Psych 201 - Chapter 10

What questions does motivation ask?

What is your goal of life?

What motivates you to set this goal?

How will you accomplish this goal?

Humanistic approach

Suggests there is a hierarchy of needs

Says the goal of life is to self actualize

Says the motivation for this goal is the psychological need for achievement

You accomplish it through goals, self discipline and resilience

Evolutionary approach

Suggests that we answer out biological needs based on instincts

Says the goal of life is to reproduce and enhance survival

Says the motivation is a biological need

Men accomplish it through variety, and women accomplish it though security

What are the 4 conditions of evolutionary theory?

1. Organisms must vary in different ways (choices to select from)

2. Some characteristics are heritable and are passed down to offspring

3. The resources must be more limited than the number of organisms to create competition. Availability shouldn’t exceed need.

4. Heritable traits that enhance survival will become prevalent because organisms with them will survive and pass them on more than the ones with less favourable traits do

Natural selection

Heritable characteristics that give species an advantage will become prevalent

Fitness

Organisms ability to survive, find a mate, and produce surviving offspring

Adaptation

A characteristic that increases the population and helps with survival and reproduction

3 types of selection

Directional, stabilizing, and disruptive

Directional selection

Favours one extreme over the other

Stabilizing selection

Favours moderate traits over extremes

Disruptive

Favours the extremes over the moderate traits

Batemans principles

1. Men show greater variance in # of offspring than females

2. Men have more variance in sexual partners than females do

3. Stronger correlation between mating success and reproductive success in men than women

Sex differences in jealousy

Men tend to get more jealous over women having sexual relations and women tend to get more jealous over men having intense emotional connections

What are the different strategies males and female use to maximize reproductive success?

Men maximize success by having more sexual partners and choosing partners who are young and viable

Women maximize success by choosing one good partner who can help raise offspring in a way that ensures and enhances their survival

What is the conflict between male and female reproductive strategies

What one wants, the other will not give

Males want variety (many partners), but females want a man who will commit

What does evolutionary psychology study?

Universal traits found in humans such as reproductive traits, which result from adaptations. Suggests the goal of life is to reproduce and adaptive traits increase reproduction. It is most influential in biology, less in psychology.

What is the function of emotions?

They drive your actions and show others how you feel based on how you react to things

How can emotions be categorized

High or low arousal, positive or negative

What are the 3 components of emotion?

Physiological arousal, cognitive appraisal of the situation (context), and behavioural reactions

Physiological arousal

Symptoms of the emotion you are feeling such as increased heart rate, tears, sweat, etc.

Cognitive appraisal of the situation

The process by which your brain interprets and evaluates a situation to determine how it will react and how it will influence how you react in the future

Behavioural response

Determined by your cognitive appraisal of a situation, it is how you respond to the situation such as hitting, crying, or hurting someone/yourself

Definition of emotion

Emotions are complex patterns that result from a situation that is personally significant

What is failure to experience emotions called?

Alexithymia

What disorders are related to alexithymia

PTSD and autism

What are common symptoms of alexithymia (especially in ASD and PTSD)

Unable to identify emotions

Rarely cry

Don’t make connection between physiological symptoms and emotions

Minimal verbal expression of emotions
Apparent emotional detachment

Cognitive signaler

emotional feeling that influences future cognitive appraisal (how a situation is evaluated)

Appraisal tendency hypothesis

Each emotion you feel has a unique influence on the judgements you make

Evaluative space model

Stimuli we perceive are either determined to be positive or negative based on their features. That determines if they affect us positively or negatively and that motivates our actions

What is the amygdala responsible for?

Responsible for some emotional regulation but mainlu the fear response (fight or flight)

What part of the brain is responsible for most of your emotions

Pre-frontal cortex