25 of the Psychology glossary’s terms, each with the part of the syllabus where you first meet it.
A cognitive bias in which one positive characteristic of a person, such as physical attractiveness, leads others to assume that the person also has other positive characteristics.
A clinician-rated scale, usually of 17 items scored after an interview, used to measure the severity of depression in treatment research; higher scores mean more severe depression.
A change in participants' behaviour, often an improvement in performance, that occurs because they know they are being observed or studied rather than because of the variable being tested.
A cognitive model proposing that health behaviour depends on perceived susceptibility to and severity of a health problem, the perceived benefits of and barriers to action, cues to action and self-efficacy.
A condition that harms physical health and is strongly influenced by behaviour and the environment, such as obesity, drug misuse or problematic social media use.
The process of enabling people and communities to increase control over and improve their health, through education, campaigns, and changes to policies and environments.
The process of looking for support for a health or mental health problem, from formal sources such as doctors or from informal sources such as family, religious leaders and traditional healers.
The proportion of the variation in a trait within a population that is associated with genetic differences between its members; it does not apply to individuals and changes with the environment.
A mental shortcut or rule of thumb that produces a quick judgement with little effort; heuristics are usually adequate but can lead to systematic errors called cognitive biases.
A culture in which much of the meaning of a message is carried by the situation, the relationship and non-verbal cues rather than the explicit words, so communication tends to be indirect.
Conditioning in which a neutral stimulus is paired with an established conditioned stimulus, rather than an unconditioned stimulus, and comes to trigger a conditioned response itself.
The tendency, after an outcome is known, to overestimate how predictable it was and how well one would have predicted it beforehand.
A curved structure inside each medial temporal lobe that is essential for forming new declarative memories and for spatial memory.
A graph of the frequency distribution of continuous data, in which touching bars show how many scores fall into each equal-width interval on the horizontal axis.
The four HL-only parts of the course that extend the core: the roles of culture, motivation and technology in behaviour across the four contexts, and data analysis and interpretation.
Explaining behaviour as an integrated whole, on the view that a person in their relationships, culture and history is more than the sum of separate parts.
A style of thinking in which attention is spread over the whole field, objects are understood through their relationships and context, and events are explained by the situation.
The tendency of people to form ties with others who are already similar to them, which can make friends look alike without any influence between them.
A cognitive theory proposing that people who explain negative events by stable, global causes become hopeless after negative life events, and that hopelessness leads to depression.
A chemical messenger secreted by an endocrine gland into the bloodstream, which carries it to target cells throughout the body that have receptors for it.
The culture of the larger society in which immigrants, refugees or sojourners settle, also called the host society or receiving society.
The slower stress pathway in which the hypothalamus releases CRH, the pituitary gland releases ACTH and the adrenal cortex releases cortisol, which keeps energy available during continuing stress.
A technique in which people publicly advocate a behaviour and are then reminded of their own failures to perform it, creating dissonance that is most easily reduced by changing their behaviour.
A small structure at the base of the brain that regulates hunger, thirst, body temperature and sleep, and controls hormone release through the pituitary gland.
A precise, testable prediction of the relationship between variables in a study, stated in operationalised terms.