In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is attribution theory. When something happens, we have a natural tendency to want to know why, so we seek out cause-and-effect relationships. Attribution theory considers how we attribute events to certain factors. Factors influencing attribution An early influence […]
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is locus of control. Locus of control refers to who/what we hold responsible for what happens in our lives. This concept was first identified by psychologist Julian B. Rotter in 1954. With an internal locus of control, we
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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 DARVO response to sexual assault allegations. DARVO is an acronym to describe a pattern of responses that sexual offenders may display when faced with accountability for their actions. Before getting into what DARVO stands for, I’ll
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is factitious disorder imposed on another, also known as Munchausen syndrome by proxy. While Munchausen by proxy is likely the name that’s most recognizable, the name for the disorder in the current version of the Diagnostic and Statistical
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is cognitive bias. Do you think you’re biased? Well, your brain certainly is. A cognitive bias is a type of shortcut your brain takes to make tasks easier and more automatic. Sometimes that’s helpful, but often it’s not,
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s terms are antisocial and asocial. For some reason, I have a very clear memory of a moment shortly after my nursing career began. I was at work and was saying something about being antisocial. One of the psychiatrists looked at
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In 1943, psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed a model of human motivation that was based on a hierarchy of needs, both physical and psychological, that people are motivated to meet. He identified five levels
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s term is paranoia. Kind of like anxiety and depression, the word paranoia often gets tossed around fairly loosely in common parlance, but in a psychological/psychiatric sense, it has far more significance. Google Dictionary defines paranoia as: “A mental condition characterized
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s term is flashbacks. Flashbacks involve the intense, vivid re-experiencing of memories as though they’re occurring in the present tense. This most often happens with trauma-related memories. The flashbacks are usually involuntary and intrusive, and they don’t result from a
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s terms are intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. We need motivation in order to do pretty much anything. But where does it come from, and does the source of the motivation matter in terms of the outcomes? Self-determination theory is one
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