Psychology

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Vocabulary List

abrecation: the expression and consequent release of a previously repressed emotion, achieved through reliving the experience that caused it (typically through hypnosis or suggestion).

accommodation: Process of modifying a structue based on new elements to assimilate.

acute stress: A transient state of arousal with typically clear onset and offset patterns

adequacy: " Concordance between the temperament of a child and characteristics or environmental constraints."

alexithymia: is a personality construct characterized by the sub-clinical inability to identify and describe emotions in the self.

algolagnia: desire for sexual gratification through inflicting pain on oneself or others; sadomasochism.

analyse: to study or examine something in detail in order to understand or explain it.

analytical: Relating to or using analysis or logical reasoning.

animism: the attribution of a soul to plants, inanimate objects, and natural phenomena.

anorexia nervosa: " Anorexia nervosa is a psychiatric disorder characterized by an unrealistic fear of weight gain, self-starvation, and conspicuous distortion of body image. The individual is obsessed with becoming increasingly thinner and limits food intake to the point where health is compromised"

anxiety: An intense emotional response caused by the preconscious recognition that a repressed conflict is about to emerge into consciousness.

aphonia: Loss of the voice resulting from disease, injury to the vocal cords, or various psychological causes, such as hysteria

assessee: evaluate or estimate the nature, ability, or quality of.

assimilation: Process integration of external elements to a given structure.

attitude: An enduring, learned predisposition to behave in a consistent way toward a given class of objects, or a persistent mental and/or neural state of readiness to react to a certain class of objects, not as they are but as they are conceived to be

attitude: The learned, relatively stable tendency to respond to people, concepts, and events in an evaluative way.

attribution: The process by which people use information to make inferences about the causes of behavior or events.

autohypnosis: the process or result of self-induced hypnosis

balance of power: the power held by a small group when larger groups are of equal strength.

behavior: the way in which one acts or conducts oneself, esp. toward others.

behaviorism: the theory or doctrine that human or animal psychology can be accurately studied only through the examination and analysis of objectively observable and quantifiable behavioral events, in contrast with subjective mental states.

behaviorism: the theory that human and animal behavior can be explained in terms of conditioning, without appeal to thoughts or feelings, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior patterns.

behaviour: the way or manner in which one conducts oneself

behavioural approach: The behavioral approach is based on the concept of explaining behavior through observation, and the belief that our environment is what causes us to behave differently or suffer illnesses.

behaviourist: Behaviorism (or behaviourism), is an approach to psychology that combines elements of philosophy, methodology, and theory.

behaviourist theory: The theory or doctrine that human or animal psychology can be accurately studied only through theexamination and analysis of objectively observable and quantifiable behavioral events, in contrast withsubjective mental states.

bipolar disorder: Bipolar disorder, formerly called manic depression, is a mental illness that brings severe high and low moods and changes in sleep, energy, thinking, and behavior

butterfly effect: Notion that an effect or a trivial thing can have serious consequences if it causes an imbalance and causes other changes that create a big upheaval.

causality: Causality (also referred to as causation[1]) is the relation between an event (the cause) and a second event (the effect), where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first.

centration: which refers to the tendency to focus on only one aspect of a situation, problem or object.

cerebral dominance: the normal tendency for one half of the brain, usually the left cerebral hemisphere in right-handed people, to exercise more control over certain functions (e.g. handedness and language) than the other

child development: Child development refers to the biological, psychological and emotional changes that occur in human beings between birth and the end of adolescence, as the individual progresses from dependency to increasing autonomy.

classical conditionning: a learning process that occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired

classification: the action or process of classifying something according to shared qualities or characteristics

clinical psychologist: A clinical psychologist is a mental health professional with highly specialized training in the diagnosis and psychological treatment of mental illness, including obsessive compulsive disorder.

code switching: code-switching occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation.

cognition: the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.

cognitive consistency: The tendency to seek consistency in one's cognitions.

