Glossary of Psychological Terms
Definitions of terms used in psychology, psychometric testing and occupational assessment, organised alphabetically.
Zero-sum game
In game theory, a situation in which one participant's losses are exactly balanced by another's gains, because the total amount available to be won is fixed — the gains and losses across all players sum to zero. Sometimes proposed, controversially, as a model for how rewards are distributed within society more broadly.
Zoomorphism
The interpretation or description of human behaviour using concepts and terms properly applicable to animal behaviour — the reverse of anthropomorphism, which projects human qualities onto animals.
Zygote
In humans and other higher animals, the single cell formed by the union of a sperm cell and an egg cell at fertilisation, from which, through subsequent cell division, a new individual organism develops.
