Psychology: Emotion, Motivation, Personality, and Social Psychology

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering key definitions and theories from the lecture notes on emotion, motivation, personality traits, and social psychology.

Affect

A broad, general category of feeling that is categorized as positive or negative and encapsulates both emotions and moods.

Emotion

A specific, temporary feeling that arises in reaction to a specific event, characterized by mental components (thoughts, preparation to act) and bodily/brain changes, often accompanied by distinct facial expressions.

Mood

A general, longer-lasting emotional state that often cannot be attributed to any specific happening or event.

Appraisal

The conscious and unconscious evaluation and interpretation of the emotion-relevant aspects of a stimulus or event, assessing factors such as self-relevance, importance, control, and coping.

James–Lange Theory

The theory of emotion stating that physiological bodily responses follow directly from the perception of an exciting stimulus, and the subsequent feeling of those bodily changes is the emotion.

Two-Factor Theory of Emotion

Schachter and Singer's theory proposing that different stimuli trigger the same general physiological response, which is then cognitively labeled and interpreted differently depending on situational context.

Facial Feedback Hypothesis

The hypothesis suggesting that emotional expressions can cause the emotional experiences they typically signify (e.g., holding a pencil in teeth to smile induces happier feelings).

Universality Hypothesis

Darwin's hypothesis suggesting that all emotional expressions mean the same thing to all people in all places at all times.

Display Rule

A cultural norm governing the appropriate expression of emotion through techniques such as intensification, deintensification, masking, and neutralizing.

Intensification

A display rule technique involving exaggerating the outward expression of an emotion, such as pretending to be delighted by an unwanted gift.

Deintensification

A display rule technique involving muting or toning down the expression of an emotion, such as an athlete hiding disappointment after winning a silver medal.

Masking

A display rule technique involving expressing one emotion while feeling an entirely different emotion, such as displaying interest rather than contempt.

Neutralizing

A display rule technique involving displaying no facial expression of the emotion one is experiencing, maintaining a blank or poker face.

Fast and Slow Pathways

LeDoux's dual-processing neural routes for emotional stimuli: the fast pathway sends information directly from the thalamus to the amygdala for survival appraisal, while the slow pathway travels from the thalamus to the cortex and then to the amygdala for detailed analysis.

Emotion Regulation

The cognitive and behavioral strategies individuals use to influence their own emotional experience.

Reappraisal

An emotion-regulation strategy that involves altering one's emotional experience by changing the way one thinks about the emotion-eliciting stimulus.

Suppression

An emotion-regulation strategy involving the inhibition of the outward signs of an emotion, which is generally ineffective and requires substantial effort.

Affect Labeling

An emotion-regulation strategy that involves putting one's feelings into words, which effectively diminishes the intensity of negative emotional states.

Motivation

The conditions responsible for variations in the intensity, persistence, quality, and direction of ongoing behavior, involving choices about energy expenditure and goal prioritization.

Instinct

An inborn, hard-wired faculty defined by William James as acting in such a way as to produce certain ends, without foresight of the ends, and without previous education in the performance.

Equilibrium

A static or chemical state where opposing forces or reaction rates are equal, resulting in no net change and requiring no energy input in an isolated or closed system.

Homeostasis

A dynamic state of equilibrium in an open biological system where living organisms actively expend energy and use feedback loops to maintain internal variables within a narrow, non-equilibrium range.

Drive-Reduction Theory

Clark Hull's theory suggesting that the primary motivation of all organisms is to reduce internal physiological drives that arise when basic needs are unmet.

Hedonic Principle

The psychological and philosophical principle stating that people are fundamentally motivated to experience pleasure and avoid pain.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

A theory organizing human motivations into a pyramid-like progression of needs, where foundational physiological requirements must be addressed before higher-level growth and self-actualization needs can emerge.

Ghrelin

An orexigenic hormone produced in the stomach that signals the brain to switch hunger on and temporarily improves learning and memory by binding to hippocampal neurons.

Leptin

An anorexigenic chemical secreted by fat cells that signals the brain to shut hunger off, rendering food less appealing.

Lateral Hypothalamus

A brain structure that receives orexigenic signals to initiate hunger; when destroyed, animals will starve themselves to death despite having access to food.

Ventromedial Hypothalamus

A brain structure that receives anorexigenic signals to terminate eating; when destroyed, animals will gorge themselves to the point of severe obesity.

Evolutionary Mismatch

The concept that traits and biological mechanisms that evolved because they were adaptive in an ancestral environment can become maladaptive in a modern environment.

Intrinsic Motivation

Motivation driven by internal rewards, personal interest, curiosity, joy, or meaning derived directly from the activity itself.

Extrinsic Motivation

Motivation to perform actions that are not themselves rewarding but lead to external payoffs, tangible rewards (e.g., money, grades), or the avoidance of punishment.

Overjustification Effect

The phenomenon whereby providing external tangible rewards for an activity that was already intrinsically rewarding diminishes an individual's subsequent intrinsic interest in it.

Conscious Motivation

Motivations, goals, and drives that an individual is actively aware of, can articulate, and typically recognizes when facing difficult or problematic tasks.

Unconscious Motivation

Implicit or hidden psychological drivers (such as deep-seated fears or implicit needs) that influence behavior without the person's conscious awareness.

Approach Motivation

A motivational state energized by the desire to experience a positive stimulus, reward, or desirable outcome.

Avoidance Motivation

A motivational state energized by the desire to prevent, escape, or move away from an unpleasant outcome, threat, or failure.

Loss Aversion

The psychological tendency for people to care significantly more about avoiding potential losses than about acquiring equal-sized gains.

Terror Management Theory

A theory explaining how individuals manage the existential dread of their own mortality by adopting and clinging to cultural worldviews that provide shared value and meaning.

Self-Efficacy

Albert Bandura's concept denoting an individual's belief in their capacity to successfully perform a specific task or accomplish a designated goal.

Personality

An individual's characteristic style of behaving, thinking, and feeling over time and across situations.

Projective Techniques

Personality evaluation instruments (such as the Rorschach Inkblot Test or TAT) that present standardized ambiguous stimuli to elicit subjective responses presumed to reveal unconscious inner motives and traits.

Big Five Personality Traits

The five core dimensions used to describe human personality, represented by the acronym O.C.E.A.N.: Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

Situation Strength Theory

A theory proposing that the degree to which personality traits translate into behavior is governed by situational characteristics, specifically clarity, consistency, constraints, and consequences.

Internal Locus of Control

The psychological belief that one directly controls the events, successes, and challenges of their life through their own personal actions, decisions, and effort.

External Locus of Control

The psychological belief that life outcomes, successes, and failures are predominantly governed by outside forces, chance, luck, or powerful others.

Social Psychology

The scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another, encompassing social thinking, social influence, and social relations.

Self-Serving Bias

The cognitive tendency to perceive oneself favorably, often by attributing positive outcomes and actions to one's own traits while judging oneself more favorably than others.

Optimism Bias

The tendency to believe that future positive events are more likely to occur to oneself and negative events are more likely to occur to others.

Attribution Theory

A social psychological framework explaining how people explain the behavior of others by attributing it to either internal dispositions (personality, attitudes) or external situations.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to underestimate the impact of situational influences and overestimate the role of dispositional influences when evaluating the behavior of others.

Post-Decision Dissonance

A form of cognitive dissonance that arises after making an important or difficult decision between attractive alternatives, colloquially referred to as buyer's remorse.