Emotions and Motivations Flashcards
affect
the experience of feeling or emotion
two fundamental aspects of affect: emotions and motivation
arousal
emotion involves arousal
our experiences of the bodily responses created by the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system (ANS).
emotion
a mental and physiological feeling state that directs our attention and guides our behavior
normally serve an adaptive role
motivation
a driving force that initiates and directs behavior
Motivation can thus be conceptualized as a series of behavioral responses that lead us to attempt to reduce drives and to attain goals by comparing our current state with a desired end state
some motivations are biological, such as the motivation for food, water, and sex
there are a variety of other personal and social motivations that can influence behavior, including the motivations for social approval and acceptance, the motivation to achieve, and the motivation to take, or to avoid taking, risks
As predicted by basic theories of operant learning, motivations lead us to engage in particular behaviors because doing so makes us feel good.
drives
internal states that are activated when the physiological characteristics of the body are out of balance
goals
desired end states that we strive to attain
homeostasis
the body tries to maintain homeostasis, the natural state of the body’s systems, with goals, drives, and arousal in balance
basic emotions
anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise
Our response to the basic emotion of fear, for instance, is primarily determined by the fast pathway through the limbic system.
cognitive appraisal
The cognitive interpretations that accompany emotions allow us to experience a much larger and more complex set of secondary emotions
secondary emotions
determined in part by:
arousal (level of intensity, physical)
valence (pleasant or unpleasant)
Secondary emotions are more determined by the slow pathway through the frontal lobes in the cortex.
Cannon-Bard theory of emotion
the experience of an emotion is accompanied by physiological arousal
emotions and arousal generally are subjectively experienced together, and the spread is very fast
James-Lange theory of emotion
our experience of an emotion is the result of the arousal that we experience
the emotion depends on the arousal
there is at least some evidence that arousal is necessary for the experience of emotion, and that the patterns of arousal are different for different emotions
two-factor theory of emotion
the experience of emotion is determined by the intensity of the arousal we are experiencing, but that the cognitive appraisal of the situation determines what the emotion will be
emotion = arousal + cognition (i.e., the meaning)
there is also evidence that we may interpret the same patterns of arousal differently in different situations
misattribution of arousal
The tendency for people to incorrectly label the source of the arousal that they are experiencing
men on a shaky bridge
Schachter & Singer:
the idea is that because cognitions are such strong determinants of emotional states, the same state of physiological arousal could be labeled in many different ways, depending entirely on the label provided by the social situation.
excitation transfer
the phenomenon that occurs when people who are already experiencing arousal from one event tend to also experience unrelated emotions more strongly
