Psychology Vocabulary Notes

Aaron Beck

• Aaron Beck used cognitive therapy to reverse patients' catastrophizing beliefs about themselves, their situations, and their futures.

Absolute Threshold

• The minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus 50% of the time.

Accommodation

• Adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information.
• Act or state of adjustment or adaptation; changes in the shape of the ocular lens for various focal distances.

Achievement Tests

• Tests designed to assess what a person has learned.

Acoustic Encoding

• The encoding of sound, especially the sound of words.

Acquisition

• In classical conditioning, the initial stage where one links a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus, leading the neutral stimulus to trigger a conditioned response.
• In 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 where the listener echoes, restates, and clarifies, a feature of Rogers' client-centered therapy.

Adaptation-Level Phenomenon

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

Addiction

• Compulsive drug craving and use, despite adverse consequences.

Adolescence

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

Adrenal Glands

• A pair of endocrine glands that sit just above the kidneys and secrete hormones (epinephrine and norepinephrine) that help arouse the body in times of stress.

Aggression

• Any physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy.
• Physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt someone.

Algorithm

• A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem.
• Contrasts with the usually speedier, but more error-prone, use of heuristics.

Alpha Waves

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

Altruism

• Unselfish regard for the welfare of others.

Amnesia

• The loss of memory.

Amphetamines

• Drugs that stimulate neural activity, causing speeded-up body functions and associated energy and mood changes.

Amygdala

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

Anorexia Nervosa

• An eating disorder in which a person (usually an adolescent female) diets and becomes significantly (15% or more) underweight, yet, still feeling fat, continues to starve.

Antianxiety Drugs

• Drugs used to control anxiety and agitation.

Antidepressant Drugs

• Drugs used to treat depression, also increasingly prescribed for anxiety.
• Different types work by altering the availability of various neurotransmitters.

Antipsychotic Drugs

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

Antisocial Personality Disorder

• A personality disorder in which the 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

• Psychological disorders characterized by distressing, persistent anxiety or maladaptive behaviors that reduce anxiety.

Aphasia

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

Applied Research

• Scientific study that aims to solve practical problems.

Aptitude Tests

• Tests designed to predict a person's future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn.

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 consequences (as in operant conditioning).

Attachment

• An emotional tie with another person; shown in young children by their seeking closeness to the caregiver and showing distress on separation.

Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

• A psychological disorder marked by the appearance by age 7 of one or more of three key symptoms: extreme inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.

Attitude

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

Attribution Theory

• Theory that we explain someone's behavior by crediting either the situation or the person's disposition.

Audition

• The sense or act of hearing.

Autism

• A disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by deficient communication, social interaction, and understanding of others' states of minds.

Automatic Processing

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

Autonomic Nervous System

• 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

• Estimating 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

• A type of counterconditioning that associates an unpleasant state (such as nausea) with an unwanted behavior (such as drinking).

Axon

• The extension of a neuron, ending in branching terminal fivers through which messages pass to other neurons or to muscles or glands.

Babbling Stage

• Beginning at about 4 months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language.

Barbiturates

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

Basal Metabolic Rate

• The body's resting rate of energy expenditure.

Basic Research

• Pure science that aims to increase the scientific knowledge base.

Basic Trust

• According to Erik Erikson, a sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy; said to be formed during infancy by appropriate experiences with responsive caregivers.

Behavior Genetics

• The study of the relative power and limits of genetic and environmental influences on behavior.

Behavior Therapy

• Therapy that applies learning principles to the elimination of unwanted behaviors.

Behavioral Medicine

• An interdisciplinary field that integrates behavioral and medical knowledge and applies that knowledge to health and disease.

Behavioral Psychology

• The scientific study of observable behavior and its explanation by principles of learning.

Behaviorism

• The view that psychology should be an objective science that studies behavior without reference to mental processes.
• Most research psychologists today agree with the objective science aspect but not the exclusion of mental processes.

Belief Perseverance

• Clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited.

