Glossary / I

Psychology terms starting with I

1,167 terms with short definitions. Study these as flashcards

Iother: In William James's view, the part of self that knows, chooses, and experiences life.
I statementnoun: A speaker describes personal feelings or needs using “I,” which can help reduce blame during disagreements.
I–Itadjective: In Buber’s philosophy, this describes relating to someone or something solely as an object for use or control.
I–Thouadjective: In Buber’s philosophy, this describes meeting another as a unique being whose experience matters in its own right.
I/E ratioabbreviation: The inspiration–expiration ratio compares inhaling time with exhaling time by dividing the first duration by the second.
I/O psychologyabbreviation: The study of behavior at work, including hiring, training, leadership, and job satisfaction.
IAAPabbreviation: An international professional organization connects psychologists worldwide and supports applying psychological science to practical problems.
IACUCabbreviation: An institutional animal oversight committee reviews research plans and care practices to protect animal welfare and meet applicable requirements.
IADLsabbreviation: Instrumental daily living activities are practical tasks, such as shopping or managing money, that help someone live independently.
IATabbreviation: The Implicit Association Test compares sorting speeds across paired categories to estimate how strongly concepts are automatically linked.
iatro-prefix: This word part connects a term with doctors or medical practice.
iatrochemical school of thoughtnoun: A historical medical approach proposed that chemical imbalance caused illness and that chemical remedies could restore health.
iatrogenicadjective: This describes a health problem unintentionally caused or worsened by treatment or a healthcare provider’s actions.
iatrogenic schizophrenianoun: A proposed condition called tardive dysmentia involves emotional, social, and activity changes associated with prolonged antipsychotic use.
iatrophysical school of thoughtnoun: A seventeenth-century medical approach used mathematics, measurement, and mechanics to explain how the body works.
ibogainenoun: A substance from the iboga plant alters perception and has been investigated for possible effects on addiction and withdrawal.
ibotenic acidnoun: A chemical in certain Amanita mushrooms activates glutamate receptors, including NMDA receptors, increasing excitation in nerve cells.
IBSabbreviation: A bowel disorder that causes belly pain and changes in bathroom habits, often worsened by stress.
ICCabbreviation: A statistic showing how strongly ratings or scores agree across judges or repeated measurements.
ICDabbreviation: The World Health Organization's manual for coding diseases and mental disorders.
icenoun: A street name for smokable methamphetamine, a powerful stimulant drug that can cause severe mental and body problems.
iceberg metaphornoun: This image presents conscious experience as a small visible portion of a much larger field of unconscious mental activity.
iceberg principlenoun: This principle proposes that obvious explanations of behavior or opinions leave out deeper reasons that require further investigation.
iceberg profilenoun: On the POMS mood questionnaire, this pattern places vigor above a standardized score of 50 and every other mood scale below.
ICFabbreviation: An intermediate care facility provides nursing and medical support for people needing less intensive care than hospitals or skilled nursing facilities.
icon (ikon)noun: A picture or visual sign represents an object, action, or idea.
iconic contentnoun: In Bruner’s developmental theory, these mental pictures contain information about particular things or features of the world.
iconic gesturenoun: A bodily movement conveys meaning by resembling the object, action, or feature being communicated.
iconic memoryphrase: A very brief visual memory holds an image for less than a second after it disappears.
iconic representationnoun: In Bruner’s theory, knowledge about objects and experiences takes the form of mental images built from sensory experience.
iconic symbolnoun: A written or spoken sign resembles what it represents through its appearance or sound.
iconicitynoun: Resemblance between a sign’s form and its meaning allows one thing to represent another.
iconoclastnoun: A person questions or tries to overturn widely accepted beliefs, customs, or ways of doing things.
iconolatrynoun: A religious practice honors sacred images as ways of connecting with the divine.
iconomanianoun: A historical label described an impulse to gather and worship images that was considered excessive or disruptive.
ICPabbreviation: Intracranial pressure is the pressure inside the skull, which can affect brain function when it becomes too high.
ICSabbreviation: Intracranial stimulation uses electrodes placed inside the brain to deliver electrical current directly to selected areas.
ICSHabbreviation: Interstitial cell-stimulating hormone is another name for luteinizing hormone, emphasizing its role in prompting the testes to produce androgens.
icterusnoun: Another name for jaundice describes yellowing skin and eye whites caused by a buildup of the pigment bilirubin.
ictusnoun: A sudden medical episode, especially a seizure, may be described using this word.
ICUabbreviation: A hospital area where very sick patients get constant watching and advanced medical treatment.
idnoun: The unconscious part of personality that pushes for immediate pleasure and basic drives, like hunger and sex.
id anxietynoun: Psychoanalytic theory proposes that this anxiety arises from instinctive urges within the unconscious part of personality called the id.
id psychologynoun: A psychoanalytic approach explains mental life by emphasizing unconscious instinctive urges that seek immediate pleasure or satisfaction.
id resistancenoun: Psychoanalytic theory proposes that unconscious urges to repeat earlier experiences can interfere with change during therapy.
IDAabbreviation: Initial data analysis checks a dataset’s quality and patterns before researchers apply more complex statistical methods.
IDDMabbreviation: Insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus is an older name for type 1 diabetes, where very limited insulin production makes replacement insulin necessary.
IDEAnoun: A thought or mental picture that comes from experience and can happen without current sensory input.
idea of influencenoun: An unsupported belief suggests that outside forces secretly control one’s experiences, often less firmly than a delusion.
idea of referencenoun: Someone feels that ordinary events or other people’s behavior carry a special personal meaning about them.
ideal observernoun: A theoretical observer uses available sensory information optimally, providing a benchmark for comparing human perception and decisions.
ideal performance state (IPS)noun: A person’s level of mental and bodily activation is especially well suited to performing at their best.
ideal selfnoun: A person’s imagined best version of themselves includes the qualities they hope or strive to develop.
idealismnoun: A family of philosophical views holds that reality depends on mind rather than existing entirely independently of it.
idealistic monismnoun: A philosophical view proposes that everything ultimately has one basic nature, understood as mind or spirit.
idealizationnoun: Seeing someone as almost perfect by noticing only strengths and ignoring faults, often to avoid mixed feelings.
idealizing transferencenoun: In self psychology, a client experiences the therapist as an ideal parent whose strength and care provide security.
ideationnoun: The forming of ideas and mental pictures in the mind.
ideational agnosianoun: A person cannot connect an object with its meaning or use, despite having adequate basic sensory abilities.
ideational apraxiaphrase: A person cannot plan and carry out the right steps of a familiar action, despite normal strength.
idée fixenoun: An unreasonable belief remains firmly held even when evidence shows that it is mistaken.
identical elements theorynoun: This theory proposes that learning transfers more easily when a new task shares parts with tasks already mastered.
identical pointsnoun: Matching locations in each eye’s retina receive corresponding images of an object positioned at a particular distance.
identical twinsphrase: Two siblings who develop when one fertilized egg splits, so they share nearly all the same genes.
identifiable neuronnoun: A large nerve cell has sufficiently consistent features across individuals for researchers to recognize and name it.
identificationnoun: Taking on another person's or group's traits, values, or identity, usually without fully realizing it.
identification testnoun: A verbal intelligence assessment asks someone to name pictured objects or their parts.
identification transferencenoun: During group therapy, a participant identifies with fellow members and wants to become more like them.
identification with the aggressorphrase: Unconsciously copying a threatening person's traits or aggression to feel safer or more in control.
identification–production distinctionnoun: A priming hypothesis separates implicit memory tasks requiring generated answers from tasks requiring recognition or checking of item properties.
identified patientphrase: The family member seen as having the problem, while the whole family may contribute to it.
identitynoun: A person's steady sense of who they are, including traits, roles, groups, and values.
identity achievement statusnoun: In Marcia’s model, someone has explored different possibilities and committed to choices about who they are.
identity confusionphrase: Feeling unsure about who you are, often during adolescence but sometimes later in life.
identity crisisphrase: A period of exploring values and roles while feeling unsure about who you are.
identity diffusionphrase: Having an unclear, unstable sense of who you are, including your goals, values, and feelings about yourself.
identity disordernoun: An older label for serious problems with sense of self, especially dissociative identity disorder.
identity foreclosurephrase: Choosing roles and values picked by others before exploring who you really want to be.
identity fusionnoun: Someone feels their personal self and group membership are inseparable, which can motivate major sacrifices for the group.
identity matrixnoun: A square number grid has ones on the diagonal running from upper left to lower right and zeros elsewhere.
identity neednoun: Fromm proposed that people need to experience themselves as distinct individuals with an independent sense of who they are.
identity politicsnoun: Political action grows from shared group identities and the concerns connected with belonging to those groups.
identity principlenoun: In Piaget’s theory, children recognize that an amount stays unchanged when nothing is added or removed despite changes in appearance.
identity status modelphrase: Marcia's theory sorts adolescent identity into four patterns based on how much someone explores and commits.
identity stylenoun: An adolescent’s usual approach to identity decisions involves exploring information, following others’ expectations, or avoiding the decisions.
identity theoryphrase: Thoughts and feelings are the same events as activity in the brain, not separate nonphysical things.
identity versus identity confusionnoun: Erikson proposed an adolescent stage focused on developing a coherent personal identity or remaining uncertain about oneself.
identity, negation, reciprocal, and correlative operations (INRC group)noun: Piaget proposed four linked logical operations for advanced reasoning: leaving unchanged, reversing, reciprocating, and combining reversal with reciprocation.
ideogramnoun: A written or drawn symbol communicates an idea or object through its visual form.
ideologynoun: An organized set of beliefs and values that shapes how a person or group understands society.
