Sexual Motivation and Behaviour, Achievement, and the element of emotional experience

Question 1

The Human Sexual Response

Answer 1

Masters and Johnson divide the sexual response cycle into four stages: excitement , plateau, orgasm, and resolution.

Question 2

The human Sexual Response: Excitement phase

Answer 2

The level of physical arousal usually rises rapidly. In both sexes, muscle tension, respiration rate, heart rate, and blood pressure increase quickly. Vasocongestion–> engorgement of blood vessels

Question 3

The human Sexual Response: Plateau Phase

Answer 3

physiological arousal usually continues to build, but a much slower pace.

Women: further vasocongestion produces tightening of the vaginal entrances, clitorris withdraws under the clitoral hood

Men: bit of fluid at the tip of the penis.

Question 4

The human Sexual Response: Orgasm Phase

Answer 4

Occurs when sexual arousal reaches its peak intensity.It discharges in a series of muscular contractions that pulsate through the pelvic area. Heart rate and blood pressure increases.

Men: ejaculation .

women: more likely to have multiorgamic –> but less likely to has sex without experiencing an orgasm

Question 5

The human Sexual Response: The Resolution Phase

Answer 5

The physiological changes produced by sexual arousal.

men with experience a refractory period

Question 6

Refractory period

Answer 6

a time following orgasm during which males are largely unresponsive` to further stimulation

Question 7

Evolutionary Analyses of Human Sexual Behaviour:

Parental Investment Theory (Robert Triver’s)

Answer 7

maintains that a species’ mating patterns depend on what each sex has to invest– in terms of time, energy, and survival risk– to produce and nurture offspring.

According to Triver’s, the sex that makes the smaller investment will compete for mating opportunities with the sex that makes the larger investment, and the sex with the larger investment will tend to be more discriminating in selecting partners.

This theory predicts that in comparison to women, men will show more interest in sexual activity, more desire for a variety in sexual partners, and more willingness to engage in uncommitted sex. In contrast, females are thought to be the conservative, discriminating sex that is highly selective in choosing partners. This selectivity supposedly entails seeking partners who have the greatest ability to contribute towards feeding and caring for offspring.

Question 8

Gender Differences: Cognitive and Drive

Answer 8

men : think about sex more, initiate more, frequent and variety of sexual fantasies. Their subjective ratings of their sex drive tend to be higher than females, men also tend to overestimate women’s sexual interest in them.

men are more motivated to seek out a variety of sex partners

Question 9

Gender Differences: Mate Preferences

Answer 9

Evolutionary theory predicts that men should place more emphasis than women on partner characteristics such as youthfulness (which allows for more reproductive years) and attractiveness (which is assumed to be correlated with health and fertility)

Women should place more emphasis than men on partner characteristics such as intelligences, ambition, income, and social status (which are associated with the ability to provide more material resources).

Question 10

The Controversial Issues of Pornography

Answer 10

• stimulates sexual desire
• generally men are more likely to watch it
• often portrays women in degrading roles tha elicit negative reactions from female viewers
• efforts to find a link between the prevalence of erotica and sex crime rates have largely yielded negative results.

Question 11

the controversial issues of pornography : aggressive pornography

Answer 11

has raised some serious concerns about its effects. Aggressive pornography typically depicts violence against women. –> exposure to aggressive pornography may also make sexual coercion seem less offensive and help perpetuate the myth that women enjoy being raped and ravaged.
–studies indicate that this type of material increases male subjects’ aggressive behaviour toward women.

Question 12

Date Rape

Answer 12

occurs when a woman is forced to have sex in context of dating.

Question 13

The Mystery of Sexual Orientation

Answer 13

Sexual orientation refers toa person’s preference for emotional and sexual relationships with individuals of the same sex, the other sex, or either sex.

Heterosexuals ,bisexual, homosexuals

Question 14

Hetersexuals

Answer 14

seek emotional-sexual relationships with members of the other sex

Question 15

bisexuals

Answer 15

seek emotional-sexual relationships with members of either sex

Question 16

homosexuals

Answer 16

seek emotional-sexual relationships with members of the same sex.

Question 17

Kinsey: Seven point scale of Sexuality

Answer 17

Kinsey and others concluded that it is more accurate to view heterosexuality and homosexuality as endpoints on a continuum.

Kinsey devised a seven-point scale that can be used to characterize an individual’s sexual orientation.

Question 18

Theories of explaining homosexuality: Environmental Theories

Answer 18

something in the environment influences your sexuality –> if you are raised by a week, detached, ineffectual father –> this could lead to homosexuality.

Question 19

Theories of explaining homosexuality: Biological Theories

Answer 19

Biological research suggests that there is a genetic predisposition to homosexuality, possibly based on the X chromosome. Anatomical differences between gay and straight men in the size of the anterior hypothalamus have also been found. This structure is larger in men than in women, and this study showed that gay men had a 50% smaller AH than straight men.
Some theorists believe that anatomical brain differences such as these may be due to the organizing effects of prenatal hormones on neurological development.

Question 20

Theories of explaining homosexuality: Interactionist Theories

Answer 20

The interactionist view holds that genes and prenatal hormones shape a child’s temperament, which initiates a chain of events that ultimately shapes sexual orientation.

Question 21

Achievement: In Search of Excellence –> The Achievement motive

Answer 21

The achievement motive is the need to master difficult challenges, to outperform others, and to meet high standards of excellence. above all else, the need for achievement involves the desire to excel, especially in competition with others.

