Glossary

The first time that each term in this glossary appears in the text of this book, it is in boldface. Terms used in the definition of an item that are listed in the glossary appear in italics.

Act psychology Brentano’s system, stating that all psychological processes are acts that refer to objects and that all psychological acts have immanent objectivity, meaning that the objects they refer to are immanent within the acts

Adaptation level According to Helson’s theory, the overall level to which a sensory system is adjusted on the basis of earlier stimulation

Adaptive act According to the functionalist school of psychology, any behavior of any organism; all responses are presumed to facilitate the organism’s adaptation to its environment

Adjustment The key process in the functionalist system, which saw life as a continuous process of the organism’s adjustment to its environment

Affections Titchener’s third kind of mental elements, in addition to sensations and images

All-or-none law The doctrine that a neuron either fires with all its energy or does not fire at all, that there are no gradations in the activity level of a nerve cell

American Psychological Association The oldest and largest psychological association in the world

Analytical psychology Jung’s name for his neo-Freudian version of psychoanalysis

And-connections A term that Gestalt theorists used to describe arbitrary connections, based on contiguity in space and time but indifferent to the nature of the items connected

Animism The doctrine that souls or spirits inhabit everything in the world; compare vitalism

Anti-elementism Denial of the validity of elementism’s assumption that the only way to understand any complex totality is to decompose it into its elemental constituents

APA Multicultural Guidelines Guidelines for understanding and dealing with a wide variety of forms of diversity in a sociocultural context

APA Services The program of the APA that deals with advocacy

Aphasia A neurobiological disorder in which the patient loses the ability to understand words or use them correctly

Apperception According to Wundt, bringing objects into the focus of consciousness; according to Herbart, fitting items into the current contents of consciousness

Apperceptive mass According to Herbart, the current content of consciousness, which determines what additional contents can become conscious

Archetype A prototypic Jungian symbol in the collective unconscious, such as transcendent awe or the idea of evil

Artificial intelligence (Al) Computer programs that can carry out cognitive processes such as problem solving that, when engaged in by actual organisms, are deemed intelligent

Assimilation According to Wundt, the combination of mental elements, not all of which are simultaneously present in consciousness

Association Connection among various elements in consciousness or behavior Association for Psychological Science The later name for the APS, originally the American Psychological Society; an organization for behavioral science founded late in the 20th century as a rival to the American Psychological Association (APA)

Associationism The doctrine that the primary (or even sole) law needed to explain mental events or processes is the law of association, that is, connection via contiguity in space and time

Atomism The effort to understand wholes by breaking them down into their elemental components

Attention The process of bringing an item into the focus of consciousness

Balance models Social psychology theories by Heider, Peak, and others that describe relations among interrelated subparts of social units and predict which ones will be stable and unstable

Behavior modification The use of principles of conditioning to mold behavior Behavioral genetics The study of the contribution of genes (as contrasted with, for example, learning) to behavior

Behaviorism One of the major 20th-century schools ofpsychology, characterized by the doctrine that psychology must limit itself to the study of objective behavior and avoid any reference to consciousness

Behavioristics Skinners term for the objective description of behavior and its determinants and control

Biofeedback Procedures for monitoring typically unconscious physiological processes, such as blood pressure, to make them modifiable by conditioning

Categories According to Kant, the filters of time, space, and cause and effect that the human mind imposes on all conscious experience

cgs Centimeters, grams, and seconds, representing the physical dimensions of distance, weight, and time to which the objective, materialistic view of natural science aims to limit all scientific measurement

Chronological history A historiographic strategy that uses time as the primary organizer of a historical account

Client-centered counseling According to Rogers, a form of psychotherapy that during the course of treatment emphasizes clients’ own perspectives

Clinical neuropsychology A large specialty of psychology that integrates brain and behavior by studying and applying behavioral knowledge to the understanding and treatment of neurological and related disorders

Clinical psychology A specialty of psychology that deals primarily with the study and treatment of psychopathology

Cogito ergo stun “I think, therefore I am”; Descartes’s conclusion that because I am thinking I must exist

Cognitive dissonance Festinger’s theory proposing that decisions tend to be made in such a way as to be consistent with beliefs about the domain in which the decision is made

Cognitive map Tolman’s term for what organisms learn in problem situations such as mazes; the subjective conception of the problem situation that is built on the basis of experience with that situation

Cognitive neuroscience The study of neurobiological correlates of cognitive processes

Cognitive revolution The late 20th-century reorientation of research psychologists to concentrate on cognitive processes

Common sense According to Aristotle, a superordinate sixth sense that complements and integrates the input from the first five: vision, audition, taste, smell, and kinesthesis

Complex ideas Ideas that consist of the combination of multiple simple ideas; a concept found primarily in 19th-century association theory

Complication According to Wundt, a complex idea composed of elements from different sensory modalities

Computer simulation Computer programs that attempt to mimic real events, such as human performance in a problem situation

Conation According to late 19th-century and early 20th-century British psychology, the third major component of psychological processes (in addition to cognition and feeling), having to do with motivation

Conditioning The generation of a connection between a previously neutral stimulus and a response by repeatedly pairing the stimulus with a stimulus that already elicits that response

