Studied by 4 people
Tolman argues that in order to understand behavior, we must ___________
study it as a phenomenon
What does Tolman mean when he calls behavior molar?
something to be studied as a whole (and not reduced to its component parts)
What does the author’s cat do when he/she wants to go outside?
claw the couch and run to the door
the cat would claw the furniture, and the author wanted the cat to stop so he'd bring it outside.
Tolman’s approach emphasized the idea that organisms develop what?
a cognitive map of their environment.
The important point for our purposes is that when place learning occurs it suggests something. What does it suggest?
that expectations do develop where rewards are found
Lewin’s approach was a dynamic one, emphasizing what?
that the forces acting to initiate behavior are constantly changing
The reaction of an object is the result of all the forces acting upon that object within the field containing it. What is this idea called?
field theory
Why does the central core of the inner-personal region have a greater influence on behavior?
the core regions are in contact with many other regions
What is Lewin's concept of tension?
internal motivation of the person
-- motivated to reduce tension
What is one way of summarizing Lewin's approach?
to understand behavior, one must understand all the forces that are related to that behavior
Briefly, what are four problems with Lewin’s analysis of behavior?
his terms are not clearly defined
psychological facts can change at any moment
He only inferred the conditions after the behavior occured
lacked proper control groups
What is the basic idea underlying expectancy-value theory?
motivated behavior results from the combination of individual needs and the value of goals available in the environment
According to Rotter, what determines our preference for an event?
the event's reinforcement value
-its desirability to us
Our reactions in new situations will be based on generalized expectations from the past. Explain.
Generalized expectations will guide our behavior despite never being in this situation before
example: You would expect to do well on an essay exam you've never taken before because you've consistently done well on other types of tests.
On the continuum of internality-externality, where do individuals at both extremes perceive rewards and punishments come from?
Internal: from their own actions, they're in control External: luck or other powerful people, they're not in control
Social learning has been suggested as a factor in several behavioral issues. Name three from the text.
autism, violence, alcohol use, coercive sexuality
What are Murray’s manifest needs? [Not a list – a description.]
needs that direct their behavior, learned and activated by environmental cues.
What do subjects do in the Thematic Apperception Test?
make up a story or describe a situation depicted in an ambiguous picture.
For what did McClelland and Atkinson’s submarine base subjects think they were being tested?
visual acuity
they looked at slides of food seeking or eating and were told to write stories
What did the TAT suggest the subjects in the failure condition were significantly more concerned with?
need-for-achievement
The tendency to approach or avoid achievement situations is thought to result from what four variables?
motive for success, motive to avoid failure, probability of success, and incentive value
The incentive value of success is the value of actually achieving the goal and represents what fact?
that some goals are worth more than others
What is the difference between mastery goals and performance goals?
mastery goals: they want to increase personal competence performance goals: they compare their competence to others
Give two reasons why attitudes do not always predict behaviors well.
Attitudes correlate with patterns of behavior
Some attitudes are more important to us
In Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior, what is the difference between perceived behavioral control and actual behavioral control?
actual behavioral control: time and ability, they are likely to perform a behavior if they have actual behavioral control and the intention to
perceived behavioral control: they belief in their ability to perform that behavior -- can predict behavior as it leads to intention
What are the three major components of intention according to Ajzen?
attitude toward behavior, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control
What is social loafing?
People do less when there are other people working with them
Describe the Ringelmann effect.
that a person's rope-pulling effort would decrease as group size increased
The sound ____ is not even 3x as intense as ______. Why?
of 12 hands clapping, the sound of 2. The ringelmann effect: effort decreased as group size increased.
What does the collective effort model predict?
individuals will be motivated to perform well if they expect that their effort leads to obtaining a valued goal.
Why does performance in a group decease, according to social impact theory?
social loafing: the larger the group, the less pressure each member of the group feels to perform, they feel that the work is dispersed amongst themselves.
What does one expect in a nation that contains a large number of persons high in need for achievement who become entrepreneurs?
They value work, knowledge, and freedom over family, tradition, and relationships
How did Horner conceptualize the fear of success construct?
By adding verbal items to the TAT that included gender.. When they saw a women, they would write stories of dropping out when she scored high academically (fear of success stories)
Explain the final criticism of the Asch studies.
That the Asch studies may no longer be relevant as they occurred many years ago at a time and in a place where conformity was much more prevalent than it is today.
Explain the foot-in-the-door effect.
People are more likely to consent to a large request if they had previously agreed to a smaller, related request
Explain the door-in-the-face effect.
