AQA GCSE Psychology key terms

A way of writing a number using place value, with a decimal point separating whole-number places from tenths, hundredths and smaller parts.

A way of writing numbers using place value, with a decimal point separating whole-number places from tenths, hundredths and smaller parts.

Reduced awareness of oneself as a separate individual and a reduced sense of personal responsibility, which can occur when someone is part of a crowd.

Resisting an immediate reward in order to obtain a larger reward later.

Cues in a research situation that lead participants to infer what is expected of them and may change their behaviour.

Cues that help participants guess a study’s aim and may lead them to change their behaviour.

A branching extension of a neuron that receives signals and carries them towards its cell body.

The bottom number in a fraction, showing how many equal parts make up the whole.

A cluster of physical, behavioural and cognitive features in which substance use takes a much higher priority than activities that previously had greater value.

The outcome measured by the researcher to investigate the effect of the independent variable.

A pattern of explaining negative events through internal, stable and global causes.

Visual information used to judge distance or depth.

A numerical summary describing a feature of a dataset, such as its typical score or its spread.

Following an order that causes harm to another person.

Identifying a condition by assessing a person's symptoms against agreed criteria.

The symptoms and other requirements used to decide whether a person has a particular condition.

An explanation in which an underlying vulnerability combines with environmental stresses or experiences to produce a disorder.

A reduction in an individual's sense of personal responsibility because responsibility appears to be shared with other people.

An expense directly associated with providing a service, such as paying staff to deliver mental health care.

An explanation proposing that the environment provides enough sensory information for perception without drawing on past experience to make inferences.

Learning through actively exploring, experimenting and finding things out rather than only receiving information.

Numerical data consisting of separate possible values, such as the number of words recalled.

A state of mental imbalance caused by information that does not fit existing schemas.

The extent to which values in a dataset are spread out.

An individual characteristic, such as personality or morality, that influences behaviour.

The pattern of how values in a dataset are spread: which values are common and which are rare.

Non-identical twins who develop from two separate fertilised eggs and share, on average, about half their inherited genetic variation, like other siblings.