ideomotor activitynoun: Thoughts are accompanied by bodily movements that happen without a deliberate decision to make them.
ideomotor apraxiaphrase: Trouble carrying out learned movements on command despite understanding, strength, and coordination being intact.
ideomotor compatibilitynoun: A cue closely resembles the sensory result of its assigned action, making that action easier to select.
ideomotor principlenoun: A historical theory proposes that imagining movements sends weak signals to muscles, strengthening pathways used for later physical performance.
ideomotor suggestionnoun: During hypnosis, a suggested idea leads to a muscular response that feels automatic to the person.
ideomotor theorynoun: This hypothesis proposes that mentally representing an action can spontaneously produce it unless something holds the response back.
idio-prefix: This word part adds the meaning of something individual, distinctive, or private to a word.
idiocentricadjective: Someone emphasizes personal interests, goals, and individual qualities more than group membership or collective priorities.
idiocynoun: An obsolete and offensive diagnostic label was once used for intellectual disability.
idiodynamicsnoun: This view holds that people actively select relevant information from their surroundings and organize how they respond.
idiogamistnoun: An older label describes someone whose full sexual response occurs only with their own partner, sometimes including similar people.
idiogenesisnoun: A condition develops without an identifiable cause, especially when discussing the origin of a disease.
idioglossianoun: A private communication system develops between people, particularly twins, that other listeners cannot understand.
idiographicadjective: Focused on understanding one person's unique pattern instead of making broad rules from groups of people.
idiolalianoun: Speech becomes unintelligible because many sounds are left out, replaced, or pronounced in altered ways.
idiolectnoun: An individual uses language in a distinctive way through their choices of words, grammar, and pronunciation.
idiomnoun: A familiar expression has a shared meaning that cannot be worked out simply by interpreting each word literally.
idiopathicadjective: Describes a disease or symptom that appears without a known cause.
idiopathic epilepsynoun: This label describes epilepsy involving repeated seizures whose underlying cause has not been clearly identified.
idiophrenicadjective: An older descriptive word indicates that a mental disorder results from an underlying brain disease.
idioretinal lightnoun: Faint gray visual sensations in darkness arise from internal retinal or brain activity rather than incoming light.
idiosyncrasynoun: An unusual personal habit or mental or physical trait that is distinctive to one individual.
idiosyncrasy-credit modelnoun: This model proposes that contributions and loyalty earn group members tolerance for later mistakes or departures from shared rules.
idiosyncratic classificationnoun: Items are sorted together despite having no apparent shared features in their appearance or meaning.
idiosyncratic intoxicationnoun: A historical clinical description concerns unusually extreme behavioral and emotional changes after an apparently small amount of alcohol.
idiosyncratic reactionnoun: Someone responds unexpectedly to a drug, sometimes showing unusually strong, weak, or opposite effects.
idiotnoun: An obsolete, offensive label was historically applied to people with severe intellectual disability.
idiot savantnoun: An outdated, offensive label described someone with an exceptional specific ability alongside intellectual or other developmental differences.
idioversenoun: In postmodern thought, someone’s unique lived world includes all their sensations, interpretations, and understandings.
IDRAabbreviation: The Insanity Defense Reform Act is a 1984 U.S. federal law that narrowed the insanity defense and changed proof responsibilities.
IDSabbreviation: A coordinated health care network in which providers work together to deliver and manage patient services.
IEPabbreviation: An individualized education program documents a student’s disability-related learning needs, educational goals, and planned school services.
if…then profilesnoun: These descriptions map how someone’s characteristic behavior changes depending on the social situation they encounter.
IFSPabbreviation: An Individualized Family Service Plan organizes early developmental support for a child under three and the child’s family.
IGTabbreviation: The Iowa Gambling Task assesses decisions through card choices offering different patterns of immediate gains and longer-term outcomes.
IHSabbreviation: The Indian Health Service is a U.S. federal agency providing health services for American Indian and Alaska Native communities.
iich’aanoun: Historical accounts describe a culturally named pattern of distress in Navajo communities involving episodes of uncontrolled aggression.
IKBSabbreviation: An intelligence knowledge-based system uses stored knowledge and artificial intelligence methods to solve problems or support decisions.
ikotanoun: Historical descriptions of myriachit in Siberian populations include seemingly involuntary copying of other people's movements.
ILDabbreviation: Interaural level differences are differences in sound intensity between the ears that help locate a sound's source.
iliohypogastric nervenoun: A nerve from the lower back supplies abdominal muscles and sensation in parts of the lower abdomen and buttock.
ilioinguinal nervenoun: A nerve from the lower back carries sensation from parts of the groin, upper inner thigh, and external genitals.
illegitimacynoun: An outdated social and legal label classified children according to whether their parents were married when they were born.
illicitadjective: Not allowed by law or rules, especially when talking about illegal drugs or secret forbidden behavior.
Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA)noun: A standardized assessment compares children's spoken and written language skills with those of a reference group to investigate learning difficulties.
illiteracynoun: A person lacks the ability to read or write, or both.
illnessnoun: Feeling physically or mentally unwell, whether from disease, injury, or emotional problems.
illness anxiety disorderphrase: Persistent fear of having or getting a serious disease despite few or no real physical symptoms.
illness behaviornoun: People respond to being ill through feelings, beliefs, daily activities, communication, and choices about seeking care.
illocutionary actnoun: A speaker performs a social action through words, such as making a promise, giving an order, or asking a question.
illogicalitynoun: A pattern of reasoning leads to conclusions that lack support or do not follow from the available information.
illuminancenoun: The amount of visible light reaching each unit of surface area is measured in lux.
illuminationnoun: A sudden clear understanding of a problem, event, or relationship after confusion or struggle.
illumination conditionsnoun: An environment's lighting features, including strength and glare, affect how comfortably and effectively people can perform tasks.
illumination standardsnoun: Recommended lighting levels specify how much light should reach a work surface for particular tasks, usually in lux.
illumination unitnoun: A unit measures light arriving per surface area, historically the foot-candle and now commonly the lux.
illuminismnoun: A historical clinical label describes an intensely elevated state involving hallucinated conversations with beings experienced as imaginary or supernatural.
illusionnoun: A misleading impression caused by wrongly reading what you sense, remember, or believe.
illusion of agencynoun: A person mistakenly experiences an event as something they caused or controlled.
illusion of controlphrase: Believing your choices can control outside events that are actually ruled by chance or other forces.
illusion of doublesnoun: A person holds a false, firmly maintained belief that familiar loved ones have been replaced by identical-looking strangers.
illusion of orientationnoun: Reduced clarity of consciousness causes someone to misidentify surroundings or people, including misunderstanding where they are.
illusion of unique invulnerabilitynoun: Someone mistakenly believes they have special protection from risks or misfortunes that can affect other people.
illusion of willnoun: Someone falsely feels that their intention brought about an event beyond their control.
illusory conjunctionnoun: During a brief encounter, perception mistakenly combines a feature of one item with a different item.
illusory contournoun: A person sees an edge that the visual arrangement suggests even though no actual boundary is drawn there.
illusory correlationphrase: Seeing two events as linked more strongly than they really are, or when no real link exists.
illusory covariationnoun: Someone perceives a consistent relationship between two things even though the supposed pattern does not actually exist.
illusory memorynoun: A recollection contains inaccurate details or describes an event that never occurred, even when it feels convincing.
illusory movementnoun: Something appears to move or change size even though the perceived motion or size change is not actually occurring.
illy (illie)noun: A slang name describes a tobacco or cannabis cigarette containing added PCP, a drug that changes perception and awareness.
iloperidonenoun: An atypical antipsychotic medicine treats psychotic symptoms partly by blocking certain dopamine and serotonin receptors in the brain.
imabbreviation: The abbreviation means intramuscular, describing something located within a muscle or an injection delivered into muscle tissue.
imagenoun: A mental picture, sound, or other memory experience brought back without the real thing present.
imageless thoughtnoun: A historically debated proposal holds that thinking can happen without mental pictures or other sensory experiences.
imagerynoun: Sensory-like experiences in the mind without the real thing being present.
imagery codenoun: Information is stored in memory through a mental picture representing an object, idea, or experience.
imagery cuenoun: A deliberately imagined image serves as a signal that helps guide a person's actions or attention.
imagery effectnoun: People tend to remember a word better when they picture what it represents than when they only read it.
imagery rehearsal therapynoun: A treatment for recurring nightmares involves rewriting dream events with less distressing content and practicing the revised images while awake.
imagery techniquenoun: A therapeutic method uses imagined scenes to help people relax, manage distress, or work with emotions.
imagery trainingnoun: Structured practice develops clearer, more vivid, and more controllable mental experiences involving individual senses and combinations of senses.
imaginal exposurephrase: A therapist has the person vividly picture a feared situation to reduce anxiety through repeated mental exposure.