Binge-Eating Disorder

• Significant binge-eating episodes, followed by distress, disgust, or guilt, but without the compensatory purging, fasting, or excessive exercise that marks bulimia nervosa.

Binocular Cues

• Depth cues, such as retinal disparity and convergence, that depend on the use of two eyes.

Biofeedback

• A system for electronically recording, amplifying, and feeding back information regarding a subtle psychological state, such as blood pressure or muscle tension.

Biological Psychology

• A branch of psychology that studies the links between biological (including neuroscience and behavior genetics) and psychological processes.
• A branch of psychology concerned with the links between biology and behavior.

Biomedical Therapy

• Prescribed medications or medical procedures that act directly on the patient's nervous system.

Biopsychosocial Approach

• An integrated approach that incorporates biological, psychological, and social-cultural levels of analysis.

Bipolar Disorder

• A mood disorder in which the person alternates between the hopelessness and lethargy of depression and the overexcited state of mania.

Blind Spot

• The point at which the optic nerve leaves the eye, creating a blind spot because no receptor cells are located there.

Bottom-Up Processing

• Analysis that begins with the sensory receptors and works up to the brain's integration of sensory information.

Brainstem

• The oldest part and central core of the brain, beginning where the spinal cord swells as it enters the skull; is responsible for automatic survival functions.

Broca's Area

• Controls language expression - an area, usually in the left frontal lobe, that directs the muscle movements involved in speech.

Bulimia Nervosa

• An eating disorder characterized by episodes of overeating, usually of high-calorie foods, followed by vomiting, laxative use, fasting, or excessive exercise.

Bystander Effect

• Tendency for any given bystander to be less likely to give aid if other bystanders are present.

Cannon-Bard Theory

• The theory that an emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers: (1) physiological responses, and (2) the subjective experience of emotion.

Case Study

• An observation technique in which one person is studied in depth in the hope of revealing universal principles.

Catharsis

• Emotional release; the catharsis hypothesis maintains that "releasing" aggressive energy (through action or fantasy) relieves aggressive urges.

Central Nervous System (CNS)

• The brain and spinal cord.

Central Route of Persuasion

• Attitude change in which interested people focus on the actual argument and respond with favorable thoughts.

Cerebellum

• The "little brain" at the rear of the brainstem; functions include processing sensory input and coordinating movement output and balance.

Cerebral Cortex

• The intricate fabric of interconnected neural cells covering the cerebral hemispheres; the body's ultimate control and information-processing center.

Change Blindness

• The tendency to fail to detect changes in any part of a scene to which we are not focusing our attention.

Chromosomes

• Threadlike structures made of DNA molecules that contain the genes.

Chunking

• Organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically.

Circadian Rhythm

• The biological clock; regular bodily rhythms (for example, of temperature and wakefulness) that occur on a 24-hour cycle.

Classical Conditioning

• A type of learning in which one learns to link two or more stimuli and anticipate events.

Client-Centered Therapy

• A humanistic therapy, developed by Carl Rogers, in which the therapist uses techniques such as active listening within a genuine, accepting, empathic environment to facilitate client's growth.
• Also called person-centered therapy.

Clinical Psychology

• A branch of psychology that studies, assesses, and treats people with psychological disorders.

Cochlea

• The fluid-filled, coiled tunnel in the inner ear that contains the receptors for hearing.

Cochlear Implant

• A device for converting sounds into electrical signals and stimulating the auditory nerve through electrodes threaded into the cochlea.

Cognition

• The mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.
• All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

• A popular integrative therapy that combines cognitive therapy with behavior therapy.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

• Theory that we act to reduce the discomfort we feel when two of our thoughts are inconsistent.
• We change our attitudes rather than our behaviors.

Cognitive Map

• A mental representation of the layout of one's environment.
• For example, after exploring a maze, rats act as if they have learned this.

Cognitive Neuroscience

• The interdisciplinary study of the brain activity linked with cognition (including perception, thinking, memory, and language).
• The interdisciplinary study of the brain activity linked with cognition (including perception, thinking, memory, and language).

