Source Chapter Attributions
Chapter 1. Introducing Psychology
Charles Stangor and Jennifer Walinga
1.1 Psychology as a Science
1.2 The Evolution of Psychology: History, Approaches, and Questions
Chapter 1 Summary, Key Terms, and Self-Test
Charles Stangor; Jennifer Walinga; and Jorden A. Cummings
Chapter 2. Introduction to Major Perspectives
Jennifer Walinga
2.1 Biological Psychology
2.2 Psychodynamic Psychology
2.3 Behaviourist Psychology
2.4 Humanist, Cognitive, and Evolutionary Psychology
Jennifer Walinga and Lee Sanders
Chapter 3. Psychological Science & Research
Charles Stangor; Jennifer Walinga; Jorden A. Cummings; and Lee Sanders
3.1 Psychologists Use the Scientific Method to Guide Their Research
3.2 Moral Foundations of Ethical Research
Paul C. Price, Rajiv S. Jhangiani, I-Chant A. Chiang, Dana C. Leighton, and Carrie Cuttler
3.3 From Moral Principles to Ethics Codes
3.4 Putting Ethics Into Practice
3.5 Psychologists Use Descriptive, Correlational, and Experimental Research Designs to Understand Behaviour
3.6 You Can Be an Informed Consumer of Psychological Research
3.7 The Replication Crisis in Psychology
Edward Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener
Chapter 4. Genetics and Evolution
Lee Sanders
4.1 The Nature-Nurture Question
Eric Turkheimer
4.2 Evolutionary Theories in Psychology
4.3 Epigenetics in Psychology
Ian Weaver
4.4 Is Personality More Nature or More Nurture? Behavioural and Molecular Genetics
Chapter 5. Brains, Bodies, and Behaviour
5.1 The Neuron Is the Building Block of the Nervous System
5.2 Our Brains Control Our Thoughts, Feelings, and Behaviour
5.3 Putting It All Together: The Nervous System and the Endocrine System
5.4 Psychologists Study the Brain Using Many Different Methods
Charles Stangor; Jennifer Walinga; and Lee Sanders
Chapter 6. Sensing and Perceiving
6.1 We Experience Our World through Sensation
6.2 Seeing
6.3 Hearing
6.4 Tasting, Smelling, and Touching
6.5 Accuracy and Inaccuracy in Perception
Chapter 7. States of Consciousness
7.1 States of Consciousness
Robert Biswas-Diener and Jake Teeny
7.2 Attention
Frances Friedrich
7.3 Sleeping and Dreaming Revitalize Us for Action
7.4 Altering Consciousness with Psychoactive Drugs
7.5 Altering Consciousness without Drugs
7.6 The Unconscious
Ap Dijksterhuis
Chapter 8. Remembering and Judging
8.1 Memories as Types and Stages
8.2 How We Remember: Cues to Improving Memory
8.3 Accuracy and Inaccuracy in Memory and Cognition
8.4 Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Biases
Cara Laney and Elizabeth F. Loftus
Chapter 8 Summary, Key Terms, Self-Test
Chapter 9. Intelligence and Language
9.1 Defining and Measuring Intelligence
9.2 The Social, Cultural, and Political Aspects of Intelligence
9.3 Communicating with Others: The Development and Use of Language
Chapter 10. Learning
Chapter 10 Introduction
10.1 Learning by Association: Classical Conditioning
10.2 Changing Behaviour through Reinforcement and Punishment: Operant Conditioning
10.3 Learning by Insight and Observation
10.4 Using the Principles of Learning to Understand Everyday Behaviour
Chapter 10 Summary, Key Terms, and Self-Test
Chapter 11. Emotions and Motivations
11.1 The Experience of Emotion
11.2 Functions of Emotions
Hyisung Hwang and David Matsumoto
11.3 Positive Emotions: The Power of Happiness
11.4 Drive States
Sudeep Bhatia and George Loewenstein
11.5 Motives and Goals
Ayelet Fishbach and Maferima Touré-Tillery
Chapter 12. Stress, Health, and Coping
Jennifer Walinga and Jorden A. Cummings
12.1 Stress: The Unseen Killer
12.2 Health and Stress
12.3 Stress and Coping
12.4 The Healthy Life
Emily Hooker and Sarah Pressman
12.5 Positive Psychology
Robert A. Emmons
Chapter 13. Psychology in Our Social Lives
Jorden A. Cummings
