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ntra-group behaviour refers to the internal dynamics of groups, or the ways in which group members interact with one another. It has been studied from a number of perspectives, such as psychodynamic and experimental.

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Adolescence refers to the period between childhood and adulthood, a time of transition. It is not the same as puberty, which refers to the physiological changes that start at around 12 or 13 years old, and ends with biological sexual maturity. Adoles...

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Animal behaviour. The discipline of ethology studies animal behaviour in natural surroundings, and has provided considerable insight into the organisation of feeding, reproductive and social systems in many species. Although caution is needed agains...

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Occupational/Organisational. This approach is a branch of applied psychology that looks at people's performance and well-being in work environments, and at factors affecting their capacity to function effectively.

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Natural History. The term Natural History refers to the study of natural objects (plants, animals, insects etc.), particularly in the field. The natural history method is, in essence, a process of detailed observation and cataloguing and categorizat...

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Neuropsychological basis of the mind/consciousness. Neuropsychology examines how neurological processes in the brain affect both behaviour and the experience of consciousness. This involves studying the brain, for example by examining the structure...

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Psychophysics measures how people respond to basic physical sensations such as temperature and loudness, looking at things such as reaction times and sensory thresholds. A typical question for investigation would be, what is the minimum stimulus need...

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Dyslexia. Someone with dyslexia has normal intellectual abilities, apart from a particular inability (or great difficulty) in learning to read or spell. Dyslexia seems to be a neurological disorder, inhibiting an individual's capacity to recognize a...

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Learning. Although learning is usually defined in terms such as 'acquiring knowledge', psychology often makes use of a much more general way of defining this concept. Learning is seen as the process of acquiring changes in behaviour, knowledge, or a...

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Emotion. The term 'emotion' originates from the Latin emovere, which carries the sense of movement and excitation. This captures the activating quality emotions can have upon people. Although the term is widely used within psychology, it is not easi...

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Hypnosis. Based on inducing a condition of strong SUGGESTIBILITY, through an initial period of developing a deepening relaxation. From this suggestible state, the individual being hypnotised concentrates on the voice of the hypnotist, allowing the s...

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Personality structure and Personality development . The term 'personality' can have widely divergent meanings. It can be seen as the outcome of the factors that make a person different from others in their patterns of thought, values, beliefs, emot...

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Attention is most often referred to as the cognitive capacity to focus on certain aspects of our perception , while (at least temporarily) disregarding information about other parts of our perceptual environment. In practice, the 'disregarded' items ...

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Ideology. Although the term 'ideology' is quite often used with a negative ring to it, it basically refers to a coherent philosophy or worldview made up of various ideas, values, beliefs, concepts and symbols. Therefore, we all use ideology in all o...

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Transpersonal Psychology. Essentially Transpersonal Psychology is attempting to make sense of experiences traditionally called 'religious' or 'spiritual' within a psychological framework, by looking at such issues as the unity of life, wisdom and lo...

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Attitude. This concept originally arose within social psychology as an attempt to define an individual's (or a group's) viewpoint about a particular person or situation. An attitude is the outcome of a combination of a person's beliefs (cognitions) ...

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Moral development refers to the unfolding of ethics, values, and the sense of right and wrong as a person grows up. Major theorists of moral development include Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, who considered that the height of moral development in...

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Memory refers to our capacity to store and retrieve information. It also refers to the experience of recalling the past, in terms of images, sounds, tastes, ideas, people, and so on. Psychologists often divide memory into a number of different types....

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Creativity. The capacity to develop new and original solutions to particular problems, new artistic or cultural expressions, or new ways of thinking.

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Mind/body problem. The issue of how the mind and body relate is one of the perennial underlying questions, not just for psychology, but philosophy, neuroscience and biology also. The essential 'problem' arises because of the division often made in o...

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Evolution. The theory of evolution is an explanatory framework for the diversity and form of organisms in the natural world. Darwin developed the theory in the nineteenth century. He argued that the many species observed by naturalists could have al...

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Perception is a very broad term, which covers all those cognitive/brain processes involved in receiving and interpreting information about our environment, via one of the sense organs. For example, vision involves an experience of objects in three di...

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Hemispheric Asymmetries. Asymmetries between the two halves or hemispheres of the brain can be divided into two types. An example of a structural asymmetry is the fact that the right hemisphere tends to be slightly longer and heavier than the left. ...

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Intelligence is a shorthand term covering a complex range of human capacities. There are no universally accepted definitions, but intelligence is generally taken to relate to factors such as the capacity to make sense of abstract ideas and to perceiv...

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Shyness may be defined experientially as discomfort and/or inhibition in interpersonal situations that interferes with pursuing one's interpersonal or professional goals. It is a form of excessive preoccupation with one's own sense of self, and the c...

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Coping involves strategies that people can evolve and draw upon to help deal with internal or external situations/factors which are seen as being stressful, and at the limits of the person's ability to handle. Coping can be contrasted with avoidance ...

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Along with psychosis, neurosis is one of the terms used to describe mental disorders which do not obviously stem from an injury to, or physical deterioration of, the nervous system. Neurotic disorders are those which do not involve hallucination, del...