Connectionism Thorndike’s position that learning is a matter of forming connections between stimuli and responses on the basis of satisfiers or annoyers presented after the response is made

Constancy hypothesis The assumption that physical stimuli always result in the same sensation irrespective of context, an assumption challenged experimentally by Gestalt theorists

Contiguity Proximity in space and time; a primary principle of association since Aristotle

Contralateral representation The sensory and motor localization of functions in the brain, opposite from their anatomical localization, such that the left side of the brain senses and controls the right half of the body and the right side of the brain senses and controls the left half of the body

Contrast In associations, the connection of an idea with its opposite; in perception, enhancement of the difference between a stimulus and its background

Converging operations A group of operational definitions intended to measure or specify the same underlying concept or dimension

Corpus callosum A massive set of white fibers in the center of the mammalian brain, connecting the two hemispheres

Correlation The statistical connection between two variables, such that knowledge of one of them enhances prediction of the other; usually expressed as a coefficient of correlation in the range from -1 to +1

Counseling psychology A specialty in psychology that deals with helping individuals make decisions about their lives (e.g., career, marriage)

Creative synthesis Wundts doctrine that the combination of mental elements can generate a new compound, the attributes of which are not directly deducible from the attributes of the elements

Critical empiricism One of the three philosophical trends that culminated in the founding of experimental psychology as a separate discipline, calling for the use of objective empirical methods as the preferred epistemology

Crucial experiment According to Brentano, an experiment that decides a crucial theoretical issue; also called experimentum crucis; compare systematic experiment

Culture-free tests Tests (of variables such as intelligence) that are intended to be uncontaminated by sociocultural variables

Defense mechanisms In psychoanalysis, techniques such as repression or sublimation that the ego uses to keep unacceptable unconscious material out of consciousness

Delayed reaction One of Hunters methods for studying symbolic processes, in which the animal is prevented for some time from responding to a stimulus that was presented and then removed

Dependent variable In systematic experiments, a variable whose value depends on the value of an independent variable

Descriptive operationism The methodological approach of using various operations to specify a concept, without arguing that the concept is identical with those operations; compare operationism

Determining tendency In studies by the Wurzburg school, the mental predilection to come up with a particular kind of response on the basis of instructions or prior activity

Determinism The doctrine that all events are caused; compare free will

Distributed practice Distributing the time allotted to memorizing or learning something into several separated sessions; compare massed practice

Double-aspect monism A position concerning the mind—body problem held by Spinoza and others, stating that mind and body are two sides of the same underlying reality

Dream analysis Freuds “royal road to the unconscious”; the process of interpreting analysands’ dreams, primarily by requiring the analysands to free associate to elements in their dreams

Drive-reduction theory A major behavioristic theory (held by, e.g., Hull) claiming that the reduction of a drive after a response is made is necessary for the subsequent strengthening of that response

Dualism A position concerning the mind—body problem stating that mind and body are two different realities, as in Descartes’s unextended and extended substance

Dynamic psychology Woodworths psychological system, which gives motivation a central role; also, a 20th-century term for psychological treatments and theoretical analyses based on Freudian or neo-Freudian principles

Dynamic self-distribution The Gestalt claim that systems in nature typically evolve due to internal forces and processes rather than externally imposed arbitrary and mechanical constraints

Ego One of Freuds three components of the mind; the part of the human psyche that mediates between the unconscious demands of the id and superego and between unconscious desires and the real world

Eidetic imagery An ability, described by Jaensch, to generate vivid veridical memory images of previously presented stimulus material

Eidola (singular: eidolon) In the early Greek theory of sensation, faint copies of themselves emitted by stimulus objects, to which the senses are attuned and which they are capable of receiving

Einstellung Determining tendency (set), a process studied extensively by the Wurzburg school

Elementism The conviction that one can understand a whole only by first understanding the elements that compose it and then discovering how they combine to constitute the whole; that understanding any complex totality' requires decomposing it into its elemental constituents

Empiricism The epistemological doctrine that reliable and valid knowledge can be obtained only through empirical or experiential methods; compare rationalism

Empirism The epistemological doctrine that all mental components are generated by experience and no knowledge is inborn; compare nativism, tabula rasa

Environment The physical or psychological setting in which an organism exists Environmentalism The doctrine held by, for instance, Watson and Skinner, that environmental consequences are a major determinant of behavior

Epicureanism An early Greek philosophy arguing that one should devote one’s life to seeking pleasure; compare hedonism, stoicism

Epistemology The domain of philosophy' that deals with how humans can, and should, obtain reliable and valid knowledge

Equipotentiality Lashley’s doctrine that parts of the brain can take over functions typically performed by other parts, if those other parts are damaged

Eros Freud’s term for the sexual instinct, one of the two major id drives (see also thanatos); the sexual component of the libido

Ethnomusicology The study of the music of different cultures and ages

Ethology A branch of biology that studies the behavior of species in their natural habitat

Evaluation research Use of empirical methods for obtaining objective evidence about the efficacy of various intervention practices such as psychotherapy or other programs for enhancing socially desirable outcomes

Evidence-based practice The use of psychological or medical practices based on systematic objective evaluation of their demonstrable effectiveness

Evolution The doctrine that species are not fixed and immutable but change over time in ways corresponding to changes in their environment

Evolutionary associationism The doctrine that associations learned by one generation can be passed on to its progeny by heredity

Evolutionary psychology An orientation concerning psychological theories that emphasizes the adaptive or evolutionary advantages of changes in behavior

Experimental esthetics The empirical study of how the characteristics of objects determine esthetic judgments about those objects

Experimental psychology The natural-science approach to the study of psychological phenomena, using experimental methods to determine their causes and processes

Extended substance According to Descartes’s dualism, the physical world; compare unextended substance

External history A historiographic strategy that discusses historical events in the context of their sociocultural environment; compare internal history

Extirpation The experimental removal of tissue; an empirical procedure for studying, in particular, the functions of parts of the brain

Extraversion Jung’s term for individuals’ tendency to be gregarious and concentrate primarily on interpersonal social activities; compare introversion.

Factor analysis A statistical technique that generates a small number of factors that can, at least to some extent, account for the relationships among variables in a matrix of correlation coefficients

Faculties Capabilities of the mind; according to the doctrine of organology or phrenology, the strength of a faculty corresponds with the size of the brain area that supports it

Family pedigree method The study of the distribution of certain mental attributes (e.g., genius or feeblemindedness) within a family to determine the extent to which they are due to heredity

Fechner Club Titchener’s initial name for what later became “Titchener’s experimentalists” and then the Society for Experimental Psychologists

Fechner’s law The doctrine that the intensity of sensations is proportional to the logarithm of the intensity of the physical stimulus; expressed as S = k log R

Feelings One kind of mental element in Wundt’s and Titchener’s systems of psychology

Field of consciousness According to Wundt and Titchener, the background of consciousness; the ground from which items in the focus of consciousness stand out

Field theory A term for Gestalt theory, in particular Lewins version; an orientation that emphasizes the interrelatedness of most psychological phenomena and processes with their context

Figurai aftereffects A kind of perceptual illusion studied by Kohler and others that results in distortions in figurai patterns that are produced by prior stimulation

Figure The configuration in the field of consciousness that receives attention; compare ground

Focus of consciousness According to Wundt, the center of attention; what is dominant in consciousness; compare field of consciousness

Forgetting curve According to Ebbinghaus, the typically rapid decrease over time in recall or recognition of memorized items, usually dropping to a very low asymptote

Form Shape or configuration; in Aristotle, the organizing principle that makes the matter of an object cohere; compare matter

Founding of laboratories One of the five scientific trends that culminated in the founding of experimental psychology as a separate discipline; the establishment of institutions for performing scientific experiments

Fragmentation The breakup of psychology' into a number of relatively unrelated disciplines; typical of the last third of the 20th century

Free association The Freudian psychoanalytic procedure that requires analysands to report whatever conies into their consciousness, often used together with the interpretation of particular memories or contents of dreams

Free will The doctrine that human decisions are not predetermined by identifiable independent variables but are due to individual choice; compare determinism

Functional definition of meaning Mead’s definition of the meaning of items based on the functions those items are capable of performing

Functionalism One of the major 20th-century schools of psychology, characterized by the doctrine of studying what the mind is for or what it does to enhance the organisms adjustment rather than studying the mere contents of the mind Fusion According to Wundt, the combination of several mental elements that never occur separately and in which the constituent elements are not readily discernible

Gerontology The study of the psychological, social, and medical changes that accompany old age

Gestalt theory One of the major 20th-century schools ofpsychology, characterized by the doctrine that wholes typically are totally different from any mere sum of the elements of which they are composed

Gestalt therapy Peris’s version of Freudian psychoanalytic practice and theory Gestaltqualitat Ehrenfels’s term for an additional element over and above the elements constituting any whole; for instance,squareness, or a particular melody

Great individual A doctrine in historiography holding that major historical events result from the actions of particular individuals; compare Ortgeist, Zeitgeist

Ground In the field of consciousness or in perception, that against which a figure stands out

Group dynamics Lewin’s approach to the interactions within social groups, and the influence of the individual on the group and the group on the individual

Health psychology The study of the contribution of lifestyle variables to physical health and the application of that knowledge to the enhancement of physical health; also called behavioral medicine

Hedonism The doctrine that pleasure and pain powerfully determine and explain conduct; compare Epicureanism, stoicism

Hering papers A graduated series of gray squares ranging from white to black, used to measure perceived brightness

Higher mental processes According to Wundt, psychological processes such as cognition or problem solving that are more complex than simple processes such as sensation or association

Historicism A historiographic strategy that discusses historical events in their original historical sociocultural context; compare presentism

Historiography The techniques, theories, and principles of strategy and presentation in historical scholarship

Hormic psychology Purposive psychology; McDougall’s system of psychology that considers all behavior to be purposive

Human engineering The discipline of designing equipment so that human operators can use it effectively with a minimum of errors

Humanistic psychology The school of Maslow, May, and Rogers, emphasizing the positive, creative, and optimistic side of human nature, which these theorists claimed was ignored by traditional schools of psychology

Hypothetico-deductive method According to Hull, the method of natural science, in which hypotheses rigorously derived from scientific theory must be tested empirically in experimental studies

Iconic memory Short-term memory of a stimulus pattern or event that precisely mirrors that pattern or event

