bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Marital Discord
Authors: Beach Steven R. H.
Published: January 2010

The large volume of research on marital discord and the related constructs of marital conflict and marital dissatisfaction attest to the perceived importance of understanding the problems that sometimes arise in marriage. Of the various terms used in this area of inquiry, “marital satisfaction” is the best defined, referring to an evaluation of the relationship or the partner. Because of their clarity and brevity, measures of marital satisfaction play a prominent role in all areas of marital research.
Maslow, Abraham (1908–1970)
Authors: Lundin Ralph W.
Published: January 2010

Abraham Maslow studied with two of the leading Gestalt psychologists, Max Wertheimer and Kurt Koffka, at the New School for Social Research. From these men he got the idea for a holistic psychology. He received all three of his academic degrees from the University of Wisconsin, obtaining his Ph.D. in 1934 along with Carl Rogers, Rollo May, and Charlotte Buhler. His most important books, presenting his humanistic position, include
Motivation and Personality
and
Toward a Psychology of Being.
Masochism
Authors: Rathbone June
Published: January 2010

It is doubtful whether an increased tolerance for sadism and masochism (S&M) in the sexual behavior of daily life has led to any greater understanding of the phenomenon of masochism. A rather simplistic definition in a medical encyclopedia runs as follows: a glandular insufficiency, especially of the gonads and adrenals, demanding the stimulation of pain before the subject is able to react to sexual stimuli.
Mate Selection
Authors: Cason Margaret J. , Li Norman P.
Published: January 2010

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife”—so wrote Jane Austen in
Pride and Prejudice.
From classic literature to contemporary screenplays, from the latest celebrity news to office gossip, it is nearly impossible to escape the pervasive topic of romantic relationships. Indeed, the pursuit of mates consumes a significant portion of our time and energy, and for good reason—mates give us companionship, pleasure, comfort, security, and even health benefits. As we discuss in this article, there are two major theoretical perspectives for understanding mate selection. Although these perspectives have different explanations for people's mate choices, both agree that who one selects as a mate depends largely on the type of relationship one seeks and the characteristics one desires.
McNaughton Rule
Authors: Hess Allen K.
Published: January 2010

On January 20, 1843, Daniel McNaughton shot Edmund Drummond. That McNaughton shot the secretary of Sir Robert Peel, the
actus reus
, is indisputable.
Mens rea
, or the concept that an evil mind must be present for criminal culpability, became crystallized in this case. Thus, a guilty person will have an evil mind, but that same mind must be a mind that is free from mental disease or defect.
Mental Retardation
Authors: Glidden Laraine Masters
Published: January 2010

Mental retardation, also known as intellectual disability, is characterized by subaverage general intellectual functioning and impairments in adaptive behavior, both manifested during the developmental years of childhood and adolescence (American Association on Mental Retardation, 2002; American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Intellectual functioning is measured by the Intelligence Quotient (IQ), and, in most instances, an IQ score of lower than 70 meets the criterion for subaverage general intellectual functioning. Definitions of adaptive behavior usually include skills of communication, socialization, and daily living as well as gross and fine motor abilities. Both IQ and adaptive behavior tests are available, have satisfactory reliability and validity, and yield scores that compare individuals with others of the same age. Nevertheless, controversy about their measurement exists, and some critics believe that essential components of intellectual functioning are complex, multidimensional, and not adequately measured by current instruments (Switzky & Greenspan, 2006).
Mexico, Psychology in
Authors: HernÁNDEZ‐GuzmÁN Laura
Published: January 2010

Psychology has been taught in Mexico since the late nineteenth century, but professional training did not begin until the 1960s, and licenses were initially issued in the early 1970s. Professional training programs prepare psychologists at the licentiate level. Licentiate level students take courses exclusively in psychology for approximately five years. Although there was only one training program in 1960, at Mexico's National University, there has been a proliferation of training programs during subsequent decades. In Mexico there are several agencies with the authority to open a professional training program: the president of the country or a state governor, state autonomous universities, private universities by incorporating their programs with an autonomous university, and private universities asking for recognition by the federal government. Autonomous universities make their own legal decisions, and the government cannot intervene in those decisions.
Military Psychology
Authors: Zillmer Eric A. , Kennedy Carrie Hill
Published: January 2010

Military psychology is defined as the science and application of human behavior as it relates to the military. The field of military psychology integrates the professional and scientific literature with practical requirements of the military in order to meet the needs of the armed forces and military personnel (Kennedy & Zillmer, 2006). Much of the thinking in the field of military psychology, stimulated by the situational demands of the military, has had a dramatic impact on the overall field of psychology itself, particularly psychological testing, personnel selection, clinical psychology education, aviation psychology, understanding of the human response to trauma, and head‐injury rehabilitation. Thus, the origins, history, and development of military psychology and its relationship to the general field of psychology are intertwined.
M
iller,
N
eal
E
. (1909–2002)
Authors: Staff
Published: January 2010

