Psychology Glossary

This glossary is a comprehensive guide to psychological tricks, biases, and phenomena that influence human behavior and decision-making. Understanding these concepts is crucial today, where information manipulation and persuasion techniques are increasingly prevalent.

Why is this psychological terms glossary necessary? In an era of information overload and sophisticated marketing strategies, being aware of psychological tricks can help individuals make more informed decisions, recognize manipulation attempts, and improve their critical thinking skills.

This knowledge is essential for navigating modern life’s complex social and informational landscapes.

Who can benefit from this glossary?

1. Students of psychology and social sciences;
2. Marketing and advertising professionals;
3. Business leaders and managers;
4. Educators and trainers;
5. Journalists and media professionals;
6. Anyone interested in understanding human behavior and improving their decision-making skills.

How to use this glossary:

• The terms are organized alphabetically for easy reference.
• Each entry includes a concise definition and explanation of the concept.
• Use this glossary to familiarize yourself with these psychological tricks, reflect on how they might affect your own thinking, and identify when they’re being used in various contexts.

Good luck.

Psychological Terms Glossary

Note: Some of these terms are less commonly used in discussions of psychological tricks, but they are related to psychological concepts or phenomena.

0… 9

Here’s an alphabetical list of numerical words (0-9) related to psychological concepts or tricks, with brief explanations:

1% rule: The principle that about 1% of users in an online community create content, while 99% are observers or lurkers.

20/80 rule (Pareto principle): The idea that 80% of effects come from 20% of causes, often applied in various psychological and social contexts.

36 questions: A set of personal questions designed to accelerate intimacy between two people.

50/50 fallacy: The mistaken belief that when faced with two options, each has an equal probability of being correct.

6 degrees of separation: The theory that any person on the planet can be connected to any other person through a chain of acquaintances with no more than five intermediaries.

7±2 rule (Miller’s law): The concept that the average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their working memory.

90-9-1 rule: In online communities, 90% of users are lurkers, 9% contribute occasionally, and 1% of users account for most contributions.

A

Here’s a list of “A” words for a glossary about psychological tricks, along with short explanations:

Affinity bias: The tendency to prefer people who are similar to ourselves.

Ambiguity effect: The tendency to avoid options for which the probability of a favorable outcome is unknown.

Amplification: Exaggerating or overstating certain aspects of a situation to influence perception.

Anchoring: The tendency to rely heavily on the first piece of information offered when making decisions.

Appeal to emotion: Manipulating people’s emotions to win an argument or influence behavior.

Artificial scarcity: Creating a false sense of scarcity to increase demand or urgency.

Asch conformity: The tendency to conform to group opinions, even when they contradict one’s own judgment.

Attentional bias: The tendency to focus on certain aspects of a situation while ignoring others.

Attitude inoculation: Exposing people to weak arguments against their beliefs to strengthen those beliefs.

Attractiveness bias: The tendency to attribute positive qualities, abilities, and even desirable personality traits to individuals we perceive as physically attractive.

Attribution error: Incorrectly attributing causes to behavior, often overestimating personality factors and underestimating situational factors.

Automation bias: The tendency to favor suggestions from automated systems over human reasoning.

Audience effect: The tendency for people to perform differently when they know they’re being observed.

Authority bias: The tendency to attribute greater accuracy to the opinions of an authority figure.

Autobiographical bias: The tendency to remember one’s own experiences more vividly than others.

Availability heuristic: Judging the probability of an event based on how easily examples come to mind.

Here’s a list of “B” words for a glossary about psychological tricks, with short explanations:

Baader-Meinhof phenomenon: The illusion that something you’ve just learned about suddenly appears everywhere.

Backfire effect: Some people strengthen their original beliefs when presented with contradictory evidence.

Bandwagon effect: The tendency to adopt beliefs or behaviors because many others do the same.

Barnum effect: The tendency to accept vague, general personality descriptions as uniquely applicable to oneself.

Base rate fallacy: Ignoring general information in favor of specific but less relevant information.

