FCPS AP Psych Unit 7
Motivation - a need or desire that energizes and directs behavior
Instinct: complex, inherited behavior patterns characteristic of a species that is unlearned.
Incentive: Force that pulls a person toward a particular behavior.
Intrinsic Motivation: Motivation that stems from internal factors, benefits associated with the process of pursuing a goal (autonomy, mastery, purpose)
Extrinsic Motivation: Motivation that stems from external factors, benefits associated with achieving a goal or avoiding punishment (compensation, punishment, reward)
Overjustification Effect – Promising a reward for doing something you like to do results in you seeking the reward as the motivation for performing the task.
This tends to diminish the intrinsic motivation to do something.
Self-Efficacy: Our belief that we can perform behaviors that are necessary to accomplish tasks, and that we are competent
Achievement Motivation: The need for achievement drives accomplishment and performance and thereby motivates our behavior
Drive Reduction Theory: The idea that a physiological need creates an aroused tension state (a drive) that motivate an organism to satisfy the need
Incentive Theory: We are pulled into action by—positive or negative— outside incentives
Optimum Arousal Theory: Human motivation aims to increase arousal - We feel driven to experience stimulation
Arousal is the level of alertness, wakefulness, and activation causes by activity in the central nervous system
Yerkes-Dodson Law: people perform best at a moderate level of arousal.
Hierarchy of Needs: Maslow’s pyramid of human needs, beginning at the base with physiological needs that must first be satisfied before higher-level safety needs and then psychological needs become active.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors. This produces a feeling of mental discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance.
For example, when people smoke (behavior) and they know that smoking causes cancer (cognition), they are in a state of cognitive dissonance.
Hunger Motivation: Understanding why we eat, hunger is something that makes us do things (motivator) and is a drive state
Set point: the point at which an individual’s “weight thermostat” is supposedly set. When the body falls below this weight, an increase in hunger and a lowered metabolic rate may act to restore the lost weight.
Lateral hypothalamus (LH): the “on” button for eating. *Remember: If it is lesioned, people will not feel hungry and they will become little (LH).
Ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH): the “off” button for eating. *Remember: If it is lesioned, people will not feel full and they will become very huge (VMH)
Basal metabolic rate: the body’s resting rate of energy expenditure.
Anorexia nervosa: an eating disorder in which a person (usually an adolescent female) diets and becomes significantly (15 percent or more) underweight, yet, still feeling fat, continues to starve.
Bulimia nervosa: an eating disorder characterized by episodes of overeating, usually high-calorie foods, followed by vomiting, laxative use, fasting, or excessive exercise.
Binge-eating disorder: significant binge-eating episodes, followed by distress, disgust, or guilt, but without the compensatory purging, fasting, or excessive exercise that marks bulimia nervosa.
Body Mass Index (BMI): the percentage of a person’s body fat.
Obesity: a disorder characterized by being excessively overweight, usually considered to have a BMI of over 30%.
Sexual Motivation: The normal human interest in sexual objects and activities
Sexual response cycle: the four stages of sexual responding described by Masters and Johnson – excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution.
Estrogen: sex hormone secreted in greater amount by females than males and contributing to female sex characteristics.
Testosterone: the most important of the male sex hormones.
Social Motivation: People need each other and need groups in order to survive and thrive
Social bonds boosted our ancestors’ survival rate
Ostracism “Social Exclusion”: Ostracism is being deliberately left out of a group or social setting by exclusion and rejection
Alfred Kinsey: Pioneering sex researcher, gained his data mostly through interviews that culminated in the Kinsey Reports
Abraham Maslow: Humanist who developed the Hierarchy of Needs.
Homeostasis: The body’s tendency to maintain an internal steady state of metabolism, to stay in balance
Need: a necessity, especially a physiological.
Primary drive: drives that are innate such as hunger, thirst, and sex.
Secondary drive: drives that are learned through conditioning such as working for money.
Emotion: a response of the whole organism, involving (1) physiological arousal, (2) expressive behaviors, and (3) conscious experience.
James-Lange theory: our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli.
Cannon-Bard theory (Thalamic Theory): an emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers (1) physiological responses and (2) the subjective experience of emotion.
Schachter-Singer theory (Schachter-Two Factor): to experience emotion one must (1) be physically aroused and (2) cognitively label the arousal.
Zajonc; LeDoux - some embodied responses happen instantly, without conscious appraisal - we automatically feel startled by a sound in the forest before labeling it as a threat
Lazarus - cognitive appraisal (“is it dangerous or not?”) - sometimes without our awareness - define emotion. Example: The sound is “just the wind”.
