Motivation, Emotion, and Stress Overview

Flashcards covering key vocabulary and concepts from the lecture on motivation, emotion, and stress.

Motivation

A need or desire that energizes and directs behavior.

Instinct

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

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 around a particular level.

Incentive

A positive or negative environmental stimulus that motivates behavior.

Yerkes-Dodson Law

The principle that performance increases with arousal only up to a point, beyond which performance decreases.

Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow's pyramid of human needs, beginning with physiological needs that must be met before higher-level needs.

Glucose

The form of sugar that circulates in the blood and provides the major source of energy for body tissues.

Set Point

The point at which an individual’s 'weight thermostat' is supposedly set.

Basal Metabolic Rate

The body's resting rate of energy expenditure.

Sexual Response Cycle

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

Refractory Period

A resting period after orgasm, during which a man cannot achieve another orgasm.

Sexual Dysfunction

A problem that consistently impairs sexual arousal or functioning.

Estrogens

Sex hormones secreted in greater amounts by females than males, contributing to female sex characteristics.

Testosterone

The most important male sex hormone; stimulates the growth of male sex organs and characteristics.

Emotion

A response of the whole organism, involving physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and 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

The theory that an emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers physiological responses and subjective emotion.

Two-Factor Theory

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

Polygraph

A machine used to detect lies by measuring physiological responses accompanying emotion.

Facial Feedback Effect

The tendency of facial muscle states to trigger corresponding feelings.

Health Psychology

A subfield of psychology that provides psychology's contribution to behavioral medicine.

Stress

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

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

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

Tend-and-Befriend Response

Under stress, people (especially women) often provide support to others and seek support from others.

Psychophysiological Illness

Literally, 'mind-body' illness; any stress-related physical illness.

Psychoneuroimmunology

The study of how psychological, neural, and endocrine processes together affect the immune system.

Lymphocytes

The two types of white blood cells that are part of the body's immune system, B and T lymphocytes.

Coronary Heart Disease

The clogging of the vessels that nourish the heart muscle; the leading cause of death in many developed countries.

Type A

Competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone individuals.

Type B

Easygoing and relaxed individuals.