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Psychology glossary
63 key psychology terms, each with a plain-English definition and one real example. Search it, skim it, or work through a full unit at a time — it's free and there's nothing to sign up for.
Every term, A–Z
Acquisition
The initial stage of learning, when the association between two stimuli (or a behavior and a consequence) is first formed.
Example: The first several bell-then-food pairings, before the dog reliably salivates.
Availability heuristic
Judging how likely something is by how easily examples come to mind.
Example: Fearing plane crashes more than car accidents because crashes dominate the news.
Behavioral perspective
Explains behavior as learned responses shaped by rewards, punishments, and associations in the environment.
Example: A student studying harder because good grades have consistently earned praise.
Biological perspective
Explains behavior through genetics, brain structures, neurotransmitters, and hormones.
Example: Attributing depression partly to low serotonin activity rather than only to life events.
Chunking
Grouping items into meaningful units to expand how much working memory can hold.
Example: Remembering 1-4-9-2 as the year 1492 instead of four separate digits.
Classical conditioning
Learning by association: a neutral stimulus becomes linked to a stimulus that already triggers an automatic response.
Example: Feeling hungry the instant you hear a microwave beep.
Cognitive perspective
Explains behavior through how people take in, store, interpret, and retrieve information.
Example: Two people leaving the same meeting with different memories because they focused on different details.
Conditioned response (CR)
The learned reaction to a conditioned stimulus.
Example: The dog salivating at the bell alone, with no food present.
Conditioned stimulus (CS)
A previously neutral stimulus that, after pairing, comes to trigger a learned response.
Example: The bell Pavlov rang before feeding the dogs.
Confirmation bias
Seeking and favoring information that supports what you already believe.
Example: Reading only the reviews that agree with the purchase you already want to make.
Confounding variable
An uncontrolled third factor that could explain the results instead of the independent variable.
Example: If the 8-hour sleep group also happened to be the honors class, ability is confounded with sleep.
Correlation coefficient
A number from -1.00 to +1.00 describing the strength and direction of a relationship between two variables. It never proves causation.
Example: Ice cream sales and drowning deaths correlate at about +.70 — because both rise with summer heat.
Debriefing
Fully explaining a study's true purpose, including any deception, after participation ends.
Example: Telling participants the 'other student' who criticized them was actually a confederate.
Dependent variable
The outcome the researcher measures — it depends on the independent variable.
Example: The number of words recalled on the memory test.
Discrimination
Learning to respond only to the specific conditioned stimulus and not to similar ones.
Example: The dog salivating at Pavlov's bell but not at a doorbell.
Double-blind procedure
A design in which neither participants nor the researchers interacting with them know who is in which condition.
Example: A drug trial where the nurse handing out pills doesn't know which are active.
Encoding
Getting information into memory by converting it into a usable mental form.
Example: Turning a spoken phone number into a mental image of the keypad.
Explicit (declarative) memory
Consciously recalled facts and personal experiences.
Example: Naming the capital of France, or recalling your first day of school.
Extinction
The weakening and eventual disappearance of a learned response when the association is no longer reinforced.
Example: The bell ringing repeatedly with no food until the dog stops salivating.
Fixed-interval schedule
Reinforcement for the first response after a set amount of time. Produces a scalloped pattern of responding.
Example: Studying hard right before each scheduled Friday quiz and barely at all after it.
Fixed-ratio schedule
Reinforcement delivered after a set number of responses. Produces a high, steady rate of responding.
Example: A coffee shop card that gives a free drink after every 10 purchases.
Framing
How a choice is worded changing the decision people make, even when the options are identical.
Example: '90% survival rate' feeling much better than '10% mortality rate.'
Functional fixedness
The inability to see an object being used in a way other than its usual one.
Example: Not realizing a coin can work as a screwdriver.
Functionalism
An early school of thought focused on the purpose of mental processes — what behaviors and thoughts do for survival — rather than their parts.
Example: William James asking why fear is useful instead of what fear is made of.
Generalization
Responding the same way to stimuli that resemble the original conditioned stimulus.
Example: A child afraid of one barking dog becoming afraid of all dogs.
Humanistic perspective
Emphasizes free will, personal growth, and the drive to reach one's full potential.
Example: A therapist offering unconditional positive regard so a client can explore who they want to become.
Hypothesis
A testable, falsifiable prediction about the relationship between two variables.
Example: 'Students who sleep 8 hours score higher on a memory test than students who sleep 4 hours.'
Implicit (procedural) memory
Memories expressed through skills and conditioned responses without conscious recall.
Example: Typing quickly without being able to name the key positions.
Independent variable
The variable the researcher deliberately manipulates to see what effect it has.
Example: The amount of sleep participants are assigned to get.
Informed consent
Participants must be told enough about a study to freely decide whether to take part.
Example: Signing a form describing the tasks, time commitment, and right to withdraw at any point.
Introspection
Looking inward and reporting on your own conscious thoughts, feelings, and sensations — psychology's earliest research method.
Example: Wundt's participants sipping coffee and describing the exact sequence of sensations they noticed.
