UNiT+VIIIA+-+MOTiVATiON


 * UNiT VIIIA - MOTiVATiON:**

Notes (p. 328-336)

 * **Motivation **: a need or desire that energizes and directs behavior
 * __Motivational Concepts: __**
 * **Instinct theory **(now replaced by the //evolutionary perspective//) focuses on genetically predisposed behaviors.
 * **Drive-reduction theory ** focuses on how our inner pushes and external pulls interact.
 * **Arousal theory ** focuses on finding the right level of stimulation.


 * __Instincts and Evolutionary Psychology: __**
 * To qualify as an **instinct**, a complex behavior must have a fixed pattern throughout a species and be unlearned.
 * o Human behavior exhibits certain unlearned fixed patterns, i.e. infants’ innate reflexes for rooting and sucking
 * o Many psychologists view human behavior as something guided by physiological needs and psychological desires.
 * __Drives and Incentives: __**
 * The **drive-replacement theory** is the idea that a physiological need creates an aroused state that drives an organism to reduce their need by means of things, such as eating or drinking.
 * o In certain circumstances, when a physiological need increases, so does a psychological drive—an aroused, motivated state.
 * § <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Physiological aim of drive reduction: **homeostasis** – the maintenance of a steady internal state, i.e. regulation of body temperature
 * § <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">We are pulled by **incentives**—positive or negative stimuli that lure or repel us.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Freshly baked pizza, aroma of good food, etc.
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Optimum arousal: __**
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Some motivated behaviors actually increase arousal.
 * o <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Human motivation aims to seek optimum levels of arousal.
 * § <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Having all our biological needs satisfied, we feel driven to experience stimulation and hunger for information.
 * § <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Lacking stimulation, we feel bored and seek ways to increase arousal to some optimum level.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">With too much stimulation comes stress, and then we look for a way to decrease arousal.
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">A Hierarchy of Motives: __**
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Some needs take priority over others.
 * o <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Abraham Maslow (1970) described these priorities as a **hierarchy of needs.**
 * § <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">At the base of this pyramid are our physiological needs, such as those for food and water. Only if these needs are met are we prompted to meet our need for safety, and then to satisfy the uniquely human needs to give and receive love and to enjoy self-esteem. Beyond this, said Maslow (1971), lies the need to actualize one’s full potential.
 * o <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Maslow also proposed that some people attain a level of self-transcendence, a self-actualization level where people strive for meaning, purpose, and communion that is beyond the self that is transpersonal.
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Hunger: __**
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Hunger can be a provocative force, prompting one to do unimaginable acts.
 * o <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">David Mandel (1983), a Nazi concentration camp survivor, recalled how a starving “father and son would fight over a piece of bread. Like dogs.” One father, whose 20-year-old son stole his bread from under his pillow while he slept, went into a deep depression, asking over and over how his son could do such a thing. The next day the father died. “Hunger does something to you that’s hard to describe,” Mandel explained.
 * § <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">This description highlights the supremacy of physiological needs came from starvation experiences in World War II prison camps.
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">The Physiology of Hunger - Body Chemistry and the Brain: __**
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Hunger = stomach contractions.
 * o <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Even without stomach pangs, hunger would still persist. Some hunger persists similarly in humans whose ulcerated or cancerous stomachs have been removed.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">People and other animals automatically regulate their caloric intake to prevent energy deficits and maintain a stable body weight. This suggests that somehow, somewhere, the body is keeping tabs on its available resources.
 * o <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Glucose is one of these resources.
 * § <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Increases in the hormone insulin diminish blood **glucose**, partly by converting it to stored fat.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">If your blood glucose level drops, you won’t consciously feel this change. But your brain, which is automatically monitoring your blood chemistry and your body’s internal state, will trigger hunger.
 * o <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Hunger is controlled by the hypothalamus. Two distinct hypothalamic centers influence eating.
 * § <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Activity along the sides of the hypothalamus (the lateral hypothalamus) brings on hunger. If electrically stimulated there, well-fed animals begin to eat.
 * § <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Activity in the second center—the lower mid-hypothalamus (the ventromedial hypothalamus)—depresses hunger. Stimulate this area and an animal will stop eating; destroy it and the animal’s stomach and intestines will process food more rapidly, causing it to become extremely fat.
 * **__<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">The appetite hormones __**
 * o **<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Insulin **<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">: Secreted by pancreas; controls blood glucose.
 * o **<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Leptin: **<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;"> Secreted by fat cells; when abundant, causes brain to increase metabolism and decrease hunger.
 * o **<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Orexin: **<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;"> Hunger-triggering hormone secreted by hypothalamus.
 * o **<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Ghrelin: **<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;"> Secreted by empty stomach; sends “I’m hungry” signals to the brain.
 * o **<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Obestatin **<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">: Secreted by stomach; sends out “I’m full” signals to the brain.
 * o **<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">PYY: **<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;"> Digestive tract hormone; sends “I’m not hungry” signals to the brain.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">The complex interaction of appetite hormones and brain activity may help explain the body’s apparent predisposition to maintain itself at a particular weight level.
 * o <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Hunger increases and energy expenditure decreases.
 * o <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">**Set point:** the point at which an individual’s “weight thermostat” is supposedly set. When the body falls below this weight, an increase in hunger and a lowered metabolic rate may act to restore the lost weight.
 * o <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Our bodies regulate weight through the control of food intake, energy output, and **basal metabolic rate**—the rate of energy expenditure for maintaining basic body functions when the body is at rest.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Settling point: level at which a person's weight settles in response to caloric intake and expenditure (influenced by environment and biology)