Paul Ekman - Universal emotions (all cultures). Identified every muscle in the human face and then every possible combination of facial muscles
Facial Feedback Hypothesis: Facial movement and expressions can influence attitude and emotional experience
Display Rule: A social group or culture's informal norms about how to appropriately express emotions
Stress: the process by which we perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors, that we appraise as threatening or challenging.
Stressor: anything that brings on the reaction to stress.
Distress: bad stress such as losing a job, a loved one, divorce, etc.
Eustress: good stress such as going on a vacation, the holidays, getting married, etc.
General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS): Selye’s concept of the body’s adaptive response to stress in three phases – alarm, resistance, exhaustion.
Alarm stage: encounter threatening stimulus, fight or flight activated. If threat avoided, stage ends
Resistance stage: if the threat is not avoided there’s prolonged state of stress. Activation of stress cannot be kept up indefinitely.
Exhaustion stage: energy and strength are used up by maintaining resistance, can become vulnerable to illness, fatigue & injury.
Approach-approach: the least stressful social conflict that involves 2 options, only one of which you can choose. Ex. You are accepted to both Harvard and Dartmouth. Which do you choose?
Avoidance-avoidance: involves 2 negative options, one of which you must choose. Ex. mow the lawn or wash the dishes.
Approach-avoidance: involves whether or not to choose an option that has both a positive and negative consequence or consequences. You are both attracted and repelled by the same goal. Ex. you like to eat spicy food but it gives you heartburn.
Multiple approach-avoidance: most complex of the social conflicts that involves several alternative courses of action that have both positive and negative aspects. Ex. you only have a certain amount of money to spend on prom. Take a limo: spend most of your budget on the limo and have very little money left for a nice dinner; borrow your parent’s car: it can only fit one other couple and they can’t give it to you when you want it, but you save money; get a party bus: cheaper than a limo, but you don’t know all of the couples going.
Coronary heart disease: the clogging of the vessels that nourish the heart muscle; the leading cause of death in North America.
Acute Stress disorder: diagnosed within the 1st month after exposure to a traumatic event. The person experiences depression and/or anxiety.
Type A: Friedman and Rosenman’s term for competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone people.
Type B: Friedman and Rosenman’s term for easygoing, relaxed people.
Psychophysiological illness: literally, “mind-body” illness; any stress-related physical illness, such as hypertension and some headaches.
Lymphocytes: the two types of white blood cells that are part of the body’s immune system; B lymphocytes form in the bone marrow and release antibodies that fight bacterial infections; T lymphocytes form in the thymus and other lymphatic tissue and attack cancer cells, viruses, and foreign substances.
B lymphocytes: fight bacterial infections.
T lymphocytes: attack cancer cells and viruses.
Sigmund Freud: The Father of Psychoanalysis
Carl Jung: Early follower of Freud, established rival theoretical perspective
Alfred Adler: believed people strive for superiorityto be altruistic, cooperative, creative, unique, aware, and interested in social welfare
Psychoanalytic Theories: Sigmund Freud developed theory of personality development, human behavior and experience are determined by forces over which we have very little control and about which we are generally unaware
Unconscious: According to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories
Id: Part of the human personality that is made up of all our inborn biological urges that seeks out immediate gratification
Ego: The largely conscious, “executive” part of personality that, mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality
Superego: The part of personality that, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspirations
Psychosexual Stages: The childhood stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) during which, according to Freud, the id’s pleasure seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones
Oral (0-1): Obtain pleasure from the mouth via sucking, biting, swallowing.
Anal (1-3): Pleasure obtained by learning to control bodily wastes.
Phallic Stage – Pleasure zone in our genitals and we are focusing on coping with incestuous feelings
Latency Stage (5-12) Suppress sexual interest - play mostly with same sex peers
Genital Stage (adolescent & Up) Adult sexuality. Feeling more comfortable with the mature understanding of what sex means and what is about. Comfort and maturity in expressing sexual feelings towards others.
Oedipus complex – boys have feelings of love towards mothers and feel hostile their fathers
Electra Complex – Girls develop penis envy and love towards fathers, but feel hostile towards mothers
Identification: The process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos
Fixation: According to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved
Psychoanalysis: Freud’s techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions
Free Association: In psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing
Repression – banishing anxiety arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness. Example: Witness a murder and when the police ask you what happened, you forget
Regression – an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated. Example: Anxious on a first day of school, a child may result to a “thumb sucking” phase to help him/her get through
Reaction Formation – the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses to their opposite. People may express feelings that are opposite of their unconscious feelings. Example: “I hate him” may really mean, “I love him”
Projection – People disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others. Example: “He doesn’t trust me,” may mean “I don’t trust him.”