Imaginarynoun: In Lacan's theory, an early state where infants feel fused with others before language and social rules.
imaginary audiencephrase: A teen's mistaken feeling that other people are constantly watching and judging them.
imaginary companionphrase: A made-up friend a child treats as real during pretend play and emotional sharing.
imaginationnoun: The mind's ability to form ideas or pictures without direct input from the senses.
imagination inflationphrase: Imagining an event can make someone more likely to later believe it really happened, especially from childhood.
imagingnoun: Making pictures of the brain or body with scanners helps doctors and researchers study structure and activity.
imaging geneticsnoun: Researchers combine genetic information with brain scans to study links between genetic differences and brain features related to behavior.
imagonoun: In psychoanalytic theory, an unconscious image of someone important, often a childhood caregiver, shapes later relationships.
imago therapynoun: A relationship therapy uses structured exercises based on the proposal that unconscious caregiver images influence partner choices and relationship difficulties.
imbecilitynoun: An obsolete, offensive label was historically applied to people described as having moderate or severe intellectual disability.
imipraminenoun: An older antidepressant from the tricyclic group, a three-ring chemical family, used for severe depression.
imitationnoun: Learning by copying another person's actions, words, or behavior, on purpose or without meaning to.
imitation gamenoun: Turing proposed testing machine intelligence by asking whether a questioner could distinguish a computer from a human through written conversation.
imitative learningnoun: In Tomasello's theory, learners adopt another person's methods while grasping the intentions behind those actions.
immanent justicenoun: In Piaget's account, children may believe wrongdoing automatically brings punishment, regardless of intentions or surrounding circumstances.
immaterialismnoun: A philosophical view holds that objects exist through perceived qualities, without an independent material substance beneath those qualities.
immature sciencenoun: In the supplied account of Kuhn's framework, a field has not yet reached even the preparadigmatic stage of scientific development.
immaturitynoun: Showing childish or poorly suited behavior because age-expected emotional or social skills are not yet developed.
immediacy behaviornoun: Actions such as leaning closer or exchanging looks communicate warmth, ease, or interpersonal closeness.
immediate experiencenoun: In Wundt's framework, experience consists of directly perceived qualities before added interpretation or explanation.
immediate gratificationphrase: Getting pleasure or reward right away after doing something, instead of waiting for a larger benefit.
immediate memoryphrase: Holding and repeating information right after hearing it, often only long enough to use it.
immediate recall testnoun: A memory assessment asks someone to reproduce information directly after encountering it, without a planned waiting interval.
immobilitynoun: Showing little or no movement for long periods, often seen in catatonia during severe psychotic disorders.
immune disordernoun: A health condition disrupts immune function, making the body's defenses too weak, too active, poorly regulated, or directed at itself.
immune responsephrase: When foreign substances enter the body, immune cells react to fight and remove them.
immune systemphrase: The body's defense network recognizes germs and other foreign material and helps fight disease.
immunitynoun: Greater resistance to being persuaded or upset after earlier exposure to a mild challenge.
immunizationnoun: Protection from disease given by vaccines or ready-made antibodies instead of catching the illness naturally.
immunocytochemistrynoun: Researchers use marked antibodies to reveal where specific proteins are located inside cells.
immunodeficiency disordernoun: An inherited or acquired condition weakens immune defenses, making infections harder for the body to resist.
immunologynoun: This scientific field studies how immune defenses work, including protection against infection and reactions such as allergies.
immunosuppressionnoun: Immune activity becomes reduced, limiting the body's ability to respond effectively to infections and other threats.
immunotherapynoun: A medical treatment changes immune activity to help manage disease, sometimes increasing responses and sometimes reducing them.
Imodiumnoun: This brand name identifies loperamide, a medicine that treats diarrhea by slowing movement through the intestines.
impact analysisnoun: Researchers use numerical evidence, often from controlled comparisons, to estimate how much a program caused its intended outcomes.
impaired judgmentphrase: Having trouble weighing evidence and making sensible choices, often leading to risky or unreasonable actions.
impairmentnoun: A loss or drop in normal body or mental functioning that makes everyday tasks harder.
impairment indexphrase: A score showing how many thinking tests fall in the impaired range, suggesting possible brain dysfunction.
impeachment evidencenoun: Information presented in court challenges whether a witness or their testimony deserves to be believed.
imperativenoun: A demand carries a strong sense of urgency or obligation to act.
imperceptibleadjective: Something is too faint or too slightly different for an observer to detect under particular conditions.
impersonationnoun: Someone deliberately takes on another person's identity or copies their characteristic actions and expressions.
impingementnoun: Winnicott proposed that disturbing intrusions in an infant's caregiving environment can interrupt the development of a spontaneous sense of self.
implantationnoun: When a fertilized egg attaches to the wall of the uterus about a week after ovulation.
implanted memorynoun: Someone comes to remember an event that did not happen after another person persuades them it occurred.
implemental mind-setnoun: After choosing a goal, a person focuses on planning and carrying out the actions needed to reach it.
implementation evaluationphrase: Checks whether a program was carried out as planned and reached the people it was meant for.
implicaturenoun: A speaker suggests a meaning that listeners infer even though the words do not directly state or logically require it.
Implicit Association Test (IAT)noun: A computerized task compares sorting speeds across category pairings to estimate the relative strength of automatic mental associations.
implicit attitudenoun: A fairly lasting tendency to evaluate something positively or negatively operates with little conscious awareness.
implicit attitude measurenoun: A procedure assesses someone's evaluations indirectly while they are unaware that those evaluations are being examined.
implicit behaviornoun: An activity or reaction is hidden from direct observation, requires instruments to detect, or occurs without the person's awareness.
implicit biasnoun: Automatic associations or evaluations can shape judgments and actions without conscious awareness or deliberate agreement.
implicit causalitynoun: Certain verbs suggest which participant caused an event, even when the sentence gives no explicit explanation.
implicit cognitionnoun: Mental processing or knowledge influences a person without being clearly available to their conscious awareness.
implicit emotion regulationnoun: Emotional responses change in strength or duration without deliberate monitoring or a conscious effort to manage them.
implicit knowledgenoun: Understanding gained through experience guides skilled activity without clear awareness and is often difficult to explain in words.
implicit leadership theoriesnoun: People carry usually unstated, experience-based beliefs about which qualities make someone a leader.
implicit learningphrase: People pick up a skill or pattern without trying to learn it or knowing what they learned.
implicit measurenoun: A psychological characteristic is assessed through task responses without the participant recognizing that this characteristic is being measured.
implicit memoryphrase: Past experience changes behavior without the person consciously trying to remember it.
implicit memory testnoun: A task measures how earlier experiences affect current performance without asking people to consciously remember those experiences.
implicit personality theoriesnoun: People hold often unspoken assumptions about which personality traits tend to occur together in someone.
implicit prejudicenoun: An unfavorable evaluation of a social group operates without the person consciously recognizing that attitude.
implicit processnoun: A mental operation cannot be accurately examined or described by looking inward, even under favorable conditions.
implicit responsenoun: An internal reaction, such as a thought or bodily change, is usually inferred or measured indirectly.
implicit self theorynoun: This proposal explains how beliefs that personal qualities are fixed or changeable shape expectations, motivation, and behavior.
implosive therapyphrase: Uses vivid imagined fear scenes, often intensified, to reduce anxiety through prolonged exposure.
importance of an attitudenoun: The degree of personal concern someone attaches to an attitude's subject helps determine how much that attitude matters.
impossible figurenoun: A depicted shape contains parts that suggest conflicting spatial arrangements, preventing a consistent interpretation of the whole.
impostor phenomenonnoun: Despite evidence of achievement, someone doubts their competence and fears others will discover they do not deserve their success.
impostor syndromenoun: In common usage, someone feels their success is undeserved and fears being exposed as incapable despite evidence of competence.
impotencenoun: An older label describes difficulty getting or keeping an erection firm enough for sexual activity.
impoverishedadjective: A stimulus or environment provides little information, variety, or opportunity for sensory and intellectual engagement.
impressionnoun: A general feeling or quick judgment formed without careful thought or full evidence.
impression formationnoun: People combine information and personal interpretations to build an overall mental picture of a person, group, or object.
impression managementphrase: Trying to shape how other people see you by purposely showing your most likable qualities.
impressionism factornoun: In Berlyne's art research, this rating dimension emphasizes surface appearance, including texture, light, and color, over ideas and lines.
imprintingnoun: A fast learning process during a brief early period when some young animals attach to the first moving thing.
improvement ratenoun: The percent drop in failures after using a selection test instead of choosing people by chance.
improvisationnoun: Within psychodrama, people explore concerns by acting out situations spontaneously, without rehearsing or preparing their responses.
IMPSabbreviation: The Inpatient Multidimensional Psychiatric Scale is an interview rating tool developed to assess psychotic symptoms and behavior among hospitalized patients.
impuberismnoun: An older term describes not yet reaching puberty, whether because of young age or delayed development.
impulsenoun: A sudden strong urge to do something without stopping to think first.
impulse controlphrase: The ability to stop a sudden urge and choose whether to act on it.
impulse-control disordernoun: A mental disorder involves repeated difficulty resisting urges to perform actions that cause significant harm to oneself or others.
impulse-timing modelnoun: This movement model proposes that the strength and timing of force bursts from opposing muscles determine a movement's path.
impulsionnoun: A sudden, strong urge pushes someone toward acting, often before they have considered the consequences.
impulsiveadjective: Acting quickly without enough thought about what might happen next, especially when taking risks.
impulsive characternoun: A personality pattern involves frequently acting quickly without sufficiently considering what might happen afterward.
imputationnoun: Researchers replace missing observations with estimated or selected values so they can analyze an incomplete dataset.
imunoun: A historically described pattern among some Ainu and Sakhalin women involves unusually strong startling, involuntary copying, and following commands.
