What drives human behavior? Why do we do what we do? How do emotions shape social reality? These are some of the questions that the international scientific conference “Emotions and Motivation – Drivers of Behavior” tried to answer. The conference was held in Zagreb on March 7th at the Faculty of Philosophy and Religious Studies of the University of Zagreb.
The conference addressed the relationship between emotions, motives, mind, will, person, community, therapist, and patient. More than forty experts from the fields of philosophy, theology, psychology, educational and rehabilitation sciences and from various psychotherapy perspectives spoke at the conference. Participants came from Croatia, Poland, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the USA.
The conference program was enriched by three keynote lectures, which covered the three main perspectives on the relationship between motivation and emotions: philosophical, psychiatric, and psychological. Filip Grgić, from the Institute of Philosophy in Zagreb, gave a presentation on “Weakness of Will and Indifference”. Prof. Marijana Braš and Prof. Veljko Đorđević from the Faculty of Medicine in Zagreb gave a lecture on “Flight from the Culture of Illness to the Culture of Health – Emotions, Motives and Communication”. Prof. Martin F. Lynch from the University of Rochester, New York, spoke about the role of basic psychological needs in motivation and well-being.
The conference was organized by the Faculty of Philosophy and Religious Studies of the University of Zagreb, the Institute of St. Thomas Aquinas in Zagreb, the Institute of Social Sciences in Belgrade, the Department of Social and Humanities in Medicine of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Rijeka, and the Ignatianum University in Krakow.
The conference is part of the University of Zagreb project “What Drives Human Behavior?”, led by the Faculty of Philosophy and Religious Studies of the University of Zagreb.
