you may surprise yourself about what you can do when you have no other options.
In the first chapter it discusses the internal motives that cause motivation. One of the internal motives was needs. Needs are things that necessary to maintain life. For example hunger or thirst. In the movie he brings himself to eat raw crab meat and drink nothing but liquid from the coconuts. He did what he had to do in order survive. This is very interesting to think about because it makes you think what you would bring yourself to do in order to survive.
In the second chapter talks about drive which is what motivates you take care of the body’s needs. Some of examples of this from the movie would once again be hunger or thirst which I talked about in the previous paragraph. If you haven’t had anything to eat then your hunger would drive you eat. Same goes for thirst. Your thirst would be what drives you to drink. Another example of this would be when he knocks out his tooth because it hurts so badly. The pain would be what drives him to knock out his tooth the way he did.
In the third chapter it talks about amygdala which is what detects and responds to threatening and emotionally significant events. The amygdala stimulation may cause any of the following: respiration, increased heart rate, fear facial expression, and others. We could clearly see Tom Hanks character going through these things when the plane was crashing and he was trying to make his way to the raft and then to the island.
In the fourth chapter it talks about our needs. It discusses the three different types of needs, which are: Physiological needs, psychological needs, and social needs. This chapter talked about the physiological needs such as thirst, hunger, and sex. The psychological and social needs will be discussed more in depth in the future chapters. However like I have mentioned a few times now, we see in the movie the need for hunger and thirst. I think it’s safe to say that hunger and thirst are two of the most important motivators that we encounter. Hunger and thirst can drive you to do some extreme things. If you find yourself on a deserted island you may find yourself drinking and eating some things that you never thought you would.

Terms: internal motives, needs, drive, amygdala, amygdala stimulation, physiological needs, psychological needs, social needs

The movie Cast Away is an excellent representation of the basic physiological and psychological drives that motivate all of us. Before the plane crashes, we see Chuck and Kelly feasting at a Christmas party, with lots of food and drink, meaning that when Chuck got on the plane, he was in a satiated state, according to the model of Need-Drive Behavior. After the plane crashes, Chuck’s survival instincts kick in and he manages to get out of the plane and get inside the raft. Once he gets to the island his first task is making a help sign, which he does using his feet. His water levels begin to rapidly decrease as the day wears on as he perspires, breathes heavily, and moves around the island. His prolonged physiological deprivation gives rise to a bodily need for water, and after the first night, he has a psychological drive to quench his thirst. Chuck finds coconuts, and tries numerous ways to open them, from throwing them at a boulder, to smashing them between rocks, and finally using a sharp edge to slice it in half, and thus breaking it and spilling all the juice. So he has to try again, this time with more patience, and he is able to satiate his thirst, at least enough for the time being to reduce the psychological desire. Because of the limited resources on the island and the amount of exertion that Chuck must use in order to survive and explore the island, the environmental influences on what he can eat and the amount of availability of food changes his diet and the portion sizes and what counts for satiating his hunger. Over time on the island, his tastes change as well. The first time he catches a fish he eats it raw and almost throws up. He even contemplates sucking the raw goo of a crab. This is because he is experiencing food deprivation, which releases the hormone Ghrelin, which circulates in the blood stream, stimulating the hypothalamus to give the psychological experience of hunger, motivating him and driving him to continually seek food.
Chuck decides to make fire, and after several failed attempts as well as causing injury to his hand, he starts a flame and experiences feeling good, positive and pleasure in being successful. When this happens, the neurotransmitter dopamine is released in the brain circuit and stimulates the limbic structures to allow these feeling to occur.
Although there is a lot of really great instances in Cast Away, with water deprivation and food, and shows how important the hypothalamus really is in motivating us to eat and drink and survive, there are also many instances of other drives and behaviors. For example, the Cerebral Cortex is used and activated after he finds his sail and starts making plans and setting goals to try and get off the island. Another good example of other brain processes working together is in the beginning when he hears the coconuts dropping, and not knowing what it is, responding with fear, anger, and anxiety. These responses are triggered by the amygdala. The septal area is used when he is talking with Wilson and when he goes back and sees all his friends, because that is the pleasure area associated with socialbility.

Terms: Need-Drive Behavior, Ghrelin, hypothalamus, neurotransmitter, dopamine, limbic structures, Cerebral Cortex, amygdala