Imurannoun: This brand name identifies azathioprine, a medicine used to reduce immune activity in transplantation and some immune-related illnesses.
in absentiaphrase: A legal proceeding happens while the person whose case is being considered is absent.
in re Gaultother: A 1967 Supreme Court ruling established important rights for young people facing juvenile court proceedings.
in situ hybridizationnoun: A laboratory method locates particular DNA or RNA sequences inside cells or tissue using matching, labeled probes.
in uterophrase: Inside the mother's uterus, meaning during development before birth.
in vitrophrase: Biological processes occur outside an organism, typically under controlled laboratory conditions in dishes or tubes.
in vitro fertilization (IVF)noun: A fertility procedure combines eggs and sperm in a laboratory before placing a resulting embryo into a uterus.
in vivophrase: Done in a real-life setting, especially when facing feared situations during exposure treatment.
in vivo desensitizationnoun: A behavioral treatment reduces fear through planned encounters with actual feared situations, usually progressing from easier to harder ones.
in vivo exposurephrase: A treatment where someone faces feared real-life situations directly to lower anxiety over time.
in-basket testnoun: A management assessment asks someone to handle realistic workplace messages and documents as though doing the job.
in-home respitenoun: Temporary care provided in someone’s home gives their usual family caregivers a break from caregiving responsibilities.
in-house evaluationnoun: An organization assesses its own program using staff members who work within that organization.
inaccessibilitynoun: In clinical descriptions, a person shows little observable response to attempts at contact or other outside stimulation.
inadvertent plagiarismnoun: Someone mistakes a previously encountered idea for their own invention because they have forgotten its source.
inanimate nounnoun: A noun names something linguistically treated as lacking the living agency needed to perform an action.
inappetencenoun: A person experiences reduced appetite or desire, which can occur during depression and other conditions.
inappropriate affectnoun: An emotional expression seems mismatched with the surrounding situation or with what the person says they think or want.
inappropriate stimulusnoun: An input produces a response usually triggered by a different kind of input, such as pressure producing visual sensations.
Inapsinenoun: A brand name for droperidol identifies a medicine used around surgery and sometimes for severe agitation.
inattentionnoun: Trouble keeping attention focused, or having it drift from one thing to another.
inattentional blindnessnoun: Someone misses an unexpected, visible event because their attention is occupied by something else.
inbornadjective: Present from birth rather than learned from experience or teaching.
inborn error of metabolismnoun: A genetic change disrupts the body’s chemical processing, often by affecting an enzyme or the movement of substances.
inbreedingnoun: Reproduction between close biological relatives increases the chance that offspring inherit matching copies of certain harmful gene variants.
inbreeding avoidancenoun: Behaviors that reduce mating among close biological relatives can limit genetic risks associated with such reproduction.
incantationnoun: Ritual speech, song, or chanting follows prescribed words, often within religious practices or traditions involving magic.
incendiarismnoun: An older clinical label describes pyromania, involving repeated fire setting driven by urges and followed by pleasure or relief.
incentivenoun: An outside reward or condition that pushes someone to act.
incentive motivationnoun: Anticipating a rewarding outcome creates motivation to act toward obtaining it.
incentive systemnoun: An organization sets rewards and rules for earning them to encourage particular kinds of work performance.
incentive theorynoun: A theory proposes that motivation arises from outside rewards or deterrents interacting with someone’s mental and bodily state.
incentive valuenoun: The personal worth of a possible reward or other motivator determines how appealing it seems to someone.
incestnoun: Sexual contact occurs between family members whose relationship falls within a society’s prohibited family boundaries.
incest barriernoun: Psychoanalytic theory proposes an internal defense against sexual wishes involving relatives, formed by taking in society’s family prohibitions.
incestuous tiesnoun: Fromm proposed that excessive dependence on family or symbolic substitutes can restrict independence and relationships beyond that circle.
incidencenoun: The number of new cases in a group during a set time period.
incident processnoun: A teaching method presents limited case information and lets learners question an informed instructor before making decisions.
incidental learningphrase: Knowledge picked up without trying to learn it while paying attention to something else.
incidental memorynoun: Information is remembered even though the person did not deliberately try to learn or retain it.
inclusionnoun: Students with disabilities learn in regular classrooms as much as possible, with supports they need.
inclusion–exclusion criteriaphrase: Rules for who can join a study and who must be left out.
inclusion/exclusion modelnoun: A judgment theory predicts that including context in a target’s representation creates similarity, while excluding extreme context creates contrast.
inclusive fitnessnoun: Evolutionary success includes producing offspring and effects on relatives’ reproduction, weighted by how closely those relatives are genetically related.
inclusivenessnoun: A Gestalt principle describes noticing a surrounding larger figure while overlooking a smaller figure completely contained within it.
incoherencenoun: Speech or writing becomes jumbled and hard to understand because thinking is disorganized.
incompatibilitynoun: When people cannot get along or work together smoothly because their styles or needs clash.
incompatible responsephrase: A feeling or action that cannot happen at the same time as another one.
incompatible response methodnoun: A habit change technique replaces an unwanted action with another action that cannot happen at the same moment.
incompetencenoun: Not being able to do a needed task well enough or make sound decisions when required.
incompetency pleanoun: A court claim argues that a defendant currently cannot sufficiently understand proceedings or help their lawyer prepare a defense.
incompetent reservoirnoun: An organism transmits a particular disease causing agent poorly and may sometimes help reduce its spread.
incomplete block designnoun: An experiment arranges treatments within blocks, with at least some blocks containing only a subset of the treatments.
incomplete counterbalancingnoun: An experiment uses selected treatment sequences, balancing how often treatments occupy each position without testing every possible sequence.
incomplete factorial designnoun: An experiment tests a selected subset of possible combinations of the factors being studied.
incomplete spinal cord injurynoun: Spinal cord damage leaves some movement or sensation preserved below the injured area.
incomplete-pictures testnoun: An assessment measures how early someone recognizes objects as drawings become progressively more complete.
incomplete-sentence testnoun: An assessment asks people to finish sentence beginnings, often to explore personality, feelings, or concerns.
incongruencenoun: A mismatch between a person's real experiences and self-image, often causing distress or behavior that feels fake.
incongruitynoun: Something does not fit with expectations, surrounding elements, or an accepted pattern.
incongruity theory of humornoun: A theory explains humor as arising when elements unexpectedly clash with one another or with what someone anticipates.
incontinencenoun: Loss of control over urination or bowel movements, often due to nerve, brain, or body problems.
incoordinationnoun: Poor control of body movements so actions do not work smoothly together.
incorporationnoun: Psychoanalytic theory describes a fantasy of swallowing a person or thing and experiencing it as physically present within oneself.
incorporation dreamnoun: A dream weaves an actual bodily sensation or outside event into its unfolding content.
incrementaladjective: Happening through small, added steps over time rather than through one big change.
incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER)noun: A comparison divides the difference in costs between two health options by the difference in their measured benefits.
incremental learningnoun: Learning develops gradually through successive experiences, with each trial potentially adding to what has already been learned.
incremental theorynoun: A person believes that psychological qualities, such as intelligence or personality, can gradually develop and change.
incremental validityphrase: How much a new test improves prediction or decisions beyond information already collected.
incubationnoun: A problem solution slowly forms outside awareness, often after focused effort has stopped.
incubation of anxietynoun: A proposed learning process makes anxiety stronger when a learned warning cue repeatedly appears without the original upsetting event.
incubusnoun: In folklore, a male supernatural being was believed to have sexual contact with women during sleep.
incusnoun: A tiny middle ear bone passes sound vibrations from the malleus to the stapes.
indecencynoun: Conduct receives this label when a culture judges it offensive or improper, particularly concerning sexual matters.
indefinite articlenoun: A word such as English “a” or “an” introduces a noun without identifying a particular, already established example.
indemnity plannoun: This health insurance arrangement reimburses covered care after delivery and usually allows substantial choice among providers.
independencenoun: Being able to think, choose, and act without too much control from other people or groups.
independent eventsphrase: Two outcomes are unrelated, so knowing one does not change the chance of the other.
independent groupsphrase: Separate sets of participants where each person is in only one group being compared.
independent livingnoun: Managing most everyday activities without help is one meaning; another emphasizes disabled people’s rights to direct their lives.
independent phenomenanoun: In parapsychology, these are alleged paranormal events attributed neither to human thought transmission nor to mental control of objects.
independent practice association (IPA)noun: An association of private doctors arranges prepaid care, receiving payment per service or a fixed amount per enrolled person.
independent random samplingnoun: Researchers select members individually through a chance procedure that gives every population member an equal opportunity for selection.
independent random variablesnoun: These chance-based quantities have outcomes that provide no information about the probabilities of one another’s values.
independent samplesphrase: Two groups whose members are unrelated, so one person's score does not affect the other's.
independent samplingnoun: Researchers choose participants so that earlier selections do not change anyone else’s chance of being included.
independent self-construalnoun: A person understands themselves mainly through their distinctive qualities, achievements, and separateness, placing less emphasis on social connections.
independent variable (IV)phrase: A factor researchers change, or treat as coming first, to see whether it affects an outcome.
independent-groups designnoun: A study compares separate participant groups, with each person assigned to just one experimental condition.
independent-living aidnoun: A device or system helps a person with a disability maintain or improve their ability to perform everyday activities.
independent-living programnoun: Community services help people with disabilities build everyday skills, increase self-direction, and obtain support for living more independently.
independent-samples t testnoun: A statistical test evaluates a difference between two unrelated groups’ averages while accounting for variability and sample sizes.
Inderalnoun: This brand name identifies propranolol, a beta blocker that can reduce certain physical signs of anxiety.
indeterminacynoun: Available information or mathematical conditions allow multiple possible solutions or descriptions instead of identifying a single one.
indeterminacy principlenoun: Quantum physics sets a fundamental limit on how precisely a particle’s position and momentum can both be specified.
indeterminate sentencingnoun: A court sets a range of confinement time, leaving release authorities discretion over the actual duration within that range.
indeterminismnoun: This philosophical position holds that prior conditions do not fully fix every event, including, in some psychological accounts, human choices.
indexnoun: A combined score uses several measures to estimate a broader trait or likely outcome.
index adopteesnoun: In certain adoption studies, these participants have biological and adoptive parents who differ in whether they have the disorder being studied.
index casenoun: A person with a suspected inherited condition serves as the starting point for studying that condition among their relatives.
index of discriminationnoun: A score shows how well a test or question distinguishes people with higher overall performance from those with lower performance.
index of reliabilityphrase: A number that shows how consistently a test gives similar results across time, items, or raters.
index of validitynoun: A number, usually a correlation, describes how closely assessment scores relate to an accepted indicator of what they should measure.
index of variabilitynoun: A numerical measure describes how widely values in a dataset differ from one another.
