Mental States: Lecture Notes
Mechanisms of Motivation, Sleep, and Emotion
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Mechanisms of Motivation
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Sex and Aggression
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Making Sense of the Central Nervous System
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SKIP: Hunger, Sex, Reward Mechanisms
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Sleeping and Dreaming
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Arousal and Emotion
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Making Sense of the Limbic System
Prof. Pete Hurd www.psych.ualberta.ca/~phurd/
Why are some individuals more
aggressive than others?
What causes variation in aggressiveness?
Tinbergen's (from Aristotle) 4 causes:
- Ultimate causes
- Proximate causes
- Ontogeny
- Phylogeny
1. If there is an advantage to being more
aggressive, then:
2. What is the cost which counterbalances
this benefit at higher levels
of aggressiveness?
Aggression variables
- Fighting Ability
- Relavive Resource Value
- Aggressiveness
Apparent benefit:
Possible cost?
Contradicts West Point data
Sexual selection of facial features
Other Hypotheses
- Physiological cost
- Social cost (male-male)
- Mating cost
Preliminary results
Making Sense of the CNS
Emotion & the Limbic System
Emotion serves to arouse the nervous system:
Finding a $50 Bill
Memory and Emotion
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Neutral narrative
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Boy visits father in hospital, watches a disaster response exercise in
which a simulated severed leg is reattached
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Emotional narrative
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Boy visits father in hospital, on the way gets hit by car, severs leg,
which is successfully reattached
Affect and Emotion
Emotion = Transient response to a stimulus
Evoke behaviour and cognition
Affect = Mental state
May give rise to emotion
Love
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