AP Psychology - Unit 7 (Motivation, Emotion, and Personality)

Motivation

a need or desire that energizes and directs behavior.

Arousal Theory

A theory of motivation suggesting that people are motivated to maintain an optimal level of alertness and physical and mental activation.

Learned Motive

Learned needs, drives, and goals

Need

Something essential for survival

Stimulus Motive

Appears to be unlearned but causes an increase in stimulation, such as curiosity

Instinct

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

Sympathetic Nervous System

Division of the autonomic nervous system that arouses the body, mobilizing its energy in stressful situations

Parasympathetic Nervous System

Division of the autonomic nervous system that calms the body, conserving its energy

Rationalization

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

Reaction-Formation

Psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites. Thus, people may express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings.

Reality Principle

Tendency of the ego to postpone gratification until it can find an appropriate outlet

Regression

Psychoanalytic defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated

Sublimation

Defense mechanism in which unacceptable sexual or aggressive drives are unconsciously channeled into socially acceptable modes of expression and redirected into new, learned behaviors, which indirectly provide some satisfaction for the original drives.

Drive-Reduction Theory

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

Conditions of Worth

Standards that the individual must live up to in order to receive positive regard from others

Ideal Self

One's perception of whom one should be or would like to be

Incongruence

Degree of disparity between one's self-concept and one's actual experience.

Real Self

One's perception of actual characteristics, traits, and abilities

Insulin

Protein hormone synthesized in the pancreas that regulates blood sugar levels by facilitating the uptake of glucose into tissues

Lateral Hypothalamus

Part of the hypothalamus that produces hunger signals

Leptin

Hormone produced by adipose (fat) cells that acts as a satiety factor in regulating appetite.

Satiety

Feeling of fullness

Ventromedial Hypothalamus

Part of the hypothalamus that produces feelings of fullness as opposed to hunger, and causes one to stop eating.

Canon-Bard Theory

Theory of emotion that asserts that the physiological and cognitive aspects of emotion occur simultaneously and collectively lead to the behavioral reaction

Display Rules

Cross-cultural guidelines for how and when to express emotions

Emotional Intelligence

Ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions

Microexpressions

Very brief, sudden emotional expressions

Schachter's Two-Factor Theory

To experience emotion one must be physically aroused and cognitively label the arousal

Anima

Soul, spirit

Animus

Hostile feeling or intent; animosity; hostility; disposition

Archetypes

Emotionally charged images and thought forms that have universal meaning

Inferiority Complex

Adler's conception of a basic feeling of inadequacy stemming from childhood experiences

Heritability

Proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes. The heritability of a trait may vary, depending on the range of populations and environments studied.

Temperament

Person's characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity

Androgens

Male sex hormones

Burnout

State of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion created by long-term involvement in an emotionally demanding situation and accompanied by lowered performance and motivation

Coping Methods

Behaviors, thinking, and emotional processes that a person uses to handle stress and continue to function.

Life-Changing Units

Measure of the stress levels of different types of change experienced during a given period

Stress Reaction

Body's response to a stressor

Stressor

Anything that causes stress

16 Personality Factors

A concept by psychologist Raymond Cattell stating that personality could be described in terms of 16 basic personality factors, or traits. Each factor represents a dimension that ranges between two extremes.

Factor Analysis

Statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie a person's total score.

Five Factor Model

Openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism

Source Traits

More basic traits that underlie the surface traits, forming the core of personality

Surface Traits

Sspects of personality that can easily be seen by other people in the outward actions of a person

Achievement

A result gained by effort

Extrinsic Motivation

Desire to perform a behavior to receive promised rewards or avoid threatened punishment

Intrinsic Motivation

Desire to perform a behavior effectively for its own sake

Anal Stage

Freud's pychosexual period during which a child learns to control his bodily excretions

Denial

Refusing to believe or even perceive painful realities

Displacement

Distance and direction of an object's change in position from the starting point.

Electra Complex

Conflict during phallic stage in which girls supposedly love their fathers romantically and want to eliminate their mothers as rivals

Genital Stage

Freud's stage of psychosexual development when adult sexuality is prominent

Latency Stage

Fourth psychosexual stage, in which the primary focus is on the further development of intellectual, creative, interpersonal, and athletic skills

Oral Stage

Freud's first stage of psychosexual development during which pleasure is centered in the mouth

Phallic Stage

Freud's third stage of development, when the penis becomes the focus of concern and pleasure

Projection

Psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others

Cognitive Theory of Personality

Analysis of your own perceptions, thoughts, and feelings

Environmental Determinism

Doctrine that claims that cultural traits are formed and controlled by environmental conditions.

External Locus of Control

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

Internal Locus of Control

Perception that you control your own fate

Observational Learning

Learning by observing others

Personal-Construct Theory

Approach to personality proposed by George Kelly that emphasizes the idea that people actively endeavor to construe or understand the world and construct their own theories about human behavior.

Social Learning Theory

Theory that we learn social behavior by observing and imitating and by being rewarded or punished

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.

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 at the base with physiological needs that must first be satisfied before higher-level safety needs and then psychological needs become active.

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.

Sexual Response Cycle

Four stages of sexual responding described by Masters and Johnson—excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution.

Estrogen

sex hormones, such as estradiol, secreted in greater amounts by females than by males and contributing to female sex characteristics. In nonhuman female mammals, estrogen levels peak during ovulation, promoting sexual receptivity.

Testosterone

the most important of the male sex hormones. Both males and females have it, but the additional testosterone in males stimulates the growth of the male sex organs in the fetus and the development of the male sex characteristics during puberty.

Emotion

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

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

Facial Feedback Effect

Tendency of facial muscle states to trigger corresponding feelings such as fear, anger, or happiness.

Health Psychology

Subfield of psychology that provides psychology's contribution to behavioral medicine.

Stress

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

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

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

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.

Psychoanalysis

(1) Sigmund Freud's theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions.

Unconscious

according to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. According to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware.

Id

a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that, according to Freud, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. The id operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification.

Ego

the largely conscious, "executive" part of personality that, according to Freud, mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality. The ego operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id's desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain.

Superego

the part of personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspirations.

Oedipus Complex

According to Freud, a boy's sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father.

Psychosexual Stages

Childhood stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) during which, according to Freud, the id's pleasure -seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones.

Fixation

According to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved.

Defense Mechanisms

In psychoanalytic theory, the ego's protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.

Repression

In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories.

Collective Unconscious

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

Projective Test

A personality test, such as the Rorschach, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one's inner dynamics.

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.

Rorschach Inkblot Test

Most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots, designed by Hermann Rorschach; seeks to identify people's inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots.

False Consensus Effect

the tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and our behaviors.

Self-Actualization

According to Maslow, one of the ultimate psychological needs that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved; the motivation to fulfill one's potential.

Unconditional Positive Regard

Caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude, which Carl Rogers believed would help clients to develop self-awareness and self-acceptance.

Self-Concept

Our understanding and evaluation of who we are

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

the most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests. Originally developed to identify emotional disorders (still considered its most appropriate use), this test is now used for many other screening purposes.