Behavioral contagion: The tendency for behaviors, attitudes, and ideas to spread through a group.

Belief bias: The tendency to evaluate an argument’s logical strength based on its conclusion’s believability.

Ben Franklin effect: The phenomenon where a person who has done someone a favor is more likely to do that person another favor than they would be if they had received a favor from that person.

Bias blindness: The tendency to see oneself as less biased than others.

Bizarreness effect: The tendency to remember bizarre information more easily than common information.

Blind spot bias: The tendency to recognize cognitive biases in others but not in oneself.

Boomerang effect: When an attempt to persuade someone results in the opposite of the intended effect.

Bounded rationality: The idea that rational decision-making is limited by available information, cognitive limitations, and time constraints.

Brainwashing: Intense indoctrination using psychological techniques to radically change someone’s beliefs.

Here’s a list of “C” words for a glossary about psychological tricks, with short explanations:

Cheerleader effect: The phenomenon where individuals appear more attractive in a group than in isolation.

Choice-supportive bias: The tendency to remember one’s choices as better than they actually were.

Clustering illusion: The tendency to see patterns in random events.

Cocktail party effect: The ability to focus one’s attention on a particular stimulus while filtering out others.

Cognitive bias: Systematic errors in thinking that affect judgments and decisions.

Cognitive dissonance: The mental discomfort experienced when holding contradictory beliefs or values.

Commitment bias: The tendency to remain committed to a course of action, even when it’s no longer rational.

Confirmation bias: The tendency to search for, interpret, and recall information that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs.

Congruence bias: The tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing, instead of testing alternative hypotheses.

Context effect: The influence of environmental factors on perception and behavior.

Continued influence effect: The tendency for misinformation to continue influencing beliefs even after it has been corrected.

Contrast effect: The enhancement or diminishment of perception when compared with recently observed objects.

Cross-race effect: The tendency to more easily recognize faces of one’s own race.

Here’s a list of “D” words for a glossary about psychological tricks, with short explanations:

Decoy effect: The phenomenon where consumers change their preference between two options when presented with a third, asymmetrically dominated option.

Default effect: The tendency to choose pre-set options instead of alternatives, even when the alternatives would bring better results.

Defensive attribution: The tendency to attribute more blame to a victim of an accident as the severity of the accident increases.

Deindividuation: The loss of self-awareness in group situations that can lead to uninhibited behavior.

Déjà vu: The feeling that one has lived through the present situation before.

Denial: A defense mechanism in which a person refuses to accept reality or facts.

Diffusion of responsibility: The tendency for people to take less responsibility for their actions when others are present.

Disinhibition effect: The tendency to be more open or unrestrained in online interactions compared to face-to-face communication.

Displacement: A defense mechanism where a person redirects emotions or impulses onto a less threatening target.

Door-in-the-face technique: Making a large request that will likely be refused, followed by a smaller request that is more likely to be accepted.

Dopamine-driven feedback loops: The reinforcement of behaviors through the release of dopamine in the brain.

Double bind: A situation in which a person receives conflicting messages, and responding to one message means failing at the other.

Dual process theory: The idea that cognitive processes operate in two distinct modes: one automatic and unconscious, the other controlled and conscious.

Dunning-Kruger effect: The tendency for unskilled individuals to overestimate their own ability and for experts to underestimate theirs.

Here’s a list of “E” words for a glossary about psychological tricks, with short explanations:

Effort justification: The tendency to attribute greater value to an outcome if it required more effort to achieve.

Egocentric bias: The tendency to rely too heavily on one’s own perspective and have difficulty seeing things from other viewpoints.

Elaboration likelihood model: A theory of persuasion stating that people can be influenced via central (thoughtful) or peripheral (superficial) routes.

Emotional contagion: The phenomenon of having one person’s emotions trigger similar emotions in others.

Emotional reasoning: The tendency to believe that what we feel must be true.

Empathy gap: The tendency to underestimate the influence of visceral drives on one’s own attitudes, preferences, and behaviors.

Endowment effect: The tendency for people to overvalue something simply because they own it.

