• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Belief perseverance—the tendency to hold onto a belief after the basis for the belief is discredited.

Belief bias—the tendency for our preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning, making illogical conclusions seem valid or logical conclusions seem invalid.

Hindsight bias—the tendency to falsely report, after the event, that we correctly predicted the outcome of the event.

Overconfidence bias—the tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments.

Overcoming obstacles to problem solving can include:

Creativity—the ability to think about a problem or idea in new and unusual ways to come up with unconventional solutions.

Incubation—putting aside a problem temporarily; allows the problem solver to look at the problem from a different perspective.

Brainstorming—generating lots of possible solutions to a problem without making prior evaluative judgments.

Divergent thinking—thinking that produces many alternatives or ideas.

Convergent thinking—conventional thinking directed toward a single correct solution.

Language—communication system based on words and grammar; spoken, written, or gestured words and the way they are combined to communicate meaning from person to person and to transmit civilization’s accumulated knowledge.

• Phonemes—smallest units of sound in spoken language.

• Morphemes—the smallest unit of language that has meaning.

• Grammar—a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others.

• Syntax—rules that are used to order words into grammatically sensible sentences.

• Semantics—a set of rules we use to derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences.

• Babbling—an infant’s spontaneous production of speech sounds; begins around 4 months old.

• Holophrase—one-word utterances that convey meaning; characteristic of a 1-year-old.

• Telegraphic speech—meaningful two-word sentences, usually a noun and a verb, and usually in the correct order uttered by 2-year-olds.

• Overgeneralization or overregularization—application of grammatical rules without making appropriate exceptions (“I goed to the store”).

• Behavioral perspective—language is developed by imitating sounds we hear to create words.

• Nativist perspective—idea that the human brain has an innate capacity for acquiring language (language acquisition device) possibly during a critical period of time after birth, and that children are born with a universal sense of grammar (Noam Chomsky).

• Social interactivist perspective—babies are biologically equipped for learning language, which may be activated or constrained by experience.

• Linguistic relativity hypothesis—our language guides and determines our thinking (Whorf). It is more accurate to say that language influences thought.

CHAPTER 12

Motivation and Emotion

IN THIS CHAPTER

Summary: Why do you do what you do? Motivation is a psychological process that directs and maintains your behavior toward a goal, fueled by motives, which are needs or desires that energize your behavior. Theories of motivation generally distinguish between primary, biological motives such as hunger, thirst, sex, pain reduction, optimal arousal, aggression; and secondary, social motives such as achievement, affiliation, autonomy, curiosity, and play. Social motives are learned motives acquired as part of growing up in a particular society or culture. Emotion is closely related to motivation. Some psychologists even define emotions as specific motivated states. Emotion is a psychological feeling that involves a mixture of physiological arousal, conscious experience, and overt behavior. Emotions include love, hate, fear, and jealousy. Instinct/evolutionary, drive reduction, incentive, arousal, and humanistic theories look at motivation differently. James-Lange, Cannon-Bard, Schachter-Singer, and opponent-process theories explain the relationship between physiological changes and emotional experiences differently. Both motivation and emotion spur us into action.

This chapter looks closely