Id One of Freuds three components of the mind; the fully unconscious primal part of the human psyche containing the libido

Idealism The metaphysical position, held by Berkeley, that fundamental reality consists of ideas rather than of the material world

Idiographic approach Allport’s strategy aimed at understanding the unique characteristics of an individual; compare nomothetic approach

Imageless thought Thinking understood as consisting not necessarily of a series of elemental sensations, images, or ideas, but rather of processes involving direction, set, determining tendencies, and other factors, as reported in studies by members of the Wurzburg school

Immanent objectivity Brentano’s doctrine that all mental acts have outside referents, that is, that outside objects are immanent in all mental events

Immediate experience Experience that includes the observer’s mental contributions to conscious events, as in the data of psychology; compare mediated experience

Independent variable In systematic experiments, a variable, usually manipulated by the experimenter, whose value affects the value of one or more dependent variables

Individual psychology Adler’s term for his version of neo-Freudian psychoanalysis

Inferential statistics Statistical procedures used to generalize the results obtained from a sample of a population to the entire population from which the sample was drawn

Inferiority feelings According to Adler, debilitative challenges to the selfimage inevitably generated by a youngsters recognition of the far superior skills, strengths, and abilities of adults

Information processing A field of study generated by the advent of the modern computer, concentrating on the way humans, computers, and animals deal with information

Information theory A mathematical theory developed by Wiener, Shannon, and others that deals precisely with the encoding, processing, and output performed by information-processing systems

Insight Understanding of the essential features of a situation, problem, or stimulus, assumed by Gestalt theorists to occur during productive thinking and by psychoanalysts to occur when analysands understand the unconscious origins of their problems

Instinct Inborn patterns of response to particular environmental conditions

Intelligence quotient (IQ) Stern’s formula for quantifying intelligence by the ratio of an individual’s measured mental age to that individual’s chronological age

Internal history A historiographic strategy that restricts its discussion to historical events in a particular discipline or field; compare external history

Introspection The structuralists' preferred method for the study of mental phenomena, in which trained observers report on the conscious elements in the experience resulting from particular experimentally applied stimuli

Introversion Jung’s term for an individual’s tendency to eschew social activities and concentrate instead on internal subjective concerns; compare extraversion

Isomorphism A Gestalt doctrine holding that physiochemical processes in the brain and nervous system must have Gestalt properties similar to those displayed by the corresponding psychological processes

James—Lange theory A theory of emotion arguing that subjective emotions are the effect, not the cause, of the physiological manifestations of those emotions

Just noticeable difference (jnd) In Weber’s law, the smallest change in a stimulus that results in a change in the sensation; usually a specific fraction of the amount of stimulation already present

Law of effect Thorndike’s doctrine that a satisfactory result strengthens a preceding S-R connection, while a punitive result weakens it; compare truncated law of effect

Learned helplessness A phenomenon in which organisms, on the basis of discovering earlier that they are unable to control unpleasant events, fail to learn how to avoid or escape from controllable noxious stimulation

Learning by doing Dewey’s proposal that active involvement in situations about which one is intended to learn is more effective than non-participatory activities such as merely hearing or reading about them

Libido According to Freud, the powerful unconscious desire which strives for sexual gratification and aggressive dominance over all efforts to curb it

Life space Lewins topological representation of an individual’s situation as viewed from the perspective of that individual

Life span development Changes in perspective and behavior as a function of age, extending from birth through childhood and adolescence into maturity and old age

Lloyd Morgan’s canon A version of the principle of parsimony (“Occam’s Razor”), stating that one should not explain a behavioral process by recourse to a more complex or higher capacity if it can be explained by a simpler or lower capacity

Local signs Lotze’s doctrine stating that places on a sensory surface obtain a relative spatial locus on the basis of past experience

Localization of functions Identification of particular parts of the brain and nervous system that are involved in the performance of various psychological and behavioral acts and processes

Long-term memory The encoded residue of events and stimuli after those events and stimuli have been processed in short-term memory and then placed in permanent mental storage

Machine learning The self-revision of computer programs written in such a way that they can improve themselves in response to feedback about how they are actually working

Malleus Maleficarum Literally, “hammer for female evildoers” (Latin); a 15th-century document constituting an early description of psychopathology; intended to explain how to identify and deal with witchcraft

Mass action Lashley’s doctrine that the brain acts to some extent as a whole rather than specific subparts of the brain performing specific, uniquely separable functions

Massed practice Combining all the time allotted to memorizing or learning something to a single session; compare distributed practice

Mastery One of Ebbinghaus’s methods for the experimental study of rote memorization; counting the number of repeated trials required for the first complete correct reproduction of the memorized material

Matter The lower level in Aristotle’s metaphysical hierarchy; what is organized by form; compare form

Mechanisms can become drives Woodworth’s doctrine in his dynamic psychology that well-learned behavior patterns can contain their own motivation, that is, that organisms tend to enjoy engaging in habitual acts

Mediated experience Experience with the subjective component removed, as in the data of physics; compare immediate experience

Memory Stored residue of earlier experience

Memory drum A device for exposing material in experiments on rote memorization

Mental age A dimension determined in an attempt to measure intelligence; usually the average chronological age of individuals who perform at the same level on a cognitive task or puzzle as the person whose intelligence is being measured

