Emotions, Cognitions, and Personality Lecture Notes

This flashcard set covers the lecture's core concepts regarding the interplay of emotions, cognitions, and personality, including definitions of emotion vs. affect, models of well-being, cognitive styles, and components of the self.

Emotion

A conscious, evaluative reaction to some event; it includes a cognitive component and tends to include core, universal feelings.

Mood

A feeling state that is not clearly linked to a specific event and refers to how someone feels in general.

Affect

The automatic, instantaneous response that something is good or bad.

Conscious Emotion

A powerful and clearly unified feeling state, such as anger or joy.

Automatic Affect

A quick response of liking or disliking towards something.

Universal Emotions

The six basic emotions seen cross-culturally: surprise, anger, fear, happiness, disgust, and sadness.

Affect Balance

A definition of happiness measured by the frequency of positive emotions minus negative emotions.

Life Satisfaction

An evaluation of how one's life is generally compared to an internal standard.

Subjective Roots of Happiness

Predictors of happiness connected to an individual’s outlook on life, such as optimism, which are found to be more significant than objective predictors like money.

Direct Model

A model of the relationship between personality and well-being which assumes that personality directly causes emotional reactions.

Indirect Model

A model where personality causes a person to create a certain lifestyle, which then causes emotional reactions leading to well-being.

Beck’s Cognitive Model

A theory of depression involving cognitive styles and schemas where certain internal, stable, and global patterns serve as a preexisting vulnerability.

Pessimistic Explanatory Style

A cognitive style typical of depressed individuals that is internal (blaming self), stable (consistent over time), and global (affecting everything).

Aggression

The physical or verbal manifestation of the internal emotion of anger.

Type A Personality

A syndrome or cluster of personality traits including achievement striving, impatience, competitiveness, and hostility.

Venting (Catharsis)

The theory that releasing anger through physical activity or screaming is healthy, though social scientists like Brad Bushman suggest it actually increases future aggression.

Emotional Intelligence (EI)

The ability to perceive, access, generate, understand, and reflectively regulate emotions.

Emotional Intelligence - Four Branches

The components of the MSC EIT: perceiving emotions, facilitating thought, understanding emotions, and managing emotions.

Affective Forecasting

Predicting emotional reactions to future events, often involving an overestimation of the intensity or duration of those feelings.

Cognition

Awareness and thinking, as well as specific mental acts such as perceiving, interpreting, remembering, believing, and anticipating.

Field Independent

People who have the ability to focus on details despite the clutter of background information; they often favor natural sciences, math, and engineering.

Field Dependent

People who see the big picture rather than individual details and are more attentive to social cues; they often favor social sciences and education.

Reducers

Individuals with a high pain tolerance and a dampened nervous system who seek strong stimulation to compensate for lower sensory reactivity.

Augmenters

Individuals with a lower pain tolerance whose nervous system amplifies or augments the impact of sensory inputs.

Internal Locus of Control

The generalized expectancy that reinforcing events are under one's own control and that one is responsible for major life outcomes.

External Locus of Control

The generalized expectancy that events are outside of one's own control.

Learned Helplessness

A state where animals or humans become passive and accepting of unpleasant circumstances after being subjected to inescapable negative events.

Self-Concept

A person's beliefs about themselves including their attributes; answers the question "Who am I?"

Self Esteem

The evaluative component of the self; answers the question "What am I worth?"

Social Identity

The part of ourselves we show to others to create an impression, characterized by continuity and differentiation.

Objective Self Awareness

The beginning of social identity in teenage years, involving the ability to see oneself as an object of others' attention.

Possible Selves

A person's ideas of what they might like to become (aspirations) or what they are afraid of becoming (fears).

Identity Crisis

A state of confusion about who you are or your place in society, generally found in Western cultures.