Ch 9 and 10 Review Sheets PDF

# Motivational Theories and Concepts ## Drive Theories - Emphasize internal states of tension (due to disruptions of homeostasis) that push organisms in certain directions. ## Incentive Theories - Emphasize how external goals pull organisms in certain directions. ## Evolutionary Theories - Ass...

# Motivational Theories and Concepts ## Drive Theories - Emphasize internal states of tension (due to disruptions of homeostasis) that push organisms in certain directions. ## Incentive Theories - Emphasize how external goals pull organisms in certain directions. ## Evolutionary Theories - Assert that motives are a product of natural selection that have had adaptive value in terms of fostering reproductive fitness. # Motivation of Hunger ## Biological factors regulating hunger - Research originally suggested that the lateral and ventromedial areas of the hypothalamus were the brain's on-off switches for hunger - Scientists now think that neural circuits passing through the hypothalamus play a larger role in the regulation of hunger. - Fluctuations in blood glucose monitored by glucostats also influence hunger. - The stomach can send two types of satiety signals to the brain. ## Environmental factors regulating hunger - Incentive-oriented theorists emphasize that the palatability, quantity, and variety of available food, and presence of others, are key factors influencing eating behavior. - Hunger can be triggered by food cues in the environment, such as odors.  - Humans show some innate taste preferences, but learning is much more influential. - Classical conditioning and observational learning shape what people prefer to eat. - Food preferences are also governed by exposure, which is why there are huge cultural variations in eating habits. - Stressful events can elicit arousal, and heightened arousal is associated with overeating. # Sexual Motivation ## Determinants of sexual desire - Hormonal fluctuations clearly regulate sexual desire in the animal kingdom, but they appear to have only a small impact on sexual desire in humans. - Erotic materials stimulate transient increases in sexual desire in many people, but researchers have found little evidence of an association between the availability of erotica and the incidence of sex crimes. - Exposure to erotica may alter attitudes about sexual behavior. - Attraction to a potential partner is another key factor governing sexual desire in both animals and humans. ## Sexual orientation - People tend to view heterosexuality and homosexuality as an all-or-none distinction, but it is more accurate to view them as endpoints on a continuum. - Environmental explanations of sexual orientation have not been supported by research. - Biological explanations have fared better in recent years. Twin studies have shown that genetic factors influence sexual orientation. - Research also suggests that idiosyncrasies in prenatal hormonal secretions may influence sexual orientation. - Females’ sexual orientation appears to be characterized by more plasticity than that of males. ## The human sexual response - Masters and Johnson showed that the sexual response cycle consists of four stages: excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution. ## Evolutionary analyses - According to parental investment theory, the sex that makes the smaller investment in offspring will compete for mating opportunities with the sex that makes the larger investment, which will be more discriminating in selecting partners. - Human males are required to invest little in offspring, so their reproductive potential is maximized by mating with as many partners as possible.  - Human females have to invest months to years in carrying and nourishing offspring, so they maximize their reproductive potential by mating with males who are able to invest more resources in their offspring. # Emotion ## Cognitive component - The cognitive component of emotion consists of subjective feelings that are often intense and difficult to control. - Cognitive appraisals of events influence the emotions that people experience.  - Researchers have tended to focus on negative emotions while neglecting positive emotions. ## Physiological component - The physiological component of emotion is dominated by autonomic arousal. - A polygraph detects emotional arousal, which is a far from perfect index of lying. - According to Joseph LeDoux, the amygdala lies at the core of a complex set of neural circuits that process emotion. - Emotions depend on activity in a constellation of interacting brain centers. ## Behavioral component - At the behavioral level, emotions are revealed through body language. - People can identify at least six emotions based on facial expressions. - According to the facial-feedback hypothesis, facial muscles send signals to the brain that aid in the recognition of emotions. ## Cultural considerations - Ekman and Friesen have found cross-cultural agreement in the identification of emotions based on facial expressions, but there are cultural disparities in how emotions are categorized and in public displays of emotions. ## Theoretical views - The James-Lange theory asserted that the conscious experience of emotion results from one’s perception of autonomic arousal. - The Cannon-Bard theory asserted that emotions originate in subcortical areas of the brain. - According to the two-factor theory, people infer emotion from autonomic arousal and then label it in accordance with their cognitive explanation for the arousal.  - Evolutionary theories of emotion assert that emotions are innate reactions that do not depend on cognitive processes. ## The roots of obesity - Research suggests that some people inherit a genetic vulnerability to obesity. - In overweight people, energy intake from food consumption chronically exceeds energy expenditure. - According to set point theory, the body monitors fat-cell levels to keep them fairly stable, making it challenging to lose weight and keep it off. - According to settling point theory, weight tends to drift around the level at which food consumption and energy expenditure tend to achieve an equilibrium. - Vacillations in dietary restraint may also contribute to obesity. # The Achievement Motive - David McClelland pioneered the use of the TAT to measure individual differences in need for achievement. - People who score high in the need for achievement tend to work harder and more persistently than others and are more likely to delay gratification.  - However, people high in the need for achievement tend to choose challenges of intermediate difficulty. - The pursuit of achievement goals tends to increase when the probability of success on a task and the incentive value of success are higher. - Achievement pursuits may be influenced by fear of failure. ## Gender differences in sexual activity - Males think about sex and initiate sex more often than females. - Males are more willing to engage in casual sex and have more partners than females. ## Gender differences in mate preferences - Males around the world place more emphasis than females on potential partners’ youthfulness and attractiveness.  - Females around the world place more emphasis than males on partners’ intelligence and financial prospects. # Development in Adolescence ## Puberty and the growth spurt - Pubescence is the 2-year span preceding puberty during which secondary sex characteristics begin to develop. - Puberty is the stage during which primary sex characteristics develop fully. - Girls who reach puberty early and boys who mature relatively late have a greater risk for psychological and social difficulties. - The prefrontal cortex appears to be the last area of the brain to fully mature, and this maturation is not complete until late adolescence or early adulthood. ## Time of turmoil? - Suicides and especially attempted suicides have risen dramatically among adolescents in recent decades, but completed suicide rates remain lower for adolescents than for older age groups. - The data on adolescent violence suggest that adolescence is a time of turmoil, although the incidence of school violence has remained lower than widely perceived. - The recent consensus of experts has been that adolescence does not appear to be more stressful than other periods of life. - However, Jeffrey Arnett has marshalled evidence that suggests that adolescence is somewhat more stressful than other life stages. ## The search for identity - According to Erikson, the main challenge of adolescence is the struggle for a sense of identity. - According to James Marcia, adolescents deal with their identity crisis in four ways: foreclosure, moratorium, identity diffusion, and identity achievement. - Age trends in identity status generally are consistent with Marcia’s theory, but there is great variability and most people reach identity achievement at later ages than originally envisioned. ## Family transitions - Adjusting to marriage is more likely to be difficult when spouses have different expectations about marital roles. - Most parents are happy with their decision to have children, but the arrival of the first child represents a major transition, and the disruption of routines can be draining. - Parent-adolescent relations are not as contentious as widely assumed, but conflicts do increase and parents tend to feel stressed. - For many parents the transition to an empty nest seems to be less difficult than it used to be. # Development in Adulthood ## Cognitive changes - General intelligence is fairly stable throughout most of adulthood, with a small decline in average scores seen after age 60. - The memory losses associated with aging are moderate and may be mostly due to declining working memory.  - Speed in cognitive processing tends to begin a gradual decline during middle adulthood. ## Physical changes - In the sensory domain, vision and hearing acuity tend to decline, but glasses and hearing aids can compensate for these losses. - Women’s reactions to menopause vary and menopause is not as stressful as widely believed. - Brain tissue and weight tend to decline after age 60, but this loss does not appear to be the key to age-related dementias. - Dementias are seen in about 15%-20% of people over age 75, but they are not part of the normal aging process. - Alzheimer’s patients exhibit profound loss of brain tissue and the accumulation of characteristic neural abnormalities. ## Personality development - During adulthood, personality generally remains fairly stable, but some people do experience