Motivation, Emotion & Personality Flashcard Terms

Drive-Reduction Theory

An explanation for human behavior by focusing on the role of internal drives and the motivation to satisfy them.

Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow's pyramid of needs - bottom to top. Physiological needs (air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing, and reproduction), safety needs (personal security, employment, resources, health, property), love and belonging (friendship, intimacy, family, sense of connection), esteem (respect, self-esteem, status, recognition, strength, freedom), and self-actualization (desire to become the mot that one can be).

Glucose

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

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 lower metabolic rate may act to restore the lost weight.

Basal Metabolic Rate

The body's base rate of energy expenditure.

Anorexia Nervosa

When a normal-weight person diets and becomes significantly (≥ 15%) underweight, yet, still feeling fat, continues to starve. Usually an adolescent female.

Bulimia Nervosa

Disorder characterized by episodes of overeating, usually of high-calorie food, followed by vomiting, laxative use, fasting, or excessive exercise (purging).

Estrogen

A sex hormone, secreted in greater amounts by females than by males.

Testosterone

Most important of the male sex hormones. Both males and females have it.

Flow

A completely, involved, focused state of consciousness, with diminished awareness of self and time, resulting from optimal engagement of one's skills,

Industrial-Organizational Psychology (I/O)

The application of psychological concepts and methods to optimizing human behavior in workplaces.

Personnel Psychology

Sub-field of I-O psychology that focuses on employee recruitment, selection, placement, training, appraisal, and development.

Organizational Psychology

Sub-field of I-O psychology that examines organizational influences on worker satisfaction and productivity and facilitates organization change.

Theory X

Assumes that workers are basically lazy, error-prone, and extrinsically motivated by money. Says that workers should be directed from above.

Theory Y

Assumes that, given challenge and freedom, workers are motivated to achieve self-esteem and to demonstrate their competence and creativity.

James-Lange Theory

Experience of emotion is awareness of physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli. Perception of stimulus→Arousal→Emotion.

Cannon-Bard Theory

Emotional-arousing stimuli simultaneously trigger: physiological responses and subjective experience of emotion. Perception of stimulus→Arousal + Emotion.

Two-Factor Theory

To experience emotion one must: be physically aroused AND cognitively label the arousal. Perception of stimulus→Arousal + Cognitive Label→Emotion.

Feel-Good, Do-Good Phenomenon

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

Subjective Well-Being

Self-perceived happiness or satisfaction with life. Used along with measures of objective well-being.

Adaptation-Level Phenomenon

Tendency to form judgments relative to a "neutral" level. Defined by our prior experience. Examples include brightness of lights, volume of sound, and level of income.

Relative Deprivation

Perception that one is worse off relative to those with whom one compares oneself.

Personality

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

Psychoanalytic Perspective of Personality

A human is constantly, though slowly, changing through perpetual interactions. The human personality can be conceived of as a locus of change with fragile and indefinite boundaries.

Free Association

The practice of allowing the patient to discuss thoughts, dreams, memories, or words, regardless of coherency.

Psychoanalysis

The process of free association (chain of thoughts) leads to painful, embarrassing unconscious memories. Once these memories are retrieved and released the patient feels better.

Unconscious

The complex of mental activities within an individual that proceed without his awareness.

Id

Unconsciously strives to satisfy sexual and aggressive drives, operating on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification.

Ego

Functions as the "executive" and mediates the demands of the id and superego.

Superego

Provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspirations.

Psychosexual Stages

Oral (0-18 months) is pleasure centers on the mouth - sucking, biting, chewing. Anal (18-36 months) is pleasure focused on bowel and bladder elimination; coping with demands for control. Phallic (3-6 years) is the pleasure zone of the genitals; coping with incestuous sexual feelings. Latency (6 to puberty) is dormant sexual feelings. Genital (puberty on) is maturation of sexual interests.

Oedipus Complex

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

Electra Complex

A girl's desire for her father.

Identification

Children cope with threatening feelings by repressing them and by identifying with the rival parents. Through this process of identification, their superego gains strength that incorporates their parent's values.

Fixation

Becoming stuck at a particular point in psychosexual development.

Defense Mechanism - Repression

Banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness.

Defense Mechanism - Regression

Leads an individual faced with anxiety to retreat to a more infantile psychosexual stage.

Defense Mechanism - Reaction Formation

Causes the ego to unconsciously switch unacceptable impulses into their opposites. People may express feelings of purity when they may be suffering anxiety from unconscious feelings about sex.

Defense Mechanism - Projection

Leads people to disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others.

Defense Mechanism - Rationalization

Offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one's actions.

Defense Mechanism - Displacement

Shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, redirecting anger toward a safer outlet.

Projective Tests - Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Developed by Henry Murray, the TAT is a projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interest through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.

Projective Tests - Rorschach Inkblot Test

The most widely used projective test uses a set of 10 inkblots and was designed by Hermann Rorschach. It seeks to identify people's inner feelings by analyzing their interpretation of the blots.

Carl Jung

Believed in the collective unconscious, which contained a common reservoir of images derived from our species' past. This is why many cultures share certain myths and images such as the mother being a symbol of nurturance.

Alfred Adler

Believed in childhood tensions. However, these tensions were social in nature and not sexual. A child struggles with an inferiority complex during growth and strives for superiority and power.

Karen Horney

Believed in the social aspects of childhood growth and development. She countered Freud's assumption that women have weak superegos and suffer from "penis envy".

