All articles starting with P
28,818 articles
Psychological contract
The psychological contract is the set of unwritten employee beliefs about what each side owes the other; coined by Argyris in 1960 and formalized by Rousseau in 1989.
Psychological effect
Psychological effect: a measurable change in cognition, emotion, or behavior caused by psychological factors such as stress, labels, or social comparison; covers stress-cognition effects, the better-than-average effect, and diagnostic labeling effects.
Psychological egoism
Psychological egoism, the descriptive thesis that every person's only ultimate aim is their own welfare, denying genuine altruism; distinct from ethical and rational egoism. Criticized via Butler's objection and Batson's empathy experiments; only Hobbes and Bentham explicitly endorsed it.
Psychological first aid
Psychological first aid (PFA) is supportive, non-intrusive assistance providing safety, calming, and practical help to people in the hours to weeks after disasters and emergencies.
Psychological horror
Psychological horror, a horror subgenre also called psychological terror, frightens through characters' mental and emotional states, unreliable narration, and ambiguity rather than monsters or gore, contrasting with supernatural horror's external threats.
Psychological operations (United States)
Psychological operations (PSYOP) are U.S. military planned influence activities aimed at foreign audiences, run mainly by Army special operations units, historically renamed MISO from 2010 and restored to PSYOP in 2025, with legal bans on targeting Americans.
Psychological pain
Psychological pain, also called mental pain, psychache, or psychic pain, is sustained emotional suffering studied mainly in suicide research. Ten self-rated scales (1999-2021) measure it, led by the Psychache Scale, but validity evidence is weak.
Psychological projection
Psychological projection, a Freudian defense mechanism, attributes one's own unacceptable feelings or traits to others; also called defensive projection, studied by Baumeister and classified at the disavowal defense level.
Psychological research
Psychological Research is a peer-reviewed journal published by Springer, covering human perception, attention, memory, and action. Founded in 1922 as Psychologische Forschung, it became an English-language international journal in 1974.
Psychological resilience
Psychological resilience, also known as emotional or stress resilience, is the process of adapting well to adversity through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility, and it can be learned and practiced rather than being a fixed trait.
Psychological review
Psychological Review (ISSN 0033-295X) is the American Psychological Association's theoretical psychology journal, founded 1894 by Cattell and Baldwin; publishes theory papers and Theoretical Notes, editor Elena L. Grigorenko.
Psychological safety
Psychological safety is a shared belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk taking, so members can ask questions, admit mistakes, and disagree without fear.
Psychological science
Psychological science: the empirical study of mind, brain, and behavior, and the movement behind the Association for Psychological Science (founded 1988) and its flagship journal Psychological Science (1990), known for the replication crisis and open-science reforms.
Psychological stress
Psychological stress, also called stress, is the brain and body's response to challenges appraised as threatening. Covers fight-or-flight physiology, HPA axis, acute versus chronic stress, Selye's history, health outcomes, and coping.
Psychological testing
Psychological testing, also known as mental testing, is the use of standardized psychometric tests to measure intelligence, aptitudes, personality, and emotional functioning in clinical, educational, and workplace settings.
Psychological thriller
Psychological thriller: a fiction and film genre driven by mental tension, unreliable narration, obsession, and paranoia rather than physical action; related to detective fiction and the Gothic via Poe, named postwar, popularized by Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), with domestic noir its dominant modern branch.
Psychological torture
Psychological torture is the intentional infliction of severe mental pain or suffering, also called mental torture, using methods such as solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, and sensory manipulation, defined under UNCAT Article 1 and documented via the Istanbul Protocol.
Psychological trauma
Psychological trauma, also called emotional trauma, is a distressing experience that overwhelms a person's capacity to cope and can lead to PTSD, depression, or substance abuse.
Psychological warfare
Psychological warfare, also called psywar or PSYOP, is the planned use of propaganda and psychological actions to influence foreign audiences' emotions, reasoning, and behavior. Distinguished from public diplomacy and cognitive warfare; practiced by the US, China, Russia, and Korea.
Psychological Well-Being
Psychological well-being (PWB) is a construct describing positive psychological functioning, studied through hedonic pleasure and eudaimonic meaning, with Ryff's six dimensions its most widely used model and better health its key correlate.
Psychologist
Psychologist: a professional trained in psychology, the study of mind and behavior. Covers clinical, counseling, forensic and neuropsychology specialties, doctoral training, licensure and the EPPP, prescribing limits, and scope-of-practice rules in the US, China, and Hong Kong.
Psychology
Psychology, the scientific study of the mind and behavior, spans research and applied branches from cognitive to clinical psychology; founded as a laboratory science by Wundt in 1879, it is one of seven hub sciences and has faced a replication crisis since the 2010s.
Psychology Today
Psychology Today, founded 1967 by Nicholas Charney, is an American bimonthly magazine and website on human behavior and mental health, also operating a large online therapist directory; not peer-reviewed.
Psychomachia
Psychomachia: Latin allegorical epic by Prudentius (348–ca. 410 CE), first allegorical epic in Western literature, staging personified Virtues and Vices in combat for the human soul; hugely influential on medieval allegory and art.
Psychometrics
Psychometrics is the field of psychological measurement, covering test design, validity, reliability, fairness, classical test theory, item response theory, and computerized adaptive testing in education, clinical, and workplace assessment.
Psychometry (paranormal)
Psychometry (paranormal), also called object or token reading, is the claimed ability to read an object's history by touch, coined by Joseph Rodes Buchanan in the 1840s; unsupported by controlled studies.
Psychomotor agitation
Psychomotor agitation: restlessness with increased motor activity in psychiatric, neurological, and drug-related conditions; ICD-11 and MeSH definitions, causes, scales, and emergency management.
Psychomotor retardation
Psychomotor retardation: generalized slowing of movement and speech in depression, Parkinson's disease, catatonia and related disorders; linked to striatal dopamine, measured by actigraphy, CORE and reaction-time tasks.
Psychomotor vigilance task
The psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) is a sustained-attention test measuring reaction times to detect lapses from sleep loss, introduced by Dinges and Powell in 1985.
Psychomyiidae
Psychomyiidae (trumpet-net, tube-making caddisflies) is a family of Trichoptera established by Walker in 1852, type genus Psychomyia; 648 species in eight genera, centered in the Oriental region, larvae building silken tube retreats.