Cognitive Psychology

• The scientific study of all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

Cognitive Therapy

• Therapy that teaches people new, more adaptive ways of thinking and acting; based on the assumption that thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions.

Collective Unconscious

• Carl Jung's concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces form our species' history.

Collectivism

• Giving priority to the goals of one's group (often one's extended family or work group) and defining one's identity accordingly.

Color Constancy

• Perceiving familiar objects as having consistent color, even if changing illumination alters the wavelengths reflected by the object.

Companionate Love

• The deep affectionate attachment we feel for those with whom our lives are intertwined.

Concept

• A mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.

Concrete Operational Stage

• In Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 6 or 7 to 11 years of age) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events.

Conditioned Reinforcer

• A stimulus that gains its reinforcing power through its association with a primary reinforcer; also known as a secondary reinforcer.

Conditioned Response

• In classical conditioning, the learned response to a previously neutral stimulus.

Conditioned Stimulus

• In classical conditioning, an originally irrelevant stimulus that, after association with an unconditioned stimulus, comes to trigger a conditioned response.

Conduction Hearing Loss

• Hearing loss caused by damage to the mechanical system that conducts sound waves to the cochlea.

Cones

• Retinal receptor cells that are concentrated near the center of the retina and that function in daylight or in well-lit conditions.
• The cones detect fine detail and give rise to color sensations.

Confirmation Bias

• A tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence.

Conflict

• A perceived incompatibility of actions, goals, or ideas.

Conformity

• Adjusting one's behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard.

Confounding Variable

• A factor other than the independent variable that might produce an effect in an experiment.

Consciousness

• Our awareness of ourselves and our environment.
• Our awareness of ourselves and our environment.

Conservation

• The principle (which Piaget believed to be a part of concrete operational reasoning) that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects.

Content Validity

• The extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest.

Continuous Reinforcement

• Reinforcing the desired response every time it occurs.

Control Group

• In an experiment, the group that is not exposed to the treatment.
• Contrasts with the experimental group and serves as a comparison for evaluating the effect of the treatment.

Conversion Disorder

• A rare somatoform disorder in which a person experiences very specific genuine physical symptoms for which no physiological basis can be found.

Coronary Heart Disease

• The clogging of the vessels that nourish the heart muscle; the leading cause of death in North America.

Corpus Callosum

• The large band of neural fibers connecting the two brain hemispheres and carrying messages between them.

Correlation

• A measure of the extent to which two factors vary together, and thus of how well either factor predicts the other.

Correlation Coefficient

• A statistical index of the relationship between to things (from -1 to +1).

Counseling Psychology

• A branch of psychology that assists people with problems in living (often related to school, work, or marriage) and in achieving greater well-being.

Counterconditioning

• A behavior therapy procedure that uses classical conditioning to evoke new responses to stimuli that are triggering unwanted behaviors.
• Includes exposure therapies and aversive conditioning.

Creativity

• The ability to produce novel and valuable ideas.

Critical Period

• An optimal period shortly after birth when an organism's exposure to certain stimuli or experience produces proper development.

Critical Thinking

• Thinking that does not blindly accept arguments and conclusions.
• Rather, it examines assumptions, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence, and assesses conclusions.

Cross-Sectional Study

• A study in which people of different ages are compared with one another.

Crystallized Intelligence

• Our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age.

CT (Computed Tomography) Scan

• A series of X-ray photographs taken from different angles and combined by computer into a composite representation of a slice through the body.
• Also called CAT scan.

Culture

• The enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared by a group of people and transmitted through generations.
• The enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a group of people and transmitted form one generation to the next.

Debriefing

• The postexperimental explanation for a study, including its purpose and any deceptions, to its participants.

Defense Mechanisms

• In psychoanalytic theory, the ego's protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.

Deindividuation

• The loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal or anonymity.

