Final

Question 1

Describe the function of basic emotions as a toolkit for survival

Answer 1

• Basic emotions are thought to be evolved, hardwired responses adapted to solve specific survival problems
• Core principles:
• Each emotion has an adaptive function
• Emotions coordinate cognition, physiological responses, subjective experiences, and behaviour

Question 2

What qualifies as a basic emotion?

Answer 2

• Universality (should appear across all cultures, and
  maybe in other species)
• Distinct expressions (cross-culturally recognizable facial, vocal, and behavioural patterns)
• Early emergence
• Physiological distinctiveness

Question 3

What are the 7 emotional systems that Panksepp (1998) argued for?

Answer 3

1) Seeking
2) Rage
3) Fear
4) Lust
5) Care
6) Panic/grief
7) Play

Question 4

Describe the seeking emotional system (Panksepp, 1998)

Answer 4

• Seeking system energizes and works together with emotions
• Foundation of goal-directed behaviour
• Function: generates enthusiasm, curiosity, sense of purpose
• Trigger: new or promising stimuli (ex: food, mates, exploration)
• Behavioural Output: foraging, exploration, goal-directed behaviour
• Neurobiology: Dopamine- driven; centered in the mesolimbic pathway
• Subjective feeling: interest, anticipation, excitement, enthusiasm

Question 5

Describe the rage emotional system (Panksepp, 1998)

Answer 5

• System underlying anger and aggression
• The system prepares the body for aggressive action
• Function: mobilizes an aggressive response to threat, restraint, or frustration
• Trigger: physical restraint, blocked goals, perceived injustice
• Behavioural Output: fighting, attacking, asserting control
• Neurobiology: centered in medial amygdala, hypothalamus, and periaqueductal gray
• Subjective feeling: anger, frustration, irritation

Question 6

Describe the fear emotional system (Panksepp, 1998)

Answer 6

• Function: promotes survival through avoidance and escape behaviours in the face of danger
• Minimizing threat and maximizing safety
• Trigger: threats, pain, unfamiliar or dangerous stimuli
• Behavioural Output: freezing, fleeing, avoidance
• Neurobiology: amygdala, hypothalamus, periaqueductal gray
• Subjective feeling: fear, anxiety, dread

Question 7

Describe the lust emotional system (Panksepp, 1998)

Answer 7

• Function: drives reproductive behaviour and sexual attraction
• Prepares the body and mind
• Trigger: presence of sexually relevant stimuli (ex: pheromones, cues of fertility)
• Behavioural Output: sexual arousal, courtship, mating behaviour
• Neurobiology: hypothalamus, testosterone, estrogen, oxytocin
• Subjective feeling: sexual desire, attraction, arousal

Question 8

Describe the care emotional system (Panksepp, 1998)

Answer 8

• Function: promotes nurturing and caregiving
• The response we would expect to be activated with the baby schema
• Trigger: presence of offspring or vulnerable others
• Behavioural Output: protecting, feeding, soothing
• Neurobiology: ventromedial hypothalamus, oxytocin
• Subjective feeling: warmth, affection, compassion

Question 9

Describe the panic/grief emotional system (Panksepp, 1998)

Answer 9

• Function: promotes social reconnection and attachment maintenance
• Trigger: social separation, loss, neglect
• Behavioural Output: crying, protest, withdrawal, sadness
• Neurobiology: ACC, periaqueductal gray, endogenous opioids
• Subjective feeling: sadness, loneliness, grief

Question 10

Describe the play emotional system (Panksepp, 1998)

Answer 10

• Function: encourages social engagement, learning social rules, building social bonds, emotion regulation
• Trigger: safe, relaxed environments and familiar social partners
• Behavioural Output: rough-and-tumble play, laughter
• Neurobiology: Dorsal thalamus, dopamine, opioids
• Subjective feeling: joy, amusement, social pleasure

Question 11

Describe Panksepp’s studies on rats and the basic emotion of play

Answer 11

• He would conduct studies where he tickled rats
• Rats would emit these hypersonic frequency vocalizations
• Interpreted these as a form of laughter
• Interpreted these during rough-and-tumble play which we also see in mammals and humans

Question 12

Why did Panksepp argue rough-and-tumble play is important?

Answer 12

• Learn how to modulate their emotions and how to not get too aggressive
• Learn to recover quickly from emotion arousal (important for emotion regulation)
• Creates emotional muscle memory

Question 13

Describe Russell (2003) dimensional approach to emotion

Answer 13

• Dimensional models suggest emotions exist on continuous scales rather than in discrete categories
• 2 key dimensions:
  1) Valence (pleasant vs unpleasant - negative vs positive valence)
  2) Arousal (high vs low activation)
• People differ in emotional granularity
• These 4 dimensions should hang together predictably
• These components don’t always align perfectly (ex: may be anxious but smiling)
• So instead researchers started looking at subjective feelings
• Proponents of this type of view have argued that in real life we can’t always tell emotions apart

Question 14

What’s emotional granularity?

Answer 14

Ability to finely differentiate emotional experience

Question 15

Describe psychological construction theories of emotion

Answer 15

• Psychological construction theories argue that emotions aren’t biologically hardwired categories but are constructed using concepts we learn from those around us
• Similar to Schachter-Singer theory, constructionists argue that people rely on situational cues and learned concepts to interpret and label feelings
• Unlike S-S theory, they don’t believe that bodily arousal is necessary
• Merit and Russell argue that emotions like fear, anger, sadness are the result of psychological construct
• Human invention and socially constructed
• These psychological concepts are going to vary across cultures and languages
• Evidence that physiological reactions and emotions tightly align with behaviour is very clear cut
• How we interpret those feelings (how we label them) is going to depend on what we learn
• Less physical arousal according to this view and conceptual knowledge is more important

Question 16

Describe the debate between the basic emotions approach and psychological construction approach to emotions

Answer 16

• Debate is ongoing
• Maybe integration of both is possible (ex: Panksepp acknowledged both
  biological and learned components)
• Primary processes: raw emotional systems rooted in subcortical brain regions, shared across mammals
• Ex: you can stimulate an animal’s brain and trigger an emotional response -> this response doesn’t depend on higher learning or higher brain regions
• Animals feel shame in the same way that we do but they may be experiencing a more primitive type
• Secondary processes: learning and memory systems that shape responses based on past experiences
• Tertiary processes: higher-order cognitive systems (ex: language and culture) that conceptualize and label emotions
• Ex: shame may be rooted in social pain (panic/grief) but shaped by cultural and cognitive processes

Question 17

Describe fear and anxiety

Answer 17

• Fear is a response to a specific, immediate threat (ex: bear, car going the wrong way)
• Involves intense feelings, facial expressions, physiological reactions, and action tendencies (freezing, escape, avoidance)
• Anxiety is more diffuse, non-specific (ex: free-floating type of dread)
• Social anxiety is specific to social situations (especially meeting new people or public speaking), driven by fears of judgment, rejection, or negative evaluation
• Behavioural cues of fear and anxiety: distinct facial expression (raised and drawn together eyebrows, widened eyes, tension around the mouth)
• Freezing is a characteristic behavioural response
• Physiological response: heart rate speeds up (with freezing it drops)
• Sympathetic nervous system facilitates flight
• Adaptive value: heightens attention to threat, prepares body for action
• Anxiety can be very debilitating (ex: might lead us to procrastinate or do things we should avoid doing)

