Social psychology is the branch of psychology concerned with the way individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by others.

An attribute is a quality or feature regarded as a characteristic or inherent part of someone or something. Attribution Theory states that we explain another person’s behavior by crediting either the situation or the person’s disposition.

Fundamental Attribution Error: the tendency for observers to, when analyzing another’s behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition 

Actor-Observer Bias: a cognitive bias where people attribute their own actions to external circumstances while attributing others' actions to internal factors like personality or character

Prejudice is an unjustifiable (and usually negative) attitude toward a group of people, typically based in stereotyped beliefs, negative feelings, an a predisposition to discriminatory behavior.

A stereotype is a generalized (sometimes accurate but often overgeneralized) belief about a group of people.

Discrimination is an unjustifiable negative behavior toward a group and its members.

For example, there is a stereotype that all blondes are dumb. You hold the belief, or prejudice, that agrees with this stereotype, and thus discriminate against blondes by talking down to them or refusing to hire them because you assume they are stupid. Prejudice is the thought, discrimination is the action. 

Humans prefer order to chaos and that desire can alter our judgement. 

• The just world phenomenon is the tendency to believe that the world is just and fair; people get what they deserve and deserve what they get. (i.e. victim blaming)

• In-group vs. Out-group: the “us vs. them” mentality, in which you favor those with whom you share a common identity (in-group bias) and disparage those outside your group.

• Scapegoat theory explains that prejudice offers an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame.

• The other-race effect is the tendency to recall faces of one’s own race more accurately than faces of other races.

An attitude is a feeling or feelings, often influenced by our beliefs, that predispose us to respond in a particular way to objects, people, and events.

Advertising is all based on attitude formation, making you feel something and thus connecting you to the product/idea. 

You hear “In the arms of the angels…” and immediately start sobbing and get the desire to buy all the sad puppies left in the snow. It’s an effective tactic for the ASPCA to get donations because it makes you feel something, thus why they’ve run the same commercial for over a decade.

The foot-in-the-door phenomenon is the tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request. 

• Ex. Agreeing to a free trial makes you more likely to buy the product, if you help your overwhelmed coworker with a few tables you’re more likely to cover her shift when she asks a few days later

The door-in-the-face phenomenon is the tendency for people to comply to a smaller request after rejecting an initially larger request.

• Ex. Asking for $100 assuming you’ll be rejected and then asking for $5 which you are more likely to get, curating a huge wedding registry knowing you won’t get everything but people will buy more if they see more options

The lowball technique is designed to gain compliance by making a very attractive initial offer to persuade a person to accept the offer and then making the terms less favorable. 

• Ex. “Hidden Fees”, When a car dealership lists a car for $14,000 to get you to agree to buy it and later changes the price to $16,000. 

Peripheral route persuasion occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues, such as the speaker’s attractiveness.

• Ex. Celebrity endorsements

Central route persuasion occurs when interested people focus on the arguments and respond with favorable thoughts.

• Ex. Making a decision based on research and statistics rather than feelings

Sometimes, our attitudes and our behaviors don’t line up. When this happens, we experience a tension known as cognitive dissonance. To relieve this tension, Leon Festinger proposed Cognitive Dissonance Theory, which states that we act to reduce this discomfort we feel when our actions are inconsistent with our thoughts. There are three ways to alleviate this tension - change the action, change the attitude, or change the attitude about the action.

For example, let’s say you think you are a good and honest person, but while out with friends, you shoplift an item from a store on a dare. You can’t be a good person while stealing, so you experience dissonance in the form of guilt. To relieve this, you can either return or pay for the item, decide you are not in fact a good person, or rationalize the shoplifting by saying “It’s was only $2!” or “That company mistreats its employees and deserved it!” or maybe “My friends wouldn’t like me if I didn’t follow through.”. 

Social psychology focuses on group behavior, specifically how the presence of others alters our behavior. This includes social influence, of which there are two distinct types:

• Normative: Going along with others in pursuit of social approval or belonging (and to avoid disapproval/rejection). 

  • • Ex. Wearing clothes similar to your friends.

• Informative: Going along with others because their ideas and behavior make sense, the evidence in our social environment changes our minds. 