Collective Unconscious

Common reservoir of images derived from our species' past.

Criticisms of Freud's Theories

The theory is too simple to ever explain something as complex as a human mind, and that Freud overemphasized sex and was unbalanced here (was sexist)

Humanistic Perspective of Personality

Emphasizes the individualized qualities of optimal well-being and the use of creative potential to benefit others, as well as the relational conditions that promote those qualities as the outcomes of healthy development.

Carl Rogers

Believed in an individual's self-actualization tendencies (theory of unconditional positive regard).

Unconditional Positive Regard

An attitude of acceptance of others despite their failings.

Self Concept

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

Criticisms and Support for Humanistic Perspective

Pervasive impact on counseling, education, child-rearing, and management with its emphasis on a positive self-concept, empathy, and the thought that people are basically good and can improve. Criticisms include: Concepts in humanistic psychology are vague and subjective and lack scientific basis. The individualism encouraged can lead to self-indulgence, selfishness, and an erosion of moral restraints. Humanistic psychology fails to appreciate the reality of our human capacity for evil. It lacks adequate balance between realistic optimism and despair.

Trait Perspective of Personality

An individual's unique constellation of durable dispositions and consistent ways of behaving (traits) constitutes his or her personality.

Factor Analysis

Hans and Sybil Eysenck suggested that personality could be reduced down to two polar dimensions, extraversion-introversion and emotional stability-instability.

Personality Inventory

A self-assessment method, often a standardized questionnaire, that reveals insights into an individual's character.

Empirically Derived Tests

They require statistical techniques. One of the central goals of empirical personality assessment is to create a test that validly discriminates between two distinct dimensions of personality. They can take a great deal of time to construct.

MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory)

The most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests. It was originally developed to identify emotional disorders. It was developed by empirically testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminated between diagnostic groups.

"Big Five" Personality Factors - Emotional Stability

Neuroticism involves being calm/anxious, secure/insecure, and self-satisfied/self-pitying.

"Big Five" Personality Factors - Extraversion

Involves being sociable/retiring, fun-loving/sober, and affectionate/reserved.

"Big Five" Personality Factors - Openness

Involves being imaginative/practical, having a preference for variety/a preference for routine, and being independent/conforming.

"Big Five" Personality Factors - Agreeableness

Involves being soft-hearted/ruthless, trusting/insecure, and helpful/uncooperative.

"Big Five" Personality Factors - Conscientiousness

Involves being organized/disorganized, careful/careless, and disciplined/impulsive.

Stability and Heritability of Traits

These traits are quite stable in adulthood, but they change over development. In terms of heritability, it's around 50% or so for each trait.

Person-Situation Controversy

Controversy concerning whether the person or the situation is more influential in determining a person's behavior. Traits are socially significant and influence our health, thinking, and performance. Walter Mischel (1958, 1984, 2004) points out that traits may be enduring, but the resulting behavior in various situations is different. Therefore, traits are not good predictors of behavior. However, trait theorists argue that behaviors from a situation may be different, but average behavior remains the same. Therefore, traits matter.

Social-Cognitive Perspective

Bandura (1986, 2001, 2005) believes that personality is the result of an interaction that takes place between a person and their social context.

Reciprocal Determinism

Theory by psychologist Albert Bandura that says that a person's behavior both influences and is influenced by personal factors and the social environment.

Personal Control

Whether we control the environment or the environment controls us. This is emphasized by social-cognitive psychologists.

Locus of Control - Internal vs. External

Internal locus of control refers to the perception that we can control our own fate, while external locus of control refers to the perception that chance or outside forces beyond our personal control determine our fate.

Learned Helplessness

When unable to avoid repeated adverse events an animal or human learns helplessness. Uncontrollable bad events→Perceived lack of control→Generalized helpless behavior.

Optimism

A tendency to expect good things in the future. An optimistic or pessimistic attributional style is your way of explaining positive or negative events.

Positive Psychology

Aims to discover and promote conditions that enable individuals and communities to thrive.

Exploring the Self - Spotlight Effect

Studies how we overestimate our concern that others evaluate our appearance, performance, and blunders.

Self Esteem and Its Benefits

Maslow and Rogers argued that a successful life results from a healthy self-image. Low self esteem results in personal problems - viewing ourselves & others critically and believing that low self-esteem reflects reality, our failure in meeting challenges, or surmounting difficulties.

Culture and Self Esteem

People maintain their self-esteem even with a low status by valuing things they achieve and comparing themselves to people with similar positions. Concepts include self, life task, what matters, coping method, morality, relationships, and attributing behavior.

Self-Serving Bias

The tendency to attribute our successes to internal, personal factors, and our failures to external, situational factors

Individualism

A social or cultural tradition, ideology, or personal outlook that emphasizes the individual and their rights, independence, and relationships with other individuals.

Collectivism

A worldview in which social behavior is guided largely by goals that are shared by a collective, such as a family.

Culture and the Self

Casts psychology's understanding of the self, identity, or agency as central to the analysis and interpretation of behavior and demonstrates that cultures and selves define and build upon each other in an ongoing cycle of mutual constitution.

The Modern Unconscious Mind

Consists of processes in the mind that occur automatically and are not available to introspection. Contains repressed ideas and images, as well as primitive desires and impulses that have never been allowed to enter the conscious mind.

Terror Management Theory

Large groups, and even entire societies, may make decisions, or put them off, primarily to gain comfort from avoiding thoughts of death or reassurance that their ideas will live on after they are gone.