Question 18

Describe the value and costs of negative emotions

Answer 18

• Negative emotions are not only inevitable but they’re also essential
• Evolutionary perspective: emotions are here because they helped our ancestors survive
• Goal is not a life free of negative emotions but having negative emotions that are well-calibrated to the situation

Question 19

Describe sadness

Answer 19

• Sadness is most often triggered by losses that threaten social bonds or valued goals
• Often measured with Beck Depression Measure Inventory
• Signals need for support
• Sad facial expressions are easily and universally recognized
• Body language and nonverbal cues are also recognizable
• Crying increases recognition
• Sadness might motivate others to help us and signal to them that we’re sad
• Sadness promotes more careful, systematic thinking (less reliance on stereotypes and heuristics, more realism)
• When goals are no longer attainable, sadness may help break through rigid goal persistence (goal shielding) & lead to realistic reassessment and openness to shifting goals, especially with help from others
• Associated with 2 physiological patterns:
  1) Increased arousal (higher heart rate, blood pressure, skin conductance)
• Seen when crying
• More likely when loss is imminent/impending
• May reflect active coping, call for social support
  2) Decreased arousal (lower heart rate, skin conductance)
• More likely when loss is final
• May reflect energy conservation
• Could be that there’s a time course for sadness
• Research shows that when you’re watching a romance movie, you may experience these physiological patterns along with the character (1 - when the breakup is about to happen and 2 - for the aftermath)
• Pervasive Sadness (turns into depression) can make it hard for us to achieve our goals

Question 20

Is there any truth to this idea that we derive benefits from thinking positively and being optimistic?

Answer 20

• Often hear message of importance of thinking positively
• Ex: as the book “The Secret to Love, Health, and Money” advocates for (law of attraction)
• Thoughts can be very powerful
• Ex: placebo effect with pain, willpower and ego depletion (matters how much you think you’re depleted and not how depleted you actually are)

Question 21

What’s optimism?

Answer 21

• Generalized expectation that things will go well in the future and that the things we desire will come our way and that things will workout
• People hold these beliefs across a variety of situations
• Ex: items from a widely used measure of trait optimism:
• “In uncertain times, I usually expect the best”
• “Overall, I expect more good things to happen to me than bad”

Question 22

Describe how optimism benefits self-regulation

Answer 22

• Optimism promotes confidence & persistence in pursuit of goals
• Optimists are more likely to use more adaptive problem-solving strategies
• Optimism has been linked to better goal performance in various domains (ex: academic achievement, career, success, health outcomes)
• Researchers have conducted longitudinal studies examining how individual traits, including optimism, influence students’ ability to navigate this transition to college:
• Optimism predicts better college adjustment in freshmen
• Optimistic students more likely to use active coping strategies (ex: problem-solving, seeking support) and avoid passive coping (ex: ignoring problems)
• This leads to lower stress, greater well-being and a smoother transition to university life
• We see this relationship between optimism and better coping across a variety of domains, especially when people find themselves in challenging or adverse circumstances (ex: medical school)

Question 23

Describe how optimism benefits health

Answer 23

• Optimism predicts better self-regulation and better mental and physical health across variety of domains (ex: workplace stress, recovery from serious illness)
• Ex: optimistic medical students experience less anxiety and depression
• Ex: optimistic athletes tend to persist longer in training and bounce back from setbacks more quickly
• Potential mechanisms:
• Physiological mechanisms: optimists tend to experience less chronic stress and less chronic stress protects against long-term health risks like inflammation, cardiovascular disease, and immune dysfunction
• Behavioural mechanisms:
• Engaging in more adaptive coping strategies makes it less likely that challenges are going to spiral out of control and contribute to even more stress later on
• Fewer problematic behaviours, more health-promoting behaviours (ex: exercise, eating healthy, following health advice)
• Ex: optimists have been shown to be more likely to complete an aftercare program and stay abstinent after treatment for alcohol dependency

Question 24

Describe the expectancy-value theory

Answer 24

• Motivation is determined by two key factors
• Value of the goal: Is this goal worth pursuing?
• Expectancy of success: Is this goal achievable?
• According to this framework, people are most motivated when they:
  1) believe they can succeed (high expectancy)
  2) see the goal as meaningful or beneficial
• Parallel to fixed mindsets: fixed mindset of intelligence leads to low expectancy of success
• Optimism boosts expectancy of success
• You should be very determined and positive when setting your goals

Question 25

Describe the explanatory style of optimism and pessimism

Answer 25

- Optimism/pessimism is related to explanatory style, which develops over time based on experience and is malleable (research suggests that it can be shifted with practice) and can be taught - Explanatory style: how a person explains the causes of events, particularly bad events - Optimists see setbacks as: - Temporary (unstable) - Limited to one area of life (specific) - Due to external factors - Optimists are explaining bad events in a more circumscribed way and are more likely to try harder next time and bounce back - Pessimists see setbacks as: - Permanent (stable) - Affecting everything (global) - Entirely their fault (internal) - If you believe that things can't change, you won't be motivated to try harder - (In)stability and specificity/globality attributions particularly important for predicting positive outcomes - Internality vs externality is less consistent - Opposite pattern for positive events (although attribution for negative events may be more important): - Optimists tend to internalize success and see it as more stable and global - Pessimists will downplay the positive event and use external, unstable and specific attribution for positive events - Research suggests that how we explain negative events might matter the most and might be particularly influential for determining whether we persist in the face of challenges or whether we give up

Question 26

Describe Seligman et al. (1990) research example on explanatory styles for pessimistic and optimistic swimmers

Answer 26

* Research on athletic performance in university varsity swimmers * At the start of the season, researchers had swimmers complete an attributional style questionnaire * The researchers then simulated a defeat by giving swimmers a false time (lower time - small enough that it would be believable and disappointing to the swimmers) * Found that swimmers with pessimistic explanatory style were more likely to underperform compared to optimistic swimmers * Examined reactions to false negative feedback: * Found that optimistic swimmers maintained performance (were disappointed but were more likely to shake it off and maintain performance) and pessimistic performers performed worse on next swim * Negative attributions that swimmers make for failure/setbacks appear to hinder their ability to bounce back from those failures * This didn't have anything to do with talent * If an athlete expects a future failure, they're going to lose the motivation to try, and it's going to lower their engagement and effort and they end up in a downward spiral

Question 27

Describe how to learn to think like an optimist

Answer 27

- There's solid evidence that explanatory style can be changed with practice - With cognitive training techniques, individuals can shift from a pessimistic way of interpreting setbacks to a more resilient and optimistic mindset - Cognitive and cognitive-behavioural therapy is built on principle that beliefs about events, not the events themselves, cause negative emotional consequences (not what happens to you that matters, it's how you interpret it that matters) - One of the most widely used tools in cognitive therapy is cognitive restructuring - Cognitive restructuring helps individuals identify and challenge negative thought patterns -> can learn to reframe your thinking - “I’m just not smart enough, I’m always going to fail” → “That was a tough test, and I didn’t prepare well. But I’ll learn from this and do better next time.” - A lot of parallels to the growth mindset - Cognitive therapy techniques like this are the foundation of many evidence-based treatments for depression - People with depression often have deeply ingrained pessimistic explanatory styles - There's a deep conceptual link between depression and motivation - Social learning (want to be careful what we model for others as parents, managers, teachers, because these explanatory styles can be transmitted and taught)

Question 28

What's self-efficacy?

