Page 653 - Understanding Psychology

percentile system a system for ranking test scores that indicates the ratio of scores lower and higher than a given score (p. 346)
perception the organization and interpretation of sensory information into meaningful experiences (p. 208)
peripheral nervous system (PNS) a network of nerves branching out from the spinal cord that conduct in- formation from the bodily organs to the central nervous system and take information back to the organs (p. 156)
peripheral route for persuasion a way to deliver a mes- sage by relying on emotional appeals, emphasizing per- sonal traits or positive feelings (p. 592)
permissive / laissez-faire family family in which children have the final say; parents are less controlling and have a nonpunishing, accepting attitude toward children (p. 79)
personal construct theory George Kelly’s theory that our processes are psychologically channelized by the ways in which each of us anticipates events (p. 396)
personality all the consistent, stable, enduring, and unique ways in which the behavior of one person differs from that of others (p. 375)
personality disorders maladaptive or inflexible ways of dealing with others and one’s environment (p. 475)
personality test an instrument used to measure a person’s traits, behaviors, and unobservable characteristics and to identify problems (p. 363)
persuasion the direct attempt to influence attitudes (p. 590)
pessimist a person whose thoughts lead him or her to believe and expect that bad things will happen (p. 433)
phallic stage in this stage, Freud’s third psychosexual stage, children associate sexual pleasure with their geni- tals (p. 82)
phobia an intense and irrational fear of a particular object or situation (p. 456)
phoneme an individual sound that is the basic structural element of language (p. 305)
physical proximity the distance of one person to another person (p. 522)
physiological having to do with an organism’s physical needs (pp. 7, 616)
pituitary gland the center of control of the endocrine sys- tem that hangs directly below the hypothalamus and secretes a large number of hormones (p. 171)
placebo effect a change in a participant’s illness or behavior that results from a belief that the treatment will have an effect rather than from the actual treatment (pp. 45, 488)
positive correlation a relationship between variables in which one variable increases as the other variable also increases (p. 39)
positive regard viewing oneself in a positive light due to positive feedback received from interaction with others (p. 395)
positive reinforcer a stimulus that increases the likelihood that a response will occur again (p. 251)
Glossary percentile system–psychoactive drugs
positron emission tomography (PET) an imaging tech- nique used to see which areas of the brain are being acti- vated while performing tasks (p. 167)
posthypnotic suggestion a suggestion made during hyp- nosis about performing a particular behavior in response to a predetermined cue that influences the participant’s behavior afterward (p. 193)
post-traumatic stress disorder disorder in which victims of catastrophes or other traumatic events experience the original event in the form of dreams or flashbacks (pp. 423, 459)
preattentive process a method for extracting information automatically and simultaneously when presented with stimuli (p. 213)
precocious puberty premature puberty (p. 100) predictive validity ability of a test’s scores to predict real-
world performance (p. 345)
prefrontal lobotomy a radical form of psychosurgery in
which a section of the frontal lobe of the brain is
destroyed (p. 510)
prejudice preconceived, unjustifiable, and usually negative
attitude toward a person or group that has been formed
without sufficient evidence (p. 587)
primacy effect the tendency to form opinions about others
based on first impressions (p. 528)
primary appraisal one’s immediate evaluation of a situa-
tion (p. 416)
primary group a group of people who interact daily face-
to-face (p. 549)
primary-recency effect the fact that most people are better
able to recall information presented at the beginning and
end of a list (p. 277)
primary reinforcer a stimulus, such as food or water, that is
naturally rewarding and satisfying and requires no learning
on the part of the subject to become pleasurable (p. 252) proactive interference a forgetting process in which information that we learned earlier blocks or disrupts the
retrieval of related new information (p. 286) procedural memory memory of learned skills and proce- dures that does not require conscious recollection (p. 279)
progesterone a female sex hormone (p. 172)
progressive relaxation an exercise performed by lying down comfortably and tensing and releasing the tension
in each major muscle group in turn (p. 434)
projection unconsciously transferring one’s own undesir-
able attitudes, feelings, or thoughts to others (p. 382) projective test an unstructured test of personality in which a person is asked to respond freely, giving his or her own
interpretation of various ambiguous stimuli (p. 366) prototype a representative example of a concept (p. 296) psychiatry a branch of medicine that deals with mental,
emotional, or behavioral disorders (p. 25)
psychoactive drugs chemicals that affect the nervous sys-
tem and result in altered consciousness or awareness, influence sensations and perceptions, and modify moods and cognitive processes (p. 197)
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