  • • Ex. Deciding which side of the road to drive on.

• Norms: understood rules and expectations for how people behave

  • • Ex. We know to dress in business attire for an interview, we know to bring gifts to birthday or housewarming parties, and we know to give up our seat on the bus to an elderly woman. These aren’t laws but expectations, and we know we can face ridicule if we don’t adhere to them. Thus norms can lead to conformity. 

Behavior is contagious. If we see someone yawn, or just read about someone yawning, we have a desire to yawn too. This is true of many simple behaviors - looking at the sky, scratching, checking your phone, having an accent, adjusting to a mood shift, etc. 

• Chameleon Effect - In an experiment, a confederate/collaborator of the experimenter intentionally rubbed his/her face or shook a foot; this seemed to lead to a greater likelihood of the study participant doing the same behavior.

Social Facilitation: improved performance on simple or well-learned tasks in the presence of others. (i.e. If you are really good at something, or it is an easy task, you will perform better in front of a group.)

• Ex. Athletes doing better with a large crowd to cheer them on than they did in practice with no one watching.

Social Impairment: reduced performance on difficult or unpracticed tasks in the presence of others (i.e. If it is a difficult task or you are not very good at it, you will perform worse in front of a group.)

• Spotlight effect:

• Ex. Stage fright

Social Loafing: the tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling efforts toward a common goal than if they were individually accountable.

• Ex. Tug-of-war, group projects

Sometimes we are inclined to help, other times we ignore those in need. The bystander effect is the tendency for any given bystander (witness) to be less likely to give aid if other bystanders are present. We are more likely to help if:

• The person appears in need and deserving of help

• The person is similar to us

• The person is female

• We see others being helpful

• We aren’t in a hurry

• We are in a small town

• We feel guilty

• We are in a good mood → do-good feel-good phenomenon

Sometimes crowds make us better, but other times, they act as a shield from consequences. Deindividuation is the loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group that foster arousal and anonymity. This explains “mob mentality”, where a person would not be likely to act violently alone, but they feel empowered and emboldened when part of a group. 

When we disagree with our group, we often stay silent because we don’t want to be cast out or cause problems. Groupthink is the mode of reasoning that occurs when the desire for harmony in the decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. 

Group polarization is a phenomenon wherein the decisions and opinions of people in a group setting become more extreme than their actual, privately held beliefs after discussion within the group.

Aggression is any physical or verbal behavior intended to harm someone physically or emotionally.

When faced with an aversive situation or obstacle, you experience anger (frustration) which makes you more likely to engage in violent behavior (aggression). This is known as the frustration-aggression principle. 

Influences on Aggression:

• Genetics → predisposition for a short temper

• Neural → amygdala & frontal lobe

• Biochemical → testosterone

• Social → observing violent models

When might aggression be reinforced?

• Children who have gotten what they wanted through bullying or are praised for their tenacity on a soccer field are being rewarded for their acts of aggression.

• Growing up in a household or culture where men are expected to be dominant and aggressive will encourage that behavior.

• Repeated exposure to violence in various forms of media desensitizes viewers to acts of violence.

  • Video games: Some studies suggest that video games promote aggression, while others argue it allows for a cathartic outlet for one to indulge their violent tendencies.

Conflict is perceived as an incompatibility of actions, goals, or ideas. 

• Approach-approach conflict: occurs when you must choose between two desirable outcomes.

• Avoidance-avoidance conflict: occurs when you must choose between two unattractive outcomes.

• Approach-avoidance conflict: exists when one event or goal has both attractive and unattractive features. 

• Multiple approach-avoidance conflicts: here you must choose between two or more things, each of which has both desirable and undesirable features.

A social trap is a situation in which a person or group of people actively work to attain a short-term goal, which will ultimately have long-term consequences for the larger population. 

• Ex. Before laws and regulations were passed, many chemical companies would dispose of toxic and chemical waste by dumping it in the ocean or burying it underground. 

  • • Solved their immediate problem- the waste disappeared 

    • Created a serious environmental and health hazards for future generations

Other examples include running your sprinklers during a drought, refusing to get vaccines for major illnesses thus allowing those illnesses to spread, and hunting an endangered animal.

