Abstract
The short history of the construct of activation7 can be traced back to the work of Cannon on the generalized response of the sympathetic nervous system to threatening events (Cannon, 1929). This generalized response should prepare the organism for fight or flight. The behavior energetics group around Duffy elaborated on the activation construct and commented upon its psychological significance (Duffy, 1957; see below; see also Malmo, 1959). The concept of generalized drive from Hull’s behavior theory (Hull, 1943) was a second important tradition. Finally, the early work on the reticular activating system appeared to offer an anatomical substrate for nonspecific activation (Moruzzi & Magoun, 1949).
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© 1992 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Stemmler, G. (1992). Activation. In: Differential Psychophysiology: Persons in Situations. Recent Research in Psychology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-84655-7_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-84655-7_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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