Rationalization – offers self-justification explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one’s actions. Example: Students who don’t study may think, “All work and no play makes me a boring person” or someone who is an alcoholic say, “I only drink in social settings.”
Displacement – Shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person; redirecting anger toward a safer outlet. Example: Bullying
Denial – People refuse to believe or even perceive painful realities. Example: See your boyfriend cheating, but still don’t believe it
Collective unconscious. This is our supposedly common collection of images that we have gained together as human beings from our ancestral & evolutionary past
Archetypes: Major structural components of the collective unconscious, universal pattern or predispositions that structure how all humans consciously and unconsciously adapt to their world
Anima: The hidden feminine side of man, based on men’s collective experiences with women throughout time
Animus: The hidden masculine side of woman
inferiority complex - consists of feelings of not measuring up to standards, a doubt and uncertainty about oneself, and a lack of self-esteem
Operant Conditioning Theory: B.F. Skinner maintained that behavior is personality. The environment shapes who we come and who we become is determined by the contingencies of reinforcement we have experienced
Social Cognitive Theory (Albert Bandura): Views behavior as influenced by the interaction between people’s traits (including their thinking) and their social context
Reciprocal Determinism: The characteristics of the person, the person’s behavior, and the environment all affect one another in a two-way causal relationships
Locus of Control: The degree to which we expect that a reinforcement or outcome of our behavior is contingent on our own behavior or personal characteristics vs. fate, unpredictable, other people
Internal locus of control: Think they control and are responsible for what happens to them
External locus of control: Believe what happens is due to fate, luck, or others
Humanistic Theorists: emphasized human potential, focused on the ways “healthy” people strive for self determination and self-realization
Abraham Maslow said people are motivated by a hierarchy of needs. Maslow said we fulfill the most basic needs first, each layer of needs is vital to development of personality
Self-Actualization - motivation to fulfill potential and to become a fully functioning person
Carl Rogers - Self, an organized, consistent set of beliefs and perceptions about ourselves, which develops in response to our life experiences
Ideal Self vs. Real Self: The ideal self is the person that you would like to be; the real self is the person you actually are
Incongruence, the difference between our real self, and ideal self
Unconditional Positive Regard: We are all born with a need for acceptance and love from others independent of how we behave, and positive self-regard from ourselves
Acceptance, Genuine, Empathy – What Carl Rogers believes everyone needs for personal growth
Individualists – more emphasis on independent self. Self defined by personal values, personal goals, and personal attitudes
Collectivists – more emphasis on collective self. Self defined by connections with family and friends with the goals of the group having higher priority than individual goals
Trait - a characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports
Gordon Allport: Conducted research that focused on conscious motivation and personal traits. Proposed three levels of traits...
Cardinal Traits, Defining characteristic, dominates/shapes all of our behavior
Central Traits, General characteristic, between 5-10 which shape much of our behavior
Secondary traits, Characteristic apparent in only certain situations
Raymond Cattell’s 16 Traits: Through the use of surveys and records, found out how traits are organized and how they are linked
Source Traits: The more basic traits that underlie the surface traits, forming the core of personality
Surface Traits: Aspects of personality that can easily be seen by other people in the outward actions of a person
Hans Eysenck’s Personality Dimensions: He simplified a long list of traits into his three dimensions
Extraversion: Measures our sociability, tendency to pay attention to external environment
Neuroticism: Measures our level of emotional instability
Conscientiousness: organized and careful
Agreeableness: trusting
Neuroticism: insecure
Openness: more createive
Extraversion: affectionate
Self-Report Methods: Most common personality assessment techniques, involve a person answering a series of questions, such as a personality questionnaire, or supplying information about himself or herself
Personality Inventory - a questionnaire on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors; used to assess selected personality traits
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) - the most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests. Originally developed to identify emotional disorders, this test is now used for many other screening purposes
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI): Carl Jung’s theory on personality, one of the most popular personality inventories used with nonclinical populations, measures individuals across four bipolar dimensions
Projective Test: Personality test that provides ambiguous stimuli and test-takers tell a story about it
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): Projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes
Rorschach Inkblot Test - the most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots, designed by Hermann Rorschach; seeks to identify people's inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots