Vocabulary

5α-reductase: An enzyme required to convert testosterone to 5α-dihydrotestosterone.
Abducens nucleus: A group of excitatory motor neurons in the medial brainstem that send projections through the VIth cranial nerve to control the ipsilateral lateral rectus muscle. In addition, abducens interneurons send an excitatory projection across the midline to a subdivision of cells in the ipsilateral oculomotor nucleus, which project through the IIIrd cranial nerve to innervate the ipsilateral medial rectus muscle.
Ability model: An approach that views EI as a standard intelligence that utilizes a distinct set of mental abilities that (1) are intercorrelated, (2) relate to other extant intelligences, and (3) develop with age and experience (Mayer & Salovey, 1997).
Ablation: Surgical removal of brain tissue.
Absolute stability: Consistency in the level or amount of a personality attribute over time.
Accommodation: Changing one's beliefs about the world and how it works in light of new experience.
Acetylcholine: An organic compound neurotransmitter consisting of acetic acid and choline. Depending upon the receptor type, acetycholine can have excitatory, inhibitory, or modulatory effects.
Action potential: A transient all-or-nothing electrical current that is conducted down the axon when the membrane potential reaches the threshold of excitation.
Active person–environment transactions: The interplay between individuals and their contextual circumstances that occurs whenever individuals play a key role in seeking out, selecting, or otherwise manipulating aspects of their environment.
Active-constructive responding: Demonstrating sincere interest and enthusiasm for the good news of another person.
Adoption: To take in and raise a child of other parents legally as one’s own.
Affect: An emotional process; includes moods, subjective feelings, and discrete emotions.
Afferent nerve fibers: Single neurons that innervate the receptor hair cells and carry vestibular signals to the brain as part of the vestibulocochlear nerve (cranial nerve VIII).
Afferent nerves: Nerves that carry messages to the brain or spinal cord.
A-fibers: Fast-conducting sensory nerves with myelinated axons. Larger diameter and thicker myelin sheaths increases conduction speed. Aβ-fibers conduct touch signals from low-threshold mechanoreceptors with a velocity of 80 m/s and a diameter of 10 μm; Aδ-fibers have a diameter of 2.5 μm and conduct cold, noxious, and thermal signals at 12 m/s. The third and fastest conducting A-fiber is the Aα, which conducts proprioceptive information with a velocity of 120 m/s and a diameter of 20 μm.
Age effects: Differences in personality between groups of different ages that are related to maturation and development instead of birth cohort differences.
Age in place: The trend toward making accommodations to ensure that aging people can stay in their homes and live independently.
Aggression: A form of social interaction that includes threat, attack, and fighting.
Aggression: Any behavior intended to harm another person who does not want to be harmed.
Agnosias: Due to damage of Wernicke’s area. An inability to recognize objects, words, or faces.
Agreeableness: A core personality trait that includes such dispositional characteristics as being sympathetic, generous, forgiving, and helpful, and behavioral tendencies toward harmonious social relations and likeability.
Allodynia: Pain due to a stimulus that does not normally provoke pain, e.g., when a light, stroking touch feels painful.
Altruism: A motivation for helping that has the improvement of another’s welfare as its ultimate goal, with no expectation of any benefits for the helper.
Altruism: A desire to improve the welfare of another person, at a potential cost to the self and without any expectation of reward.
Amnesia: The loss of memory.
Amygdala: A region located deep within the brain in the medial area (toward the center) of the temporal lobes (parallel to the ears). If you could draw a line through your eye sloping toward the back of your head and another line between your two ears, the amygdala would be located at the intersection of these lines. The amygdala is involved in detecting relevant stimuli in our environment and has been implicated in emotional responses.
Amygdala: Two almond-shaped structures located in the medial temporal lobes of the brain.
Amygdala: A brain structure in the limbic system involved in fear reactivity and implicated in the biological basis for social anxiety disorder.
Analgesia: Pain relief.
Anecdotal evidence: An argument that is based on personal experience and not considered reliable or representative.
Animism: The belief that everyone and everything had a “soul” and that mental illness was due to animistic causes, for example, evil spirits controlling an individual and his/her behavior.
Anomalous face overgeneralization hypothesis: Proposes that the attractiveness halo effect is a by-product of reactions to low fitness. People overgeneralize the adaptive tendency to use low attractiveness as an indicator of negative traits, like low health or intelligence, and mistakenly use higher-than-average attractiveness as an indicator of high health or intelligence.
Anterograde amnesia: Inability to form new memories for facts and events after the onset of amnesia.
Antisocial personality disorder: Counterpart diagnosis to psychopathy included in the third through fifth editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM; APA, 2000). Defined by specific symptoms of behavioral deviancy in childhood (e.g., fighting, lying, stealing, truancy) continuing into adulthood (manifested as repeated rule-breaking, impulsiveness, irresponsibility, aggressiveness, etc.).
Anxiety: A state of worry or apprehension about future events or possible danger that usually involves negative thoughts, unpleasant physical sensations, and/or a desire to avoid harm.
Anxiety disorder: A group of diagnoses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) classification system where anxiety is central to the person’s dysfunctioning. Typical symptoms include excessive rumination, worrying, uneasiness, apprehension, and fear about future uncertainties either based on real or imagined events. These symptoms may affect both physical and psychological health. The anxiety disorders are subdivided into panic disorder, specific phobia, social phobia, posttraumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder.
Anxious-avoidant: Attachment style that involves suppressing one’s own feelings and desires, and a difficulty depending on others.
Anxious-resistant: Attachment style that is self-critical, insecure, and fearful of rejection.
Aphasia: Due to damage of the Broca’s area. An inability to produce or understand words.
Appraisal structure: The set of appraisals that bring about an emotion.
Appraisal theories: Evaluations that relate what is happening in the environment to people’s values, goals, and beliefs. Appraisal theories of emotion contend that emotions are caused by patterns of appraisals, such as whether an event furthers or hinders a goal and whether an event can be coped with.
Archival research: A type of research in which the researcher analyses records or archives instead of collecting data from live human participants.
Arcuate fasciculus: A fiber tract that connects Wernicke’s and Broca’s speech areas.
Aromatase: An enzyme that converts androgens into estrogens.
Arousal: cost–reward model: An egoistic theory proposed by Piliavin et al. (1981) that claims that seeing a person in need leads to the arousal of unpleasant feelings, and observers are motivated to eliminate that aversive state, often by helping the victim. A cost–reward analysis may lead observers to react in ways other than offering direct assistance, including indirect help, reinterpretation of the situation, or fleeing the scene.
Aspartate: An excitatory amino acid neurotransmitter that is widely used by vestibular receptors, afferents, and many neurons in the brain.
Assent: When minor participants are asked to indicate their willingness to participate in a study. This is usually obtained from participants who are at least 7 years old, in addition to parent or guardian consent.
Asylum: A place of refuge or safety established to confine and care for the mentally ill; forerunners of the mental hospital or psychiatric facility.
Attachment behavioral system: A motivational system selected over the course of evolution to maintain proximity between a young child and his or her primary attachment figure.
Attachment behaviors: Behaviors and signals that attract the attention of a primary attachment figure and function to prevent separation from that individual or to reestablish proximity to that individual (e.g., crying, clinging).
Attachment figure: Someone who functions as the primary safe haven and secure base for an individual. In childhood, an individual’s attachment figure is often a parent. In adulthood, an individual’s attachment figure is often a romantic partner.
Attachment patterns: (also called “attachment styles” or “attachment orientations”) Individual differences in how securely (vs. insecurely) people think, feel, and behave in attachment relationships.
Attachment theory: Theory that describes the enduring patterns of relationships from birth to death.
Attitude: A way of thinking or feeling about a target that is often reflected in a person’s behavior. Examples of attitude targets are individuals, concepts, and groups.
Attraction: The psychological process of being sexually interested in another person. This can include, for example, physical attraction, first impressions, and dating rituals.
Attraction: A connection between personality attributes and aspects of the environment that occurs because individuals with particular traits are drawn to certain environments.
Attractiveness halo effect: The tendency to associate attractiveness with a variety of positive traits, such as being more sociable, intelligent, competent, and healthy.
Attrition: A connection between personality attributes and aspects of the environment that occurs because individuals with particular traits drop out from certain environments.
Attrition: When a participant drops out, or fails to complete, all parts of a study.
Authoritarian parenting: Parenting style that is high is demandingness and low in support.
Authoritative parenting: A parenting style that is high in demandingness and high in support.
Authority stage: Stage from approximately 2 years to age 4 or 5 when parents create rules and figure out how to effectively guide their children’s behavior.
Automatic empathy: A social perceiver unwittingly taking on the internal state of another person, usually because of mimicking the person’s expressive behavior and thereby feeling the expressed emotion.
Automatic process: When a thought, feeling, or behavior occurs with little or no mental effort. Typically, automatic processes are described as involuntary or spontaneous, often resulting from a great deal of practice or repetition.
Autonomic nervous system: A part of the peripheral nervous system that connects to glands and smooth muscles. Consists of sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions.
Availability heuristic: The tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by the ease with which relevant instances come to mind.
Awareness: A conscious experience or the capability of having conscious experiences, which is distinct from self-awareness, the conscious understanding of one’s own existence and individuality.
Awe: An emotion associated with profound, moving experiences. Awe comes about when people encounter an event that is vast (far from normal experience) but that can be accommodated in existing knowledge.
Axial plane: See “horizontal plane.”
Axon: Part of the neuron that extends off the soma, splitting several times to connect with other neurons; main output of the neuron.
Basal ganglia: Subcortical structures of the cerebral hemispheres involved in voluntary movement.
Basic-level category: The neutral, preferred category for a given object, at an intermediate level of specificity.
Basking in reflected glory: The tendency for people to associate themselves with successful people or groups.
Behaviorism: The study of behavior.
Bidirectional: The idea that parents influence their children, but their children also influence the parents; the direction of influence goes both ways, from parent to child, and from child to parent.
Bidirectional relations: When one variable is likely both cause and consequence of another variable.
Big data: The analysis of large data sets.
Big-C Creativity: Creative ideas that have an impact well beyond the everyday life of home or work. At the highest level, this kind of creativity is that of the creative genius.
Binocular advantage: Benefits from having two eyes as opposed to a single eye.
Biopsychosocial model: A model in which the interaction of biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors is seen as influencing the development of the individual.
Birth cohort: Individuals born in a particular year or span of time.
Blended family: A family consisting of an adult couple and their children from previous relationships.
Blind to the research hypothesis: When participants in research are not aware of what is being studied.
Blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD): The signal typically measured in fMRI that results from changes in the ratio of oxygenated hemoglobin to deoxygenated hemoglobin in the blood.
Boomerang generation: Term used to describe young adults, primarily between the ages of 25 and 34, who return home after previously living on their own.
Borderline Personality Disorder: This personality disorder is defined by a chronic pattern of instability. This instability manifests itself in interpersonal relationships, mood, self-image, and behavior that can interfere with social functioning or work. It may also cause grave emotional distress.
Bouncing balls illusion: The tendency to perceive two circles as bouncing off each other if the moment of their contact is accompanied by an auditory stimulus.
Brain stem: The “trunk” of the brain comprised of the medulla, pons, midbrain, and diencephalon.
Broca’s area: An area in the frontal lobe of the left hemisphere. Implicated in language production.
Bystander intervention: The phenomenon whereby people intervene to help others in need even if the other is a complete stranger and the intervention puts the helper at risk.
Callosotomy: Surgical procedure in which the corpus callosum is severed (used to control severe epilepsy).
Capitalization: Seeking out someone else with whom to share your good news.
Cartesian catastrophe: The idea that mental processes taking place outside conscious awareness are impossible.
Case study: A thorough study of a patient (or a few patients) with naturally occurring lesions.
Category: A set of entities that are equivalent in some way. Usually the items are similar to one another.
Catharsis: Greek term that means to cleanse or purge. Applied to aggression, catharsis is the belief that acting aggressively or even viewing aggression purges angry feelings and aggressive impulses into harmless channels.
Cathartic method: A therapeutic procedure introduced by Breuer and developed further by Freud in the late 19th century whereby a patient gains insight and emotional relief from recalling and reliving traumatic events.
Cause-and-effect: Related to whether we say one variable is causing changes in the other variable, versus other variables that may be related to these two variables.
Cell membrane: A bi-lipid layer of molecules that separates the cell from the surrounding extracellular fluid.
Central nervous system: The part of the nervous system that consists of the brain and spinal cord.
Central sulcus: The major fissure that divides the frontal and the parietal lobes.
Cerebellum: A nervous system structure behind and below the cerebrum. Controls motor movement coordination, balance, equilibrium, and muscle tone.
Cerebellum: The distinctive structure at the back of the brain, Latin for “small brain.”
Cerebral cortex: The outermost gray matter of the cerebrum; the distinctive convoluti characteristic of the mammalian brain.
Cerebral hemispheres: The cerebral cortex, underlying white matter, and subcortical structures.
Cerebrum: Consists of left and right hemispheres that sit at the top of the nervous system and engages in a variety of higher-order functions.
Cerebrum: Usually refers to the cerebral cortex and associated white matter, but in some texts includes the subcortical structures.