Mental chemistry John Stuart Mill’s doctrine that, as in physical chemistry, mental compounds can display qualities that are not discernible in their constituent elements; compare his fathers mental mechanics

Mental chronometry Measurement of the time it takes to perform certain mental functions; the study of reaction time

Mental elements In associationism, structuralism, and other perspectives, the basic component parts of complex contents of consciousness

Mental mechanics James Mill’s pure associationism, stating that mental compounds are the sum total of their constituent elements; compare his son’s mental chemistry

Mental philosophy The study of the domain of conscious events; in the 18th and 19th centuries in the United States, this domain typically included topics that later became part of the discipline of psychology

Mental testing A field that grew rapidly during the 20th century, consisting of standardized methods for measuring intelligence and a wide variety of other psychological dimensions that vary among individuals

Meta-analysis A technique that systematically combines the findings from large numbers of controlled studies of the same phenomenon to yield a single statistically generated rational conclusion about that phenomenon

Method of adjustment One of Fechner’s psychophysical techniques, in which a research participant sets a variable stimulus so that it matches some characteristic of a standard stimulus

Method of average error Another name for the method of adjustment

Method of constant stimuli One of Fechner’s psychophysical techniques, in which a research participant judges whether a characteristic of a variable stimulus is greater than, equal to, or less than some characteristic of a standard stimulus

Method of just noticeable differences One of Fechner’s psychophysical techniques, in which a research participant sets a variable stimulus to make its characteristic just noticeably greater or less than some characteristic of a standard stimulus

Method of limits One of Fechner’s psychophysical techniques, in which a variable stimulus is initially set to be clearly greater or less than some characteristic of a standard stimulus and then is gradually changed by the experimenter until the research participant indicates that, subjectively, it is no longer greater or less

Method of reproduction Another name for the method of adjustment

Method of right and wrong cases Another name for the method of constant stimuli

Methodological operationism The epistemological practice of specifying theoretical concepts or dimensions in terms of the operations used to measure them

Middle Ages The period of Western history from the decline of the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine empires to the beginning of the Renaissance

Mind—body problem The question of the nature of the mind and of the body and their relationship

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) A prominent 20th-century paper-and-pencil test for measuring various dimensions of personality

Molar approach Analysis and description of phenomena in terms of higher-order processes and events; compare molecular

Molar-molecular controversy A primarily 20th-century debate about whether scientific explanation of events requires analysis in terms of other events at the same level or in terms of lower-level “elements”

Molecular approach Analysis and description of phenomena in terms of their most basic elementary components; compare molar

Monad In Leibniz’s philosophy, an independent, noninteracting, ultimate element of reality; see preestablished harmony

Moral philosophy The part of philosophy dealing with ethics; in the 18th and 19th centuries in the United States, usually dealing with topics that later became part of the discipline of psychology

Motor theory of thinking The doctrine that thinking is actually a matter of the contraction of various muscles or is the result of such physiological activity Nativism The epistemological doctrine that some knowledge is innate and not dependent on experience; compare empirism, tabula rasa

Necessary connection An essential relationship between a cause and its effect, which Hume argued does not exist; rather, he held that a cause and its effect are merely contiguous in time and place

Nomothetic approach Allport’s strategy aimed at identifying general laws that apply to all people or all organisms; compare idiographic approach

Nonsense syllables Three-letter consonant—vowel—consonant combinations including no meaningful words, invented by Fechner for the experimental study of rote memorization

Normal curve of distribution A bell-shaped, symmetrical distribution of data points around a central tendency, characterizing measurements of many human and animal variables; the Gaussian distribution of error

Noumena (singular: noumenon) The constituents of Kant’s world of true reality, of which human experience is an error-riddled reflection, tempered by the categories of space, time, and cause and effect

Null hypothesis The hypothesis in classical inferential statistics, which the researcher usually attempts to refute, that there is no correlation among or difference in relevant variables in the population from which the research sample is drawn

Objectivism The philosophical doctrine that only what is objectively measurable in cgs terms—space (centimeters), mass (grams), or time (seconds)—is a permissible object of investigation by natural science

Objectivity Removing everything subjective from descriptions, data, and explanations

Oedipus complex The Freudian concept that there is a universal unconscious striving for union with the opposite-sex parent and destruction of the same-sex parent

Operational triangulation The methodological prescription to use a variety of operational characterizations of a particular theoretical concept or dimension rather than just one

Opponent-process theory Hering’s doctrine that color vision is based on increase or decrease in excitation of three different kinds of retinal cone cells

Organization of perception The doctrine that the result of sensory stimulation is not a random mosaic of unrelated sensations but is an organized percept of objects in context; the Gestalt theorists proposed a variety of principles for this organization

Organology Another name for phrenology

Ortgeist “The spirit of a place”; a doctrine in historiography holding that major historical events result from the prevailing attitudes and conditions at the location where they occur; compare great individual, Zeitgeist

Ossicles Three tiny bones in the inner ear, which transmit movement of the eardrum to the oval window in the cochlea

Overlearning Practicing material to be memorized by rote several times more than required for mastery; compare mastery