Answer 28

- Belief that we can bring about desired outcomes - Belief in our ability to navigate challenges, influence outcomes, obtain the things we want - Originally developed by Albert Bandura - Has been shown to have profound effects on motivation, persistence, success even in difficult circumstances - Why there are sometimes conflicting results in internality dimension because might be conflating self-blame and self-efficacy

Question 29

Optimism vs Self-Efficacy

Answer 29

- Closely related and sometimes get conflated in research and popular discourse - Optimism: more general expectation that good things will happen (I believe that good things will happen) - Self-efficacy: more specific, emphasizes sense of control, belief that you can make good things happen (I believe that I can make good things happen)

Question 30

Describe the importance of self-efficacy

Answer 30

- Development of self-efficacy influences nearly every aspect of self-regulation - Strong sense of self-efficacy is going to fuel motivation, persistence, resilience - Shapes goal pursuit & determines activity choices (this has long term impacts - avoiding challenges today limits your future opportunities) - When we feel capable we seek out challenges and when we doubt ourselves, we avoid them - Avoidance reinforces self-doubt - Self-efficacy promotes effort and persistence - Self-efficacy affects thinking and focus under pressure (research shows that individuals with stronger self-efficacy are better able to stay focused under pressure and to think logically)

Question 31

What are the sources of self-efficacy?

Answer 31

1) Personal behaviour history: “Have I succeeded at this before?” - Perhaps the most powerful source of self-efficacy - If we have succeeded at something before, we're more likely to believe we can do it again - The more of these positive experiences that we accumulate, the more confident we become - If you avoid challenges because of low self-efficacy then you never get to build up self-efficacy 2) Vicarious experience: “Have I seen someone like me succeed?: - Gives us confidence that we can do it too - The more we relate to the person we're observing the stronger the effect - Evidence that representation matters - Watching experts can be helpful but seeing peers in terms of self-efficacy is more impactful 3) Verbal persuasion and encouragement - Must be realistic - Won't work if we feel like we're being patronized or talked down to - Words alone aren't enough 4) Interpretation of physiological state - Help better cope with the physiological stress that might arise in these challenging situations - Our physical state (heart rate, muscle tension) influence our beliefs about our ability to succeed - Feeling anxious can lower self-efficacy and low self-efficacy can make us feel more anxious - Someone with high self-efficacy might reframe these body signals as excitement - Stress in small doses is normal and adaptive, it helps you overcome challenges and perform - Try to see it as an ally rather than a foe

Question 32

Stressors vs Perceived Stress

Answer 32

- Stressors: the events that are most likely to be stressful - Self-efficacy has a strong impact on stress, and chronic stress in particular - Perceived stress: a subjective evaluation of stress in response to events, depending on appraisal - Stress is not just about the events that happen to us but our interpretations of these events - Why the same stressful event can be stressful for one person but not another

Question 33

Describe the Stress appraisal theory

Answer 33

- Lazarus & Folkman (1984) - Appraisals of an event and our role in it shape our emotional experience of the event, and our physiological reactions to it - Postulates that stress is what happens when the demands of the situation exceed our ability to cope - 2 broad categories of appraisals determine the degree to which we perceive an event to be stressful: 1) Primary appraisal: a person’s perception of the demands or challenges of a given situation - Initial reaction to the situation - Is the event positive, negative, or neutral? - If negative, to what extent is it harmful, threatening for the future, or challenging? 2) Secondary appraisal: a person’s perception of their ability to deal with the demands of a given situation - Are coping abilities and resources sufficient to deal with and overcome the harm, threat, or challenge posed by the event? - Ultimately, the subjective experience of stress results from the balancing of primary and secondary appraisals - Perceived stress is high when the primary appraisal of the situation’s demands exceeds the secondary appraisal of your ability to meet those demands - Ex: high harm/threat + low coping = substantial stress - Why our beliefs of our ability to cope with a situation matter in terms of performance and wellbeing

Question 34

Challenge vs Threat Appraisal Reactivity

Answer 34

* Challenge appraisal reactivity: cardiovascular pattern of response whereby the heart pumps out more blood and the vasculature dilates, allowing efficient circulation through the body * More adaptive physiological response and enhanced performance * Threat appraisal reactivity: cardiovascular pattern of response whereby the heart pumps out more blood but the vasculature constricts, preventing efficient circulation through the body * Overtime this type of physiological response can lead to health problems and impaired performance * Individuals high in self-efficacy are more likely to make challenge appraisals * The way you interpret the situation is going to influence your performance and your physical health overtime

Question 35

What are the 2 types of expectancies?

Answer 35

- The building blocks of self-efficacy 1) Efficacy expectation = “Can I do it?” - Do I have the skills, knowledge, resources, etc. to do something? 2) Outcome expectation = “Will it work?” - If I take action, will it actually lead to the result I want? - Both judgments are crucial for influencing motivation and action

Question 36

Describe learned helplessness

Answer 36

- When we lack self-efficacy, we may enter a state of learned helplessness - State of passive resignation to an aversive situation that one has come to believe is outside of their control - Opposite of self-efficacy - Original work done on animals - Experiment with dogs (Seligman & Maier, 1967): - Control group: no shocks - Escape group: were able to learn that there's a lever that you can press and could terminate shock by pressing lever - No-escape group: received shocks without any way to stop them - Nothing they could do to avoid the shock - Particularly interested in this group - These dogs later exhibit behaviours that resemble depression in humans - Test phase: - Dogs could easily jump over a hurdle to get away from the electrified floor - Dogs who could control the shocks later learned to escape by jumping over a barrier in a new environment - Dogs who had no control before often did not attempt to escape, even when escape was easy - When animals are placed in a situation where they have little to no control, they develop this expectation that their future actions will have little or no effect on what happens to them - Learned that nothing they do matters so there's no point in trying

Question 37

Describe learned helplessness in humans

Answer 37

- Has been shown in humans with loud aversive noises - Learned helplessness occurs when repeated failure leads people to believe they have no control over their situation - Undermines motivation, leading people to stop trying, even when success is possible - Repeated failure -> attribution to personal flaws -> loss of motivation - To break the cycle: - Build small successes to restore self-efficacy - Recognize that past failure =/= future failure - Focus on controllable actions rather than global unchangeable beliefs