13.1 An Introduction to the Science of Social Psychology
Robert Biswas-Diener
13.2 Social Cognition and Attitudes
Yanine D. Hess and Cynthia L. Pickett
13.3 Conformity and Obedience
Jerry M. Burger
13.4 Prejudice, Discrimination, and Stereotyping
Susan T. Fiske
13.5 Helping and Prosocial Behavior
Dennis L. Poepsel and David A. Schroeder
Chapter 14. Growing and Developing
14.1 Conception and Prenatal Development
14.2 Infancy and Childhood: Exploring and Learning
14.3 Adolescence: Developing Independence and Identity
14.4 Early and Middle Adulthood: Building Effective Lives
14.5 Late Adulthood: Aging, Retiring, and Bereavement
14.6 Gender
Christia Spears Brown and Jennifer A. Jewell
Chapter 15. Culture
15.1 Culture
Robert Biswas-Diener; Neil Thin; and Lee Sanders
15.2 Culture and Emotion
Jeanne Tsai
Chapter 16. Personality
16.1 Personality Traits
Edward Diener; Richard E. Lucas; and Jorden A. Cummings
16.2 Personality Assessment
Chapter 17. Defining Psychological Disorders
17.1 Psychological Disorder: What Makes a Behaviour Abnormal?
17.2 Anxiety and Dissociative Disorders: Fearing the World Around Us
17.3 Mood Disorders: Emotions as Illness
17.4 Schizophrenia: The Edge of Reality and Consciousness
17.5 Personality Disorders
Chapter 18. Treating Psychological Disorders
18.1 Reducing Disorder by Confronting It: Psychotherapy
18.2 Reducing Disorder Biologically: Drug and Brain Therapy
18.3 Reducing Disorder by Changing the Social Situation
18.4 Evaluating Treatment and Prevention: What Works?
Jorden A. Cummings and Lee Sanders
Introduction to Psychology
On June 27, 2014, 13-year-old Gavin England saved his grandfather from drowning when their prawning boat took on water and sank off the Saanich Peninsula on Vancouver Island (CTV, 2014). Gavin's grandfather Vern was not a strong swimmer, and though both were wearing life jackets, they would not have survived for long in the cold Pacific ocean waters 300 meters from shore.
Gavin recounted the event, explaining how he suffered sharp cuts to his bare feet when climbing the embankment where he had dragged his grandfather. He attributed his ability to overcome the pain of the cuts to adrenalin. Upon finding an old truck with keys in the ignition, and despite the high emotions he was experiencing, he then had the wherewithal to learn to drive on the spot and make it up a three-kilometer hill to get help. Gavin explained that his knowledge of driving a dirt bike served him well: "I knew that clutch in meant drive." Vern described the young boy as "tenacious" and calm throughout the event. He was giving his grandfather words of encouragement as he pulled him to shore.
Stories such as Gavin's are rare and unpredictable. We hope we will act with the same clear-headed tenacity in emergency situations, but the heroic response is not assured. Gavin's ability to abate panic, and recognize and regulate his emotions was central to his actions in this emergency situation.
The topic of this chapter is affect, defined as the experience of feeling or emotion. Affect is an essential part of the study of psychology because it plays such an important role in everyday life. As we will see, affect guides behaviour, helps us make decisions, and has a major impact on our mental and physical health.
The two fundamental components of affect are emotions and motivation. Both of these words have the same underlying Latin root, meaning "to move." In contrast to cognitive processes that are calm, collected, and frequently rational, emotions and motivations involve arousal, or our experiences of the bodily responses created by the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system (ANS). Because they involve arousal, emotions and motivations are "hot" — they "charge," "drive," or "move" our behaviour.