Paired associates A rote memorization task requiring the research participant to recall or recognize the second member of a memorized pair when the first one is presented

Parapsychology The study of psychic phenomena such as extrasensory perception, telepathy, and clairvoyance

Path analysis A late 20th-century statistical procedure that goes beyond the basic inferential statistics which concentrate on refuting the null hypothesis, to analyze cause-and-effect relations in a matrix of data

Percept What is perceived

Permanent possibilities of sensation John Stuart Mill’s metaphysical characterization of epistemological reality: if it is possible to sense it, then it exists

Person cognition Perception of other people, a field of study that became prominent in mid-20th-century social psychology

Personal equation A mathematical formula used by astronomers to correct for individual differences in reaction time, so that times of various astronomical events recorded by one observer can be transformed to match those recorded by another

Personality The study of long-standing character traits in humans

Petites perceptions Literally, “little perceptions” (French); subthreshold sensory events, unnoticed individually, which according to Leibniz can be combined with others to lead to a conscious sensation

Phenomenology In psychological research, the unbiased description of subjective experience

Phrenology The doctrine that the strength of psychic faculties in an individual can be determined by examining bumps in the skull that indicate the size of the corresponding underlying parts of the brain

Physiology One of the five scientific trends that culminated in the founding of experimental psychology as a separate discipline; the study of the functions of anatomical parts

Practice of psychology The application of principles of psychology to solving practical problems, including applied experimental psychology, clinical psychology, and many other specialties

Pragmatism The doctrine that if there is no other convincing evidence of the truth or falsity of a proposition, the criterion for judging its validity should be how well assuming the truth of the proposition works in a practical sense

Priignanz The Gestalt doctrine that the organization of any whole is as “good” (e.g., symmetrical, simple, harmonious) as the prevailing conditions allow

Preestablished harmony Leibniz’s doctrine that noninteracting monads, including those of mind and body, are predestined like set clocks to seem to interact although they do not actually do so

Prescriptive operationism The epistemological doctrine that concepts are identical to the operations used to specify or measure them; compare descriptive operationism

Presentism A historiographic strategy that discusses historical events in terms of the perspectives of the here and now; compare historicism

Primary qualities According to Locke, sense qualities that correspond to actual physical qualities such as number and size; compare secondary qualities

Productive thinking Thought processes that result in creative problem solving and insight into the nature of the problem situation; a psychological process emphasized by Gestalt theorists

Professional psychology The practice of psychology

Projective test A test in which one’s personality, motivation, etc. presumably affect one’s perception or description of ambiguous material (e.g., Rorschach or Thematic Apperception Test); the personality is “projected” onto the material

Psi Chi An honor society in psychology' founded in 1929, having more members than any other psychological association in the world, with over a thousand chapters

Psychic causality The cause—effect relationships in mental events, which, according to Wundt, cannot contradict the cause—effect relationships in the physical world and are equally regular

Psychoanalysis One of the major 20th-century schools of psychology, characterized by emphasis on the role of unconscious processes in mental events; also, the Freudian approach to psychotherapy

Psycholinguistics The study of the relationship between language and psychological events, including the role language can play in the way cognitive processes occur

Psychological Abstracts The name of the collection of more than 4 million abstracts found in the American Psychological Association’s Psychinfo source Psychoneuroimmunology The study of ways in which behavioral variables affect the immune system

Psychonomic Society A late 20th-century organization of active behavioral scientists; criteria for membership include publication of several articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals

Psychopathology Mental aberrations and mental illness; the study of these phenomena

Psychophysical parallelism A position concerning the mind—body problem stating that, while mind and body do not interact or affect one another, events in one realm parallel events in the other

Psychophysics The study of the relationship between physical characteristics of stimuli and characteristics of the resulting subjective sensations

Psychosexual stages The Freudian developmental stages defined by changes in the source of erotic pleasure, from oral through anal, phallic, and latent to genital

Psychotherapy The use of talking or other psychological techniques to deal with psychological problems or psychopathology

Purposive psychology Another term for McDougall’s hormic psychology

Quantification One of the five scientific trends that culminated in the founding of experimental psychology as a separate discipline; systematic, objective techniques for numerical measurement of variables

Rationalism The epistemological doctrine that reliable and valid knowledge can be obtained through careful logical reasoning; compare empiricism

Reaction time The time period between a stimulus and the resulting response, a measurement that is a major tool of experimental psychology

Reality principle In psychodynamic theory, the principle that the ego must deal with in recognizing that having a wish does not automatically result in that wish being fulfilled; the harsh realities of the external world

Redintegration Hamilton’s doctrine that activation of a prominent element in a complex memory can activate the entire memory

Reductionism Explaining a higher-level phenomenon by recourse to lower-level factors, such as the effort to explain psychological events via physiological ones

Reflex Automatic response to an activating stimulus

Reflex arc The basic analytic unit of reflexology, consisting of a stimulus, a response, and the connection between them (S-R), in which activation of the stimulus automatically results in the associated response

Reflexology The doctrine that all psychological events can be fully explained in terms of reflexes

Reinforcement According to Skinner, change in the probability of a particular response in a particular stimulus situation due to an event after the response has occurred; any event that strengthens (or weakens) the tendency to make a preceding response