C-fibers: C-fibers: Slow-conducting unmyelinated thin sensory afferents with a diameter of 1 μm and a conduction velocity of approximately 1 m/s. C-pain fibers convey noxious, thermal, and heat signals; C-tactile fibers convey gentle touch, light stroking.
Character strength: A positive trait or quality deemed to be morally good and is valued for itself as well as for promoting individual and collective well-being.
Child abuse: Injury, death, or emotional harm to a child caused by a parent or caregiver, either intentionally or unintentionally.
Childfree: Term used to describe people who purposefully choose not to have children.
Childless: Term used to describe people who would like to have children but are unable to conceive.
Chills: A feeling of goosebumps, usually on the arms, scalp, and neck, that is often experienced during moments of awe.
Chromosomal sex: The sex of an individual as determined by the sex chromosomes (typically XX or XY) received at the time of fertilization.
Chronic pain: Persistent or recurrent pain, beyond usual course of acute illness or injury; sometimes present without observable tissue damage or clear cause.
Chunk: The process of grouping information together using our knowledge.
Cingulate gyrus: A medial cortical portion of the nervous tissue that is a part of the limbic system.
Classical conditioning: Describes stimulus-stimulus associative learning.
Clock time: Scheduling activities according to the time on the clock.
Cochlea: Snail-shell-shaped organ that transduces mechanical vibrations into neural signals.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT): Psychotherapy approach that incorporates cognitive techniques (targeting unhelpful thoughts) and behavioral techniques (changing behaviors) to improve psychological symptoms.
Cognitive failures: Every day slips and lapses, also called absentmindedness.
Cognitive psychology: The study of mental processes.
Cohabitation: Arrangement where two unmarried adults live together.
Coherence: Within attachment theory, the gaining of insight into and reconciling one’s childhood experiences.
Cohort effects: When research findings differ for participants of the same age tested at different points in historical time.
Cohort effects: Differences in personality that are related to historical and social factors unique to individuals born in a particular year.
Collective efficacy: The shared beliefs among members of a group about the group’s ability to effectively perform the tasks needed to attain a valued goal.
Collective self-esteem: Feelings of self-worth that are based on evaluation of relationships with others and membership in social groups.
Collectivism: Belief system that emphasizes the duties and obligations that each person has toward others.
Collectivism: The cultural trend in which the primary unit of measurement is the group. Collectivists are likely to emphasize duty and obligation over personal aspirations.
Common knowledge effect: The tendency for groups to spend more time discussing information that all members know (shared information) and less time examining information that only a few members know (unshared).
Common-pool resource: A collective product or service that is freely available to all individuals of a society, but is vulnerable to overuse and degradation.
Commons dilemma game: A game in which members of a group must balance their desire for personal gain against the deterioration and possible collapse of a resource.
Compensatory reflexes: A stabilizing motor reflex that occurs in response to a perceived movement, such as the vestibuloocular reflex, or the postural responses that occur during running or skiing.
Complex experimental designs: An experiment with two or more independent variables.
Computerized axial tomography: A noninvasive brain-scanning procedure that uses X-ray absorption around the head.
Concept: The mental representation of a category.
Conditioned aversions and preferences: Likes and dislikes developed through associations with pleasurable or unpleasurable sensations.
Cones: Photoreceptors that operate in lighted environments and can encode fine visual details. There are three different kinds (S or blue, M or green and L or red) that are each sensitive to slightly different types of light. Combined, these three types of cones allow you to have color vision.
Confederate: An actor working with the researcher. Most often, this individual is used to deceive unsuspecting research participants. Also known as a “stooge.”
Confidante: A trusted person with whom secrets and vulnerabilities can be shared.
Confidence interval: An interval of plausible values for a population parameter; the interval of values within the margin of error of a statistic.
Conformity: Changing one’s attitude or behavior to match a perceived social norm.
Confusion: An emotion associated with conflicting and contrary information, such as when people appraise an event as unfamiliar and as hard to understand. Confusion motivates people to work through the perplexing information and thus fosters deeper learning.
Conscientiousness: A personality trait consisting of self-control, orderliness, industriousness, and traditionalism.
Conscious: Having knowledge of something external or internal to oneself; being aware of and responding to one’s surroundings.
Conscious experience: The first-person perspective of a mental event, such as feeling some sensory input, a memory, an idea, an emotion, a mood, or a continuous temporal sequence of happenings.
Consciousness: Awareness of ourselves and our environment.
Consciousness: The quality or state of being aware of an external object or something within oneself. It has been defined as the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind.
Consolidation: Process by which a memory trace is stabilized and transformed into a more durable form.
Contemplative science: A research area concerned with understanding how contemplative practices such as meditation can affect individuals, including changes in their behavior, their emotional reactivity, their cognitive abilities, and their brains. Contemplative science also seeks insights into conscious experience that can be gained from first-person observations by individuals who have gained extraordinary expertise in introspection.
Contingency management: A reward or punishment that systematically follows a behavior. Parents can use contingencies to modify their children’s behavior.
Contralateral: Literally “opposite side”; used to refer to the fact that the two hemispheres of the brain process sensory information and motor commands for the opposite side of the body (e.g., the left hemisphere controls the right side of the body).
Contrast: Relative difference in the amount and type of light coming from two nearby locations.
Contrast gain: Process where the sensitivity of your visual system can be tuned to be most sensitive to the levels of contrast that are most prevalent in the environment.
Convergent thinking: The opposite of divergent thinking, the capacity to narrow in on the single “correct” answer or solution to a given question or problem (e.g., giving the right response on an intelligence tests).
Converging evidence: Similar findings reported from multiple studies using different methods.
Cooperation: The coordination of multiple partners toward a common goal that will benefit everyone involved.
Coping potential: People's beliefs about their ability to handle challenges.
Coronal plane: A slice that runs from head to foot; brain slices in this plane are similar to slices of a loaf of bread, with the eyes being the front of the loaf.
Correlation: A measure of the association between two variables, or how they go together.
Correlational research: A type of descriptive research that involves measuring the association between two variables, or how they go together.
Corresponsive principle: The idea that personality traits often become matched with environmental conditions such that an individual’s social context acts to accentuate and reinforce their personality attributes.
Cortisol: A hormone made by the adrenal glands, within the cortex. Cortisol helps the body maintain blood pressure and immune function. Cortisol increases when the body is under stress.
Cost–benefit analysis: A decision-making process that compares the cost of an action or thing against the expected benefit to help determine the best course of action.
Counterfactual thinking: Mentally comparing actual events with fantasies of what might have been possible in alternative scenarios.
Cover story: A fake description of the purpose and/or procedure of a study, used when deception is necessary in order to answer a research question.
C-pain or Aδ-fibers: C-pain fibers convey noxious, thermal, and heat signals
Cross-cultural psychology (or cross-cultural studies): An approach to researching culture that emphasizes the use of standard scales as a means of making meaningful comparisons across groups.
Cross-cultural studies (or cross-cultural psychology): An approach to researching culture that emphasizes the use of standard scales as a means of making meaningful comparisons across groups.
Crossmodal phenomena: Effects that concern the influence of the perception of one sensory modality on the perception of another.
Crossmodal receptive field: A receptive field that can be stimulated by a stimulus from more than one sensory modality.
Crossmodal stimulus: A stimulus with components in multiple sensory modalties that interact with each other.
Cross-sectional design: Research method that involves observation of all of a population, or a representative subset, at one specific point in time.
Cross-sectional research: A research design used to examine behavior in participants of different ages who are tested at the same point in time.
Cross-sectional study/design: A research design that uses a group of individuals with different ages (and birth cohorts) assessed at a single point in time.
Crowds: Adolescent peer groups characterized by shared reputations or images.
C-tactile fibers: C-tactile fibers convey gentle touch, light stroking
Cultural differences: An approach to understanding culture primarily by paying attention to unique and distinctive features that set them apart from other cultures.
Cultural display rules: These are rules that are learned early in life that specify the management and modification of emotional expressions according to social circumstances. Cultural display rules can work in a number of different ways. For example, they can require individuals to express emotions “as is” (i.e., as they feel them), to exaggerate their expressions to show more than what is actually felt, to tone down their expressions to show less than what is actually felt, to conceal their feelings by expressing something else, or to show nothing at all.
Cultural intelligence: The ability and willingness to apply cultural awareness to practical uses.
Cultural psychology: An approach to researching culture that emphasizes the use of interviews and observation as a means of understanding culture from its own point of view.
Cultural relativism: The principled objection to passing overly culture-bound (i.e., “ethnocentric”) judgements on aspects of other cultures.
Cultural relativism: The idea that cultural norms and values of a society can only be understood on their own terms or in their own context.
Cultural script: Learned guides for how to behave appropriately in a given social situation. These reflect cultural norms and widely accepted values.
Cultural similarities: An approach to understanding culture primarily by paying attention to common features that are the same as or similar to those of other cultures
Culture: A pattern of shared meaning and behavior among a group of people that is passed from one generation to the next.
Culture of honor: A culture in which personal or family reputation is especially important.
Cumulative continuity principle: The generalization that personality attributes show increasing stability with age and experience.
Cutaneous senses: The senses of the skin: tactile, thermal, pruritic (itchy), painful, and pleasant.
Dark adaptation: Process that allows you to become sensitive to very small levels of light, so that you can actually see in the near-absence of light.
Decay: The fading of memories with the passage of time.
Declarative memory: Conscious memories for facts and events.
Decomposed games: A task in which an individual chooses from multiple allocations of resources to distribute between him- or herself and another person.
Defeminization: The removal of the potential for female traits.
Defensive coping mechanism: An unconscious process, which protects an individual from unacceptable or painful ideas, impulses, or memories.
Demand characteristics: Subtle cues that make participants aware of what the experimenter expects to find or how participants are expected to behave.
Demasculinization: The removal of the potential for male traits.
Dendrite: Part of a neuron that extends away from the cell body and is the main input to the neuron.
Deoxygenated hemoglobin: Hemoglobin not carrying oxygen.
Departure stage: Stage at which parents prepare for a child to depart and evaluate their successes and failures as parents.
Dependent variable: The variable the researcher measures but does not manipulate in an experiment.
Depolarization: A change in a cell’s membrane potential, making the inside of the cell more positive and increasing the chance of an action potential.
Depolarized: When receptor hair cells have mechanically gated channels open, the cell increases its membrane voltage, which produces a release of neurotransmitter to excite the innervating nerve fiber.
DES: Dissociative Experiences Scale.
Descending pain modulatory system: A top-down pain-modulating system able to inhibit or facilitate pain. The pathway produces analgesia by the release of endogenous opioids. Several brain structures and nuclei are part of this circuit, such as the frontal lobe areas of the anterior cingulate cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, and insular cortex; and nuclei in the amygdala and the hypothalamus, which all project to a structure in the midbrain called the periaqueductal grey (PAG). The PAG then controls ascending pain transmission from the afferent pain system indirectly through the rostral ventromedial medulla (RVM) in the brainstem, which uses ON- and OFF-cells to inhibit or facilitate nociceptive signals at the spinal dorsal horn.
Detection thresholds: The smallest amount of head motion that can be reliably reported by an observer.
Deviant peer contagion: The spread of problem behaviors within groups of adolescents.
Dichotic listening: A task in which different audio streams are presented to each ear. Typically, people are asked to monitor one stream while ignoring the other.
Dichotic listening: An experimental task in which two messages are presented to different ears.
DID: Dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder, is at the far end of the dissociative disorder spectrum. It is characterized by at least two distinct, and dissociated personality states. These personality states – or ‘alters’ - alternately control a person’s behavior. The sufferer therefore experiences significant memory impairment for important information not explained by ordinary forgetfulness.
Differential stability: Consistency in the rank-ordering of personality across two or more measurement occasions.
Differential susceptibility: Genetic factors that make individuals more or less responsive to environmental experiences.
Diffuse optical imaging (DOI): A neuroimaging technique that infers brain activity by measuring changes in light as it is passed through the skull and surface of the brain.
Diffusion: The force on molecules to move from areas of high concentration to areas of low concentration.
Diffusion of responsibility: When deciding whether to help a person in need, knowing that there are others who could also provide assistance relieves bystanders of some measure of personal responsibility, reducing the likelihood that bystanders will intervene.
Dihydrotestosterone (DHT): A primary androgen that is an androgenic steroid product of testosterone and binds strongly to androgen receptors.
Directional tuning: The preferred direction of motion that hair cells and afferents exhibit where a peak excitatory response occurs and the least preferred direction where no response occurs. Cells are said to be “tuned” for a best and worst direction of motion, with in-between motion directions eliciting a lesser but observable response.
Discrimination: Discrimination is behavior that advantages or disadvantages people merely based on their group membership.
Dishabituation: When participants demonstrated increased attention (through looking or listening behavior) to a new stimulus after having been habituated to a different stimulus.
Dissociation: A disruption in the usually integrated function of consciousness, memory, identity, or perception of the environment.
Dissociative amnesia: Loss of autobiographical memories from a period in the past in the absence of brain injury or disease.
Distractor task: A task that is designed to make a person think about something unrelated to an impending decision.
Distribution: The pattern of variation in data.
Divergent thinking: The opposite of convergent thinking, the capacity for exploring multiple potential answers or solutions to a given question or problem (e.g., coming up with many different uses for a common object).
Divided attention: The ability to flexibly allocate attentional resources between two or more concurrent tasks.
DNA methylation: Covalent modifications of mammalian DNA occurring via the methylation of cytosine, typically in the context of the CpG dinucleotide.
DNA methyltransferases (DNMTs): Enzymes that establish and maintain DNA methylation using methyl-group donor compounds or cofactors. The main mammalian DNMTs are DNMT1, which maintains methylation state across DNA replication, and DNMT3a and DNMT3b, which perform de novo methylation.
Double flash illusion: The false perception of two visual flashes when a single flash is accompanied by two auditory beeps.
Downward comparison: Making mental comparisons with people who are perceived to be inferior on the standard of comparison.
Drug diversion: When a drug that is prescribed to treat a medical condition is given to another individual who seeks to use the drug illicitly.
Dunning-Kruger Effect: The tendency for unskilled people to be overconfident in their ability and highly skilled people to underestimate their ability.
Ecological validity: The degree to which a study finding has been obtained under conditions that are typical for what happens in everyday life.
Ectoderm: The outermost layer of a developing fetus.
EEG: (Electroencephalography) The recording of the brain’s electrical activity over a period of time by placing electrodes on the scalp.
Efferent nerves: Nerves that carry messages from the brain to glands and organs in the periphery.
Ego defenses: Mental strategies, rooted in the ego, that we use to manage anxiety when we feel threatened (some examples include repression, denial, sublimation, and reaction formation).
Ego depletion: The state of diminished willpower or low energy associated with having exerted self-regulation.
Ego depletion: The idea that people have a limited pool of mental resources for self-control (e.g., regulating emotions, willpower), and this pool can be used up (depleted).
Egoism: A motivation for helping that has the improvement of the helper’s own circumstances as its primary goal.
Elder abuse: Any form of mistreatment that results in harm to an elder person, often caused by his/her adult child.
Electroencephalogram: A measure of electrical activity generated by the brain’s neurons.
Electroencephalography: A technique that is used to measure gross electrical activity of the brain by placing electrodes on the scalp.
Electroencephalography (EEG): A neuroimaging technique that measures electrical brain activity via multiple electrodes on the scalp.
Electronically activated recorder (EAR): A methodology where participants wear a small, portable audio recorder that intermittently records snippets of ambient sounds around them.
Electrostatic pressure: The force on two ions with similar charge to repel each other; the force of two ions with opposite charge to attract to one another.
Elicited imitation: A behavioral method used to examine recall memory in infants and young children.
Emerging adulthood: A new life stage extending from approximately ages 18 to 25, during which the foundation of an adult life is gradually constructed in love and work. Primary features include identity explorations, instability, focus on self-development, feeling incompletely adult, and a broad sense of possibilities.
Emotion: An experiential, physiological, and behavioral response to a personally meaningful stimulus.
Emotion coherence: The degree to which emotional responses (subjective experience, behavior, physiology, etc.) converge with one another.
Emotion fluctuation: The degree to which emotions vary or change in intensity over time.
Emotion regulation: The ability to recognize emotional experiences and respond to situations by engaging in strategies to manage emotions as necessary.
Emotional intelligence: The ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions. (Salovey & Mayer, 1990). EI includes four specific abilities: perceiving, using, understanding, and managing emotions.
Empathic concern: According to Batson’s empathy–altruism hypothesis, observers who empathize with a person in need (that is, put themselves in the shoes of the victim and imagine how that person feels) will experience empathic concern and have an altruistic motivation for helping.
Empathy: The ability to vicariously experience the emotions of another person.
Empathy–altruism model: An altruistic theory proposed by Batson (2011) that claims that people who put themselves in the shoes of a victim and imagining how the victim feel will experience empathic concern that evokes an altruistic motivation for helping.
Empiricism: The belief that knowledge comes from experience.
Empty Nest: Feelings of sadness and loneliness that parents may feel when their adult children leave the home for the first time.
Encoding: Process by which information gets into memory.
Encoding: The pact of putting information into memory.
Enculturation: The uniquely human form of learning that is taught by one generation to another.
Endocrine gland: A ductless gland from which hormones are released into the blood system in response to specific biological signals.
Endophenotypes: A characteristic that reflects a genetic liability for disease and a more basic component of a complex clinical presentation. Endophenotypes are less developmentally malleable than overt behavior.
Endorphin: An endogenous morphine-like peptide that binds to the opioid receptors in the brain and body; synthesized in the body’s nervous system.
Engagement: Formal agreement to get married.
Epigenetics: The study of heritable changes in gene expression or cellular phenotype caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence. Epigenetic marks include covalent DNA modifications and posttranslational histone modifications.
Epigenetics: Heritable changes in gene activity that are not caused by changes in the DNA sequence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics
Epigenome: The genome-wide distribution of epigenetic marks.
Estrogen: Any of the C18 class of steroid hormones, so named because of the estrus-generating properties in females. Biologically important estrogens include estradiol and estriol.
Ethnocentric bias (or ethnocentrism): Being unduly guided by the beliefs of the culture you’ve grown up in, especially when this results in a misunderstanding or disparagement of unfamiliar cultures.
Ethnographic studies: Research that emphasizes field data collection and that examines questions that attempt to understand culture from it's own context and point of view.
Etiology: The causal description of all of the factors that contribute to the development of a disorder or illness.
Eugenics: The practice of selective breeding to promote desired traits.
Eureka experience: When a creative product enters consciousness.
Event-related potentials: A physiological measure of large electrical change in the brain produced by sensory stimulation or motor responses.
Event-related potentials (ERP): Measures the firing of groups of neurons in the cortex. As a person views or listens to specific types of information, neuronal activity creates small electrical currents that can be recorded from non-invasive sensors placed on the scalp. ERP provides excellent information about the timing of processing, clarifying brain activity at the millisecond pace at which it unfolds.
Event-related potentials (ERP): The recording of participant brain activity using a stretchy cap with small electrodes or sensors as participants engage in a particular task (commonly viewing photographs or listening to auditory stimuli).
Evocative person–environment transactions: The interplay between individuals and their contextual circumstances that occurs whenever attributes of the individual draw out particular responses from others in their environment.
Excitatory postsynaptic potentials: A depolarizing postsynaptic current that causes the membrane potential to become more positive and move towards the threshold of excitation.
Exemplar: An example in memory that is labeled as being in a particular category.
Experience sampling methods: Systematic ways of having participants provide samples of their ongoing behavior. Participants' reports are dependent (contingent) upon either a signal, pre-established intervals, or the occurrence of some event.
Exposure treatment: A technique used in behavior therapy that involves a patient repeatedly confronting a feared situation, without danger, to reduce anxiety.
Exteroception: The sense of the external world, of all stimulation originating from outside our own bodies.
Facial expressions: Part of the expressive component of emotions, facial expressions of emotion communicate inner feelings to others.
False-belief test: An experimental procedure that assesses whether a perceiver recognizes that another person has a false belief—a belief that contradicts reality.
Family of orientation: The family one is born into.
Family of procreation: The family one creates, usually through marriage.
Family systems theory: Theory that says a person cannot be understood on their own, but as a member of a unit.
Fantasy proneness: The tendency to extensive fantasizing or daydreaming.
Fear of negative evaluation: The preoccupation with and dread of the possibility of being judged negatively by others.
Fear of positive evaluation: The dread associated with favorable public evaluation or acknowledgment of success, particularly when it involves social comparison.
Feminization: The induction of female traits.
Field experiment: An experiment that occurs outside of the lab and in a real world situation.
Fight or flight response: The physiological response that occurs in response to a perceived threat, preparing the body for actions needed to deal with the threat.
First-person perspective: Observations made by individuals about their own conscious experiences, also known as introspection or a subjective point of view. Phenomenology refers to the description and investigation of such observations.
Fixed mindset: The belief that personal qualities such as intelligence are traits that cannot be developed. People with fixed mindsets often underperform compared to those with “growth mindsets”
Flashbulb memory: A highly detailed and vivid memory of an emotionally significant event.
Flourishing: To live optimally psychologically, relationally, and spiritually.
Folk explanations of behavior: People’s natural explanations for why somebody did something, felt something, etc. (differing substantially for unintentional and intentional behaviors).
Forebrain: A part of the nervous system that contains the cerebral hemispheres, thalamus, and hypothalamus.
Foreclosure: Individuals commit to an identity without exploration of options.
Forgiveness: The letting go of negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors toward an offender.
Fornix: (plural form, fornices) A nerve fiber tract that connects the hippocampus to mammillary bodies.
Foster care: Care provided by alternative families to children whose families of orientation cannot adequately care for them; often arranged through the government or a social service agency.
Four-Branch Model: An ability model developed by Drs. Peter Salovey and John Mayer that includes four main components of EI, arranged in hierarchical order, beginning with basic psychological processes and advancing to integrative psychological processes. The branches are (1) perception of emotion, (2) use of emotion to facilitate thinking, (3) understanding emotion, and (4) management of emotion.
Free rider problem: A situation in which one or more individuals benefit from a common-pool resource without paying their share of the cost.
Frog Pond Effect: The theory that a person’s comparison group can affect their evaluations of themselves. Specifically, people have a tendency to have lower self-evaluations when comparing themselves to higher performing groups.
Frontal lobe: The most forward region (close to forehead) of the cerebral hemispheres.
Frontal lobe: The front most (anterior) part of the cerebrum; anterior to the central sulcus and responsible for motor output and planning, language, judgment, and decision-making.
Functional distance: The frequency with which we cross paths with others.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging: (or fMRI) A noninvasive brain-imaging technique that registers changes in blood flow in the brain during a given task (also see magnetic resonance imaging).
Functional magnetic resonance imaging: A measure of changes in the oxygenation of blood flow as areas in the brain become active.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): Entails the use of powerful magnets to measure the levels of oxygen within the brain that vary with changes in neural activity. That is, as the neurons in specific brain regions “work harder” when performing a specific task, they require more oxygen. By having people listen to or view social percepts in an MRI scanner, fMRI specifies the brain regions that evidence a relative increase in blood flow. In this way, fMRI provides excellent spatial information, pinpointing with millimeter accuracy, the brain regions most critical for different social processes.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): A neuroimaging technique that infers brain activity by measuring changes in oxygen levels in the blood.
Functional neuroanatomy: Classifying how regions within the nervous system relate to psychology and behavior.
Functionalism: A school of American psychology that focused on the utility of consciousness.
Functionalist theories of emotion: Theories of emotion that emphasize the adaptive role of an emotion in handling common problems throughout evolutionary history.
Fundamental attribution error: The tendency to emphasize another person’s personality traits when describing that person’s motives and behaviors and overlooking the influence of situational factors.
g or general mental ability: The general factor common to all cognitive ability measures, “a very general mental capacity that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—‘catching on,’ ‘making sense of things,’ or ‘figuring out’ what to do” (Gottfredson, 1997, p. 13).
Gamma-aminobutyric acid: A major inhibitory neurotransmitter in the vestibular commissural system.
Gaze stability: A combination of eye, neck, and head responses that are all coordinated to maintain visual fixation (fovea) upon a point of interest.
Gene: A specific deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequence that codes for a specific polypeptide or protein or an observable inherited trait.
General population: A sample of people representative of the average individual in our society.
Generalizability: Related to whether the results from the sample can be generalized to a larger population.
Genome-wide association study (GWAS): A study that maps DNA polymorphisms in affected individuals and controls matched for age, sex, and ethnic background with the aim of identifying causal genetic variants.
Genotype: The DNA content of a cell’s nucleus, whether a trait is externally observable or not.
Gestalt psychology: An attempt to study the unity of experience.
Globus pallidus: A nucleus of the basal ganglia.
Glutamate: An excitatory amino acid neurotransmitter that is widely used by vestibular receptors, afferents, and many neurons in the brain.
Gonadal sex: The sex of an individual as determined by the possession of either ovaries or testes. Females have ovaries, whereas males have testes.
Good genes hypothesis: Proposes that certain physical qualities, like averageness, are attractive because they advertise mate quality—either greater fertility or better genetic traits that lead to better offspring and hence greater reproductive success.
Gratitude: A feeling of appreciation or thankfulness in response to receiving a benefit.
Gray matter: The outer grayish regions of the brain comprised of the neurons’ cell bodies.
Gray matter: Composes the bark or the cortex of the cerebrum and consists of the cell bodies of the neurons (see also white matter).
Group cohesion: The solidarity or unity of a group resulting from the development of strong and mutual interpersonal bonds among members and group-level forces that unify the group, such as shared commitment to group goals.
Group level: A focus on summary statistics that apply to aggregates of individuals when studying personality development. An example is considering whether the average score of a group of 50 year olds is higher than the average score of a group of 21 year olds when considering a trait like conscientiousness.
Group polarization: The tendency for members of a deliberating group to move to a more extreme position, with the direction of the shift determined by the majority or average of the members’ predeliberation preferences.
Groupthink: A set of negative group-level processes, including illusions of invulnerability, self-censorship, and pressures to conform, that occur when highly cohesive groups seek concurrence when making a decision.
Growth mindset: The belief that personal qualities, such as intelligence, can be developed through effort and practice.
Gustation: The action of tasting; the ability to taste.
Gyri: (plural) Folds between sulci in the cortex.
Gyrus: A fold between sulci in the cortex.
Gyrus: (plural form, gyri) A bulge that is raised between or among fissures of the convoluted brain.
Habituation: When participants demonstrated decreased attention (through looking or listening behavior) to repeatedly-presented stimuli.
Habituation: Occurs when the response to a stimulus decreases with exposure.
Hair cells: The receptor cells of the vestibular system. They are termed hair cells due to the many hairlike cilia that extend from the apical surface of the cell into the gelatin membrane. Mechanical gated ion channels in the tips of the cilia open and close as the cilia bend to cause membrane voltage changes in the hair cell that are proportional to the intensity and direction of motion.
Happiness: A state of well-being characterized by relative permanence, by dominantly agreeable emotion ranging in value from mere contentment to deep and intense joy in living, and by a natural desire for its continuation.
Hawthorne Effect: An effect in which individuals change or improve some facet of their behavior as a result of their awareness of being observed.
Hawthorne Studies: A series of well-known studies conducted under the leadership of Harvard University researchers, which changed the perspective of scholars and practitioners about the role of human psychology in relation to work behavior.
Health: The complete state of physical, mental, and social well-being—not just the absence of disease or infirmity.
Health behaviors: Behaviors that are associated with better health. Examples include exercising, not smoking, and wearing a seat belt while in a vehicle.
Helpfulness: A component of the prosocial personality orientation; describes individuals who have been helpful in the past and, because they believe they can be effective with the help they give, are more likely to be helpful in the future.
Helping: Prosocial acts that typically involve situations in which one person is in need and another provides the necessary assistance to eliminate the other’s need.
Hemoglobin: The oxygen-carrying portion of a red blood cell.
Heterogamy: Partnering with someone who is unlike you in a meaningful way.
Heterotypic stability: Consistency in the underlying psychological attribute across development regardless of any changes in how the attribute is expressed at different ages.
Hippocampus: (plural form, hippocampi) A nucleus inside (medial) the temporal lobe implicated in learning and memory.
Histone acetyltransferases (HATs) and histone deacetylases (HDACs): HATs are enzymes that transfer acetyl groups to specific positions on histone tails, promoting an “open” chromatin state and transcriptional activation. HDACs remove these acetyl groups, resulting in a “closed” chromatin state and transcriptional repression.
Histone modifications: Posttranslational modifications of the N-terminal “tails” of histone proteins that serve as a major mode of epigenetic regulation. These modifications include acetylation, phosphorylation, methylation, sumoylation, ubiquitination, and ADP-ribosylation.
Homo habilis: A human ancestor, handy man, that lived two million years ago.
Homo sapiens: Modern man, the only surviving form of the genus Homo.
Homogamy: Partnering with someone who is like you in a meaningful way.
Homophily: Adolescents tend to associate with peers who are similar to themselves.
Homotypic stability: Consistency of the exact same thoughts, feelings, and behaviors across development.
Horizontal plane: A slice that runs horizontally through a standing person (i.e., parallel to the floor); slices of brain in this plane divide the top and bottom parts of the brain; this plane is similar to slicing a hamburger bun.
Hormone: An organic chemical messenger released from endocrine cells that travels through the blood to interact with target cells at some distance to cause a biological response.
Hormones: Chemicals released by cells in the brain or body that affect cells in other parts of the brain or body.
Hostile attribution bias: The tendency to perceive ambiguous actions by others as aggressive.
Hostile attribution bias: The tendency of some individuals to interpret ambiguous social cues and interactions as examples of aggressiveness, disrespect, or antagonism.
Hostile expectation bias: The tendency to assume that people will react to potential conflicts with aggression.
Hostile perception bias: The tendency to perceive social interactions in general as being aggressive.
Humility: Having an accurate view of self—not too high or low—and a realistic appraisal of one’s strengths and weaknesses, especially in relation to other people.
Humorism (or humoralism): A belief held by ancient Greek and Roman physicians (and until the 19th century) that an excess or deficiency in any of the four bodily fluids, or humors—blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm—directly affected their health and temperament.
Hyperpolarization: A change in a cell’s membrane potential, making the inside of the cell more negative and decreasing the chance of an action potential.
Hyperpolarizes: When receptor hair cells have mechanically gated channels close, the cell decreases its membrane voltage, which produces less release of neurotransmitters to inhibit the innervating nerve fiber.
Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis: A system that involves the hypothalamus (within the brain), the pituitary gland (within the brain), and the adrenal glands (at the top of the kidneys). This system helps maintain homeostasis (keeping the body’s systems within normal ranges) by regulating digestion, immune function, mood, temperature, and energy use. Through this, the HPA regulates the body’s response to stress and injury.
Hypothalamus: Part of the diencephalon. Regulates biological drives with pituitary gland.
Hypothalamus: A brain structure located below the thalamus and above the brain stem.
Hypothesis: A logical idea that can be tested.
Hypothesis: A possible explanation that can be tested through research.
Hysteria: Term used by the ancient Greeks and Egyptians to describe a disorder believed to be caused by a woman’s uterus wandering throughout the body and interfering with other organs (today referred to as conversion disorder, in which psychological problems are expressed in physical form).
Identical twins: Two individual organisms that originated from the same zygote and therefore are genetically identical or very similar. The epigenetic profiling of identical twins discordant for disease is a unique experimental design as it eliminates the DNA sequence-, age-, and sex-differences from consideration.
Identity achievement: Individuals have explored different options and then made commitments.
Identity diffusion: Adolescents neither explore nor commit to any roles or ideologies.
Image-making stage: Stage during pregnancy when parents consider what it means to be a parent and plan for changes to accommodate a child.
Imaginal performances: When imagining yourself doing well increases self-efficacy.
Immunocytochemistry: A method of staining tissue including the brain, using antibodies.
Impasse-driven learning: An approach to instruction that motivates active learning by having learners work through perplexing barriers.
Implicit association test (IAT): A computer-based categorization task that measures the strength of association between specific concepts over several trials.
Implicit learning: Occurs when we acquire information without intent that we cannot easily express.
Implicit memory: A type of long-term memory that does not require conscious thought to encode. It's the type of memory one makes without intent.
Inattentional blindness: The failure to notice a fully visible, but unexpected, object or event when attention is devoted to something else.
Inattentional blindness: The failure to notice a fully visible object when attention is devoted to something else.
Inattentional deafness: The auditory analog of inattentional blindness. People fail to notice an unexpected sound or voice when attention is devoted to other aspects of a scene.
Incidental learning: Any type of learning that happens without the intention to learn.
Independent self: The tendency to define the self in terms of stable traits that guide behavior.
Independent variable: The variable the researcher manipulates and controls in an experiment.
Individual differences: Ways in which people differ in terms of their behavior, emotion, cognition, and development.
Individual differences: Psychological traits, abilities, aptitudes and tendencies that vary from person to person.
Individual level: A focus on individual level statistics that reflect whether individuals show stability or change when studying personality development. An example is evaluating how many individuals increased in conscientiousness versus how many decreased in conscientiousness when considering the transition from adolescence to adulthood.
Individualism: Belief system that exalts freedom, independence, and individual choice as high values.
Individualism: The cultural trend in which the primary unit of measurement is the individual. Individualists are likely to emphasize uniqueness and personal aspirations over social duty.
Industrialized countries: The economically advanced countries of the world, in which most of the world’s wealth is concentrated.
Industrial/Organizational psychology: Scientific study of behavior in organizational settings and the application of psychology to understand work behavior.
Informed consent: The process of getting permission from adults for themselves and their children to take part in research.
Ingroup: A social group to which an individual identifies or belongs.
Inhibitory postsynaptic potentials: A hyperpolarizing postsynaptic current that causes the membrane potential to become more negative and move away from the threshold of excitation.
Insomnia: A sleep disorder in which there is an inability to fall asleep or to stay asleep as long as desired. Symptoms also include waking up too early, experience many awakenings during the night, and not feeling rested during the day.
Institutional Review Boards (IRBs): A committee that reviews and approves research procedures involving human participants and animal subjects to ensure that the research is conducted in accordance with federal, institutional, and ethical guidelines.
Integrated: The process by which the perceptual system combines information arising from more than one modality.
Intention: An agent’s mental state of committing to perform an action that the agent believes will bring about a desired outcome.
Intentional learning: Any type of learning that happens when motivated by intention.
Intentionality: The quality of an agent’s performing a behavior intentionally—that is, with skill and awareness and executing an intention (which is in turn based on a desire and relevant beliefs).
Interaural differences: Differences (usually in time or intensity) between the two ears.
Interdependent self: The tendency to define the self in terms of social contexts that guide behavior.
Interdependent stage: Stage during teenage years when parents renegotiate their relationship with their adolescent children to allow for shared power in decision-making.
Interest: An emotion associated with curiosity and intrigue, interest motivates engaging with new things and learning more about them. It is one of the earliest emotions to develop and a resource for intrinsically motivated learning across the life span.
Interference: Other memories get in the way of retrieving a desired memory
Interindividual-intergroup discontinuity: The tendency for relations between groups to be less cooperative than relations between individuals.
Interoception: The sense of the physiological state of the body. Hunger, thirst, temperature, pain, and other sensations relevant to homeostasis. Visceral input such as heart rate, blood pressure, and digestive activity give rise to an experience of the body’s internal states and physiological reactions to external stimulation. This experience has been described as a representation of “the material me,” and it is hypothesized to be the foundation of subjective feelings, emotion, and self-awareness.
Interpersonal: This refers to the relationship or interaction between two or more individuals in a group. Thus, the interpersonal functions of emotion refer to the effects of one’s emotion on others, or to the relationship between oneself and others.
Interpretive stage: Stage from age 4or 5 to the start of adolescence when parents help their children interpret their experiences with the social world beyond the family.
Interview techniques: A research method in which participants are asked to report on their experiences using language, commonly by engaging in conversation with a researcher (participants may also be asked to record their responses in writing).
Intimate partner violence: Physical, sexual, or psychological abuse inflicted by a partner.
Intrapersonal: This refers to what occurs within oneself. Thus, the intrapersonal functions of emotion refer to the effects of emotion to individuals that occur physically inside their bodies and psychologically inside their minds.
Intrinsically motivated learning: Learning that is “for its own sake”—such as learning motivated by curiosity and wonder—instead of learning to gain rewards or social approval.
Introspection: A method of focusing on internal processes.
Invasive Procedure: A procedure that involves the skin being broken or an instrument or chemical being introduced into a body cavity.
Involuntary or obligatory responses: Behaviors in which individuals engage that do not require much conscious thought or effort.
Ion channels: Proteins that span the cell membrane, forming channels that specific ions can flow through between the intracellular and extracellular space.
Ionotropic receptor: Ion channel that opens to allow ions to permeate the cell membrane under specific conditions, such as the presence of a neurotransmitter or a specific membrane potential.
Joint attention: Two people attending to the same object and being aware that they both are attending to it.
Joint family: A family comprised of at least three generations living together. Joint families often include many members of the extended family.
Kin selection: According to evolutionary psychology, the favoritism shown for helping our blood relatives, with the goals of increasing the likelihood that some portion of our DNA will be passed on to future generations.
Knowledge emotions: A family of emotions associated with learning, reflecting, and exploring. These emotions come about when unexpected and unfamiliar events happen in the environment. Broadly speaking, they motivate people to explore unfamiliar things, which builds knowledge and expertise over the long run.
Laboratory environments: A setting in which the researcher can carefully control situations and manipulate variables.
Latent inhibition: The ability to filter out extraneous stimuli, concentrating only on the information that is deemed relevant. Reduced latent inhibition is associated with higher creativity.
Lateral geniculate nucleus: (or LGN) A nucleus in the thalamus that is innervated by the optic nerves and sends signals to the visual cortex in the occipital lobe.
Lateral inhibition: A signal produced by a neuron aimed at suppressing the response of nearby neurons.
Lateral rectus muscle: An eye muscle that turns outward in the horizontal plane.
Lateral sulcus: The major fissure that delineates the temporal lobe below the frontal and the parietal lobes.
Lateral vestibulo-spinal tract: Vestibular neurons that project to all levels of the spinal cord on the ipsilateral side to control posture and balance movements.
Lateralized: To the side; used to refer to the fact that specific functions may reside primarily in one hemisphere or the other (e.g., for the majority individuals, the left hemisphere is most responsible for language).
Learned helplessness: The belief, as someone who is abused, that one has no control over his or her situation.
Lesion: A region in the brain that suffered damage through injury, disease, or medical intervention.
Lesion studies: A surgical method in which a part of the animal brain is removed to study its effects on behavior or function.
Lesions: Damage or tissue abnormality due, for example, to an injury, surgery, or a vascular problem.
Lesions: Abnormalities in the tissue of an organism usually caused by disease or trauma.
Levels of analysis: Complementary views for analyzing and understanding a phenomenon.
Life domains: Various domains of life, such as finances and job.
Life satisfaction: The degree to which one is satisfied with one’s life overall.
Limbic system: A loosely defined network of nuclei in the brain involved with learning and emotion.
