39 articles
Pyromania
Pyromania is a rare impulse control disorder marked by repeated deliberate fire setting for tension relief, not profit or revenge. Also called pathological fire setting; DSM-5 and ICD-11 diagnose it, treatment evidence remains limited.
Rat race
Rat race: an endless, self-defeating competitive struggle for power, money, and position. Term attested 1934 (aviation), figurative by 1939 (Kitty Foyle); formalized in Akerlof's 1976 economics model.
Reactance (psychology)
Reactance (psychology), from Jack Brehm's 1966 reactance theory: an aversive motivational state, mixing anger and counterarguing, triggered by threats to behavioral freedom, producing resistance, boomerang effects, and reduced persuasion in health campaigns.
Self-control
Self-control: effortful regulation of impulses and delayed gratification in service of long-term goals. Covers Mischel's marshmallow test, Baumeister's strength model and ego depletion, its replication and conceptual crisis, and measurement problems.
Self-determination theory
Self-determination theory (SDT), developed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, is a psychology framework holding that autonomy, competence, and relatedness needs underlie motivation, wellness, and internalization across education, work, and health.
Self-efficacy
Self-efficacy, introduced by Albert Bandura in 1977, is the belief in one's capability to execute behaviors that produce specific outcomes. It arises from four sources (mastery, vicarious experience, persuasion, emotional states), is domain-specific, and is distinct from outcome expectancy.
Success
Success, the attainment of valued goals, is studied through goal-setting field experiments, McClelland's achievement motivation, and well-being research showing ambition predicts career success but only weakly life satisfaction.
Transtheoretical model
Transtheoretical Model (TTM), or stages of change model, by Prochaska and DiClemente: behavior change through precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance, with decisional balance, self-efficacy, and 10 change processes.
Two-factor theory
Herzberg's two-factor theory (motivation-hygiene theory), from The Motivation to Work (1959): motivators create satisfaction, hygiene factors only prevent dissatisfaction, as independent sets.