Unit 7: Motivation, Emotion, and Personality Flashcards

1
Q

Motivation

A

a need or desire that influences and directs behavior

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2
Q

Nature vs. Nurture in motivation

A

the “bodily push” (nature) combined with our personal experience (nurture) creates motivation

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3
Q

Instinct

A

a complex behavior that is rigidly patterned throughout a species and is unlearned

  • humans are not primarily motivated by instinct; we have basic ones but more of our motivations are driven by psysiological needs and psychological wants
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4
Q

Instinct theory

A

theory that our instincts act as a source of motivation; inborn impulses are our motivation to action

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5
Q

Imprinting

A

the process by which certain animals form strong attachments during early life

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6
Q

Drive reduction theory

A

the idea that a physiological need creates an aroused state (a drive) that motivates an organism to satisfy the need

  • drive reduction is the way our bodies strive for homeostasis, a tendency to maintain a balanced or constant internal state

homeostasis –> need –> drive –> drive reduction

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7
Q

incentives

A

a positive or negative environmental stimulus that motivates behavior

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8
Q

arousal theory

A

some motivated behaviors increase arousal (**think adrenaline junkies)

sometimes uncertainty brings excitement, amplifying motivation

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9
Q

Yerkes-Dodson Law

A

the principle that performance increases with arousal only up to a point, beyond which performance decreases (this point is different for different people)

  • simpler tasks are performed best when arousal levels are relatively moderate/high whereas complex tasks are best performed when arousal levels are low
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10
Q

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

A

Beginning at the base with physiological needs that must first be satisfied before higher-level safety needs and then psychological needs become active

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11
Q

How do glucose levels affect hunger?

A

If your blood glucose level drops, you won’t consciously feel the lower blood sugar. Your brain, which is automatically monitoring your blood chemistry and your body’s internal state, will trigger hunger.

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12
Q

Role of the Hypothalamus in hunger

A

Blood vessels supply the hypothalamus, enabling it to respond to our current blood chemistry/incoming neural info about the body’s state

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13
Q

Ghrelin

A

Hormone secreted by an empty stomach; sends “i’m hungry” signals to the brain

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14
Q

“set point” (in terms of weight)

A

The point at which your “weight thermostat” may be set. When your body falls below this weight, increased hunger and lowered metabolic rate may combine to restore lost weight.

  • does not really exist; sustained changes in our body weight can alter one’s set point and psychological factors sometimes also drive our feelings of hunger
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15
Q

Testosterone

A

The most important male sex hormone. both males and females have it, but the additional testosterone in males stimulates the growth of the make sex organs during the fetal period and the development of the male sex characteristics during puberty

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16
Q

Oestrogen

A

sex hormones that contribute to female sex characteristics and are secreted in greater amounts by females than in males - oestrogen peaks during ovulation

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17
Q

Testosterone

A

The most important male sex hormone. Both males and females have it, but the additional testosterone in males stimulates the growth of the male sex organs during the fetal period and the development of the male sex characteristics during puberty

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18
Q

Affiliation need

A

the need to build relationships and be part of a group

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19
Q

Ostracism

A

deliberate social exclusion of groups or individuals

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20
Q

Narcissism

A

excessive self-love and self-absorbtion

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21
Q

Achievement motivation

A

a desire for significant accomplishment, mastery of skills or ideas, control, and for attaining a high standard

  • those with high achievement motivation tend to achieve more with their persistence and eagerness for challenge
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22
Q

Emotion vs the autonomic nervous system

A

in a crisis the sympathetic division of your ANS mobilizes your body for action by directing your adrenal glands to release the stress hormone epinephrine and norepinephrine to prepare you for survival. When crisis has passed, the parasympathetic division works to gradually calm you down as stress hormones slowly leave the bloodstream

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23
Q

Common sense theory (theories of emotion)

A

Stimulus > Emotion > Arousal
- some sort of external stimulus will elicit an emotion response causing arousal