Mirror-image perceptions: mutual views often held by conflicting people, as when each side sees itself as ethical and peaceful and views the other side as evil and aggressive.

• Ex. opposing sides of a war, political parties, school rivalry

Self-fulfilling prophecy: a phenomenon in which a belief in something causes it to come true

• Ex. You go into the AP Exam saying “There’s no way I pass”. You don’t study, you don’t prepare, because you “know” you’re going to fail. When you score a 1, you are disappointed but not surprised. 

Contact between hostile groups will reduce animosity if they are made to work towards a superordinate goal, or a shared goal that overrides differences among people and requires their cooperation. 

• In the Robber’s Cave study, researcher Muzafer Sherif separated 22 Oklahoma City boys into two separate camp areas. Then he had the two groups compete for prizes in a series of activities. Before long, each group became intensely proud of itself and hostile to the other group. Food wars broke out. Cabins were ransacked. Fistfights had to be broken up by camp counselors. Brought together, the two groups avoided each other, except to taunt and threaten. Then Sherif arranged for the camp water supply to “fail,” and all 22 boys had to work together to restore the water. To rent a movie they all had to pool their resources. To move a stalled truck, the boys needed to combine their strength, pulling and pushing together. Having used isolation and competition to make strangers into enemies, Sherif used shared predicaments and goals to turn enemies into friends. 

Why do we like who we like? Love and friendship may seem complicated, but in reality, it boils down to a few key factors:

• Proximity - we like people who are geographically close to us

  • Mere exposure effect: the phenomenon that repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases liking of them

• Reciprocity - we like people who like us

• Similarity - we like people who like what we like

• Association - we like people who are associated with the things we like

• Appearance - we like people we find attractive

  • Historically, we are attracted to those who are viewed as healthy, but the idea of “healthy” changes with each generation and culture. Physical attractiveness predicts dating frequency and they are perceived as healthier, happier, more honest, and more successful than less attractive counterparts. Despite this, attractive people do not have higher self-esteem or happiness.

Two types of love:

• Passionate Love: An aroused state of intense positive absorption in another, usually present at the beginning of a love relationship. Ex. Summer love

  • • Emotions have two ingredients - physical arousal plus cognitive appraisal

    • Arousal from any source can enhance one emotion or another, depending on how we interpret and label the arousal

• Companionate Love: A deep, affectionate attachment we feel for those with whom our lives are intertwined. Ex. Soul mates 

  • • Equity: a condition in which people receive from a relationship in proportion to what they give to it

    • Self-disclosure: revealing the intimate aspects to oneself to others (a.k.a. honesty)

Altruism is an unselfish regard for the welfare of others, or engaging in acts of kindness without expecting anything in return. This can be done through acts of charity, donating to causes, volunteering, etc. 

Why do we help? 

• Social exchange theory states that our social behavior is an exchange process, the aim of which is to maximize benefits and minimize costs.

  • • Ex. giving blood, donating clothes

• The reciprocity norm states that an expectation that people will help those that have helped them.

  • • Ex. offering a ride home to the classmate that helps you with your homework, buying gifts for those that have bought gifts for you

• Social responsibility norm: an expectation that people will help those in need of help

Psychologists have varied ways to view and study personality—our characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting. 

• Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory proposed that childhood sexuality and unconscious motivations influence personality. 

• The humanistic theories focused on our inner capacities for growth and self-fulfillment. 

• Trait theories examine characteristic patterns of behavior (traits). 

• Social-cognitive theories explore the interaction between people’s traits (including their thinking) and their social context. 

Psychodynamic theories of personality view human behavior as a dynamic interaction between the conscious mind and unconscious mind. These theories are descended from Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis—his theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts, as well as, the associated treatment techniques to expose and interpret these unconscious tensions. 

Freud’s case studies led to his “discovery” of the unconscious - a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. Basic to Freud’s theory was his belief that the mind is mostly hidden. Our conscious awareness is like the part of an iceberg that floats above the surface. Beneath this awareness is the larger unconscious mind, with its thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. Some of these thoughts we store temporarily in a preconscious area, from which we can retrieve them into conscious awareness. Of greater interest to Freud was the mass of unacceptable passions and thoughts that he believed we repress, or forcibly block from our consciousness because they would be too unsettling to acknowledge. Freud believed that without our awareness, these troublesome feelings and ideas powerfully influence us, sometimes gaining expression in disguised forms—the work we choose, the beliefs we hold, our daily habits, our upsetting symptoms.