When we experience emotions or strong motivations, we feel the experiences. When we become aroused, the sympathetic nervous system provides us with energy to respond to our environment. The liver puts extra sugar into the bloodstream, the heart pumps more blood, our pupils dilate to help us see better, respiration increases, and we begin to perspire to cool the body. The stress hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine are released. We experience these responses as arousal.
American pilot Captain"Sully" Sullenberger (Figure 11.1, "Captain Sullenberger and His Plane on the Hudson River") was 915 metres up in the air when the sudden loss of power in his airplane put his life, as well as the lives of 150 passengers and crew members, in his hands. Both of the engines on flight 1539 had shut down, and his options for a safe landing were limited.
Sully kept flying the plane and alerted the control tower to the situation: "This is Cactus 1539…hit birds. We lost thrust in both engines. We're turning back toward La Guardia."
When the tower gave him the compass setting and runway for a possible landing, Sullenberger's extensive experience allowed him to give a calm response: "I'm not sure if we can make any runway…Anything in New Jersey?"
Captain Sullenberger was not just any pilot in a crisis, but a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot with 40 years of flight experience. He had served both as a flight instructor and the safety chairman for the Airline Pilots Association. Training had quickened his mental processes in assessing the threat, allowing him to maintain what tower operators later called an "eerie calm." He knew the capabilities of his plane.
When the tower suggested a runway in New Jersey, Sullenberger calmly replied: "We're unable. We may end up in the Hudson."
Figure 11.1 Captain Sullenberger and His Plane on the Hudson River. Imagine that you are on a plane that you know is going to crash. What emotions would you experience, and how would you respond to them? Would the rush of fear cause you to panic, or could you control your emotions like Captain Sullenberger did, as he calmly calculated the heading, position, thrust, and elevation of the plane, and then landed it on the Hudson River?
The last communication from Captain Sullenberger to the tower advised of the eventual outcome: "We're going to be in the Hudson."
He calmly set the plane down on the water. Passengers reported that the landing was like landing on a rough runway. The crew kept the passengers calm as women, children, and then the rest of the passengers were evacuated onto the rescue boats that had quickly arrived. Captain Sullenberger then calmly walked the aisle of the plane to be sure that everyone was out before joining the 150 other rescued survivors (Levin, 2009; National Transportation Safety Board, 2009).
Some called it "grace under pressure," and others called it the "miracle on the Hudson." But psychologists see it as the ultimate in emotion regulation — the ability to control and productively use one's emotions.
An emotion is a mental and physiological feeling state that directs our attention and guides our behaviour. Whether it is the thrill of a roller-coaster ride that elicits an unexpected scream, the flush of embarrassment that follows a public mistake, or the horror of a potential plane crash that creates an exceptionally brilliant response in a pilot, emotions move our actions. Emotions normally serve an adaptive role: We care for infants because of the love we feel for them, we avoid making a left turn onto a crowded highway because we fear that a speeding truck may hit us, and we are particularly nice to Mandy because we are feeling guilty that we did not go to her party. But emotions may also be destructive, such as when a frustrating experience leads us to lash out at others who do not deserve it.
The Surrey School District in British Columbia has incorporated "emotional regulation" into the curriculum (Wells, 2013). In six schools, educators are piloting a program that helps teachers look for what may be stressing children, making them unable to pay attention, lethargic, hyperactive, or out of control. The children may be impacted by too much noise in the classroom, too little sleep, or too much junk food in their lunch. The teachers help the children recognize what they need to do to make themselves calm and productive in class. The program ultimately places the motivation for behavioural control within the hands of the children.
Motivations are closely related to emotions. A motivation is a driving force that initiates and directs behaviour. Some motivations are biological, such as the motivation for food, water, and sex. But there are a variety of other personal and social motivations that can influence behaviour, including the motivations for social approval and acceptance, the motivation to achieve, and the motivation to take, or to avoid taking, risks (Morsella, Bargh, & Gollwitzer, 2009). In each case we follow our motivations because they are rewarding. As predicted by basic theories of operant learning, motivations lead us to engage in particular behaviours because doing so makes us feel good.
