Behavior, Arousal, and Affective Valence

A set of 30 vocabulary flashcards based on the lecture notes about arousal, behavior, and affective valence.

Arousal

The mobilization or activation of energy that occurs in preparation for or during behavior.

Physiological Arousal

Bodily changes corresponding to feelings of energy, such as clammy hands, increased heartbeat, and muscle tension.

Psychological Arousal

The subjective experience of being aroused, which can be reported verbally by individuals.

Trait Anxiety

The disposition of an individual to perceive environmental events as threatening and respond anxiously.

State Anxiety

The actual feelings of apprehension and worry evoked by threatening situations.

Yerkes-Dodson Law

The theory that performance varies with arousal intensity; optimal performance occurs at moderate levels of arousal.

Collative Variables

Stimulus characteristics that include novelty, complexity, and incongruity, influencing an individual's level of arousal.

Inverted-U Relationship

The principle that indicates that performance increases with arousal to a point before it begins to decline again.

Adrenaline

A hormone that is released during physiological arousal, enhancing the body's readiness for action.

Cusp Catastrophe Model

A theory in sports psychology that describes how performance can decline drastically when cognitive anxiety is high and physiological arousal is also high.

Tonic Immobility

A state of temporary paralysis or unresponsiveness that can occur in humans during extreme stress.

Energetic Arousal

A dimension characterized by feelings ranging from tiredness to being alert and awake.

Tense Arousal

A dimension characterized by feelings from calmness to anxiety and tension.

Evaluation Anxiety

Anxiety triggered by the perception of being evaluated, often seen in academic and performance settings.

Arousal-Performance Relationship

The relationship between a person's level of arousal and their performance effectiveness, varying based on the complexity of the task.

Processing Efficiency Theory

A theory that suggests anxiety manifests as worry, which occupies working memory and hinders cognitive performance.

Attentional Control Theory

A theory that posits anxiety affects attention, impairing the ability to focus and shift attention effectively.

Novelty

The quality of being new, original, or unusual, which can elicit arousal and affect emotional responses.

Complexity

The quality of having many interconnected parts, which can influence an individual's preference or liking for a stimulus.

Emotion Regulation

The management of feelings to influence one's emotional experience and expression.

Benign Masochism

The enjoyment of experiences that are initially perceived as negative but are not harmful, such as watching horror movies.

Tragedy Paradox

The phenomenon where individuals enjoy unpleasurable experiences such as sad music, often for the reflection and catharsis they provide.

Affective Valence

The intrinsic attractiveness (positive valence) or aversiveness (negative valence) of an event, object, or situation.

Mood Regulation Functions

Reasons for listening to music related to improving one's emotional state, including mood lifting and relaxation.

Groove (in music)

The rhythmic property of music that compels an individual to move in synchrony with it.

Chills (in response to music)

Physiological reactions such as goosebumps or shivers resulting from intense pleasure derived from music.

Processing Fluency

The ease with which a stimulus is processed, which can influence feelings of beauty and liking.

Cognitive Schemas

Mental structures that represent concepts, help interpret information, and guide expectations.

Handling of Incongruity in Humor

The cognitive process where discrepancies in humor are recognized and resolved to evoke amusement.

Preference for Complexity in Music

The tendency for individuals to prefer music that has a moderate level of complexity.

Prediction Errors in Music

Discrepancies between expected musical notes and the notes that occur, which can result in pleasure when resolved.

Thayer (1989)

Arousal theory has two dimensions: energetic and tense arousal

Findings: High tense arousal on exam day, and low tense arousal on normal day classes

Clements (1976)

Energetic arousal as an inverted-U relationship with time of day.

Levels: Low at 8 am, high from 12 and 2 pm, and low on evening classes.

Childs and de Wit (2008)

Found that quicker reaction times at 5pm when felt vigor was high and slower at 3 am when felt vigor was lower

Grundy (2012)

Grammatical error detection rate was higher for 400 milligrams of caffeine compared to no caffeine.

Yoshie (2009)

Anxiety created by audience had a negative effect on performance compared to solo performance.

Attwood (2013)

Inhaling carbon dioxide increases physiological arousal in the form of raised blood pressure and heart rate.

High arousal in the form of anxiety decreased face matching accuracy.

Yerkes and Dodson (1908)

Easy discrimination: performance increase across all shock intensities and rarely decline

Difficult discrimination tasks: performance increased with shock intensity, then decrease.

Low arousal produces maximal performance on difficult tasks, and high arousal produces maximal performance on easy tasks.

Hutterman and Memmert (2014)

Arousal levels has different impact on task performance differently on individual and task.

Correct geometric pair identification decrease when heart rate reach 70% on non-athletes

Medeiros Filho (2008)

Shooting performance was better when the archers were in their zone of optimal functioning.

Ashcroft and Kirk (2001)

Anxiety increase— working-memory capacity for numbers (computation span) decrease

Capacity for letter (listening span) was affected slightly but not significantly.

Wilson (2009)

Worry from high threat instructions interfered with the players’ ability to not be distracted by extraneous stimuli

Muppets (2013)

Feelings of arousal are more likely to be accompanied by valences feelings, positive, or negative.

Zuckerman (1969)

Optimal level of stimulation theory

People are motivated to position themselves at the intermediate level of stimulation that provides the highest positive affective valence

Berliner

Medium levels of arousal produce maximum pleasure. All things in moderation

Collation variables: collectively to stimulus characteristics that include novelty, complexity, and incongruity.

O’Brien (2019)

62% participants chose novel experience because they wanted to avoid repeating the same activity, which they predicted would be boring.

Gray (2014)

Participants rated the tops for liking based on ratings of attractiveness, arousal, and beauty.

Novel and more complex tops were liked better than less novel and simpler tops

High complexity and low novelty was liked more than high complexity plus high novelty combined.

Smith and Dorfman (1975)

Liking ratings decreased consistently for low complexity stimuli and increased consistently for high complexity stimuli over 20 exposures

Janata (2012)

Music with faster tempo elicited higher groove ratings

As groove ratings increased, liking increased also.

Higher groove music elicited greater synchronous movement.