Freud believed that human personality, including its emotions and desires, arises from a conflict between impulse and restraint—between our aggressive, pleasure-seeking biological urges and our internalized social controls over these urges. Freud believed personality arises from our efforts to resolve this basic conflict—to express these impulses in ways that bring satisfaction without also bringing guilt or punishment. To understand the mind’s dynamics during this conflict, Freud proposed three interacting systems: the id, ego, and superego.

• Id → pleasure principle demands immediate gratification → largely unconscious reservoir of psychic energy that strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives

• Ego → reality principle → conscious mediator between the id and superego, making goals and actions reasonable and realistic

• Superego → morality principle → represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgement and future aspirations

• Hypnosis - By changing the focus of the patient, some psychotherapists can access repressed memories or unconscious motives.

• Dream interpretation - Freud believed dreams allowed for the unconscious mind to make itself known. 

  • • Manifest content: summary of the dream

    • Latent content: hidden meaning of the dream

• Free Association - a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind

• Projective Tests

As members of social groups, we must control our sexual and aggressive impulses, not act them out. But sometimes the ego fears losing control of this inner id–superego war. The presumed result is a dark cloud of unfocused anxiety that leaves us feeling unsettled but unsure why. Freud proposed that the ego protects itself with defense mechanisms—tactics that reduce or redirect anxiety by distorting reality. For Freud, all defense mechanisms function indirectly and unconsciously. 

Example: how a high school student might respond to being cut from the soccer team using different defense mechanisms

Personality tests reflect the basic ideas of particular personality theories. Such a test would need to provide some sort of road into the unconscious—to unearth the residue of early childhood experiences, move beneath surface thoughts, and reveal hidden conflicts and impulses. Objective assessment tools, such as agree-disagree or true-false questionnaires, would be inadequate because they would merely tap the conscious surface.

• Projective tests: a personality test, such as the Rorschach, that provides ambiguous images designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics.

• Rorschach Inkblots: provides information about a person's thought processes, perceptions, motivations, and attitude toward their environment; used to elicit info about the structure and dynamics of an individual's personality functioning

• Thematic Apperception: people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.

• Questionnaires:

  • • Myers-Briggs 16 Personality Types

    • Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) → used for diagnosing disorders

By the 1960s, some personality psychologists had become discontented with the sometimes bleak focus on drives and conflicts in psychodynamic theory, and the mechanistic psychology of B. F. Skinner’s behaviorism. Two pioneering theorists—Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers—offered a third-force perspective that emphasized human potential. In contrast to Sigmund Freud’s emphasis on disorders born out of dark conflicts, these humanistic theorists emphasized the ways people strive for self-determination and self-realization. In contrast to behaviorism’s scientific objectivity, they studied people through their own self-reported experiences and feelings. Humanistic theories view personality with a focus on the potential for healthy personal growth.

Maslow proposed that we are motivated by a hierarchy of needs. If our physiological needs are met, we become concerned with personal safety. If we achieve a sense of security, we then seek to love, to be loved, and to love ourselves. With our love needs satisfied, we seek self-esteem. Having achieved self-esteem, we ultimately seek self-actualization (the process of fulfilling our potential) and self-transcendence (meaning, purpose, and identity beyond the self).

Fellow humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers agreed with much of Maslow’s thinking. Rogers’ person-centered perspective held that people are basically good and are endowed with self-actualizing tendencies. Unless thwarted by an environment that inhibits growth, each of us is like an acorn, primed for growth and fulfillment. Rogers believed that a growth-promoting social climate provides:

• Acceptance

  • Unconditional positive regard: a caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude to help people develop self-awareness and self-acceptance

  • Self-concept: all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves in response to the question “who am I?”

