Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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
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
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)
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.)
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
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
Projection Disguising one’s own threatening Talks a lot about how mad his
impulses by attributing them to others parent is at the coach
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.
Trinity of Personality
- Gene
- Environment
- Cognition
Humanistic Psychology:
Carl Rogers
- Goal of everyone is to become fully functioning
- Becoming ideal version of self
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