Neal Elgar Miller (born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, August 3, 1909), was Professor Emeritus of Rockefeller University from 1981 until his death in 2002 and research affiliate at Yale University from 1985 to 2002. He was the first psychologist to receive the National Medal of Science, the nation's highest award for scientific achievement. On February 8, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson presented Miller with the medal, citing him for sustained and imaginative research on principles of learning and motivation and illuminating behavioral analysis of the effects of direct electrical stimulation on the brain.
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–Adolescent
Authors: Archer Robert P. , Krishnamurthy Radhika
Published: January 2010

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–Adolescent (MMPI‐A; Butcher et al., 1992) is an adolescent‐specific revision of the original, broadband personality instrument, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI; Hathaway & McKinley, 1943). The original MMPI, designed primarily for adult clinical assessment, had been applied to evaluate adolescents from the time of its release. The revision to the MMPI‐A was prompted by several considerations. First, the passage of nearly five decades since the original test's release made it necessary to develop contemporary adolescent norms. Second, it was apparent that MMPI items did not provide sufficient coverage of adolescent experiences. The accumulated research on adolescent MMPI profiles indicated that adolescent response patterns were quite distinct from those of adults, therefore warranting a developmentally appropriate instrument to achieve interpretive accuracy. The revision effort was undertaken with the goals of updating and refining item content, reducing test length and reading‐level demands, developing a uniform set of contemporary adolescent norms, and developing scales to measure adolescent‐relevant difficulties such as school‐ and family‐related problems (Archer, 2005; Butcher et al., 1992).
Mob Psychology
Authors: Greenberg Martin S.
Published: January 2010

Crowds are defined as “co‐acting, shoulder‐to‐shoulder, anonymous, casual, temporary, and unorganized collectivities” (Brown, 1954, p. 840). According to Floyd Allport (1924), “A crowd is a collection of individuals who are all attending and reacting to some common object, their reactions being of a simple prepotent sort and accompanied by strong emotional responses” (p. 292). Crowds can be subdivided according to whether they are active or passive, the former being amoband the latter anaudience. Mobs are further classified according to the dominant behavior of participants, whether aggressive, escapist, acquisitive, or expressive.
Motion Perception
Authors: Meteyard Lotte , Bahrami Bahador
Published: January 2010

There have been substantial advances in our understanding of motion perception over the last few decades. These advances include exciting developments in motion perception research within neurophysiology, functional imaging, psychophysics, and computational modeling. To go beyond the overview provided in this article, readers are encouraged to consult detailed summaries available elsewhere (Blake, Sekuler, & Grossman, 2003; Sekuler, Watamaniuk & Blake, 2002).
Motivation
Authors: Ferguson Eva Dreikurs
Published: January 2010

Motivation leads to the instigation, persistence, energizing, and directing of behavior. Motivation refers to the energizing and directive states of animals and humans. The term
arousal
is used to describe the energizing aspect of motivation. The directing or steering aspect is related to goals. Thirsty animals look for water, or a person in a stressful job tries to escape from an unpleasant work situation. For humans, motivation largely involves complex, learned, social states. These states, like the beliefs associated with them, are continuously modified through many experiences.
M
owrer,
O
.
H
obart (1907–1982)
Authors: Staff
Published: January 2010

O. H. Mowrer was born on a farm in Unionville, Missouri, in 1907. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Missouri in 1929 and his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins in 1932. Although Mowrer suffered from repeated and chronic depression, he had a successful career and made major contributions to psychology. He published a series of 19 papers concerning vestibule‐ocular reflexes and spatial orientation that, while not often cited in psychological literature, were well received in otology and sensory physiology. They also served, somewhat paradoxically, to gain him an appointment (1934–1940) at Yale's Institute of Human Relations. There he developed theoretical and research interests in the psychology of learning, language, psychopathology, certain cognitive processes, and interpersonal relations that importantly influenced his subsequent career.
Multicultural Assessment
Authors: Suzuki Lisa A. , Ahluwalia Muninder K.
Published: January 2010

Multicultural assessment focuses on the evaluation of individuals, taking into account their cultural context. Multicultural assessment involves “a continuing and open‐ended series of substantive and methodological insertions and adaptations designed to mesh the process of assessment and evaluation with the cultural characteristics of the group [individual] being studied” (Padilla & Borsato, 2008, p. 6). Assessment results influence educational opportunities, diagnosis, and employment. Therefore, culturally appropriate testing practices are critical given the potentially important and long‐term consequences for the examinee.
M
ilgram,
S
tanley (1933–1984)
Authors: Staff
Published: January 2010