Limbic system: Includes the subcortical structures of the amygdala and hippocampal formation as well as some cortical structures; responsible for aversion and gratification.
Limited capacity: The notion that humans have limited mental resources that can be used at a given time.
Little-c creativity: Creative ideas that appear at the personal level, whether the home or the workplace. Such creativity needs not have a larger impact to be considered creative.
Local dominance effect: People are generally more influenced by social comparison when that comparison is personally relevant rather than broad and general.
Longitudinal research: A research design used to examine behavior in the same participants over short (months) or long (decades) periods of time.
Longitudinal study/design: A research design that follows the same group of individuals at multiple time points.
Lucid dreams: Any dream in which one is aware that one is dreaming.
Ma: Japanese way of thinking that emphasizes attention to the spaces between things rather than the things themselves.
Machiavellianism: Being cunning, strategic, or exploitative in one’s relationships. Named after Machiavelli, who outlined this way of relating in his book, The Prince.
Magnetic resonance imaging: Or MRI is a brain imaging noninvasive technique that uses magnetic energy to generate brain images (also see fMRI).
Magnification factor: Cortical space projected by an area of sensory input (e.g., mm of cortex per degree of visual field).
Maladaptive: Term referring to behaviors that cause people who have them physical or emotional harm, prevent them from functioning in daily life, and/or indicate that they have lost touch with reality and/or cannot control their thoughts and behavior (also called dysfunctional).
Malingering: Fabrication or exaggeration of medical symptoms to achieve secondary gain (e.g., receive medication, avoid school).
Manipulation: A connection between personality attributes and aspects of the environment that occurs whenever individuals with particular traits actively shape their environments.
Manipulation check: A measure used to determine whether or not the manipulation of the independent variable has had its intended effect on the participants.
Margin of error: The expected amount of random variation in a statistic; often defined for 95% confidence level.
Marriage market: The process through which prospective spouses compare assets and liabilities of available partners and choose the best available mate.
Masculinization: The induction of male traits.
Mastery goals: Goals that are focused primarily on learning, competence, and self-development. These are contrasted with “performance goals” that are focused on the quality of a person’s performance.
Maternal behavior: Parental behavior performed by the mother or other female.
Maturity principle: The generalization that personality attributes associated with the successful fulfillment of adult roles increase with age and experience.
Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT): A 141-item performance assessment of EI that measures the four emotion abilities (as defined by the four-branch model of EI) with a total of eight tasks.
McGurk effect: An effect in which conflicting visual and auditory components of a speech stimulus result in an illusory percept.
Mechanically gated ion channels: Ion channels located in the tips of the stereocilia on the receptor cells that open/close as the cilia bend toward the tallest/smallest cilia, respectively. These channels are permeable to potassium ions, which are abundant in the fluid bathing the top of the hair cells.
Medial prefrontal cortex: An area of the brain located in the middle of the frontal lobes (at the front of the head), active when people mentalize about the self and others.
Medial temporal lobes: Inner region of the temporal lobes that includes the hippocampus.
Medial vestibulo-spinal tract: Vestibular nucleus neurons project bilaterally to cervical spinal motor neurons for head and neck movement control. The tract principally functions in gaze direction and stability during motion.
Medulla oblongata: An area just above the spinal cord that processes breathing, digestion, heart and blood vessel function, swallowing, and sneezing.
Mentalizing: The act of representing the mental states of oneself and others. Mentalizing allows humans to interpret the intentions, beliefs, and emotional states of others.
Mere-exposure effect: The notion that people like people/places/things merely because they are familiar with them.
Mere-exposure effect: The tendency to prefer stimuli that have been seen before over novel ones. There also is a generalized mere-exposure effect shown in a preference for stimuli that are similar to those that have been seen before.
Mere-exposure effects: The result of developing a more positive attitude towards a stimulus after repeated instances of mere exposure to it.
Mesmerism: Derived from Franz Anton Mesmer in the late 18th century, an early version of hypnotism in which Mesmer claimed that hysterical symptoms could be treated through animal magnetism emanating from Mesmer’s body and permeating the universe (and later through magnets); later explained in terms of high suggestibility in individuals.
Metabolite: A substance necessary for a living organism to maintain life.
Metacognition: Describes the knowledge and skills people have in monitoring and controlling their own learning and memory.
Mimicry: Copying others’ behavior, usually without awareness.
Mirror neurons: Neurons identified in monkey brains that fire both when the monkey performs a certain action and when it perceives another agent performing that action.
Mixed and Trait Models: Approaches that view EI as a combination of self-perceived emotion skills, personality traits, and attitudes.
Modern family: A family based on commitment, caring, and close emotional ties.
Monitoring: Keeping track of a target behavior that is to be regulated.
Monochronic (M-time): Monochronic thinking focuses on doing one activity, from beginning to completion, at a time.
Mood disorder: A group of diagnoses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) classification system where a disturbance in the person’s mood is the primary dysfunction. Mood disorders include major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, dysthymic and cyclothymic disorder.
Moratorium: State in which adolescents are actively exploring options but have not yet made identity commitments.
Morph: A face or other image that has been transformed by a computer program so that it is a mixture of multiple images.
Motor control: The use of thinking to direct muscles and limbs to perform a desired action.
Motor cortex: Region of the frontal lobe responsible for voluntary movement; the motor cortex has a contralateral representation of the human body.
Multicultural experiences: Individual exposure to two or more cultures, such as obtained by living abroad, emigrating to another country, or working or going to school in a culturally diverse setting.
Multigenerational homes: Homes with more than one adult generation.
Multimodal: Of or pertaining to multiple sensory modalities.
Multimodal perception: The effects that concurrent stimulation in more than one sensory modality has on the perception of events and objects in the world.
Multimodal phenomena: Effects that concern the binding of inputs from multiple sensory modalities.
Multisensory convergence zones: Regions in the brain that receive input from multiple unimodal areas processing different sensory modalities.
Multisensory enhancement: See “superadditive effect of multisensory integration.”
Myelin: Fatty tissue, produced by glial cells (see module, “Neurons”) that insulates the axons of the neurons; myelin is necessary for normal conduction of electrical impulses among neurons.
Myelin sheath: Substance around the axon of a neuron that serves as insulation to allow the action potential to conduct rapidly toward the terminal buttons.
Narcissism: A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), a need for admiration, and lack of empathy.
Naturalistic observation: Unobtrusively watching people as they go about the business of living their lives.
Need to belong: A strong natural impulse in humans to form social connections and to be accepted by others.
N-Effect: The finding that increasing the number of competitors generally decreases one’s motivation to compete.
Negative state relief model: An egoistic theory proposed by Cialdini et al. (1982) that claims that people have learned through socialization that helping can serve as a secondary reinforcement that will relieve negative moods such as sadness.
Neglect: Failure to care for someone properly.
Neural crest: A set of primordial neurons that migrate outside the neural tube and give rise to sensory and autonomic neurons in the peripheral nervous system.
Neural impulse: An electro-chemical signal that enables neurons to communicate.
Neural induction: A process that causes the formation of the neural tube.
Neural plasticity: The ability of synapses and neural pathways to change over time and adapt to changes in neural process, behavior, or environment.
Neuroblasts: Brain progenitor cells that asymmetrically divide into other neuroblasts or nerve cells.
Neuroendocrinology: The study of how the brain and hormones act in concert to coordinate the physiology of the body.
Neuroepithelium: The lining of the neural tube.
Neuropsychoanalysis: An integrative, interdisciplinary domain of inquiry seeking to integrate psychoanalytic and neuropsychological ideas and findings to enhance both areas of inquiry (you can learn more by visiting the webpage of the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society at http://www.neuropsa.org.uk/).
Neuroscience: The study of the nervous system.
Neuroscience methods: A research method that deals with the structure or function of the nervous system and brain.
Neurotransmitter: A chemical messenger that travels between neurons to provide communication. Some neurotransmitters, such as norepinephrine, can leak into the blood system and act as hormones.
Neurotransmitters: Chemical substance released by the presynaptic terminal button that acts on the postsynaptic cell.
Neurotransmitters: A chemical compound used to send signals from a receptor cell to a neuron, or from one neuron to another. Neurotransmitters can be excitatory, inhibitory, or modulatory and are packaged in small vesicles that are released from the end terminals of cells.
Nightmares: An unpleasant dream that can cause a strong negative emotional response from the mind, typically fear or horror, but also despair, anxiety, and great sadness. The dream may contain situations of danger, discomfort, psychological or physical terror. Sufferers usually awaken in a state of distress and may be unable to return to sleep for a prolonged period of time.
Nociception: The neural process of encoding noxious stimuli, the sensory input from nociceptors. Not necessarily painful, and crucially not necessary for the experience of pain.
Nociceptors: High-threshold sensory receptors of the peripheral somatosensory nervous system that are capable of transducing and encoding noxious stimuli. Nociceptors send information about actual or impending tissue damage to the brain. These signals can often lead to pain, but nociception and pain are not the same.
Nomenclature: Naming conventions.
Nonassociative learning: Occurs when a single repeated exposure leads to a change in behavior.
Non-industrialized countries: The less economically advanced countries that comprise the majority of the world’s population. Most are currently developing at a rapid rate.
Noninvasive procedure: A procedure that does not require the insertion of an instrument or chemical through the skin or into a body cavity.
Noxious stimulus: A stimulus that is damaging or threatens damage to normal tissues.
Nuclear families: A core family unit comprised of only the parents and children.
Nucleus: Collection of nerve cells found in the brain which typically serve a specific function.
Nucleus accumbens: A region of the basal forebrain located in front of the preoptic region.
Nurturing stage: Stage from birth to around 18-24 months in which parents develop an attachment relationship with child and adapt to the new baby.
Obedience: Responding to an order or command from a person in a position of authority.
Object permanence: The understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be directly observed (e.g., that a pen continues to exist even when it is hidden under a piece of paper).
Object relations theory: A modern offshoot of the psychodynamic perspective, this theory contends that personality can be understood as reflecting mental images of significant figures (especially the parents) that we form early in life in response to interactions taking place within the family; these mental images serve as templates (or “scripts”) for later interpersonal relationships.
Objective social variables: Targets of research interest that are factual and not subject to personal opinions or feelings.
Observational learning: Learning by observing the behavior of others.
Observational learning: Learning by observing the behavior of others.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: This anxiety disorder is characterized by intrusive thoughts (obsessions), by repetitive behaviors (compulsions), or both. Obsessions produce uneasiness, fear, or worry. Compulsions are then aimed at reducing the associated anxiety. Examples of compulsive behaviors include excessive washing or cleaning; repeated checking; extreme hoarding; and nervous rituals, such as switching the light on and off a certain number of times when entering a room. Intrusive thoughts are often sexual, violent, or religious in nature...
Occipital lobe: The back part of the cerebrum, which houses the visual areas.
Occipital lobe: The back most (posterior) part of the cerebrum; involved in vision.
Ocial touch hypothesis: Proposes that social touch is a distinct domain of touch. C-tactile afferents form a special pathway that distinguishes social touch from other types of touch by selectively firing in response to touch of social-affective relevance; thus sending affective information parallel to the discriminatory information from the Aβ-fibers. In this way, the socially relevant touch stands out from the rest as having special positive emotional value and is processed further in affect-related brain areas such as the insula.
Oculomotor nuclei: Includes three neuronal groups in the brainstem, the abducens nucleus, the oculomotor nucleus, and the trochlear nucleus, whose cells send motor commands to the six pairs of eye muscles.
Oculomotor nucleus: A group of cells in the middle brainstem that contain subgroups of neurons that project to the medial rectus, inferior oblique, inferior rectus, and superior rectus muscles of the eyes through the 3rd cranial nerve.
OECD countries: Members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, comprised of the world’s wealthiest countries.
Olfaction: The sense of smell; the action of smelling; the ability to smell.
Omnivore: A person or animal that is able to survive by eating a wide range of foods from plant or animal origin.
O*Net: A vast database of occupational information containing data on hundreds of jobs.
Open ended questions: Research questions that ask participants to answer in their own words.
Openness to experience: One of the five major factors of personality, this trait is associated with higher curiosity, creativity, emotional breadth, and open-mindedness. People high in openness to experience are more likely to experience interest and awe.
Openness to experience: One of the factors of the Big Five Model of personality, the factor assesses the degree that a person is open to different or new values, interests, and activities.
Operant conditioning: Describes stimulus-response associative learning.
Operationalization: The process of defining a concept so that it can be measured. In psychology, this often happens by identifying related concepts or behaviors that can be more easily measured.
Operationalize: How researchers specifically measure a concept.
Opponent Process Theory: Theory of color vision that assumes there are four different basic colors, organized into two pairs (red/green and blue/yellow) and proposes that colors in the world are encoded in terms of the opponency (or difference) between the colors in each pair. There is an additional black/white pair responsible for coding light contrast.
Oppositional defiant disorder: A childhood behavior disorder that is characterized by stubbornness, hostility, and behavioral defiance. This disorder is highly comorbid with ADHD.
Optimal level: The level that is the most favorable for an outcome.
Orbital frontal cortex: A region of the frontal lobes of the brain above the eye sockets.
Originality: When an idea or solution has a low probability of occurrence.
Orthonasal olfaction: Perceiving scents/smells introduced via the nostrils.
