Psychology in Everyday Life Chapter 9 : Myers

Motivation

a need or desire that energizes and directs behavior.

Drive-reduction theory

the idea that a physiological need creates an aroused state (a drive) that motivates us to satisfy the need.

Physiological need

a basic bodily requirement.

Drive

an aroused, motivated state often created when the body is deprived of some substance it needs.

Incentive

a positive or negative environmental stimulus that motivates behavior.

Hierarchy of needs

Maslow's pyramid of human needs, at the base are physiological needs. These basic needs must be satisfied before higher-level safety needs, and the psychological needs, become active.

Glucose

the form of sugar that circulates in the blood and provides the major source of energy for body tissues. When its level is low, we feel hunger.

Set Point

the point at which your "weight thermostat" is supposedly set. When your body falls below this weight, increased hunger and a lowered metabolic rate may combine to restore lost weight.

Basal Metabolic Rate

the body's resting rate of energy output.

Emotion

a response of the whole organism, involving bodily arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience.

James-Lange Theory

the theory that our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli

Cannon-Bard Theory

the theory that an emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers physiological responses and the subjective experience of emotion.

Two-factor theory

Schachter and Singer's theory that to experience emotion we must be physically aroused and cognitively label the arousal.

Facial feedback effect

the tendency of facial muscle states to trigger corresponding feelings such as fear, anger, or happiness.

Catharsis

emotional release. The catharsis hypothesis maintains that "releasing" aggressive energy (through action or fantasy) relieves aggressive urges.

Feel-good, do-good phenomenon

our tendency to be helpful when already in a good mood.

Subjective well-being

self-perceived happiness or satisfaction with life. Used along with measures of objective well-being to evaluate our quality of life.

Adaptation-level phenomenon

our tendency to form judgments (of sounds, of lights, of income) relative to a neutral level defined by our past experiences.

Relative deprivation

the perception that we are worse off relative to those with whom we compare ourselves.