Psychology Chapter 10: Emotion and Motivation

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the key terms, psychological theories, biological structures, and regulatory mechanisms in Chapter 10: Emotion and Motivation.

Emotion

An immediate, specific negative or positive response to environmental events or internal thoughts, comprising physiological processes, behavioral responses, and cognitive appraisal.

Feeling

The subjective experience of an emotion, such as feeling scared, based on cognitive appraisal of the situation and interpretation of bodily states, but not the emotion itself.

Mood

A diffuse, long-lasting emotional state that lacks an identifiable trigger or specific physiological and behavioral response, subtly coloring thought and behavior.

Primary emotions

Emotions that are innate, evolutionarily adaptive, and universal (shared across cultures), including anger, fear, sadness, disgust, happiness, surprise, and contempt.

Secondary emotions

Blends of primary emotions, feelings about emotions, or culturally specific emotional concepts, such as remorse, guilt, shame, jealousy, pride, love, and contentment.

Circumplex model

A model in which emotions are plotted along two continuums: valence (how negative or positive they are) and arousal (how activating or physiological they are).

Body Maps of Emotion

Topographical representations developed by Finnish researchers showing regions of the body with increased activity (warm colors) or decreased activity (cool colors) associated with specific emotional states.

Insula

A subcortical structure that receives and integrates somatosensory signals from the body, mediates subjective awareness of bodily states, and is centrally involved in experiencing disgust, anger, guilt, and anxiety.

Amygdala

A subcortical brain structure that processes the emotional significance of stimuli, generates immediate reactions, and is critical for emotional learning and conditioned fear responses.

Fast path and slow path to the amygdala

The dual routes of sensory processing: a fast path directly from the thalamus to the amygdala for priority, near-instantaneous threat responses, and a slow path through the sensory cortex for deeper evaluation before reaching the amygdala.

Polygraph

An electronic instrument that records multiple physiological indices of autonomic arousal, such as breathing rate, heart rate, and skin conductance from sweating, to assess deception.

James-Lange theory

A theory of emotion stating that people perceive specific patterns of bodily responses and as a result of that perception feel emotion.

Cannon-Bard theory

A theory of emotion stating that information about emotional stimuli is sent simultaneously to the cortex and the body, producing emotional experience and bodily reactions at the same time.

Two-factor theory

A theory of emotion stating that the cognitive label applied to generalized physiological arousal results in the specific experience of an emotion.

Misattribution of arousal

A psychological phenomenon in which individuals misidentify the source of their physiological arousal, seeking environmental explanations for their feelings.

Rebound effect

The counterproductive outcome where attempting to actively suppress a thought leads an individual to think about it even more frequently.

Rumination

An ineffective emotion regulation strategy that involves repeatedly thinking about, elaborating on, and becoming trapped in a cycle of undesired thoughts or feelings, thereby prolonging negative affect.

Reappraisal

A successful emotion regulation technique that directly alters an emotional reaction to an event by consciously reinterpreting or reframing the situation in more neutral terms.

Display rules

Rules learned through socialization that dictate which emotional expressions are suitable and acceptable in given social situations.

Ideal affect

The specific emotional and affective states that people want to feel or that cultures especially value.

Guilt

A negative emotional state characterized by anxiety, tension, and agitation when someone feels responsible for another person's negative affective state, serving to affirm social bonds and discourage harmful behaviors.

Motivation

A process that energizes, guides, and maintains behavior toward a goal.

Need

A state of biological, social, or psychological deficiency that motivates goal-directed behavior.

Need hierarchy

Maslow's arrangement of human needs, in which basic survival needs must be satisfied before higher personal growth and achievement needs can be addressed.

Self-actualization

A state at the peak of Maslow's hierarchy that is achieved when one's personal dreams, aspirations, and full human potential have been attained.

Drive

A psychological state that, by creating arousal, motivates an organism to satisfy a biological or psychological need.

Homeostasis

The tendency for bodily functions to maintain physiological equilibrium around an optimal set-point.

Negative-feedback loop

A self-regulating biological system where deviation from a set-point triggers corrective behavior until the set-point, such as $37^\circ\text{C}$ ($98.6^\circ\text{F}$), is regained, halting the response.

Habit

A learned, dominant behavioral response produced by arousal that develops over time when an action consistently reduces a drive.

Yerkes-Dodson law

The psychological principle dictating that performance on challenging tasks increases with arousal up to a moderate level, after which additional arousal impairs performance, represented by an inverted-U graph.

Incentives

External objects or external goals, rather than internal drives, that motivate behaviors.

Extrinsic motivation

Motivation to perform an activity because of the external goals or tangible rewards toward which that activity is directed.

Intrinsic motivation

Motivation to perform an activity because of the inherent value or pleasure associated with the activity itself, rather than for an apparent external goal.

Self-efficacy

The belief that personal efforts directed toward a goal will result in successful task performance and achievement.

Grit

A personality trait characterized by long-term perseverance and passion for challenging goals that assists in sustained achievement.

Delay of gratification

The voluntary postponement of an immediate reward in pursuit of a more valuable long-term goal, facilitated by cognitive strategies such as turning hot cognitions into cold cognitions, ignoring, and self-distraction.

Self-regulation

The cognitive and behavioral process by which individuals direct, monitor, and adjust their behavior toward personal goals.

Need to belong

A fundamental, evolutionarily adaptive drive that motivates humans to form and maintain stable interpersonal attachments and social connections.

Balance theory

The idea that people are motivated to achieve harmony in their interpersonal relationships, where a triad is balanced when all three relationships are positive, or when two are negative and one is positive.

Cognitive dissonance

The unpleasant state of tension experienced when an individual holds two conflicting beliefs or when a belief conflicts with a behavior, creating motivation to change thoughts, change actions, or rationalize.

Self-affirmation

A fundamental need for a sense of self that is coherent and stable, prompting individuals to restore integrity when threats to self-coherence arise.

Core values

Strongly held beliefs about enduring principles that are most important and meaningful, which promote emotions and actions when aroused or threatened.