Ostracism: Being excluded and ignored by others.
Ostracism: Excluding one or more individuals from a group by reducing or eliminating contact with the person, usually by ignoring, shunning, or explicitly banishing them.
Other-oriented empathy: A component of the prosocial personality orientation; describes individuals who have a strong sense of social responsibility, empathize with and feel emotionally tied to those in need, understand the problems the victim is experiencing, and have a heightened sense of moral obligations to be helpful.
Otoconia: Small calcium carbonate particles that are packed in a layer on top of the gelatin membrane that covers the otolith receptor hair cell stereocilia.
Otolith receptors: Two inner ear vestibular receptors (utricle and saccule) that transduce linear accelerations and head tilt relative to gravity into neural signals that are then transferred to the brain.
Outgroup: A social group to which an individual does not identify or belong.
Outgroup: A social category or group with which an individual does not identify.
Oxygenated hemoglobin: Hemoglobin carrying oxygen.
Oxytocin: A nine amino acid mammalian neuropeptide. Oxytocin is synthesized primarily in the brain, but also in other tissues such as uterus, heart and thymus, with local effects. Oxytocin is best known as a hormone of female reproduction due to its capacity to cause uterine contractions and eject milk. Oxytocin has effects on brain tissue, but also acts throughout the body in some cases as an antioxidant or anti-inflammatory.
Oxytocin: A peptide hormone secreted by the pituitary gland to trigger lactation, as well as social bonding.
Pace of life: The frequency of events per unit of time; also referred to as speed or tempo.
Pain: Defined as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage,” according to the International Association for the Study of Pain.
Parameter: A numerical result summarizing a population (e.g., mean, proportion).
Parasympathetic nervous system: A division of the autonomic nervous system that is slower than its counterpart—that is, the sympathetic nervous system—and works in opposition to it. Generally engaged in “rest and digest” functions.
Parasympathetic nervous system (PNS): One of the two major divisions of the autonomic nervous system, responsible for stimulation of “rest and digest” activities.
Parent management training: A treatment for childhood behavior problems that teaches parents how to use contingencies to more effectively manage their children’s behavior.
Parental behavior: Behaviors performed in relation to one’s offspring that contributes directly to the survival of those offspring
Parietal lobe: The part of the cerebrum between the frontal and occipital lobes; involved in bodily sensations, visual attention, and integrating the senses.
Parietal lobe: An area of the cerebrum just behind the central sulcus that is engaged with somatosensory and gustatory sensation.
Participant variable: The individual characteristics of research subjects - age, personality, health, intelligence, etc.
Paternal behavior: Parental behavior performed by the father or other male.
Pathologizes: To define a trait or collection of traits as medically or psychologically unhealthy or abnormal.
Perceived social support: A person’s perception that others are there to help them in times of need.
Perceptual learning: Occurs when aspects of our perception changes as a function of experience.
Performance assessment: A method of measurement associated with ability models of EI that evaluate the test taker’s ability to solve emotion-related problems.
Performance experiences: When past successes or failures lead to changes in self-efficacy.
Periaqueductal gray: The gray matter in the midbrain near the cerebral aqueduct.
Peripheral nervous system: The part of the nervous system that is outside the brain and spinal cord.
Permissive parenting: Parenting that is low in demandingness and high in support.
Personal distress: According to Batson’s empathy–altruism hypothesis, observers who take a detached view of a person in need will experience feelings of being “worried” and “upset” and will have an egoistic motivation for helping to relieve that distress.
Personality: A person’s relatively stable patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior.
Person–environment transactions: The interplay between individuals and their contextual circumstances that ends up shaping both personality and the environment.
Phantom pain: Pain that appears to originate in an amputated limb.
Pharmacotherapy: A treatment approach that involves using medications to alter a person’s neural functioning to reduce psychological symptoms.
Phenotype: The pattern of expression of the genotype or the magnitude or extent to which it is observably expressed—an observable characteristic or trait of an organism, such as its morphology, development, biochemical or physiological properties, or behavior.
Photoactivation: A photochemical reaction that occurs when light hits photoreceptors, producing a neural signal.
Phrenology: A now-discredited field of brain study, popular in the first half of the 19th century that correlated bumps and indentations of the skull with specific functions of the brain.
Physical abuse: The use of intentional physical force to cause harm.
Pinna: Visible part of the outer ear.
Placebo effect: Effects from a treatment that are not caused by the physical properties of a treatment but by the meaning ascribed to it. These effects reflect the brain’s own activation of modulatory systems, which is triggered by positive expectation or desire for a successful treatment. Placebo analgesia is the most well-studied placebo effect and has been shown to depend, to a large degree, on opioid mechanisms. Placebo analgesia can be reversed by the pharmacological blocking of  opioid receptors. The word “placebo” is probably derived from the Latin word “placebit” (“it will please”).
Pluralistic ignorance: Relying on the actions of others to define an ambiguous need situation and to then erroneously conclude that no help or intervention is necessary.
Polychronic (P-time): Polychronic thinking switches back and forth among multiple activities as the situation demands.
Pons: A bridge that connects the cerebral cortex with the medulla, and reciprocally transfers information back and forth between the brain and the spinal cord.
Population: A larger collection of individuals that we would like to generalize our results to.
Positive psychology: The science of human flourishing. Positive Psychology is an applied science with an emphasis on real world intervention.
Positron: A particle having the same mass and numerically equal but positive charge as an electron.
Positron Emission Tomography: (or PET) An invasive procedure that captures brain images with positron emissions from the brain after the individual has been injected with radio-labeled isotopes.
Positron emission tomography (PET): A neuroimaging technique that measures brain activity by detecting the presence of a radioactive substance in the brain that is initially injected into the bloodstream and then pulled in by active brain tissue.
Practice effect: When participants get better at a task over time by “practicing” it through repeated assessments instead of due to actual developmental change (practice effects can be particularly problematic in longitudinal and sequential research designs).
Practitioner-Scholar Model: A model of training of professional psychologists that emphasizes clinical practice.
Prejudice: An evaluation or emotion toward people based merely on their group membership.
Preoptic region: A part of the anterior hypothalamus.
Prevalence: The number of cases of a specific disorder present in a given population at a certain time.
Primacy of the Unconscious: The hypothesis—supported by contemporary empirical research—that the vast majority of mental activity takes place outside conscious awareness.
Primary auditory cortex: A region of the cortex devoted to the processing of simple auditory information.
Primary Motor Cortex: A strip of cortex just in front of the central sulcus that is involved with motor control.
Primary Somatosensory Cortex: A strip of cerebral tissue just behind the central sulcus engaged in sensory reception of bodily sensations.
Primary visual cortex: A region of the cortex devoted to the processing of simple visual information.
Primary visual cortex (V1): Brain region located in the occipital cortex (toward the back of the head) responsible for processing basic visual information like the detection, thickness, and orientation of simple lines, color, and small-scale motion.
Priming: The process by which exposing people to one stimulus makes certain thoughts, feelings or behaviors more salient.
Principle of Inverse Effectiveness: The finding that, in general, for a multimodal stimulus, if the response to each unimodal component (on its own) is weak, then the opportunity for multisensory enhancement is very large. However, if one component—by itself—is sufficient to evoke a strong response, then the effect on the response gained by simultaneously processing the other components of the stimulus will be relatively small.
Prisoner’s dilemma: A classic paradox in which two individuals must independently choose between defection (maximizing reward to the self) and cooperation (maximizing reward to the group).
Progesterone: A primary progestin that is involved in pregnancy and mating behaviors.
Progestin: A class of C21 steroid hormones named for their progestational (pregnancy-supporting) effects. Progesterone is a common progestin.
Prohormone: A molecule that can act as a hormone itself or be converted into another hormone with different properties. For example, testosterone can serve as a hormone or as a prohormone for either dihydrotestosterone or estradiol.
Projection: A social perceiver’s assumption that the other person wants, knows, or feels the same as the perceiver wants, know, or feels.
Prolactin: A protein hormone that is highly conserved throughout the animal kingdom. It has many biological functions associated with reproduction and synergistic actions with steroid hormones.
Proprioceptive: Sensory information regarding muscle position and movement arising from receptors in the muscles, tendons, and joints.
Pro-social: Thoughts, actions, and feelings that are directed towards others and which are positive in nature.
Prosocial behavior: Social behavior that benefits another person.
Prosocial personality orientation: A measure of individual differences that identifies two sets of personality characteristics (other-oriented empathy, helpfulness) that are highly correlated with prosocial behavior.
Prototype: A typical, or average, member of a category. Averageness increases attractiveness.
Proximity: The relative closeness or distance from a given comparison standard. The further from the standard a person is, the less important he or she considers the standard. When a person is closer to the standard he/she is more likely to be competitive.
Proximity: Physical nearness.
Psychic causality: The assumption that nothing in mental life happens by chance—that there is no such thing as a “random” thought or feeling.
Psychogenesis: Developing from psychological origins.
Psychological abuse: Aggressive behavior intended to control a partner.
Psychological control: Parents’ manipulation of and intrusion into adolescents’ emotional and cognitive world through invalidating adolescents’ feelings and pressuring them to think in particular ways.
Psychological essentialism: The belief that members of a category have an unseen property that causes them to be in the category and to have the properties associated with it.
Psychopathy: Synonymous with psychopathic personality, the term used by Cleckley (1941/1976), and adapted from the term psychopathic introduced by German psychiatrist Julius Koch (1888) to designate mental disorders presumed to be heritable.
Psychopathy: A pattern of antisocial behavior characterized by an inability to empathize, egocentricity, and a desire to use relationships as tools for personal gain.
Psychophysics: Study of the relationships between physical stimuli and the perception of those stimuli.
Psychophysiological methods: Any research method in which the dependent variable is a physiological measure and the independent variable is behavioral or mental (such as memory).
Psychophysiological responses: Recording of biological measures (such as heart rate and hormone levels) and neurological responses (such as brain activity) that may be associated with observable behaviors.
Psychosexual stage model: Probably the most controversial aspect of psychodynamic theory, the psychosexual stage model contends that early in life we progress through a sequence of developmental stages (oral, anal, Oedipal, latency, and genital), each with its own unique mode of sexual gratification.
PTM: Post-traumatic model of dissociation.
Punishment: Inflicting pain or removing pleasure for a misdeed. Punishment decreases the likelihood that a behavior will be repeated.
P-value: The probability of observing a particular outcome in a sample, or more extreme, under a conjecture about the larger population or process.
Random assignment: Assigning participants to receive different conditions of an experiment by chance.
Random assignment: Using a probability-based method to divide a sample into treatment groups.
Random sampling: Using a probability-based method to select a subset of individuals for the sample from the population.
Rational self-interest: The principle that people will make logical decisions based on maximizing their own gains and benefits.
Reactive person–environment transactions: The interplay between individuals and their contextual circumstances that occurs whenever attributes of the individual shape how a person perceives and responds to their environment.
Realism: A point of view that emphasizes the importance of the senses in providing knowledge of the external world.
Recall memory: The process of remembering discrete episodes or events from the past, including encoding, consolidation and storage, and retrieval.
Received social support: The actual act of receiving support (e.g., informational, functional).
Receptive field: The portion of the world to which a neuron will respond if an appropriate stimulus is present there.
Receptor: A chemical structure on the cell surface or inside of a cell that has an affinity for a specific chemical configuration of a hormone, neurotransmitter, or other compound.
Reciprocal altruism: According to evolutionary psychology, a genetic predisposition for people to help those who have previously helped them.
Reciprocity: The act of exchanging goods or services. By giving a person a gift, the principle of reciprocity can be used to influence others; they then feel obligated to give back.
Recurrent dreams: The same dream narrative or dreamscape is experienced over different occasions of sleep.
Relational aggression: Intentionally harming another person’s social relationships, feelings of acceptance, or inclusion within a group.
Relationship bank account: An account you hold with every person in which a positive deposit or a negative withdrawal can be made during every interaction you have with the person.
Remote associations: Associations between words or concepts that are semantically distant and thus relatively unusual or original.
Research confederate: A person working with a researcher, posing as a research participant or as a bystander.
Research design: The strategy (or “blueprint”) for deciding how to collect and analyze research information.
Research methods: The specific tools and techniques used by researchers to collect information.
Research participant: A person being studied as part of a research program.
Resting membrane potential: The voltage inside the cell relative to the voltage outside the cell while the cell is a rest (approximately -70 mV).
Retrieval: Process by which information is accessed from memory and utilized.
Retrograde amnesia: Inability to retrieve memories for facts and events acquired before the onset of amnesia.
Retronasal olfaction: Perceiving scents/smells introduced via the mouth/palate.
Ritual: Rites or actions performed in a systematic or prescribed way often for an intended purpose. Example: The exchange of wedding rings during a marriage ceremony in many cultures.
Rods: Photoreceptors that are very sensitive to light and are mostly responsible for night vision.
Rostrocaudal: A front-back plane used to identify anatomical structures in the body and the brain.
Rubber hand illusion: The false perception of a fake hand as belonging to a perceiver, due to multimodal sensory information.
Safety behaviors: Actions people take to reduce likelihood of embarrassment or minimizing anxiety in a situation (e.g., not making eye contact, planning what to say).