Stanley Milgram received his Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard in 1960. He began his career as an Assistant Professor at Harvard, but was denied tenure (some think due to his obedience studies), and he moved to the Graduate Center of the City University of New York where he remained until his death. Using an auditory judgment task rather than the visual judgment task of the original Solomon Asch studies, Milgram compared the conformity levels of Norwegians and Frenchmen and found Norwegians to be more conforming.
Multiple Regression
Authors: Cohen Barry H.
Published: January 2010

The simplest and most commonly used form of multiple regression (
MR
) is multiple linear regression. This method uses a linear combination (i.e., a weighted average) of predictor variables to maximize the accuracy with which a criterion variable can be predicted; the end result is a multiple regression equation in which each predictor variable is multiplied by its optimal weight, and a constant (called the
Y
‐intercept) is added. The accuracy or lack of accuracy of a regression equation is measured by summing the squared differences between the predicted and actual criterion values for each case in the dataset; this quantity is symbolized as SS
error
(or SS
residual
). The set of weights, called partial regression slopes, that lead to the smallest value of SS
error
, is known as the Ordinary Least Squares (
OLS
) regression solution; these same weights produce the largest possible value for
R
.
R
2
equals the proportion of criterion variance that is accounted for by a multiple regression equation, and the increase in
R
2
produced by adding a predictor variable is equal to the square of what is called the
semipartial
(or
part
) correlation of that predictor with the criterion, given the other predictors that were already in the equation.
Multivariate Methods
Authors: Harlow Lisa L.
Published: January 2010

Multivariate methods provide options for analyzing and understanding the essence of a set of well‐chosen variables. Myriad information is potentially available to researchers, policy makers, and practitioners with which to examine group differences, predict outcomes, explore patterns, and investigate models. Statistical methods are needed to make sense of this information and to come to meaningful conclusions that synthesize and simplify the data.
M
urray,
H
enry
A
. (1893–1988)
Authors: Lundin Ralph W.
Published: January 2010

Henry A. Murray received his B.A. degree from Harvard University and later the M.A. and then the M.D. degree from Columbia University. He completed residency in surgery at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. During his residency, he had the unusual experience of helping to care for the future president of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Following this, he spent four years at the Rockefeller Institute studying embryology. In 1927 he received the Ph.D. from Cambridge University in England. While at Cambridge he became acquainted with the writings of Carl Jung, whose
Psychological Types
had recently been translated to English.
National Institute on Aging
Authors: Hodes Richard J.
Published: January 2010

The National Institute on Aging (NIA), one of 27 institutes and centers of the National Institutes of Health, leads a broad scientific effort to understand the nature of aging and to extend the healthy, active years of life. Congress established the NIA in 1974 to “improve the health and well‐being of older Americans through research on aging processes, age‐related diseases, and the special problems and needs of the aged.” Later legislation designated NIA as the primary federal agency on Alzheimer's Disease (AD) research. NIA conducts intramural research at NIA laboratories in Bethesda and Baltimore, MD, and sponsors extramural research at universities and other research institutions. NIA funds both individual and institutional training and career support at pre‐ and post‐doctoral levels for all stages of careers, and places special emphasis on underrepresented minorities.
Neocortex
Authors: Lukatela Katarina , Swadlow Harvey A.
Published: January 2010

Two cerebral hemispheres comprise the most anterior and visible portion of the mammalian brain. In humans, most of the surface of these hemispheres is covered by highly convoluted neocortex (“cortex,” derived from Greek, meaning bark or covering). Neocortex is found only in mammals and is differentiated from more primitive types of cortex by a complex morphology and lamination pattern. This tissue may be considered the “crown jewel” of mammalian evolution, having expanded more than any other brain region during our evolutionary history. The characteristic convolutions of the cortical surface represent a clever geometric solution to the challenge of fitting more of the two‐dimensional neocortical sheet into a braincase without unduly increasing the size of the head. In humans, the neocortex occupies about 80% of the brain mass and is essential for cognitive functions such as rational thought, language, perception, and goal directed behavior.
Neuropsychological Development
Authors: Coren Stanley
Published: January 2010

Research in developmental neuropsychology first started because it was believed that children are neurologically simpler than adults and would provide clearer data as to the relationship between brain function and behavior. This turned out to be a somewhat simplistic view, and the study of the developing nervous system quickly raised a number of important new questions, such as “Why does the young brain appear to be so flexible in compensating for injury?” and “How do environmental factors influence the developing brain?” In addressing such questions, we must first provide an overview of the neural developmental process.
Nightmares
Authors: Neylan Thomas C.
Published: January 2010