Deja Vu

• The eerie sense that "I've experienced this before."
• Cues from the current situation may subconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience.

Delta Waves

• The large, slow brain waves associated with deep sleep.

Delusions

• False beliefs, often of persecution or grandeur, that may accompany psychotic disorders.

Dendrite

• The bushy, branching extensions of a neuron that receive messages and conduct impulses toward the cell body.

Denial

• Psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people refuse to believe or even to perceive painful realities.

Dependent Variable

• The outcome factor; the variable that may change in response to manipulations of the independent variable.

Depressants

• Drugs (such as alcohol, barbiturates, and opiates) that reduce neural activity and slow body functions.

Depth Perception

• The ability to see objects in three dimensions although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional; allows us to judge distance.

Developmental Psychology

• A branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the life span.
• The scientific study of physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the life span.

Difference Threshold

• The minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection 50% of the time.
• We experience the difference threshold as a just noticeable difference (Also called just noticeable difference or JND).

Discrimination

• Unjustifiable negative behavior toward a group and its members.
• In classical conditioning, the learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and stimuli that do not signal an unconditioned stimulus.

Discriminative Stimulus

• In operant conditioning, a stimulus that elicits a response after association with reinforcement (in contrast to related stimuli not associated with reinforcement).

Displacement

• Psychoanalytic defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object of person, as when redirecting anger toward a safer outlet.

Dissociation

• A split in consciousness, which allows some thoughts and behaviors to occur simultaneously with others.

Dissociative Disorders

• Disorders in which conscious awareness becomes separated from previous memories, thoughts, and feelings.

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

• A rare dissociative disorder in which a person exhibits two or more distinct and alternating personalities.
• Also called multiple personality disorder.

DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid)

• A complex molecule containing the genetic information that makes up the chromosomes.

Donald Meichenbaum

• Offered stress inoculation training: teaching people to restructure their thinking in stressful situations.

Double-Blind Procedure

• An experiment procedure in which both the research participants and the research staff are ignorant (blind) about whether the research participants have received the treatment or a placebo.
• Commonly used in drug-evaluation studies.

Down Syndrome

• A condition of intellectual disability and associated physical disorders caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21.

Dream

• A sequence of images, emotions, and thoughts passing through a sleeping person's mind.
• Dreams are notable for their hallucinatory imagery, discontinuities, and incongruities, and for the dreamer's delusional acceptance of the content and later difficulties remembering it.

Drive-Reduction Theory

• The idea that a physiological need creates an aroused tension state (a drive) that motivates an organism to satisfy the need.

DSM-IV-TR

• A classification system that describes the features used to diagnose each recognized mental disorder and indicates how the disorder can be distinguished from other, similar problems.

Dual Processing

• The principle that information is often simultaneously processed on separate conscious and unconscious tracks.

Echoic Memory

• A momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled within 3 or 4 seconds.

Eclectic Approach

• An approach to psychotherapy that, depending on the client's problems, uses techniques from various forms of therapy.

Ecstasy (MDMA)

• A synthetic stimulant and mild hallucinogen.
• Produces euphoria and social intimacy, but with short-term health risks and longer-term harm to serotonin- producing neurons and to mood and cognition.

Educational Psychology

• The study of how psychological processes affect and can enhance teaching and learning.

Effortful Processing

• Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort.

Ego

• The largely conscious, "executive" part of personality that, according to Freud, mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality.
• The ego operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id's desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain.

Egocentrism

• In Piaget's theory, the preoperational child's difficulty taking another's point of view.

Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)

• A biomedical therapy for severely depressed patients in which a brief electric current is sent through the brain of an anesthetized patient.

Electroencephalogram (EEG)

• An amplified recording of the waves of electrical activity that sweep across the brain's surface.
• These waves are measured by electrodes placed on the scalp.

Embryo

• The developing human organism from about 2 weeks after fertilization through the second month.

Emerging Adulthood

• For some people in modern cultures, a period from the late teens to mid-twenties bridging the gap between adolescent dependence and full independence and responsible adulthood.