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24
Q

James-Lange theory (theories of emotion)

A

Stimulus > Arousal > Emotion
- an external stimulus causes an arousal, leaving you emotional

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25
Q

Cannon-Bard theory (theories of emotion)

A

Stimulus = Emotion + Arousal
- an external stimulus causes fear and a physical response at the same time

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26
Q

Schachter Singer “2 factor” theory (theories of emotion)

A

Stimulus > Arousal + cognitive label > Emotion
- an external stimulus elicits a psychological response and at the same time an internal analysis (or cognitive label), before emotion

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27
Q

Lazarus theory (theories of emotion)

A

Stimulus > Cognitive label > Emotion + arousal
- your brain analyses a situation and as a result produces an emotional and physical response

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28
Q

Zajonc and LeDoux theory (theories of emotion)

A

Stimulus > Thalamus > Amygdala > Fear
- instant emotional response; cognition is not always immediately involved
** think jumpscare

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29
Q

How do we communicate nonverbally?

A

Expressive behavior - body language and facial expressions

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30
Q

Difference between real and fake emotion

A

Hard-to-control face muscles are often signifiers of real emotion from fake
** activated under-eye muscles when expressing happiness

Most people cannot detect the minute differences between liars and truth tellars

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31
Q

Ekman’s research on emotional detection accuracy

A

Suggests that humans can detect falsity in feigned emotion; basic emotions are innate and shared by everyone, enough that we can accurately decipher them

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32
Q

Darwin’s ideas on historical expression of emotion

A

in prehistoric times, as means of survival our ancestors communicated in facial expression before verbal communication, and still we have retained some of those tendencies

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33
Q

Darwin’s ideas on the historical expression of emotion

A

in prehistoric times, as means of survival our ancestors communicated in facial expression before verbal communication, and still we have retained some of those tendencies

34
Q

Facial feedback effect

A

the tendency of facial muscle states to trigger corresponding feelings such as fear, anger, or happiness

35
Q

Behavior feedback effect

A

the tendency of behavior to influence our own and others thoughts, feelings and actions

36
Q

Stress

A

the process by which we perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors, that we appraise as threatening or challenging

37
Q

Stress appraisal chart

A

Stressful event = Threat = Negative response
** math test = “I don’t know anything” = stressed to distraction

OR

Stressful event = Challenge + Positive response
** math test + “I’ve got to apply all I know” = aroused, focused

38
Q

Selye’s phases of the general adaptation syndrome (GAS)

A

(GAS is Selye’s concept of the body’s adaptive responses to stress)

  1. Alarm reaction
    - sympathetic nervous system
    - fight or flight
  2. Resistance
    - blood pressure and respiration remain high
    - hormones to the bloodstream; full engagement to fight
  3. Exhaustion
    - body’s reserves dwindle with no relief from stress over time
    - vulnerable to illness/collapse/death
39
Q

Selye’s basic point

A

Idea that although the human body copes well with temporary stress, prolonged stress can damage it at a certain point

40
Q

DNA and prolonged stress

A

results in shortened telomers (DNA pieces that shorten with age) with those who suffered childhood stressors

41
Q

Tend-and-befriend response

A

under stress, people (especially women) often provide support to others (tend) and bond with and seek support from others (befriend)

42
Q

Health psychology

A

subfield of psychology that provides psychology’s contribution to behavioral medicine

43
Q

Psychoneuroimmunology

A

Study of how physiological, neural, and endocrine processes together affect the immune system and resulting health

44
Q

Two ways a poorly functioning immune system can react

A
  1. Too strong of a reaction; may attack the body’s own tissues, causing an allergic reaction or a self-attacking disease
  2. Underreaction; bacterial infection may flare, dormant viruses may erupt, or cancer cells could multiply
45
Q

How are stress and cancer linked?

