Motivation, Emotion and Personality Flashcards
Why we act, how we feel and what makes each of us consistent. Covers drive-reduction, arousal and incentive theories, Maslow's hierarchy and self-determination theory, the James-Lange, Cannon-Bard and two-factor theories of emotion, and the psychodynamic, humanistic, social-cognitive and trait approaches to personality. In the current course these sit in Unit 4 with social psychology.
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Download CSVStudy Tips for Motivation, Emotion and Personality
Turn the three emotion theories into one scenario card: you see a bear, your heart races, you feel fear. Write the order of events each theory predicts on the back.
Group personality cards by perspective (psychodynamic, humanistic, social-cognitive, trait) and add the assessment each perspective uses, such as projective tests for Freud and inventories for trait theorists.
Learn defense mechanisms from examples, not definitions. The exam describes a behavior, like a student blaming the teacher for a failed test, and asks you to name the mechanism.
Connect motivation theories to your own study habits. Explaining why you revise for intrinsic or extrinsic reasons is the kind of application the free-response questions reward.
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More AP Psychology Topics
Biological Bases of Behavior
The Unit 1 topics that sit around the brain map: how heredity, evolution and the endocrine system shape behavior, how psychoactive drugs change neural firing, and what happens across the sleep cycle. Pair it with the Brain and Neuroscience deck, which covers neurons, brain regions and imaging, for complete Unit 1 coverage.
Brain and Neuroscience
The biological foundations of behavior and mental processes. Covers neuron structure, neurotransmitters, synaptic transmission, major brain regions, nervous system organization, brain imaging techniques, and hemispheric specialization.
Cognition and Intelligence
The thinking side of Unit 2: concepts and prototypes, algorithms and heuristics, the biases and errors that distort judgment, creative thinking, and how intelligence is defined and measured. Covers Kahneman and Tversky's heuristics, functional fixedness, framing, theories of intelligence from Spearman to Gardner and Sternberg, and what makes a test standardized and fair.
Developmental Psychology
The study of physical, cognitive, and social changes across the lifespan. Covers Piaget's cognitive stages, Erikson's psychosocial stages, attachment theory, moral development, prenatal development, language development, parenting styles, and the nature vs. nurture debate.
Learning and Conditioning
Core principles of how organisms acquire and modify behavior. Covers classical conditioning, operant conditioning, observational learning, reinforcement schedules, and key phenomena like extinction and generalization.
Memory
How memories are encoded, stored and retrieved, and why they fail. Covers the Atkinson-Shiffrin and working memory models, explicit and implicit memory, levels of processing, chunking, long-term potentiation, retrieval cues, the forgetting curve, interference, amnesia and memory distortion. Memory is the largest block of content in Unit 2, Cognition.
Psychological Disorders
How psychological disorders are defined, explained and classified, and the core features of each major category in the AP course. Covers the DSM, the biopsychosocial and diathesis-stress models, neurodevelopmental, schizophrenia spectrum, depressive, bipolar, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive, trauma-related, dissociative, eating and personality disorders. This is the largest part of Unit 5, Mental and Physical Health.
Research Methods
Research Methods is the foundation of AP Psychology, covering experimental design, statistical concepts, ethical guidelines, and the scientific method. Understanding how psychologists collect and interpret data is tested throughout the exam.
Sensation and Perception
How the senses turn light, sound, pressure and motion into neural signals, and how the brain organizes those signals into what we perceive. Covers thresholds and signal detection, vision and color theories, hearing and pitch theories, pain, balance, Gestalt grouping, depth cues and perceptual constancy. Sensation sits in Unit 1 of the current AP course and perception in Unit 2.
Social Psychology
Social Psychology examines how people think about, influence, and relate to one another. Covers attribution, conformity, obedience, group dynamics, prejudice, aggression, and prosocial behavior. These topics are heavily tested on the AP Psychology exam.
Treatment and Health Psychology
The rest of Unit 5: how stress affects health, how people cope, what positive psychology studies, and how psychological disorders are treated. Covers Selye's general adaptation syndrome, coping styles, adverse childhood experiences, the history of treatment from Pinel to deinstitutionalization, psychodynamic, humanistic, behavioral and cognitive therapies, and biomedical treatments.
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