Vocabulary

Ablation: Surgical removal of brain tissue.
Acceptance and commitment therapy: A therapeutic approach designed to foster nonjudgmental observation of one’s own mental processes.
Adaptations: Evolved solutions to problems that historically contributed to reproductive success.
Adherence: In health, it is the ability of a patient to maintain a health behavior prescribed by a physician. This might include taking medication as prescribed, exercising more, or eating less high-fat food.
Adoption study: A behavior genetic research method that involves comparison of adopted children to their adoptive and biological parents.
Affective forecasting: Predicting how one will feel in the future after some event or decision.
Afferent nerves: Nerves that carry messages to the brain or spinal cord.
Agnosias: Due to damage of Wernicke’s area. An inability to recognize objects, words, or faces.
Agoraphobia: A sort of anxiety disorder distinguished by feelings that a place is uncomfortable or may be unsafe because it is significantly open or crowded.
Agreeableness: A personality trait that reflects a person’s tendency to be compassionate, cooperative, warm, and caring to others. People low in agreeableness tend to be rude, hostile, and to pursue their own interests over those of others.
Alogia: A reduction in the amount of speech and/or increased pausing before the initiation of speech.
Ambulatory assessment: An overarching term to describe methodologies that assess the behavior, physiology, experience, and environments of humans in naturalistic settings.
Amnesia: The loss of memory.
Anal sex: Penetration of the anus by an animate or inanimate object.
Androgyny: Having both feminine and masculine characteristics.
Anecdotal evidence: A piece of biased evidence, usually drawn from personal experience, used to support a conclusion that may or may not be correct.
Anhedonia: Loss of interest or pleasure in activities one previously found enjoyable or rewarding.
Anhedonia/amotivation: A reduction in the drive or ability to take the steps or engage in actions necessary to obtain the potentially positive outcome.
Anxiety: A mood state characterized by negative affect, muscle tension, and physical arousal in which a person apprehensively anticipates future danger or misfortune.
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.
Aphasia: Due to damage of the Broca’s area. An inability to produce or understand words.
Arcuate fasciculus: A fiber tract that connects Wernicke’s and Broca’s speech areas.
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.
Attitude: A psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor.
Attributional style: The tendency by which a person infers the cause or meaning of behaviors or events.
Authoritative: A parenting style characterized by high (but reasonable) expectations for children’s behavior, good communication, warmth and nurturance, and the use of reasoning (rather than coercion) as preferred responses to children’s misbehavior.
Autobiographical memory: Memory for the events of one’s life.
Autobiographical reasoning: The ability, typically developed in adolescence, to derive substantive conclusions about the self from analyzing one’s own personal experiences.
Automatic: A behavior or process has one or more of the following features: unintentional, uncontrollable, occurring outside of conscious awareness, and cognitively efficient.
Automatic: Automatic biases are unintended, immediate, and irresistible.
Automatic thoughts: Thoughts that occur spontaneously; often used to describe problematic thoughts that maintain mental disorders.
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: A heuristic in which the frequency or likelihood of an event is evaluated based on how easily instances of it come to mind.
Aversive racism: Aversive racism is unexamined racial bias that the person does not intend and would reject, but that avoids inter-racial contact.
Axial plane: See “horizontal plane.”
Basal ganglia: Subcortical structures of the cerebral hemispheres involved in voluntary movement.
Behavioral genetics: The empirical science of how genes and environments combine to generate behavior.
Behavioral medicine: A field similar to health psychology that integrates psychological factors (e.g., emotion, behavior, cognition, and social factors) in the treatment of disease. This applied field includes clinical areas of study, such as occupational therapy, hypnosis, rehabilitation or medicine, and preventative medicine.
Big Five: A broad taxonomy of personality trait domains repeatedly derived from studies of trait ratings in adulthood and encompassing the categories of (1) extraversion vs. introversion, (2) neuroticism vs. emotional stability, (3) agreeable vs. disagreeableness, (4) conscientiousness vs. nonconscientiousness, and (5) openness to experience vs. conventionality. By late childhood and early adolescence, people’s self-attributions of personality traits, as well as the trait attributions made about them by others, show patterns of intercorrelations that confirm with the five-factor structure obtained in studies of adults.
Biofeedback: The process by which physiological signals, not normally available to human perception, are transformed into easy-to-understand graphs or numbers. Individuals can then use this information to try to change bodily functioning (e.g., lower blood pressure, reduce muscle tension).
Biological vulnerability: A specific genetic and neurobiological factor that might predispose someone to develop anxiety disorders.
Biomedical Model of Health: A reductionist model that posits that ill health is a result of a deviation from normal function, which is explained by the presence of pathogens, injury, or genetic abnormality.
Biopsychosocial Model of Health: An approach to studying health and human function that posits the importance of biological, psychological, and social (or environmental) processes.
Bisexual: Attraction to two sexes.
Blatant biases: Blatant biases are conscious beliefs, feelings, and behavior that people are perfectly willing to admit, are mostly hostile, and openly favor their own group.
Blocking: In classical conditioning, the finding that no conditioning occurs to a stimulus if it is combined with a previously conditioned stimulus during conditioning trials. Suggests that information, surprise value, or prediction error is important in conditioning.
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.
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.
Callosotomy: Surgical procedure in which the corpus callosum is severed (used to control severe epilepsy).
Case study: An in-depth and objective examination of the details of a single person or entity.
Case study: A thorough study of a patient (or a few patients) with naturally occurring lesions.
Catatonia: Behaviors that seem to reflect a reduction in responsiveness to the external environment. This can include holding unusual postures for long periods of time, failing to respond to verbal or motor prompts from another person, or excessive and seemingly purposeless motor activity.
Categorize: To sort or arrange different items into classes or categories.
Causality: In research, the determination that one variable causes—is responsible for—an effect.
Central sulcus: The major fissure that divides the frontal and the parietal lobes.
Cerebellum: The distinctive structure at the back of the brain, Latin for “small brain.”
Cerebellum: A nervous system structure behind and below the cerebrum. Controls motor movement coordination, balance, equilibrium, and muscle tone.
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.
Chameleon effect: The tendency for individuals to nonconsciously mimic the postures, mannerisms, facial expressions, and other behaviors of one’s interaction partners.
Chronic disease: A health condition that persists over time, typically for periods longer than three months (e.g., HIV, asthma, diabetes).
Chronic stress: Discrete or related problematic events and conditions which persist over time and result in prolonged activation of the biological and/or psychological stress response (e.g., unemployment, ongoing health difficulties, marital discord).
Chutes and Ladders: A numerical board game that seems to be useful for building numerical knowledge.
Cingulate gyrus: A medial cortical portion of the nervous tissue that is a part of the limbic system.
Cisgender: When a person’s birth sex corresponds with his/her gender identity and gender role.
Classical conditioning: The procedure in which an initially neutral stimulus (the conditioned stimulus, or CS) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (or US). The result is that the conditioned stimulus begins to elicit a conditioned response (CR). Classical conditioning is nowadays considered important as both a behavioral phenomenon and as a method to study simple associative learning. Same as Pavlovian conditioning.
Cognitive bias modification: Using exercises (e.g., computer games) to change problematic thinking habits.
Cognitive failures: Every day slips and lapses, also called absentmindedness.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT): A family of approaches with the goal of changing the thoughts and behaviors that influence psychopathology.
Coital sex: Vaginal-penile intercourse.
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.
Comorbidity: Describes a state of having more than one psychological or physical disorder at a given time.
Computerized axial tomography: A noninvasive brain-scanning procedure that uses X-ray absorption around the head.
Concrete operations stage: Piagetian stage between ages 7 and 12 when children can think logically about concrete situations but not engage in systematic scientific reasoning.
Conditioned compensatory response: In classical conditioning, a conditioned response that opposes, rather than is the same as, the unconditioned response. It functions to reduce the strength of the unconditioned response. Often seen in conditioning when drugs are used as unconditioned stimuli.
Conditioned response: A learned reaction following classical conditioning, or the process by which an event that automatically elicits a response is repeatedly paired with another neutral stimulus (conditioned stimulus), resulting in the ability of the neutral stimulus to elicit the same response on its own.
Conditioned response (CR): The response that is elicited by the conditioned stimulus after classical conditioning has taken place.
Conditioned stimulus (CS): An initially neutral stimulus (like a bell, light, or tone) that elicits a conditioned response after it has been associated with an unconditioned stimulus.
Confidante: A trusted person with whom secrets and vulnerabilities can be shared.
Conformity: Changing one’s attitude or behavior to match a perceived social norm.
Conscience: The cognitive, emotional, and social influences that cause young children to create and act consistently with internal standards of conduct.
Conscientiousness: A personality trait that reflects a person’s tendency to be careful, organized, hardworking, and to follow rules.
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.
Conservation problems: Problems pioneered by Piaget in which physical transformation of an object or set of objects changes a perceptually salient dimension but not the quantity that is being asked about.
Consolidation: The process occurring after encoding that is believed to stabilize memory traces.
Context: Stimuli that are in the background whenever learning occurs. For instance, the Skinner box or room in which learning takes place is the classic example of a context. However, “context” can also be provided by internal stimuli, such as the sensory effects of drugs (e.g., being under the influence of alcohol has stimulus properties that provide a context) and mood states (e.g., being happy or sad). It can also be provided by a specific period in time—the passage of time is sometimes said to change the “temporal context.”
Continuous development: Ways in which development occurs in a gradual incremental manner, rather than through sudden jumps.
Continuous distributions: Characteristics can go from low to high, with all different intermediate values possible. One does not simply have the trait or not have it, but can possess varying amounts of it.
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).
Control: Feeling like you have the power to change your environment or behavior if you need or want to.
Converging evidence: Similar findings reported from multiple studies using different methods.
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: In statistics, the measure of relatedness of two or more variables.
Correlation: A measure of the association between two variables, or how they go together.
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.
Cross-sectional design: Research method that involves observation of all of a population, or a representative subset, at one specific point in time.
Cue overload principle: The principle stating that the more memories that are associated to a particular retrieval cue, the less effective the cue will be in prompting retrieval of any one memory.
Cultural differences: An approach to understanding culture primarily by paying attention to unique and distinctive features that set them apart from other cultures.
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 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.
Cunnilingus: Oral stimulation of the female’s external sex organs.
Daily Diary method: A methodology where participants complete a questionnaire about their thoughts, feelings, and behavior of the day at the end of the day.
Daily hassles: Irritations in daily life that are not necessarily traumatic, but that cause difficulties and repeated stress.
Data (also called observations): In research, information systematically collected for analysis and interpretation.
Day reconstruction method (DRM): A methodology where participants describe their experiences and behavior of a given day retrospectively upon a systematic reconstruction on the following day.
Deductive reasoning: A form of reasoning in which a given premise determines the interpretation of specific observations (e.g., All birds have feathers; since a duck is a bird, it has feathers).
Defensive coping mechanism: An unconscious process, which protects an individual from unacceptable or painful ideas, impulses, or memories.
Delusions: False beliefs that are often fixed, hard to change even in the presence of conflicting information, and often culturally influenced in their content.
Depth perception: The ability to actively perceive the distance from oneself of objects in the environment.
DES: Dissociative Experiences Scale.
Descriptive norm: The perception of what most people do in a given situation.
Diagnostic criteria: The specific criteria used to determine whether an individual has a specific type of psychiatric disorder. Commonly used diagnostic criteria are included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, 5th Edition (DSM-5) and the Internal Classification of Disorders, Version 9 (ICD-9).
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT): A treatment often used for borderline personality disorder that incorporates both cognitive-behavioral and mindfulness elements.
Dialectical worldview: A perspective in DBT that emphasizes the joint importance of change and acceptance.
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.
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.
Directional goals: The motivation to reach a particular outcome or judgment.
Discontinuous development: Discontinuous development
Discrimination: Discrimination is behavior that advantages or disadvantages people merely based on their group membership.
Discriminative stimulus: In operant conditioning, a stimulus that signals whether the response will be reinforced. It is said to “set the occasion” for the operant response.
Disorganized behavior: Behavior or dress that is outside the norm for almost all subcultures. This would include odd dress, odd makeup (e.g., lipstick outlining a mouth for 1 inch), or unusual rituals (e.g., repetitive hand gestures).
Disorganized speech: Speech that is difficult to follow, either because answers do not clearly follow questions or because one sentence does not logically follow from another.
Dissociation: A disruption in the usually integrated function of consciousness, memory, identity, or perception of the environment.
Distinctiveness: The principle that unusual events (in a context of similar events) will be recalled and recognized better than uniform (nondistinctive) events.
Distribution: In statistics, the relative frequency that a particular value occurs for each possible value of a given variable.
Dizygotic twins: Twins conceived from two ova and two sperm.
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.
Dopamine: A neurotransmitter in the brain that is thought to play an important role in regulating the function of other neurotransmitters.
Durability bias: A bias in affective forecasting in which one overestimates for how long one will feel an emotion (positive or negative) after some event.
Early adversity: Single or multiple acute or chronic stressful events, which may be biological or psychological in nature (e.g., poverty, abuse, childhood illness or injury), occurring during childhood and resulting in a biological and/or psychological stress response.
Ecological momentary assessment: An overarching term to describe methodologies that repeatedly sample participants’ real-world experiences, behavior, and physiology in real time.
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.
Efferent nerves: Nerves that carry messages from the brain to glands and organs in the periphery.
Effortful control: A temperament quality that enables children to be more successful in motivated self-regulation.
Ego: Sigmund Freud’s conception of an executive self in the personality. Akin to this module’s notion of “the I,” Freud imagined the ego as observing outside reality, engaging in rational though, and coping with the competing demands of inner desires and moral standards.
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, or EAR: A methodology where participants wear a small, portable audio recorder that intermittently records snippets of ambient sounds around them.
Emotion-focused coping: Coping strategy aimed at reducing the negative emotions associated with a stressful event.
Empirical: Concerned with observation and/or the ability to verify a claim.
Empirical methods: Approaches to inquiry that are tied to actual measurement and observation.
Encoding: The initial experience of perceiving and learning events.
Encoding specificity principle: The hypothesis that a retrieval cue will be effective to the extent that information encoded from the cue overlaps or matches information in the engram or memory trace.
Enculturation: The uniquely human form of learning that is taught by one generation to another.
Engrams: A term indicating the change in the nervous system representing an event; also, memory trace.
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.
Episodic memory: Memory for events in a particular time and place.
Episodic memory: The ability to learn and retrieve new information or episodes in one’s life.
Error management theory (EMT): A theory of selection under conditions of uncertainty in which recurrent cost asymmetries of judgment or inference favor the evolution of adaptive cognitive biases that function to minimize the more costly errors.
Ethics: Professional guidelines that offer researchers a template for making decisions that protect research participants from potential harm and that help steer scientists away from conflicts of interest or other situations that might compromise the integrity of their research.
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.
Evaluative priming task: An implicit attitude task that assesses the extent to which an attitude object is associated with a positive or negative valence by measuring the time it takes a person to label an adjective as good or bad after being presented with an attitude object.
Event-related potentials: A physiological measure of large electrical change in the brain produced by sensory stimulation or motor responses.
Evolution: Change over time. Is the definition changing?
Experience-sampling method: A methodology where participants report on their momentary thoughts, feelings, and behaviors at different points in time over the course of a day.
Explicit attitude: An attitude that is consciously held and can be reported on by the person holding the attitude.
Exposure therapy: A form of intervention in which the patient engages with a problematic (usually feared) situation without avoidance or escape.
External cues: Stimuli in the outside world that serve as triggers for anxiety or as reminders of past traumatic events.
External validity: The degree to which a finding generalizes from the specific sample and context of a study to some larger population and broader settings.
Extinction: Decrease in the strength of a learned behavior that occurs when the conditioned stimulus is presented without the unconditioned stimulus (in classical conditioning) or when the behavior is no longer reinforced (in instrumental conditioning). The term describes both the procedure (the US or reinforcer is no longer presented) as well as the result of the procedure (the learned response declines). Behaviors that have been reduced in strength through extinction are said to be “extinguished.”
Extraversion: A personality trait that reflects a person’s tendency to be sociable, outgoing, active, and assertive.
Facets: Broad personality traits can be broken down into narrower facets or aspects of the trait. For example, extraversion has several facets, such as sociability, dominance, risk-taking and so forth.
Fact: Objective information about the world.
Factor analysis: A statistical technique for grouping similar things together according to how highly they are associated.
Falsify: In science, the ability of a claim to be tested and—possibly—refuted; a defining feature of science.
Family Stress Model: A description of the negative effects of family financial difficulty on child adjustment through the effects of economic stress on parents’ depressed mood, increased marital problems, and poor parenting.
Fantasy proneness: The tendency to extensive fantasizing or daydreaming.
Fear conditioning: A type of classical or Pavlovian conditioning in which the conditioned stimulus (CS) is associated with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US), such as a foot shock. As a consequence of learning, the CS comes to evoke fear. The phenomenon is thought to be involved in the development of anxiety disorders in humans.
Fellatio: Oral stimulation of the male’s external sex organs.
Fight or flight response: A biological reaction to alarming stressors that prepares the body to resist or escape a threat.
Five stages of psychosexual development: Oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital.
Five-Factor Model: (also called the Big Five) The Five-Factor Model is a widely accepted model of personality traits. Advocates of the model believe that much of the variability in people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors can be summarized with five broad traits. These five traits are Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.
Flashback: Sudden, intense re-experiencing of a previous event, usually trauma-related.
Flashbulb memory: Vivid personal memories of receiving the news of some momentous (and usually emotional) event.
Flat affect: A reduction in the display of emotions through facial expressions, gestures, and speech intonation.
Forebrain: A part of the nervous system that contains the cerebral hemispheres, thalamus, and hypothalamus.
Formal operations stage: Piagetian stage starting at age 12 years and continuing for the rest of life, in which adolescents may gain the reasoning powers of educated adults.
Fornix: (plural form, fornices) A nerve fiber tract that connects the hippocampus to mammillary bodies.
Free association: In psychodynamic therapy, a process in which the patient reports all thoughts that come to mind without censorship, and these thoughts are interpreted by the therapist.
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.
Full-cycle psychology: A scientific approach whereby researchers start with an observational field study to identify an effect in the real world, follow up with laboratory experimentation to verify the effect and isolate the causal mechanisms, and return to field research to corroborate their experimental findings.
Functional capacity: The ability to engage in self-care (cook, clean, bathe), work, attend school, and/or engage in social relationships.
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 (fMRI): Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): A neuroimaging technique that infers brain activity by measuring changes in oxygen levels in the blood.
G: Short for “general factor” and is often used to be synonymous with intelligence itself.
Gender: The psychological and sociological representations of one’s biological sex.
Gender identity: Personal depictions of masculinity and femininity.
Gender roles: Societal expectations of masculinity and femininity.
Gender schemas: Organized beliefs and expectations about maleness and femaleness that guide children’s thinking about gender.
Gene: A specific deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequence that codes for a specific polypeptide or protein or an observable inherited trait.
Gene Selection Theory: The modern theory of evolution by selection by which differential gene replication is the defining process of evolutionary change.
General Adaptation Syndrome: A three-phase model of stress, which includes a mobilization of physiological resources phase, a coping phase, and an exhaustion phase (i.e., when an organism fails to cope with the stress adequately and depletes its resources).
General population: A sample of people representative of the average individual in our society.
Generalize: In research, the degree to which one can extend conclusions drawn from the findings of a study to other groups or situations not included in the study.
Generalize: Generalizing, in science, refers to the ability to arrive at broad conclusions based on a smaller sample of observations. For these conclusions to be true the sample should accurately represent the larger population from which it is drawn.
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD): Excessive worry about everyday things that is at a level that is out of proportion to the specific causes of worry.
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.
Globus pallidus: A nucleus of the basal ganglia.
Goal-directed behavior: Instrumental behavior that is influenced by the animal’s knowledge of the association between the behavior and its consequence and the current value of the consequence. Sensitive to the reinforcer devaluation effect.
Goodness of fit: The match or synchrony between a child’s temperament and characteristics of parental care that contributes to positive or negative personality development. A good “fit” means that parents have accommodated to the child’s temperamental attributes, and this contributes to positive personality growth and better adjustment.
Grandiosity: Inflated self-esteem or an exaggerated sense of self-importance and self-worth (e.g., believing one has special powers or superior abilities).
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).
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.
Habit: Instrumental behavior that occurs automatically in the presence of a stimulus and is no longer influenced by the animal’s knowledge of the value of the reinforcer. Insensitive to the reinforcer devaluation effect.
Hallucinations: Perceptual experiences that occur even when there is no stimulus in the outside world generating the experiences. They can be auditory, visual, olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste), or somatic (touch).
Health: According to the World Health Organization, it is a complete state of physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
Health: The complete state of physical, mental, and social well-being—not just the absence of disease or infirmity.
Health behavior: Any behavior that is related to health—either good or bad.
Health behaviors: Behaviors that are associated with better health. Examples include exercising, not smoking, and wearing a seat belt while in a vehicle.
Heritability coefficient: An easily misinterpreted statistical construct that purports to measure the role of genetics in the explanation of differences among individuals.
Heterosexual: Opposite-sex attraction.
Heuristics: A mental shortcut or rule of thumb that reduces complex mental problems to more simple rule-based decisions.
HEXACO model: The HEXACO model is an alternative to the Five-Factor Model. The HEXACO model includes six traits, five of which are variants of the traits included in the Big Five (Emotionality [E], Extraversion [X], Agreeableness [A], Conscientiousness [C], and Openness [O]). The sixth factor, Honesty-Humility [H], is unique to this model.
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.
Homosexual: Same-sex attraction.
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.
Hostility: An experience or trait with cognitive, behavioral, and emotional components. It often includes cynical thoughts, feelings of emotion, and aggressive behavior.
Hot cognition: The mental processes that are influenced by desires and feelings.
Hypersomnia: Excessive daytime sleepiness, including difficulty staying awake or napping, or prolonged sleep episodes.
Hypothalamus: Part of the diencephalon. Regulates biological drives with pituitary gland.
Hypotheses: A logical idea that can be tested.
Hypothesis: A tentative explanation that is subject to testing.
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: Sometimes used synonymously with the term “self,” identity means many different things in psychological science and in other fields (e.g., sociology). In this module, I adopt Erik Erikson’s conception of identity as a developmental task for late adolescence and young adulthood. Forming an identity in adolescence and young adulthood involves exploring alternative roles, values, goals, and relationships and eventually committing to a realistic agenda for life that productively situates a person in the adult world of work and love. In addition, identity formation entails commitments to new social roles and reevaluation of old traits, and importantly, it brings with it a sense of temporal continuity in life, achieved though the construction of an integrative life story.
Immunocytochemistry: A method of staining tissue including the brain, using antibodies.
Impact bias: A bias in affective forecasting in which one overestimates the strength or intensity of emotion one will experience after some event.
Implicit Association Test: Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures relatively automatic biases that favor own group relative to other groups.
Implicit Association Test: An implicit attitude task that assesses a person’s automatic associations between concepts by measuring the response times in pairing the concepts.
Implicit attitude: An attitude that a person cannot verbally or overtly state.
Implicit measures of attitudes: Measures of attitudes in which researchers infer the participant’s attitude rather than having the participant explicitly report it.
Independent: Two characteristics or traits are separate from one another-- a person can be high on one and low on the other, or vice-versa. Some correlated traits are relatively independent in that although there is a tendency for a person high on one to also be high on the other, this is not always the case.
Independent self: The tendency to define the self in terms of stable traits that guide behavior.
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.
Induction: To draw general conclusions from specific observations.
Inductive reasoning: A form of reasoning in which a general conclusion is inferred from a set of observations (e.g., noting that “the driver in that car was texting; he just cut me off then ran a red light!” (a specific observation), which leads to the general conclusion that texting while driving is dangerous).
Information processing theories: Theories that focus on describing the cognitive processes that underlie thinking at any one age and cognitive growth over time.
Informational influence: Conformity that results from a concern to act in a socially approved manner as determined by how others act.
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.
Instrumental conditioning: Process in which animals learn about the relationship between their behaviors and their consequences. Also known as operant conditioning.
Integrative or eclectic psychotherapy: Also called integrative psychotherapy, this term refers to approaches combining multiple orientations (e.g., CBT with psychoanalytic elements).
Integrative or eclectic psychotherapy: Also called integrative psychotherapy, this term refers to approaches combining multiple orientations (e.g., CBT with psychoanalytic elements).
Intelligence: An individual’s cognitive capability. This includes the ability to acquire, process, recall and apply information.
Interdependent self: The tendency to define the self in terms of social contexts that guide behavior.
Internal bodily or somatic cues: Physical sensations that serve as triggers for anxiety or as reminders of past traumatic events.
Internal validity: The degree to which a cause-effect relationship between two variables has been unambiguously established.
Interoceptive avoidance: Avoidance of situations or activities that produce sensations of physical arousal similar to those occurring during a panic attack or intense fear response.
Intersex: Born with either an absence or some combination of male and female reproductive organs, sex hormones, or sex chromosomes.
Intersexual selection: A process of sexual selection by which evolution (change) occurs as a consequences of the mate preferences of one sex exerting selection pressure on members of the opposite sex.
Intrasexual competition: A process of sexual selection by which members of one sex compete with each other, and the victors gain preferential mating access to members of the opposite sex.
IQ: Short for “intelligence quotient.” This is a score, typically obtained from a widely used measure of intelligence that is meant to rank a person’s intellectual ability against that of others.
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 sulcus: The major fissure that delineates the temporal lobe below the frontal and the parietal lobes.
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).
Law of effect: The idea that instrumental or operant responses are influenced by their effects. Responses that are followed by a pleasant state of affairs will be strengthened and those that are followed by discomfort will be weakened. Nowadays, the term refers to the idea that operant or instrumental behaviors are lawfully controlled by their consequences.
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.
Levels of analysis: In science, there are complementary understandings and explanations of phenomena.
Lexical hypothesis: The lexical hypothesis is the idea that the most important differences between people will be encoded in the language that we use to describe people. Therefore, if we want to know which personality traits are most important, we can look to the language that people use to describe themselves and others.
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.
Linguistic inquiry and word count: A quantitative text analysis methodology that automatically extracts grammatical and psychological information from a text by counting word frequencies.
Lived day analysis: A methodology where a research team follows an individual around with a video camera to objectively document a person’s daily life as it is lived.
Lucid dreams: Any dream in which one is aware that one is dreaming.
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: A set of techniques that uses strong magnets to measure either the structure of the brain (e.g., gray matter and white matter) or how the brain functions when a person performs cognitive tasks (e.g., working memory or episodic memory) or other types of tasks.
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).
Masochism: Receiving pain from another person to experience pleasure for one’s self.
Masturbation: Tactile stimulation of the body for sexual pleasure.
Medulla oblongata: An area just above the spinal cord that processes breathing, digestion, heart and blood vessel function, swallowing, and sneezing.
Memory traces: A term indicating the change in the nervous system representing an event.
Metabolite: A substance necessary for a living organism to maintain life.
Mind–body connection: The idea that our emotions and thoughts can affect how our body functions.
Mindfulness: A process that reflects a nonjudgmental, yet attentive, mental state.
Mindfulness-based therapy: A form of psychotherapy grounded in mindfulness theory and practice, often involving meditation, yoga, body scan, and other features of mindfulness exercises.
Misinformation effect: When erroneous information occurring after an event is remembered as having been part of the original event.
Mnemonic devices: A strategy for remembering large amounts of information, usually involving imaging events occurring on a journey or with some other set of memorized cues.
Model minority: A minority group whose members are perceived as achieving a higher degree of socioeconomic success than the population average.
Monozygotic twins: Twins conceived from a single ovum and a single sperm, therefore genetically identical.
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.
Mood-congruent memory: The tendency to be better able to recall memories that have a mood similar to our current mood.
Motivated skepticism: A form of bias that can result from having a directional goal in which one is skeptical of evidence despite its strength because it goes against what one wants to believe.
Motor cortex: Region of the frontal lobe responsible for voluntary movement; the motor cortex has a contralateral representation of the human body.
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.
Narcissism: A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), a need for admiration, and lack of empathy.
Narrative identity: An internalized and evolving story of the self designed to provide life with some measure of temporal unity and purpose. Beginning in late adolescence, people craft self-defining stories that reconstruct the past and imagine the future to explain how the person came to be the person that he or she is becoming.
Natural selection: Differential reproductive success as a consequence of differences in heritable attributes.
Nature: The genes that children bring with them to life and that influence all aspects of their development.
Need for closure: The desire to come to a decision that will resolve ambiguity and conclude an issue.
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 induction: A process that causes the formation of the neural tube.
Neuroblasts: Brain progenitor cells that asymmetrically divide into other neuroblasts or nerve cells.
Neurodevelopmental: Processes that influence how the brain develops either in utero or as the child is growing up.
Neuroepithelium: The lining of the neural tube.
Neuroticism: A personality trait that reflects the tendency to be interpersonally sensitive and the tendency to experience negative emotions like anxiety, fear, sadness, and anger.
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.
Nomenclature: Naming conventions.
Norm: Assessments are given to a representative sample of a population to determine the range of scores for that population. These “norms” are then used to place an individual who takes that assessment on a range of scores in which he or she is compared to the population at large.
Normative influence: Conformity that results from a concern for what other people think of us.
Null-hypothesis significance testing (NHST): In statistics, a test created to determine the chances that an alternative hypothesis would produce a result as extreme as the one observed if the null hypothesis were actually true.
Numerical magnitudes: The sizes of numbers.
Nurture: The environments, starting with the womb, that influence all aspects of children’s development.
Obedience: Responding to an order or command from a person in a position of authority.
