In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is pluralistic ignorance. Pluralistic ignorance is a type of social group bias in which members of a social group privately disagree with a certain belief or behaviour, but they publicly go along with what they perceive to be […]
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is the enneagram. The enneagram is a personality typology that includes nine different personality types, which are depicted in the 9-pointed figure shown above. A key influence in the development of the enneagram as it’s currently used was
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is intelligence quotient (IQ). We’ve probably all heard of the IQ test as a standard way of measuring intelligence. What’s actually involved, though? Well, to begin, we should consider what intelligence is. There is no single agreed-upon definition,
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is not so much a single term as a group of terms that fall within the umbrella of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. Love him or hate him, Sigmund Freud was quite remarkable in terms of his impact on the
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is false pregnancy (pseudocyesis). False pregnancy, also known as pseudocyesis, is a type of somatoform disorder. This group of disorders, which also includes functional neurological symptom disorder (formerly known as conversion disorder), involves physical symptoms that stem from
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is sleep. It’s something we all need to do, but what exactly does it involve? When we’re asleep, we have altered consciousness and decreased reactivity to sensory stimulation from the environment. The brain’s energy consumption drops significantly, which
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is enmeshment. Enmeshment was first described by family therapist Salvador Minuchin. It occurs when there is an extreme lack of boundaries, which prevents healthy differentiation into autonomous individuals. It occurs most often in families, although it can happen in
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week, we’re looking at repression vs. suppression. Suppression and repression are examples of Freudian defense mechanisms. They serve the purpose of removing unwanted information from conscious awareness. Suppression involves consciously pushing distressing thoughts, emotions, or memories or unacceptable urges or
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is defense mechanisms. The concept of defense mechanisms was originally proposed by Sigmund Freud. They’re strategies that are used unconsciously in order to protect the ego when faced with uncomfortable feelings. Freud identified a number of defense mechanisms, as
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is the just world fallacy. The just world fallacy, also known as the just world hypothesis, is a common type of cognitive bias – a shortcut that the mind unconsciously takes when considering the world around us. Do you
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