Needs Flashcards
(32 cards)
What is motivation?
Motivation is a broad theoretical concept that is used to explain why people engage in certain actions. It includes aspects of activation and intention: energy, direction, persistence, and equifinality.
What is the psychological hedonism/hedonic axiom?
Organisms approach goals or engage in activities that presumably yield a positive outcome and avoid events that presumably have negative outcomes.
What is determinism?
Every event is an unavoidable and necessary consequence of prior circumstances.
What is dualism in the mind-body puzzle?
Assumes that the body and the mind are qualitatively different (Descartes).
What is monism in the mind-body puzzle?
Assumes that the body and the mind are qualitatively the same (Godfried Wilhelm Leibniz).
What is interactionist/Cartesian dualism?
The body is believed to be material whereas the mind is immaterial. The body depends on the mind; they interact with each other. Interaction occurs in the pineal gland where light energy through the eyes activates spirits which leads to body movement.
What is parallelistic dualism?
The body and the mind both work simultaneously but without influencing each other. Both mind and body exist but they do not interact with one another.
What is methodological dualism?
Methods for studying mental activity are different from those used to study other phenomena; hence the body-mind distinction is worth maintaining for this reason alone.
What is mentalistic monism?
The external world does not exist, it is merely a product of our own mind.
What is solipsism?
Proposed by Hume; there is only one mind and all other minds are merely a product of your own mind (not plausible).
What is materialistic monism?
The one underlying substance is of material nature and the mind is what the brain does; consciousness is merely a function of the brain.
What is the neural identity theory?
A variation of materialistic monism: the nervous system can be divided into two different parts: for every conscious mental event there is a corresponding brain event, but the converse is not true. We are not aware of everything that happens in our nervous system (aka the double-aspect theory).
What is a scientific theory?
A theory is a representation of real things that arise in nature and can therefore be seen, and it relates those things to each other by a set of rules.
What qualities distinguish a good theory from a bad one?
Testability: a good theory can be proven false.
Fruitfulness: a good theory generates research so that more knowledge can be gained.
Simplicity: the simple explanation is also preferred (parsimony).
Comprehensiveness: the better the theory, the greater number of observations it explains.
What do we want theories to explain?
We want theories to explain past events and predict future ones. One kind of scientific explanation is to identify a specific event as an instance of a more general principle or law.
What are the subareas of semiotic?
Semiotics is a system used to understand the scientific language and it has three subareas.
Syntactics: the relations of different signs to each other based on confirmed rules.
Semantics: the relations of signs to the objects to which they refer guided by rules for defining terms (simplest definition: ostensive definition).
Pragmatics: the relations of signs to their users.
What is a circular definitions?
A circular definition is when something is defined in terms of itself (appears to say something but it doesn’t).
What are intervening variables?
Intervening variables can be used to prevent circular reasoning by using an antecedant condition and a consequent condition in the definition.
How do we put together a theory?
The concepts of a theory are defined in terms of observable events, and the theory states how these concepts are related to each other. Predictions about other observable events in the world are made based on the syntax of the theory, which is determined by both observation and logic.
What is the regulatory approach to motivation?
The regulatory approach functions around homeostasis, how our bodies attempt to restore internal equilibrium following disruptive internal forces. According to this approach, there is a biological mechanism, complex behaviours are strings of reflexes of the body, and stimuli are the sole cause of the behaviour.
People are driven by their need for homeostasis.
Internal need –> Drive –> Activity –> Goal –> Quiescence
What is the purposive approach to motivation?
Emphasizes the goal-directed nature of behaviour and is more future-oriented and less physiologically oriented. We look to the future and all possible outcomes of different actions, and then we strive towards those goals we predict will have the greatest value to us.
What are motivational intervening variables?
An intervening variable is motivational if a difference in the level of an intervening variable X is related to a difference in preference, vigour, or persistence of behaviour. We can manipulate both internal states (regulatory) and goals (purposive) to see how they affect performance.
What is the hedonic continuum?
The hedonic continuum assumes that at any given time, there is an ordering of events along a continuum ranging from aversive to neutral to desirable. Organisms direct their behaviours to maximize pleasure and minimize distress. The hedonic continuum with the ordering of outcomes from aversive to desirable is a hierarchy of desirability of goals.
What is the relationship between social rejection and numbness to pain?
Laboratory manipulations of social exclusion caused a broad decrease in pain sensitivity across all participants. Biologically, the body goes into shock after experiencing pain (evolutionarily beneficial). Social rejections produces an emotional experience that is very similar to pain, with the same brain circuits being active. Thus, the brain releases opioids to produce an emotional shock-like state which presents itself in the form of emotional numbness.