When you present a very large request and it increases their compliance motivation to your second, smaller request
How did Milgram’s subjects think they were “teaching” the other subjects (confederates)?
by delivering increasingly painful electric shocks for incorrect answers in a verbal memory task
What percentage of the Yale undergrads escalated the shocks to the 450-volt maximum?
65
Milgram’s subjects were put into a conflict situation where they had to choose between two alternatives. What were they?
open defiance of an authority figure and obedience to a personally immoral behavior
What does Zimbardo call the ability to avoid responsibility for one’s behaviors?
deindividuation
Define hedonism
the seeking of pleasure and avoidance of pain
Troland divided stimulation of the nervous system into three categories: beneception, nociception, and neutroception. Briefly describe each term.
Beneception- occurs when pleasant feelings are aroused by stimuli Nociception- occurs as the result of stimuli that arouse unpleasant feelings Neutroception- exists when stimuli cause neither pleasant nor unpleasant feelings
What are the three properties of the affective processes represented by Young’s continuum?
sign, intensity, and duration
What paradigm do researchers often employ to observe affective intensity differences of substances?
preference tests
According to Young, the range of the hedonic continuum extends from the maximum negative end () through a neutral _____________________ zone, to the extreme positive end (__).
(distress), (indifferent), (delight)
When lab animals are given a choice of sugar solutions, they prefer higher sugar concentrations up to what point?
as far up the concentration scale as we care to go
Positive and negative affect are closely associated with what types of behavior?
positive affect is closely associated with approach behavior negative affect is closely associated with withdrawal behavior
Pfaffman’s research indicates that _______________________________are sufficient to trigger approach or avoidance behaviors without being tied to physiological change.
taste sensations
True or False: Pfaffman stated that hedonic intensity and sensory intensity are the same.
false
When may hedonic explanations of motivation prove to be less useful?
when applied to behaviors associated with the stimulation of distance receptors
Why is pain useful?
it tells us we have been injured and often causes us to alter our behavior so that the injured part of our body has time to heal
How did Melzack’s research lead him to describe the relationship between injury severity and pain experienced?
no simple and direct relationship existed between the severity of an injury and the amount of pain experienced
“Disconnection” surgery attempts to abolish certain types of pain but is often unsuccessful. What does this suggest (according to the text)?
the experience of pain is more than just simple perception of painful stimulation
Participants in electric shock experiments reported that the process was painful more often when something existed in the experiment’s instructions. What was that something?
when the word "pain" was in a set of instructions
Which area of the brain stem may also influence the perception of pain at the spinal cord level?
periaqueductal gray matter
Non-utilitarian problem-solving games like chess or bridge seem to be motivated by what?
sensory/external stimulation ***
What was different about the performance of monkeys that received food rewards for solving puzzles?
Delivery of food tended to disrupt performance on the puzzles The rewarded group lost interest in the puzzles sooner than the non-rewarded group
Berlyne argued that we attempt to maintain an optimal level of arousal. What happens when the level gets too high or too low?
If stimulation drops too low (as in boredom) we become motivated to increase our arousal level If arousal level becomes too high, we are motivated to lower it
When Montgomery’s rats explored two mazes, what seemed to determine the length of time they spent in the second maze?
degree of stimulus change involved
When Thompson and Melzack kept puppies isolated for many months, what did they note about the exploratory behaviors of the isolated pups?
explore long after the control subjects had grown bored of their new surroundings
How did the isolated puppies in Thompson and Melzack’s studies compare to normally raised pups on problem solving?
they were deficient compared to the normals in ability
What problems were noted when Riesen’s dark-reared cats were exposed to a normal lighting environment?
perceptual deficits and violent emotionality hyper-excitability, increased incidences of convulsive disorder, and localized motor impairment
What does research on sensory restriction indicate about stimulation during development?
adequate stimulation is necessary for normal development
Derived motives usually extinguish quickly when __________________ with the primary ______________________ is cut, but the infant-mother attachment seems ______________________.
associated, motive, lifelong
Of what were surrogate mothers constructed?
wore or soft terrycloth
Harlow and Suomi stated that facial design of their surrogates was not important. According to them, what does an infant believe about his/her mother’s face?
the maternal face is beautiful regardless of how others might judge it
The effects of isolation were minimal and reversible when a monkey was isolated from birth to what age?
