Motivation, Emotion, and Stress AND Identity and Personality Flashcards
Motivation
The purpose, or driving force, behind our actions
Extrinsic Motivation
Based on external circumstances; motivation to take actions that are not themselves rewarding, but may lead to reward
Intrinsic Motivation
Based on internal drive or perception; motivation to take actions that are themselves rewarding
Primary factors that influence emotion
Instincts, arousal, drives, and needs
Instincts
Innate, fixed patterns of behaviour in response to stimuli. It may be consistent throughout life, or it may appear or disappear with time
Instinct theory of motivation
People perform certain behaviours because of evolutionary programmed instincts
Arousal theory
People perform actions to maintain arousal, the state of being awake and reactive to stimuli, at an optimal level
Yerkes-Dodson law
Shows that performance is optimal at a medium level of arousal. Simple tasks generally require slightly higher arousal than complex tasks.
Drives
Are internal states of tension that beget particular behaviors focused on goals
Internal state generated by physiological needs/departures from physiological optimality
Primary drives
motivate us to sustain bodily processes in homeostasis. Includes need for food, water, and warmth
Secondary drives
Motivate us to fulfill nonbiological, emotional, or “learned” desires. Stem from learning and include accomplishments and emotions
Drive reduction theory
States that motivation arises from the desire to eliminate drives, which create uncomfortable internal states. Satisfying needs may also drive motivation
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
Prioritizes needs into five categories: physiological needs (highest priority), safety and security, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization
Self-determination theory
Emphasizes the role of 3 universal needs: autonomy (the need to be in control of one’s actions and ideas), competence (the need to complete and excel at difficult tasks), and relatedness (the need to feel accepted and wanted in relationships).
Incentive theory
Explains motivation as the desire to pursue rewards and avoid punishments; not by need or arousal
Expectancy-value theory
States that the amount of motivation for a task is based on the individual’s expectation of success and the amount that success is valued
Opponent-process theory
Explains motivation for drug use: as drug use increases, the body counteracts its effects, leading to tolerance and uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms
Emotion
The state of mind, or feeling, that is subjectively experienced based on circumstances, mood, and relationships
What are the 3 components of emotion
Cognitive (subjective interpretation), behavioural (facial expressions and body language), and physiological (changes in the autonomic nervous system)
7 universal emotions?
happiness, sadness, contempt, surprise, fear, disgust, and anger
James-Lange theory
Nervous system arousal leads to a cognitive response in which the emotion is labeled
Cannon-Bard Theory
The simultaneous arousal of the nervous system and cognitive response lead to action
Schachter-Singer Theory
Nervous system arousal and interpretation of context lead to a cognitive response
Limbic system
The primary nervous system component involved in experiencing emotion
Amygdala
Involved with attention, fear, and aggression; helps interpret facial expressions; part of intrinsic memory system for emotional memory
Septal nuclei
Involved with feelings of pleasure, pleasure-seeking behaviour, and addiction
Hippocampus
Creates long-term explicit (episodic) memories and communicates with other parts of the limbic system through an extension called a fornix
Prefrontal cortex
Anterior portion of the frontal lobes and involved with planning intricate cognitive functions, expressing personality, and making decisions. Also receives arousal input from brainstem. Left Prefrontal cortex associated with pos. emotions and right with neg. emotions.
Stress
The physiological and cognitive response to challenges or life changes
Primary appraisal
Initial evaluation of the environment and associated threat; classifying a potential stressor as irrelevant, benign-positive, or stressful
Secondary appraisal
Evaluating if the organism can cope with the stress, based on harm, threat, and challenge
Stressors can lead to what 2 general reactions
Distress or eustress
Distress
Occurs when experiencing unpleasant stressors
Eustress
Positive response one may have to a stressor; occurs as a result of positive conditions
3 stages of General Adaptation Syndrome
Alarm, resistance, and exhaustion
Self-concept
The sum of the ways in which we describe ourselves: in the present, who we used to be, and who we might be in the future
Identities
Individual components of our self-concept related to groups to which we belong, e.g. religious affiliation, sexual orientation, etc.
Reference group
Group to which we compare ourselves.