Nightmares are defined as disturbing dreams associated with anxiety or fear that result in an awakening from sleep. The subject usually is readily aroused to full alertness and is able to recall much of the content of the dream. This distinguishes nightmares from night terrors, which are associated with a prolonged transition to wakefulness and scant recall of dream narrative. Although nightmares are featured prominently in literature and descriptive psychoanalytic writings, there is limited empirical research on this phenomenon. This fact is driven in part by pragmatic scientific limitations that make it difficult to observe neurocognitive events during the actual dream. Dreams can only be recalled following an awakening, and the fidelity of recall is not known. For example, it is possible that dream recall is limited to dream events occurring in the immediate period just prior to arousal. Further, dream recall is subject to retrieval biases in which the subject imposes order on what has been a chaotic mental experience.
Noise Pollution
Authors: Bronzaft Arline L.
Published: January 2010

Noise and sound do indeed differ in that noise is unwanted, intrusive, and bothersome sound that has been judged at a higher cognitive level. Some sounds may be deemed pleasant by some listeners while the same sounds are judged as intrusive and annoying by other listeners; yet at other times, the same sounds once judged pleasant can become disturbing in another context. As a result, the oft‐heard expression “Music to some people; noise to others” has been quoted to argue that little can be done to abate noise. However, in trying to curb noise, ordinances and laws have been passed based on the concept of the “reasonable person” standard. In other words, would a person of reasonable sensitivities deem this particular sound to be noise? These ordinances and laws have been passed because noise pollution has grown immensely in the past century, due in large part to advances in noise‐producing and noise‐related technology. Additionally, a growing body of research has demonstrated that noise can no longer be viewed as “simply annoying;” rather, noise is a serious mental and physical health hazard.
Null Hypothesis Significance Testing
Authors: Cohen Barry H.
Published: January 2010

Null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) is an inferential statistical method for deciding whether a well‐specified hypothesis, identified as the
null hypothesis
, is to be regarded as true for a population from which a given set of data has been obtained by random sampling. In the usual procedure the data from a particular dependent (i.e., measured) variable are first summarized by a single number called a
test statistic.
Usually, some assumptions must then be made in order to find the relative likelihoods of all possible values of that test statistic when the null hypothesis is true, and thus to find the null hypothesis distribution (NHD). The next step is to calculate the probability of obtaining one's actual test statistic from the NHD, or one that is even further from the mean of the NHD. From what is called the “frequentist” point of view, that probability, called a
p value
, tells us the proportion of times that the NHD would yield a test statistic at least as inconsistent with the null hypothesis as the one you obtained, over many exact replications of your study. In the accept‐support (AS) form of NHST, researchers actually want to obtain a
p
value that is close to its maximum of 1.0, because the null hypothesis being tested is consistent with the theory that motivated the study.
Object Splitting
Authors: Siegel Judith P.
Published: January 2010

Intense, over‐reactive, extreme—these are a few of the adjectives used by therapists to describe individuals whose reactions are governed by defensive splitting. Splitting is a psychological defense mechanism that affects the way current and past events are experienced or remembered. Under the influence of splitting, the world is evaluated in extremes of “all good” or “all bad.” Life is precarious, as relatively minor events have the power to trigger episodes of intense despair or rage. Splitting creates rapid reversals in well‐being and wreaks havoc on interpersonal relationships.
Obsessions
Authors: Fama Jeanne M. , Wilhelm Sabine
Published: January 2010

Obsessions are described in the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision
(American Psychiatric Association, 2000) as recurrent intrusive thoughts, impulses, or images that produce marked anxiety or discomfort. The content of obsessions is ego‐dystonic, meaning that they are experienced as intrusive, unwanted, and generally inconsistent with one's self‐image, values, beliefs, and behaviors. Obsessions differ from ego‐syntonic thoughts about everyday problems (e.g., recurrent thoughts or worries about finances, occupation, relationships, and the like) and should be distinguished from the “brooding” ruminations that are common in depression. Typical obsessions include doubts about whether one did something adequately (e.g., turned off the stove); intrusive sexual, aggressive, or religious thoughts or images (e.g., horrific image of stabbing a friend); thoughts about contamination; and excessive concerns about symmetry or exactness. Individuals with Obsessive‐Compulsive Disorder (OCD) experience frequent obsessions that are severe enough to cause significant functioning impairment and try to suppress or neutralize their obsessions with other thoughts or compulsive actions. Unlike individuals with psychotic or delusional disorders, individuals with OCD generally recognize their obsessions as senseless and know that the obsessions originate in their own minds.
Obsessive‐Compulsive Disorder
Authors: Abramowitz Jonathan S. , Mahaffey Brittain L. , Wheaton Michael G.
Published: January 2010

Obsessive‐compulsive disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder that involves two primary symptoms:
obsessions
and
compulsions
.
Obsessions
are thoughts, ideas, images, impulses, or doubts that are experienced as senseless, unwanted, and distressing. Although people with OCD recognize the thoughts as irrational, these thoughts often evoke anxiety about dreaded consequences. Common themes of obsessions include contamination; responsibility for causing terrible harm (e.g., by making mistakes); violent, sexual, or blasphemous thoughts; or thoughts about things not being just right. Beyond these common themes, some individuals may exhibit unusual obsessions, such as a fear of having an extramarital affair with a stranger by mistake.
Obsessive‐Compulsive Personality Disorder
Authors: Abramowitz Jonathan S. , Wheaton Michael G. , Mahaffey Brittain L.
Published: January 2010