A

In healthy, functioning immune systems, lymphocytes, macrophages and NK cells search out cancer cells/cancer-damaged cells, but a weakened immune system cannot fight them

NOTE: stress does not create cancer cells

46
Q

Stress and inflammation

A

Both heart disease and depression may result when chronic stress triggers blood inflammation; the more physiological trauma people experience, the more their bodies generate inflammation

47
Q

Anger management and catharsis

A

Anger management are behaviors to help quell and direct our anger

examples include waiting, distraction, support, distance, and catharsis, the idea that “releasing” aggressive energy (through action or fantasy) relieves aggressive urges

48
Q

Three health benefits of social support

A
  1. social support calms us and reduces blood pressure and stress hormones
  2. social support fosters stronger immune functioning
  3. close relationships give us an opportunity for “open heart therapy” - a chance to confide painful feelings
49
Q

Feel-good, do-good phenomenon

A

people’s tendency to be helpful when in a good mood

50
Q

Positive psychology

A

the scientific study for human flourishing, with the goals of discovering and promoting strengths and virtues that help individuals and communities to thrive

51
Q

Subjective well-being

A

Self-perceived happiness or satisfaction with life. used along with measures of objective wellbeing (psychical/economic indicators) to evaluate people’s quality of life

52
Q

Adaptive-level phenomenon

A

our tendency to form judgements (of sounds, of lights, of income) relative to a neural level defined by our prior experience

53
Q

Relative deprivation

A

the perception that one is worse off relative to those with whom one compares oneself

54
Q

Personality

A

an individuals characteristic pattern of feeling, thinking, and acting

55
Q

Psychoanalysis

A
  • Freud’s approach
  • attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflict; seeks to expose/interpret unconscious tensions
56
Q

Psychodynamics

A
  • The modern-day take on psychoanalytics
  • Views personality with a focus on the unconscious and the influence of childhood experiences; childhood tensions (not sexual, as in Freud’s psychoanalysis) are crucial for personality formation

(Adler, Horney, Jung)

57
Q

Three parts of the unconscious mind according to Freud

A
  1. Unconcious: unacceptable information that we process, of which we are unaware
  2. Preconcious: where we store some of these thoughts temporarily, from which we can retrieve them into conscious awareness
  3. Conscious: what we know is happening in our mind
58
Q

How do Id, Ego, and Superego interact

A

(Freud’s psychoanalytic theory)

Id (unconscious energy) - instincts; strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive desires, demanding instant gratification

Superego (internalized ideas) - morals; internalized ideals and standards for judgement and future aspirations

The Ego (mostly conscious) is how you mediate instincts and morals into concrete decisions; the reality principle of satisfying the Id realistically to bring the most amount of pleasure without sacrificing your Superego

59
Q

Freud’s psychosexual stages

A
  • Oral (pleasure from mouth/sucking)
  • Anal (pleasure from learning to control bodily waste)
  • Phallic (pleasure from genitals/coping with incestual feelings)
  • Latent (suppressing sexual identity)
  • Gential (expressing sexual feelings towards others)
60
Q

Fixation in a psychosexual stage

A

a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking activities relating to a psychosexual stage in which conflicts were unresovled

** a person who had been either orally overindulged or under indulged might fixate on the oral stage, maybe smoking weed/cigarettes

61
Q

Seven defense mechanisms

A
  • Regression: retreating to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated
    **thumb sucking brings comfort
  • Reaction formation: switching unacceptable impulses into their opposites
    ** exaggerated friendliness
  • Projection: disguising one’s own threatening impulses by attributing them to others
    ** thief thinks everyone else is a thief
  • Rationalization: offering self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening unconscious reasons for one’s actions
    ** a habitual drinker says she drinks with her friends “just to be sociable”
  • Displacement: shifting sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person
    **a boy punches the wall after his mom sends him to his room
  • Sublimation: transferring of unacceptable impulses into socially valued motives
    **man with aggressive urges becomes a surgeon
  • Denial: refusing to belive or even perceive painful realities
    ** a partner denies evidence of his loved one’s afair
62
Q

How do neo-Freudians differ from Freud?

