115 of the Psychology glossary’s terms, each with the part of the syllabus where you first meet it.
The fast stress pathway in which the hypothalamus activates the sympathetic nervous system, which stimulates the adrenal medulla to release adrenaline and noradrenaline into the bloodstream.
The group of participants actually selected to take part in a study, drawn from the target population.
A systematic error that occurs when some members of the target population are more likely than others to be included in a sample, so the sample does not represent the population.
The list or source from which a sample is actually drawn, such as an electoral register, a school roll or a telephone directory; a biased frame produces a biased sample.
The procedure used to select participants for a study from the target population, such as random, stratified, opportunity, self-selected or snowball sampling.
Temporary, adjustable support from a more knowledgeable person that lets a learner complete a task they could not complete alone, gradually withdrawn as the learner becomes competent.
A graph in which each point shows one participant’s (or case’s) scores on two variables, used to show the direction, strength and form of a correlation.
The rule deciding which responses are reinforced, such as after a fixed or variable number of responses (ratio) or a fixed or variable amount of time (interval).
A mental framework of organised knowledge about an object, person, event or situation, built from experience, that creates expectations and guides how new information is processed.
A cognitive theory proposing that knowledge is organised into mental frameworks, called schemas, that guide perception, attention, encoding and retrieval of new information.
A mental health disorder involving psychosis, such as hallucinations and delusions, together with disorganised thinking and reduced motivation and emotional expression.
A schema for a familiar sequence of events, such as eating in a restaurant, that specifies the usual actions, roles and order in which they happen.
A learned motive not based directly on a biological need, such as the motive to achieve, to affiliate with others, to compete or to pursue an interest.
A stimulus that has become reinforcing through association with a primary reinforcer, such as money, praise or tokens.
An attachment type in which the infant explores freely using the caregiver as a secure base, may be distressed by separation, and seeks and is quickly comforted by the caregiver on reunion.
A caregiver whose availability gives a child enough security to explore the environment, and to whom the child returns for comfort when threatened.
An explanation of anchoring in which considering an anchor activates knowledge consistent with it, making that knowledge more accessible in memory so that it dominates the final estimate.
The process of focusing on one source of information while ignoring others, such as following one conversation in a noisy room.
The practice of placing adopted children in families similar to their biological families, which makes genetic and environmental influences harder to separate in adoption studies.
An antidepressant that blocks the serotonin transporter on the presynaptic neuron, so that less serotonin is reabsorbed after release and more remains in the synaptic gap.
Steele’s theory that people can protect a threatened self-image, including reducing dissonance, by affirming another valued part of themselves rather than resolving the original inconsistency.
An extension of social identity theory proposing that people define themselves at different levels (personal or group) depending on context, and conform to the norms of the group they categorise themselves into.
A person’s overall set of beliefs about who they are, including their characteristics, abilities, roles and relationships.
A theory of motivation proposing that people have innate tendencies towards growth and that intrinsic motivation and well-being depend on satisfying the needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness.
The act of revealing personal information about oneself, such as thoughts, feelings and experiences, to another person.
A person’s belief in their capability to organise and carry out the actions needed to succeed in a specific task or situation.
The evaluative part of the self-concept: how positively or negatively a person judges their own worth.
Bem’s theory that people often infer their own attitudes by observing their own behaviour and its circumstances, as an outside observer would, without needing a state of tension.
Data in which participants describe their own thoughts, feelings, experiences or behaviour, usually through questionnaires, interviews or diaries.
A schema containing a person’s organised beliefs and knowledge about themselves, which guides attention to and memory for information relevant to the self.
A sampling technique in which people choose to take part, for example by answering an advertisement or an online invitation; also called volunteer sampling.
A type of declarative long-term memory for general knowledge and facts about the world, such as word meanings, independent of when they were learned.
A theme that stays at the explicit, surface level of what participants said, describing and summarising the content of the data without looking beyond it.
An interview based on a guide of planned questions in which the interviewer can change the order and ask follow-up questions to explore answers in depth.
A window in development when the brain is especially responsive to a type of experience, so learning is easiest then, though some learning remains possible afterwards.
A memory store that holds a brief, unprocessed copy of input from each sense for a fraction of a second to a few seconds, with a large capacity.
An acculturation strategy in which a person keeps their heritage culture and avoids contact with, or adoption of, the host culture.
The tendency to recall items at the start of a list (primacy effect) and at the end of a list (recency effect) better than items in the middle.
A neurotransmitter involved in regulating mood, sleep, appetite and impulse control, and the main target of SSRI antidepressants.
A gene (5-HTT) coding for the protein that carries serotonin back into the neuron that released it; its short allele was proposed as a genetic vulnerability to depression under stress.
An antidepressant that blocks the reuptake of both serotonin and noradrenaline, so that more of each remains in the synaptic gap.
A technique for producing new behaviour by reinforcing successive approximations to it, gradually raising the requirement until only the target behaviour is reinforced.
A Paper 1 Section A question worth 4 marks that asks for an explanation or description of an approach term, illustrated with one example of behaviour that is explained.
A memory store of limited capacity, about five to nine items, that holds information for up to about 18–30 seconds unless it is rehearsed.
The probability threshold, set before analysis and usually 0.05 in psychology, below which a result is treated as statistically significant; it is the accepted risk of rejecting a true null hypothesis.
