Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

• Biological or Physiological Needs: physical needs necessary for survival, such as food, shelter, and warmth
• Safety Needs: feeling safe in one's environment, having no threats, and having financial security
• Belongingness Needs: having pleasant interactions with people and forming interpersonal relationships
• Esteem Needs: respect for oneself and others, self-respect, and recognition from others
• Self-Actualization Needs: the process of becoming who one uniquely is, involving creativity and personal growth

Taormina's Views on Maslow's Hierarchy

• Lower levels of needs must be satisfied first in order to satisfy higher levels of needs
• Anxiety and worrying can lower self-esteem levels
• Family support and traditional values can positively support the needs from lower and higher levels

Cognitive Attribution Theory

• The core concept is that people explain the causes of their and others' emotions
• Assumption: feelings are caused by thoughts and beliefs about causality
• Causal Locus: the cause of emotions can reside within or outside a person (internal or external)
• Causal Stability: the cause of emotions can be stable or fluctuate over time
• Causal Control: the changeability of the cause of emotions

Theory of Achievement Motivation

• Early pleasure-pain principle: individuals strive to maximize pleasure and minimize pain
• Source of motivation shifted from basic needs to psychogenic desire (power and status)
• Strong focus on motivation, including both intrinsic (non-materialistic reward, e.g., pride) and extrinsic (materialistic reward, e.g., money) motivation

Laws of Emotions (Frijda)

• Emotions involve a change in action readiness and are assumed to rest on underlying mechanisms that generate emotions and are involuntary
• 12 Laws of Emotions:
  • Law of Situational Meaning: emotions arise in response to the meaning of a given situation
  • Law of Concern: emotions arise in response to events that are important
  • Law of Apparent Reality: emotions are elicited by events appraised as real
  • Law of Change: emotions are elicited by actual or expected change
  • Law of Affective Contrast: loss of satisfaction does not yield a neutral condition
  • Law of Habituation: continued pleasure wears off
  • Law of Comparative Feeling: intensity of emotions depends on the relationship between the event and a reference point
  • Law of Hedonic Asymmetry: pleasure is always contingent upon change, while pain may persist under adverse conditions
  • Law of Conservation of Emotional Momentum: emotions persist, and emotional events retain their power to elicit emotions indefinitely unless counteracted
  • Law of Closure: emotions tend to be closed for judgment of relativity of impact
  • Law of Care for Consequences: emotions elicit secondary impulses that modify the action in view of its consequences
  • Law of Lightest Load and Greatest Pain: minimizing negative emotional load and maximizing emotional gain

Emotions and Consciousness

• Emotions are conscious and subjective feelings
• Emotional reactions can occur as core affective processes and can occur with conscious feelings
• Emotional and motivational processes occur in people, involving both subjective feelings and underlying core psychological processes with objective features

Emotions in Animals

• Emotions do not necessarily reflect conscious subjective feelings
• Animals may share similar emotional processes and brain circuitry with humans, but there is no proof that they have subjective feelings