5 Steps to a 5 AP Psychology, 2010-2011 Edition (44 page)

Conflict
involves being torn in different directions by opposing motives that block us from attaining a goal, leaving us feeling frustrated and stressed. The least stressful are
approach-approach conflicts,
which are situations involving two positive options, only one of which we can have. For example, you are accepted to both Harvard and Yale and must decide which to attend.
Avoidance-avoidance conflicts
are situations involving two negative options, one of which you must choose. Some expressions, such as “Between a rock and a hard place,” or “Damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” and “Between the devil and the deep blue sea,” exemplify this conflict.
Approach-avoidance conflicts
are situations involving whether or not to choose an option that has both a positive and negative consequence or consequences. Ordering a rich dessert ruins your diet but satisfies your chocolate cravings. The most complex form of conflict is the
multiple approach–avoidance conflict,
which involves several alternative courses of action that have both positive and negative aspects. For example, if you take the bus to the movies, you’ll get there in time to get a good seat and see the coming attractions, but you won’t have enough money to buy popcorn. If your parents drive you, you’ll have to help make dinner and wash the dishes. If you walk there, you may be late and get a bad seat, but you’ll have enough money to buy popcorn and you won’t have to help with dinner and the dishes.

An
emotion
is a conscious feeling of pleasantness or unpleasantness accompanied by biological activation and expressive behavior; emotion has cognitive, physiological, and behavioral components. Two dimensions of emotion are arousal or intensity and valence or
positive/negative quality. The greater the arousal, the more intense the emotion. Fear, anger, happiness, sadness, surprise, and disgust are examples of emotions. Evolutionary psychologists suggest that emotions persist because of their adaptive value. Fear of people and other animals displaying angry faces, for example, caused humans to focus attention and energize action to protect themselves in ways that enabled the species to survive. Facial expressions seem to be inborn and universal across all cultures. Many areas in the brain, many neuro-transmitter systems, the autonomic nervous system, and the endocrine system are tied to emotions. The amygdala, which is part of the limbic system, influences aggression and fear, and interacts with the hypothalamus, which sets emotional states, such as rage. The limbic system has pathways to and from the cerebral cortex, especially the frontal lobes, which are involved in control and interpretation of emotions. The left hemisphere is more closely associated with positive emotions, and the right with negative emotions. Emotions are inferred from nonverbal expressive behaviors, including body language, vocal qualities, and, most importantly, facial expressions. Paul Ekman and others found at least six basic facial expressions are universally recognized by people in diverse cultures all over the world.

Cultures differ in norms for regulating emotional expression. For example, the Japanese, who value interdependence, promote more restraint in expression of emotions than other more individualistic cultures.

Psychologists agree that emotions associated with feelings (e.g., love, hate, fear) have physiological, behavioral, and cognitive components, but disagree as to how the three components interact to produce feelings and actions. No one theory seems sufficient to explain emotion, but each appears to contribute to an explanation.

American psychologist William James, a founder of the school of functionalism, and Danish physiologist Karl Lange proposed that our awareness of our physiological arousal leads to our conscious experience of emotion. According to this theory, external stimuli activate our autonomic nervous systems, producing specific patterns of physiological changes for different emotions that evoke specific emotional experiences. When we see a vicious looking dog growl at us, our sympathetic nervous system kicks in, we begin to run immediately, and then we become aware that we are afraid. This theory suggests that we can change our feelings by changing our behavior.

The James-Lange theory is consistent with the current facial-feedback hypothesis that our facial expressions affect our emotional experiences. Smiling seems to induce positive moods and frowning seems to induce negative moods.

Walter Cannon and Philip Bard disagreed with the James-Lange theory. According to Cannon-Bard theory, conscious experience of emotion accompanies physiological responses. Cannon and Bard theorized that the thalamus (the processor of all sensory information but smell in the brain) simultaneously sends information to both the limbic system (emotional center) and the frontal lobes (cognitive center) about an event. When we see the vicious growling dog, our bodily arousal and our recognition of the fear we feel occur at the same time.

We now know that although the thalamus does not directly cause emotional responses, it relays sensory information to the amygdala and hypothalamus, which process the information.

According to opponent-process theory, when we experience an emotion, an opposing emotion will counter the first emotion, lessening the experience of that emotion. When we
experience the first emotion on repeated occasions, the opposing emotion becomes stronger and the first emotion becomes weaker, leading to an even weaker experience of the first emotion. If we are about to jump out of an airplane for the first time, we tend to feel extreme fear along with low levels of elation. On subsequent jumps, we experience less fear and more elation.

Cognitive theories argue that our emotional experiences depend on our interpretation of situations. Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer’s studies suggested we infer emotion from arousal, then label it according to our cognitive explanation for the arousal. For example, if we feel aroused and someone is yelling at us, we must be angry.

Different people on an amusement park ride experience different emotions. According to Richard Lazarus’s cognitive-appraisal theory, our emotional experience depends on our interpretation of the situation we are in. In primary appraisal, we assess potential consequences of the situation, and in secondary appraisal, we decide what to do. This suggests that we can change our emotions if we learn to interpret the situation differently.