Motivations are often considered in psychology in terms of drives, which are internal states that are activated when the physiological characteristics of the body are out of balance, and goals, which are desired end states that we strive to attain. Motivation can thus be conceptualized as a series of behavioural responses that lead us to attempt to reduce drives and to attain goals by comparing our current state with a desired end state (Lawrence, Carver, & Scheier, 2002). Like a thermostat on an air conditioner, the body tries to maintain homeostasis, the natural state of the body's systems, with goals, drives, and arousal in balance. When a drive or goal is aroused—for instance, when we are hungry—the thermostat turns on and we start to behave in a way that attempts to reduce the drive or meet the goal (in this case to seek food). As the body works toward the desired end state, the thermostat continues to check whether or not the end state has been reached. Eventually, the need or goal is satisfied (we eat), and the relevant behaviours are turned off. The body's thermostat continues to check for homeostasis and is always ready to react to future needs.
In addition to more basic motivations such as hunger, a variety of other personal and social motivations can also be conceptualized in terms of drives or goals. When the goal of studying for an exam is hindered because we take a day off from our schoolwork, we may work harder on our studying on the next day to move us toward our goal. When we are dieting, we may be more likely to have a big binge on a day when the scale says that we have met our prior day's goals. And when we are lonely, the motivation to be around other people is aroused and we try to socialize. In many, if not most cases, our emotions and motivations operate out of our conscious awareness to guide our behaviour (Freud, 1922; Hassin, Bargh, & Zimerman, 2009; Williams, Bargh, Nocera, & Gray, 2009).
We begin this chapter by considering the role of affect on behaviour, discussing the most important psychological theories of emotions. Then we will consider how emotions influence our mental and physical health. We will discuss the various functions that emotions serve. We will discuss positive emotions and how they help us respond to stress and influence our experience of happiness. We'll then turn to discussing drives states, or affective experiences that influence our thoughts and behaviours, and how we fulfill goals that are important to our survival and our motivation to pursue more personal goals.
Image Attributions
Figure 11.1: Sully Sullenberger by Ingrid Taylar (http://www.flickr.com/photos/taylar/435061088) used under CC BY 2.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/); Plane crash into Hudson River by Greg L., (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plane_crash_into_Hudson_Rivercroped.jpg) used under CC BY 2.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en).
CTV. (2014). Heroic act (video broadcast). Toronto, ON: CTV National News. Retrieved July 24, 2014, from http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=389519
Freud, S. (1922). The unconscious. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 56(3), 291.
Hassin, R. R., Bargh, J. A., & Zimerman, S. (2009). Automatic and flexible: The case of nonconscious goal pursuit. Social Cognition, 27(1), 20–36.
Lawrence, J. W., Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (2002). Velocity toward goal attainment in immediate experience as a determinant of affect. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 32(4), 788–802.
Levin, A. (2009, June 9). Experience averts tragedy in Hudson landing. USA Today. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-06-08-hudson_N.htm.
Morsella, E., Bargh, J. A., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2009). Oxford handbook of human action. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
National Transportation Safety Board. (2009, June 9). Excerpts of Flight 1549 cockpit communications. USA Today. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-06-09-hudson-cockpit-transcript_N.htm.
Wells, K. (2013). Self-regulation technique helps students focus in class: Teachers try new approach to improving students' behaviour. CBC News Posted: Nov 30, 2013 Retrieved 2014 from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/self-regulation-technique-helps-students-focus-in-class-1.2440688
Williams, L. E., Bargh, J. A., Nocera, C. C., & Gray, J. R. (2009). The unconscious regulation of emotion: Nonconscious reappraisal goals modulate emotional reactivity. Emotion, 9(6), 847–854.
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Introduction to Psychology by Charles Stangor; Jennifer Walinga; and Jorden A. Cummings is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.