Reinforcer A stimulus applied after a response is made that strengthens the stimulus—response connection it follows (Thorndike), satisfies a need (Hull), or increases the probability of the response it follows (Skinner)

Relational determination A basic Gestalt doctrine that the qualities of related items affect the connection that exists between those items and that the qualities of a whole affect the nature of its constituent parts

Reliability The stability of a measurement; the extent to which a measurement of a variable agrees with an earlier or alternate measurement of the same variable

Reminiscence Somewhat improved recall or recognition of memorized material at some time later than immediately after memorization; a phenomenon that tends to occur with massed practice of the memorized material

Remote associations Associations beyond immediately adjacent items in a list to be memorized, such as between the first and third or fourth and seventh

Renaissance A period in European history immediately following the Middle Ages, usually considered to occur about 1400—1600 and characterized by major intellectual and sociocultural “rebirth”

Repression One of the Freudian ego defense mechanisms, in which unacceptable material is forced into the unconscious

Research attitude An epistemological doctrine contrasted with faith, authority, and reasoning, asserting that the scientist must concentrate on determining whether an assertion is true and on how to determine whether it is true

Resonance theory Helmholtzs doctrine of pitch perception, stating that different tones activate different transverse fibers on the basilar membrane of the cochlea in the inner ear by resonance

Response-produced stimuli Internal, usually kinesthetic, stimulation produced by making a particular response; a theoretical concept used primarily by the behaviorist perspective

Retinal disparity The slight difference in the images of three-dimensional scenes on the retinas of the two eyes, the combination of which by the visual centers in the brain generates a powerful cue to the perception of three-dimensionality

Retroactive inhibition The interference of new material to be memorized with later recall of material memorized earlier

Rorschach test A series of ambiguous, bilaterally symmetrical inkblots, described and interpreted by an individual; used to measure fundamental aspects of personality' and psychopathology in a projective test

Savings A measurement in the experimental study of memorization identifying how many' fewer trials are required to relearn a list of items memorized earlier than to memorize it initially'

Schools of psychology Major foci of theoretical psychology, especially' during the first half of the 20th century, among them structuralism,functionalism, Gestalt theory, behaviorism, and psychoanalysis

Scientific materialism One of the three philosophical trends that culminated in the founding of experimental psychology as a separate discipline, calling for the explanation of scientific phenomena in materialistic or physical terms

Secondary qualities According to Locke, sensory qualities such as color, taste, smell, and temperature that are generated in an observer by the primary qualities of physical objects but that do not themselves reside in those objects; compare primary qualities

Self-actualization According to Maslow, the effort to realize one’s potential fully; the highest in the hierarchy of human motivations

Semantic differential Osgood’s procedure for measuring the connotative meaning of any word or other item

Sensations Subjective impressions produced by stimuli in the environment that activate the sense organs

Sensory neuroscience The study of the physiological correlates of sensations

Set Another term for determining tendency or Einstellung

Short-term memory Memory of an immediately preceding event or stimulus, before that event or stimulus has been processed for encoding in long-term memory; also, the mechanism by which iconic memories are transformed into long-term memories

Similarity One of Aristotle’s principles of association, the doctrine that if one idea is present in the mind it increases the likelihood that one will think of a similar idea

Simple ideas Elemental ideas that correspond to simple sensations; according to James Mill, the building blocks of everything that is in the mind

Social learning A learning procedure in which, according to Bandura, one learns by watching what happens when another organism behaves in a certain way in a particular situation

Social psychology The branch of empirical psychology that deals with relationships between groups as well as between the group and the individual

Society of Experimental Psychologists An exclusive organization founded by Titchener, initially called the Fechner Club and then “Titchener’s experimentalists”

Sociocultural psychology The branch of empirical psychology dealing with the effects of social and cultural groups on one another and on the individual, including linguistic issues

Solipsism The epistemological doctrine held by Hume, Berkeley, and others that there is nothing of which one can be certain other than one’s own existence

Specific fiber energies According to Helmholtz, the specific subjective qualities, such as colors or tones, that result from activation of specific sensory fibers, for instance, in retinal cones or on the basilar membrane of the cochlea in the inner ear

Specific nerve energies According to Johannes Müller, the sensation in specific domains that results from activation of specific nerves; for instance, seeing as a result of activating the visual nerve and hearing as a result of activating the auditory nerve

Standards for Educational and Psychological Tests and Assessment The standards which outline and describe all standards involving every aspect of educational and psychological testing

Stereoscope A device for presenting two slightly different images to the two eyes at the same time, so that the resulting retinal disparity results in the perception of a three-dimensional scene with objects having depth in visual space

Stimulus error In Titchenerian introspection, description of mental contents in terms of knowledge about the stimulus rather than in terms of basic mental elements

Stimulus—response connection The connection between a stimulus and a response; the unit assumed by the behaviorist school of psychology to suffice for explaining all behavior

Stoicism An early Greek philosophy recommending a conservative orientation and reasoned restraint; compare Epicureanism, hedonism

Stream of consciousness The succession of subjective mental events in an individual, described in detail by Janies

Stroboscope A device for presenting a series of slightly changing stationary images in rapid succession, in such a way as to generate perceived motion in the image; sometimes a drum with vertical viewing slits, whose interior surface contains the stationary images