Object permanence task: The Piagetian task in which infants below about 9 months of age fail to search for an object that is removed from their sight and, if not allowed to search immediately for the object, act as if they do not know that it continues to exist.
Objective: Being free of personal bias.
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...
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD): A disorder characterized by the desire to engage in certain behaviors excessively or compulsively in hopes of reducing anxiety. Behaviors include things such as cleaning, repeatedly opening and closing doors, hoarding, and obsessing over certain thoughts.
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.
Open ended questions: Research questions that ask participants to answer in their own words.
Openness to Experience: A personality trait that reflects a person’s tendency to seek out and to appreciate new things, including thoughts, feelings, values, and experiences.
Operant: A behavior that is controlled by its consequences. The simplest example is the rat’s lever-pressing, which is controlled by the presentation of the reinforcer.
Operant conditioning: See instrumental conditioning.
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.
Oral sex: Cunnilingus or fellatio.
Ostracism: Being excluded and ignored by others.
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.
Panic disorder (PD): A condition marked by regular strong panic attacks, and which may include significant levels of worry about future attacks.
Paraphilic disorders: Sexual behaviors that cause harm to others or one’s self.
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.
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.
Pavlovian conditioning: See classical conditioning.
Personality: Enduring predispositions that characterize a person, such as styles of thought, feelings and behavior.
Personality traits: Enduring dispositions in behavior that show differences across individuals, and which tend to characterize the person across varying types of situations.
Person-centered therapy: A therapeutic approach focused on creating a supportive environment for self-discovery.
Person-situation debate: The person-situation debate is a historical debate about the relative power of personality traits as compared to situational influences on behavior. The situationist critique, which started the person-situation debate, suggested that people overestimate the extent to which personality traits are consistent across situations.
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.
Phonemic awareness: Awareness of the component sounds within words.
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.
Piaget’s theory: Theory that development occurs through a sequence of discontinuous stages: the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages.
Planning fallacy: A cognitive bias in which one underestimates how long it will take to complete a task.
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: In research, all the people belonging to a particular group (e.g., the population of left handed people).
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: A technique that uses radio-labelled ligands to measure the distribution of different neurotransmitter receptors in the brain or to measure how much of a certain type of neurotransmitter is released when a person is given a specific type of drug or does a particularly cognitive task.
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.
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD): A sense of intense fear, triggered by memories of a past traumatic event, that another traumatic event might occur. PTSD may include feelings of isolation and emotional numbing.
Prediction error: When the outcome of a conditioning trial is different from that which is predicted by the conditioned stimuli that are present on the trial (i.e., when the US is surprising). Prediction error is necessary to create Pavlovian conditioning (and associative learning generally). As learning occurs over repeated conditioning trials, the conditioned stimulus increasingly predicts the unconditioned stimulus, and prediction error declines. Conditioning works to correct or reduce prediction error.
Prejudice: Prejudice is an evaluation or emotion toward people merely based on their group membership.
Preoperational reasoning stage: Period within Piagetian theory from age 2 to 7 years, in which children can represent objects through drawing and language but cannot solve logical reasoning problems, such as the conservation problems.
Preparedness: The idea that an organism’s evolutionary history can make it easy to learn a particular association. Because of preparedness, you are more likely to associate the taste of tequila, and not the circumstances surrounding drinking it, with getting sick. Similarly, humans are more likely to associate images of spiders and snakes than flowers and mushrooms with aversive outcomes like shocks.
Prevalence: The number of cases of a specific disorder present in a given population at a certain time.
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.
Primed: A process by which a concept or behavior is made more cognitively accessible or likely to occur through the presentation of an associated concept.
Probability: A measure of the degree of certainty of the occurrence of an event.
Probability values: In statistics, the established threshold for determining whether a given value occurs by chance.
Problem-focused coping: A set of coping strategies aimed at improving or changing stressful situations.
Processing speed: The speed with which an individual can perceive auditory or visual information and respond to it.
Pseudoscience: Beliefs or practices that are presented as being scientific, or which are mistaken for being scientific, but which are not scientific (e.g., astrology, the use of celestial bodies to make predictions about human behaviors, and which presents itself as founded in astronomy, the actual scientific study of celestial objects. Astrology is a pseudoscience unable to be falsified, whereas astronomy is a legitimate scientific discipline).
Psychoanalytic therapy: Sigmund Freud’s therapeutic approach focusing on resolving unconscious conflicts.
Psychodynamic therapy: Treatment applying psychoanalytic principles in a briefer, more individualized format.
Psychological adaptations: Mechanisms of the mind that evolved to solve specific problems of survival or reproduction; conceptualized as information processing devices.
Psychological vulnerabilities: Influences that our early experiences have on how we view the world.
Psychomotor agitation: Increased motor activity associated with restlessness, including physical actions (e.g., fidgeting, pacing, feet tapping, handwringing).
Psychomotor retardation: A slowing of physical activities in which routine activities (e.g., eating, brushing teeth) are performed in an unusually slow manner.
Psychoneuroimmunology: A field of study examining the relationship among psychology, brain function, and immune function.
Psychopathology: Illnesses or disorders that involve psychological or psychiatric symptoms.
Psychopathy: A pattern of antisocial behavior characterized by an inability to empathize, egocentricity, and a desire to use relationships as tools for personal gain.
Psychosomatic medicine: An interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on how biological, psychological, and social processes contribute to physiological changes in the body and health over time.
PTM: Post-traumatic model of dissociation.
Punisher: A stimulus that decreases the strength of an operant behavior when it is made a consequence of the behavior.
Qualitative changes: Large, fundamental change, as when a caterpillar changes into a butterfly; stage theories such as Piaget’s posit that each stage reflects qualitative change relative to previous stages.
Quantitative changes: Gradual, incremental change, as in the growth of a pine tree’s girth.
Quantitative genetics: Scientific and mathematical methods for inferring genetic and environmental processes based on the degree of genetic and environmental similarity among organisms.
Quantitative law of effect: A mathematical rule that states that the effectiveness of a reinforcer at strengthening an operant response depends on the amount of reinforcement earned for all alternative behaviors. A reinforcer is less effective if there is a lot of reinforcement in the environment for other behaviors.