significant changes. - For the most part, research has not supported the notion that most people go through a midlife crisis. - According to Erikson, people evolve through three stages of development in the adult years: intimacy versus isolation, generativity versus self-absorption, and integrity versus despair. # Development in Childhood ## Motor development - Motor development follows cephalocaudal (head-to-foot) and proximodistal (center-outward) trends. - Early progress in motor skills has traditionally been attributed to maturation, but recent research suggests that infants’ exploration is also important. - Cross-cultural research on motor development shows that maturation and environment are both influential. ## Cognitive development - Jean Piaget proposed that children evolve through four stages of cognitive development. - According to Piaget, children progress in their thinking through the complementary processes of assimilation and accommodation. - The major achievement of the sensorimotor period (birth to age 2) is the development of object permanence. - Children’s thought during the preoperational period (ages 2-7) is marked by centration, animism, irreversibility, and egocentrism. - In the concrete operational period (ages 7-11) children develop the ability to perform operations on mental representations. - In the formal operational period (age 11 onward) thought becomes more systematic, abstract, and logical. - Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory asserts that children’s cognitive development is shaped by social interactions, language development, and cultural factors. - According to Vygotsky, children acquire their culture’s cognitive skills through collaborative dialogues with more-experienced members of their society. - Researchers have found that infants understand complex concepts, such as addition, that they have had little opportunity to acquire through learning. - Nativists and evolutionary theorists argue that children’s brains are prewired to readily understand certain concepts. ## Approaches to research on development - In a longitudinal study one group of subjects is observed repeatedly over time. - In a cross-sectional study groups of subjects of varied ages are observed at a single point in time.  - Cross-sectional studies are quicker and easier, but longitudinal studies can be more sensitive. ## Temperament - Temperament refers to characteristic mood, activity level, and emotional reactivity. - In a longitudinal study, Thomas and Chess found that temperament remains fairly stable as children grow up. - Jerome Kagan’s research suggests that inhibited and uninhibited temperaments are stable over time and that they have a genetic basis. ## Attachment - Attachment refers to the close emotional bonds of affection that develop between infants and their caregivers. - Harry Harlow’s studies of infant monkeys showed that reinforcement is not the key to attachment. - John Bowlby argued that attachment has a biological and evolutionary basis. - Research has shown that infant-mother attachments fall into four categories: secure, anxious-ambivalent, avoidant, and disorganized-disoriented. - Infants with a relatively secure attachment tend to become resilient, competent toddlers with high self-esteem. - Cultural variations in child rearing influence the patterns of attachment seen in a society. - According to Jay Belsky, children have been wired by evolution to respond to sensitive or insensitive care with different attachments that would have been adaptive in ancestral times. ## Moral development - Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory proposes that individuals progress through three levels of moral reasoning. - Preconventional reasoning focuses on acts’ consequences, conventional reasoning on the need to maintain social order, and postconventional reasoning on working out a personal code of ethics. - Age-related progress in moral reasoning has been found in research, but there is a lot of overlap among stages. ## Personality development - Erik Erikson’s theory proposes that individuals evolve through eight stages over the life span.  - Stage theories assume that individuals progress through stages in a particular order, that progress is strongly related to age, and that new stages bring major changes in characteristic behavior. - Erikson’s four childhood stages are trust versus mistrust, autonomy versus shame, initiative versus guilt, and industry versus inferiority. ## Stages - During the germinal stage a zygote becomes a mass of cells that implants in the uterine wall and the placenta begins to form. - During the embryonic stage most vital organs and bodily systems begin to form, making it a period of great vulnerability. - During the fetal stage organs continue to grow and gradually begin to function, as the fetus reaches the age of viability around 22-26 weeks. ## Environmental influences - Maternal malnutrition increases newborns’ risk for birth complications and neurological deficits. - Maternal consumption of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs can have a variety of negative effects on prenatal development. - Maternal illnesses can interfere with prenatal development, and genital herpes and AIDS can be passed to newborns at birth.