Obsessive‐compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) is a personality disorder characterized by excessive perfectionism, inflexibility, and need for control that negatively impacts interpersonal relationships, occupational functioning, or other important domains of an individual's life. Individuals with this condition often maintain strict principles and are intolerant of others who do not conform to their standards.
Occupational Stress
Authors: Hershcovis M. Sandy , Reich Tara C.
Published: January 2010

Occupational stress poses a significant threat to the health and well‐being of employees as well as potential costs to organizations. Occupational stressors are stress‐producing events or conditions in an organization and can include factors associated with one's work role (e.g., role ambiguity, overload, work‐family conflict, and interpersonal conflict), the social context of the work environment (e.g., workplace aggression, injustice, sexual harassment), and the physical work environment (e.g., safety, spatial organization, ambient environment).
Operant Conditioning
Authors: Palmer David C.
Published: January 2010

Operant conditioning, a term coined by B. F. Skinner (1937), has several shades of meaning. It is both an experimental procedure and a behavioral process. In the latter sense, it is a biological adaptation with a plausible evolutionary interpretation and can be observed in the environment‐behavior relations of any species with a complex nervous system. The study of operant conditioning and related phenomena comprises a substantial research paradigm within psychology in both laboratory and applied settings. This paradigm endorses tightly controlled experiments to discover behavioral principles; the direct extension of those principles to behavior therapy, education, organizational behavior, and other applications; and the use of the principles as interpretive tools for understanding complex human behavior such as language, memory, and problem solving.
Operational Definition
Authors: Marx Melvin H.
Published: January 2010

Few topics in the area of scientific communication have been as troublesome as that of operational definition. Psychologists have done their share both to clarify and to muddy the waters regarding this problem, and the following outlines some of the principal facets to be considered.
Osgood,CharlesEgerton (1916–1991)
Authors: Staff
Published: January 2010

Charles Osgood received the BA degree from Dartmouth College (1939) and the PhD degree from Yale in 1945. He then served as research associate for the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, where he worked on the training of B‐29 gunners. He was an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Connecticut from 1946–1949, and then moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign where he remained throughout his career. He became Professor of Psychology and Director of the Institute of Communication Research. In 1960 he received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association. He was elected President of the American Psychological Association in 1963. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Pain Disorder
Authors: Turk Dennis C.
Published: January 2010

Medical illness in no way excludes the possibility of psychiatric illness. Medically ill patients are, in fact, much more likely to have psychiatric illness than patients without medical illness. Psychiatric illness in no way precludes the possibility of medical illness. Psychiatric illness is, in fact, associated with health behaviors and psychophysiological changes known to promote medical illness.
Paired Comparisons
Authors: Beins Bernard C.
Published: January 2010

Psychologists are interested in quantifying psychological responses to physical stimuli. In this domain, called psychophysics, researchers have developed several useful approaches, including the method of paired comparisons.
Paradoxical Intervention
Authors: Shoham Varda , Rohrbaugh Michael J.
Published: January 2010

Paradoxical interventions are psychotherapeutic tactics that seem to contradict the goals they are designed to achieve. For example, a therapist may prescribe that clients deliberately have an unwanted symptom or restrain them from changing. In the classic definition of a therapeutic double‐bind or paradox, “an injunction is so structured that it (1) reinforces the behavior the patient expects to be changed, (2) implies that this reinforcement is the vehicle of change, and (3) thereby creates a paradox because the patient is told to change by remaining unchanged” (Watzlawick, Beavin, & Jackson, 1967, p. 241).
Parental Approaches
Authors: Haber Russell
Published: January 2010

Parents have a legal and moral duty to rear their children. This includes providing for their sustenance and well‐being, as well as their social, ethical, and personal development. In order to fulfill this responsibility, parents have to find ways to convey their principles, expectations, and regulations. Therefore, parents should aspire to raise confident and satisfied children who ultimately develop into adults who can function independently and contribute to the welfare of society.
Pavlovian Conditioning
Authors: McConnell Bridget L. , Miller Ralph R.
Published: January 2010

