Unit 7: Motivation, Emotion, and Personality

Instincts

are complex, inherited behavior patterns characteristic of a species.

Ethologist

(animal behaviorist) Konrad Lorenz, who worked with baby ducks and geese, investigated an example considered an instinct.

Imprinting

Ducks and geese form a social attachment to the first moving object they see or hear at a critical period soon after birth by following that object, which is usually their mother.

Sociobiology

which tries to relate social behaviors to evolutionary biology.

Drive reduction theory

behavior is motivated by the need to reduce drives such as hunger, thirst, or sex.

Homeostasis

is the body’s tendency to maintain an internal steady state of metabolism, to stay in balance.

Metabolism

is the sum total of all chemical processes that occur in our bodies and are necessary to keep us alive.

Incentive

is a positive or negative environmental stimulus that motivates behavior, pulling us toward a goal.

Secondary motives

motives we learn to desire, are learned through society’s pull.

Arousal

is the level of alertness, wakefulness, and activation caused by activity in the central nervous system.

Yerkes–Dodson rule

states that we usually perform most activities best when moderately aroused, and efficiency of performance is usually lower when arousal is either low or high.

Hunger

Early research indicated that stomach contractions caused hunger.

Hunger and Hormones

The hypothalamus reduces hunger by stimulating the small intestine to release cholecystokinin when food enters.

Lateral hypothalamus (LH)

was originally called the “on” button for hunger.

Ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH)

was called the satiety center, or “off” button, for hunger.

Bulimia nervosa

is a more common eating disorder characterized by eating binges involving the intake of thousands of calories, followed by purging either by vomiting or using laxatives.

Sexual orientation

refers to the direction of an individual’s sexual interest.

Homosexuality

is a tendency to direct sexual desire toward another person of the same sex, and bisexuality is a tendency to direct sexual desire toward people of both sexes.

Heterosexuality

is a tendency to direct sexual desire toward people of the opposite sex.

Achievement motive

is a desire to meet some internalized standard of excellence.

Affiliation motive

is the need to be with others.

Intrinsic motivation

is a desire to perform an activity for its own sake rather than an external reward.

Extrinsic motivation

is a desire to perform an activity to obtain a reward from outside the individual, such as money and other material goods we have learned to enjoy, such as applause or attention.

Conflict

involves being torn in different directions by opposing motives that block you from attaining a goal, leaving you feeling frustrated and stressed.

Avoidance-avoidance conflicts

are situations involving two negative options, one of which you must choose.

Approach-avoidance conflicts

are situations involving whether or not to choose an option that has both a positive and negative consequence or consequences.

Multiple approach-avoidance conflict

which involves several alternative courses. of action that have both positive and negative aspects.

Emotion

is a conscious feeling of pleasantness or unpleasantness accompanied by biological activation and expressive behavior; emotion has cognitive, physiological, and behavioral components.

Stress

is the process by which we appraise and respond to environmental threats.

Hans Selye

we react similarly to both physical and psychological stressors. Stressors are stimuli such as heat, cold, pain, mild shock,restraint, etc., that we perceive as endangering our well-being.

Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

three-stage theory of alarm, resistance, and exhaustion describes our body's reaction to stress.

id

which consists of everything psychological that is inherited, and psychic energy that powers all three systems.

ego

mediates between our instinctual needs and the conditions of the surrounding environment in order to maintain our life and see that our species lives on.

superego

which is composed of the conscience and the ego-ideal

Defense mechanisms

operate unconsciously and deny, falsify, or distort reality.

Repression

is the pushing away of threatening thoughts, feelings, and memories into the unconscious mind

Regression

is the retreat to an earlier level of development characterized by more immature, pleasurable behavior.

Rationalization

is offering socially acceptable reasons for our inappropriate behavior

Projection

is attributing our own undesirable thoughts, feelings, or actions to others.

Displacement is shifting unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or actions from a more threatening person or object to another, less threatening person or object.

Reaction formation

is acting in a manner exactly opposite to our true feelings.

Sublimation

is the redirection of unacceptable sexual or aggressive impulses into more socially acceptable behaviors.

Personal unconscious

is similar to Freud's preconscious and unconscious, a storehouse of all our own past memories, hidden instincts, and urges unique to us.

Collective unconscious

is the powerful and influential system of the psyche that contains universal memories and ideas that all people have inherited from our ancestors over the course of evolution.

Archetypes

or common themes found in all cultures, religions, and literature, both ancient and modern.

Individuation

is the psychological process by which a person becomes an individual, a unified whole, including conscious and unconscious processes.

Reciprocal determinism

which states that the characteristics of the person, the person's behavior, and the environment all affect one another in two-way causal relationships.

Self-efficacy

is our belief that we can perform behaviors that are necessary to accomplish tasks, and that we are competent.

Collective efficacy

is our perception that with collaborative effort, our group will obtain its desired outcome.

Cardinal trait

is a defining characteristic, in a small number of us, that dominates and shapes all of our behavior.

Central trait

is a general characteristic, between 5 and 10 of which shape much of our behavior.

Self-concept

is our overall view of our abilities, behavior, and personality or what we know about ourselves.

Self-esteem

is one part of our self-concept, or how we evaluate ourselves.