Structural equation modeling Mathematical modeling of the relationships discovered among variables in an empirical study

Structuralism One of the major 20th-century schools ofpsychology, characterized by Titchener’s doctrine that psychology must concentrate on the study of the structure and contents of consciousness

Style of life Adlers characterization of the pattern of attitudes, beliefs, and actions that the adult has developed to overcome the inevitable feelings of inferiority that were generated by being young, small, and weak

Sublimation One of the Freudian ego defense mechanisms, which converts unacceptable unconscious urges into acceptable conscious strivings

Subtractive method The procedure of subtracting the reaction time to a simple task from the longer period measured for a more complex task to determine the time required for intervening decision or cognitive processes

Subvocal speech Inaudible motions of the speech apparatus that, according to Watsonian behaviorism, are actually the behavioral aspect of thinking

Superego One of Freud’s three components of the mind; the mostly unconscious part of the human psyche that serves to civilize the individual by acting as a conscience that prevents the ego from permitting the expression of the pleasure principle’s devastating, unconscious id desires

Survival of the fit A major doctrine in the Darwinian theory of evolution, stating that species whose characteristics make them more able to cope with their environment than are other species are more likely to survive

Symbolic processes Presumed cognitive processes undertaken by humans and animals when confronting problems; phenomena studied by Hunter using delayed reaction techniques and the temporal maze

Systematic experiment According to Brentano, an experiment that determines how an independent variable affects one or more dependent variables, by measuring changes in the dependent variables produced by changes in the independent variable; compare crucial experiment

Systematic introspection The careful analysis of mental contents produced in psychological experiments into their basic elemental component parts, performed by Titchenerian trained observers

Systems approach Analysis of a situation in terms of its internal structure and its relevant context, as opposed to analysis into predetermined basic elements presumed to be inert

Tabula rasa Literally, “shaved (wax) tablet”; a metaphor for the doctrine that all knowledge comes from experience; the mind at birth is a blank “tablet” on which experience “writes”; compare empirism, nativism

Temporal maze A maze in which the research participant returns to the choice point with the only clue to a correct choice being the immediately preceding choices; one of Hunters devices for experimental study of symbolic processes

Thanatos Freuds term for the aggressive impulse, one of the two major drives of the id (see also eras); the aggressive or destructive component of the libido, sometimes also called the “death instinct”

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) A mid-20th-century projective procedure devised by Murray and Morgan, in which the individual is asked to tell stories suggested by pictures and the stories are interpreted to reveal personality and motivations

Three-dimensional theory Wundts doctrine of emotions, stating that all emotions can be specified by their location along the dimensions of pleasantness—unpleasantness, excitement—calm, and tension-release

Transference In psychoanalysis, the analysand’s emotional response to the therapist as if the therapist were an important person (such as a parent) in the analysand’s early life

Trial and error Learning that typically begins with random behavior, followed by gradual, automatic reduction of errors and increase in the correct response

Tropism An automatic response, such as a flower turning toward light; compare reflex

Truncated law of effect Thorndike s later version of his law of effect, in which he dropped the provision that punishment weakens previous S-R connections, retaining only the principle that satisfying consequences strengthen the preceding S-R. connection

Two-point threshold The minimum separation between two stimulated points that can be discerned as two rather than just one

Unconscious inference Helmholtz’s doctrine that perceptions involve unconscious, automatic conclusions about the nature of stimulus objects and dimensions, based on the sensory reception of the stimuli from those objects and dimensions and prior experience with those stimuli

Unconscious motivation The doctrine in psychoanalysis that much of human thought and behavior, including psychopathology, is the result of powerful unconscious motives such as sex and aggression

Unextended substance According to Descartes’s dualism, the mental world; compare extended substance

User-friendliness A characteristic of computers, computer programs, and their manuals and help systems that makes them easy for unfamiliar users to learn to use

Validity The extent to which a procedure succeeds in measuring what it purports to measure; an important characteristic of any mental test

Verstehende Psychologic Dilthey’s psychology' of “understanding” as opposed to an empirical natural science of experimental psychology

Vibratiuncles Small residual activations that, according to Hartley, continue in the nervous system after a stimulus is removed and are the physiological counterpart of the memory of the initial sensation

Vitalism The doctrine that living organisms contain a special quality over and above their physical characteristics, which differentiates them from inanimate objects; compare animism

Völkerpsychologie Wundts multivolume work dealing with higher mental processes, culture, language, art, religion, and other complex cognitive processes and phenomena

Voluntarism Wundt’s term for his own system of psychology, with its emphasis on the will

WAIS The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, an individual test for measuring intelligence

Weber’s law AR/R = k: the just noticeable difference for any sensation is a constant fraction of the intensity of the initial stimulus; a formulation that Fechner used in developing his own psychophysical law

WISC The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, a version of Wechslers individual test for measuring intelligence intended for use with children

Würzburg school Kiilpe’s group of researchers and students examining the psychology of thinking, which came up with the finding that thought can be “imageless”

Zeitgeist “The spirit of a time”; a doctrine in historiography holding that major historical events result from the prevailing attitudes and conditions at the time when they occur; compare great individual, Ortgeist