J-L Flashcards
the theory that our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli.
James Lange theory
the tendency of people to believe the world is just and that people therefore get what they deserve and deserve what they get.
just world phenomenon
the system for sensing the position and movement of individual body parts.
kinesthesis
our spoken, written, or gestured words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.
language
according to Freud, the underlying meaning of a dream (as distinct from its manifest content). Freud believed that a dream’s latent content functions as a safety valve.
latent content
learning that occurs but is not apparent until there is an incentive to demonstrate it.
latent learning
Thorndike’s principle that behaviors followed by favorable consequences become more likely and that behaviors followed by unfavorable consequences become less likely.
law of effect
the hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events.
learned helplessness
a relatively permanent change in an organism’s behavior due to experience.
learning
the transparent structure behind the pupil that changes shape to focus images on the retina.
lens
tissue destruction. A brain lesion is a naturally or experimentally caused destruction of brain tissue.
lesion
a doughnut-shaped system of neural structures at the border of the brainstem and cerebral hemispheres; associated with emotions such as fear and aggression and drives such as those for food and sex. Includes the hippocampus, amygdala, and hypothalamus.
limbic system
Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think.
linguistic relativity
a chemical that provides an effective drug therapy for the mood swings of bipolar (manic-depressive) disorders.
lithium
a now-rare psychosurgical procedure once used to calm uncontrollably emotional or violent patients. The procedure cut the nerves that connect the frontal lobes to the emotion-controlling centers of the inner brain.
lobotomy