Question 38

Describe controllability and depression

Answer 38

- Controllability attributions are a strong predictor of depression - Learned helplessness experiments with dogs remarkably resemble human depression behaviourally - If we feel that we have no control over what we do and that nothing we do matters, it's easy to see how this would lead to a depressive state - A lack of a sense of control can make it harder to seek help and undertake changes that can lead to recovery - Becomes a pernicious cycle that's difficult to break out of - Depression can be thought of as a state of despair and surrender of hope - Debate about whether individuals with depression underestimate controllability of events - Some argue for existence of “depressive realism” (vs illusion of control (optimism bias) exercised by non-depressed, more optimistic individuals) - Ex: research where non-depressed Ps overestimate their control on the task, whereas depressed Ps are more accurate - Even if the world is uncontrollable, believing in our ability to exert control can have psychological benefits

Question 39

Describe hope

Answer 39

- Hope is more than just positive thinking or optimism - Combines motivation and strategy to reach a goal - Hopelessness: feeling that nothing will get better and personal effort is meaningless - Hope is the antithesis of depression (its psychological opposite) - 2 components: 1) Agency = the belief that I can do something - Determination & motivation to reach a goal - Similar to self-efficacy but has more of an emotional component 2) Pathways thinking = belief that I can find a way to make it happen - Ability to generate different strategies and workarounds for obstacles - Belief that you can find different ways/routes of making the desired outcome happen

Question 40

Describe problematic positive thinking

Answer 40

- Optimism is a good thing but in moderation - Historically, optimism wasn't seen as a good thing - Many philosophers warned that it creates and prolongs human suffering - Freud saw it as a widespread illusion and delusion - Maybe pays to be a little delusional - Optimism is a double-edged sword - Safeguards well-being in a frightening world - Evolutionary argument: evolved alongside intelligence to help protect us from the effects of a brain able to think about the future - Had to develop something that would help us manage the debilitating fear and anxiety that would come from being able to think about the future - BUT can also lead us to underestimate risks, costs, and setbacks despite past experience (planning fallacy) - Tend to be particularly unrealistic when thinking about the future, particularly the distant future - We're really optimistic about the distant future - Ex: greatly overestimate how much free time we'll have

Question 41

What's the planning fallacy?

Answer 41

- We’re notoriously bad at predicting how long tasks will take - Even when we've made the same mistake before - Focus on imagined successful outcomes rather than potential obstacles

Question 42

Describe the construal level theory

Answer 42

- Tend to think about psychologically distant events in more abstract terms, and more psychologically proximal events in more concrete terms - Psychological distance: time, likelihood, space - Abstract, high-level aspects of tasks: the benefits of doing something, overarching goals - Concrete, low-level aspects of tasks: potential obstacles, specific steps required - Psychologically distant events: focus on desirability information - Ex: by taking this challenging course next year, I'll become a smarter and better person - Psychologically proximate events: focus on feasibility information - Ex: why did I sign up for this course this semester? I don’t have the time to read complex texts in a foreign language - Why so many of us tend to overcommit to things in the long term - Halverson talks about this as explorer vs accountant thinking

Question 43

What are the 3 ways we think about goals?

Answer 43

1) Indulging - Only fantasizing about success (ex: “I’m going to crush this presentation”) - Not thinking about potential obstacles - Problem: feels rewarding but lowers motivation to actually prepare - Decreases motivation and performance - Probably more relaxing than it is energizing - Research shows that people who are in search of employment and imagine getting the perfect dream job easily end up sending out fewer applications which is counterproductive - Why it doesn’t work: tricks your brain into thinking you’ve already succeeded - You've already enjoyed the reward of success in your mind so you're less likely to take the necessary steps to make it happen - Not the most adaptive strategy for attaining goals - Ex: “It’s going to go great!" -> prepares a little but doesn’t put in much effort 2) Dwelling - Only focusing on negative aspects of the current reality and ruminating on obstacles (ex: “I’m bad at public speaking”) - Problem: increases stress but doesn’t encourage or motivate action - Creates anxiety, procrastination, avoidance - Why it doesn’t work: makes obstacles feel insurmountable, leading to avoidance - Ex: “What if I mess up?!" -> stresses out, but still doesn’t prepare as much as they should 3) Mental contrasting: - Step 1: imagine achieving your goal (ex: giving a great presentation) - Step 2: identify obstacles in your way (ex: public speaking anxiety) - Then continue going back and forth between these 2 steps - Creating a gap between the dream and the current reality and makes it very clear to us that action is needed to achieve this desired reality and this puts us in a more solution-oriented mindset - Pushes us to be more realistic - If success seems likely, you commit and take action - If success seems unlikely, you disengage and focus on a better goal - Why it works: fosters motivation by balancing optimism with realism - Ex: “It will go great if I prepare well and practice to manage my nerves" -> creates a game plan, rehearses, and adjusts accordingly

Question 44

Describe the "WOOP" method

Answer 44

- Oettingen (2014) - Wish: choose an important and achievable/realistic goal - Outcome: imagine how achieving the goal would positively impact your life - Obstacle: identify internal barriers that might derail your progress (ex: tendency to procrastinate, self-doubt, bad habits) - Plan: develop concrete if=then plan to overcome the obstacle - People will often start engaging in this type of planning spontaneously, when engaging in mental contrasting - You can also teach people how to do this explicitly

Question 45

Describe Oettingen et al. (2001) study on the 3 ways we think about goals

Answer 45

- Ps were 1st year computer science students - Procedure: - 1st, students rated how likely they thought they were to excel in math (math is very important in this context) - Asked how energized they felt about excelling in math (how active, engaged, ready to work they were) and then a couple of weeks later, their teachers reported how much effort the students had actually put in and they got their grades back as well - Then, randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions: - Mental contrasting group - Indulging group - Dwelling group - Results: - Students who practiced mental contrasting showed strongest motivation and effort, but only if they had high expectations of success - Felt more energized, studied harder, earned highest grades - For students who had low expectations of success, mental contrasting had the opposite effect - They were more likely to disengage - Students in indulging and dwelling conditions felt moderately energized, put in moderate effort, and received average grades (regardless of how high or low their expectations were)

Question 46

What are examples of other life domains mental contrasting works for?

Answer 46

- Learning a foreign language - Cutting back on smoking - Maintaining healthy lifestyle (ex: exercising regularly) - Managing chronic illness - Forging interpersonal relationships (ex: mental contrasting led to people being more likely to get to know an attractive stranger rather than just daydreaming about it) - Mental contrasting works by aligning effort with reality: - If success seems likely, it boosts motivation & effort (more energized, committed and more likely to follow through and succeed) - If success seems unlikely, decreases motivation & effort (help them let go and disengage)

Question 47

Describe mental contrasting and counterfactual thinking

Answer 47

- Mental contrasting helps process and move past regret - Appears to help when a goal is out of reach forever - When people engage in counterfactual thinking (nagging “what could have been” or "if only" thoughts), mental contrasting reduces disappointment, regret, and resentment - Mental contrasting also helps you move forward and reengage with the present and take action in the present - People who mentally contrasted past regrets became more active and productive in daily life, ex: - Relationships: wrote more thoughtful get-well letters to friends (strengthening their other relationships in the present) - Career: created higher-quality job applications - Moving from "what if" into "what now"

Question 48

Realistic vs unrealistic optimism

Answer 48

- Realistic optimism: based on belief that success comes from effort, strategy, and perseverance - Unrealistic optimism: based on belief that success comes from luck or fixed traits - Unrealistic optimism leads to a lack of preparation and increases the risk of failure - Believing you will succeed =/= believing you will succeed easily

Question 49

What's an essential part of effective self-regulation concerning goals?

