38 of the Psychology glossary’s terms, each with the part of the syllabus where you first meet it.
A graph in which separate bars, with gaps between them, show a value (such as a count or a mean) for each category or condition; the categories have no numerical scale.
Biological, psychological, social or structural factors that make it harder for a person or group to change behaviour, even when the change would benefit them.
In self-determination theory, the three innate needs for autonomy (acting by choice), competence (feeling effective) and relatedness (feeling connected to others).
The tendency to display one's connection with a successful group, such as a winning team, in order to raise one's own social identity and self-esteem.
Any observable action of a person in response to biological, cognitive and environmental factors; in psychology the term also covers processes such as memory, emotion, motivation, learning and relationships that are inferred from what people do.
The systematic application of learning principles, especially reinforcement, to change a specific, observable behaviour, which is measured before, during and after the intervention.
A psychological treatment for depression that helps people schedule and carry out rewarding and meaningful activities, reducing avoidance and increasing contact with positive reinforcement.
A clearly defined, observable behaviour listed on an observation schedule, operationalised so that different observers record the same actions in the same way.
A process in which a person’s expectation about someone changes how they behave towards them, leading the other person to act in a way that appears to confirm the expectation.
A form of couples therapy based on learning theory that increases rewarding behaviour between partners and teaches communication and problem-solving skills.
A planned activity in cognitive behavioural therapy in which a client tests a negative prediction in real life, so that the belief can be checked against what actually happens.
An approach that explains behaviour as learned through conditioning by the environment, and that studies only observable behaviour rather than unobservable mental processes.
The tendency to judge the logical validity of an argument by whether its conclusion is believable, accepting believable but invalid conclusions and rejecting unbelievable but valid ones.
The tendency for a belief to persist after the evidence on which it was originally based has been discredited or shown to be false.
A bidimensional model of acculturation that crosses two questions, whether to keep one’s heritage culture and whether to seek contact with the host culture, to give four strategies: integration, assimilation, separation and marginalisation.
A form of gender bias that ignores or minimises real differences between men and women, often by studying one gender and assuming the findings apply to both.
A systematic tendency in thinking or research that distorts how information is collected, interpreted or reported, so that conclusions consistently lean in one direction rather than reflecting reality.
A form of confirmation bias in which evidence supporting an existing belief is judged as stronger and more reliable than equally good opposing evidence, and ambiguous evidence is read as support.
A form of confirmation bias in which information consistent with an existing belief is recalled more easily or accurately than information that is inconsistent with it.
A form of confirmation bias in which people look for and select information, questions or sources that are likely to support what they already believe.
Identification with, and competent participation in, two cultures, usually a heritage culture and a host culture; the individual-level outcome of the integration strategy.
The problem in correlational research that the direction of a relationship is unknown: variable A may cause B, or B may cause A.
The regular use of two languages by an individual or a community; bilingual people differ in when they learned each language, how fluent they are and how often they switch.
A distribution with two distinct peaks, which often shows that the data combine two different groups, such as two age groups or two types of participant.
A perspective in psychology that explains behaviour and mental processes through physiological factors such as the brain, neurotransmitters, hormones and genes, and through their evolution.
A physical characteristic of the body, such as a brain structure, neurotransmitter, hormone, gene, sleep or age, that influences behaviour or a cognitive process.
An inherited tendency to learn certain associations, such as taste with illness or snakes with fear, more quickly and lastingly than others because they aided survival in evolution.
Explaining a complex behaviour or mental process by breaking it down into its simplest biological parts, such as genes, neurotransmitters or brain areas.
A treatment of a mental health disorder that acts directly on the body, for example by changing neurotransmission with drugs or brain activity with electrical or magnetic stimulation.
A measure of body size calculated as weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in metres, used as an indirect measure of body fat in population research.
The blood-oxygen-level-dependent signal measured by fMRI: a change in the magnetic properties of blood as oxygen-rich blood flows to more active brain areas.
An unintended result of a persuasive message in which behaviour moves in the opposite direction to the one intended, such as low energy users increasing their use after learning the average.
A graph that summarises a distribution with a box from the lower to the upper quartile, a line at the median, and whiskers to the lowest and highest scores, with outliers often shown as separate points.
A set of techniques that produce pictures of the living brain's structure or activity without surgery, such as MRI, fMRI, PET and EEG.
The biologically driven sequence of changes in brain structure from before birth to early adulthood, including synaptogenesis, synaptic pruning and myelination, which proceeds roughly from the back of the brain to the front.
Repeated practice on computerised tasks or games intended to improve general cognitive abilities such as working memory or attention.
A region of the left inferior frontal lobe, named after Paul Broca, involved in producing speech and processing grammar; damage to it is linked to slow, effortful speech.