Psychology Flashcards - Motivation, Lifespan Development, Social Psychology, & Personality

Vocabulary practice flashcards generated from OpenStax Psychology 2e lecture slides covering key concepts in Motivation, Emotion, Lifespan Development, Personality, and Social Psychology.

Motivation

The internal wants or needs that direct behavior toward a specific goal.

Intrinsic Motivation

Motivation that arises from internal factors and personal satisfaction rather than external rewards.

Extrinsic Motivation

Motivation that arises from external factors, such as receiving rewards or avoiding punishment from others.

Overjustification Effect

The phenomenon where intrinsic motivation is diminished when extrinsic motivation or rewards are provided for an activity.

Drive Theory

A theory of motivation asserting that deviations from homeostasis create physiological needs that result in psychological drive states directing behavior to meet the need and restore balance.

Yerkes-Dodson Law

A law stating that task performance peaks at moderate arousal levels, with difficult tasks best performed under lower arousal and simple tasks best performed under higher arousal.

Self-Efficacy

An individual's belief in their own capability to complete a task, theorized by Albert Bandura to play a key role in motivating behavior.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

A motivation theory proposed by Abraham Maslow outlining a spectrum of needs—physiological, security, social, esteem, and self-actualization—where lower-level needs must be satisfied before addressing higher-level needs.

Set-Point Theory

An assertion that each individual has an ideal, genetically determined body weight that is resistant to change through compensatory metabolic adjustments.

Bulimia Nervosa

An eating disorder characterized by binge eating behavior followed by compensatory attempts to purge food through vomiting, laxatives, or excessive exercise.

Anorexia Nervosa

An eating disorder characterized by maintaining a body weight significantly below average through starvation and/or excessive exercise, accompanied by a distorted body image.

Sexual Response Cycle

A four-phase model of physiological responses during sexual behavior identified by Masters and Johnson, consisting of excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution.

Gender Dysphoria

A diagnostic label for individuals who experience significant distress or dysfunction lasting at least $6\,months$ due to an incongruence between their biological sex and gender identity.

James-Lange Theory

A theory of emotion asserting that emotional experiences arise directly from physiological arousal caused by a stimulus.

Cannon-Bard Theory

A theory of emotion asserting that physiological arousal and emotional experience occur simultaneously and independently in response to a stimulus.

Schachter-Singer Two-Factor Theory

A theory asserting that emotion consists of physiological arousal paired with cognitive appraisal and labeling of the arousal in context.

Lazarus' Cognitive-Mediational Theory

A theory asserting that emotions are determined by an immediate, unconscious cognitive appraisal of a stimulus that precedes both the physiological response and emotional experience.

Basolateral Complex

A subnucleus of the amygdala with dense connections to sensory brain regions, critical for classical conditioning and attaching emotional value to memory.

Central Nucleus

A subnucleus of the amygdala involved in attention and regulation of the autonomic nervous system and endocrine system via connections to the hypothalamus and brainstem.

Facial Feedback Hypothesis

The hypothesis stating that facial expressions are capable of directly influencing emotional experiences.

Normative Approach

A study method in developmental psychology that assesses large groups of children to determine average age ranges for reaching specific developmental milestones.

Continuous Development

A view of lifespan development as a cumulative, gradual process of improving existing skills over time.

Discontinuous Development

A view of lifespan development as occurring in unique, distinct stages at specific times or ages.

Schemata

Mental concepts or frameworks developed by children to categorize and interpret information about the world.

Assimilation

The cognitive process of incorporating new information into pre-existing schemata.

Accommodation

The cognitive process of modifying pre-existing schemata based on new, conflicting information.

Object Permanence

The understanding that objects continue to exist even when they are out of sight, mastered during Piaget's sensorimotor stage.

Egocentrism

The inability to take the physical or cognitive perspective of others, characteristic of Piaget's preoperational stage.

Conservation

The understanding that quantity remains identical despite changes in shape or container, mastered during Piaget's concrete operational stage.

Teratogen

Any biological, chemical, or physical environmental agent that inflicts structural or functional damage on a developing embryo or fetus.

Rooting Reflex

An inborn newborn reflex where an infant turns its head toward a cheek touch and opens its mouth.

Moro Reflex

An inborn newborn reflex where an infant spreads its arms wide and pulls them back in response to startling stimuli or feeling like falling.

Secure Base

A caregiver's presence that provides an infant with a sense of safety and emotional security while exploring the environment.

Authoritative Parenting Style

A parenting style characterized by reasonable demands, consistent limits, warm affection, and openness to listening to the child's point of view.