A

They adopted freuds interviewing techniques and accepted his basic ideas (personality structures, childhood influence, defense mechanisms etc.) but did not belive that sex/aggression were all-consuming motives and placed more emphasis on the conscious mind’s role in interpreting and coping with experiences

63
Q

Adler’s neo-Freudian theory

A

as long as someone is useful to others and overcomes feelings of inferiority, the individual feels secure and invaluable

64
Q

Horney’s neo-Freudian theory

A

The view that women are infantile and emotional, and thus are incapable of responsibility/independence, is the work of the masculine tendency to lower women’s self-respect

65
Q

Jungs’s neo-Freudian theory

A

The collective unconscious (inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history) is the source of creative impulse

66
Q

projective tests

A

a personality test, such that provides ambiguous images designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics

** thematic apperception test - people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they concoct about ambiguous images

** Rorschach Inkblot test - a set of 10 inkblots seeking to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots

widely criticized for lacking reliability and validity, and differing evaluations/interpretations of responses

67
Q

Humanistic psychology

A

focuses on the constant potential for human growth/development

criticized for being vague/subjecting, its overemphasis on individualism that could lead to over-self-indulgence, and it’s failure to appreciate the human capacity for wrongdoing

(Rogers, Maslow)

68
Q

Maslow’s ideas of self-actualization and self-transcendence

A

Self-actualization: one of the ultimate psychological needs that arise after basic psychical/psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved: the motivation to fulfill one’s potential

self-transcendence: striving for identity, meaning, and purpose beyond the self

69
Q

Three conditions needed for growth (humanistic psychology)

A

genuineness, acceptance, empathy

70
Q

unconditional positive regard

A

an attitude of total acceptance toward another person: a caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude, which carl rogers believed would help people develop self-awareness and self-acceptance

71
Q

Trait Theory

A

a characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act in certain wats, as assessed by self-report or peer-report; we are genetically predisposed

(Allport, Eysenck, McCrae, Costa)

72
Q

Gordon Allport’s trait theory

A

Three-tiered hierarchy of traits:
1. Cardinal: rare but strongly deterministic of behavior
2. Central: influence, but do not determine, behavior
3. Secondary: traits strongly determinate on immediate context

73
Q

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

A

Sorting people according to Carl Jung’s personality types based on their responses to 126 questions

  • criticized for the absence of scientific worth and situationally varying results
  • used for business and career counseling
74
Q

Personality inventories

A

True/false or agree/disagree questionnaires on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors; used to asses selected personality traits

75
Q

MMPI

A

scaled used to indicate different psychological conditions after true-false questions are administered

  • originally developed to identify emotional disorders
  • most widely researched/clinically used personality test
76
Q

McCrea and Costa’s Big Five

A

A test specifying where/to what degree one identifies with one of the five dimensions (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism)

77
Q

Person-situation controversy

A
  • Change and consistency can coexist
  • The consistency of our behaviors changes situationally even though our personalities are relatively stable
    e.g. As people grow older, their personality stabilizes
78
Q

Social cognitive theory

A

-We learn behaviors from conditioning, observing, and modeling — importance on mental processing and how we react within our environment (the interaction of our traits with a situation; how do we interpret and respond to external events given our memories/expectations/behaviors?)

  • criticizes for focusing too heavily on situations that it fails to appreciate inner traits/thoughts

(Bandura)

79
Q

Bandura’s reciprocal determinism

A

the interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment affect one another

80
Q

Spotlight effect

A

overestimating others’ noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders

81
Q

Self-esteem vs. self-efficacy

A

Self-esteem = one’s feeling of high or low self-worth

Self-efficacy = one’s sense of acceptance and effectiveness

82
Q

Dunning-Kruger Effect

A

the ignorance of one’s own incompetence

**because we are unaware of what we don’t hear, we naturally overestimate our hearing