cognitive dissonance: A condition of conflict or anxiety resulting from inconsistency between one's beliefs and one's actions, such as opposing the slaughter of animals and eating meat.

cognitive psychology: the study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity and thinking

cognitive science: the interdisciplinary scientific study of the mind and its processes

cohort: Group of people born a few years apart and exposed to the same historical and social conditions, they tend to share similar perspertives.

conformism: conformity: orthodoxy in thoughts and belief

consolability: Degree of relief or alleviation of grief, sadness, anger, pain afforded by touch and cuddle.

consultation: a meeting of physicians to evaluate a patient's case and treatment.

coping: coping is expending conscious effort to solve personal and interpersonal problems, and seeking to master, minimize or tolerate stress or conflict

correlational method: A statistical method, most often used in clinical and other applied areas of psychology, to study the relationship which exists between one characteristic and another in an individual.

correlational research: Correspondence between two sets of measurements on two or more variables.

counterpart: a person or thing holding a position or performing a function that corresponds to that of another person or thing in another place.

covariate: A covariate is an independent situation, which is free to vary. In a correlation you plot two situations or co-variates off against each other.

cross-sectional analyses: one type of observational study that involves data collection from a population, or a representative subset, at one specific point in time.

cross-sectional study: Is to look at a feature of different people in terms of age, but similar to other points of view important as education, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, etc..

dependance: the real need of the organism, or something that individuals can not provide for themselves

discrimination: Treating people less fairly because they belong to a different group.

discrimination: the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, esp. on the grounds of race, age, or sex.

disposition: A natural or acquired habit or characteristic tendency in a person or thing.

dissociative disorder: A personality disorder marked by a disturbance in the integration of identity, memory, or consciousness

dream state: a condition of altered consciousness in which a person does not recognize the environment and reacts in a manner opposed to his or her usual behavior, as by flight or an act of violence. The state is seen in epilepsy and certain disorders

eclecticism: Perspective and how to choose the most development specialists applying aspects of each approach and theories of development rather than adhering to a single.

ecological systems theory: Ecological systems theory is an approach to study of human development that consists of the 'scientific study of the progressive, mutual accommodation, throughout the life course, between an active, growing human being, and the changing properties of the immediate settings in which the developing person lives,

effect of centrality: Important impact or certains informations about others' caractéristics on impression formation.

egocentric bias: the tendency to overstress changes between the past and present in order to make ourselves look better than what we really are

emotion: an affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness.

empathic listening: Empathic listening (also called active listening or reflective listening) is a way of listening and responding to another person that improves mutual understanding and trust.

empathy: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

endogroupe: an exclusive, typically small, group of people with a shared interest or identity.

epigenetic approach: Scientific point of view emerging in the study of development, taking into account both the genetic origins of behavior and the direct systematic influence that the environment has, over time, on the genes.

ethnocentrism: belief in the superiority of one's own ethnic group

evidence: the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid.

evocation: Creation anew through the power of the memory or imagination.

evolutionary psychology: An approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective.

exogroupe: those people who do not belong to a specific in-group.

experimental method: The experimental method is a scientific method of enquiry that emphasises the control, observation, and measurement of variables in research.

experimental mortality: Loss or defection of subjects due to a change in the situation of a research participant.

expressive language: Expressive language means being able to put thoughts into words

expressive language disorder: Expressive language disorder is a communication disorder in which there are difficulties with verbal and written expression.

fabrication: Trend to the creation of imaginary productions, presented in the form of narratives more or less coordinated by situations and by fictitious events

familiarity: The state of being familiar; intimate and frequent converse, or association; unconstrained intercourse; freedom from ceremony and constraint; intimacy; as, to live in remarkable familiarity.

flooding: A therapy for phobias in which clients are exposed, with their permission, to the stimuli most frightening to them

frustration: the feeling of being upset or annoyed, esp. because of inability to change or achieve something.