Indian Health Service (IHS)noun: A U.S. federal agency delivers healthcare and supports health needs among eligible Alaska Native and American Indian communities.
indicated interventionphrase: A preventive service for people already showing early warning signs of a problem but not a full disorder.
indicativenoun: A verb form used for regular statements about what is happening or believed to be true.
indicator variablenoun: A measured variable can represent an underlying concept, or a zero-or-one variable can show whether a category applies.
indictmentnoun: A grand jury's formal criminal charge saying there is enough evidence for a trial.
indifference of indicatornoun: Different-looking intelligence test questions tend to reflect a shared general ability, although they do so to different degrees.
indigenous researchernoun: A researcher comes from the community being studied and investigates questions about that community or within it.
indirect agonistphrase: A drug that boosts a neurotransmitter's effect without attaching to the receptor itself.
indirect associationsnoun: In disorganized speech, ideas connect through links the speaker leaves unstated, making their meaning difficult for listeners to follow.
indirect attitude measurenoun: Researchers estimate someone’s attitudes from behavior or task responses without asking them to state those attitudes.
indirect measurementnoun: Researchers assess something difficult to measure directly by collecting information about another variable that can stand for it.
indirect memory testnoun: A task measures how earlier experience changes performance without asking people to deliberately remember that experience.
indirect method of therapynoun: A therapist supports clients in leading the conversation, often reflecting their words without directing or judging what they say.
indirect objectnoun: In grammar, this noun or noun phrase names a recipient or beneficiary, such as Mia in the sentence Leo gave Mia socks.
indirect odor effectnoun: Thoughts or expectations connected with a smell produce changes in brain or spinal cord activity.
indirect relationshipnoun: In statistical models, two variables are connected through another variable that lies between them in the proposed pathway.
indirect scalingnoun: Researchers build a numerical scale of perceived intensity from people’s judgments comparing stimuli two at a time.
indirect speech actnoun: A speaker communicates an intended action or purpose that listeners must infer beyond the words’ literal form.
indirect suggestibilitynoun: This proposed form of suggestibility describes responsiveness to hidden or subtle influences instead of openly stated suggestions.
individual accuracynoun: In interpersonal research, someone’s judgments match how another person generally behaves across interactions with different partners.
individual differencesphrase: People differ from one another in traits, abilities, and other characteristics that matter in behavior.
Individual Family Service Plan (IFSP)noun: A written early intervention plan organizes developmental services, family priorities, and goals for an infant or toddler and their family.
individual programnoun: This teaching method puts learners in charge of planning their studies and completing the activities they choose.
individual psychologyphrase: Adler's approach says people consciously work to overcome inferiority, belong, and reach meaningful life goals.
individual psychotherapyphrase: A one-on-one treatment where a therapist helps one person understand and change thoughts, feelings, or behavior.
individual response stereotypynoun: A person shows a characteristic, enduring pattern of automatic bodily reactions to events, such as changes in heartbeat or sweating.
individual selectionnoun: Natural selection favors inherited traits that increase an individual’s own reproductive success, making those traits more common across generations.
Individual Service Plan (ISP)noun: A shared plan identifies a disabled person’s preferred goals and the services and supports needed to work toward them.
individual therapyphrase: A therapist meets with one client alone to understand problems and help improve thoughts, feelings, or behavior.
individual-differences scaling (INDSCAL)noun: A statistical method maps perceived similarities while allowing people to give different weights to the features behind their judgments.
individualismnoun: A cultural outlook that puts personal independence and individual goals ahead of group needs.
individualist feminismnoun: A feminist perspective emphasizes women’s personal autonomy, individual rights, freedom to act, and diversity among their choices and lives.
individualistic reward structurenoun: A reward system gives each person rewards for their own achievements, independently of how anyone else performs.
individualitynoun: Each person's one-of-a-kind pattern of personality traits and qualities.
individualizationnoun: The process of becoming distinct from other people in the same group.
individualized education program (IEP)phrase: A written school plan sets learning goals and support services for a child whose disability affects education.
individualized instructionnoun: Teaching combines personal guidance and learning at each student's pace to build needed skills toward course goals.
individualized readingnoun: A reading instruction method chooses books that match a child's interests and current reading abilities.
Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)noun: A U.S. law funds and requires special education, supporting learning alongside students without disabilities as much as appropriate.
individuationnoun: A gradual process of becoming a whole, integrated self by bringing unconscious parts into awareness.
indoctrinationnoun: People are taught to accept particular beliefs, often through the influence of someone with authority.
indolenoun: A chemical compound provides a shared ring structure found in serotonin, melatonin, tryptophan, and LSD.
indolealkylaminenoun: A member of this chemical group has an indole structure; some members resemble serotonin and can produce hallucinations.
indoleaminenoun: A member of this chemical family contains an indole structure and an amine group, with serotonin and melatonin as examples.
INDSCALabbreviation: Individual-differences scaling models similarity judgments using shared dimensions that different people may give different amounts of importance.
induced abortionnoun: A pregnancy is intentionally ended through medication or a medical procedure.
induced aggressionnoun: Hostile or aggressive behavior is triggered by drugs, brain stimulation, or unpleasant experiences.
induced colornoun: A region appears to change color because of visual stimulation nearby, although stimulation within that region has not changed.
induced compliance effectnoun: After acting against a personal belief, someone may adjust that belief to better match their behavior and reduce mental discomfort.
induced hallucinationnoun: A person responsive to hypnosis experiences a perception without a matching external source after receiving a hypnotic suggestion.
induced hypothermianoun: Body temperature is deliberately lowered, usually during medical care, to reduce oxygen needs or serve another treatment purpose.
induced movementnoun: A stationary object seems to move because its surroundings move, sometimes making the surroundings appear still.
induced psychotic disorderphrase: A condition where one person develops another person's false beliefs, usually after a close, dependent relationship.
induced tonusnoun: Muscles maintain tension because movement occurs in a different part of the body.
inductionnoun: Drawing a broad rule from several specific examples or observations.
induction testnoun: An assessment asks people to discover general rules by examining several specific examples or facts.
inductive problem solvingnoun: Students learn by finding connections among supplied facts or events and explaining the broader rules behind those connections.
inductive reasoningnoun: A person uses particular observations to reach broader conclusions that remain open to revision with new evidence.
inductive statisticsnoun: Statistical methods use sample results to estimate population characteristics or test claims while accounting for uncertainty.
inductive teaching modelnoun: An educational approach builds thinking skills by guiding learners to discover general principles through examples, questions, and investigation.
industrial and organizational psychology (I/O psychology)noun: A psychology specialty studies people at work and applies findings to improve organizations and employee well-being.
industrial democracynoun: An organization gives employees a meaningful role in important decisions about their workplace.
industrial efficiencynoun: A workplace produces more output from given resources, or uses fewer resources to produce the same output.
industrial ergonomicsnoun: A design specialty shapes industrial equipment and work processes around people's physical abilities and limits.
industrial psychologynoun: A branch of psychology investigates workplace behavior and uses evidence to improve working life and organizational performance.
industrial psychopathnoun: An informal workplace label describes someone showing persistent manipulation and disregard for others, sometimes while advancing their career.
industrial relationsnoun: This field examines relationships between employers, workers, and unions, including how they negotiate pay and working conditions.
industriousnessnoun: A personality trait marked by being hardworking, careful, and dependable when doing tasks and meeting goals.
industry versus inferioritynoun: Erikson proposed that school-age children face a developmental challenge of building competence through tasks or developing feelings of inadequacy.
ineffabilitynoun: Some experiences have a quality that makes them impossible to fully express through words.
infancynoun: The first year after birth, when a human baby begins life outside the womb.
infant and preschool testsnoun: Assessments given to one young child at a time examine developmental abilities during infancy and the preschool years.
infant at risknoun: A baby faces an increased chance of developmental difficulties because of birth complications or unfavorable conditions after birth.
Infant Behavior Recordnoun: An earlier Bayley assessment component recorded observations of a baby's attention, engagement, emotional responses, and movement during testing.
infant consciousnessnoun: Babies' subjective experiences include awareness of sensations and surroundings, although when consciousness begins and how it develops remain uncertain.
infant massage therapynoun: Gentle, organized touching and stroking of a baby's body aims to support relaxation and may improve sleep.
infant reflexnoun: A baby's automatic muscle response to a particular stimulus usually fades as the nervous system develops.
infant states of arousalnoun: Babies cycle through different levels of wakefulness and activity, including sleep, quiet alertness, active waking, and crying.
infant testnoun: An assessment given individually to a baby examines developing abilities through suitable tasks and observations.
infant-directed speechnoun: People often speak to babies using expressive changes in pitch and repeated sounds or words.
infanticidenoun: The act of killing a baby or young child can occur in humans and other animals.
infantile amnesianoun: Most people cannot recall personal events from their earliest years, partly because memory systems were still developing.
infantile autismnoun: A historical diagnostic name described early-appearing differences in social communication, focused interests, and repetitive behavior now included within autism spectrum disorder.
infantile myxedemanoun: A historical condition name described thyroid-related delays in physical and mental development, with childhood characteristics continuing beyond puberty.
infantile neurosisnoun: Freud proposed that unconscious childhood conflicts form patterns that may produce symptoms during childhood or later emotional difficulties.
infantile paralysisnoun: An older name for polio describes a viral illness that can affect spinal nerve cells and sometimes cause paralysis.