Answer 49

* An essential part of effective self-regulation is knowing when to let go of one goal so we can free ourselves up to pursue other goals * This is because continued effort and goal persistence are not adaptive if the goal is unattainable

Question 50

Describe the necessity of goal disengagement

Answer 50

- Not all goals are attainable, and some goals may become unattainable with time - Some goals are unattainable due to: - Unrealistic expectations from the start (ex: overcommitting -> sometimes we sign up for too many things and we can't actually pursue them all) - Changing circumstances - Conflicts with other priorities - Loss of importance over time - High costs (mental, physical, financial) - Other constraints (ex: interpersonal) - Some goals are just not possible (we see this in the interpersonal domain -> ex: can't make someone feel a certain way about us or fundamentally incompatible with partner in terms of life goals -> ex: one partner wants children and the other doesn't) - Sometimes goals are incompatible and something is going to have to give

Question 51

Why is goal disengagement important?

Answer 51

- Every goal we pursue requires us to give something else up (opportunity costs) - By hanging on to unattainable goals, we miss out on other, potentially attainable goals and their attendant material and psychological benefits (ex: pride, joy, psychological need satisfaction) - Continuing pursuit of a goal that can’t be attained is going to create a problem for the individual's quality of life - The resources we have for goal pursuit are limited - People who keep pursuing unattainable goals will be less likely to invest time and energy in the pursuit of other important and potentially feasible goals - Repeated failure & stagnation experienced in pursuit of an unattainable goal can produce chronic stress, resulting in anxiety, depression, cortisol & immune system dysregulation (all of these make us more susceptible to illness)

Question 52

Describe action crises

Answer 52

- Decisional conflict - Period of indecision when individual is torn between goal persistence and disengagement (do we keep going or do we let it go?) - Occurs when there has been significant investment in a goal, but repeated setbacks or declining desirability make the goal less appealing - Negative impacts: - Increased stress & reduced well-being (ex: some influential perspectives in neuroscience argue that simultaneous activation of approach and avoidance goals motivation are at the very root of anxiety) - Dysregulation of physiological stress response - Problematic health symptoms (ex: headaches, fatigue, sleep disturbances) - Worse performance (when mentally caught up between goal engagement and disengagement, we're gonna start losing focus and we're not gonna perform as effectively)

Question 53

Autonomous vs controlled motivation (concerning goal disengagement)

Answer 53

- Not everyone is equally vulnerable to action crises and we're not equally vulnerable to action crises at different points in our life - Research suggests that our motivation for pursuing a goal plays a big role here - Autonomous motivation (pursuing goals for personal interest/values) = protective factor against severe action crises - Keeps you going in the face of setbacks, difficulties, challenges - Tend to bounce back more easily - Less likely to experience internal conflict - Controlled motivation (pursuing goals due to external pressure rather than internal passion) = higher risk of doubt, inner conflict, and disengagement, and more likely to experience action crises - Mismatch between what we should do and what we really want - Going to make setbacks harder to overcome - Motivation comes from the outside and relies on external factors - Motivation & subsequent susceptibility to action crises varies from goal to goal within individual - Longitudinal studies show the relationship between motivation and vulnerability to experience these action crises within individuals - The more controlled your motivation is for pursuing a goal, the more likely you are to experiencing an action crisis for this particular goal - Less likely to experience severe action crises on our most autonomous goals

Question 54

Is there any benefit to action crises?

Answer 54

- Function of action crises: force us to reassess our goals and either: - Commit more fully to a goal - Disengage from the goal and redirect our energy towards a goal that better fits our values and interests - Fork in the road moment where you have to decide which path to take - You don't want to just sit in the middle forever and experience this conflict and anxiety

Question 55

Describe the steps to goal disengagement

Answer 55

- Goal disengagement isn't easy or straightforward - Not as simple as just quitting - It's a transition that you have to do deliberately and with purpose - Goal disengagement requires: 1) Withdrawal of behavioural effort 2) Dissolving motivational commitment - Letting go of the emotional attachment you still have towards the goal - Reducing the importance of the goal and redefining it as not important to attain satisfaction in your life - Requires some reorganization of our self-concept 3) Finding an attractive alternative goal to pursue - Redirecting our energy to something else that's going to bring purpose and meaning - There are 3 paths we can take: 1) Unattainable goal -> Maintain effort and commitment -> Potential for psychological distress 2) Unattainable goal -> Give up effort and maintain commitment (= the frozen goal) -> Potential for psychological distress 3) Unattainable goal -> Give up effort and commitment -> Adopt a new, alternative goal -> Potential for psychological well-being - Path 3 is more likely to set us on a path towards achievement and greater psychological wellbeing - "When one door closes, another door opens but we so often look so long and regretfully open the closed door that we do not see the ones which open for us" - Alexander Bell

Question 56

What's the frozen goal?

Answer 56

- You're not taking any action but you're also not letting it go psychologically - Your self-identity is still bound up with it - "One day I will do this thing"

Question 57

Describe the inaction crisis

Answer 57

- Older models of goal disengagement framed it as a linear process - Not so linear and clearcut as this and the struggle actually often doesn't end with an action crisis - Often once we have chosen to disengage, we can still experience an inaction crisis - Decisional conflict that occurs after deciding to disengage from a goal - Marked by doubt, regret, and internal conflict about abandoning goal - Disrupts disengagement process - Action crisis occurs before making a choice and inaction crisis occurs after making that decision - With inaction crisis, you're still stuck and second-guessing whether letting go was the right call - Ex: you have broken up, but months later, you're still creeping on their social media and feel this pull to reach out and spend a lot of time sitting around wondering if you've made a mistake - Still mentally and emotionally stuck considering whether you should be moving on

Question 58

Why is it so difficult to let go of goals?

Answer 58

- Letting go of a goal can threaten self-concept if the goal is closely tied to one’s identity and self-worth - Abandoning it feels like losing a core part of ourselves - Sunk cost fallacy - Concerns about social disapproval: - Prevalence of quitting = failure mindset (in a lot of cultures, persistence is glorified and quitting is seen as failing and a sign of weakness) - Social investment (if a person's family, friends and mentors have invested in their goal, it makes it harder to walk away) - Public commitment can backfire when trying to disengage from a goal - Research shows that when we make a public commitment to a goal, we're more likely to persist - The more publicly someone has identified with their goal, the harder it is to quietly walk away and disengage - Ex: spotlight effect - Might misjudge the goal’s attainability (positive illusions (ex: optimism bias), planning fallacy, availability heuristic)

Question 59

What's the sunk cost fallacy?