E.g. 2 individuals with the same qualities might see themselves differently depending on how those qualities compare to their reference group
Self-esteem
Describes evaluation of ourselves
What generally results in higher self-esteem
The closer our actual self (the way we see ourselves currently) is to our ideal self (who we want to be) and our ought self (who others want us to be), the higher our self-esteem will be
Self-efficacy
The degree to which we see ourselves as being capable of a skill or in a given situation; basically our belief in our ability to succeed
What happens to our self-efficacy when we are continually placed in a consistently hopeless scenario
Diminishes to the point where learned helplessness results
Locus of control
Self-evaluation that refers to the way we characterize the influences in our lives; internal and external.
Libido
A person’s overall sex drive, the tensions of which give rise to Freud’s psychosexual stages of personality disorders.
Fixation
Occurs when a child is overindulged or overly frustrated during a stage of development; causes personality disorders and neurosis
Freud’s psychosexual phases
oral, anal, phallic, latent, and genital
What is the basis of Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development
Conflicts that occur throughout life between needs and social demands (e.g. trust vs. mistrust, autonomy vs. shame and doubt, initiative vs. guilt, industry vs. inferiority, etc.)
Kohlberg’s stages of moral development
Describes the approaches of individuals to resolving moral dilemmas –> 6 stages divided into 3 main phases: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional
Common ways children learn from others
Imitation and role-taking
Psychoanalytic perspective on personality
Views personality as resulting from unconscious urges and desires
id
base urges of survival and reproduction. Functions according to the pleasure principle and the primary process
superego
the idealist and perfectionist. Divided into the conscience (collection of improper ideas for which a child is punished) and the ego-ideal (consists of these proper actions for which a child is rewarded).
ego
the mediator between the id and and the superego and the conscious mind. Functions according to the reality principle and the secondary process
Humanistic perspective
Emphasizes the internal feelings of healthy individuals as they strive toward happiness and self-realization
What do type and trait theorists believe
That personality can be described as a number of identifiable traits that carry characteristic behaviours (eg Myers-Briggs Type Inventory)
The Big 5 traits
openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism
Allport’s 3 basic types of traits
cardinal, central, and secondary
Cardinal traits
traits around which a person organizes his or her life; not everyone develops a cardinal trait
Central traits
Represent major characteristics of the personality
Secondary traits
More personal characteristics and are limited in occurrence
Social-cognitive perspective
Holds that individuals interact with their environment in a cycle called reciprocal determinism
Reciprocal determinism
People mold their enviornments according to their personalites, and those environments in turn shape our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours
Behaviourist perspective
Based on the concept of operant conditioning, holds that personality can be described as the behaviours one has learned from prior rewards and punishments
Biological perspective
Claims that behaviour can be explained as a result of genetic expression
What brain area is most involved at distinguishing and interpreting others’ facial expressions?
The temporal lobe, with some input from the occipital lobe. Also lateralized; the RH is more active when discerning facial expressions than the left.
Dorsal prefrontal cortex
Associated with attention and cognition
Ventral prefrontal cortex
Connects with regions of the brain responsible for experiencing emotion
Ventromedial prefrontal cortex
Thought to play a substantial role in decision making and controlling emotional responses from the amygdala
What are the 2 stages of cognitive appraisal
Primary and secondary appraisal
Reappraisal
Ongoing monitoring of a situation
Self-schema
A self-given label that carries with it a set of qualities
Hierarchy of salience
Believed to be how we organize our identities, such that we let the situation dictate which identity holds the most importance for us at any given moment
Self-discrepancy theory
Maintains that each of us has three selves
Oral Stage
(0-1 yr): libidinal energy centered on the mouth; fixation can lead to excessive dependency
Anal Stage
(1-3 yrs): Libido is centered on the anus and gratification is gained through elimination and retention of waste materials. Fixation can lead to excessive orderliness or messiness
Phallic/Oedipal stage
(3-5 yrs): Oedipal or Electra conflict is resolved during this stage by identifying with the same sex parent.
Latency
5-puberty: libido is largely sublimated during this stage
Genital stage
puberty-adulthood: if previous stages have been successfully resolved, person will enter into normal heterosexual relationships
The conflicts in order of erikson’s psychosocial development
Trust vs. mistrust (0-1 yr) autonomy vs. shame and doubt (1-3 yrs) initiative vs. guilt (3-6 yrs) industry vs. inferiority (6-12 yrs) identity vs. role confusion (12-20 yrs) intimacy vs. isolation (20-40 yrs) generativity vs. stagnation (40-65 yrs) integrity vs. despair (65+ yrs)
preconventional morality
2 stages: obedience and self-interest; instrumental relativist stage.