=**__Notes (p.337-347)__**=


 * __The Psychology of Hunger:__**
 * Our eagerness to eat is pushed by our physiological state—our body chemistry and hypothalamic activity.
 * o Part of knowing when to eat is our memory of our last meal. As time passes since we last ate, we anticipate eating again and start feeling hungry.
 * __Taste Preferences: Biology and Culture:__**
 * Body chemistry and environmental factors together influence not only when we feel hungry, also our taste preferences.
 * o When stressed, we crave starchy, carbohydrate-laden foods:
 * § Carbohydrates help boost levels of serotonin, which has calming effects.
 * Preferences for sweet and salty types are genetic and universal.
 * Other taste preferences are conditioned—when given highly salted foods, people develop a liking for excess salt.
 * Culture also affects taste:
 * o Bedouins, for example, enjoy eating the eye of a camel, which most North Americans would find repulsive.
 * § **Neophobia** (dislike of things unfamiliar) was adaptive for our ancestors, protecting them from potentially toxic substances.
 * Other taste preferences are also adaptive.
 * o Spices most commonly used in hot-climate recipes inhibit bacteria growth
 * o Pregnancy-related nausea
 * __The Ecology of Eating:__**
 * Situations also control our eating.
 * o People eat more when eating with others; the presence of others tends to amplify our natural behavior tendencies
 * § **Social facilitations**—explains why, after a party or a feast, we realize we’ve overeaten.
 * o Similarly is **unit bias**, which occurs with similar mindlessness.
 * § For cultures struggling with rising obesity rates, the principle—that ecology influences eating—implies a practical message: Reduce standard portion sizes, and serve food with smaller bowls, plates, and utensils.
 * __Eating Disorders:__**
 * Our bodies are naturally disposed to maintain a normal weight, including stored energy reserves for times when food becomes unavailable. Yet sometimes psychological influences overwhelm biological wisdom.
 * o **Anorexia nervosa:** typically begins as a weight-loss diet. People with anorexia—usually adolescents and 3 out of 4 times females—drop significantly (15 percent or more) below normal weight. Yet they feel fat, fear gaining weight, and remain obsessed with losing weight. About half of those with anorexia display a binge-purge-depression cycle.
 * o **Bulimia Nervosa:**may also be triggered by a weight-loss diet, broken by gorging on forbidden foods. Binge-purge eaters—mostly women in their late teens or early twenties—eat the way some people with alcohol dependency drink—in spurts, sometimes influenced by friends who are bingeing. In a cycle of repeating episodes, overeating is followed by compensatory purging (through vomiting or laxative use) or fasting or excessive exercise. Preoccupied with food (craving sweet and high-fat foods), and fearful of becoming overweight, binge-purge eaters experience bouts of depression and anxiety, most severe during and following binges. bulimia is marked by weight fluctuations within or above normal ranges, making the condition easy to hide.
 * § **Binge-eating disorder**: Those who do significant binge eating, followed by remorse—but do not purge, fast, or exercise excessively
 * Eating disorders do not provide (as some have speculated) a telltale sign of childhood sexual abuse.
 * o Mothers of girls with eating disorders tend to focus on their own weight and on their daughters’ weight and appearance.
 * o Families of bulimia patients have a higher-than-usual incidence of childhood obesity and negative self-evaluation.
 * o Families of anorexia patients tend to be competitive, high-achieving, and protective.
 * Anorexia sufferers often have low self-evaluations, set perfectionist standards, fret about falling short of expectations, and are intensely concerned with how others perceive them
 * Genetics may influence susceptibility to eating disorders.
 * Twins are somewhat more likely to share the disorder if they are identical rather than fraternal
 * Culture and gender also plays a role in these disorders
 * Body ideals vary across culture and time
 * In India, for example, women students rate their ideal shape as close to their actual shape
 * In the West, there is a high emphasis on slim figure
 * Today’s sickness lies in part within our weight-obsessed culture.
 * motivates millions of women to be “always dieting, ” and that encourages eating binges by pressuring women to live in a constant state of semistarvation.