Answer 59

- Tendency to continue investing in a goal solely because of past investments, even when letting go would be the more rational choice - Abandoning the goal feels like a failure and feels wasteful - To combat this, you can do some reframing

Question 60

What's the availability heuristic?

Answer 60

- Imagining an event increases its perceived likelihood - The more we imagine something happening, the more strongly we come to believe that it's actually going to happen - The extent to which something is cognitively available, it's going to be perceived as more likely of happening - With a cherished goal, this is probably something that you have imagined over and over again quite vividly which can skew your perception of its likelihood

Question 61

Describe adaptive goal disengagement

Answer 61

* Research suggests disengagement is adaptive when 3 conditions are met: 1) It frees up resources (ex: time and energy) for other goals 2) A new, alternative goal is available * Without a replacement goal, disengagement can lead to emptiness, loss of purpose, disorientation and depression * When we commit to a new goal, our thoughts shift towards its pursuit * Recent research example: goal re-engagement provided a buffer against declines in well-being (ex: lower stress, fewer depressive symptoms, greater life satisfaction, greater sense of meaning in life) due to loss of control over valued goals during COVID-19 pandemic 3) It feels like a personal choice * Letting go for autonomous reasons protects well-being (more likely to feel relieved, in control, ready to move forward), while being forced to quit can create distress, inner-conflict and lingering regret

Question 62

Describe Holding et al. (2022) study on goal disengagement among university students

Answer 62

* Longitudinal study following undergraduate and graduate students who at the beginning of the academic year reported that they were in the process of disengaging from a meaningful personal goal * Researchers tracked them over a period of 8 months * Check in with them at several time points * T1: September * What kind of goal, how long have you been trying to let go? Motivation for letting go: autonomous or controlled? * The kinds of goals that Ps struggled to let go of varied widely * Even though these students had chosen to walk away from these goals, these goals were trivial to them (they rated them as quite important) * This was a challenging thing for them * The key factor the researchers were interested in was the motivation for quitting * T2: December * Disengagement progress & inaction crisis severity * T3: March * Disengagement progress & inaction crisis severity * T4: May * Disengagement progress * Results: * What didn’t matter: * Type of goal * How long someone had been trying to let go * How difficult they thought it would be to disengage * General disposition (ex: optimism, decisiveness) * What did matter: the motivation behind disengagement (to what extent did you feel in control of your decision to disengage) * Students who disengaged for autonomous reasons (feeling that they chose to let go) experienced fewer inaction crises at T2 and T3 and made more disengagement progress by the end of the year * Students who disengaged for controlled reasons (feeling pushed or obligated) experienced more inaction crises, leading to slower progress in actually letting go * Researchers then went on to replicate these findings with an older community sample * Across both studies, you see that having autonomous motivation for disengagement is associated with making disengagement progress, fewer inaction crises, whereas controlled motivation is associated with more inaction crises and this slows down progress

Question 63

What does research suggest about helping others with goal disengagement?

Answer 63

Research suggests that when we're trying to help someone let go of a goal, we should try to help them find autonomous reasons for letting go but not in a way that feels so forceful and controlled

Question 64

Describe Holding et al. (2017) study on goal disengagement and elite athletes facing retirement

Answer 64

- Elite Canadian athletes (80% of whom were Olympians) - Goal disengagement is a normative process for athletes - Very hard for elite athletes because their sport is such a big part of their identity and they have given so many resources into their sport - The researchers were interested in understanding why some fare better and others struggle - Retirement experiences vary: - Some athletes struggle with identity disruption, loss of purpose, and declines in well-being - Others adjust smoothly and find new meaning post-retirement - The reason for retirement matters: - Perceptions of controlled (forced) retirement (ex: due to injury, discrimination, external pressures) are linked to lower well-being - Perceptions of autonomous (self-chosen) retirement (ex: to pursue education or new career) linked to higher well-being - Able to successfully shift their focus to a new goal and didn't experience the same levels of distress

Question 65

Describe goal disengagement and health

Answer 65

- A capacity for goal disengagement is related to better health outcomes - Letting go of an unattainable goal has been shown to reduce physical stress related symptoms - University students who were better at disengaging from unattainable goals reported fewer health symptoms and improved sleep by the end of the semester (this effect was mediated by lower emotional distress) - In older adults, those with strong goal disengagement capacities predicted a lower incidence of the common cold over six years, especially among those facing greater physical limitations - Research suggests that goal disengagement can regulate the stress response by regulating cortisol more effectively, lowering chronic inflammation, which is considered a major culprit for many psychological and physical disorders - In women with breast cancer, stronger goal disengagement capacities were associated with lower levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a biomarker of inflammation - Among adolescent girls at risk for depression, those who struggled to disengage from unattainable goals showed increasing levels of this inflammatory biomarker over time, while those with better disengagement capacities had stable, low levels of CRP - Suggesting that this persistent goal failure without effective disengagement can contribute to immune system dysregulation and this poses long term health risks

Question 66

Describe goal accommodation/adjustment

Answer 66

- Shifting a goal to be more realistic and achievable - Lowering difficulty of the goal - Shifting to a related goal (similar to goal reengagement) - Broadening the definition of success (reframing it in a way that still feels fulfilling) - Another way to cope with an unattainable goal might be to adjust the goal and modify expectations rather than fully disengage - Research suggests that this is an adaptive form of adjustment that can help people maintain their motivation, their sense of identity, and their wellbeing while avoiding that distress associated with goal failure - Why it’s adaptive: - Goal flexibility reduces psychological distress and protects health - Can allow you to stay engaged with a valued domain and avoid psychological distress of “identity loss”

Question 67

What's an emotion?

Answer 67

- Researchers and scientists don't agree on what emotion is - Popular definition: “An inferred complex sequence of reactions to a stimulus [including] cognitive evaluations, subjective changes, autonomic and neural arousal, impulses to action, and behaviour designed to have an effect upon the stimulus that initiated the complex sequence” - This definition treats emotions as useful tools - Key points: 1) Emotions are functional (they help us navigate the world by pushing us towards actions that are going to serve our survival needs and goals -> ex: fear helps us escape danger) 2) Emotions are reactions to stimuli - Reactions to specific events/things happening in the world - Usually a clear because - What makes emotions distinct from drives like hunger or thirst which tend to just bubble up inside of us - Some debate for this -> there are suggestions that emotions aren't neatly tied to an external trigger all the time (ex: waking up grumpy for no apparent reason) 3) Emotions include cognitive appraisals (what does this mean for me), subjective feelings, physiological change, and behaviour (what do I do about it) - In everyday life we tend to focus on the feeling part - We use emotions as synonymous with feelings - Emotion is perhaps best thought of as a constellation of these factors (coordinated experience) - Are all 4 necessary for something to count as an emotion? What's the relationship between them?

Question 68

What are the 3 classic theories of emotion?

