Psychology key terms

Research that follows the same participant or participants over an extended period.

Memory that retains information beyond immediate use, potentially for months, years or a lifetime.

Repeating information to keep it active in short-term memory.

Social influence in which the views or behaviour of most members of a group affect an individual.

An episode of abnormally elevated mood accompanied by significantly increased energy and activity.

The remembered events, images and storyline of a dream.

A check that an experimental manipulation has worked as intended, such as checking that participants perceive one game as more violent than another.

An experimental design in which participants are paired on relevant characteristics, with one member of each pair in each condition.

An experimental design in which participants are paired on relevant characteristics, with one member of each pair completing each condition.

The arithmetic average: the total of all scores divided by the number of scores.

Learning that involves understanding information and connecting it with existing knowledge.

A summary of the centre or typical value of a set of results. The mean, median and mode are measures of central tendency.

A numerical summary of how spread out a set of results is. The range is a measure of dispersion.

The middle value when results are placed in numerical order. With an even number of results, it is the mean of the two middle values.

A relationship in which an intermediate variable helps explain the association between two other variables. In this study, Facebook envy mediated the relationship between surveillance use and depression symptoms.

A hormone whose release normally increases at night, helping signal that it is time to sleep.

The process through which new learning becomes established in long-term memory.

A difference between a remembered account and what actually happened, such as an added, altered or omitted detail.

A person’s psychological and emotional wellbeing, including how they feel about themselves and their ability to cope and function in everyday life.

A model that places mental health along a spectrum from well-being to significant difficulties or illness, rather than dividing everyone into two fixed categories.

A psychological difficulty that significantly affects a person's thoughts, emotions or behaviour and can interfere with everyday life.

The process through which an individual or smaller group changes the attitudes or behaviour of the majority.

Additional stress associated with belonging to a minority group, including experiences of discrimination and negative social attitudes.

An explanation for visual illusions in which depth information is interpreted incorrectly, leading to a mistaken judgement of distance, size or length.

An incorrect interpretation of sensory information; Gregory used this idea to explain visual illusions.

The class interval containing the greatest frequency of scores in grouped data.

The score or category that occurs most frequently in a dataset.