__**Obesity and Weight Control:**__
 * Our bodies store fat for good reasons. Fat is an ideal form of stored energy—a high-calorie fuel reserve to carry the body through periods when food is scarce—a common occurrence in the feast-or-famine existence of our prehistoric ancestors.
 * Worldwide, estimates the World Health Organization (WHO) (2007), more than 1 billion people are overweight, and 300 million of them are clinically obese(defined by WHO as a body mass index of 30 or more
 * Being slightly overweight poses only modest health risks :
 * Being significant obesity increases the risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, gallstones, arthritis, and certain types of cancer, thus shortening life expectancy.

__**The Social Effects of Obesity:**__
 * Obesity can also be socially toxic, by affecting both how you are treated and how you feel about yourself.
 * Obese people know the stereotype: slow, lazy, and sloppy
 * Widen people’s images on a video monitor (making them look fatter) and observers suddenly rate them as less sincere, less friendly, meaner, and more obnoxious
 * Weight bias is especially strong among women.
 * In national studies of U. S. adults, obesity has been associated with lower psychological well-being, especially among women, and with a 25 percent increase in depression and anxiety

__**The Physiology of Obesity**__:
 * Research on the physiology of obesity challenges the stereotype of severely overweight people being weak-willed gluttons.
 * Size and number of fat cells determine body fat.
 * A typical adult has 30 to 40 billion of these miniature fuel tanks, half of which lie near the skin’s surface
 * In an obese person, fat cells may swell to two or three times their normal size and then divide or trigger nearby immature fat cells to divide—resulting in up to 75 billion fat cells

__**Set Point and Metabolism:**__
 * Once we become fat, we require less food to maintain our weight than we did to attain it:
 * compared with other tissue, fat has a lower metabolic rate—it takes less food energy to maintain
 * When an overweight person’s body drops below its previous set point (or settling point), the person’s hunger increases and metabolism decreases. Thus, the body adapts to starvation by burning off fewer calories

__**The Genetic Factor:**__
 * Studies reveal a genetic influence on body weight.
 * Despite shared family meals, adoptive siblings’ body weights are uncorrelated with one another or with those of their adoptive parents. Rather, people’s weights resemble those of their biological parents
 * Identical twins have closely similar weights, even when reared apart
 * Given an obese parent, a boy is three times, and a girl six times, more likely to be obese than their counterparts with normal-weight parents
 * Scientists have discovered many different genes that influence body weight.
 * One gene scan of 40,000 people worldwide identified a variant of a gene called //FTO//, which nearly doubles the risk of becoming obese

