UNIT #7 : Motivation and Emotion Flashcards
Motivation
A need or desire that energizes and directs behaviour
Instinct
A complex, unlearned behaviour that is rigidly patterned throughout a species.
Drive-reduction theory
The idea that a physiological need creates an aroused tension state (a drive) that motivates an organism to satisfy the need
Homeostasis
A tendency to maintain a balanced or constant internal state; the regulation of any aspect of body chemistry, such as blood glucose, around a particular level
Incentive
A positive or negative environmental stimulus that motivates behaviour.
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
Yerkes-Dodson Law
The principle that performance increases with arousal only up to a point, beyond which performance decreases.
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.
Set point
The point at which an individual’s “weight thermostat” is supposedly set. When the body falls below this weight, an increase in hunger and a lowered metabolic rate may act to restore the lost weight.
Basal metabolic rate
The body’s resting rate of energy expenditure.
Sexual response cycle
The four stages of sexual responding described by Masters and Johnson—excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution.
Refractory period
A resting period after orgasm, during which a man cannot achieve another orgasm
Sexual dysfunction
A problem that consistently impairs sexual arousal or functioning.
Estrogens
sex hormones, such as estradiol, secreted in greater amounts by females than by males and contributing to female sex characteristics. In nonhuman female mammals, estrogen levels peak during ovulation, promoting sexual receptivity.
Testosterone
The most important of the male sex hormones. Both males and females have it, but the additional testosterone in males stimulates the growth of the male sex organs in the fetus and the development of the male sex characteristics during puberty.
Emotion
A response of the whole organism, involving
(1) physiological arousal,
(2) expressive behaviours, and
(3) conscious experience.
James-Lange Theory
The theory that our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli.
Cannon-Bard theory
The theory that an emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers
(1) physiological responses and
(2) the subjective experience of emotion.
Two-factor theory
The Schachter- Singer theory that to experience emotion one must (1) be physically aroused and (2) cognitively label the arousal.
Polygraph
A machine, commonly used in attempts to detect lies, that measures several of the physiological responses (such as perspiration and cardiovascular and breathing changes) accompanying emotion.
Facial feedback effect
The tendency of facial muscle states to trigger corresponding feelings such as fear, anger, or happiness.
Health psychology
A subfield of psychology that provides psychology’s contribution to behavioural medicine.
Stress
The process by which we perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors, that we appraise as threatening or challenging.
General adaptation syndrome (GAS)
Selye’s concept of the body’s adaptive response to stress in three phases—alarm, resistance, exhaustion.