Authoritarian Parenting Style

A parenting style placing high value on obedience, strict conformity, and rigid rules with little expressed warmth.

Permissive Parenting Style

A parenting style characterized by making few demands, rarely using punishment, high warmth, and acting more like a friend to the child.

Uninvolved Parenting Style

A parenting style characterized by indifference, neglect, low responsiveness to a child's needs, and making few demands.

Cognitive Empathy

The ability to adopt the perspective of others and feel empathetic concern, also known as Theory of Mind, which increases significantly during adolescence.

Crystallized Intelligence

Accumulated information, vocabulary, and skills gathered through life experience, which remains stable or improves into late adulthood.

Fluid Intelligence

Information processing speed, spatial reasoning, abstract problem solving, and short-term memory, which steadily declines starting in middle adulthood.

Socioemotional Selectivity Theory

A theory stating that as individuals age, overall social networks decrease in number, but remaining personal relationships become deeper and more emotionally fulfilling.

Id

The primitive, instinctual component of personality present at birth that contains drives for hunger, thirst, and sex, operating on the pleasure principle.

Ego

The rational, conscious structure of personality operating on the reality principle to balance the instinctual demands of the id and moral demands of the superego.

Superego

The moral compass of personality acquired through social interactions that strives for perfection and judges behavior through feelings of pride or guilt.

Reciprocal Determinism

Albert Bandura's concept that cognitive factors, behavior, and situational context continually interact to shape personality development.

Internal Locus of Control

The cognitive belief that personal outcomes and events are directly controlled by one's own efforts, decisions, and capabilities.

External Locus of Control

The cognitive belief that personal outcomes are determined by external forces, luck, fate, or powerful others.

Five Factor Model

A trait theory asserting that personality consists of five continuous dimensions: Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (OCEAN).

Situationism

The perspective in social psychology asserting that behavior and actions are determined primarily by immediate environmental surroundings and context.

Dispositionism

The perspective asserting that behavior is determined primarily by internal factors, such as personality traits and temperament.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to overemphasize internal/dispositional factors when explaining the behavior of others while underestimating situational variables.

Actor-Observer Bias

The phenomenon of explaining other people's behaviors using internal factors while explaining one's own behaviors using situational forces.

Self-Serving Bias

The tendency to make internal attributions for positive outcomes while attributing negative outcomes to external or situational variables.

Just-World Hypothesis

The belief that the world is inherently fair and predictable, leading to the assumption that good people experience positive outcomes and bad people experience negative outcomes.

Social Role

A culturally defined pattern of behavior expected of an individual in a specific setting or group.

Social Norm

A group's shared expectation of what is appropriate and acceptable behavior, speech, and appearance for its members.

Script

An individual's knowledge about the specific, expected sequence of events in a given setting or environment.

Cognitive Dissonance

Psychological discomfort experienced when holding two or more conflicting attitudes, behaviors, or cognitions.

Central Route Persuasion

A logic-driven persuasion pathway relying on data and facts that requires high cognitive effort from an analytical audience and yields lasting attitude change.

Peripheral Route Persuasion

An indirect persuasion pathway relying on external cues, positive associations, or celebrity endorsements that yields temporary attitude change.

Foot-in-the-Door Technique

A persuasion technique where getting a person to agree to a small initial request increases compliance with a subsequent larger request.

Asch Effect

The influence of a group majority on an individual's judgment, causing the individual to conform to the group's consensus.

Normative Social Influence

Conformity driven by the desire to fit in, gain social approval, and avoid rejection from the group.

Informational Social Influence

Conformity driven by the belief that the group is competent and possesses accurate information, particularly in ambiguous situations.

Groupthink

The modification of group members' opinions to align with perceived group consensus, stifling dissenting views and leading to faulty decision-making.

Group Polarization

The strengthening and intensification of an original group attitude following internal group discussion.

Social Facilitation

The tendency for individuals to perform better on easy or well-rehearsed tasks when an audience is watching.

Social Loafing

The exertion of less individual effort when working in a group where individual contributions cannot be evaluated separately.

Prejudice

A negative attitude and feeling toward an individual based solely on their membership in a particular social group.

Stereotype

A specific cognitive belief or assumption about an individual based solely on their membership in a particular social group.

Discrimination

A negative action or behavior toward an individual resulting from their membership in a particular social group.

Bystander Effect

A social phenomenon where witnesses do not offer help to a victim in distress due to the diffusion of responsibility across onlookers.

Altruism

Voluntary, selfless helping behavior driven by empathy where the desire to help persists even if personal costs outweigh benefits.

Sternberg's Triangular Theory of Love

A theory defining seven types of love formed by combinations of three core components: intimacy, passion, and commitment.