Pavlovian conditioning, also known as classical conditioning, is a reliable training procedure that results in an organism responding to a stimulus that previously did not evoke a response. It involves pairing an initially innocuous stimulus, such as a light or tone, with another stimulus that naturally provokes a response, such as food or an electrical shock. The previously neutral stimulus comes to control responding and typically evokes the same behavior that the biologically significant stimulus provoked, albeit weaker. Once a stimulus acquires behavioral control, it is known as a conditioned stimulus (CS) because it required conditioning, or training, to elicit the behavioral response that the unconditioned stimulus (US) naturally evokes. The innate reaction to the US is called the unconditioned response (UR), and the acquired response to the CS is called a conditioned response (CR).
Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test
Authors: Campbell Jonathan M. , Dommestrup Aila K.
Published: January 2010

The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) is an individually administered, norm‐referenced test of single‐word receptive (or hearing) vocabulary. Originally published in 1959, the PPVT has been revised several times and currently exists in its fourth edition (PPVT‐4; Dunn & Dunn, 2007). In addition to assessing receptive vocabulary, test authors report that the PPVT‐4 may be used as a means of estimating verbal development (Dunn & Dunn, 2007). Normed with a sample of 3,540 individuals ages 2½ to 90 representative of March 2004 U.S. census data, the PPVT‐4 features two parallel forms (Form A and Form B), each consisting of 228 test items. Items consist of two stimuli, a word spoken by the examiner and four pictures on a single card; the examinee selects the picture that best represents the examiner's spoken word. Raw scores may be translated into age‐based standard scores (i.e.,
M
 = 100;
SD
 = 15), percentile ranks, stanines, age equivalents, and grade equivalents.
Pediatric Psychology
Authors: Brown Ronald T. , Harvey Abby B.
Published: January 2010

Pediatric psychology focuses on issues associated with chronic and acute illnesses that confront children, adolescents, and their families. Pediatric psychologists' domains of interest include, but are not limited to, chronic illness, psychosocial adjustment, quality of life, adaptation associated with illness, illness and injury prevention, health services research, and health promotion and public health. The field of pediatric psychology is little more than 35 years old. It grew from clinical and developmental psychology and was influenced by Jerome Kagan, Jonas Salk, Logan Wright, and Donald Routh.
Pedophilia
Authors: Seto Michael C.
Published: January 2010

Pedophilia is typically defined as sexual attraction to prepubescent children, reflected in a person's sexual thoughts, fantasies, urges, sexual arousal, or behavior regarding children (American Psychiatric Association, 2000; World Health Organization, 1997). There are two key aspects to emphasize in this definition: first, the sexual interest in children is persistent, and second, the children of interest are prepubescent and thus show few or no signs of secondary sexual development. This means that someone who has expressed a sexual interest in children or who has engaged in sexual behavior involving a child is not necessarily a pedophile. It also means that individuals who are attracted to sexually maturing children or sexually mature adolescents, even if they are below the legally defined age of consent, are unlikely to be pedophiles.
Peer Influences
Authors: Johnson David W. , Johnson Roger T.
Published: January 2010

High‐quality relationships are important for all aspects of the development and well‐being of children and adolescents. Traditionally, the relationships between children and adults have been viewed as the most important vehicle for ensuring effective socialization and development. Child–child relationships are assumed to be, at best, relatively unimportant and, at worst, unhealthy influences. Such views are mistaken. Prominent theorists such as Sigmund Freud, George H. Mead, Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, and Lawrence Kohlberg have argued that high‐quality peer relationships are essential for an individual's development, socialization, and well‐being, and hundreds of research studies have validated these views. Young people acquire competencies, attitudes, values, and perspectives in encounters with peers as they strive to occupy a comfortable niche within their peer culture. Compared with interactions with adults, interactions with peers tend to be more frequent, more intense, and more varied. Some of the more important consequences and correlates of peer influences are discussed in this article. Specific research studies supporting the statements to follow may be found in Johnson 1980, 2009, Ladd (1999), and Prinstein and Dodge (2008).
Perceptual Development
Authors: Monesson Alexandra , Scott Lisa S.
Published: January 2010

Parents, educators, and researchers alike often question how infants and children learn to organize and interpret things they see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. The study of perceptual development examines how the use of the five senses changes over time as well as how information perceived in the environment shapes later perceptual abilities. There are several present‐day theories of perceptual development that differ in their views of the nature of the information available to infants' sensory systems (see Gibson & Pick, 2000, for a review). For example, some view sensory information as crude and insufficient for perception, and they suggest that the first step is to actively construct a representation of the external world. Another view, the ecological approach, considers sensory information as rich and well organized, in addition to assuming reciprocal interaction between the environment and the perceiver. The present review highlights the fundamentals of perceptual development, and it suggests that this development is best viewed as a bidirectional interaction between maturational factors and experience.
Personality Assessment
Authors: Weiner Irving B.
Published: January 2010