• Genuineness

• Empathy

When Gordon Allport interviewed Sigmund Freud, he discovered just how preoccupied the founder of psychoanalysis was with finding hidden motives, even in Allport’s own behavior during the interview. That experience ultimately led Allport to do what Freud did not do: to describe personality in terms of fundamental traits, or people’s characteristic patterns of behavior or a disposition to feel/act in certain ways (such as the curiosity that actually motivated Allport to see Freud).

Hans & Sybil Eysenck personality is based on 2 dimensions: 

• Introversion vs Extroversion 

• Neuroticism vs. Stability 

Katharine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers developed the Myers-Briggs test known today as the MBTI. Measures four different bipolar factors:

• • Introversion vs Extraversion

  • Intuitive vs Observant

  • Thinking vs Feeling

  • Prospecting vs Judging

Paul Costa and Robert McCrae created the Big 5 Personality Inventory which measured where individuals fell on scales in the following areas:

• • Openness to experience

  • Conscientiousness

  • Extraversion

  • Agreeableness

  • Neuroticism

Personality Inventories are questionnaires (often with true-false or agree-disagree items) on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors; used to assess selected personality traits.

• Factor Analysis (a technique that is used to reduce a large number of variables into fewer numbers of factors) is used to cluster items and score personality “tests”.

• Empirically derived: a test created by selecting from a pool of items those that discriminate between groups

Do you act the same way around your friends as you do your family? Probably not. But if personality is believed to be stable and unchanging, why would your behavior differ depending on who you are with? 

This is the basis for the person-situation controversy proposed by Walter Mischel. The person-situation controversy refers to the debate concerning whether it is the situation that the person is in or the personality of the person that determines their behavior. In unfamiliar, formal situations—perhaps as a guest in the home of a person from another culture—our traits remain hidden as we carefully attend to social cues. In familiar, informal situations—just hanging out with friends—we feel less constrained, allowing our traits to emerge. In these informal situations, our expressive styles—our animation, manner of speaking, and gestures—are impressively consistent.

Reciprocal determinism refers to the interacting influences of behavior, cognition, and environment. 

For example, Rosa’s past romantic experience (her behaviors) influence her romantic attitudes (internal factor), which affect how she now responds to Ryan (environmental factor) as a potential romantic partner.

Consider three specific ways in which individuals and environments interact:

• Different people choose different environments. The reading you do, the shows you watch, the music you listen to, the friends you associate with—all are part of an environment you participated in choosing, based partly on your disposition. People with inflated self-esteem choose to post frequent selfies in online environments, where they can receive the public attention and praise they crave. This leads to even greater self-love. We choose our environment and it then shapes us.

• Our personalities shape how we interpret and react to events. Anxious people tend to attend and react strongly to relationship threats. If we perceive the world as threatening, we will watch for threats and be prepared to defend ourselves.

• Our personalities help create situations to which we react. How we view and treat people influences how they then treat us. If we expect that others will not like us, our bragging and other efforts to seek their approval might cause them to reject us.

The self is the center of personality, organizing our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Considering possible selves helps motivate us toward positive development, but focusing too intensely on ourselves can lead to the spotlight effect (overestimating others’ noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders).

High self-esteem (one’s feelings of self-worth) is beneficial, but unrealistically high self-esteem is dangerous (linked to aggressive behavior) and fragile. Rather than unrealistically promoting children’s feelings of self-worth, it is better to reward their achievements, which leads to feelings of competence. Self-efficacy refers to one’s sense of competence and effectiveness.

How do excessive optimism, blindness to one’s own incompetence, and self-serving bias reveal the costs of self-esteem, and how do defensive and secure self-esteem differ?

• Excessive optimism can lead to complacency and prevent us from seeing real risks, while blindness to one’s own incompetence may lead us to make the same mistakes repeatedly.

• Self-serving bias is our normal tendency to perceive ourselves favorably, as when viewing ourselves as better than average or when accepting credit for our successes but not blame for our failures.

• Narcissism is excessive self-love and self-absorption.

• Defensive self-esteem is fragile, focuses on sustaining itself, and views failure or criticism as a threat. Secure self-esteem is sturdy, enabling us to feel accepted for who we are.