__** The Food and Activity Factors: **__
 * There are other factors that influence obesity besides genes, such as sleep loss, and social influence.
 * **Sleep Loss**: Studies in France, Japan, Spain, the United States, and Switzerland all show that children and adults who skimp on sleep are more vulnerable to obesity
 * With sleep deprivation, the levels of leptin (which reports body fat to the brain) fall and ghrelin (the stomach hormone that stimulates appetite) rise.
 * **Social Influence**: People were most likely to become obese when a friend became obese. If the friend who became obese is a close friend, the odds of one’s likewise becoming obese almost tripled.
 * Inactivity is compounded by ever-larger food unit portions of high-calorie foods.
 * The “bottom” line: New stadiums, theaters, and subway cars are widening their own seats to accommodate population growth and increasing obesity:
 * Environmental Reforms must be made:
 * Establish a fast-food–free zone around schools.
 * Slap an extra tax on calorie-laden junk food and soft drinks. We’re reducing smoking with increased cigarette taxes. Why not, for the same reason, institute a “Twinkie Tax”?
 * Use the revenues to subsidize healthy foods and to finance health-supportive nutritional advertising.
 * There can be high levels of **heritability**:
 * genetic influence on individual difference without heredity explaining group differences
 * genes mostly determine why a person is heavier than another
 * environment determines why people today are heavier than counterparts 50 years ago.
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Losing Weight: __**
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">With fat cells, settling points, metabolism, and genetic and environmental factors all tirelessly conspiring against shedding excess pounds, what advice can psychology people who want to lose weight?
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Permanent weight loss is not easy.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Those who do manage to keep pounds off set realistic and moderate goals, undertaking programs that modify their life-style and ongoing eating behavior
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">realize that being moderately heavy is less risky than being extremely thin
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">They exercise regularly.
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Tips:
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Begin only if you feel motivated and self-disciplined.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Minimize exposure to tempting food cues.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Take steps to boost your metabolism
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Eat healthy foods
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Don’t starve all day and eat one big meal at night.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Beware of the binge.

=__**Notes (p.348-354)**__=

__**Sexual Motivation:**__
 * Sex is part of life.
 * Sexual motivation is nature’s clever way of making people procreate, thus enabling our species’ survival.

__**The Physiology of Sex:**__
 * Like hunger, sexual arousal depends on the interplay of internal and external stimuli.

__**The Sexual Response Cycle:**__
 * Masters and Johnson describes the sexual response cycle in four stages.
 * —excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution
 * During the initial //**excitement phase**//, the genital areas become engorged with blood, a woman’s vagina expands and secretes lubricant, and her breasts and nipples may enlarge
 * In the //**plateau phase**//**//,//** excitement peaks as breathing, pulse, and blood pressure rates continue to increase. The penis becomes fully engorged and some fluid—frequently containing enough live sperm to enable conception—may appear at its tip. Vaginal secretion continues to increase
 * Muscle contractions occur all over the body during //**orgasm**//; these were accompanied by further increases in breathing, pulse, and blood pressure rates.
 * he body gradually returns to its unaroused state as the engorged genital blood vessels release their accumulated blood—relatively quickly if orgasm has occurred, relatively slowly otherwise.
 * Resolution phase – male enters **refractory period**, lasting a few minutes to a day or more, during which he is incapable of another orgasm.
 * Female’s much shorter refractory period may be enable for her to have more orgasms if restimulated during or soon after resolution.

