Exam #5 Terms (Motivation, Emotions, Stress, Health, and Personality) Flashcards
What is motivation?
A need or desire that energizes and directs behavior.
What is an instinct?
A complex behavior that is rigidly patterned throughout a species and is unlearned.
What is a physiological need?
A basic bodily requirement.
What is the drive-reduction theory?
The idea that a physiological need creates an aroused state (a drive) that motivates an organism to satisfy the need.
What is homeostasis?
A tendency to maintain a balanced or constant internal state; the regulation of any aspect of body chemistry around a particular level.
What is an incentive?
A positive or negative environmental stimulus that motivates behavior.
What is the Yerkes-Dodson law?
The principle that performance increases with arousal only up to a point, beyond which performance decreases.
What is the hierarchy of needs?
Maslow’s pyramid of human needs, beginning at the base with physiological needs that must first be satisfied before higher-level safety needs and then psychological needs become active.
What is glucose?
The form of sugar that circulates in the blood and provides the major source of energy for body tissues. When its level is low, we feel hunger.
What is the set point?
The point at which your “weight thermostat” may be set. When your body falls below this weight, increased hunger and a lower metabolic rate may combine to restore lost weight.
What is the basal metabolic rate?
The body’s resting rate of energy output.
What is obesity?
Defined as a body mass index (BMI) measurement of 30 or higher.
What is asexuality?
Having no sexual attraction to others.
What is testosterone?
The most important male sex hormone.
What are estrogens?
Sex hormones that contribute to female sex characteristics and are secreted in greater amounts by females than males.
What is the sexual response cycle?
The four stages of sexual responding described by Masters and Johnson-excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution.
What is the refractory period?
In human sexuality, a resting period that occurs after orgasm, during which a person cannot achieve another orgasm.
What is the affiliation need?
The need to build relationships and to feel part of a group.
What is ostracism?
Deliberate social exclusion of individuals or groups.
What is narcissism?
Excessive self-love and self-absorption.
What is emotion?
A response of the whole organism, including physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience.
What is the James-Lange theory?
The theory that our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to an emotion-arousing stimulus: stimulus > arousal > emotion.
What is the Cannon-Bard theory?
The theory that an emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers physiological responses and the subjective experience of emotion.
What is the two-factor theory?
The Schachter-Singer theory that to experience emotion one must be physically aroused and cognitively label the arousal.
What is a polygraph?
A machine used in attempts to detect lies that measures several of the physiological responses accompanying emotion.
What is the facial feedback effect?
The tendency of facial muscle states to trigger corresponding feelings such as fear, anger, or happiness.
What is the behavior feedback effect?
The tendency of behavior to influence our own and others’ thoughts, feelings, and actions.
What is stress?
The process by which we perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors, that we appraise as threatening or challenging.
What is general adaptation syndrome (GAS)?
Selye’s concept of the body’s adaptive response to stress in three phases-alarm, resistance, and exhaustion.
What is the tend-and-befriend response?
Under stress, people often provide support to others and bond with and seek support from others.
What is health psychology?
A subfield of psychology that provides psychology’s contribution to behavioral medicine.
What is psychoneuroimmunology?
The study of how psychological, neural, and endocrine processes together affect the immune system and resulting health.
What is coronary heart disease?
The clogging of the vessels that nourish the heart muscle; the leading cause of death in many developed countries.
What is the Type A personality?
Friedman and Rosenman’s term for competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone people.
What is the Type B personality?
Friedman and Rosenman’s term for easygoing, relaxed people.
What is catharsis?
In psychology, the idea that “releasing” aggressive energy (through action or fantasy) relieves aggressive urges.
What is aerobic exercise?
Sustained exercise that increases heart and lung fitness; also helps alleviate depression and anxiety.