10 - Emotion and Motivation Flashcards
Emotion (or affect - affective disorder = emotion based disorder)
an immediate, specific negative or positive response to environmental events or internal thoughts
Primary emotions
Emotions that are innate, evolutionarily adaptive, and universal (shared across cultures)
- associated with specific physical states
Secondary emotions
blends of primary emotions
ex. remorse, quilt, submission, anticipation
Feelings
the subjective experience of the emotion, not the emotion itself (ex. feeling scared)
Mood
long-term emotional states
- do not have an identifiable trigger or specific behavioural and psychological response
Alexithymus
if it’s so common, why is it not very visible?
a disorder in which people do not experience emotion’s subjective component
- usually comorbid with something else ex. autism or something that would be more visible than alexithymus
Circumplex model
arousal
- how activating an emotion is (brain and body activation)
- physiological activation (ex. increased brain activity) or increased autonomic responses (ex. quick heart-rate, sweating, muscle tension)
Circumplex model
valence
how negative or positive an emotion is
circumplex model of emotion
- emotions categorized by valence and arousal
How does the insula play a role in emotional experience?
- receives and integrates somatosensory signals from the whole body
- awareness of bodily states
- particularly active when people experience disgust
How does the amygdala play a role in emotional experience?
- relay between sensory systems and systems responsible for behavioural, autonomic, and hormonal responses
- processes the emotional significance of stimuli and generates immediate emotional and behavioural reactions
What are some affects of a damaged amygdala in relation to emotional experience?
- difficulty judging the intensity of fearful expressions and reacting to them
- when they do distinguish the difference, they likley won’t use that information anyways
How does the amygdala help with long-term memory?
- emotional events are likely to increase activity in the amygdala and increased activity is likely to improve long-term memory for the event
- modifies how the hippocampus consolidates memory
amygdala
Q: when wading in the ocean, you sense a dark figure under the water, so you freeze. When you realize it is your own shadow and not a shark, you relax. How did the fast and slow paths for visual info contribute to your emotional response?
2 ways info reaches the amygdala:
The first path processes info instantly (resulting in the fear respose) and the second path is more deliberate and thorough (reassures you it’s just your shadow)
Theories of emotion
Common Sense Theory
body responds to emotion
theories of emotion
James-Lange Theory
bodily response causes emotional response (ex. seeing the bear causes your heart to race, and you perceive your racing heart as fear)
- believed there were patterns
theories of emotion
Canon-Bard Theory
- mind + body experience emotions independently
- bodily response (hormones through the bloodstream) is slower than cognitive response (neural impulses)
- believed there were too many emotions for them each to have a pattern
theories of emotion
Schachter-Singer Two-Factor Theory
- physiological response to all emotional stimuli is essentially the same
- arousal is interpreted differently based on the situation and the given label (people feel the need to search for the source of arousal and identify it)
Facial feedback hypothesis
idea that you can activate an emotion by molding your facial muscles into the associated expression
Schachter-Singer Theory
Misattribution of arousal
when people misidentify the source of their arousal
Q: What are two common, but unhelpful, ways that people try to control their emotions?
suppression and rumination
Why are emotions adaptive?
(4)
- prepare and guide behaviour
- provide info about the importance of a stimuli
- guide us in learning social rules
- expressive emotions - communicate feelings to others
what is the difference between Darwin and Ekman’s idea on whether emotion is cross-cultural
Darwin: believed emotions were innate and understandable between all cultures
Ekman: believes that facial expressions and what they signify are learned socially and vary from culture to culture
Display Rules
rules learned through socialization that dictate which emotions are suitable in given situations
- govern how and when people exhibit emotions
Ideal Affect
- different cultures may value different emotional expressions
- ideal affect: refers to the types of emotions that cultures value and encourage people to display
Motivation
- a process that energizes, guides, and maintains behaviour toward a goal
What are the 4 qualities of motivation/motives
1) energizing - activate or arouse behaviour
2) directive - guides behaviour towards a goal
3) persistant - ex. continually hungry until you act on it
4) differs in strength - some things motivate stronger than others
Athymhormia Syndrome
complete loss of motivation
Clark Hull
Needs
- a state of biological, social, or psychological deficiency
- gives rise to arousal
Maslow
Need Hierarchy
Maslow’s arrangement of needs, in which basic survival needs must be met before people can satisfy higher needs
Maslow
self-actualization
a state that is achieved when one’s personal dreams and aspirations have been attained
What are some problems with Maslow’s theory?
- probably not hierarchal
- no empirical support (hard to run studies on it)
- quite Western (western societies are much more individualistic but this theory wouldn’t really apply to more collectivist societies)
Clark Hull
Drive
psychological state that motivates an organism to satisfy needs by creating arousal
Clark Hull
Arousal
a generic increase in physiological behaviour
Physiological Homeostasis
the tendency for bodily functions to maintain equilibrium
Yerkes-Dodson Law
The psychological principle that performance on challenging tasks increases with arousal up to a moderate level. After that, additional arousal impairs performance
- too much or too little arousal isn’t good
- people differ in optimal level of arousal depending on their set-point (ex. Jessey has a high set-point for optimal arousal)
what are the 4 steps of a negative feedback loop
1) system variable: the characteristic to be regulated
2) set point: optimum value of the system variable
3) detector: monitors the value of a system variable
4) correctional mechanism: process to reset system variable back to its set point
Incentives
external stimuli that motivates behaviour (rather than internal drives)
Extrinsic motivation
performance motive, goal oriented
Intrinsic motivation
doing something because it brings you joy
Approach motivation
motivates people to seek out things that make them feel good or that are adaptive (ex. X-ring)
Avoidance motivation
motivates people to avoid things that may result in negative outcomes
self-efficacy
the belief that efforts toward a goal will result in success
self-efficacy
achievement need
the desire to do well
- varies between people
self-regulation
how people control their behaviour to achieve life goals
Q: When anxious, what type of social environment do people normally prefer and why?
they prefer to be around other people (preferably people who are anxious as well)
Social comparison theory: people observe others to see if they are responding to information appropriately
cognitive dissonance
the unpleasant feeling of being aware of holding two conflicting beliefs or a belief that conflicts with a behaviour
self-affirmation
a need for a sense of self that is coherent and stable
core values
strongly helf beliefs about the enduring principles that are most important and meaningful. Values promote emotions and actions when they are aroused or threatened