The degree to which a distribution is asymmetrical. In a positive skew the tail is longer on the right (high scores) and the mean is above the median; in a negative skew the tail is on the left.
A sampling technique in which initial participants recruit further participants from their own contacts, used to reach hidden or hard-to-reach populations.
The behavioural side of adapting to a new culture: how well a person learns the skills, language and social rules needed to manage daily life, school or work in the host society.
A perspective in psychology that explains behaviour and mental processes through the social groups, relationships and cultures people belong to, including social influence, norms and cultural values.
Vygotsky’s theory that cognitive development results from social interaction with more knowledgeable people and from learning to use the cultural tools of one’s community, such as language.
A person’s or family’s social and economic position relative to others, usually measured through income, education and occupation.
A questioning technique used in cognitive therapy in which the therapist asks open questions that lead clients to examine the evidence for their own beliefs, rather than telling them what to think.
The position that behaviour is strongly influenced by biological and environmental factors but that people still make real choices within the limits those factors set.
The experience and expression of psychological distress mainly through bodily symptoms, such as fatigue, pain, poor sleep or dizziness.
A learning strategy in which study of the same material is spread across several sessions separated in time, which improves long-term retention compared with massing study into one session.
How precisely a brain imaging technique can show where activity or a structure is located, measured as the smallest area it can tell apart.
The finding that learning is impaired when learners must divide attention between separate sources that only make sense together, such as a diagram and a separate text, and that integrating them helps.
A person whose corpus callosum has been cut, usually to control severe epilepsy, so that the two hemispheres can no longer share information directly.
The reappearance of an extinguished conditioned response after a rest period, when the conditioned stimulus is presented again.
The improvement or disappearance of symptoms of a disorder without treatment, which has to be controlled for when judging whether a treatment caused change.
A theory proposing that development passes through a fixed, universal sequence of qualitatively different periods (stages), each with a distinct way of thinking or behaving.
A measure of dispersion that shows how far, on average, scores lie from the mean of their data set. A small standard deviation means scores cluster closely around the mean.
Keeping the procedure, instructions, materials and setting of a study the same for every participant, so that differences in results are not caused by differences in treatment.
Better recall when a person’s internal state at retrieval, such as mood, arousal or the effect of a drug, matches their state at learning.
The probability that a significance test will detect an effect that really exists in the population; it equals one minus the probability of a type II error and rises with sample size and effect size.
The judgement that a result is unlikely to have occurred by chance alone if there were no real effect, usually when the probability of such a result is less than 5% (p < 0.05).
A schema about a social group that attributes the same characteristics to all its members, regardless of individual differences.
A situation in which awareness of a negative stereotype about one’s group is thought to impair performance on a task that the stereotype concerns.
Negative attitudes towards a person or group, and unfair treatment of them, because of a characteristic such as a mental health disorder, leading to shame, discrimination and reluctance to seek help.
Learning to respond to a conditioned stimulus but not to similar stimuli that have not been paired with the unconditioned stimulus.
The tendency for stimuli similar to a conditioned stimulus to trigger the conditioned response, with stronger responses to more similar stimuli.
A controlled observation, developed by Ainsworth, in which an infant’s responses to two separations from and reunions with a caregiver, and to a stranger, are coded to classify the type of attachment.
A sampling technique in which the target population is divided into subgroups, such as age bands, and participants are randomly selected from each subgroup in proportion to its size in the population.
A physiological and psychological response that occurs when a person perceives that the demands of a situation exceed their resources to cope with it.
Significant changes or threats in a person’s life, such as bereavement, divorce, job loss or assault, that demand adjustment and are associated with the onset of mental health disorders.
Any event, situation or demand, physical or psychological, that can trigger a stress response, such as a deadline, a bereavement or long-term caring for a sick relative.
An interview in which every participant is asked the same questions in the same order, with no follow-up questions.
A goal that two or more groups want but can achieve only by cooperating with each other.
A form of deductive argument in which a conclusion is drawn from two premises; it is valid if the conclusion must be true whenever the premises are true, whatever its real-world truth.
The junction between two neurons, or between a neuron and a muscle or gland cell, made up of the presynaptic terminal, the synaptic gap and the postsynaptic membrane.
The tiny space, a few tens of nanometres wide, between the presynaptic terminal and the postsynaptic membrane, across which neurotransmitters diffuse.
The elimination of synapses that are used little, while frequently used connections are strengthened; it peaks in childhood and adolescence and makes neural networks more efficient.
A small membrane sac in the axon terminal that stores neurotransmitter and releases it into the synaptic gap when an action potential arrives.
The formation of new synapses between neurons, which is fastest before birth and in infancy, when the brain produces far more connections than it will keep.
The skill of combining evidence and ideas from several sources into one coherent argument or conclusion, rather than discussing each source separately.
The fast, automatic, effortless and largely unconscious mode of thinking in dual processing theory, which produces intuitive judgements by association and heuristics without loading working memory.
The slow, deliberate, effortful and conscious mode of thinking in dual processing theory, which uses working memory to follow rules, reason hypothetically and check or override System 1.
A behavioural therapy for phobias in which a person learns relaxation and then works up a hierarchy of feared situations while relaxed, so that the fear response is replaced by calm.
The cognitive process of sorting people, including oneself, into social groups, which exaggerates differences between groups and similarities within them.