Psychology Definitions and Concepts

24 Character Strengths and Virtues

  • A classification system to identify positive traits.

  • Organized into categories of wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence.

Absolute Threshold

  • The minimum stimulus energy needed to detect a particular stimulus 50 percent of the time.

Accommodation

  • (1) Sensation and Perception: The process by which the eye’s lens changes shape to focus images of near or far objects on the retina.

  • (2) Developmental Psychology: Adapting our current schemas (understandings) to incorporate new information.

Achievement Motivation

  • A desire for significant accomplishment, for mastery of skills or ideas, for control, and for attaining a high standard.

Achievement Test

  • A test designed to assess what a person has learned.

Acquisition

  • Classical Conditioning: The initial stage, when one links a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus so that the neutral stimulus begins triggering the conditioned response.

  • Operant Conditioning: The strengthening of a reinforced response.

Action Potential

  • A neural impulse; a brief electrical charge that travels down an axon.

Active Listening

  • Empathic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and seeks clarification.

  • A feature of Rogers’ person-centered therapy.

Actor-Observer Bias

  • The tendency for those acting in a situation to attribute their behavior to external causes, but for observers to attribute others’ behavior to internal causes.

  • Contributes to the fundamental attribution error (which focuses on our explanations for others’ behavior).

Acute Schizophrenia (Reactive Schizophrenia)

  • A form of schizophrenia that can begin at any age.

  • Frequently occurs in response to a traumatic event, and from which recovery is much more likely.

Adaptation-Level Phenomenon

  • Our tendency to form judgments (of sounds, of lights, of income) relative to a neutral level defined by our prior experience.

Addiction

  • An everyday term for compulsive substance use (and sometimes for dysfunctional behavior patterns, such as out-of-control gambling) that continue despite harmful consequences.

  • See also substance use disorder.

Adolescence

  • The transition period from childhood to adulthood, extending from puberty to independence.

Aerobic Exercise

  • Sustained exercise that increases heart and lung fitness; also helps alleviate anxiety.

Affiliation Need

  • The need to build and maintain relationships and to feel part of a group.

Aggression

  • Any physical or verbal behavior intended to harm someone physically or emotionally.

Agonist

  • A molecule that increases a neurotransmitter’s action.

Agoraphobia

  • Fear or avoidance of situations, such as crowds or wide open places, where one may experience a loss of control and panic.

Algorithm

  • A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem.

  • Contrasts with the usually speedier — but also more error-prone — use of heuristics.

All-or-None Response

  • A neuron’s reaction of either firing (with a full-strength response) or not firing.

Alpha Waves

  • The relatively slow brain waves of a relaxed, awake state.

Altruism

  • Unselfish regard for the welfare of others.

Amygdala

  • Two lima-bean-sized neural clusters in the limbic system; linked to emotion.

Androgyny

  • Displaying traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine psychological characteristics.

Anorexia Nervosa

  • An eating disorder in which a person (usually an adolescent female) maintains a starvation diet despite being significantly underweight, and has an inaccurate self-perception; sometimes accompanied by excessive exercise.

Antagonist

  • A molecule that inhibits or blocks a neurotransmitter’s action.

Anterograde Amnesia

  • An inability to form new memories.

Antianxiety Drugs

  • Drugs used to control anxiety and agitation.

Antidepressant Drugs

  • Drugs used to treat depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, and posttraumatic stress disorder.

  • Several widely used antidepressant drugs are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors — SSRIs.

Antipsychotic Drugs

  • Drugs used to treat schizophrenia and other forms of severe thought disorders.

Antisocial Behavior

  • Negative, destructive, harmful behavior.

  • The opposite of prosocial behavior.

Antisocial Personality Disorder

  • A personality disorder in which a person (usually a man) exhibits a lack of conscience for wrongdoing, even toward friends and family members; may be aggressive and ruthless or a clever con artist.

Anxiety Disorders

  • A group of disorders characterized by excessive fear and anxiety and related maladaptive behaviors.

Aphasia

  • Impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca’s area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke’s area (impairing understanding).

Approach and Avoidance Motives

  • The drive to move toward (approach) or away from (avoid) a stimulus.

Aptitude Test

  • A test designed to predict a person’s future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn.

Asexual

  • Having no sexual attraction toward others.

Assimilation

  • Interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas.

Association Areas

  • Areas of the cerebral cortex that are not involved in primary motor or sensory functions; rather, they are involved in higher mental functions such as learning, remembering, thinking, and speaking.

Associative Learning

  • Learning that certain events occur together.

  • The events may be two stimuli (as in classical conditioning) or a response and its consequence (as in operant conditioning).

Attachment

  • An emotional tie with others; shown in young children by their seeking closeness to caregivers and showing distress on separation.

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

  • A psychological disorder marked by extreme inattention and/or hyperactivity and impulsivity.

Attitudes

  • Feelings, often influenced by our beliefs, that predispose us to respond in a particular way to objects, people, and events.

Attribution Theory

  • The theory that we explain someone’s behavior by crediting either the situation (a situational attribution) or the person’s stable, enduring traits (a dispositional attribution).

Audition

  • The sense or act of hearing.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

  • A disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by limitations in communication and social interaction, and by rigidly fixated interests and repetitive behaviors.

Autokinetic Effect

  • The illusory movement of a still spot of light in a dark room.

Automatic Processing

  • Unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of familiar or well-learned information, such as sounds, smells, and word meanings.

Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)

  • The part of the peripheral nervous system that controls the glands and the muscles of the internal organs (such as the heart).

  • Its sympathetic division arouses; its parasympathetic division calms.

Availability Heuristic

  • Judging the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common.

Aversive Conditioning

  • Associates an unpleasant state (such as nausea) with an unwanted behavior (such as drinking alcohol).

Axon

  • The segmented neuron extension that passes messages through its branches to other neurons or to muscles or glands.

Babbling Stage

  • The stage in speech development, beginning around 4 months, during which an infant spontaneously utters various sounds that are not all related to the household language.

Barbiturates

  • Drugs that depress central nervous system activity, reducing anxiety but impairing memory and judgment.

Basal Metabolic Rate

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