Emotion

• A response of the whole organism, involving: (1) physiological arousal, (2) expressive behaviors, and (3) conscious experience.

Emotional Intelligence

• The ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions.

Empirically Derived Test

• A test (such as the MMPI) developed by testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminate between groups.

Empiricism

• The view that knowledge originates in experience and that science should, therefore, rely on observation and experimentation.

Encoding

• The processing of information into the memory system.

Endocrine System

• The body's "slow" chemical communication system; a set of glands that secrete hormones into the blood stream.

Endorphins

• "Morphine within" - natural, opiatelike neurotransmitters linked to pain control and to pleasure.

Environment

• Every nongenetic influence, from prenatal nutrition to the people and things around us.

Equity

• A condition in which people receive from a relationship is proportional to what they give to it.

Estrogens

• Sex hormones, such as estradiol, secreted in greater amounts by females than by males and contributing to female sex characteristics.
• In nonhuman female mammals, estrogen levels peak during ovulation, promoting sexual receptivity.

Evidence-Based Practice

• Clinical decision-making that integrates the best available research with clinical expertise and patient characteristics and preferences.

Evolutionary Psychology

• The study of the roots of behavior and mental processes using the principles of natural selection.
• The study of the evolution of behavior and the mind, using principles of natural selection.

Experiment

• A research method in which an investigator manipulates one or more factors (independent variables) to observe the effect on some behavior or mental process (the dependent variable).
• By random assignment of participants, the experimenter aims to control other relevant factors.

Experimental Group

• In an experiment, the group that is exposed to the treatment, that is, to one version of the independent variable.

Experimental Psychology

• The study of behavior and thinking using the experimental method.

Explicit Memory

• Memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and "declare" (declarative memory).

Exposure Therapies

• Behavioral techniques, such as systematic desensitization, that treat anxieties by exposing people (in imagination or reality) to the things they fear or avoid.

External Locus of Control

• The perception that chance or outside forces beyond your personal control determine your fate.

Extinction

• The diminishing of a conditioned response.
• Occurs in classical conditioning when an unconditioned stimulus does not follow a conditioned stimulus.
• Occurs in operant conditioning when a response is no longer reinforced.

Extrasensory Perception (ESP)

• The controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input.
• Said to include telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition.

Extrinsic Motivation

• A desire to perform a behavior to receive promised rewards or avoid threatened punishment.

Facial Feedback

• The effect of facial expressions on experienced emotions, as when a facial expression of anger or happiness intensifies feelings of anger or happiness.

Factor Analysis

• A statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie a person's total score.

Family Therapy

• Therapy that treats the family as a system. Views an individual's unwanted behaviors as influenced by or directed at other family members.

Feature Detectors

• Nerve cells in the brain that respond to specific features of the stimulus, such as shape, angle, or movement.

Feel-Good, Do-Good Phenomenon

• People's tendency to be helpful when already in a good mood.

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)

• Physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant woman's heavy drinking; in severe cases, symptoms include noticeable facial misproportions.

Fetus

• The developing human organism from 9 weeks after conception to birth.

Figure-Ground

• The organization of the visual field into objects (the figures) that stand out from their surroundings (the ground).

Fixation

• The inability to see a problem from a new perspective by employing a different mental set.
• According to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved.

Fixed-Interval Schedule

• In operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response only after a specified time has elapsed.

Fixed-Ratio Schedule

• In operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response only after a specified number of responses.

Flashbulb Memory

• A clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event.

Fluid Intelligence

• Our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood.

fMRI (Functional MRI)

• A technique for revealing blood flow and, therefore, brain activity by comparing successive MRI scans.
• Shows brain function.

Foot-in-the-Door Technique

• The tendency for people who have agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request.

Formal Operational Stage

• In Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning about age 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts.

Fovea

• The central focal point in the retina, around which the eye's cones cluster.