Reappraisal, or Cognitive restructuring: The process of identifying, evaluating, and changing maladaptive thoughts in psychotherapy.
Recoding: The ubiquitous process during learning of taking information in one form and converting it to another form, usually one more easily remembered.
Recurrent dreams: The same dream narrative or dreamscape is experienced over different occasions of sleep.
Redemptive narratives: Life stories that affirm the transformation from suffering to an enhanced status or state. In American culture, redemptive life stories are highly prized as models for the good self, as in classic narratives of atonement, upward mobility, liberation, and recovery.
Reflexivity: The idea that the self reflects back upon itself; that the I (the knower, the subject) encounters the Me (the known, the object). Reflexivity is a fundamental property of human selfhood.
Reinforced response: Following the process of operant conditioning, the strengthening of a response following either the delivery of a desired consequence (positive reinforcement) or escape from an aversive consequence.
Reinforcer: Any consequence of a behavior that strengthens the behavior or increases the likelihood that it will be performed it again.
Reinforcer devaluation effect: The finding that an animal will stop performing an instrumental response that once led to a reinforcer if the reinforcer is separately made aversive or undesirable.
Renewal effect: Recovery of an extinguished response that occurs when the context is changed after extinction. Especially strong when the change of context involves return to the context in which conditioning originally occurred. Can occur after extinction in either classical or instrumental conditioning.
Replacement fantasy: Fantasizing about someone other than one’s current partner.
Representative: In research, the degree to which a sample is a typical example of the population from which it is drawn.
Representativeness heuristic: A heuristic in which the likelihood of an object belonging to a category is evaluated based on the extent to which the object appears similar to one’s mental representation of the category.
Resilience: The ability to “bounce back” from negative situations (e.g., illness, stress) to normal functioning or to simply not show poor outcomes in the face of adversity. In some cases, resilience may lead to better functioning following the negative experience (e.g., post-traumatic growth).
Retrieval: The process of accessing stored information.
Retroactive interference: The phenomenon whereby events that occur after some particular event of interest will usually cause forgetting of the original event.
Right-wing authoritarianism: Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) focuses on value conflicts but endorses respect for obedience and authority in the service of group conformity.
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.
Rostrocaudal: A front-back plane used to identify anatomical structures in the body and the brain.
SAD performance only: Social anxiety disorder which is limited to certain situations that the sufferer perceives as requiring some type of performance.
Sadism: Inflicting pain upon another person to experience pleasure for one’s self.
Safer-sex practices: Doing anything that may decrease the probability of sexual assault, sexually transmitted infections, or unwanted pregnancy; this may include using condoms, honesty, and communication.
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: In research, a number of people selected from a population to serve as an example of that population.
Schema: A mental representation or set of beliefs about something.
Schema: A mental model or representation that organizes the important information about a thing, person, or event (also known as a script).
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 theory: An explanation for observed phenomena that is empirically well-supported, consistent, and fruitful (predictive).
Security of attachment: An infant’s confidence in the sensitivity and responsiveness of a caregiver, especially when he or she is needed. Infants can be securely attached or insecurely attached.
Self as autobiographical author: The sense of the self as a storyteller who reconstructs the past and imagines the future in order to articulate an integrative narrative that provides life with some measure of temporal continuity and purpose.
Self as motivated agent: The sense of the self as an intentional force that strives to achieve goals, plans, values, projects, and the like.
Self as social actor: The sense of the self as an embodied actor whose social performances may be construed in terms of more or less consistent self-ascribed traits and social roles.
Self-categorization theory: Self-categorization theory develops social identity theory’s point that people categorize themselves, along with each other into groups, favoring their own group.
Self-construal: The extent to which the self is defined as independent or as relating to others.
Self-efficacy: The belief that one can perform adequately in a specific situation.
Self-esteem: The extent to which a person feels that he or she is worthy and good. The success or failure that the motivated agent experiences in pursuit of valued goals is a strong determinant of self-esteem.
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.
Semantic memory: The more or less permanent store of knowledge that people have.
Sensorimotor stage: Period within Piagetian theory from birth to age 2 years, during which children come to represent the enduring reality of objects.
Sex: An organism’s means of biological reproduction.
Sexual attraction: The capacity a person has to elicit or feel sexual interest.
Sexual consent: Permission that is voluntary, conscious, and able to be withdrawn at any time.
Sexual fluidity: Personal sexual attributes changing due to psychosocial circumstances.
Sexual literacy: The lifelong pursuit of accurate human sexuality knowledge, and recognition of its various multicultural, historical, and societal contexts; the ability to critically evaluate sources and discern empirical evidence from unreliable and inaccurate information; the acknowledgment of humans as sexual beings; and an appreciation of sexuality’s contribution to enhancing one’s well-being and pleasure in life.
Sexual orientation: A person’s sexual attraction to other people.
Sexual selection: The evolution of characteristics because of the mating advantage they give organisms.
Sexual strategies theory: A comprehensive evolutionary theory of human mating that defines the menu of mating strategies humans pursue (e.g., short-term casual sex, long-term committed mating), the adaptive problems women and men face when pursuing these strategies, and the evolved solutions to these mating problems.
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.
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 anxiety disorder (SAD): A condition marked by acute fear of social situations which lead to worry and diminished day to day functioning.
Social cognition: The study of how people think about the social world.
Social dominance orientation: Social dominance orientation (SDO) describes a belief that group hierarchies are inevitable in all societies and even good, to maintain order and stability.
Social identity theory: Social identity theory notes that people categorize each other into groups, favoring their own group.
Social integration: Active engagement and participation in a broad range of social relationships.
Social integration: The size of your social network, or number of social roles (e.g., son, sister, student, employee, team member).
Social Learning Theory: The theory that people can learn new responses and behaviors by observing the behavior of others.
Social models: Authorities that are the targets for observation and who model behaviors.
Social referencing: The process by which one individual consults another’s emotional expressions to determine how to evaluate and respond to circumstances that are ambiguous or uncertain.
Social reputation: The traits and social roles that others attribute to an actor. Actors also have their own conceptions of what they imagine their respective social reputations indeed are in the eyes of others.