Although individuals vary, different cultures tend to emphasize either individualism or collectivism. Cultures based on self-reliant individualism tend to value personal independence and individual achievement. They define identity in terms of self-esteem, personal goals and attributes, and personal rights and liberties. Cultures based on socially connected collectivism tend to value group goals, social identity, and commitments. They define identity in terms of interdependence, tradition, and harmony.

• Individualist → what’s “best” for you

• Collectivist → what’s “best” for everyone

Our motivations (needs or desires that energizes and directs behavior) arise from the interplay between nature (the bodily “push”) and nurture (the “pulls” from our personal experiences, thoughts, and culture). Our motives drive our behavior. 

Theories of Motivation:

• Instinct

• Drive-reduction

• Arousal

• Hierarchy of Needs

Intrinsic motivation is when we find participation in an activity personally rewarding and fulfilling, while extrinsic motivation is when we participate in an activity to gain a reward or avoid punishment. 

For example, if you study psychology on your own because you find it fascinating and enjoyable, that’s intrinsic motivation. If you study psychology just to do well in class and possibly get a passing score on the AP exam, exempting that class in college, that’s extrinsic motivation. 

“Without friends, no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.” - Aristotle

Separated from friends or family—alone in prison or at a new school or in a foreign land—most people feel keenly their lost connections with important others. This deep need to belong—our affiliation need—seems a key human motivation. Originally, our survival depended on the presence of others. While we evolved to have more protection from the outside world, we still depend on others to survive daily life. 

• Affiliation: the need to build relationships and to feel part of a group

Avenues to connection and relationship have changed with technology, from face-to-face then letters then phone calls and now text and FaceTime. This shift allows us to reach people from across the globe instantly, but it also provides distance to say things we wouldn’t say face-to-face. Electronic communication can make us more comfortable with sharing our innermost feelings but social networking also provides our narcissistic sides to break free.

Can you recall feeling excluded or ignored or shunned? Perhaps you were unfriended or ignored online. Perhaps others gave you the silent treatment, avoided you, looked away, mocked you, or shut you out in some other way. Or perhaps you have felt excluded when among people speaking an unfamiliar language.

All these experiences are instances of ostracism, or deliberate social exclusion of individuals or groups. Worldwide, humans use many forms of ostracism—exile, imprisonment, solitary confinement—to punish, and therefore control, social behavior. For children, even a brief time-out in isolation can be punishing. Being shunned threatens one’s need to belong and can have detrimental effects. 

Some motives seem to have little obvious survival value. Billionaires may be motivated to make ever more money, reality TV stars to attract ever more social media followers, politicians to achieve ever more power, daredevils to seek ever greater thrills. Such motives seem not to diminish when they are fed. The more we achieve, the more we may need to achieve. 

• Achievement Motivation: a desire for significant accomplishment, for mastering skills or ideas, for control, and for attaining a high standard

• Grit: passion and perseverance in the pursuit of long-term goals

The complex interaction of appetite hormones and brain activity helps explain the body’s predisposition to maintain a particular weight. When semistarved rats fall below their normal weight, their “weight thermostat” signals the body to restore the lost weight. It’s as though fat cells cry out “Feed me!” and grab glucose from the bloodstream. Hunger increases and energy expenditure decreases. This stable weight toward which semi-starved rats return is their set point. In rats and humans, heredity influences body type and approximate set point. This explains why people struggle to gain or lose weight, because our bodies are resistant to change from their set point. 

Our bodies regulate weight through the control of food intake, energy output, and basal metabolic rate—the resting rate of energy expenditure for maintaining basic body functions. 

Our internal hunger is pushed by our physiology—our body chemistry and hypothalamic activity. Yet there is more to hunger than meets the stomach. The following environmental factors can determine what you eat and how much:

• Taste Preferences

  • Carbs boost serotonin and makes us feel better.

  • The hotter the climate, the spicier the food.

• Culture 

  • Some cultures believe a dish is a delicacy when to others it is an abomination → guinea pigs, reindeer meat, caviar, peanut butter, cheese, snails, etc. 

• Arousal → Engrossed in a movie and you’ll eat a tub of popcorn. 

• Presence of Others → We tend to eat more around others.

• Serving Size & Selection → Buffets and menus too many options encourage overeating.