__**Hormones and Sexual Behavior:**__ __**The Psychology of Sex:**__ __**External Stimuli:**__ __**Imagined Stimuli:**__ __**Adolescent Sexuality:**__
 * Sex hormones have two effects: They direct the physical development of male and female sex characteristics, and (especially in nonhuman animals) they activate sexual behavior.
 * When females become sexually receptive, they secrete female hormones, **estrogen**, which peak during ovulation.
 * For males, the male sex hormone, **testosterone**, is secreted stimulating sex organs.
 * In humans, hormones more loosely influence sexual behavior, although sexual desire rises slightly at ovulation among women with mates.
 * Women’s sexuality differs from that of other mammalian females in being more responsive to testosterone levels than to estrogen levels
 * If a woman’s natural testosterone level drops, as happens with removal of the ovaries or adrenal glands, her sexual interest may wane.
 * testosterone-replacement therapy sometimes restores diminished sexual appetite.
 * In men, normal fluctuations in testosterone levels, from man to man and hour to hour, have little effect on sexual drive
 * In later life, as sex hormone levels decline, the frequency of sexual fantasies and intercourse declines as well
 * Sex and Hunger are two different motivations, but hunger responds to need, while sex response to arousal and desire.
 * If we do not have sex, we may feel like dying, but we don’t actually die.
 * Both depend on internal physiological factors, and both are influenced by external and imagined stimuli, as well as cultural expectations.
 * Seeing, hearing, or reading erotic material can arouse both males and females.
 * Their brains do, however, respond differently, with fMRI scans revealing a more active amygdala in men viewing erotica
 * Sexually explicit material can have adverse effects
 * Depictions of women being sexually coerced, and enjoying it, tends to increase male viewers’ acceptance of the false idea that women enjoy rape, and they increase male viewers’ willingness to hurt women.
 * The stimuli inside our heads, our imagination, can influence sexual arousal and desire.
 * People, who have no genital sensation because of spinal cord injury, can still feel sexual desire.
 * Dreams have erotic potential.
 * Sleep researchers have discovered that genital arousal accompanies all types of dreams, even though most dreams have no sexual content.
 * Dreams sometimes contain sexual imagery that leads to orgasm
 * Men (whether gay or straight) fantasize about sex more often, more physically, and less romantically.
 * They also prefer less personal and faster-paced sexual content in books and videos
 * Adolescents’ physical maturation fosters a sexual dimension to their emerging identity.
 * Before 1900, a mere 3 percent of women had experienced premarital sex by age 18
 * 2005 – 47% of high school students acknowledged having sexual intercourse
 * Sex during the teen years is often unprotected, leading to risks of pregnancy and **sexually transmitted infections.**

__**Teen Pregnancy:**__ __**Sexually Transmitted Infections:**__
 * Ignorance is a leading cause to many teenage pregnancies.
 * Although 9 in 10 claimed to be knowledgeable, many were unaware that STIs can be transmitted through oral sex (which two-thirds had engaged in); only 19 percent had heard of HPV (human papillomavirus, a leading cause of genital warts and cervical cancer); and only 37 percent mentioned infertility as a possible result of chlamydia.
 * Most teens also overestimate their peers’ sexual activity, a misperception that may influence their own behavior
 * **Minimal communication about birth control** Many teenagers are uncomfortable discussing contraception with their parents, partners, and peers.
 * **Guilt related to sexual activity** In one survey, 72 percent of sexually active 12- to 17-year-old American girls said they regretted having had sex
 * **Alcohol use** Sexually active teens are typically alcohol-using teens
 * **Mass media norms of unprotected promiscuity** Media help write the “social scripts” that affect our perceptions and actions.
 * Unprotected sex has led to increased rates of sexually transmitted infections.
 * 2/3 of new infections occur in people under 25
 * Teenage girls, because of their not yet fully mature biological development and lower levels of protective antibodies, seem especially vulnerable
 * Across the available studies, condoms have, however, been 80 percent effective in preventing transmission of HIV from an infected partner
 * In the United States, STI facts of life have led to a greater emphasis on teen abstinence within some comprehensive sex-education programs.
 * High intelligence
 * Religious engagement
 * Father presence
 * Participation in service learning programs

