Chapter 8: Motivation Flashcards
Self-Enhancement
The motivation to view oneself positively.
Self-Esteem
The positivity of individuals’ overall evaluation of themselves.
Self-Serving Biases
A tendency for people view themselves in unrealistically positive terms.
Downward Social Comparison
An individual’s comparison of his or her performance with the performance of someone who is doing worse.
Upward Social Comparison
An individual’s comparison of his or her performance with someone who is doing better.
Compensatory Self-Enhancement
The means of compensating for doing poorly on a particular activity by focusing on how good one is at something unrelated to that activity
Discounting
Reducing the perceived importance of the domain in which one has performed poorly.
External Attributions
Interpreting the cause of an action as something outside oneself.
Internal Attributions
Interpreting that an event is caused by characteristics of the person involved.
Basking in the Reflected Glory
Emphasizing one’s connection to successful others in order to feel better about oneself.
Predestination
A belief about the afterlife holding that prior to birth, it has already been determined whether one is among the “elect” who will spend eternity in heaven or among those who will burn in hell forever.
Face
The amount of social value other give an individual if they life up to the standards associated with their position.
Prevention Orientation
A concern with correcting one’s weakness and avoiding other’s negatively judgement.
Promotion Orientation
A concern with advising oneself and aspiring for gains.
Self-Improvement
The process of seeking out one’s potential weakness and working on correcting them.
Calling
In religious belief, the God-given purpose an individual is meant to fulfill during his or her life.
Entity Theory of the World
A view of the world as something that is fixed and beyond and individual’s control to change.
Incremental Theory of the World
A view of the world as flexible and responsive to an individual’s efforts to change it.
Primary Control
The control experienced when people strive to shape existing realities to fit their perceptions.
Secondary Control
The control experienced when people when people attempt to align themselves with existing realities, leaving their circumstances unchanged but exerting control over the circumstances’ psychological impact
Learned Helplessness
The feeling of being unable to control or avoid unpleasant events, which causes stress and potentially depression.
