39 articles
Approach-avoidance task
The approach-avoidance task is a psychology reaction-time paradigm measuring automatic approach and avoidance tendencies, introduced by Andrew Solarz in 1960 and widely used in research on addiction and phobias.
Behavioural change theories
Behavioural change theories, also called behavior change theories or models, are formal frameworks explaining how people change actions, spanning continuum models like the theory of planned behavior, stage models like the transtheoretical model, and integrated systems like COM-B and the Behavior Change Wheel used in health interventions.
Control freak
Control freak: informal term for a person with an obsessive need to control people and situations; coined around 1969-1970, not a clinical diagnosis, closest counterpart OCPD; linked to intolerance of uncertainty and workplace micromanagement.
Delayed gratification
Delayed gratification: postponing a smaller immediate reward for a larger delayed one, studied via Mischel's marshmallow test and delay-discounting tasks. Reliability is modest (r ≈ .67), classic predictive claims have weakened, and children now wait longer than in the 1960s.
Discipline
Discipline: training oneself or others to follow rules and regulate impulses; covers the word's Latin etymology, mental discipline in US university history, ego depletion research, and longitudinal self-control outcomes.
Egotism
Egotism: inflated self-importance with excessive self-reference, related to but distinct from egoism, narcissism, and egocentrism; coined 1714 by Joseph Addison; central to the psychological egoism-altruism debate and studied as implicit egotism.
Expectancy theory
Expectancy theory, or VIE theory, is Victor Vroom's 1964 work-motivation model in which motivational force equals expectancy times instrumentality times valence, with noted empirical criticisms.
Exploration
Exploration: traveling to unfamiliar places to learn about them, and, in decision science, the explore-exploit trade-off between unknown and known options. Covers the Age of Exploration, Zheng He, bandit models, and neural findings.
Failure
Failure in psychology: falling short of an adopted standard of excellence. Covers Weiner's attribution dimensions, learned helplessness, motivational orientation, goal orientation, mindset evidence, and goal disengagement.
Fake it till you make it
Fake it till you make it: folk advice to act confident before feeling it. Covers affirmations backfiring (Wood 2009), failed power posing, therapeutic 'act as if', and workplace surface acting.
Flow (psychology)
Flow (psychology): optimal experience, flow state, introduced by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in 1975; a state of full absorption when challenge and skill balance, measured by the Flow State Scale and Flow Short Scale.
Goal
A goal is a desired end state a person or group commits to reaching, studied through goal-setting theory, which holds that specific, difficult goals improve performance.
Goal setting
Goal setting: specifying an aim in advance; Locke and Latham's goal-setting theory holds that specific, difficult goals with commitment and feedback improve performance, moderated by ability, task complexity, and task knowledge, with mixed applied evidence.
Habit
Habit: an automatic behavior triggered by contextual cues through learned cue-behavior associations. Also covers habit formation (18-254 days in Lally's study), striatal brain mechanisms, measurement, and critiques distinguishing habit from other behavior-change mechanisms.
Impostor syndrome
Impostor syndrome, or impostor phenomenon, is the persistent inability to internalize success and fear of being exposed as a fraud, described by Clance and Imes in 1978; it is not a DSM or ICD diagnosis, affects an estimated 70% of people, and lacks a gold-standard measure.
Impulsivity
Impulsivity, also called impulsiveness, is the tendency toward rapid, unplanned actions with diminished regard for negative consequences. Measured multidimensionally via the BIS-11 and UPPS-P trait scales and behavioral tasks like delay discounting, Go/No-Go, and Stop-Signal; linked to ADHD, addictions, bipolar and borderline personality disorders.
Learned helplessness
Learned helplessness, coined by Overmier and Seligman in 1967 with Maier, is the passivity after uncontrollable aversive events; the 2016 neuroscience revision holds helplessness is unlearned and control is what is learned.
Man's Search for Meaning
Man's Search for Meaning (Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager) is Viktor Frankl's 1946 Holocaust memoir and introduction to logotherapy, his meaning-centered psychotherapy; over 16 million copies in 50-plus languages, a 1991 Library of Congress top-ten influential book.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs
Maslow's hierarchy of needs, from Abraham Maslow's 1943 "A Theory of Human Motivation", arranges five need levels from physiological to self-actualization. Empirical reviews such as Wahba and Bridwell (1976) and cross-cultural studies find the categories real but the strict sequencing unsupported.
Midlife crisis
A midlife crisis, sometimes called a male midlife crisis, is a period of emotional turmoil in middle adulthood, coined by Elliott Jaques in 1965 and popularized in the 1970s.
Mindset
Mindset: Dweck's implicit-theories framework contrasting fixed mindset (intelligence innate) with growth mindset (intelligence improvable by effort); popularized by the 2006 book, with contested meta-analytic evidence on whether interventions raise academic achievement.
Monetary incentive delay task
The monetary incentive delay (MID) task is a neuroimaging paradigm, introduced by Brian Knutson and colleagues in 2000, that separates neural responses to anticipating monetary reward from receiving it.
Motivation
Motivation, from Latin movere (to move), is the psychological process that instigates and sustains goal-directed behavior. Central theories: expectancy-value, self-determination, social cognitive, achievement goal, and attribution theory.
Need
Need (psychology): a biological or psychological requirement whose deprivation motivates goal-directed action. Covers Murray's need taxonomy, Maslow's 1943 hierarchy, McClelland's nAch/nAff/nPow, and self-determination theory's autonomy, competence, relatedness.
New Year's resolution
New Year's resolution: a self-improvement pledge made at the year's start, with roots in Babylonian Akitu promises and Roman Janus vows; research shows 55% one-year success, approach goals outperforming avoidance goals.
Organizational Objectives
Organizational objectives are formalized statements of the end states an organization or unit intends to reach, the basis of Management by Objectives (Drucker, 1954), SMART goals, and OKRs, and grounded in Locke and Latham's goal-setting theory of specific, difficult goals.
Patience
Patience, in psychology, is the capacity to wait calmly under frustration, adversity, or suffering; related to delay of gratification (marshmallow test) and measured as interpersonal, daily-hassles, and life-hardships patience, with health and academic correlates.
Peter Pan syndrome
Peter Pan syndrome, an informal pop-psychology term coined by Dan Kiley in 1983, describes adults who avoid responsibility, commitment, and emotional maturity; not a DSM or ICD diagnosis, linked to the Jungian puer aeternus and the enabling Wendy dynamic.
Procrastination
Procrastination is the voluntary, unnecessary delay of intended tasks despite expecting negative consequences. Also called dysfunctional delay; affects up to 20% of adults and 50% of students; CBT shows moderate treatment 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.