Answer 68

- James-Lange theory of emotion - Cannon-Bard theory of emotion - Schachter-Singer Two-Factor theory of emotion

Question 69

Describe the James-Lange theory of emotion

Answer 69

- Emotions are the result of perceiving bodily changes in response to some stimulus in the environment - Stimulus (later became appraisal of stimulus) -> Physiological response & behaviour -> Emotional experience - This theory of emotion states that we have a stimulus in the environment (ex: a bear), then we have a physiological response (ex: heart starts pounding), then we have an emotional experience - Different emotions are associated with different patterns of bodily responses - Later, when challenged, James added more of a cognitive component to this theory - Challenged on the fact that your heart doesn't always start pounding to every bear (ex: if you're on a hike and you see a bear, then your heart starts pounding but if you're at the zoo and see a bear in a cage from a safe distance, then it probably won't) - Added that the "appraisal" of the stimulus matters

Question 70

Describe the Cannon-Bard theory of emotion

Answer 70

- Bodily response and emotional experience occur independently at the same time following a stimulus - Stimulus -> Physiological response & Emotional experience - Signal going both to the cortex and to the body for a simultaneous physiological and emotional response

Question 71

Describe the Schachter-Singer Two-Factor theory of emotion

Answer 71

- This theory emphasizes cognition to a much greater extent - Emotional response is the result of an interpretative label applied to a bodily response - The physiological response is not highly specific - Ex: If you see a bear or you receive a sweet love note, in both cases, your heart will speed up but these 2 things are probably going to lead to very different emotional experiences because you're going to attach different labels to them (going to make a different appraisal/evaluation/judgment) which will lead to different emotional experiences - Emotion involves cognitive appraisal about the source of the bodily response - Same physiological response leading to different emotional experiences depending on the cognitive appraisal that you make - 2 or more different stimuli -> same physiological response -> different appraisals -> different emotional experiences

Question 72

Describe William James' conception of emotions

Answer 72

* The common sense of emotion that many of us have is that there's some precipitating event, this leads to the outpouring of an emotion, and this leads to a physiological or behavioural response (ex: we cry because we're sad) * First you have conscious awareness, then you have all of the physiological and behavioural reactions * William James argued that we have it backwards * First comes the action and then comes the emotion * Ex: "We feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike" - James, 1890 * He argued that if you couldn't experience the physiological changes that accompany an emotion, then you wouldn't feel the emotion as intensely * He argued it would probably be this colourless thing, it wouldn't have the same vividness or intensity

Question 73

Describe Dutton & Aron (1974) famous Capilano Bridge Study

Answer 73

* Field study * High suspension bridge in Vancouver * As you walk over it, you feel your heart speed up and get that physiological arousal * Researchers placed an attractive confederate at the end of the bridge * Looked at heterosexual men in the study * The men would walk across the bridge, then would interact with the confederate who asked them if they'd be willing to participate in a research study where they would have to write a little story describing what was going on in the picture * Findings: * Arousal caused by walking over high suspension bridge misattributed to attractive confederate * Men who walked over this scary bridge compared to another bridge that was lower and more stable and not expected to be as physiologically arousing were more likely to find a pretext to call-up the female experimenter later (had her number) and the story they wrote had much more sexual and relationship related imagery * They're misattributing this arousal they're experiencing from walking over the bridge to the attractive confederate

Question 74

Describe Valins (1966) study on misattributing physiological arousal

Answer 74

* Suggests it's not even just about the physiological response itself but beliefs about what you're experiencing * Looked at young heterosexual men * Had them flip through a playboy magazine and look at pictures of pin-ups * The Ps were hooked up to equipment measuring their physiological state * As they're looking through these pictures, they hear a sound coming from the computer * Manipulation: * Some of the Ps were told not to pay attention to the sound as it was just the equipment (told to ignore it) * Other Ps were told that this sound was the readout of their heart rate (bogus heart rate feedback while viewing pin-ups) * Could hear their heartbeat * Researchers would accelerate or slow down the beeping sound * Findings: * Men who thought their heart was racing rated the model they were looking at as more attractive, suggesting they misattributed the perceived arousal to sexual attraction * They would rate this pin-up as being more attractive compared to the pin-ups they were viewing when the bogus feedback was indicating that their heart was slowing down

Question 75

Protest vs Despair

Answer 75

- Parallels to protest and despair responses to separation from attachment figure (Bowlby, 1969) - Protest phase = active distress - Despair phase = emotional shutdown and withdrawal to conserve resources - Pankepp’s affective neuroscience perspective: - Prolonged activation of PANIC/GRIEF system leads to shutdown of the SEEKING system, causing low energy and motivation (core features of depression) - Common roots of depression and addiction: - Drug use wears down brain’s natural ability to generate pleasure, leading to dysphoria - Both depression and addiction stem from overtaxing the brains’ basic emotional systems, through prolonged grief or overstimulation of reward systems

Question 76

Describe the self-conscious emotions

Answer 76

- Self-conscious emotions involve heightened awareness and negative appraisals of the self - Commonalities: reflect the belief that we have done something wrong or fallen short of expectations, make us feel bad, provoke urge to hide or withdraw - We feel embarrassed, guilty or ashamed if we believe that we have fallen short of expectations in our own eyes or in the eyes of others - Researchers suggest that all of these self-conscious emotions serve a related function, which is to help us repair damage after we made a mistake or transgression or at least help us avoid creating further damage - Most common experiences associated with shame are: hurting someone else's feelings, lying, failure to meet other people's expectations, and failure to meet your own expectations - Most common experiences associated with guilt are: failure to perform one's duties, lying, cheating, stealing, neglecting someone close to you, hurting somebody else's feelings, infidelity - Fair amount of overlap: - Poor performance is commonly cited as a cause for either embarrassment or shame - Hurting others is a common cause for shame and guilt - Embarrassment: often triggered by social mishaps or unwanted attention, but doesn’t necessarily mean we did something morally wrong - Embarrassment may occur with positive events as well (ex: getting praised in public)

Question 77

Shame vs Guilt

Answer 77

- These are the most common when there is some sort of moral transgression (when we do something to hurt somebody else or we fail to live up to some important internal or social value) - Both shame and guilt have characteristic display: head down, slumped posture, eye gaze avoidance (behavioural cues of withdrawal and disengagement) - Shame typically follows moral or personal failures (hurting someone, lying, disappointing others) and leads to negative, global self-judgments like “I’m a bad person” (internal, global, stable self-criticism) - Guilt arises from specific actions (breaking a promise, neglecting someone, cheating) and is tied to feeling bad about what we did, not who we are (internal, unstable and specific attributions) - Guilt, but not shame, motivates people to take action and repair harm - Guilt can serve a useful function - Those who don't feel guilt tend to be more selfish and inconsiderate of others - Ex: prejudice study

Question 78

Describe the prejudice study on guilt and shame

Answer 78

* Researchers hooked up Ps to EEG recording equipment while they looked at different images, including images of people from different races, and then gave the Ps bogus feedback suggesting that they exhibited patterns that indicated negative implicit attitudes towards people of other races * This manipulation tended to increase both shame and guilt in Ps but interestingly specifically guilt, not shame, predicted interest in trying to take some restorative action * Ex: Ps were given downtime where there were articles they could look at and Ps could select which articles they wanted to review and some of these were about reducing prejudice * Those who felt guilt were more likely to look at those articles but not those feeling shame

Question 79

What's the function of shame?