3 months
According to Harlow & Harlow (1966) and Sackett (1967) what is apparently necessary for normal development?
experience with both mother and peers
The indifference and abuse noted in Harlow & Harlow’s “motherless monkey mothers” bears a striking resemblance to _______________________________________ ______.
incidents of human child abuse
What appears to prevent the anaclitic depression common in institutionalized infants?
close interaction with an individual responsible for their care
Children suffering from deprivation dwarfism are deficient in height and appear to be malnourished even when they have adequate diets. Describe their emotional states.
lethargic, apathetic, and withdrawn
It appears that the mechanism suppressing the secretion of growth hormone by the pituitary gland in children suffering from deprivation dwarfism is actually a disruption of what?
the normal sleep pattern
What two types of interactions are apparently important for normal development of an organism?
mother-infant and peer-peer interactions
Other than behavioral tests, what did participants also experience during the isolation period?
propaganda talk on the existence of psychic phenomena
In the McGill University adult sensory-deprivation experiments, how long did most outside participants stick with the study?
2-3 days
The studies of pilots cited in the text reported feelings of confusion, loss of contact, isolation, illusions, etc. According to Clark and Graybiel, what three conditions were associated with the disorientation?
flying alone, flying at high altitude, and a minimum of activity
Sensory deprivation effects are probably not confined to high-altitude flying. Cite the example from the text.
driving along at night on an arrow-straight interstate highway
For what does REST stand and with which researcher is it associated?
Restricted Environmental Stimulation Technique Suedfeld
What are two of the most influential factors observed in sensation seeking? Explain.
age and sex
Breslin et al. found that _________________________ did not affect gambling choices, but ____________________________________ did have an effect.
alcohol use, sensation seeking
The opponent-process model assumes that the physiological process that triggers the initial hedonic reaction will be opposed by what?
a second physiological state
For addicts, stimuli associated with both the pleasurable state A and the aversive state B reinforce the same behavior. What behavior?
continue taking drugs
It appears that the tolerance that develops to a continually-used drug can be partly explained as what?
conditioned A and B states
Describe the ‘after-reaction’ noted by Solomon which occurs after a first parachute jump.
highly positive state B that is opposite in emotional quality to the fear-producing state A (interact socially, often in animated ways)
When the time interval between occurrences of “state A” is long enough, it retains its original qualities—whether they are positive or negative. What does this lead us to predict about skydiving once a year?
would lead not to exhilaration but to continued terror
What are the three problems of balance theory, according to the text?
little to say about how a person will resolve the imbalance
balance theory does not take into account the importance of the items that are out of balance
how much imbalance must occur before behavior is triggered
What is cognitive dissonance?
We attempt to maintain consistency of our beliefs, attitudes, and opinions with our overt behavior
The text cites three ways to reduce dissonance. Briefly describe the three.
one may change one of the cognitions in order to reduce the dissonance
alter our behavior in order to reduce inconsistency between cognitions
adding consonant cognitions, which effectively reduce the dissonance without changing any of the conflicting elements
What did Festinger & Carlsmith’s subjects actually do during the experiment?
packing or unpacking spools or turning pegs on a peg board
Which group found the taped discussion more interesting in the Aronson & Mills study?
The group subjected to the severe initiation of reading lurid passages and four-letter words aloud
Dissonance theory predicts that we may selectively expose ourselves to information about a choice after one has been made. Explain.
After having made a choice, you will like your chosen car more and the unchosen on less
What is the main idea of Bem’s self- perception theory?
we observe our own behavior as much as an outsider might do, then make judgements base on these observations
What is meant by conformity? [... and don’t use the word conform!]
A change in ones beliefs or behaviors as a result of real or imagined pressure (in the direction of behaving in a similar way of others)
Name one of Pepitone’s several reasons why some organisms seem to be inconsistency seeking rather than inconsistency reducing
to mask more serious or painful inconsistencies
When subjects in Asch’s experiments did not conform to the group decision, what feeling did they seem to experience?
self-doubt and a desire to agree with the group discomfort when not agreeing with the group
What is meant by the “social facilitation of behavior”? (p. 279)
The presence of others sometimes has strong effects on the behavior of individuals
The energizing of behavior as a result of others competing in the same task is called what?
coaction effect
Describe the results of the running roach experiment. (p. 279)
Roaches paired in the runway ran faster than those who had to go it alone
Coactors and audiences will facilitate performance if ____________________________
the performer's correct response is highly likely (dominant response)
Performing a well-learned task in front of an audience increases two physiological measures but not a third. Name the three.
Challenge response that includes increased heart rate and vasodilation Does not increase blood pressure
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