habituation: Habituation is a decrease in response to a stimulus after repeated presentations.

halo effect: the tendency for an impression created in one area to influence opinion in another area

heuristic: enabling a person to discover or learn something for themselves.

holism: A major holist movement in the early twentieth century was gestalt psychology. The claim was that perception is not an aggregation of atomic sense data but a field, in which there is a figure and a ground

holophrase: Single word that expresses a full thought.

human activity: something that people do or cause to happen.

human genome: The human genome comprises a sequence of approximately 3 billion component parts, called nucleotides, which are organized into DNA molecules—the double helix.

humanistic psychology: Humanistic psychology was instead focused on each individual's potential and stressed the importance of growth and self-actualization.

hypermnesia: Exceptionally exact or vivid memory, especially as associated with certain mental illnesses

ideal self: an evolving construct which represents the goals and aspirations of an individual

illness: a disease or period of sickness affecting the body or mind.

illusory correlation: Illusory correlation is the phenomenon of perceiving a relationship between variables even when no such relationship exists.

income: money received, esp. on a regular basis, for work or through investments.

inference: a conclusion reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning.

insight: the capacity to gain an accurate and deep intuitive understanding of a person or thing.

intentional handicap: Explain in advance a failure of a toutside way.

interdependence: A reciprocal relation between interdependent entities (objects or individuals or groups).

intergenerational: Which is between generations, between different age layers.

internalizing: make (attitudes or behavior) part of one's nature by learning or unconscious assimilation

interpersonnal relationships: being, relating to, or involving relations between persons.

intervention: any measure whose purpose is to improve health or alter the course of disease.

intrapsychic conflict: an emotional clash of opposing impulses within oneself, for example, of the id versus the ego or the ego versus the superego.

intuition: the abillity to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious resoning

involve: (of a situation or event) include (something) as a necessary part or result.

literacy: Literacy is the ability to read and write. The inability to do so is called illiteracy or analphabetism.

longitudinal study: A correlational research study that involves repeated observations of the same variables over long periods of time — often many decades.

lucid dreaming: The theory that conscious awareness of dreaming is a learnable skill that enables dreamers to control the direction and content of their dreams

memory: In psychology, memory is the process in which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved.

mental: involving the mind or an intellectual process

mental disability: mental disability is a mental or behavioral pattern or anomaly that causes either suffering or an impaired ability to function in ordinary life (disability), and which is not developmentally or socially normative. Mental disorders are generally defined by a combination of how a person feels, acts, thinks or perceives

mental distress: Mental distress is a term used, both by some mental health practitioners and users of mental health services, to describe a range of symptoms and experiences of a person's internal life that are commonly held to be troubling, confusing or out of the ordinary

mental health: psychological well-being and satisfactory adjustment to society and to the ordinary demands of life.

mental illness: any of various disorders in which a person's thoughts, emotions, or behaviour are so abnormal as to cause suffering to himself, herself, or other people.

mental process: the performance of some composite cognitive activity; an operation that affects mental contents; "the process of thinking"; "the cognitive operation of remembering"

meta stereotype: Perception of stereotypes by others to his group.

mind: The human consciousness that originates in the brain and is manifested especially in thought, perception, emotion, will, memory, and imagination.

narcissism: it is used to describe a person characterized by egotism, vanity, pride, or selfishness.

negation: deny the existence, evidence, or truth of (something)

neurosis: is a class of functional mental disorders involving distress but neither delusions nor hallucinations, whereby behavior is not outside socially acceptable norms.[1] It is also known as psychoneurosis or neurotic disorder, and thus those suffering from it are said to be neurotic.

neurotic: suffering from, caused by, or relating to neurosis.

nonverbal communication: Nonverbal communication is the process of communication through sending and receiving wordless (mostly visual) cues between people.

