Learning, Motivation, Emotion, and Stress (Foundational Concept 7)
Learning
Non-associative learning covers habituation (declining response to a repeated harmless stimulus) and sensitization. Classical conditioning pairs a neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) with an unconditioned stimulus (US) until the CS alone elicits a conditioned response; know acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery, generalization, discrimination, and blocking. Biological constraints matter: prepared fears and conditioned taste aversion can form in a single trial and resist extinction. Operant conditioning works through consequences: positive reinforcement (add appetitive), negative reinforcement (remove aversive; both increase behavior), positive punishment (add aversive), negative punishment (remove appetitive). Escape terminates an aversive stimulus; avoidance prevents it. Schedules are fixed or variable, interval or ratio; variable ratio yields the highest, most extinction-resistant rate. Also know shaping and Bandura's observational learning with vicarious reinforcement.
Motivation and emotion
Drive-reduction, arousal (Yerkes-Dodson inverted U, with a lower optimum for difficult tasks), incentive, and Maslow's hierarchy. Controlling extrinsic rewards can undermine intrinsic motivation (overjustification); self-determination theory names autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Emotion theories: James-Lange (physiology first), Cannon-Bard (simultaneous), Schachter-Singer two-factor (arousal plus cognitive label), and appraisal theories.
Stress and health behavior
General adaptation syndrome runs alarm, resistance, exhaustion. Primary appraisal judges threat; secondary appraisal judges resources. Coping is problem-focused or emotion-focused. Health-behavior frameworks include the health belief model, transtheoretical stages of change, theory of planned behavior, and self-efficacy.
Traps
Calling negative reinforcement a punishment; reversing escape and avoidance; expecting the same optimal arousal for easy and hard tasks; reducing Schachter-Singer to arousal alone.
Worked rule
A slot machine pays after an unpredictable number of pulls: variable ratio. A parent who gives candy to stop a child's whining has been negatively reinforced, because the whining (aversive) was removed.