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Social influence is the process through which people or groups influence other individuals or groups. These influences can affect attitudes, beliefs, values, or behaviour, and can be passed on through personal contact or via the media and other socia...

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Autism is a profound disorder that affects physical, social, and language skills. The term itself refers to a state of increased self-absorption, which seems to go along with language problems and problems in developing normal social relationships, s...

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Face perception. This refers to our capacity (from quite a young age) to distinguish individual and unique faces.

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Computer-Mediated Communication is the process by which people create, exchange, and perceive information using networks or computers, for example via internet chat rooms, e-mail, bulletin boards, newsgroups and so on. CMC can be used to refer to any...

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Prejudice/ Racism. The word 'prejudice' basically means to 'pre-judge', and in this sense always refers to some kind of negative preconception held against a particular social grouping or person. The grouping may be based on religion, social class, ...

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Interviewing as a psychological technique is discussed in detail in the methods section on INTERVIEWS. In an applied context, the main aim of an interview is to gather information for some specific purpose, usually in terms of a job application or in...

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Rhetoric/Construction of knowledge. The viewpoint that human knowledge is constructed by people within their own particular historical and social contexts is characteristic of social constructionist approaches. This applies even to knowledge of 'sol...

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Cognitive development refers to the gradual unfolding of the child's abilities to think, to reason, and to use language. At the other end of the life-span, cognitive development looks at how certain cognitive capacities such as memory can diminish wi...

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Instinct. An instinct is a drive encoded in the genes. The term is used in the Freudian model of the mind to represent one of the main driving forces of the psyche (represented by the id), counterbalanced by the social programming of the superego -w...

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Attitude change. This can refer to attempts to change the ATTITUDES of others, or understanding how people's attitudes change with changing experiences.

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Attachment. This refers to an emotional bond between people, especially used that between babies and very young children, and their primary caregiver (often, but not necessarily, the mother). Some psychologists see the quality and reliability of this...

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Stereotyping involves making relatively rigid perceptions about some particular social grouping and is a result of the operation of schemas. The generalizations made will tend to be overly simplistic, ignoring the actual complexities involved, leadi...

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Deception. Psychologists have studied how a person's non-verbal behaviour can betray the fact that they are engaged in deceiving the person they are talking to. The human capacity for deception has been taken up by evolutionary psychologists, as par...

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IIndustrial psychology was the original term for what is now often called occupational psychology. It involves researching ways of enhancing the productivity and well-being of people in work organizations. Key relationships studied include that betwe...

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Witness/courtroom procedures. A witness is someone who observes or is subjected to an event. The term is often used in a legal context, where eyewitness testimony (and its reliability or otherwise) is a key issue in many criminal trials. Researchers...

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Social cognition. This field of psychology examines the processing of social knowledge - perceiving, thinking, judging and explaining objects, events, relationships and issues in the social world. As a broad topic it involves some attempt to integr...

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Applied Psychology uses psychological methods and findings to explore possible solutions to particular practical human problems. The term 'applied psychology' covers a very wide range of perspectives, techniques, and methodologies. \nIn World War I, ...

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Non-verbal communication. This refers to those aspects of human communication apart from the overtly verbal content, including gestures, body posture, and facial expressions. It could either refer to communication which is entirely non-verbal, or to...

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Gender refers to an individual's experience of themselves as being men or women, boys or girls (and what this implies for them). It is usually clearly distinguished from the biological or physiological concept of sex. The concept of gender identity ...

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Inter-group behaviour. This refers to how two or more groups behave in interaction with each other. Like intra-group behaviour, it has been studied from a range of perspectives. The broader term of inter-group relations is also part of the study of ...

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Identity. The basic concept of identity refers to an individual's sense of themselves as a particular person, which will usually include their perception of their own social role(s). Another term which is also used is the idea of the self. At the le...

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Motivation. This term comes from the Latin term motivus (“a moving cause”). It refers to some kind of internal 'drive' within a person that causes them to act in a particular direction, e.g. initiating a particular behaviour. Although motivation as ...

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Stress.This can be seen as a long-lasting strain that has both physiological and psychological effects. Physiologically, the hormonal and nervous system changes caused by stress ultimately undermine the functioning of the immune system. Psychological...

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Treatment. There are a number of different forms of treatment for psychological disorders, reflecting the wide range of backgrounds of those working with patients. Clinical psychologists might use behaviour therapy or cognitive-behaviour therapy. Ps...

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Education. This term originally comes from the Latin educere, meaning to 'draw out from within'. Thence follows the concept of a teacher as a facilitator, helping his or her students to make connections with the material they are exposed to. Educat...

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Neurological basis of language. Noam Chomsky postulated a 'language acquisition device', an innate mechanism in the brain which allows children to acquire language relatively easily. Research on brain damaged patients has shown that certain areas of...

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Psychopathology is the study of psychological disorders and disturbances, their origins and treatment. Although sometimes used in a psychoanalytical context, it can also refer to the work of psychiatrists and neurologists.

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Conformity can relate to social behaviour or personal attitudes, and refers to the tendency to follow closely the norms of a particular group concerning 'appropriate' ways to think and behave.