observation: the action or process of observing something or someone carefully or in order to gain information

obsessive–compulsive disorder: Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts that produce uneasiness, apprehension, fear, or worry; by repetitive behaviors aimed at reducing the associated anxiety

operant conditioning: conditioning in which an operant response is brought under stimulus control by virtue of presenting reinforcement contingent upon the occurrence of the operant response

operant extinction: When a behavior no longer produces predictable consequences, its return to the level of occurrence it had before operant conditioning

outcome: the way a thing turns out; a consequence.

packaging: Learning process based on the combination of stimulus and response.

paranoia: a mental condition characterized by delusions of persecution, unwarranted jealousy, or exaggerated self-importance, typically elaborated into an organized system. It may be an aspect of chronic personality disorder, of drug abuse, or of a serious condition such as schizophrenia in which the person loses touch with reality.

perception: he neurophysiological processes, including memory, by which an organism becomes aware of and interprets external stimuli.

perception bias: A perception bias is a psychological tendency to lose objectivity in perception of people and situations.

personnality: the sum total of all the behavioural and mental characteristics by means of which an individual is recognized as being unique.

persuasion: the action or fact of persuading someone or of being persuaded to do or believe something.

phenomenology: he study of the development of human consciousness and self-awareness as a preface to or a part of philosophy

phobia: an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something.

phoneme: un phonème est la plus petite unité discrète ou distinctive (c'est-à-dire permettant de distinguer des mots les uns des autres) que l'on puisse isoler par segmentation dans la chaîne parlée.

physiological process: The functions of living organisms and their parts, and the physical and chemical factors and processes involved.

placebo: is a simulated or otherwise medically ineffectual treatment for a disease or other medical condition intended to deceive the recipient.

placebo effect: a beneficial effect, produced by a placebo drug or treatment, that cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo itself, and must therefore be due to the patient's belief in that treatment.

prejudice: An unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.

prenatal development: is the process in which a human embryo or fetus (or foetus) gestates during pregnancy, from fertilization until birth

preoperational stage: This stage happens roughly between the ages of 2 and 7 and is characterized by what Piaget referred to as egocentrism. During this stage, children have difficulty taking the point of view of others.

primacy effect: The increased ability to remember the first items in a list.

profiling: The recording and analysis of a person's psychological and behavioral characteristics, so as to assess or predict their capabilities in a certain sphere or to assist in identifying a particular subgroup of people.

prosopagnosia: is a disorder of face perception where the ability to recognize faces is impaired, while other aspects of visual processing (e.g., object discrimination) and intellectual functioning (e.g., decision making) remain intact.

proximity: The region close around a person or thing

pruning: Éliminaton process of synapses, dendrites and certain nerve pathways rarely used or redundant.

psychoanalysis: a method of studying the mind and treating mental and emotional disorders based on revealing and investigating the role of the unconscious mind.

psycholinguistics: is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language. Initial forays into psycholinguistics were largely philosophical ventures, due mainly to a lack of cohesive data on how the human brain functioned.

psychological nativism: nativism is the view that certain skills or abilities are "native" or hard-wired into the brain at birth.

psychologist: a specialist in psychology.

psychology: the scientific study of all forms of human and animal behaviour, sometimes concerned with the methods through which behaviour can be modified

psychosis: a severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality.

psychosocial development: the development of the personality, and the acquisition of social attitudes and skills, from infancy through maturity.

punishment: the infliction or imposition of a penalty as retribution for an offense

pygmalion effect: the phenomenon in which the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform

realism: the quality or fact of representing a person, thing, or situation accurately or in a way that is true to life.

receiving: be given, presented with, or paid (something)

recency effect: The principle that the most recently presented items or experiences will most likely be remembered best.

receptive language: Receptive language is the comprehension of language - listening and understanding what is communicated.

