Okay, a Status threat is a threat to your status, a Safety threat is a threat to your safety. I can sort of guess what an Affiliation threat is--something like "people like me don't do this, so I had better not".

Not that sophisticated, actually. Affiliation is a catch-all for being loved, liked, accepted, supported, understood, empathized with, etc. Bonding.

A Stimulation threat, I have no plausible guess for. "If I don't do this, I'm going to be bored"?

Yep. Stimulation isn't usually all that important, most of the time. I see Status and Affiliation threats involved in maybe 60-80% of cases, while Stimulation is more like 2 or 3%. But it does show up from time to time, and it makes for a nice acronym. ;-)

A rough chart of the (negative) emotions involved:

Status - anger, humiliation, hurt pride, indignation, embarassment

Affiliation - loneliness, rejection, unworthiness, inadequacy

Safety - fear, anxiety, uncertainty, stress

Stimulation - boredom, apathy, hopelessness

There are, of course, corresponding positive emotions for when you get each of the four values. (Like excitement and fun and joy, in the case of Stimulation.)

Anyway, whether positive or negative, these four kinds of things seem to essentially be the brain's terminal values - if you control a person's self-perceived levels of these things, you can pretty much imprint them however you like.

We spend our childhoods doing just that, actually -- learning associations between our built-in triggers, and either our environment, our actions, or other social constructs.

So for example, I learned over a good chunk of my childhood not to do almost anything exciting because my mother yelled at me until I matched her fear for my Safety, until I indeed loathed any sort of surprise or unexpectedness / unpredictability. I used to hate being around crowds and strangers because who knew what they might say or do?

(I only recently became aware of this link and removed it.... damn I've been missing out!)