Social support: A social network’s provision of psychological and material resources that benefit an individual.
Social support: The perception or actuality that we have a social network that can help us in times of need and provide us with a variety of useful resources (e.g., advice, love, money).
Social zeitgeber: Zeitgeber is German for “time giver.” Social zeitgebers are environmental cues, such as meal times and interactions with other people, that entrain biological rhythms and thus sleep-wake cycle regularity.
Sociocultural theories: Theory founded in large part by Lev Vygotsky that emphasizes how other people and the attitudes, values, and beliefs of the surrounding culture influence children’s development.
Socioeconomic status (SES): A person’s economic and social position based on income, education, and occupation.
Somatic nervous system: A part of the peripheral nervous system that uses cranial and spinal nerves in volitional actions.
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.
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.
Specific vulnerabilities: How our experiences lead us to focus and channel our anxiety.
Spina bifida: A developmental disease of the spinal cord, where the neural tube does not close caudally.
Split-brain patient: A patient who has had most or all of his or her corpus callosum severed.
Spontaneous recovery: Recovery of an extinguished response that occurs with the passage of time after extinction. Can occur after extinction in either classical or instrumental conditioning.
Standard scale: Research method in which all participants use a common scale—typically a Likert scale—to respond to questions.
Standardize: Assessments that are given in the exact same manner to all people . With regards to intelligence tests standardized scores are individual scores that are computed to be referenced against normative scores for a population (see “norm”).
State: When a symptom is acute, or transient, lasting from a few minutes to a few hours.
Stereotype Content Model: Stereotype Content Model shows that social groups are viewed according to their perceived warmth and competence.
Stereotype threat: The phenomenon in which people are concerned that they will conform to a stereotype or that their performance does conform to that stereotype, especially in instances in which the stereotype is brought to their conscious awareness.
Stereotypes: Stereotype is a belief that characterizes people based merely on their group membership.
Stereotypes: Our general beliefs about the traits or behaviors shared by group of people.
Stimulus control: When an operant behavior is controlled by a stimulus that precedes it.
Storage: The stage in the learning/memory process that bridges encoding and retrieval; the persistence of memory over time.
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 pattern of physical and psychological responses in an organism after it perceives a threatening event that disturbs its homeostasis and taxes its abilities to cope with the event.
Stressor: An event or stimulus that induces feelings of stress.
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.
Subtle biases: Subtle biases are automatic, ambiguous, and ambivalent, but real in their consequences.
Suicidal ideation: Recurring thoughts about suicide, including considering or planning for suicide, or preoccupation with suicide.
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.
Survey method: One method of research that uses a predetermined and methodical list of questions, systematically given to samples of individuals, to predict behaviors within the population.
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.
Systematic observation: The careful observation of the natural world with the aim of better understanding it. Observations provide the basic data that allow scientists to track, tally, or otherwise organize information about the natural world.
Taste aversion learning: The phenomenon in which a taste is paired with sickness, and this causes the organism to reject—and dislike—that taste in the future.
Temperament: Early emerging differences in reactivity and self-regulation, which constitutes a foundation for personality development.
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 lobe: An area of the cerebrum that lies below the lateral sulcus; it contains auditory and olfactory (smell) projection regions.
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.
Thalamus: A part of the diencephalon that works as a gateway for incoming and outgoing information.
The Age 5-to-7 Shift: Cognitive and social changes that occur in the early elementary school years that result in the child’s developing a more purposeful, planful, and goal-directed approach to life, setting the stage for the emergence of the self as a motivated agent.
The “I”: The self as knower, the sense of the self as a subject who encounters (knows, works on) itself (the Me).
The “Me”: The self as known, the sense of the self as the object or target of the I’s knowledge and work.
Theories: Groups of closely related phenomena or observations.
Theory of mind: Children’s growing understanding of the mental states that affect people’s behavior.
Theory of mind: Emerging around the age of 4, the child’s understanding that other people have minds in which are located desires and beliefs, and that desires and beliefs, thereby, motivate behavior.
Thought-action fusion: The tendency to overestimate the relationship between a thought and an action, such that one mistakenly believes a “bad” thought is the equivalent of a “bad” action.
Trait: When a symptom forms part of the personality or character.
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: A process in which physical energy converts into neural energy.
Transgender: A person whose gender identity or gender role does not correspond with his/her birth sex.
Transgender female (TGF): A transgender person whose birth sex was male.
Transgender male (TGM): A transgender person whose birth sex was female.
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.
Twin studies: A behavior genetic research method that involves comparison of the similarity of identical (monozygotic; MZ) and fraternal (dizygotic; DZ) twins.
Type A Behavior: Type A behavior is characterized by impatience, competitiveness, neuroticism, hostility, and anger.
Type B Behavior: Type B behavior reflects the absence of Type A characteristics and is represented by less competitive, aggressive, and hostile behavior patterns.
Type I error: In statistics, the error of rejecting the null hypothesis when it is true.
Type II error: In statistics, the error of failing to reject the null hypothesis when it is false.
Unconditional positive regard: In person-centered therapy, an attitude of warmth, empathy and acceptance adopted by the therapist in order to foster feelings of inherent worth in the patient.
Unconditioned response (UR): In classical conditioning, an innate response that is elicited by a stimulus before (or in the absence of) conditioning.
Unconditioned stimulus (US): In classical conditioning, the stimulus that elicits the response before conditioning occurs.
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: Belief about the way things should be.
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.
Vicarious reinforcement: Learning that occurs by observing the reinforcement or punishment of another person.
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.
Vivid dreams: A dream that is very clear, where the individual can remember the dream in great detail.
Wernicke’s area: A language area in the temporal lobe where linguistic information is comprehended (Also see Broca’s area).
White coat hypertension: A phenomenon in which patients exhibit elevated blood pressure in the hospital or doctor’s office but not in their everyday lives.
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.
White matter: The inner whitish regions of the cerebrum comprised of the myelinated axons of neurons in the cerebral cortex.
Working memory: Short transitory memory processed in the hippocampus.
Working memory: The ability to maintain information over a short period of time, such as 30 seconds or less.