Enmeshment: A condition where two or more people, often family members, have blurred psychological boundaries.

Escalation of commitment: The tendency to continue investing time, money, or effort into a failing endeavor due to past investments.

Evaluability bias: The tendency to give more weight to attributes that are easier to evaluate.

Exaggeration effect: The tendency to remember past events as more extreme than they actually were.

Expectation bias: The tendency for expectations to influence perceptions and behavior.

Experimenter’s bias: The tendency for experimenters to influence the outcome of their research in some manner.

Exposure effect: The tendency to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar.

Extrinsic incentives bias: The tendency to attribute others’ behavior to external rewards when they actually might be intrinsically motivated.

Here’s a list of “F” words for a glossary about psychological tricks, with short explanations:

Fading affect bias: The tendency for the emotional response associated with negative memories to fade faster than the emotional response associated with positive memories.

Fallacy of composition: Assuming that what is true of a part is true of the whole.

False consensus effect: The tendency to overestimate how much others agree with one’s own beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes.

False memory: A psychological phenomenon where a person recalls something that did not actually occur.

False uniqueness bias: The tendency to see one’s positive traits as more unique than they actually are.

Familiarity principle: The tendency to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar.

Flashbulb memories: A highly detailed, vivid, and long-lasting memory of a surprising and emotionally significant event.

Foot-in-the-door technique: Getting a person to agree to a large request by first having them agree to a modest request.

Focusing effect: The tendency to place too much importance on one aspect of an event, causing an error in accurately predicting the utility of a future outcome.

Forer effect: The tendency to accept vague, general personality descriptions as uniquely applicable to oneself (also known as the Barnum effect).

Forgiveness bias: The tendency to more easily forgive people who are close to us.

Framing bias: The tendency to be influenced by the way information is presented, rather than by the information itself.

Framing effect: The tendency to draw different conclusions from the same information, depending on how it is presented.

Frequency illusion: The illusion in which a word, name, or thing that has recently come to one’s attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency.

Functional fixedness: The tendency to see objects as only working in a particular way.

Fundamental attribution error: The tendency to attribute others’ behaviors to their personality, while attributing one’s own behavior to external circumstances.

Here’s a list of “G” words for a glossary about psychological tricks, with short explanations:

Gambler’s fallacy: The mistaken belief that if something happens more frequently than normal during a given period, it will happen less frequently in the future, or vice versa.

Gaslighting: A form of psychological manipulation in which a person or group causes someone to question their own sanity, perception, or memory.

Gatekeeper effect: The phenomenon where certain individuals or entities control the flow of information to a larger group, potentially influencing opinions and decisions.

Gaze bias: The tendency to focus more on options that are visually appealing or that we are already looking at.

Gender bias: Prejudice or discrimination based on a person’s gender, often leading to unfair treatment or unequal opportunities.

Generation effect: The tendency to better remember information that one has generated oneself rather than information that is merely read.

Gestalt psychology: A theory of mind that focuses on how people perceive and organize visual information. It was founded by Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, and Kurt Koffka.

Goal gradient effect: The tendency to work harder as one gets closer to achieving a goal.

Grandiose delusion: A fixed, false belief characterized by fantastic, absurd, or exaggerated ideas about one’s own importance, power, knowledge, or identity.

Grief cycle: A model describing the emotional stages people typically go through when dealing with loss or change.

Ground-consequent fallacy: The tendency to assume that if the consequence of an event is good, then the event itself must be good.

Groupthink: The practice of thinking or making decisions as a group, resulting in unchallenged, poor-quality decision-making.

Group polarization: The tendency for groups to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclination of its members.

Gruen transfer: The moment when consumers enter a shopping mall or store and, surrounded by an intentionally confusing layout, lose track of their original intentions.

Guilt by association: A technique of creating a negative opinion about a person or idea by associating them with an undesirable person or group.

Gut feeling: An instinctive or intuitive feeling, often used as a basis for decision-making.

