AP Psych: Motivation, Emotion, and Stress
• Motivation: The process that initiates, guides, and sustains goal-directed behavior.
• Instincts: Innate, fixed patterns of behavior that occur in response to specific stimuli, typically without prior learning.
• Drive: A physiological state that motivates behavior aimed at reducing a need or maintaining homeostasis.
• Homeostasis: The tendency of the body to maintain a balanced or constant internal state (e.g., body temperature, blood sugar levels).
• Incentives: External stimuli or rewards that motivate behavior, often in anticipation of a positive outcome.
• Boredom (Motivation): A state of mind when an individual feels uninterested or unstimulated by their environment, which may drive them to seek novelty or challenge.
• Hierarchy of Motives: A theory by Abraham Maslow that suggests people have a hierarchy of needs, starting with basic physiological needs and advancing to self-actualization.
• Abraham Maslow: A psychologist best known for developing the Hierarchy of Needs theory, which states that individuals are motivated by a series of hierarchical needs.
• Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: A psychological theory that prioritizes human needs in a five-tier pyramid: physiological needs, safety needs, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.
• Obesity/Ventromedial Hypothalamus: Obesity is an excessive accumulation of body fat. The ventromedial hypothalamus plays a role in regulating feelings of satiety and hunger, and its dysfunction may contribute to obesity.
• Diet/Carbohydrates and the Reduction of Tension/Anxiety: Carbohydrates can increase serotonin levels in the brain, which may reduce feelings of anxiety and tension.
• Anorexia Nervosa: An eating disorder characterized by an extreme fear of gaining weight, leading to self-imposed starvation and extreme weight loss.
• Bulimia Nervosa: An eating disorder marked by episodes of binge eating followed by compensatory behaviors like vomiting or excessive exercise to avoid weight gain.
• Job vs. Career: A job is a task or set of tasks performed for pay, while a career is a long-term professional pursuit that typically involves a series of jobs within a field.
• Flow: A state of deep engagement and focus in an activity, where individuals lose track of time and experience intrinsic motivation.
• Industrial-Organizational Psychology: The study of human behavior in organizations and the workplace, focusing on improving productivity, performance, and employee well-being.
• Interviewer Illusion: The tendency for interviewers to overestimate their ability to judge a candidate’s suitability for a job based on a brief interview.
• Halo Errors: A type of cognitive bias where an overall impression of a person influences specific judgments about their traits or behavior.
• Achievement Motivation: The desire for significant accomplishment, mastering skills, and attaining high standards of success.
• Transformational Leadership: A leadership style that inspires and motivates followers to achieve high levels of performance and to engage in personal growth.
• Keys’ Semi-Starvation Diet: An experiment led by Ancel Keys during which participants were deprived of calories to study the psychological and physiological effects of starvation.
• Lateral Hypothalamus (Animal Electrical Stimulation Experiment): The lateral hypothalamus, when electrically stimulated, triggers hunger in animals; damage to it can cause a loss of appetite.
• Cannon-Bard Theory: A theory of emotion that suggests physiological responses and emotional experiences occur simultaneously but independently.
• Cognitive Labels: In Schachter's Two-Factor Theory, the interpretation or labeling of a physiological response that leads to the experience of emotion.
• James-Lange Theory: The theory that emotions result from the perception of physiological reactions to stimuli (e.g., we feel afraid because we tremble).
• Epinephrine: A hormone produced by the adrenal glands that prepares the body for the fight-or-flight response, affecting heart rate, blood pressure, and metabolism.
• Norepinephrine: A neurotransmitter and hormone involved in the body's stress response, influencing attention, arousal, and mood.
• Physiological Arousal and Performance: According to the Yerkes-Dodson Law, performance increases with physiological arousal, but only to a certain point, after which performance declines with excessive arousal.
• Lie Detector Tests/Polygraph (Perspiration Levels): Polygraphs measure physiological responses (e.g., sweating, heart rate) that are assumed to change when a person is deceptive.
• Guilty Knowledge Test: A type of lie detection test that measures a person’s physiological responses to information only known to the criminal.
• Amygdala & Fear/Anger: The amygdala plays a key role in processing emotions like fear and anger, particularly in threat detection.
• Facial Expressions: Universal emotional expressions (e.g., smiling, frowning) that convey a person’s emotional state and are linked to evolutionary survival.
• Evolutionary Psychological Perspective: The view that human behaviors and emotions are shaped by evolutionary pressures and natural selection for adaptive functions.
• Facial Feedback Effect: The hypothesis that facial expressions can influence emotional experiences (e.g., smiling can make you feel happier).
• Susan Mineka Monkey Experiment: An experiment where monkeys were conditioned to fear snakes, showing how fears can be learned through observation.
• Catharsis Hypothesis: The idea that expressing emotions (such as through aggressive behaviors) can reduce those emotions, though this theory is controversial.
• Feel-good, Do-good Phenomenon: The tendency for people who are in a good mood to be more likely to help others.
• Adaptation-Level Phenomenon: The tendency to judge new experiences in relation to past experiences, leading to a shift in what is considered “normal” or satisfactory.
• Relative Deprivation Principle: The perception that one is worse off than others, leading to feelings of discontent or frustration.
• Schachter’s Two-Factor Theory: A theory of emotion suggesting that emotions are based on two factors: physiological arousal and cognitive interpretation of that arousal.
• Nervous System Divisions (Review): The nervous system is divided into the central nervous system (CNS) and peripheral nervous system (PNS), with the PNS further divided into the somatic and autonomic nervous systems.
• Behavioral Medicine: A field of study that integrates behavioral and biomedical science to understand the psychological and physical aspects of health and illness.
• General Adaptation Syndrome (Hans Selye): A model describing the body's response to stress in three stages: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion.
• Type A vs Type B Personalities: Type A personalities are competitive, time-urgent, and often hostile, while Type B personalities are more relaxed and easygoing.
• Psychophysiological Illness: A physical illness that is influenced by psychological factors, such as stress (e.g., hypertension, heart disease).
• Ader & Cohen Rat Experiments: Research showing that the immune system can be conditioned by associating a specific taste with an immune response, highlighting the mind-body connection.
• Executive vs Subordinate Rats: In Ader & Cohen’s experiments, rats in dominant roles (executive) had different physiological responses compared to subordinate rats.
• Pessimistic vs Optimistic Explanatory Style: A pessimistic explanatory style attributes negative events to internal, stable, and global factors, while an optimistic style attributes them to external, unstable, and specific factors.
• Homeopathy & Alternative Medicine: Homeopathy is an alternative medicine practice based on the idea that "like cures like," using extremely diluted substances to treat conditions.
• Dieting & Metabolic Rate: Dieting can affect metabolic rate; prolonged calorie restriction can lower metabolism, making it harder to lose weight.
• Social Leadership vs Task Leadership: Social leadership focuses on building relationships and morale, while task leadership emphasizes getting the job done efficiently.
• Anger: An emotional response to perceived threats or injustices, which can vary in intensity and may be expressed in different ways (e.g., frustration, aggression).