reinforcement: reinforcement is a stimulus that strengthens or weakens the behavior that produced it

relevance: The quality or state of being relevant; pertinency; applicability

resilience: is an individual's tendency to cope with stress and adversity

respondent conditioning: A type of conditioning, first studied by Pavlov, in which a previously neutral stimulus (bell sound) elicits a response (salivation) as a result of pairing it (associating it contiguously in time) a number of times with an unconditioned or natural stimulus for that response (food shown to a hungry dog).

retrograde amnesia: (Psychology) amnesia caused by a trauma such as concussion, in which the memory loss relates to material learnt before the trauma.

schizophrenia: a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation.

self-actualization: the realization or fulfillment of one's talents and potentialities, esp. considered as a drive or need present in everyone.

self-awareness: Self-awareness is the capacity for introspection and the ability to recognize oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals.

self-esteem: confidence in one's own worth or abilities; self-respect

self-monitoring: The ability to observe yourself and know when you are doing an activity act according to a standard.

self-monitoring: A theory that deals with the phenomena of expressive controls. Human beings generally differ in substantial ways in their abilities and desires to engage in expressive controls

sensory motor stage: The first stage of Piaget's theory lasts from birth to approximately age two and is centered on the infant trying to make sense of the world.

slip of the tongue: Mistake in speaking, which is to substitute a word to another.

social comparison: centered on the belief that there is a drive within individuals to gain accurate self-evaluations

social constructs: Conceptions of the nature of things based on common perceptions members of a society, not an objective reality.

social identity: A social identity is the portion of an individual's self-concept derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group.

social influence: The exercise of social power by a person or group to change the attitudes or behavior of others in a particular direction.

social interaction: A social relation or social interaction is any relationship between two or more individuals.

social learning: learning that takes place at a wider scale than individual or group learning, up to a societal scale, through social interaction between peers

social norm: Social norms are socially accepted rules of behaviour and conduct which are prescribed by society and expected of an individual by that society. They are based on traditions, beliefs and values of a society, and they may change from one society to another.

society: the totality of social relationships among organized groups of human beings or animals.

sociocultural theory: The work of sociocultural theory is to explain how individual mental functioning is related to cultural, institutional, and historical context; hence, the focus of the sociocultural perspective is on the roles that participation in social interactions and culturally organized activities play in influencing psychological development.

sociodrama: game(set,play) introduced by J.L. Moreno, which(who) includes the whole lot or a sample of a group in conflict with the prospect of one catharsis collective, by " the game(set,play) in common of a common problem

state of trance: "Passing change of the self-awareness, with reduction in the sensibility in stimulus, even transport of the subject except him - even and the real world, automatic behavior and ecstasy Frequent"

stereotype: Believing that people of a certain group, race or religion all have the same characteristics when they don't. Fixed, inaccurate ideas about a group which leads to its members being treated in a certain way.

stimulus: Any phenomenon that causes a reaction or response in an organism.

strengthening: make or become stronger

stress: a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances.

stuttering: A speech disorder characterized by spasmodic repetition of the initial consonant or syllable of words and frequent pauses or prolongation of sounds

survey: a general view, examination, or description of someone or something.

systematic observation: Research method is to look discreetly, from a grid, the behavior of subjects in their natural environment or in a laboratory.

the sequential comparative study: Is to follow subjects of different ages for a long time in order to distinguish the differences related to the age of the cohort was linked.

therapy: the treatment of disease or disorders, as by some remedial, rehabilitative, or curative process.

unconscious: the part of the mind that is inaccessible to the conscious mind but that affects behavior and emotions

unconscious mind: that part of the mind wherein psychic activity takes place of which the person is unaware.

upward comparison: Judge ourselves against people who are more skilled or fortunate than ourselves.

variables: Factors or conditions that affect or may affect the known behavior of an individual or a group.

wealth: an abundance of valuable possessions or money.

welfare: the health, happiness, and fortunes of a person or group.

withdrawal: Conduct(Driving) of estrangement and isolation more or less spread(widened) or specific