Essential Psychology Concepts: Motivation, Emotion, and Health

Core Concepts in Psychology: Questions and Answers

Motivation and Physiological Needs

1. Motivation is defined as: A need or desire that energizes and directs behavior towards a goal. (B)

2. Professor Sanford explains the organization of needs, such as the need for physical safety, within a hierarchy of motives. (D)

3. Prisoners of war placed on a starvation diet tend to spend a great deal of time daydreaming about food. (E)

4. Research on obesity and weight control indicates that once we become fat, our body often adapts, requiring less food (fewer calories) to maintain that weight compared to someone who has never been obese. (E)

Sexual Response and Social Behavior

4. Secretion of the female hormone, estrogen, peaks during ovulation. (D)

5. The ability of humans to establish social bonds with others is best understood from an evolutionary perspective. (A)

6. People who spend excessive time on social networking sites focused on their own image often display narcissistic tendencies. (E)

7. Psychologist Henry Murray's research on achievement suggested that high achievers often had more active hobbies. (A)

8. Research on the sexual response cycle indicates that enough sperm may be released prior to male orgasm to enable conception. (D)

9. If Ernie has begun watching sexually explicit movies frequently, he is likely to view his wife as less attractive (desensitization effect). (C)

Emotion, Arousal, and Expression

8. The basic components of emotion are expressive behaviors, physiological arousal, and conscious experience. (B)

9. The autonomic nervous system regulates physiological arousal. (A)

10. A psychologist would have the greatest difficulty differentiating between specific emotions based solely on measures like heart rates. (C)

11. For purposes of lie detection, investigators have most commonly made use of the polygraph. (C)

12. People are especially good at quickly detecting facial expressions of anger. (B)

13. People from different cultures often vary in how they interpret hand gestures such as the thumbs up signal. (E)

14. The idea that facial expressions can influence emotional experience is consistent with the James-Lange theory. (A)

15. Cassandra's mother told her, "You know you are in love because your heart races when he is near." This statement aligns with the James-Lange theory. (D)

16. According to the Cannon-Bard theory, you would be able to experience emotion and physiological arousal simultaneously. (E)

Stress, Health, and Psychoneuroimmunology

15. The statement "that stress arises from both the events in our cognitive" is incomplete, but it relates to the idea that stress involves cognitive appraisal of events. (A)

16. In a stressful situation, feelings of pain are often dulled by the activation of the sympathetic nervous system. (B)

17. The field of psychoneuroimmunology studies the relationship between psychological factors, the nervous system, and the immune system. (D)

18. The closing of vessels that nourish the heart is the primary mechanism underlying coronary heart disease. (C)

19. A stress-moderating hormone released by cuddling and social bonding is oxytocin. (B)