Question 22

The thematic apperception Test (TET)

Answer 22

is a project tests, that requires subjects to respond to vague, ambiguous stimuli in ways that may revel personal motives and traits –> measured the need for achievement.

Question 23

Affiliation motive

Answer 23

need for social bonds

 - - devote more time to interpersonal activities   
 - - worry more about acceptance

Question 24

achievement motive

Answer 24

need to excel

- - work harder and more persistently
- -delay gratification

Question 25

situational Determinants of Achievement Behaviour

Atkinson:

Answer 25

Your achievement drive is not the only determinant of how hard you work. situation factors can also influence achievement strivings.

Atkinson theorizes that the tendency to purse achievement in a particular situation depends on the following:

(1) the strength of one’s motivation to achieve success
(2) ones estimate of the probability of success for the task at hand.
(3) the incentive value of success

says that to easy –> satisfying feeling goes down, if task too hard– doesn’t seem probable

when the probability and incentive value of success weighed together, moderately challenging tasks seem to offer the best overall value in terms of maximizing one’s sense of accomplishment.

Question 26

Atkinson: Motivation of fear

Answer 26

a persons fear of failure must also be considered to understand achievement behaviour. He maintains that people vary in their motivation to avoid failure

Fear is one of the fundamental emotions. Thus this illustrates how motivation and emotion are often intertwined:

  - emotion can cause motivation
  - motivation can cause emotion.

Question 27

The Elements of Emotional Experience

Answer 27

Emotions includes cognitive, physiological, and behavioural components, which are summarized in the following definition:

Emotion involves (1) a subjective conscious experience (the cognitive component) accompanied by (2) bodily arousal (the physiological component) and by (3) characteristic overt expressions (the behavioural component)

Question 28

The Elements of Emotional : the cognitive component: subjective feelings

Answer 28

in studying the cognitive component of emotions, psychologists generally rely on subject’s verbal reports of what they’re experience. (the DAL (dictionary of affect in language–> provides normative emotional ratings for the words used)

emotions tend to involve automatic reactions that are difficult to regulate. In some cases, these emotional reactions may occur at an unconscious level of processing, outside of one’s awareness.

the conscious experience of emotion includes a evaluative aspect:
- people characterize their emotions as pleasant or unpleasant. Of course, individual often experience mixed emotions that include both pleasant and unpleasant qualities

Question 29

Affective forecasting

Answer 29

efforts to predict one’s emotional reactions to future events.

Question 30

The Physiological Component: Diffuse and multifaceted

Answer 30

the biological based of emotions are diffuses, involving many areas in the brain and many neurotransmitter systems, as well as the autonomic nervous system and the endocrine system.

Question 31

autonomic arousal

Answer 31

emotions are accompanied by visceral arousal.

much of the discernible physiological arousal associated with emotion occurs through the actions of the autonomic nervous system, which regulates the activity of glads, smooth muscles,and blood vessels.

• hormonal changes clearly play a crucial role in emotional responses to stress and may contribute to many other emotions as well.
  one prominent part of emotional arousal is the galvanic skin response

the connection between emotion and autonomic arousal provides the basis for the polygraph

Question 32

Galvanic Skin Response (GSR)

Answer 32

an increase in the electrical conductivity of the skin that occurs when sweat glands increase in their activity.

Question 33

Polygraph or lie detector

Answer 33

a device that record autonomic fluctuations while a subject is questioned.

the assumption is that when subjects lie, they experience emotion (presumably anxiety) that produces noticable changes in these physiological indicators

Question 34

The Physiological Component: affective neuroscience: emotions and the brain

Answer 34

the focus of research in tis areas was the examination of the neurobiology of emotions.

recent evidences suggests the amygdala plays a central role in the acquisition of conditioned fears –> the amygdala lies at the ore of a complex set of neural circuits that process emotion.

other parts of the brain that are : The prefrontal cortex, the cingulate cortex, the mesolimpic dopamine pathway, and mirror neurons, hippocampus, the lateral hypothalamus, the septum, and the brainstem

emotion depends on activity in a constellation of interacting brain centres.

Question 35

The Behavioural component: nonverbal exressiveness

Answer 35

emotions are expressed in “body language” , or nonverbal behaviour.

Question 36

Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen: 6 fundamental emotions

Answer 36

they asked subjects to identify what emotion a person was experience on the basis of facial cues in photographs. they have found that subjects are generally successful in identifying six fundamental emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust.

Question 37

Facial Feedback hypothesis

Answer 37

asserts that facial muscles send signals to the brain and that these signals help the brain recognize the emotion that one is experiencing.

Question 38

Cross-cultural similarities in emotional experience

Answer 38

Ekman and Fiesen found considerable cross-cultural agreement in the identification of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise,and disgust based on facial expression.

There is reasonably convincing evidence that people in widely disparate cultures express their emotions and interpret those expressions in much the same way.

Cross-cultural similarities have also been found in the cognitive and physiological elements of emotional experience. –> they evaluate things across the same lines.

Question 39

Cross-Cultural Differences in Emotional Experience

Answer 39

some basic categories of emotion that are universally understood in western cultures appear to go unrecognized or at least unnamed– in some non-western cultures. –> however, a lackof words for emotional concepts does not necessarly mean that htose emotions are not recognized in a culture.

Culture dispariteis have also been found in regard to nonverbal expressions of emotion–> this is because people can learn to control and modify these expressions (display rules)

Question 40

Display rules

Answer 40

are norms that regulate the appropriate expression of emotions.
They prescribe when, how, and to whom people can show various emotion to. (japanese mask sadness and anger)