Preadolescence
Conventional morality
2 stages: conformity (understanding social rules) and law and order (maintains social rule in highest regard)
Adolescence to adulthood
Postconventional morality
2 stages: social contract (moral rules) and universal human ethics (reasons that decision should be made in consideration of abstract principles)
zone of proximal development
Les Vygotsky’s concept, referring to those skills and abilities that have not yet fully developed but are in the process of development
theory of mind
The ability to sense how another mind works; once this ability is developed, we begin to recognize and react to how others think about us
Looking-glass self
How our reactions to how others perceive us can be varied and may result in us maintaining, modifying, downplaying, or accentuating different aspects of our personality
Reference group
Who we compare ourselves to
Personality
The set of thoughts, feelings, traits, and behaviours that are characteristic of an individual across time and different locations
Theories of personality are categorized into what four areas
psychoanalytic, humanistic, type and trait, and behaviourist
Pleasure principle
The aim is the achieve immediate gratification to relieve any pent-up tension
Primary process
The id’s response to frustration: obtain satisfaction now, not later
Wish fulfillment
Mental imagery, such as daydreaming or fantasy, that fulfills the need for immediate satisfaction
Defense mechanisms
The ego’s recourse for relieving anxiety caused by the clash of the id and superego. they have 2 common characteristics: first, they deny, falsify, or distort reality; second, they operate unconsciously.
What are the main 8 defense mechanisms
repression, suppression, regression, reaction formation, projection, rationalization, displacement, and sublimation
Repression
The ego’s way of forcing undesired thoughts and urges to the unconscious and and underlies many of the other defense mechanisms, the aim of of which is to disguise threatening impulses that may find their way back from the unconscious
Suppression
A more deliberate, conscious form of forgetting
Regression
Reversion to an earlier developmental state, e.g. when faced with stress
Reaction formation
When individuals suppress urges by unconsciously converting them into their exact opposites
Projection
The defense mechanism by which individuals attribute their undesired feelings to others
Rationalization
The justification of behaviours in a manner that is acceptable to the self and society
Displacement
Describes the transference of an undesired urge from one person or object to another
Sublimation
The transformation of unacceptable urges into socially acceptable behaviours
Jung’s psychoanalytic theory
Jung identified the ego as the conscious mind, and he divided the unconscious into two parts: the personal unconscious, similar to Freud’s notion of the unconscious, and the collective unconscious.
Important Jungian archetypes
Persona – the aspect of our personality we present to the world
Anima – a “man’s inner woman”
Animus – a “woman’s inner man”
Shadow – unpleasant and socially reprehensible thoughts, feelings, and actions in our consciousness
Jung’s 3 dichotomies of personality
Extraversion vs introversion
Sensing vs. intuiting (working with information abstractly)
Thinking vs. Feelings
Alfred Adler’s theory
Focused on the immediate social imperatives of family and society and their effects on unconscious factors.
Was the originator of the concept of the inferiority complex and believed striving for superiority drives the personality.
Fictional finalism
Another important concept in Adler’s theory of personality; the notion that an individual is motivated more by his expectations of the future than by past experiences
Horney’s primary concept
Basic anxiety; vulnerability and helplessness caused by inadequate parenting, and basic hostility: neglect and rejection cause anger
Object relations theory
Also falls under the realm of psychodynamic theories of personality; object refers to the representation of parents or other caregivers based on subjective experiences during early infancy.
Gestalt therapy
A form of humanism in which practitioners tend to take a holistic view of the self, seeing each individual as a complete person rather than reducing him to individual behaviours or drives.
Kurt Lewin’s force field theory
Defined the field as one’s current state of mind, which was simply the sum of the forces (influences) on the individual at that time: forces could be divided into 2 large groups –> those assisting in our attainment of goals and those blocking the path to them
Abraham Maslow’s peak experiences
Self-actualized people are more likely than people who are not to have profound and deeply moving experiences
George Kelly’s personal construct psychology
Theorized that the individual constructs a scheme of anticipation of what others will do, based on his or her knowledge, perception, and relationships with these other people.
Carl Rogers’ client-centered/person-centered/nondirective therapy
Helps the client reflect on problems, make choices, generate solutions, take positive action, and determine his or her own destiny.
Type theorists
Attempt to create a taxonomy of personality types
Trait theorists
Describe individual personality as the sum of a persons’ characterisitcs behaviours
Eysencks PEN model
Psychoticism, extraversion, and neuroticism
Functional autonomy
A major part of Allport’s theory: a behaviour continues despite satisfaction of the drive that originally created the behaviour
