Personality, Motivation, & Emotion Lecture Notes

Flashcards covering key terms and concepts from the lecture notes on personality, motivation, and emotion.

Personality

An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.

Psychodynamic Theory

Views personality with a focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experiences.

Unconscious

A reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories.

Defense Mechanisms

The ego's protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.

Regression

Retreating to a more infantile psychosexual stage.

Projection

Disguising one’s own threatening impulses by attributing them to others.

Rationalization

Offering self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening unconscious reasons for one's actions.

Self-Actualizing Tendency

The strive to fulfill one's potential (top of Maslow’s pyramid).

Trait

A characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act.

Conscientiousness

Organization/carefulness in behavior.

Self-Efficacy

One’s sense of competence and effectiveness.

Intrinsic Motivation

Doing something for its own sake.

Drive-Reduction Theory

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

Facial-Feedback Hypothesis

The tendency of facial muscle states to trigger corresponding feelings.

Stress

The process by which we perceive and respond to certain events (stressors).

Eustress

Positive stress that can motivate and energize.

Distress

Negative stress that can cause anxiety or overwhelm.

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

The body's 3-stage response to stress: Alarm, Resistance, Exhaustion.

Fight-Flight-Freeze

The body's emergency response system to perceived threats.

Emotion-Focused Coping

Attempting to alleviate stress by avoiding/ignoring a stressor and attending to emotional needs.