Evolutionary psychologists disagree that emotions depend on our evaluation of a given situation. They note that emotional responses developed before complex thinking in animal evolution. Lower animals fear predators without thinking. Robert Zajonc thinks that we often know how we feel long before we know what we think in a given situation.

Stress
is the process by which we appraise and respond to environmental threats. According to Hans Selye, we react similarly to both physical and psychological stressors.
Stressors
are stimuli such as heat, cold, pain, mild shock, restraint, etc., that we perceive as endangering our well-being. Selye’s
General Adaptation Syndrome
(GAS) three-stage theory of alarm, resistance, and exhaustion describes our body’s reaction to stress. During the
alarm
reaction, our body increases sympathetic nervous system activity and activates the adrenal glands to prepare us for “fight-or-flight,” which by increasing our heart and breathing rates, as well as the availability of glucose for energy, increases our strength for fighting an enemy or our ability to run away. During the second stage of
resistance
, our temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration remain high while the level of hormones, such as adrenalin and corticosteroids, continues to rise. If crises are not resolved in this stage, continued stress results in the depletion of our resources and decreased immunity to diseases characteristic of the third stage of
exhaustion
, which may result in illnesses like ulcers or depression, or even death.

We can classify stressors on the basis of intensity from catastrophes, to significant life changes, to daily hassles.

Catastrophes
are stressors that are unpredictable, large-scale disasters which threaten us. When catastrophes cause prolonged stress, health problems often result.

Significant life events include death of a loved one, marriage, divorce, changing jobs, moving to a new home, having a baby, and starting college. Holmes and Rahe created a “Social Readjustment Rating Scale” that rates stressful events in our lives. For example,
death of a spouse receives the highest number of points at 100 and getting married receives 50. According to Holmes and Rahe, the higher our score on the scale, the greater the probability we will face a major health event within the next year.

Daily hassles
are everyday annoyances, such as having to wait in lines, arguing with a friend, or getting a low grade on a quiz. Over time, these stressors can add up, raising our blood pressure, causing headaches, and lowering our immunity.

High levels of stress are associated with decreased immunity, high blood pressure, headaches, heart disease, and quicker progression of cancer and AIDS.

According to Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman, people who have different characteristic patterns of reacting to stress have different probabilities of suffering heart attacks.
Type A
personalities are high achievers, competitive, impatient, multi-taskers, who walk, talk, and eat quickly.
Type B
personalities, in contrast, are those who are more relaxed and calm in their approach to life. Friedman and Rosenman found that Type A personalities were more likely to experience a heart attack in their 30s and 40s than Type B personalities. Current research suggests that the Type A traits of
anger, hostility, and cynicism
are most highly correlated with potential risks for cardiac problems. After a heart attack, however, Type As are more likely to make healthy changes in their lifestyles than Type Bs.

Coping strategies can be adaptive or maladaptive. Maladaptive strategies ordinarily fail to remove the stressors or wind up substituting one stressor for another. Adaptive strategies remove stressors or enable us to better tolerate them.

Maladaptive coping strategies include aggression; indulging ourselves by eating, drinking, smoking, using drugs, spending money, or sleeping too much; or using
defense mechanisms.

Adaptive coping strategies vary from taking direct action through problem solving; to lessening stress through physically exercising, seeking the social support of friends, or finding help through religious organizations and prayer; to accepting the problem. For example, you can adopt the optimistic attitudes of hardy people by committing to a particular project or goal, seeing yourself as being in control rather than a victim of circumstance, and looking at finishing the project or realizing your goal as a challenge or opportunity. Health psychologists often suggest using relaxation, visualization, meditation, and biofeedback to help lessen the effects of stress in our lives, and boost our immune systems.

Subjective well-being, your assessment of how happy or satisfied you feel, has become a focus of positive psychology.
Positive psychology,
founded by Martin Seligman, is the scientific study of optimal human functioning. The three pillars of positive psychology are positive emotions, positive character, and positive groups, communities, and cultures.

Directions:
For each question, choose the letter of the choice that best completes the statement or answers the question.

1.
Imprinting is

(A) the adaptive response of an infant when its mother leaves a room

(B) a maladaptive response of anxiety by an infant when abandoned by its mother

(C) a period shortly after birth when a newborn reacts to salty, sweet, or bitter stimuli

(D) a period shortly after birth when an adult forms a bond with his or her newborn

(E) the tendency of some baby animals to form an attachment to the first moving object they see or hear during a critical period after birth

2.
Which of the following topics would a sociobiologist be most interested in studying?

(A) whether or not ape communication can be defined as language

(B) whether pigeons are capable of cognitive learning

(C) altruistic acts that ensure the survival of the next generation

(D) aggressive behavior in stickleback fish related to sign stimuli

(E) stress and its relationship to heart attacks

3.
When asked why he wants to become a doctor, Tom says, “Because I’ve always liked biology and being a doctor will allow me to make a good salary to take care of a family.” His answer is most consistent with which of the following theories of motivation?

(A) drive reduction

(B) incentive

(C) hierarchy of needs

(D) arousal

(E) instinct

4.
According to the Yerkes-Dodson model, when facing a very difficult challenge, which level of arousal would probably lead to the best outcome?