Internal processes that activate, gude and maintain behaviors over time 

• We do things based on instinctual urges
• Descriptive term, not explanatory
• Fails to account for learning

• Behavior is pushed from within by drives associated with basic biological processes/needs
• Can be purposefully enhanced (such as skipping lunch to enjoy a big dinner), which isn't accounted for by the theory
• Constantly works to achieve homeostasis

• Humans seek the optimal levels of arousal (which differs from person to person)

• Behavior is pulled by expectations of desirable outcomes
• Cognitive

• The desire to harm/injure others in some manner
• Caused by any of a wide range of external stimuli/events, not inherited tendencies
• Often caused by frustration (blocking of ongoing goals-directional behaviors)
• May people become depressed with agression
• Many causes of aggression:

1. Some aggress against others when it is part of their role/job (i.e. KGB, Gestapo, Loan sharks)
2. Provocation from another person (i.e. expletives)
3. Observational Learning from media violence leads to desensitization
4. Uncompfortable/unpleasant envoronmental conditions
5. Higher levels of testosterone correlated with tendecy to aggress
6. Rates of voilent crimes varies tremendously from country to country, pointing to social and cultural forces

3 major elements

1. physiological change: blood pressure, heart rate, etc.
2. Subjective cognitive states: experiences labeled as feelings
3. Expressive behaviors: Extrenal signs of internal reactions

• Events cause increased arousal
• We search our environment to find this cause
• The identification determnies how we label it, with which emotion
• The arousal and the labeling ar the two factors

• An emotional reaction is followed automatically by the opposite reaction
• Repeated exposure to the same event/stimulus results in a reduced initial reaction adn increased opposite reaction

• Left hemisphere processes positive feelings
• Right hemisphere processes negative feelings

• Described 8 fundamental emotions: Joy, anticipation, anger, disgust, sadness, surprise, fear and acceptance
• There are more and less intense dimensions to each of these emotions. i.e. Amazement>Surprise>Distraction
• Each of the 8 emotions can combine with one immediately adjacent on the circle chart to form a new emotion. i.e. Joy and acceptance form love, joy and anticipation form optimism

• Theorized that all emotions are preesent at birth
• They are not displayed all at once, but emerge in response to needs and maturational sequences
• Theory includes 10 base emotions similar to Plutchik's

• Found that certain facial expressions show the same emotion in all peoples.
• Found 7 distinct recognizable expressions

• "Facial Feedback Hypothesis"
• Muscular feeback from one's own facial expressions contribues to one's conscious experience of emotions
• Facial muscles send signals to brain and help recognize the emotion being experienced