Behavior and Motivation Exam 3

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?

1) his terms are not clearly defined
2) psychological facts can change at any moment
3) He only inferred the conditions after the behavior occured
4) 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.

1) Attitudes correlate with patterns of behavior
2) 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?

1) little to say about how a person will resolve the imbalance
2) balance theory does not take into account the importance of the items that are out of balance
3) 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.

1) one may change one of the cognitions in order to reduce the dissonance
2) alter our behavior in order to reduce inconsistency between cognitions
3) 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