Sagittal plane: A slice that runs vertically from front to back; slices of brain in this plane divide the left and right side of the brain; this plane is similar to slicing a baked potato lengthwise.
Sample: The collection of individuals on which we collect data.
Samples of convenience: Participants that have been recruited in a manner that prioritizes convenience over representativeness.
Sandwich generation: Generation of people responsible for taking care of their own children as well as their aging parents.
Satisfaction: Correspondence between an individual’s needs or preferences and the rewards offered by the environment.
Satisfactoriness: Correspondence between an individual’s abilities and the ability requirements of the environment.
Schizophrenia: This mental disorder is characterized by a breakdown of thought processes and emotional responses. Symptoms include auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking. Sufferers from this disorder experience grave dysfunctions in their social functioning and in work.
SCID-D: Structural Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Dissociative Disorders.
Scientific method: A method of investigation that includes systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.
Scientist-practitioner model: A model of training of professional psychologists that emphasizes the development of both research and clinical skills.
Scientist-practitioner model: The dual focus of I/O psychology, which entails practical questions motivating scientific inquiry to generate knowledge about the work-person interface and the practitioner side applying this scientific knowledge to organizational problems.
Second shift: Term used to describe the unpaid work a parent, usually a mother, does in the home in terms of housekeeping and childrearing.
Secure attachments: Attachment style that involves being comfortable with depending on your partner and having your partner depend on you.
Selection: A connection between personality attributes and aspects of the environment that occurs whenever individuals with particular attributes choose particular kinds of environments.
Selective attention: The ability to select certain stimuli in the environment to process, while ignoring distracting information.
Selective listening: A method for studying selective attention in which people focus attention on one auditory stream of information while deliberately ignoring other auditory information.
Selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs): A class of antidepressant medications often used to treat SAD that increase the concentration of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain.
Self-construal: The extent to which the self is defined as independent or as relating to others.
Self-efficacy: The belief that you are able to effectively perform the tasks needed to attain a valued goal.
Self-enhancement effect: The finding that people can boost their own self-evaluations by comparing themselves to others who rank lower on a particular comparison standard.
Self-esteem: The feeling of confidence in one’s own abilities or worth.
Self-evaluation maintenance (SEM): A model of social comparison that emphasizes one’s closeness to the comparison target, the relative performance of that target person, and the relevance of the comparison behavior to one’s self-concept.
Self-expansion model: Seeking to increase one’s capacity often through an intimate relationship.
Self-regulation: The complex process through which people control their thoughts, emotions, and actions.
Self-regulation: The process of altering one’s responses, including thoughts, feelings, impulses, actions, and task performance.
Self-report assessment: A method of measurement associated with mixed and trait models of EI, which evaluates the test taker’s perceived emotion-related skills, distinct personality traits, and other characteristics.
Self-report measure: A type of questionnaire in which participants answer questions whose answers correspond to numerical values that can be added to create an overall index of some construct.
Self-report measure: A type of psychological test in which a person fills out a survey or questionnaire with or without the help of an investigator.
Semicircular canals: A set of three inner ear vestibular receptors (horizontal, anterior, posterior) that transduce head rotational accelerations into head rotational velocity signals that are then transferred to the brain. There are three semicircular canals in each ear, with the major planes of each canal being orthogonal to each other.
Sensitization: Occurs when the response to a stimulus increases with exposure
Sensitization: Increased responsiveness of nociceptive neurons to their normal input and/or recruitment of a response to normally subthreshold inputs. Clinically, sensitization may only be inferred indirectly from phenomena such as hyperalgesia or allodynia. Sensitization can occur in the central nervous system (central sensitization) or in the periphery (peripheral sensitization).
Sensory modalities: A type of sense; for example, vision or audition.
Sequential research designs: A research design that includes elements of cross-sectional and longitudinal research designs. Similar to cross-sectional designs, sequential research designs include participants of different ages within one study; similar to longitudinal designs, participants of different ages are followed over time.
Serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs): A class of antidepressant medications often used to treat SAD that increase the concentration of serotonin and norepinephrine in the brain.
Sex determination: The point at which an individual begins to develop as either a male or a female. In animals that have sex chromosomes, this occurs at fertilization. Females are XX and males are XY. All eggs bear X chromosomes, whereas sperm can either bear X or Y chromosomes. Thus, it is the males that determine the sex of the offspring.
Sex differentiation: The process by which individuals develop the characteristics associated with being male or female. Differential exposure to gonadal steroids during early development causes sexual differentiation of several structures including the brain.
Sexual abuse: The act of forcing a partner to take part in a sex act against his or her will.
Shadowing: A task in which the individual is asked to repeat an auditory message as it is presented.
Shared mental model: Knowledge, expectations, conceptualizations, and other cognitive representations that members of a group have in common pertaining to the group and its members, tasks, procedures, and resources.
Shunning: The act of avoiding or ignoring a person, and withholding all social interaction for a period of time. Shunning generally occurs as a punishment and is temporary.
Silent language: Cultural norms of time and time use as they pertain to social communication and interaction.
Simulation: Imaginary or real imitation of other people’s behavior or feelings.
Simulation: The process of representing the other person’s mental state.
Single parent family: An individual parent raising a child or children.
Situational identity: Being guided by different cultural influences in different situations, such as home versus workplace, or formal versus informal roles.
Sleep deprivation: A sufficient lack of restorative sleep over a cumulative period so as to cause physical or psychiatric symptoms and affect routine performances of tasks.
Sleep paralysis: Sleep paralysis occurs when the normal paralysis during REM sleep manifests when falling asleep or awakening, often accompanied by hallucinations of danger or a malevolent presence in the room.
Sleep-wake cycle: A daily rhythmic activity cycle, based on 24-hour intervals, that is exhibited by many organisms.
Social and cultural: Society refers to a system of relationships between individuals and groups of individuals; culture refers to the meaning and information afforded to that system that is transmitted across generations. Thus, the social and cultural functions of emotion refer to the effects that emotions have on the functioning and maintenance of societies and cultures.
Social and emotional learning (SEL): The real-world application of EI in an educational setting and/or classroom that involves curricula that teach the process of integrating thinking, feeling, and behaving in order to become aware of the self and of others, make responsible decisions, and manage one’s own behaviors and those of others (Elias et al., 1997)
Social anxiety: Excessive anticipation and distress about social situations in which one may be evaluated negatively, rejected, or scrutinized.
Social anxiety disorder (SAD): An anxiety disorder marked by severe and persistent social anxiety and avoidance that interferes with a person’s ability to fulfill their roles in important life domains.
Social attribution: The way a person explains the motives or behaviors of others.
Social brain: The set of neuroanatomical structures that allows us to understand the actions and intentions of other people.
Social categorization: The act of mentally classifying someone into a social group (e.g., as female, elderly, a librarian).
Social category: Any group in which membership is defined by similarities between its members. Examples include religious, ethnic, and athletic groups.
Social cognition: The way people process and apply information about others.
Social comparison: The process by which people understand their own ability or condition by mentally comparing themselves to others.
Social comparison: The process of contrasting one’s personal qualities and outcomes, including beliefs, attitudes, values, abilities, accomplishments, and experiences, to those of other people.
Social facilitation: Improvement in task performance that occurs when people work in the presence of other people.
Social facilitation: When performance on simple or well-rehearsed tasks is enhanced when we are in the presence of others.
Social identity: A person’s sense of who they are, based on their group membership(s).
Social identity theory: A theoretical analysis of group processes and intergroup relations that assumes groups influence their members’ self-concepts and self-esteem, particularly when individuals categorize themselves as group members and identify with the group.
Social influence: When one person causes a change in attitude or behavior in another person, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
Social integration: Active engagement and participation in a broad range of social relationships.
Social loafing: The reduction of individual effort exerted when people work in groups compared with when they work alone.
Social neuroscience: An interdisciplinary field concerned with identifying the neural processes underlying social behavior and cognition.
Social or behavioral priming: A field of research that investigates how the activation of one social concept in memory can elicit changes in behavior, physiology, or self-reports of a related social concept without conscious awareness.
Social psychology: The branch of psychological science that is mainly concerned with understanding how the presence of others affects our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
Social referencing: This refers to the process whereby individuals look for information from others to clarify a situation, and then use that information to act. Thus, individuals will often use the emotional expressions of others as a source of information to make decisions about their own behavior.
Social support: A subjective feeling of psychological or physical comfort provided by family, friends, and others.
Social support: A social network’s provision of psychological and material resources that benefit an individual.
Social time: Scheduling by the flow of the activity. Events begin and end when, by mutual consensus, participants “feel” the time is right.
Social touch hypothesis: Proposes that social touch is a distinct domain of touch. C-tactile afferents form a special pathway that distinguishes social touch from other types of touch by selectively firing in response to touch of social-affective relevance; thus sending affective information parallel to the discriminatory information from the Aβ-fibers. In this way, the socially relevant touch stands out from the rest as having special positive emotional value and is processed further in affect-related brain areas such as the insula.
Social value orientation (SVO): An assessment of how an individual prefers to allocate resources between him- or herself and another person.
Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP): A professional organization bringing together academics and practitioners who work in I/O psychology and related areas. It is Division 14 of the American Psychological Association (APA).
Sociometer model: A conceptual analysis of self-evaluation processes that theorizes self-esteem functions to psychologically monitor of one’s degree of inclusion and exclusion in social groups.
Sodium-potassium pump: An ion channel that uses the neuron’s energy (adenosine triphosphate, ATP) to pump three Na+ ions outside the cell in exchange for bringing two K+ ions inside the cell.
Solidity principle: The idea that two solid masses should not be able to move through one another.
Soma: Cell body of a neuron that contains the nucleus and genetic information, and directs protein synthesis.
Somatic nervous system: A part of the peripheral nervous system that uses cranial and spinal nerves in volitional actions.
Somatogenesis: Developing from physical/bodily origins.
Somatosensory (body sensations) cortex: The region of the parietal lobe responsible for bodily sensations; the somatosensory cortex has a contralateral representation of the human body.
Somatosensory cortex: Consists of primary sensory cortex (S1) in the postcentral gyrus in the parietal lobes and secondary somatosensory cortex (S2), which is defined functionally and found in the upper bank of the lateral sulcus, called the parietal operculum. Somatosensory cortex also includes parts of the insular cortex.
Somatotopically organized: When the parts of the body that are represented in a particular brain region are organized topographically according to their physical location in the body (see Figure 2 illustration).
Spatial principle of multisensory integration: The finding that the superadditive effects of multisensory integration are observed when the sources of stimulation are spatially related to one another.
Spatial resolution: A term that refers to how small the elements of an image are; high spatial resolution means the device or technique can resolve very small elements; in neuroscience it describes how small of a structure in the brain can be imaged.
Spatial resolution: The degree to which one can separate a single object in space from another.
Specific abilities: Cognitive abilities that contain an appreciable component of g or general ability, but also contain a large component of a more content-focused talent such as mathematical, spatial, or verbal ability; patterns of specific abilities channel development down different paths as a function of an individual’s relative strengths and weaknesses.
Spina bifida: A developmental disease of the spinal cord, where the neural tube does not close caudally.
Spines: Protrusions on the dendrite of a neuron that form synapses with terminal buttons of the presynaptic axon.
Spinothalamic tract: Runs through the spinal cord’s lateral column up to the thalamus. C-fibers enter the dorsal horn of the spinal cord and form a synapse with a neuron that then crosses over to the lateral column and becomes part of the spinothalamic tract.
Split-brain patient: A patient who has had most or all of his or her corpus callosum severed.
Standard scale: Research method in which all participants use a common scale—typically a Likert scale—to respond to questions.
Standards: Ideas about how things should (or should not) be.
State: When a symptom is acute, or transient, lasting from a few minutes to a few hours.
State of vulnerability: When a person places him or herself in a position in which he or she might be exploited or harmed. This is often done out of trust that others will not exploit the vulnerability.
Statistic: A numerical result computed from a sample (e.g., mean, proportion).
Statistical significance: A result is statistically significant if it is unlikely to arise by chance alone.
Stepfamily: A family formed, after divorce or widowhood, through remarriage.
Stereocilia: Hairlike projections from the top of the receptor hair cells. The stereocilia are arranged in ascending height and when displaced toward the tallest cilia, the mechanical gated channels open and the cell is excited (depolarized). When the stereocilia are displaced toward the smallest cilia, the channels close and the cell is inhibited (hyperpolarized).
Stereotypes: The beliefs or attributes we associate with a specific social group. Stereotyping refers to the act of assuming that because someone is a member of a particular group, he or she possesses the group’s attributes. For example, stereotyping occurs when we assume someone is unemotional just because he is man, or particularly athletic just because she is African American.
Stereotyping: A mental process of using information shortcuts about a group to effectively navigate social situations or make decisions.
Stigmatized group: A group that suffers from social disapproval based on some characteristic that sets them apart from the majority.
Strange situation: A laboratory task that involves briefly separating and reuniting infants and their primary caregivers as a way of studying individual differences in attachment behavior.
Stress: A threat or challenge to our well-being. Stress can have both a psychological component, which consists of our subjective thoughts and feelings about being threatened or challenged, as well as a physiological component, which consists of our body’s response to the threat or challenge (see “fight or flight response”).