Answer 79

- Shame displays resemble submission signals in animals, which function to de-escalate conflict & prevent harm - May have evolved as an appeasement strategy to de-escalate social conflict, helping reduce aggression, elicit cooperation or pity, & maintain social cohesion - Shame may have evolved as a tool to reduce conflict and keep our social groups intact - Shame triggers emotional and physical withdrawal, similar to depressive states and sickness behaviour (ex: isolation), both of which are linked to increased inflammation - Inflammation heightens social sensitivity (for both positive and negative stimuli) which can end up in this spiral (more sensitive to social threat, feel more disconnected from others, feel more affected by negative feedback) - Shame at its core might serve an adaptive purpose but it's also tricky as it can be triggered by these imaginary or exaggerated social failures and once it's activated, you can spiral and become even more hyper attuned to rejection or criticism - It also ramps up our sensitivity to social rewards, so to positive social stimuli as well - Might be part of a bigger system to help us reconnect: pull back from unsupportive others when at risk and seek out social support when we're vulnerable and need it the most

Question 80

What can we do about boredom?

Answer 80

- If attention is the problem because task demands are too high: - Can eliminate external distractions - Can decrease task difficulty to match skill level or break task down into manageable components - Build up skill to match challenge (ex: in video games, there's an increase in difficulty as the game goes on and the player gets better, which is part of what makes them so engaging) - If attention is the problem because task demands are too low: - Make task more challenging - Increase external stimulation (ex: might listen to music, eat a snack, engage in mind wandering) - If meaning is the problem: - Can find ways to reframe our goals and make it feel more relevant and important - "Why" thinking - Re-evaluate goal - Find value in activity - Maybe find a new goal or new activity - When bored may pursue either interesting activities (when lacking meaning) or enjoyable activities (when lacking attention) - Pursuing interesting activities will build up our cognitive resources, preventing future boredom

Question 81

Describe anger

Answer 81

- Anger is unique among basic negative emotions because motivates approach rather than withdrawal, energizes us to confront obstacles - Core trigger: arises when something blocks our goals or threatens our wellbeing (ex: physical or psychological harm, betrayal, unfair criticism) - Can be triggered by a feeling of lack of consideration from others or cumulative frustrations, pain or other aversive conditions - Function is to help/energize us to remove obstacles or to prevent or stop harm - Stems from belief that the interference or restraint is unjust or illegitimate, things are not as they should be

Question 82

Describe Fredrickson et al. (1998) broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions

Answer 82

- While negative emotions tend to narrow our focus and prepare us for immediate action, positive emotions (except enthusiasm) broaden thinking, fostering curiosity, creativity, and engagement in the world - Ex: following positive mood induction, people are more likely to recognize global patterns, think creatively, and remain open to new experiences - Positive emotions help build resilience/resources and long-term satisfaction - While negative emotions prepare us to avoid threats, positive emotions promote approach, exploration and goal-seeking, helping us take advantage of opportunities for growth and connection - Upward spiral

Question 83

Describe contentment

Answer 83

- Contentment occurs after consuming a reward (liking component) - More mellow, relaxing - Associated with activation of parasympathetic nervous system, which slows the body down and promotes digestion and relaxation - In nonhuman animals, brain activity shifts from dopaminergic activation (reward anticipation) to β-endorphin (opioid-related) activity (relaxation and behavioral slowing) after consuming a reward - Cognitive function: enhances memory consolidation, helping animals remember how the obtained the reward so they could enjoy it again in the future

Question 84

Goals contribute to effective self-regulation by providing what?

Answer 84

- Direction and focus - Motivation - Planning and strategy - Feedback allowing us to monitor our progress (including emotions) - Sense of self-efficacy

Question 85

Where does regulatory focus come from?

Answer 85

- Temperament: some of us are dispositionally more sensitive to negative outcomes (more neurotic) vs sensitive to positive outcomes (more extroverted) - Different styles of caretaker-child interactions - Promotion focus: - Nurturing, bolstering parenting - Caregivers who emphasize and encourage aspirations and progress - Prevention focus: - Punitive, controlling parenting - Caregivers that emphasize obedience, obligations, and safety - Culture: - Independent/individualist cultures (ex: Western Europe, US, Canada) tend to prioritize individual achievement, aspirations, and self-reliance → increases likelihood of developing promotion focus - Interdependent/collectivist cultures (ex: East & South Asia, Latin America) tend to prioritize social harmony and group-well-being → more prevention focus, concerns about letting other down

Question 86

Describe the regulatory fit theory

Answer 86

- People are more engaged and motivated when their strategy matches their motivational style - Promotion-focused individuals thrive with eager, gain-seeking strategies - Prevention-focused individuals perform best with vigilant, loss-avoiding strategies - Regulatory fit also improves performance and psychological well-being

Question 87

Promotion vs prevention thinking and speed vs accuracy

Answer 87

- Promotion focus: prioritize speed over accuracy - Can lead to faster decision-making, but may increase likelihood of errors - Prevention focus: prioritize accuracy over speed - May lead to fewer errors but slow down decision-making process

Question 88

What are the key trade-offs for promotion and prevention approaches

Answer 88

- Speed and accuracy - Confidence and caution - Commitment and exploration

Question 89

Describe regulatory focus in the social domain

Answer 89

- Outright rejection vs. passive exclusion may affect regulatory focus - Explicit rejection (direct dismissal) → triggers prevention focus (loss avoidance) - Being ignored (passive exclusion) → triggers promotion focus (missed opportunity)

Question 90

Describe the 2 key motivational concepts in healthcare

Answer 90

- Autonomous motivation - Autonomy support: 1) Take and acknowledge patients' perspectives 2) Provide choices 3) Provide meaningful rationale

Question 91

What are the basic listening skills taught in healthcare?

Answer 91

- Make eye contact - Ask open-ended questions - Listen carefully - Don't interrupt - Encourage initiation and involvement - Provide a rationale for your suggestions

Question 92

What was Williams' mediation model in the healthcare setting?

Answer 92

Doctor autonomy support -> Patient autonomy motivation -> Adherence to medical regimen OR Autonomy support -> Autonomous motivation -> Positive health outcomes

Question 93

What are the National Cancer Associations' 5 Major Steps to Intervention (The 5 A's) for smoking?

Answer 93

1. Ask (3 qs)- Identify and document tobacco use status for every patient at every visit 2. Advise - In a clear, strong, and personalized manner, urge every tobacco user to quit 3. Assess - Is the tobacco user willing to make a quit attempt at this time? 4. Assist - For the patient willing to make a quit attempt, use counseling and pharmacotherapy to help him or her quit 5. Arrange - Schedule follow-up contact, in person or by telephone, preferably within the first week after the quit date