Chapter 10 | Emotion and Motivation Flashcards
Emotion (Affect)
An immediate, specific negative or positive response to environmental events or internal thoughts.
Typically have a triggering event & prompt changes in thought and behavior.
Three components -
- Physiological response (heart beating fast, sweating)
- Behavioral response (eyes/mouth opening wide)
- Bodily states based on feelings
Involves the activation of the autonomic nervous system to prepare the body to meet environmental challenges.
Feeling
The subjective experience of the emotion (being scared) but not the emotion itself.
Mood
Diffuse, long-lasting emotional states that do not have an identifiable trigger or a specific behavioral and physiological response.
Refers to people’s vague senses that they feel certain ways.
Feeling V. Mood
Getting cut off in traffic can make a person angry (emotion), but for no apparent reason, a person can be irritable (mood).
Primary emotions
Innate, evolutionary adaptive, and universal emotions.
Examples - anger, fear, sadness, disgust, happiness, surprise, contempt
Secondary emotions
Blends of primary emotions, feelings about emotions, or emotions that relate to culturally specific values or concepts.
Examples - remorse, guilt, shames, jealousy, pride, love, contentment
Circumplex model
One system in which emotion is classified.
Emotions are plotted along two continuums - valence (how negative or positive they are) & arousal (how activating they are).
Arousal
Generic term used to describe physiological activation (increased brain activity) or increased autonomic responses (quickened heart rate, increased sweating or muscle tension).
Valence V. Arousal
Examples -
- You lost a $1 bill in your pocket. This makes you unhappy, so you will judge it to have negative valence. Might make you slightly aroused.
- You find a million dollar lottery ticket. This makes you very happy, so you will judge it to have positive valence. Your arousal will probably skyrocket.
Limbic System
(1937) Neuroanatomist James Papez proposed that many subcortical brain regions are involved in emotions.
(1952) Physician/Neuroscientist Paul MacLean expanded the list of regions and called it the limbic system.
Many limbic structures are not central to emotion & many brain structures outside are involved in emotion.
Used in a rough, descriptive way rather than as a means of directly linking brain areas to specific emotional functions.
Insula
Receives and integrates somatosensory signals from the entire body.
Involved in the subjective awareness of bodily states, such as sensing your heartbeat, feeling hungry, or needing to urinate.
Particularly active when people experience disgust or observe facial expressions of disgust in other people.
Activated in emotions including anger, guilt, and anxiety.
Amygdala
Processes the emotional significance of stimuli and generates immediate emotional and behavioral reactions.
(Joseph LeDoux) The processing of emotion in the amygdala involves a circuit that has developed over the course of evolution to protect animals from danger. Most important brain structure for emotional learning.
People with amygdala damage do not develop conditioned fear responses to objects associated with danger.
How information reaches the amygdala
- “Quick and Dirty” System - processes sensory information nearly instantaneously. Travels quickly through the thalamus directly to the amygdala for priority processing.
- The Slower Path (More deliberate & more thorough evaluations) - sensory material travels from the thalamus to the cortex. Information is scrutinized in greater depth before it is passed along to the amygdala.
Fast system prepares animals to respond to a threat in case the slower pathway confirms the threat.
Example - You shied away from a blurry movement in the grass only to realize it was the wind and not a snake.
What is the amygdala involved in?
Emotional events stored in memory.
The perception of social stimuli.
Emotional content of facial expression.
Polygraph (Lie Detectors)
An electronic instrument that assesses the body’s physiological response to questions.
Records numerous aspects of arousal, such as breathing rate and heart rate.
Used to determine a person’s level of emotionality (autonomic arousal) when confronted with certain information.
Example - Lying is stressful for most people, so autonomic arousal should be higher when people are lying than when they are telling the truth.
How is the polygraph flawed?
Physiological arousal is not specific to lying. People may become nervous because the procedure is new and scary or they’re upset because someone thinks they’re guilty when they’re innocent.
The polygraph cannot tell whether or not a response is due to lying, nervousness, or anything else.
They are easy to cheat by counting backward by sevens or pressing your feet to the floor during critical questions.
