ch10 psych

Motivation

Goal-directed behavior driven by needs, wants, interests, and desires.

Homeostasis

A state of physiological equilibrium or stability.

Drive

An internal state of tension that motivates an organism to engage in activities to reduce this tension.

Incentive

An external goal that has the capacity to motivate behavior.

Glucose

A simple sugar that is an important source of energy.

Glucostats

Neurons sensitive to glucose in the surrounding fluid.

Obesity

The condition of being overweight.

Body Mass Index (BMI)

Weight (in kilograms) divided by height (in meters) squared (kg/m²).

Set-Point Theory

The body monitors fat-cell levels to keep weight fairly stable.

Settling-Point Theory

Weight tends to drift around the level at which the factors determining food consumption and energy expenditure achieve equilibrium.

Estrogens

The principal class of gonadal hormones in females.

Androgens

The principal class of gonadal hormones in males.

Parental Investment

What each sex has to invest—in terms of time, energy, survival risk, and forgone opportunities—to produce and nurture offspring.

Sexual Orientation

A person's preference for emotional and sexual relationships with individuals of the same sex, the other sex, or either sex.

Heterosexuals

Individuals who seek emotional-sexual relationships with members of the other sex.

Bisexuals

Individuals who seek emotional-sexual relationships with members of either sex.

Homosexuals

Individuals who seek emotional-sexual relationships with members of the same sex.

Vasocongestion

The engorgement of blood vessels.

Refractory Period

A time following orgasm during which males are largely unresponsive to further stimulation.

Achievement Motive

The need to master difficult challenges, to outperform others, and to meet high standards of excellence.

Emotion

A subjective conscious experience (the cognitive component) accompanied by bodily arousal (the physiological component) and characteristic overt expressions (the behavioral component).

Galvanic Skin Response (GSR)

An increase in the electrical conductivity of the skin that occurs when sweat glands increase their activity.

Polygraph

A device that records autonomic fluctuations while a subject is questioned.

Display Rules

Norms that regulate the appropriate expression of emotions.

Subjective Well-Being

Individuals' personal perceptions of their overall happiness and life satisfaction.

Hedonic Adaptation

The phenomenon where the mental scale people use to judge the pleasantness-unpleasantness of their experiences shifts so that their neutral point, or baseline for comparison, changes.

Argument

One or more premises used to provide support for a conclusion.