A person with a MANIA for himself, having a wildly exaggerated view of his own abilities and importance.

See MINNESOTA MULTIPHASIC PERSONALITY INVENTORY.

This term denotes ‘culture’ as it is used by both ANTHROPOLOGY and PSYCHOLOGY, i.e. not only the shared beliefs, values. ATTITUDES and expectations of its members make up the culture of an organisation, but also the unquestioned assumptions about its traditions and ways of doing things.

In EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, the HYPOTHESIS that any difference found between the EXPERIMENTAL GROUP and the CONTROL GROUP occurred by chance and is not significant. The goal of the EXPERIMENT is therefore to reject the null hypothesis and be able to state that the experimental treatment has produced a significant effect.

A term sometimes used in the study of PERCEPTION to describe the way INNATE physiological processes combine with experience to structure our perceptual world.

A form ofCONDITIONING, introduced by B.F.SKINNER that attempts to shape BEHAVIOUR by reinforcing or punishing a response which is spontaneously emitted (rather than elicitedasin CLASSICAL CONDITIONING ). The emphasis is on an organism operating on its own environment, e.g. a rat exploring a cage may happen to press a bar. If this behaviour produces the REINFORCEMENT of a food pellet it will eventually learn how to manipulate its environment to get food whenever it wants. By a careful arrangement of such reinforcements animals can be trained to perform very complex behaviours.

Defining a concept in terms of the operations or techniques by which it can be studied.

Technically used term in Britain and North America for describing people who score less than a 70 IQ.

The lack of care and love and affectionate handling provided by a mother or mothering figure. Especially important during the first three years of life, the optimum period for the forming of social ATTACHMENTS. Maternal deprivation, in children who have been institutionalised or abandoned for example, frequently leads to physical, psychological or social problems in later life. See BOWLBY.

(1) A way of representing patterns of relationships observed in human BEHAVIOUR. (2) In SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, a person whose behaviour is closely observed. See MODELLING.