Working with Walter Cannon, A. L. Washburn agreed to swallow a balloon attached to a recording device. When inflated to fill his stomach, the balloon transmitted his stomach contractions. Washburn supplied information about his feelings of hunger by pressing a key each time he felt a hunger pang. The discovery→  Whenever Washburn felt hungry, he was indeed having stomach contractions.

People and other animals automatically regulate their caloric intake to prevent energy deficits and maintain a stable body weight. The body is keeping tabs on its available resources. One such resource is the blood sugar glucose. Increases in the hormone insulin (secreted by the pancreas) diminish blood glucose, partly by converting it to stored fat. If your blood glucose level drops, you won’t consciously feel the lower blood sugar. But your brain, which is automatically monitoring your blood chemistry and your body’s internal state, will trigger hunger. Signals from your stomach, intestines, and liver (indicating whether glucose is being deposited or withdrawn) all signal your brain to motivate eating or not.

As dieters know, physiological needs are powerful. This was vividly demonstrated when Ancel Keys and his research team studied semistarvation among wartime volunteers who participated in a challenging experiment as an alternative to military service. After feeding 200 men normally for three months, researchers halved the food intake for 36 of them. These semistarved men became listless and apathetic as their bodies conserved energy. Eventually, their body weights stabilized about 25 percent below their starting weights.

More dramatic were the psychological effects. Consistent with Maslow’s idea of a needs hierarchy, the men became food obsessed. They talked food. They daydreamed food. They collected recipes, read cookbooks, and feasted their eyes on delectable forbidden foods. Preoccupied with their unfulfilled basic need, they lost interest in sex and social activities. The men’s preoccupations illustrate how powerful motives can hijack our consciousness.

Motivated behavior often is driven by powerful emotions that color our lives. In times of stress, emotions can disrupt your life, or save it. Fear, anger, sadness, joy, and love are psychological states that also entail physical reactions. Nervous about an important encounter, we feel stomach butterflies. Anxious over public speaking, we frequent the bathroom. Smoldering over a family conflict, we get a splitting headache. Emotions are our body’s adaptive response. They support our survival. When we face challenges, emotions focus our attention and energize our actions.

• Emotion: a response of the whole organism involving physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience

Scientists have identified several basic human emotions that can be recognized across all cultures:

• Joy

• Anger

• Interest

• Disgust

• Surprise

• Sadness

• Fear

Other scientists have proposed several other basic emotions, but these are more difficult to express and recognize:

• Love

• Pride

• Shame

• Guilt

• Contempt

Divisions of our autonomic nervous system control much of our physiological arousal, and thus contribute to how we express emotion. The sympathetic nervous system, your fight-or-flight response, mobilizes your body for action, contributing to responses to fear, anxiety, or anger. The parasympathetic nervous system, your rest-and-digest response, relaxes your body and returns you to normal. 

Different emotions can share common biological signatures. Yet our varying emotions feel different to us, and they often look different to others. We may appear “paralyzed with fear” or “ready to explode.” Fear and joy prompt a similar increased heart rate, but they stimulate different facial muscles. During fear, your brow muscles tense. During joy, muscles in your cheeks and under your eyes pull into a smile.

Polygraphs, which measure several physiological indicators of emotion, are not accurate enough to justify widespread use in business and law enforcement. The use of the Concealed Information Test and new forms of technology may produce better indications of lying.

Much of our communication is through body movements, facial expressions, and voice tones. Even second-long filmed slices of behavior can reveal feelings. People read a great deal of emotional content in the eyes (“the window to the soul”) and the faces. 

• Introverts are better at detecting emotions; extroverts have emotions that are easier to read. 

• We are primed to quickly detect negative emotions, and even negative emotion words.

• Women tend to read emotions more easily and to express more empathy.

• Context also has an impact on how we read facial expressions. 

• Those who have been abused are biased toward seeing fearful faces as angry.

The meaning of gestures varies with culture, but facial expressions, such as those of happiness and fear, are common the world over. Cultures also differ in the amount of emotion they express.

Research on the facial feedback effect shows that our facial expressions can trigger emotional feelings and signal our body to respond accordingly. We also mimic others’ expressions, which helps us empathize. A similar behavior feedback effect is the tendency of behavior to influence our own and others’ thoughts, feelings, and actions.