=**Notes (p. 354-362):**=

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sexual Orientation Statistics: <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sexual orientation is not an indicator of mental health.
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sexual Orientation: __**
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">We express the direction of our sexual interest in our <span class="apple-converted-space" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> **sexual orientation** <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">—our enduring sexual attraction toward members of our own sex (homosexual orientation)or the other sex (heterosexual orientation)
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Cultures vary in attitude toward homosexuality:
 * § <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">n Chile, 32 percent of people say they think homosexuality “is never justified,” as do 50 percent of people in the United States and 98 percent in Kenya and Nigeria
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Gay men and lesbians often recall childhood play preferences like those of the other sex.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Most homosexual people report not becoming aware of same-sex attraction until during or shortly after puberty, and not thinking of themselves as gay or lesbian
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The most accurate figure of homosexual people seems to be about 3 or 4 percent of men and 1 or 2 percent of women.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Estimates derived from the sexual activity of unmarried partners reported in the 2000 U. S. Census
 * § <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">suggests that 2.5 percent of the population is gay or lesbian
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sexual orientation is not an indicator of mental health.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Homosexuality, in and of itself, is not associated with mental disorders or emotional or social problems.” - American Psychological Association
 * § <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">some homosexual individuals, especially during adolescence, struggle with their sexual attractions and are at increased risk for thinking about and attempting suicide
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Initially, they deny/ ignore their desires
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sexual orientation is more strongly established for men
 * § <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">For women, it tends to be more loose and more fluid and changing.
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">In men, a high sex drive is associated with increased attraction to women (if heterosexual) or men (if homosexual).
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> In women, a high sex drive is associated with increased attraction to both men and women.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">When shown pictures of heterosexual couples, in either erotic or non-erotic contexts, heterosexual men look mostly at the woman while heterosexual women look more equally at both the man and the woman
 * § <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Baumeister calls this “**erotic plasticity**”
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Origins of Sexual Orientation: __**
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Most frequent questions about the origins of sexual orientation:
 * o Is homosexuality linked with problems in a child’s relationships with parents, such as with a domineering mother and an ineffectual father, or a possessive mother and a hostile father?
 * § <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The answer to all these questions is apparently “no”.
 * § <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Studies centered around these questions found that: <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Homosexuals are no more likely than heterosexuals to have been smothered by maternal love, <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">neglected by their father, or sexually abused.
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ray Blanchard found that men who have older brothers are also somewhat more likely to be gay and about one-third more likely for each additional older brother.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">fraternal birth-order effect
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">If there are environmental factors that influence sexual orientation, we do not yet know what they are.
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Same-sex Attraction in Animals: __**
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Some degree of homosexuality seems to be a natural part of the animal world.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">At Coney Island’s New York Aquarium, penguins Wendell and Cass spent several years as devoted same-sex partners.
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Brain and Sexual Orientation: __**
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Researcher Simon LeVay <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">studied sections of the hypothalamus taken from deceased heterosexual and homosexual people.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">To avoid biasing the results, he did a //blind study//, not knowing which donors were gay
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">For nine months he peered through his microscope at a cell cluster he thought might be important.
 * § <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">One cell cluster was reliably larger in heterosexual men than in women and homosexual men
 * § <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">A recent discovery found that gay men and straight women have brain hemispheres of similar size, whereas in lesbian women and straight men, the right hemisphere is larger.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">LeVay views the hypothalamic center as an important part of the neural pathway engaged in sexual behavior.
 * § <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">believes that brain anatomy influences sexual orientation.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Responses to hormone-derived sexual scents also point to a brain difference.
 * § <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">When straight women are given a whiff of a scent derived from men’s sweat, their hypothalamus lights up in an area governing sexual arousal.
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Gay men’s brains respond similarly to the men’s scent.
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Genes and Sexual Orientation: __**
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Evidence indicates a genetic influence on sexual orientation.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">First, homosexuality does appear to run in families.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Second, twin studies have established that genes play a substantial role in explaining individual differences in sexual orientation.
 * § <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Identical twins are somewhat more likely than fraternal twins to share a homosexual orientation
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Because sexual orientations differ in many identical twin pairs, especially female twins, we know that other factors besides genes are at work.
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Prenatal Hormones and Sexual Orientation: __**
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Elevated rates of homosexual orientation in identical and fraternal twins suggest that a shared prenatal environment may also be a factor in sexual orientation.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">In animals and some exceptional human cases, abnormal prenatal hormone conditions have altered a fetus’ sexual orientation.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">A critical period for the human brain’s neural-hormonal control system may exist between the middle of the second and fifth months after conception
 * § <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Exposure to the hormone levels typically experienced by female fetuses during this time appears to predispose the person (whether female or male) to be attracted to males in later life.
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">On several traits, gays and lesbians appear to fall midway between straight females and males
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">lesbians’ cochlea and hearing systems develop in a way that is intermediate between those of heterosexual females and heterosexual males, which seems attributable to prenatal hormonal influence
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Fingerprint ridge counts may also differ.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Although most people have more fingerprint ridges on their right hand than on their left, some studies find a greater right-left difference in heterosexual males than in females and gay males
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">A gay-straight difference also appears in studies showing that gay men’s spatial abilities resemble those typical of straight women.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">On mental rotation tasks, straight men tend to outscore women.
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Need to Belong: __**
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Although healthy people vary in their wish for privacy and solitude, most of us seek to affiliate with others, even to become strongly attached to certain others in enduring, close relationships
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">We are what Aristotle called the social animal. “Without friends,” wrote Aristotle in his Nichomachean Ethics, “no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.”
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Aiding Survival: __**
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Social bonds boosted our ancestors’ survival rate.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">By keeping children close to their caregivers, attachments served as a powerful survival impulse.
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Survival also was enhanced by cooperation.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">In solo combat, our ancestors were not the toughest predators.
 * § <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">As hunters, they learned that six hands were better than two.
 * § <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">As foragers, they gained protection from predators and enemies by traveling in groups.
 * § <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">As hunters, they learned that six hands were better than two.
 * § <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">As foragers, they gained protection from predators and enemies by traveling in groups.


