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Motivation: a need or desire that energizes and directs behavior

 Need is something YOU HAVE TO HAVE TO SURVIVE


 Desire is just something you really want

Emotions: motivate us to seek out or avoid situations

Conflicts include having 2 wanted things, 2 undesirable things, 2 things that have both desirable
and undesirable things, one single event has both desirable and undesirable

Instinct theory (Evolutionary): all organisms are born with innate biological tendencies that
help them survive - instincts! Unlearned! Innate!
 Dog shakes body when wet
 Birds migrating south before winter
 Mother’s reflex to take care of her child
 Coughing when something is in your throat
 Sex desires

Drive reduction theory: we are motivated to engage in behaviors that reduce drives (state of
tension caused by needs) in order to return our body to homeostasis
 Imbalance in homeostasis creates a need, the brain responds by creating a drive, the
drive prompts the organism to take action to return to balance/homeostasis
 Primary drives: innate/unlearned (hunger, thirst)
 Secondary drives: psychological (social approval)
 Secondary drives are always connected to primary drives

Incentive theory: we are pulled by incentives to behave in a certain manner


 Intrinsic motivation: comes from within
 Extrinsic motivation: external stimulus

Arousal theory: people are motivated to take actions to either increase or decrease their
arousal levels in order to achieve and maintain a personal optimum level of arousal
 physiological/biological, emotional, intellectual
 Optimum arousal theory: as humans, our goal is not to eliminate arousal, but to seek
optimum levels of arousal
o OPTIMUM LEVELS ARE NOT STATIC! THEY CHANGE
o Acute stress vs chronic stress
 Yerkes-Dodson Law of Arousal: principle that performance increases with a moderate
amount of arousal (acute stress)

Incentive theory: people are motivated by a desire to obtain external incentives, we behave in
a way that we believe will result in a reward, and avoid actions that may bring punishment
 Incentive: a positive or negative enviornmental stimulus that motivates a behavior
 Push factor, pushes us to do something

Intrinsic motivation: a motivation that is driven by internal rewards


Extrinsic motivation: a motivation that is driven by external rewards

Overjustification effect: occurs when external incentive decreases a person’s intrinsic


motivation to to perform a behavior or participate in an activity
 Katie loves to write. she starts a blog, and the activity of writing and publishing her
thoughts makes her feel good and want to write more. However, if a business were to
start paying her to write blog posts, her desire to write will decrease.

Emotions: psychological states that include subjective, physiological, and behavioral elements
 Subjective meaning everyone’s emotional state is different when they encounter stuff
 Just because they’re subjective, they’re still very real
3 Components of Emotions:
1. Bodily arousal (eg: heart pounding)
2. Expressive behaviors (eg: quickened pace, shouting)
3. Conscious experience (eg: realizing it’s actually happening, thinks of outcomes, etc)

Multidimensional scaling of emotions:


Valence: positive and negative that emotion is (x-axis)
Physiological arousal: how high or low that aorusal is (y-axis)

Common sense tells most of us that we:


 Cry because we are sad,
 Lash out because we are angry,
 Tremble because we are afraid

But to American psychologist William James, this common sense view of emotion had things
backward
Rather, according to James:
“We feel sorry because we cry”
“Angry because we strike”
“Afraid because we tremble”

Theories of Emotion
1. common sense theory
 Stimulus (Twig snaps) → Emotion (fear) → Arousal (heart beats faster sweaty palms
etc.)

2. Schachter-Singer Two-Factor Theory: Arousal + Label = Emotion


 We apprasie (interpret) our experiences only theory so far with cognition
 Physical reactions + thoughts = emotion
 Two-factor theory: emotions are made from physical arousal and cognitive appraisal

3. Lazarus’ Cognitive appraisal


 Stimulus triggers a cognitive label, which then triggers both emotion and arousal

4. Zajonc & LeDoux theory


 Sometimes the stimulus goes directly to the emotional response
 Sometimes cognition is bypassed because of first, instinct reaction

5. James-Lange Theory
 Stimulus triggers arousal and then emotion

6. Cannon-Bard Theory
 The stimulus triggers both emotions and arousal at the same time

Paul Ekman- expressing emotions

6 emotions with universally recognized expression:


 Joy
 Sadness
 Anger
 Fear
 Surprise
 Disgust
Paul Ekman
 If you put on your face one of the universal facial expressions, you’ll experience the
emotion
 Self-generate emotions by putting it on your face
 Lots of “triggers” on the expressions to actually show an emotion
o A smile does not mean joy, there are muscles around your eyes
 Facial expressions → affects our thoughts → manifests our behavior/emotion

Personality: An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting


4 Broad Categories:
1. Psychoanalytical (Sigmund Freud - Austria) (FATHER OF PSYCHOANALYSIS)
 Attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and tensions
o Led to a form of therapy to interpret unconscious tensions
 Thoughts and behaviors emerge from tension that is always active between your
unconscious motives and unresolved childhood conflicts
 Psychoanalytic behavior unlock & resolve unresolved sexual childhood conflicts
 The Freudian unconscious, is a repository filled with desires, wishes, and fears
 3 main approaches to uncover the unconscious:
1. Dream interpretation
2. Free association
3. Parapraxis (contrary action)
 “freudian slip”: psychological phenomenon where you accidentally
say something you’re not supposed to say, it reveals what you are
unconsciously thinking about in your mind
 Freud’s view of personality:
o Id: the “it”, primary needs, pleasure principle. Unconscious energy
o Ego: integrate into society, balance id and superego, mostly conscious
o Superego: internalized ideals, ideal, morality. conscious
o Underlying concept is that there are push and pull factors within each
person’s personality, pushing and pulling them in to do different things
 Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
Stage Focus

Oral (0-18 months) Pleasure centers on mouth - sucking, biting, chewing

Anal (18-36 Pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder elimination; coping with
months) demands for control

Phallic (3-6 years) Pleasure zone in genitals; coping with incestuous sexual feelings

Latency (6 to A phase of dormant sexual feelings


puberty)

Genital (puberty+) Maturation of sexual interests


 3 different types of anxiety
1. Reality anxiety: environmental dangers
2. Neurotic anxiety: lose control of the animal drives of id
3. Moral anxiety: past or future, immoral behavior
 Freud’s Defense Mechanisms
Defense Unconscious process employed to Example of how 16-year old
Mechanism avoid anxiety-arousing thoughts or defends against anxiety after
feelings being cut from soccer team

Regression Retreating to earlier psychosexual Wants to go grandma’s house to


stage, where some psychic energy play cards and bake cookies +
remains fixed eat

Reaction Switching unacceptable impulses into Makes a big show of expressing


Formation their opposites indifference about being on the
“stupid soccer team”

Projection Disguising one’s own threatening Talks a lot about how mad his
impulses by attributing them to others parent is at the coach

Rationalization Offering self-justifying explanations in Explains that he wasn’t working


place of the real, more threatening very hard and could’ve made it if
unconscious reasons for one’s actions he really actually tried

Sublimation Transferring of unacceptable impulses Decides to join cross country


into socially valued motives because everyone is accepted

Displacement Shifting sexual or agressive impusles Yells at little brother for no


toward a more acceptable or reason at all

Denial Refusing to believe or even perceive Insists that there was an error on
painful realities team list and he’s going to set
things right with the coach
 Neo-Freudians (psychodynamics)
o Alfred Adler: agrees that childhood is critical source, insisted that it’s
social and not sexual emphasis, “inferiority complex” which is that people
are motivated by childhood issues of inferiority that trigger our drive for
power and superiority
o Karen Horney: agrees that childhood is a critical source of personality
elements, insisted that it’s childhood anxiety that triggers need for love
and security, challenges Freud’s idea that women have weak superegos,
challenges “penis envy” and countered with “womb envy” (one envies the
other gender’s genitals and abilities of their sex)
o Carl Jung: agrees that the unconscious is powerful, insists that it consists
even more than thoughts and feelings, collective unconscious contains a
reservoir of archetypes from our species’ collective experiences,
transferred as epigenetic marks
Psychoanalysis: result of unconscious desires that are in our psyche
Psychodynamic: both unconscious and conscious minds interact.

Albert Bandura: bobo the clown


- Social part: behavior happens from what we learned
- Cognitive part: what we think about a situation

Trinity of Personality
- Gene
- Environment
- Cognition

Reciprocal Determinism: all three things of personality are related

Humanistic Psychology:

Abraham Maslow: Hierarchy of needs


1. Self-actualization
2. Self esteem
3. Love/belonging
4. Safety
5. Physiological

Carl Rogers
- Goal of everyone is to become fully functioning
- Becoming ideal version of self
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