A disorder in which a person’s mood swings between the opposite poles of MANIA and DEPRESSION. This is a more modern way of describing the traditional MANIC-DEPRESSIVE categorisation.

See BARD-CANNON THEORY.

The deliberate changing of a particular pattern of BEHAVIOUR by behaviourist methods.

See APPROACH-AVOIDANCE CONFLICT and OPERANT CONDITIONING.

A simple statistical test widely used in PSYCHOLOGY to see whether observed results differ from those expected by chance alone.

See CHILDREN’S APPERCEPTION TEST.

NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION with other people by means of physical postures, movements or GESTURES that may be CONSCIOUS or UNCONSCIOUS.

A school of PSYCHOLOGY founded in the United States by J.B.WATSON in 1913 as a reaction against a prevailing (European) emphasis on the CONSCIOUS examination of the contents of the MIND (see WUNDT). Watson believed that the work of PAVLOV on CONDITIONING represented the future of psychology. He believed that the interest in the mind and CONSCIOUSNESS should be pushed aside, and psychology deal solely with the OBJECTIVE study and manipulation of human and animal behaviour. Watson is now generally regarded by psychologists as much too extreme and simple-minded, having been superseded by B.F. SKINNER and other more subtle theorists.

Nevertheless, the crucial emphasis on observable behaviour remains and flourishes. In a sense, every psychologist who performs an EXPERIMENTcan be called a behaviourist in fact, if not in theory. For cultural and historical reasons, Behaviourism has continued to flourish more in the United States than elsewhere.

Refers to someone acts as a catalyst for social change in what is considered a desirable direction. For example, raising the CONSCIOUSNESS of an exploited group to the point of understanding and attempting to remove the exploitation. The term is also used in business to describe someone who brings about organisational change. This person may already be a manager, but may also be an external agent whose job is to bring about change and manage it effectively.

Speech sounds made by infants from which recognisable language develops.

A kind of BALANCE THEORY proposed by the American psychologist Leon Festinger. The theory states that because we have a powerful DRIVE towards consistency (or consonance), if we hold two psychologically inconsistent cognitions (beliefs. attitudes, values or ideas) at the same time, or if our BEHAVIOUR clashes with those cognitions, we will be in an unpleasant state of tension which we are strongly motivated to reduce. As the theory deals with psychological rather than logical inconsistency, it proposes that we are not so much concerned with actually being consistent as with feeling that we are consistent.