Here’s a list of “I” words for a glossary about psychological tricks, with short explanations:

Identification: A defense mechanism in which an individual adopts certain attributes, behaviors, or attitudes of another person or group.

Illusion of control: The tendency to believe one can control or influence outcomes that they demonstrably have no influence over.

Illusion of transparency: The tendency to overestimate the degree to which others can discern our internal states.

Illusory correlation: Perceiving a relationship between variables when no such relationship exists.

Illusory superiority: The tendency to overestimate one’s own abilities in relation to others.

Illusory truth effect: The tendency to believe information to be correct after repeated exposure.

Implicit bias: Unconscious attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions.

Imposter syndrome: Persistent doubt about one’s abilities and accomplishments, accompanied by the fear of being exposed as a fraud.

Inattentional blindness: Failing to notice a fully visible, but unexpected object because attention was engaged on another task, event, or object.

Information bias: The tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.

In-group bias: The tendency to favor members of one’s own group over those in other groups.

Inoculation theory: The idea that exposing people to weak arguments against their beliefs can strengthen those beliefs.

Introspection illusion: The belief that one has direct insight into the origins of their mental states, while treating others’ introspections as unreliable.

Ironic process theory: The psychological process whereby deliberate attempts to suppress certain thoughts make them more likely to surface.

Isolation effect: The tendency to give more weight to recently observed or recalled information.

Here’s a list of “K” words for a glossary about psychological tricks, with short explanations:

Kanner syndrome: Another term for classic autism, characterized by difficulties in social interaction, communication, and restricted or repetitive behaviors.

Kappa effect: A perceptual illusion where the temporal duration between a sequence of spatial intervals is thought to be relatively longer or shorter than it actually is.

Katharsis: The process of releasing strong or repressed emotions, often through art or drama, leading to renewal or restoration.

Kerning: In design and marketing psychology, the adjustment of space between letters to create a visually pleasing result that can subtly influence perception.

Keyword mnemonic: A memory technique that involves linking a word to be remembered with a common keyword that sounds similar and is easily visualized.

Kindchenschema: The set of facial and body features that make a creature appear “cute” and activate nurturing responses in humans.

Kinesics: The study of body language and non-verbal communication.

Kinesthetic learning: A learning style in which learning takes place by the student carrying out physical activities, rather than listening to a lecture or watching demonstrations.

Kleptomania: A recurrent urge to steal, typically without regard for need or profit.

Knee-jerk reaction: An immediate, automatic response to a situation without careful thought or analysis.

Knowledge bias: The tendency for people to evaluate arguments based on their prior knowledge and beliefs, rather than on the logical merit of the argument itself.

Knightian uncertainty: A lack of any quantifiable knowledge about some possible occurrence, as opposed to risk, which can be quantified.

Kohlberg’s stages of moral development: A theory proposing that moral reasoning develops through six stages, from pre-conventional to post-conventional thinking.

Koro syndrome: A culture-specific syndrome in which an individual has an overpowering belief that their sex organs are retracting and will disappear.

Kübbler-Ross model: A theory describing the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance).

Here’s a list of “L” words for a glossary about psychological tricks, with short explanations:

Labeling: Assigning a category or descriptor to a person or group, often leading to oversimplification or stereotyping.

Law of large numbers: The principle that as a sample size grows, its mean gets closer to the average of the whole population.

Learned helplessness: A condition in which a person suffers from a sense of powerlessness, arising from persistent failure to succeed.

Leniency bias: The tendency to be more lenient in evaluating people we know or like.

Licensing effect: The tendency to indulge in potentially harmful behaviors following positive behaviors.

Like-o-meter effect: The tendency to like people who like us.

Loss aversion: The tendency to prefer avoiding losses over acquiring equivalent gains.

Locus of control: The degree to which people believe they have control over their life outcomes.

Loyalty bias: The tendency to stay committed to a brand, group, or belief system, even when presented with contrary evidence.

Lucid dreaming: The phenomenon where a dreamer is aware they are dreaming and can potentially control the dream’s content.

Law of effect: The principle that behaviors followed by positive consequences are more likely to be repeated.