 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Wanting to Belong: __**
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The need to belong colors our thoughts and emotions.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">We spend a great deal of time thinking about actual and hoped-for relationships.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">When relationships form, we often feel joy.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">When our need for relatedness is satisfied in balance with two other basic psychological needs— **autonomy** and **competence**—the result is a deep sense of well-being
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">When we feel included, accepted, and loved by those important to us, our self-esteem rides high.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Much of our social behavior therefore aims to increase our belonging—our social acceptance and inclusion.
 * § <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">To avoid rejection, we generally conform to group standards and seek to make favorable impressions
 * § <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> To win friendship and esteem, we monitor our behavior, hoping to create the right impressions.
 * § <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Seeking love and belonging, we spend billions on clothes, cosmetics, and diet and fitness aids—all motivated by our quest for acceptance.
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sustaining Relationships: __**
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">When the fear of being alone seems worse than the pain of emotional or physical abuse, attachments can keep people in abusive relationships. Even when bad relationships break, people suffer.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">After separations, feelings of loneliness and anger—and sometimes even a strange desire to be near the former partner—linger.
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">When something threatens or dissolves our social ties, negative emotions—anxiety, loneliness, jealousy, guilt—overwhelm us
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">We feel empty and pointless.
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Pain of Ostracism: __**
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Worldwide, humans control social behavior via the punishing effects of severe ostracism—of exile, imprisonment, and solitary confinement.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">To be shunned is to have one’s needs threatened.
 * o <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">To experience ostracism is to experience real pain.
 * § <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ostracism elicits increased activity in a brain area, the **anterior cingulate cortex** that also activates in response to physical pain.
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Psychologically, we seem to experience social pain with the same emotional unpleasantness that marks physical pain.
 * <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Rejected and unable to remedy the situation, people may seek new friends—or they may turn nasty.