Framing

• The way an issue is posed; can affect decisions and judgments.

Fraternal Twins

• Twins who develop from separate fertilized eggs.
• They are genetically no closer that brothers and sisters, but they share a fetal environment.

Free Association

• In psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing.

Frequency

• The number of complete wavelengths that pass a given point in a certain amount of time.

Frequency Theory

• In hearing, the theory that the rate of nerve impulses traveling up the auditory nerve matches the frequency of a tone, thus enabling us to sense its pitch.

Frontal Lobes

• Portion of the cerebral cortex lying just behind the forehead; involved in speaking and muscle movements and in making plans and judgments.

Frustration-Aggression Principle

• The principle that frustration, the blocking of an attempt to achieve some goal, creates anger which can generate aggression.

Functional Fixedness

• The tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; an impediment to problem solving.

Functionalism

• A school of psychology that focused on how our mental and behavioral processes function - how they enable us to adapt, survive and flourish.

Fundamental Attribution Error

• The tendency for observers, when analyzing another's behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition.

Gate-Control Theory

• Theory that spinal cord contains neurological gate that blocks pains signals or allows them to pass.
• Gate is opened by activity of pain going up small nerve fibers & gate is closed by act of large fibers or by info coming from brain.

Gender

• In psychology, the biologically and socially influenced characteristics by which people define male and female.

Gender Identity

• Our sense of being male or female.

Gender Role

• A set of expected behavior for males or for females.

Gender Typing

• The acquisition of a traditional masculine or feminine role.

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

• Selye's concept of the body's adaptive response to stress in three phases - alarm, resistance, exhaustion.

General Intelligence (g)

• A general intelligence factor that, according to Spearman and others, underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test.

Generalization

• The tendency, once a response has been conditioned, for a stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus to elicit similar responses.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

• An anxiety disorder in which a person is continually tense, apprehensive, and in a state of autonomic nervous system arousal.

Genes

• The biochemical units of heredity that make up the chromosomes; segments of DNA capable of synthesizing a protein.

Genome

• The complete instructions for making an organism, consisting of all the genetic material in that organism's chromosomes.

Gestalt

• An organized whole.
• Gestalt psychologists emphasized our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes.

Glial Cells

• Cells in the nervous system that support, nourish, and protect neurons.

Glucose

• The form of sugar that circulates in the blood and provides the major source of energy for body tissues; when its level is low, we feel hunger.

Grammar

• In a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others.

GRIT

• Strategy designed to decrease international tensions

Group Polarization

• Tendency of group members to move to an extreme position after discussing an issue as a group.

Grouping

• The perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups.

Habituation

• Decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation; as infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a visual stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner.
• An organism's decreasing response to a stimulus with repeated exposure to it.

Hallucinations

• False sensory experiences, such as seeing something in the absence of an external visual stimulus.

Hallucinogens

• Psychedelic ("mind-manifesting") drugs, such as LSD, that distort perceptions and evoke sensory images in the absence of sensory input.

Health Psychology

• A subfield of psychology that provides psychology's contribution to behavioral medicine.

Heritability

• The proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes.
• This may vary, depending on the range of populations and environments studied.

Heuristic

• A simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms.

Hierarchy of Needs

• Maslow's pyramid of human needs, beginning at the base with physiological needs that must first be satisfied before higher-level safety needs and then psychological needs become active.

Higher-Order Conditioning

• A procedure in which the conditioned stimulus in one conditioning experience is paired with a new neutral stimulus, creating a second (often weaker) conditioned stimulus.

Hindsight Bias

• The tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one would have foreseen it (Also known as the I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon).

Hippocampus

• A neural center that is located in the limbic system; helps process explicit memories for storage.

Homeostasis

• A tendency to maintain a balanced or constant internal state; the regulation of any aspect of body chemistry, such as blood glucose, around a particular level.

Hormones

• Chemical messengers that are manufactured buy the endocrine glands, travel through the bloodstream, and affect other tissues