Interviewer must rely on their judgement whether or not the arousal indicates deception. Judgement is influenced by the investigator’s preexisting beliefs.
James-Lange Theory
A theory of emotion stating that people perceive specific patterns of bodily responses and as a result of that perception feel emotions.
Cannon-Bard Theory
A theory of emotion stating that information about emotional stimuli is sent simultaneously to the cortex and the body and results in emotional experience and bodily reactions, respectively.
Schachter-Singer Two-factor Theory
A theory of emotion stating that the label applied to physiological arousal results in the experience of an emotion.
Misattribution of Arousal
When people misidentify the source of their arousal
Strategies to regulate emotions
Suppression - people do not respond to the emotional stimulus
Rumination - thinking about, elaborating on, and becoming stuck in a cycle of undesired thoughts or feelings
Suppression & Rumination are unhelpful.
Reappraising - reminding yourself that such events are “just (neutral term)”
Self-distracting - creating a mental distance between yourself and the emotional stimulus
Humor - beneficial to short-term and long-term health
Refocus your attention - focus on something less emotional or on your own physical sensations
Distract yourself - doing something other than the troubling activity or thinking about something not stressful
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) - Chales Darwin
Argues that expressive aspects of emotion are adaptive because they communicate feelings.
Display rules
Rules learned through socialization that dictate which emotions are suitable in given situations
Ideal affect
Emotional and affective states that people want to feel or that cultures especially value.
Motivation
A process that energizes, guides, and maintains behavior toward a goal
Need
A state of biological, social, or psychological deficiency.
Need hierarchy
(1940s) Abraham Maslow proposed an influential “need theory” of motivation. He believed that people are driven by many needs, which are arranged into a need hierarchy.
Basic survival needs must be met before people can satisfy higher needs.
Hunger / Dehydration > Achievement
Self-actualization
A state that is achieved when one’s personal dreams and aspirations have been attained.
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.
Incentives
External objects or external goals, rather than internal drives, that motivate behaviors.
Extrinsic motivation
Motivation to perform an activity because of the external goals toward which that activity is directed.
Example - doing an activity because it makes you money.
Intrinsic motivation
Motivation to perform an activity because of the value or pleasure associated with that activity, rather than for an apparent external goal or purpose.
Example - doing an activity because it is enjoyable.
Pleasure Principle
Sigmund Freud proposed that people are encourages to seek pleasure and avoid pain.
Hedonism
Human’s desire for pleasantness and avoidance of unpleasantness.
Pleasure motivating behavior helps to understand a criticism of biological drive theories.
If biological drives explain all behaviors, why do animals engage in behaviors that do not necessarily satisfy biological needs?
Challenging goals
Edwin Locke and Gary Latham (1990) developed a theory challenging and specifying goals that are the best, if they are not difficult. Challenging goals encourages effort, persistence, and concentration. Goals that are too easy or too hard can undermine motivation and lead to failure.
SMART
Describes goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time bound (Doran 1981).
Clearly defined so the person pursuing the goal knows when it has been achieved. Helps people divide large projects into smaller chunks and ensure clear feedback ont heir progress.
Self-efficacy
The belief that efforts toward a goal will result in success.
Achievement motive
The desire to do well relative to standards of excellence. Student high in achievement motivation sit closer to the front of the classrooms, score higher on exams, and obtain better grades in courses relative to their career goals.
Self-regulation
The process by which people direct their behavior toward the attainment of goals.
Need to Belong
Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary (1995) hypothesized that humans have a fundamental motive to make and maintain interpersonal attachments that has evolved for adaptive purposes.
Balance theory
The idea that people are motivated to achieve harmony in their interpersonal relationships. A triad is balanced when the relationships are all the same direction or if two relationships are negative and one is positive.
Cognitive dissonance
The unpleasant feeling of being aware of holding two conflicting beliefs or a belief that conflicts with a behavior.
Self-affirmation
A need for a sense of self that is coherent and stable.
Core values
Strongly held beliefs about the enduring principles that are most important and meaningful. Values promote emotions and actions when they are aroused or threatened.
