Chapter 11 Flashcards
Motivation
Physiological and psychological processes underlying the initiation of behaviors that direct an organism toward a specific goal.
Drive
Biological trigger that tells us we may be deprived of something and causes us to seek it.
Incentives
Stimuli that we seek to reduce drives.
Allostasis
Motivation that’s influenced by current needs and the anticipation of future needs.
Hypothalamus
Nuclei found at the bottom surface of the brain.
Regulates motivation and homeostasis
Anterior Cingulate Cortex
Emotional processing, activated when we eat fatty foods.
Orbitofrontal Cortex
Links food waste, and texture with feelings of reward.
Unit bias
Assumption that the unit of sale portion size is an appropriate amount to consume.
Intrasexual selection
Members of the same sex competing for opportunity to mate with members of the opposite sex.
Intersexual selection
Members of one sex selecting a mating partner based on their desirable traits.
Psychological influences on human sexual behavior
When the partners have emotional attachment, feeling of insecurity and many other reasons, they could continue to have sex throughout their lifetimes.
Biological influences on human sexual behavior
Sexual response cycle: excitement → plateau → orgasm → resolution
Sexual stimulation → Hypothalamus → Pituitary gland → Oxytocin release (may promote bonding between sexual partners)
Disorders of eating
Obesity: Food intake exceeds energy expenditure.
Anorexia: Self-starvation, intense fear with weight gain, denial of serious health consequences associated with low weight.
Bulimia: Characterized by periods of food deprivation, binge-eating, and purging, marked by tendency to be impulsive, individuals more likely to enter treatment programs.
Disorders of eating and the brain
Women with anorexia –> Negative words about body image –> More activity in amygdala
Women with bulimia –> Overweight pictures –> More activity in medial frontal regions
Women with eating disorders shown images comparing themselves to idealized models demonstrate activation of insula.
Cultural influences
Gender roles –> Accepted attitudes and behaviors of males and females in a given society.
Sexual scripts –> set of rules and assumptions about the sexual behaviors of males and females.
Sex guilt –> negative emotional feelings for having violated culturally accepted standards of appropriate sexual behavior.
Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs
Self-actualization, aesthetic needs, cognitive needs, esteem needs, love and belongingness, safety needs, physiological needs.
Affiliation motivation
Motivation to maintain healthy relationships that involves caring.
Terror management theory
Suggests human’s fear of mortality motivates behaviors that preserve self-esteem and our sense of belonging.
(Berscheid and Waller) First scientific model of love
Passionate love
Compassionate love
Passionate love
Associated with physical and emotional longing for the other person.
Activity in areas of the brain related to physical reward, and the insula
Compassionate love
Related to tenderness, and the affection felt when lives are connected with another person.
Influences long-term stability of a relationship.
Caudate nucleus
Related to experiencing rewards.
Achievement Motivation
Drive to perform at high levels and accomplish significant goals.
Approach goals
Enjoyable and pleasant incentives that draws a person to a particular behavior.
Avoidance goals
Attempt to avoid an unpleasant outcome.
Self-determination theory
An individual’s ability to achieve their goals and achieve psychological well-being is influenced by the degree of control they have over their behavior.
3 universal needs
Relatedness: Feeling connected with others.
Autonomy: Feeling of control over your life.
Competence: Satisfaction felt when performing a task at a skill level.
Self-efficacy
An individual’s confidence that they can plan and execute a course of action in order to solve a problem.
Extrinsic motivation
Performance motive: focused on rewards, avoiding embarrassment, etc.
Meaning losing some degree of autonomy.
Amotivational: having little to no motivation to perform a behavior.
Intrinsic motivation
Mastery motive: genuine, internal motivation to perform behaviors, overcome challenges.
Unrelated to potential for reward, outside validation.
What’s emotion
3 components:
A subjective thought or experience.
Patterns of neural activity and physical arousal.
An observable behavioral expression.
The initial response
Emotion-dependent responses occur in the brain within approx. 150ms of sensing a potential threat.
Amygdala receives sensory input from cortex approx. 200ms after an emotional stimulus appears.
Autonomic nervous system
Parasympathetic (“Peace and “rest and digest”)
Sympathetic (“Stress”, “Flight or flight”)
Threatening emotional stimuli trigger brain areas involved in planning movement, as well as several regions of the spinal cord.
Emotional regulation
Frontal lobes receive information from the amygdala, and other sensory areas.
Responsible for determining if the instinctive emotional response is appropriate.
James large theory of emotion
Our physiological reactions to a stimulus come before the emotional experience.
Cannon-Bard theory of emotion
Brain interprets a situation and generates subjective emotional feelings.
The representations in the brain trigger physiological responses in the body.
2 factor theory of emotion
Step 1: Physical arousal
Step 2: Cognitive label 1: “I’m scared” OR
Cognitive label 2: “I’m excited”
Evolutionary explanations
Feelings of disgust → Nose scrunching (reducing the airflow in nostrils)
Feelings of fear → Widening of eyes, deep inhalation
Culture, display rules, and context
Emotional dialects
○ Variations across cultures in how common emotions are expressed.
Display rules
○ Unwritten expectations regarding when it is appropriate to show certain emotions.
Interpretation of emotional expressions differs across cultures.
Western participants: tend to evaluate emotion of individual figures in a group.
Asian participants: tend to evaluate emotion of individual in relation to the emotions of the whole group.