Stress reaction: The tendency to become easily distressed by the normal challenges of life.
Stria terminalis: A band of fibers that runs along the top surface of the thalamus.
Structural model: Developed to complement and extend the topographic model, the structural model of the mind posits the existence of three interacting mental structures called the id, ego, and superego.
Structuralism: A school of American psychology that sought to describe the elements of conscious experience.
Subcortical: Structures that lie beneath the cerebral cortex, but above the brain stem.
Subjective social variables: Targets of research interest that are not necessarily factual but are related to personal opinions or feelings
Subjective well-being: The scientific term used to describe how people experience the quality of their lives in terms of life satisfaction and emotional judgments of positive and negative affect.
Subliminal perception: The ability to process information for meaning when the individual is not consciously aware of that information.
Sulci: (plural) Grooves separating folds of the cortex.
Sulcus: A groove separating folds of the cortex.
Sulcus: (plural form, sulci) The crevices or fissures formed by convolutions in the brain.
Superadditive effect of multisensory integration: The finding that responses to multimodal stimuli are typically greater than the sum of the independent responses to each unimodal component if it were presented on its own.
Superior temporal sulcus: The sulcus (a fissure in the surface of the brain) that separates the superior temporal gyrus from the middle temporal gyrus. Located in the temporal lobes (parallel to the ears), it is involved in perception of biological motion or the movement of animate objects.
Supernatural: Developing from origins beyond the visible observable universe.
Support support network: The people who care about and support a person.
Surprise: An emotion rooted in expectancy violation that orients people toward the unexpected event.
Survey research: A method of research that involves administering a questionnaire to respondents in person, by telephone, through the mail, or over the internet.
Sympathetic nervous system: A division of the autonomic nervous system, that is faster than its counterpart that is the parasympathetic nervous system and works in opposition to it. Generally engaged in “fight or flight” functions.
Sympathetic nervous system: A branch of the autonomic nervous system that controls many of the body’s internal organs. Activity of the SNS generally mobilizes the body’s fight or flight response.
Sympathetic nervous system (SNS): One of the two major divisions of the autonomic nervous system, responsible for stimulation of “fight or flight” activities.
Synapse: Junction between the presynaptic terminal button of one neuron and the dendrite, axon, or soma of another postsynaptic neuron.
Synaptic gap: Also known as the synaptic cleft; the small space between the presynaptic terminal button and the postsynaptic dendritic spine, axon, or soma.
Synaptic vesicles: Groups of neurotransmitters packaged together and located within the terminal button.
Synchrony: Two people displaying the same behaviors or having the same internal states (typically because of mutual mimicry).
Syndrome: Involving a particular group of signs and symptoms.
Synesthesia: The blending of two or more sensory experiences, or the automatic activation of a secondary (indirect) sensory experience due to certain aspects of the primary (direct) sensory stimulation.
Target cell: A cell that has receptors for a specific chemical messenger (hormone or neurotransmitter).
Task-specific measures of self-efficacy: Measures that ask about self-efficacy beliefs for a particular task (e.g., athletic self-efficacy, academic self-efficacy).
Teamwork: The process by which members of the team combine their knowledge, skills, abilities, and other resources through a coordinated series of actions to produce an outcome.
Temperament: A child’s innate personality; biologically based personality, including qualities such as activity level, emotional reactivity, sociability, mood, and soothability.
Temporal lobe: An area of the cerebrum that lies below the lateral sulcus; it contains auditory and olfactory (smell) projection regions.
Temporal lobe: The part of the cerebrum in front of (anterior to) the occipital lobe and below the lateral fissure; involved in vision, auditory processing, memory, and integrating vision and audition.
Temporal parietal junction: The area where the temporal lobes (parallel to the ears) and parieta lobes (at the top of the head toward the back) meet. This area is important in mentalizing and distinguishing between the self and others.
Temporal perspective: The extent to which we are oriented toward the past, present, and future.
Temporal resolution: The degree to which one can separate a single point in time from another.
Temporal resolution: A term that refers to how small a unit of time can be measured; high temporal resolution means capable of resolving very small units of time; in neuroscience it describes how precisely in time a process can be measured in the brain.
Temporally graded retrograde amnesia: Inability to retrieve memories from just prior to the onset of amnesia with intact memory for more remote events.
Terminal button: The part of the end of the axon that form synapses with postsynaptic dendrite, axon, or soma.
Terror management theory (TMT): A theory that proposes that humans manage the anxiety that stems from the inevitability of death by embracing frameworks of meaning such as cultural values and beliefs.
Tertiary education: Education or training beyond secondary school, usually taking place in a college, university, or vocational training program.
Testosterone: The primary androgen secreted by the testes of most vertebrate animals, including men.
Thalamus: A structure in the midline of the brain located between the midbrain and the cerebral cortex.
Thalamus: A part of the diencephalon that works as a gateway for incoming and outgoing information.
Theory of mind: The human capacity to understand minds, a capacity that is made up of a collection of concepts (e.g., agent, intentionality) and processes (e.g., goal detection, imitation, empathy, perspective taking).
Third-person perspective: Observations made by individuals in a way that can be independently confirmed by other individuals so as to lead to general, objective understanding. With respect to consciousness, third-person perspectives make use of behavioral and neural measures related to conscious experiences.
Threshold of excitation: Specific membrane potential that the neuron must reach to initiate an action potential.
Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon: The inability to pull a word from memory even though there is the sensation that that word is available.
Topographic model: Freud’s first model of the mind, which contended that the mind could be divided into three regions: conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. (The “topographic” comes from the fact that topography is the study of maps.)
Torsion: A rotational eye movement around the line of sight that consists of a clockwise or counterclockwise direction.
Traditional family: Two or more people related by blood, marriage, and—occasionally-- by adoption.
Trait: When a symptom forms part of the personality or character.
Trait curiosity: Stable individual-differences in how easily and how often people become curious.
“Traitement moral” (moral treatment): A therapeutic regimen of improved nutrition, living conditions, and rewards for productive behavior that has been attributed to Philippe Pinel during the French Revolution, when he released mentally ill patients from their restraints and treated them with compassion and dignity rather than with contempt and denigration.
Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS): A neuroscience technique that passes mild electrical current directly through a brain area by placing small electrodes on the skull.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS): A neuroscience technique whereby a brief magnetic pulse is applied to the head that temporarily induces a weak electrical current that interferes with ongoing activity.
Transduction: The mechanisms that convert stimuli into electrical signals that can be transmitted and processed by the nervous system. Physical or chemical stimulation creates action potentials in a receptor cell in the peripheral nervous system, which is then conducted along the axon to the central nervous system.
Transduction: A process in which physical energy converts into neural energy.
Transfer-appropriate processing: A principle that states that memory performance is superior when a test taps the same cognitive processes as the original encoding activity.
Transformation: The term for personality changes associated with experience and life events.
Transverse plane: See “horizontal plane.”
Trauma: An event or situation that causes great distress and disruption, and that creates substantial, lasting damage to the psychological development of a person.
Trephination: The drilling of a hole in the skull, presumably as a way of treating psychological disorders.
Triarchic model: Model formulated to reconcile alternative historic conceptions of psychopathy and differing methods for assessing it. Conceives of psychopathy as encompassing three symptomatic components: boldness, involving social efficacy, emotional resiliency, and venturesomeness; meanness, entailing lack of empathy/emotional-sensitivity and exploitative behavior toward others; and disinhibition, entailing deficient behavioral restraint and lack of control over urges/emotional reactions.
Trichromacy theory: Theory that proposes that all of your color perception is fundamentally based on the combination of three (not two, not four) different color signals.
Two-parent family: A family consisting of two parents—typical both of the biological parents-- and their children.
Tympanic membrane: Ear drum, which separates the outer ear from the middle ear.
Typicality: The difference in “goodness” of category members, ranging from the most typical (the prototype) to borderline members.
Ultimatum game: An economic game in which a proposer (Player A) can offer a subset of resources to a responder (Player B), who can then either accept or reject the given proposal.
Unconscious: Not conscious; the part of the mind that affects behavior though it is inaccessible to the conscious mind.
Under-determined or misspecified causal models: Psychological frameworks that miss or neglect to include one or more of the critical determinants of the phenomenon under analysis.
Unimodal: Of or pertaining to a single sensory modality.
Unimodal components: The parts of a stimulus relevant to one sensory modality at a time.
Unimodal cortex: A region of the brain devoted to the processing of information from a single sensory modality.
Uninvolved parenting: Parenting that is low in demandingness and low in support.
Unusual uses: A test of divergent thinking that asks participants to find many uses for commonplace objects, such as a brick or paperclip.
Upward comparisons: Making mental comparisons to people who are perceived to be superior on the standard of comparison.
Vagus nerve: The 10th cranial nerve. The mammalian vagus has an older unmyelinated branch which originates in the dorsal motor complex and a more recently evolved, myelinated branch, with origins in the ventral vagal complex including the nucleus ambiguous. The vagus is the primary source of autonomic-parasympathetic regulation for various internal organs, including the heart, lungs and other parts of the viscera. The vagus nerve is primarily sensory (afferent), transmitting abundant visceral input to the central nervous system.
Value judgment: An assessment—based on one’s own preferences and priorities—about the basic “goodness” or “badness” of a concept or practice.
Value-free research: Research that is not influenced by the researchers’ own values, morality, or opinions.
Vasopressin: A nine amino acid mammalian neuropeptide. Vasopressin is synthesized primarily in the brain, but also may be made in other tissues. Vasopressin is best known for its effects on the cardiovascular system (increasing blood pressure) and also the kidneys (causing water retention). Vasopressin has effects on brain tissue, but also acts throughout the body.
Verbal persuasion: When trusted people (friends, family, experts) influence your self-efficacy for better or worse by either encouraging or discouraging you about your ability to succeed.
Verbal report paradigms: Research methods that require participants to report on their experiences, thoughts, feelings, etc., using language.
Vergence angle: The angle between the line of sight for the two eyes. Low vergence angles indicate far-viewing objects, whereas large angles indicate viewing of near objects.
Vestibular compensation: Following injury to one side of vestibular receptors or the vestibulocochlear nerve, the central vestibular nuclei neurons gradually recover much of their function through plasticity mechanisms. The recovery is never complete, however, and extreme motion environments can lead to dizziness, nausea, problems with balance, and spatial memory.
Vestibular efferents: Nerve fibers originating from a nucleus in the brainstem that project from the brain to innervate the vestibular receptor hair cells and afferent nerve terminals. Efferents have a modulatory role on their targets, which is not well understood.
Vestibular system: Consists of a set of motion and gravity detection receptors in the inner ear, a set of primary nuclei in the brainstem, and a network of pathways carrying motion and gravity signals to many regions of the brain.
Vestibulocochlear nerve: The VIIIth cranial nerve that carries fibers innervating the vestibular receptors and the cochlea.
Vestibuloocular reflex: Eye movements produced by the vestibular brainstem that are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction to head motion. The VOR functions to maintain visual stability on a point of interest and is nearly perfect for all natural head movements.
Vestibulo-ocular reflex: Coordination of motion information with visual information that allows you to maintain your gaze on an object while you move.
Vicarious performances: When seeing other people succeed or fail leads to changes in self-efficacy.
Vignette: A short story that presents a situation that participants are asked to respond to.
Violation of expectation paradigm: A research method in which infants are expected to respond in a particular way because one of two conditions violates or goes against what they should expect based on their everyday experiences (e.g., it violates our expectations that Wile E. Coyote runs off a cliff but does not immediately fall to the ground below).
Violence: Aggression intended to cause extreme physical harm, such as injury or death.
Visual cortex: The part of the brain that processes visual information, located in the back of the brain.
Visual hemifield: The half of visual space (what we see) on one side of fixation (where we are looking); the left hemisphere is responsible for the right visual hemifield, and the right hemisphere is responsible for the left visual hemifield.
Visual perspective taking: Can refer to visual perspective taking (perceiving something from another person’s spatial vantage point) or more generally to effortful mental state inference (trying to infer the other person’s thoughts, desires, emotions).
Vivid dreams: A dream that is very clear, where the individual can remember the dream in great detail.
Voltage: The difference in electric charge between two points.
Voluntary responses: Behaviors that a person has control over and completes by choice.
WEIRD cultures: Cultures that are western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic.
Well-being: The experience of mental and physical health and the absence of disorder.
Wernicke’s area: A language area in the temporal lobe where linguistic information is comprehended (Also see Broca’s area).
What pathway: Pathway of neural processing in the brain that is responsible for your ability to recognize what is around you.
Where-and-How pathway: Pathway of neural processing in the brain that is responsible for you knowing where things are in the world and how to interact with them.
White matter: The inner whitish regions of the cerebrum comprised of the myelinated axons of neurons in the cerebral cortex.
White matter: Regions of the nervous system that represent the axons of the nerve cells; whitish in color because of myelination of the nerve cells.
Work and organizational psychology: Preferred name for I/O psychology in Europe.
Working memory: Short transitory memory processed in the hippocampus.
Working memory: The form of memory we use to hold onto information temporarily, usually for the purposes of manipulation.
Working models: An understanding of how relationships operate; viewing oneself as worthy of love and others as trustworthy.