Personality assessment is the use of psychological assessment procedures to identify personality characteristics of individuals. These personality characteristics consist of various traits and states. Personality traits are abiding dispositions of people to think, feel, and act in certain ways, to deal with situations in a fairly consistent and predictable manner, and to conduct themselves in a distinctive fashion. When people are asked to describe someone (as in “What is this person like?”), the words they use (e.g., friendly, quiet, self‐centered, generous, grouchy) typically identify personality traits. Personality states consist of what people are thinking and the mood they are in at the moment, as in paying close or little attention, being worried or unconcerned, feeling happy or sad, or being anxious, angry, fearful, relaxed, bored, or enthusiastic.
Personality Development
Authors: Robins Richard W. , Donnellan M. Brent
Published: January 2010

Personality refers to an individual's stable tendencies to think, feel, and act in particular ways. The field of personality development focuses on the age at which these tendencies first emerge in childhood, the role of nature (genes) and nurture (environment) in their development, and their patterns of consistency and change across the life span. In this entry, we summarize the most recent findings and conclusions emerging from the field.
Personality Psychology
Authors: Robins Richard W. , Donnellan M. Brent
Published: January 2010

Personality psychology focuses on understanding individual variability in people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors: why is one person shy and another sociable, one person irritable and another even‐tempered, and one person reliable and another irresponsible? One of the hallmarks of the field is that such questions are investigated at multiple levels of analysis, from genes to sociocultural contexts. Consequently, personality researchers use a broad array of methods, including self‐report questionnaires, computerized tasks, behavioral observation, brain imaging, and DNA analyses. Individuals trained in personality psychology work at universities, private and federal research institutes, test‐publishing companies, organizational consulting firms, and government agencies such as the CIA.
Pheromones
Authors: Sorensen Peter W.
Published: January 2010

Forty years ago, Karlson and Lüscher (1959) coined the termpheromoneto describe chemicals that are “excreted to the outside by an individual and received by a second individual of the same species in which they release a specific reaction.” They created this term for bombykol, the first conspecific attractant to be identified in an insect (the silkworm). Since the structure elucidation of this long‐chain alcohol, hundreds of pheromones have been identified, and it is now commonly accepted that most animals (with the possible exception of birds and marine mammals) use chemicals released by conspecifics to mediate various social interactions. Frequently, these conspecific chemicals are found in precise mixtures that are discerned at very low concentrations with great specificity, sometimes exerting subtle effects that seem to go beyond the original definition (e.g., kin recognition). Nevertheless, the termpheromoneremains in common usage, and it is now used to describe almost any chemical cue that mediates intraspecies communication and to which organisms are predisposed to respond.
Phi Coefficient
Authors: Wearden Stanley
Published: January 2010

The phi (
φ
) coefficient was proposed by George Utney Yule in 1912 as an index of association between two dichotomous variables. The
φ
statistic is particularly useful to many research workers because it is the familiar product‐moment correlation when computed for data from a bivariate binomial distribution. When such data are organized in a fourfold table, the coefficient is most easily computed as

urn:x-wiley:9780470479216:media:corpsy0677:xm1
Premenstrual Syndrome
Authors: Stubbs Margaret L.
Published: January 2010

Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is commonly understood to refer to a cluster of unpleasant physical and psychological symptoms that may be experienced prior to menstruation. Identified symptoms include bloating, breast tenderness, backache, muscle or joint pain, trouble with sleeping, acne, food cravings, irritability, mood swings, anxiety, and depression. The onset of menstruation is said to diminish symptom experience, and the cause of PMS is often described as related to the changing hormone levels of the menstrual cycle. The American Psychiatric Association (2000) includes premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) as a diagnostic category in the fourth edition of the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM‐IV‐TR) to refer to an extreme form of PMS, which is asserted to affect 3–8% of women.
Pride
Authors: Tracy Jessica L.
Published: January 2010

Pride is a self‐conscious emotion that fuels many of our most meaningful achievements, both everyday and life‐changing. Like all self‐conscious emotions, pride is experienced when individuals direct their attention inward and make a self‐evaluation. As a positive emotion, pride occurs when these self‐evaluations result in positive views of the self, that is, when individuals realize that their current self‐representations fit with their goals for their identity—the kind of person they want to be. Thus, students experience pride after receiving a good grade, children after succeeding at a new task, and adults after finding a mate. Adults feel pride in response to a promotion at work, their child's first steps, or their partner's love. Indeed, pride seems to fuel several fundamental human pursuits: the desire to achieve, to attain power and status, to meet an attractive and intelligent romantic partner, to feel good about one's self and one's social group, and to raise successful and well‐behaved children.
Psychoanalysis
Authors: Rangell Leo
Published: January 2010

