AP Psychology - Emotion

Affect

A term for emotional responses

Internal factor of emotion

Personal factors like thoughts, physiological factors that influence emotional experience.

External factor of emotion

Stimuli trigger emotions: Compliments make us happy, while insults can make us sad or angry.

Physiological experience of emotion

The physical changes that occur in the body when experiencing emotions.

Cognitive experience of emotions

The thoughts that accompany emotional experiences

Appraisal

To assign value. Whatever you experience depends on how you think, and thinking differently can fix how you feel. You can appraise a positive or negative emotion to an experience.

Cognitive label

Mental label influenced by context, basically appraisal

Facial feedback hypothesis

The idea that facial expressions can influence emotions. (Smiling more can make you happier)

Cognitive appraisal

The process of evaluating a situation to determine its emotional impact.

Display rules

Cultural norms that dictate how and when emotions should be expressed.

Elicitors

Something that triggers emotional responses

Positive Psychology

A field of psychology that focuses on strengths, well being, and optimal functioning.

Well-being

A state of being comfortable, but being uncomfortable is critical to growth.

Resilience

The ability to recover from stress, bouncing back.

Self Efficacy

The belief in your own abilities

Positive emotions

Emoitions that make you happy. There is a ratio of positive to negative emotions that seems to be healthy.

3-1 barely happy

11-1 too happy

Positive subjective experiences

Personal feelings and emotions that contribute to happiness and well being.

Positive objective experiences

Favorable life events or circumstances that contribute to well-being.

Signature strenghts/virtues

Positive traits that can be deemed morally good.

Anhedonia

A symptom, it is the difficulty in feeling happiness when someone normally should.

Virtue of wisdom

The quality of good judgement

Virtue of courage

Overcoming or confronting fears

Virtue of humanity

Being compassionate

Virtue of justice

Fairness, equality

Virtue of temperance

Self control and moderation

Motivation

Wanting to do something

Drive reduction theory

Suggests that motivation is based on reducing biological drives

Arousal theory

A theory that people are motivated to maintain an optimal level of arousal

Optimum Arousal

Theory that performance is best at an optimal level of arousal

Inverted U Graph

Represents the optimum arousal and yerkes-dodson theory

Yerkes-Dodson theory

The more aroused we are, the dumber we get.

Self determination theory

A theory that focuses on the motivation behind choices people make without external influence.

Intrinsic Motivation

The reward comes from inside you. Pride, accomplishment, curiosity.

Extrinsic Motivation

Rewards or threats of punishment that come from outside of you. (A good grade, money, or praise from others).

Hedonic or incentive theory

Theory saying that behavior is motivated by a desire for pleasure or incentives.

Overjustification Effect

If you pay someone for doing what they liike, they will stop liking it.

Lewin’s motivational conflict theory

A theory that describes conflicts between different motivational states. Approach, and avoidance.

Approach-Approach

Wanting two things at once, but you can only pick one

Approach-Avoidance

When you both want and don’t want something at the same time.

Avoidance-Avoidance

When you have to choose between two unpleasant things.

Sensation seeking theory

People seek out new experiences to maintain arousal

Thrill seeking

Looking for a high level of arousal

Adventure seeking

Looking for new experiences

Disinhibition

Engaging in risky behaviors when in a highly stimulated environment

Boredom susceptibility

The tendency to become easily bored. (Boredom is good for your brain!)

Feeding and eating disorders

You know you should eat/stop eating, but you won’t.

Health Psychology

A field of psychology that focuses on how to be healthy

Burn Out

A state of exhaustion caused by prolonged stress

Explanatory Style

A persons habitual way of explaining events, typically as positive or negative.

Optimistic

Negative events are temporary, external.

Pessimistic

Negative events are long term, internal.

Locus of Control

Who/what controls your life

Internal Locus of Control

You are in charge, but its hard to accept defeat if you fail due to internal pressure.

External Locus of Control

The world keeps spinning, “Gods Plan”, but you are a puppet of your circumstances.