Latent learning: Learning that occurs without obvious reinforcement and is not immediately demonstrated.

Looking-glass self: The concept that individuals develop their self-image based on their understanding of how others perceive them.

Limited capacity model: The theory that individuals have a limited amount of cognitive resources to process information at any given time.

Ludic fallacy: The misuse of games and models to predict real-life outcomes.

Here’s an alphabetical list of “M” words for a glossary about psychological tricks, with short explanations:

Magnification: The tendency to exaggerate the importance of negative events or minimize the importance of positive ones.

Mere exposure effect: The tendency to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar.

Mirroring: The unconscious replication of another person’s nonverbal signals.

Misattribution of arousal: The tendency to incorrectly attribute physical or emotional arousal to the wrong source.

Mood congruence effect: The tendency to recall information that is consistent with one’s current mood.

Moral licensing: The tendency to engage in immoral behavior after doing something moral, as if you’ve “earned” the right to be bad.

Motivated reasoning: The tendency to form and maintain beliefs that protect one’s self-interest or emotional comfort.

Multitasking illusion: The belief that one can effectively perform two or more tasks simultaneously.

Munchausen syndrome: A factitious disorder where a person repeatedly and deliberately acts as if they have a physical or mental illness when they are not actually sick.

Myside bias: The tendency to search for, interpret, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs.

Here’s an alphabetical list of “N” words for a glossary about psychological tricks, with short explanations:

Naive realism: The belief that we see reality as it really is, objectively and without bias.

Narcissism: Excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one’s physical appearance.

Negativity bias: The tendency to give more importance to negative experiences or information compared to positive ones.

Neglect of probability: The tendency to disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty.

Nocebo effect: Experiencing adverse effects from a placebo due to negative expectations.

Nominal fallacy: The belief that because we have named something, we understand it.

Normalcy bias: The tendency to believe things will always function the way they normally have, leading to underestimating the likelihood of a disaster.

Nostalgia effect: The tendency to view past events more favorably than they were experienced at the time.

Not invented here syndrome: The tendency to avoid using or buying products, research, or knowledge from external sources.

Nudge theory: The concept of influencing behavior through subtle changes in the environment or presentation of choices.

Here’s an alphabetical list of “O” words for a glossary about psychological tricks, with short explanations:

Obedience to authority: The tendency to comply with commands from authority figures, even when they conflict with personal ethics.

Observer-expectancy effect: When a researcher’s cognitive bias causes them to subconsciously influence the participants of an experiment.

Occam’s razor: The principle that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

Omission bias: The tendency to judge harmful actions as worse than equally harmful inactions.

Operant conditioning: A learning process where behavior is modified through reinforcement or punishment.

Optimism bias: The tendency to believe that one is less likely to experience a negative event compared to others.

Ostrich effect: The tendency to ignore negative situations or information.

Out-group homogeneity bias: The tendency to view members of out-groups as more similar to each other than members of one’s in-group.

Overconfidence effect: The tendency to overestimate one’s own abilities or chances of success.

Overjustification effect: The reduction in intrinsic motivation for an activity after being externally rewarded for it.

Here’s an alphabetical list of “P” words for a glossary about psychological tricks, with short explanations:

Panic buying: The act of buying large quantities of a product in anticipation of, or after, a disaster or perceived threat of shortage.

Pareidolia: The tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern.

Peer pressure: Social influence exerted on an individual to conform to the expectations of a group.

Persistence bias: The tendency to continue a course of action even in the face of negative outcomes.

Placebo effect: A beneficial effect produced by a placebo treatment, which cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo itself.

Priming: The implicit memory effect in which exposure to a stimulus influences response to a later stimulus.

Projection: The defense mechanism of attributing one’s own unacceptable urges or qualities to another person.

Prospect theory: A theory stating that people make decisions based on the potential value of losses and gains rather than the final outcome.

Pygmalion effect: The phenomenon where higher expectations lead to an increase in performance.

Psychological reactance: The urge to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do in order to preserve a sense of freedom.