Latent learning
Learning that occurs but isn't demonstrated until there's a reason to show it.
Example: Rats that wandered a maze with no reward suddenly running it perfectly once food appeared.
Long-term memory
The relatively permanent, effectively unlimited store of knowledge, skills, and experiences.
Example: Remembering how to ride a bike after ten years off one.
Misinformation effect
Memory becoming distorted after exposure to misleading information following an event.
Example: Witnesses estimating faster speeds when asked how fast cars 'smashed' rather than 'hit.'
Mnemonic device
A memory aid that uses vivid imagery, acronyms, or organization to make material easier to retrieve.
Example: ROY G. BIV for the colors of the visible spectrum.
Negative punishment
Removing something desirable to decrease a behavior.
Example: Taking away phone privileges for a week.
Negative reinforcement
Removing an unpleasant condition to increase a behavior. Still increases behavior — it is not punishment.
Example: Buckling your seatbelt to stop the car's beeping, so you buckle up faster next time.
Observational learning
Learning by watching and imitating others rather than through direct consequences.
Example: Children in Bandura's Bobo doll study hitting the doll after seeing an adult do it.
Operant conditioning
Learning in which behavior is strengthened or weakened by its consequences.
Example: Taking the same route to work because it has consistently been fastest.
Operational definition
A precise statement of how a variable is measured or manipulated in a specific study.
Example: Defining 'stress' as a score above 20 on the Perceived Stress Scale, not just 'feeling overwhelmed.'
Placebo effect
Improvement caused by a participant's expectations rather than the treatment itself.
Example: Feeling more alert after a sugar pill you were told was caffeine.
Positive punishment
Adding an unpleasant consequence to decrease a behavior.
Example: Assigning extra chores after a curfew violation.
Positive reinforcement
Adding a desirable consequence to increase a behavior.
Example: Giving a dog a treat after it sits.
Proactive interference
Older learning disrupting recall of new information.
Example: Typing your old password out of habit after changing it.
Psychodynamic perspective
Explains behavior through unconscious motives, internal conflict, and early childhood experience.
Example: Interpreting a persistent fear of commitment as rooted in an early loss.
Random assignment
Placing participants into experimental groups by chance so pre-existing differences spread out evenly.
Example: Drawing names to decide who gets the 8-hour and who gets the 4-hour sleep condition.
Random sample
A sample in which every member of the population has an equal chance of being selected, making results generalizable.
Example: Pulling 200 student ID numbers at random from the full enrollment list.
Representativeness heuristic
Judging likelihood by how well something matches a mental prototype, ignoring base rates.
Example: Assuming a quiet, bookish stranger is a librarian rather than a salesperson — though salespeople vastly outnumber librarians.
Retrieval
Pulling stored information back into conscious awareness.
Example: Recalling a definition mid-exam without any prompt on the page.
Retroactive interference
New learning disrupting recall of older information.
Example: Learning Spanish and then struggling to recall French vocabulary.
Sensory memory
A very brief, high-capacity record of sensory input lasting well under a second for vision.
Example: The trail a sparkler seems to leave in the dark.
Serial position effect
The tendency to best recall the first (primacy) and last (recency) items in a list.
Example: Remembering the first and last people introduced at a party, but not the middle five.
Shaping
Reinforcing successive approximations — steps that get closer and closer to the target behavior.
Example: Rewarding a rat first for facing the lever, then touching it, then pressing it.
Sociocultural perspective
Explains behavior through the influence of culture, social norms, and group membership.
Example: Why direct eye contact reads as confident in one culture and disrespectful in another.
Spacing effect
Information studied in spread-out sessions is retained far better than the same time spent cramming.
Example: Reviewing flashcards 15 minutes a day for a week rather than two hours the night before.
Spontaneous recovery
The sudden reappearance of an extinguished response after a rest period.
Example: A week after extinction, the dog salivates at the bell again — briefly.
Storage
Retaining encoded information over time.
Example: Still knowing your childhood address decades later.
Structuralism
An early school of thought that tried to break consciousness down into its most basic elements, the way chemistry breaks matter into atoms.
Example: Titchener asking participants to describe an apple purely as color, weight, and texture — never as 'an apple.'
Unconditioned response (UCR)
The unlearned, automatic reaction to an unconditioned stimulus.
Example: Salivating at the taste of food.
Unconditioned stimulus (UCS)
A stimulus that naturally and automatically triggers a response without any learning.
Example: Food in the mouth causing salivation.
Variable-interval schedule
Reinforcement for the first response after unpredictable time intervals. Produces slow, steady responding.
Example: Checking your phone for a text that could arrive at any moment.
Variable-ratio schedule
Reinforcement after an unpredictable number of responses. Produces the highest response rate and is the hardest to extinguish.
Example: Slot machines — which is exactly why they're so hard to walk away from.
Working memory
The limited-capacity system that actively holds and manipulates information right now — an update to the older 'short-term memory' idea.
Example: Holding three numbers in mind while adding them without writing anything down.
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