AP Psych Unit 7

Motivation

A need or desire that energizes and directs behavior.

Instinct

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

Drive-reduction theory

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

Homeostasis

A tendency to maintain a balanced or constant internal state; the regulation of any aspect of body chemistry, such as blood glucose, around a particular level.

Incentive

A positive or negative environmental stimulus that motivates behavior.

Hierarchy of needs

Maslow's pyramid of human needs, beginning at the base with physiological needs that must first be satisfied before higher-level safety needs and then psychological needs become active.

Arousal theory

We take action to reach an optimum level of arousal- not too high, not too low (sleepy versus panic attack).

Yerkes-Dodson law

We perform best with a moderate level of stress or arousal. Perform poorly with too little or too high arousal/stress.

Intrinsic motivation

A desire to perform a behavior effectively for its own sake.

Extrinsic motivation

A desire to perform a behavior to receive promised rewards or avoid threatened punishment.

Glucose

The form of sugar that circulates in the blood and provides the major source of energy for body tissues. When its level is low, we feel hunger.

Set point

The point at which an individual's "weight thermostat" is supposedly set. When the body falls below this weight, an increase in hunger and a lowered metabolic rate may act to restore the lost weight.

Basal metabolic rate

The body's resting rate of energy expenditure.

Anorexia nervosa

An eating disorder in which a person diets and becomes significantly (15% or more) underweight, yet, still feeling fat, continues to starve.

Bulimia nervosa

An eating disorder characterized by episodes of overeating, usually of high-calorie foods, followed by vomiting, laxative use, fasting, or excessive exercise.

Binge-eating disorder

Significant binge-eating episodes, followed by distress, disgust, or guilt, but without the compensatory purging, fasting, or excessive exercise that marks bulimia nervosa.

Sexual response cycle

The four stages of sexual responding described by Masters and Johnson: excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution.

Sexual orientation

An enduring sexual attraction toward members of either one's own (homosexual orientation) or the other sex (heterosexual orientation).

Emotion

A response of the whole organism, involving (1) physiological arousal, (2) expressive behaviors, and (3) conscious experience.

James-Lange theory

The theory that our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli.

Cannon-Bard theory

Theory that an emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers (1) physiological responses and (2) the subjective experience of emotions.

Two-factor theory

The Schachter-Singer theory that to experience emotion one must (1) be physically aroused and (2) cognitively label the arousal.

Catharsis

Emotional release. The catharsis hypothesis maintains that "releasing" aggressive energy (through action or fantasy) relieves aggressive urges.

Feel-good, do-good phenomenon

People's tendency to be helpful when already in a good mood.

Adaptation-level phenomenon

The tendency for people to adapt to a new situation, and then become used to that situation as the new normal.

Relative deprivation

The perception that we are worse off relative to those with whom we compare ourselves.

Approach-approach conflict

When conflicted between two choices that are equally attractive.

Avoidance-avoidance conflict

When conflicted between two choices that are equally unattractive.

Approach-avoidance conflict

When conflicted about a choice, there are both appealing and negative aspects to the decision you must make.

Multiple-approach avoidance conflict

When conflicted about a choice, one has to choose between both attractive and negative aspects of the available alternatives.

Stress

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

Stressor

The stimuli causing the stress.

Acute stress

Psychological and physical response to a traumatic or terrifying event.

Chronic stress

Response to stress over long periods of time that causes a lot of damage.

General adaptation syndrome (GAS)

Selye's concept of the body's adaptive response to stress in three phases: alarm, resistance, exhaustion.

Learned helplessness

The hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events.

Type A

Friedman and Rosenman's term for competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone people.

Type B

Friedman and Rosenman's term for easygoing, relaxed people.

Need for achievement (n Ach)

Refers to an individual's desire for significant accomplishment, mastering of skills, control, or high standards.

Personality

An individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.

Free association

A method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing.

Psychoanalysis

Freud's theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts.

Unconscious

According to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories.

Id

A reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives.

Ego

The largely conscious, "executive" part of personality that mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality.

Superego

The part of personality that represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgement.

Psychosexual stages

The childhood stages of development during which the id's pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones.

Oedipus complex

A boy's sexual desires towards his mother and feelings of jealousy for the rival father.

Identification

The process by which children incorporate their parents' values into their developing superegos.

Fixation

A lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, where conflicts were unresolved.

Defense mechanisms

The ego's protective method of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.

Repression

The basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness.

Regression

Psychoanalytic defense mechanism in which an individual retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage.

Reaction formation

Defense mechanism in which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites.

Projection

Defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others.

Rationalization

Defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one's actions.

Displacement

Defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable object or person.

Sublimation

Defense mechanism by which people re-channel their unacceptable impulses into socially approved activities.

Denial

Defense mechanism by which people refuse to believe or even to perceive painful realities.

Collective unconscious

Carl Jung's concept of a shared inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species' history.

Archetypes

Universal, symbolic images that appear across cultures in myths, art, stories, and dreams.

Inferiority complex

Struggles in development where the child strives for control, superiority, and power.

Projective test

A personality test that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one's inner dynamics.

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

A projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through stories about ambiguous scenes.

Rorschach inkblot test

Set of 10 inkblots designed to identify people's inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations.

Self-actualization

According to Maslow, one of the ultimate psychological needs that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met.

Unconditional positive regard

According to Rogers, an attitude of total acceptance toward another person.

Self-concept

All our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, "Who am I?"

Trait

A characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act.

Personality inventory

A questionnaire used to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors.

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

Most widely researched and clinically used personality test originally developed to identify emotional disorders.

Big-five (five-factor) model

Five traits everyone has, rated on a continuum: emotional stability, extraversion, agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness.

Social-cognitive perspective

Views behavior as influenced by the interaction between people's traits and their social context.

Reciprocal determinism

The interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment.

External locus of control

The perception that chance or outside forces beyond your personal control determine your fate.

Internal locus of control

The perception that you control your own fate.

Self-esteem

Feelings of positive or negative regard for oneself.