A technique to determine the effectiveness of different items on a test for discriminating between the people who take it.

A questionnaire designed to elicit a subject’s areas of vocational interest, developed by the American psychologist George Kuder.

Damage to bodily tissue from accident, disease or surgery. In the study of BEHAVIOUR, the term usually refers to BRAIN DAMAGE.

An old idea, re-introduced by GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY, that there is a one-to-one correspondence between a perceived stimulus and its representation in the BRAIN. The concept has now largely been abandoned.

In SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, the term used for the unquestioned assumption that the world is a just place where the deserving are rewarded and the undeserving punished. It therefore follows that if people are punished they must have done something to deserve it, and this is how the HYPOTHESIS accounts for people who blame victims for their own misfortunes.

See also DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE.

From the Latin word for ‘it’: according to FREUD, the id houses the deepest UNCONSCIOUS drives which are most in touch with the biological nature of the body and is one of the three main aspects of the PERSONALITY. The id is dominated by the pleasure principle and causes problems for the EGO when its drives are blocked.

See MONOZYGOTIC TWINS.

The image of a visual stimulus that lasts for a second or two in the MEMORY.

Compare with ECHOIC STORE.

The principle underlying the connections in the MEMORY between certain ideas, feelings or behaviours. Aristotle made the first formulation of these principles in the 4th Century BC.

A FREE ASSOCIATION test of 100 words together with a standardised list of the relative FREQUENCY of people’s responses to them.