Psychoanalysis is a theory of the mind and a method derived from that theory to treat mental disturbances. It had its origins in the discoveries and formulations developed over some 50 years by its creator, Sigmund Freud, a neurologist, neuroanatomist, and neuropathologist living in Vienna, who had an inquiring mind about the nature of mental processes. Freud was born in 1856. During a travel grant at the famous Salpetriere Clinic in Paris for 4 months in 1885–1886, under the noted French neurologist Charcot, the young physician came to learn from his mentor, via now‐classic experiments in hypnosis, that ideas can instill and then remove and abolish the central features of hysteria.
Psychological Health
Authors: Shapiro Deane H. , Santerre Craig , Shapiro Shauna L. , Astin John A. , Shapiro Josh D. , Huston Jena
Published: January 2010

All psychotherapeutic systems have a vision of psychological health rooted in and stemming from their view of human nature. The goal of therapy is to develop interventions that, based on each orientation's personality theory, remove obstacles and barriers and develop awareness, insights, skills, and abilities that enhance a person's psychological health (Shapiro, 1983).
Psychology of Women
Authors: Stake Jayne E.
Published: January 2010

The psychology of women is a subdiscipline of the field of psychology with the primary goal of understanding and improving the lives of girls and women through improved research, methods of practice, and dissemination of knowledge about sex and gender. The psychology of women does not encompass all theory and research about women; instead, it includes only that which is undertaken from the epistemological perspectives and principles of feminism. This area of psychology was spurred by serious limitations in psychological theory and research that date back to the inception of psychology in the late 1890s. During these early years of psychology, male pioneers in the field, such as Francis Galton and William James, held firm opinions of the temperamental and intellectual inferiority of women (Rosenberg, 1982). Along with most of the general public at the time, these early psychologists presumed that gender differences were large in magnitude, inherited, and immutable. To further illustrate misogyny within the field, women were excluded from many educational and professional opportunities in the early decades of psychology. In one striking example, Mary Whiton Calkins was denied a doctorate from Harvard even though she achieved all requirements for the degree, and she went on to have a distinguished research and teaching career.
Psychometrics
Authors: Geisinger Kurt F.
Published: January 2010

The field of psychometrics generally considers the data from educational and psychological tests and assessments from a quantitative perspective. Such data normally emerge from test responses, although they may come from a wide variety of measurement instruments. Two divisions might be identified within psychometrics: theoretical and applied psychometrics. Psychometric theory (as portrayed by Embretson & Reise, 2000; Lord, 1980; McDonald, 1999; Nunnally, 1978) provides researchers and psychologists with mathematical models to be used in considering responses to individual test items, entire tests, and sets of tests. Applied psychometrics is the implementation of these models and their analytic procedures to test data (e.g., Thorndike, 1982).
Psychopharmacology
Authors: Bruce Timothy J. , Alahi Peter
Published: January 2010

Psychopharmacology, from the Greekpsychemeaning “soul,”pharmakonmeaning “drug,” andlogosmeaning “knowledge,” is the study of drugs that affect mood, cognition, and behavior. The field encompasses a range of topics including drug composition, properties, effects, interactions, toxicity, and therapeutic application (Stahl & Muntner, 2008). Two fundamental divisions of basic research in psychopharmacology are pharmacokinetics, what the body does to medication, and pharmacodynamics, what medication does to the body (Tozer & Rowland, 2006). Understanding these actions and the functions controlled by the affected neurotransmitter systems has advanced the field of psychopharmacotherapy, the clinical application of psychopharmacology for the treatment of mental and emotional problems (Janicak, Davis, Preskorn, Ayd, & Pavuluri, 2006).
Racism
Authors: Augoustinos Martha
Published: January 2010

Although many definitions of racism have been proposed, an all‐inclusive definition has yet to be agreed on, particularly as researchers have identified a variety of racisms (Miles & Brown, 2003; Richards, 1997). Central to many definitions of racism is the belief in a biological hierarchy between different racial and ethnic groups and the associated practices that maintain and reproduce social inequalities between groups based on such beliefs. The belief that differences between social groups are biological implies that such variability is fundamental and fixed. These essentialist beliefs lead to the categorization of people into groups based on assumptions that surface characteristics (e.g., skin color) reflect deeper essential features, and these in turn are believed to be inherent and unchangeable and to reflect the real nature of the groups they represent. These ideas were central to scientific racism, which was widely promoted as an ideology in the late nineteenth century and the earlier half of the twentieth century.
Rater Error
Authors: Thomas Jay C. , Meeke Heidi
Published: January 2010

Rater errors are systematic biases affecting the distribution of assigned ratings or the construct validity of ratings, typically in the context of performance rating or grading. Rater errors that influence the distribution of ratings include leniency and severity errors and central tendency errors. Leniency and severity errors are the tendency to assign predominantly high or low ratings on a scale; central tendency error derives from a propensity to avoid assigning extreme values, which leaves most ratings near the middle of the scale. Such errors can reduce utility of ratings for decision making. For example, if raises or bonuses are contingent upon ratings and if almost all employees are rated near the top, it becomes impossible to apply contingency. In research, it is feared that these errors can restrict the range of measures, thereby reducing effect sizes.