infantile sexualitynoun: Freud proposed that pleasurable bodily experiences in infancy express libido and contribute to later sexual development.
infantile speechnoun: An older child or adult uses speech sounds or patterns usually associated with much younger children.
infantilismnoun: A historical label describes physical features, behavior, or mental functioning associated with early childhood persisting into later ages.
infantilizationnoun: A person encourages someone older to act like a small child, often by limiting their independence.
infarctionnoun: Death of body tissue caused by a blocked artery cutting off its blood supply.
infectious disease (ID)noun: An illness develops when disease-causing organisms, such as viruses or bacteria, enter and multiply in the body.
infecunditynoun: A person or other organism lacks the biological ability to reproduce.
inferencenoun: A belief or conclusion someone draws from clues, facts, or earlier ideas.
inferential statisticsphrase: These methods use sample data to make careful guesses about a whole population and estimate possible error.
inferential testphrase: A statistical method used to judge whether sample results likely show a real population difference.
inferential validitynoun: Laboratory conclusions about causes hold up in the everyday situations the research was designed to represent.
inferioradjective: Lower in status, worth, or ability when compared with another person or group.
inferior colliculusnoun: Each of two midbrain structures processes sound signals and passes them toward an auditory relay in the thalamus.
inferior frontal gyrusnoun: A lower frontal brain ridge contributes to speech production, emotional understanding, and decisions about risk.
inferior functionnoun: In Jung’s theory, this personality function operates largely outside awareness under the influence of a dominant function.
inferior longitudinal fasciculusnoun: A bundle of nerve fibers links occipital and temporal brain regions within each hemisphere.
inferior obliquenoun: A muscle beneath each eyeball rolls its top outward and helps raise it, especially during a glance toward the nose.
inferior olivary complex (inferior olivary nucleus; inferior olive)noun: A cluster of nerve cell groups in the medulla helps coordinate movements through connections with the cerebellum.
inferior rectusnoun: A muscle attached beneath each eyeball pulls it downward, particularly during a glance away from the nose.
inferior temporal gyrusnoun: A ridge along the lower temporal lobe helps process visual information, language, meaning, and combined sensory input.
inferioritynoun: Feeling less able or worthwhile than others, often when schoolwork or skill-building efforts go badly.
inferiority complexnoun: A lasting sense of being not good enough that can lead to shyness or trying too hard to prove worth.
inferotemporal cortex (IT cortex)noun: A lower region of temporal brain cortex helps recognize objects by processing their visual shapes and features.
infertilitynoun: Difficulty having a baby because physical problems lower fertility in one or both partners.
infibulationnoun: A genital cutting practice creates a seal from cut labial tissue, reducing the opening to the vagina without medical benefit.
infidelitynoun: Secret sexual or emotional involvement with someone outside a committed relationship, often causing deep hurt and mistrust.
infinite-valued logicnoun: A logical system allows infinitely many possible truth values, instead of limiting statements to two categories.
infixnoun: A meaningful language element is placed inside a word to change its meaning or grammatical form.
inflammationnoun: A body tissue response to injury or infection causing swelling, warmth, redness, and often pain.
inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)noun: A group of lasting digestive conditions causes inflammation that can flare up and settle down over time.
inflectionnoun: A word changes form to show grammatical information, such as past time, possession, or more than one.
influence analysisnoun: Statistical methods examine how strongly particular observations affect the results of an analysis.
influence tacticsnoun: People use specific actions to try to change someone else’s opinions or behavior.
influencing machinenoun: In a persecutory delusion, a person believes a machine controls their experiences or actions despite lacking supporting evidence.
influenzanoun: An infection caused by flu viruses affects breathing passages and often brings sudden fever, aches, and tiredness.
informal communicationsnoun: Employees exchange information through conversations or contacts outside their organization’s official communication routes.
informal fallacynoun: An argument goes wrong because its wording, assumptions, or relevance fail to support its conclusion.
informantnoun: Someone who knows a person well and gives useful information about that person's behavior or symptoms.
informaticsnoun: A scientific field studies how technology can organize, process, and use data and knowledge.
informationnoun: What someone learns from facts, experience, or messages that lowers uncertainty.
information feedbacknoun: Responses help someone understand the accuracy or effects of their thoughts and actions, including how others experience them.
information hypothesisnoun: A proposed explanation uses mathematical information theory to model conscious experiences arising from the senses.
information overloadnoun: Incoming information exceeds what someone can handle effectively, potentially increasing stress or making decisions harder.
information processing (IP)phrase: Describes how the mind takes in, stores, uses, and responds to information.
information sciencenoun: A field studies how information is organized, represented, kept, found, and shared.
information systemsnoun: Organized technologies gather data, keep records, manage information, and produce reports for practical purposes.
information technology (IT)noun: Computers and communication tools apply knowledge about information to practical tasks involving data.
information testnoun: An assessment checks someone’s general knowledge across several topics using questions that may vary in difficulty.
information theorynoun: A mathematical framework measures uncertainty and examines how messages can be encoded, transmitted, and recovered despite interference.
information-error techniquenoun: An indirect attitude measure uses guesses on difficult factual questions to estimate someone’s favorable or unfavorable views.
information-motivation-behavioral skills model (IMB model)noun: A health behavior framework links protective action to accurate knowledge, personal and social motivation, practical skills, and confidence.
information-processing modelnoun: A memory framework explains how information moves through mental operations that transform it, keep it, and bring it back.
informational cascadenoun: People set aside their own information and copy earlier choices because they assume others know more.
informational influencephrase: In unclear situations, people change beliefs or behavior because they think others know what is correct.
informational powernoun: Influence gained because someone knows important facts about the situation better than others do.
informed consentphrase: A person's voluntary okay after understanding what will happen, possible risks, benefits, and other choices.
infra-prefix: This word beginning indicates a position below something, or sometimes within it.
infradian rhythmnoun: A repeating pattern in bodily activity or psychological functioning has intervals exceeding 24 hours, as with menstruation.
infrahumanadjective: An obsolete adjective described nonhuman species as lower than humans within a historical hierarchy of living things.
infrarednoun: Electromagnetic radiation has wavelengths beyond visible red light and shorter than microwaves, and is often associated with heat.
infrared theory of smellnoun: A disputed historical theory proposed that odor molecules create smell through infrared absorption that briefly cools nasal sensory structures.
infrasonic communicationnoun: Some animals exchange signals using sounds below about 20 hertz, which people usually cannot hear.
infrasoundnoun: Sound vibrating fewer than about 20 times per second falls below the usual human hearing range.
infundibulumnoun: A funnel-shaped body structure often means the stalk connecting the hypothalamus with the pituitary gland in brain anatomy.
ingenuitynoun: Someone uses practical creativity to find clever solutions to ordinary problems.
ingratiationnoun: Someone deliberately tries to gain another person’s approval or affection by presenting themselves favorably.
ingroupnoun: A group you belong to and feel loyal to, especially compared with people outside it.
ingroup biasnoun: People tend to judge their own group and its members more favorably than other groups.
ingroup extremity effectnoun: People describe their own group’s members, behavior, and creations with exaggerated praise or unusually positive judgments.
inguinaladjective: An anatomical description concerns the groin, where the lower abdomen meets the thigh.
INHabbreviation: This abbreviation names isonicotinic acid hydrazide, also called isoniazid, a medicine used against tuberculosis.
inhabitancenoun: A supernatural belief holds that spirits can occupy places or control people, animals, and objects.
inhalantnoun: A substance breathed as gas or vapor can produce intoxication by changing brain activity.
inhalant abusenoun: An older diagnosis described repeated inhalant use that caused serious problems without meeting the separate dependence diagnosis.
inhalant dependencenoun: An older diagnosis described a persistent drive to use inhalants despite serious problems, sometimes with reduced sensitivity to their effects.
inhalant intoxicationnoun: Recent inhalant use produces temporary, significant changes in thinking or behavior alongside physical effects such as dizziness or poor coordination.
inhalation of drugsnoun: Drugs enter through breathing or drawing substances into the nose, allowing absorption through the lungs or nasal lining.
inheritancenoun: Passing traits from parents to children through genes.
inheritance of acquired characteristicsnoun: Lamarck's historical theory proposed that traits developed during life could pass from parents to offspring.
inherited disordernoun: A health condition results from a gene or chromosome change, often passed from a parent to a child.
inhibitionnoun: Holding back thoughts, feelings, or actions so an impulse or learned response does not happen.
inhibition mechanismsnoun: Nervous system processes reduce excitation by limiting signal release or making receiving neurons less likely to fire.
inhibition of delaynoun: A learned response weakens early during a continuing cue and appears closer to when the expected event arrives.
inhibition of return (IOR)noun: Attention briefly returns more slowly to a recently attended place than it shifts to another place.
inhibitornoun: Something that slows down or blocks a process, action, or response.
inhibitory aftereffectnoun: After attending somewhere, a person may briefly take longer to direct attention back there than elsewhere.
inhibitory conditioningnoun: Through classical conditioning, an organism learns that a cue predicts an otherwise expected event will not happen.
inhibitory cuenoun: A learned signal reduces a conditioned reaction because it predicts that an expected outcome will be absent or weaker.
inhibitory gradient (inhibition gradient)noun: A graph shows how strongly learned response suppression spreads to cues resembling the cue originally associated with suppression.
inhibitory neurotransmitterphrase: A chemical messenger that makes the next neuron less likely to send a signal.
inhibitory postsynaptic potential (IPSP)noun: A brief electrical change in a receiving neuron makes that neuron less likely to send a nerve impulse.
inhibitory potentialnoun: Hull proposed a temporary state produced by responding, combining fatigue-related and learned inhibition that makes the response less likely again.
inhibitory processphrase: A mental or behavioral process that stops unwanted actions or blocks distracting information from taking over.
inhibitory synapsenoun: A junction between neurons allows one neuron's signal to make the receiving neuron less likely to fire.
inimicaladjective: Something described this way works against well-being, development, or successful functioning.
initial crynoun: An involuntary sound sometimes begins a tonic–clonic seizure as tightening chest and voice box muscles push air outward.
initial data analysis (IDA)noun: Researchers inspect and summarize data before formal testing to check quality, patterns, and suitability for planned statistical methods.
initial insomnianoun: A person has trouble beginning sleep when they are trying to fall asleep.
initial interviewphrase: The first therapy meeting builds trust, hears the person's concerns, and begins diagnosis and treatment planning.
initial linknoun: In a concurrent-chains experiment, one of two available starting schedules leads to another schedule before the final reward.
initial spurtnoun: Performance or productivity briefly rises at the beginning of a task, especially when the task is new.
Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA)noun: A reading instruction system uses 44 symbols with mostly consistent sound relationships to help beginners learn English.
initial value dependencynoun: A proposed physiological principle says a body's starting activity level influences how much its response changes after stimulation.
initial values lawnoun: A proposed rule predicts that physiological reactions depend partly on the system's activity level before a stimulus occurs.
initiating structurephrase: A leadership style that organizes tasks, sets clear goals, and tells each person their job.
initiation deficitnoun: A severe reduction in motivation and initiative makes choosing or starting voluntary actions very difficult.
initiative versus guiltnoun: Erikson proposed that preschool children develop confidence in starting activities or experience guilt about their efforts during his third developmental stage.
injunctive normnoun: A shared social expectation describes what people ought to do, think, or feel in a situation.
injury deceitfulnessnoun: An athlete deliberately hides an injury to keep participating, maintain a team position, or avoid unwanted consequences.
injury denialnoun: A person does not acknowledge that an injury exists or recognize how serious it is.
injury feigningnoun: Some birds display apparent injury to draw a predator's attention away from their nest.
inkblot testphrase: A personality test that asks what people see in inkblots to reveal patterns in thinking and feeling.
INLabbreviation: The abbreviation names the inner nuclear layer, a retinal band containing cell bodies involved in processing and supporting vision.
inliernoun: In this data-quality sense, an incorrect recorded value can blend into a dataset instead of standing out.
innateadjective: Present from birth rather than learned through experience later in life.
innate behaviornoun: An action pattern develops without specific teaching or practice and has a strong inherited basis.
innate ideasnoun: Some philosophers propose that certain ideas or capacities for understanding exist in the mind before learning through experience.
innate releasing mechanism (IRM)noun: Classical animal behavior theory proposes an inborn neural process that links a specific cue to a characteristic action sequence.
inner audiencenoun: An imagined listener seems to hear a person's silent self-talk, sometimes representing an authority figure in psychodynamic theory.
inner conflictphrase: Opposing wishes, feelings, or goals within one person that create tension and make choices harder.
inner dialoguenoun: A person mentally discusses or debates an issue with themselves.
inner earnoun: The deepest ear region contains sensory structures that detect sound and help track head movement and position for balance.
inner estrangementnoun: In Paul Federn's terminology, a person experiences surrounding objects as strangely unfamiliar or unreal.
inner hair cellsnoun: Specialized sensory cells in the cochlea convert sound-driven movement into signals carried by most auditory nerve fibers.
inner languagenoun: Words and concepts appear privately as silent speech or mental images involving sight, sound, or movement.
inner nuclear layer (INL)noun: A retinal band houses several kinds of nerve and support cell bodies between light receptors and ganglion cells.
inner plexiform layer (IPL)noun: A retinal layer contains connections where bipolar and amacrine cells communicate with ganglion cells and one another.
inner psychophysicsnoun: Fechner's approach investigates how subjective sensations relate to activity within the body's sensory systems.
inner scribenoun: A proposed working memory component briefly maintains spatial locations and movements and helps plan actions in space.
inner speechphrase: Silent talking to yourself in your mind that helps with thinking, planning, and self-control.
inner-directedadjective: A person guided mainly by internal standards and motivation is relatively resistant to other people's opinions or social pressure.
innervationnoun: The nerves reaching an organ or body area provide pathways for signals to or from that tissue.
innervation rationoun: This measure counts how many muscle fibers receive signals from each individual motor axon, with smaller values allowing finer control.
innovation diffusionnoun: New tools, practices, or ideas gradually spread through a population as people adopt and use them.
innovative therapiesnoun: New psychological treatments depart from established approaches and may not yet have strong research support.
inoculation theoryphrase: People become harder to persuade after practicing against weak opposing arguments they can easily answer.
Inocybenoun: This mushroom genus includes species containing muscarine, a poison that disrupts nerve signals controlling organs and glands.
inositolnoun: A sugarlike compound found in foods helps build cell membranes and supplies materials for molecules that carry signals inside cells.
inositol phosphatesnoun: These compounds combine inositol with phosphate groups, and some help pass messages within cells.
inpatientnoun: A person who stays in a hospital at least one day for observation, testing, or treatment.
Inpatient Multidimensional Psychiatric Scale (IMPS)noun: This interview rating scale assesses symptom severity and patterns of attitudes and behavior in hospitalized people experiencing psychosis.
inpatient servicesphrase: Hospital-based care gives patients round-the-clock supervision, medical help, and therapies not fully offered in outpatient settings.
inputnoun: Information, signals, or energy entering a system so it can respond or work.
input-process-output model (IPO model)noun: This framework explains results by tracing how starting resources or information are transformed through internal activities.
input–output mechanismnoun: This model automatically transforms each input into a set output through fixed steps, without outside interaction during processing.
inquiry training modelnoun: This teaching approach develops thinking by helping learners discover broader patterns and solutions from particular examples.
inquisitorial systemnoun: A legal system gives judges an active role in investigating cases and questioning the people involved.
INRC groupnoun: Piaget proposed that formal operational reasoning coordinates identity (I), negation (N), reciprocal (R), and correlative (C) transformations.
insane asylumnoun: This outdated name described a residential institution intended to care for people with severe mental health conditions.
insanitynoun: In criminal law, a mental condition that can make someone not legally responsible for a crime.
insanity defensephrase: A legal claim that a person was too mentally impaired to be held criminally responsible.
Insanity Defense Reform Act (IDRA)noun: A 1984 United States law narrowed the federal insanity defense and required defendants to establish that defense.
insect phobianoun: A lasting, intense fear of insects exceeds the actual danger and causes significant distress, avoidance, or disruption.
insecure attachmentphrase: A child shows little trust in a caregiver and may avoid or cling when the caregiver returns.
insecuritynoun: Feeling unsure of your worth or abilities and worried you cannot handle life or relationships well.
inseminationnoun: Semen or sperm is placed within the reproductive tract through sexual intercourse or a medical procedure.
insensibleadjective: Someone described this way lacks sensation or consciousness, or shows little emotional response.
insert headphonenoun: A sound delivery device seals the ear canal, usually using a foam plug and tube to reduce outside noise.
insightnoun: A sudden, clear understanding of a problem after the answer was not obvious before.
insight learningphrase: Solving a problem through a sudden new understanding after mentally reorganizing its parts.
insight therapynoun: This psychotherapy approach treats understanding personal difficulties and their origins as essential to resolving them.
insomnianoun: Trouble falling asleep or staying asleep that causes daytime tiredness or problems in daily life.
insomnia disorderphrase: Ongoing trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, or getting enough sleep that causes daytime problems.
inspection time (IT)noun: The shortest viewing time needed to reliably notice a simple visual difference measures how quickly someone takes in information.
inspectionalismnoun: An alternative name for voyeurism describes sexual interest in watching unsuspecting people during nudity, undressing, or sexual activity.
inspective explorationnoun: Investigating something unfamiliar can reduce uncertainty, fear, and the level of alertness or tension it produces.
inspirationnoun: A sudden new understanding that leads to a creative idea or solution.
inspiration–expiration ratio (I/E ratio)noun: Dividing breathing-in time by breathing-out time gives a measure researchers use when studying emotional states.
inspirational motivationphrase: Feeling driven toward a goal after seeing admired, successful people perform at a high level.
instabilitynoun: A pattern of poor self-control, unpredictable behavior, changing views, and emotions that shift quickly or feel too strong.
instance theorynoun: This theory proposes that people categorize things by comparing them with specific examples stored in memory.
instant gratificationphrase: Wanting rewards right away instead of waiting, even when waiting would lead to better results.
instigation therapynoun: A behavioral treatment uses the therapist's example and reinforcement to build clients' ability to guide and evaluate their own behavior.
instinctnoun: An inborn tendency to act or react in a certain way without learning it first.
instinctive behaviornoun: An inherited, largely unlearned pattern of complex activity typically appears in a species when particular cues are present.
instinctive driftnoun: An animal's learned behavior gradually shifts toward its species' natural behavior patterns, despite earlier training and reinforcement.
instinctive knowledgenoun: An unlearned, relatively fixed response to something never encountered before suggests inherited influences on emotion and behavior.
instinctual aimnoun: In psychoanalytic theory, an activity satisfies an instinct and releases the inner tension associated with it.
instinctual drivenoun: In classical psychoanalysis, a proposed inborn biological urge pushes a person toward satisfaction to restore physical and psychological balance.
instinctualization of smellnoun: This historical psychoanalytic concept concerns smells contributing to sexual arousal, including interests involving body odors or feces.
institutionnoun: A large organization, such as a hospital, prison, or university, that has a formal social role.
Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC)noun: An institutional committee reviews animal research plans and oversees animal care to protect welfare and ensure compliance with applicable rules.
institutional carephrase: Round-the-clock medical or mental health help given while someone lives in a care facility.
institutional neurosisnoun: This historical label describes withdrawal, reduced motivation, and declining everyday functioning linked to restrictive, unstimulating institutional environments.
institutional releasenoun: A person is discharged from a residential treatment facility or correctional institution.
institutional researchnoun: Studies of an educational institution's people, resources, and conditions provide information to guide its decisions.
institutional review board (IRB)phrase: A committee checks research plans to protect participants and make sure studies follow ethical rules.
institutionalismnoun: In this psychological sense, restrictive institutional conditions can contribute to withdrawal, passivity, and reduced social or practical functioning.
institutionalizationnoun: Making a program or change become a regular, lasting part of an organization.
institutionalized racismnoun: Institutional rules and everyday practices create or maintain unfair treatment and unequal opportunities for racial groups.
instructed learningnoun: In Tomasello's theory, learners develop skills by understanding a more skilled person's guidance and comparing that perspective with their own.
instructional setnoun: A researcher's directions or signals shape how participants approach a task, such as prioritizing speed or accuracy.
instructional theory of developmentnoun: This theory proposes that environmental influences guide initially unorganized nervous system elements into specialized structures.
instructional treatmentnoun: An instructor plans, delivers, and evaluates an educational intervention intended to improve learning or performance.
instrumentnoun: A tool researchers or clinicians use to measure, test, or collect information about people.
instrument driftnoun: A measuring device gradually changes its readings over time, potentially making research findings less accurate.
instrumentaladjective: Describing something used mainly as a tool to reach another goal.
instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs)noun: Complex everyday tasks, such as managing money, preparing meals, and arranging transportation, support independent living.
instrumental aggressionphrase: Hurting or threatening someone on purpose to get something wanted, not mainly because of anger.
instrumental behaviornoun: Actions are learned and maintained because their consequences provide something desirable or remove something unpleasant.
instrumental conditioningnoun: Learning occurs when reinforcement depends on performing a particular action, making that action more likely to happen again.
instrumental dependencenoun: A person tends to depend on other people to complete tasks or accomplish practical goals.
Instrumental Enrichmentnoun: Feuerstein's educational program uses puzzles and everyday applications to develop thinking skills and awareness of one's own thinking.
instrumental learningphrase: Behavior changes because rewards or punishments follow actions and shape what happens next.
instrumental orientationnoun: A person or group gives priority to tasks, goals, and practical rewards over the relationships involved.
instrumental relativist orientationnoun: In Kohlberg's second moral stage, people judge actions mainly by personal benefits, rewards, and exchanges that serve their needs.
instrumental responsenoun: An action helps achieve a goal, such as obtaining a reward or avoiding an unpleasant experience.
instrumentalismnoun: This philosophical view judges ideas and theories by their practical usefulness rather than whether they describe ultimate truth.
instrumentality theorynoun: This theory proposes that attitudes toward events depend on whether people expect them to produce desirable or undesirable outcomes.
instrumentationnoun: Making and using tools, including tests, to measure traits or control experiments accurately.
instrumentation effectnoun: A study's measured results change because its measurement tools or procedures change, potentially creating misleading conclusions.
insufficient justification effectnoun: People may change their attitudes to match their actions when external rewards or threats provide too little explanation.
insufflationnoun: Air or another substance is blown into a space, or a drug is inhaled through the nose.
insulanoun: A hidden area of cortex helps with disgust, taste, self-awareness, swallowing, and speech.
insulinnoun: A hormone from the pancreas that helps body cells take in sugar and keeps blood sugar balanced.
insulin lipodystrophynoun: Fat beneath the skin changes at insulin injection sites, including local loss of fatty tissue.
insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM)noun: This older name for type 1 diabetes describes very limited natural insulin production and the need for replacement insulin.
insulin-shock therapynoun: This historical schizophrenia treatment used insulin to lower blood sugar enough to cause repeated temporary comas.
intake interviewnoun: An initial care meeting gathers information about someone's concerns and history to help decide suitable services or treatment.
integralnoun: In calculus, the total area under a graphed curve between two chosen points.
integrated behavioral health care (IBHC)noun: Behavioral health professionals work within primary medical care, collaborating with other clinicians to address patients' physical and psychological needs.
integrated carephrase: Medical and mental health services work together as one coordinated plan so a person's care is connected and effective.
integrated delivery system (IDS)noun: A healthcare organization coordinates its management and clinical work across doctors, hospitals, and supporting services.
integrated displaynoun: A machine's information display places similar kinds of information together to help people read and use it.
integrated modelnoun: In program evaluation, a director oversees teams whose writers, designers, and evaluators jointly develop and assess the program.
integrated systemnoun: A central control lets a person with disabilities operate computers, communication equipment, environmental devices, and powered mobility.
integrationnoun: Bringing separate parts together so they work as one organized, effective whole.
integrative agnosianoun: A person can see an object's parts but has difficulty combining them into a recognizable whole.
integrative bargainingnoun: People negotiating work together to find an agreement that serves the interests of everyone involved.
integrative behavioral couples therapynoun: This couples treatment combines emotional understanding and acceptance with efforts to change troubling patterns between partners.
integrative complexitynoun: This describes how fully someone recognizes different sides of an issue and understands connections among those sides.
integrative learningnoun: Learning involves coordinating several kinds of processing, such as seeing and moving, either together or in sequence.
integrative medicinenoun: This approach combines standard medical care with complementary methods supported by evidence about their safety and effectiveness.
integrative psychotherapynoun: A therapist combines ideas or methods from different therapy approaches to address a client's particular needs.
integritynoun: Being honest and acting by the same moral rules with yourself and other people.
integrity group psychotherapynoun: This group therapy expects honesty and openness, with experienced members demonstrating sincere participation for others.
integrity testingnoun: Workplace assessments estimate whether applicants or employees might engage in dishonest or other behavior that undermines the organization.
integrity versus despairphrase: Erikson's proposed final developmental stage involves older adults reviewing life with acceptance and satisfaction or with regret and distress.
intellectnoun: A person's mental abilities support understanding, reasoning, and working with ideas, especially abstract concepts.
intellectual detachmentnoun: A person considers an issue according to its evidence and merits while setting aside personal feelings and interests.
intellectual disabilityphrase: A developmental disorder with below-average thinking skills and daily living abilities that begin in childhood and limit independent functioning.
intellectual functionnoun: A mental process helps someone gain, develop, or connect ideas, including through reasoning, memory, imagination, or judgment.
intellectual impoverishmentnoun: This describes reduced thinking abilities, such as difficulty concentrating, generating ideas, or solving problems, that can have various causes.
intellectual insightnoun: In therapy, someone understands their experiences or relationships through reasoning, without necessarily connecting that understanding to feelings.
intellectual maturitynoun: An adult level of thinking typically includes sound judgment and may involve wisdom developed through experience.
intellectual operationnoun: A thinking process allows someone to acquire ideas, develop them, or work out how they connect.
intellectual plasticitynoun: This describes how much a person's thinking abilities can change with experience, learning, or other influences.
intellectual stimulationphrase: Encouraging people to question old ways and think creatively about problems and new possibilities.
intellectual subaverage functioningnoun: This label describes an IQ score below its test average by a distance exceeding two standard deviations.
intellectualismnoun: This doctrine proposes that thinking processes are fundamental and that emotions and motivations arise from or depend on them.
intellectualizationnoun: Handling painful feelings by thinking about them in a cold, abstract way to avoid the emotions.
intelligencenoun: The ability to learn, reason, solve problems, and adjust well to new situations.
intelligence knowledge-based system (IKBS)noun: An artificial intelligence system uses stored, organized knowledge to solve problems or help people make decisions.
intelligence measurenoun: A standardized assessment estimates thinking abilities, such as reasoning and learning, by comparing performance with a reference group.
intelligence quotientphrase: A score comparing a person's test performance to what is typical for their age group.
intelligence testphrase: A standardized set of tasks estimates how well someone reasons, solves problems, and learns compared with others.
intelligent designnoun: This disputed claim holds that life's complexity requires an intelligent creator rather than being explainable through natural evolutionary processes.
intensional meaningnoun: A word's meaning is explained through the defining features of what it describes, rather than by listing examples.
intensitynoun: How strong a stimulus, feeling, or behavior is at a given moment.
intensive care syndromenoun: This older label describes confusion or psychotic symptoms occurring during intensive care, influenced by illness, medication, and unfamiliar surroundings.
intensive care unit (ICU)noun: A specialized hospital area provides continuous monitoring and highly intensive medical and nursing support for critically ill patients.
intensive psychotherapynoun: Extended psychological treatment explores a person's concerns, life history, and inner conflicts in considerable depth.
intent analysisnoun: Researchers study social exchanges by sorting what people say according to its intended purpose, such as offering reassurance.
intentionnoun: A conscious plan or aim to do a certain action.
intention movementnoun: An early body movement prepares for, and may signal, another action that follows.
intention tremornoun: Shaking appears or becomes stronger as a deliberate movement approaches its target, such as a finger nearing the nose.
intentional accidentnoun: An event appears accidental but was deliberately caused, sometimes with motives the person does not fully acknowledge.
intentional agentnoun: An individual acts deliberately toward goals using what they know and what they want.
intentional behaviornoun: A person deliberately uses actions or strategies to bring about a desired result.
intentional forgettingnoun: Historical psychoanalytic theory proposed that hidden wishes or repression could block access to memories without a person's awareness.
intentional inexistencenoun: Brentano proposed that whatever someone thinks about or perceives is present as an object within that mental act.
intentional learningnoun: Someone deliberately sets out to learn and consciously uses methods to understand or remember the material.
intentional stancenoun: A way to predict behavior assumes that a being acts reasonably based on what it believes and wants.
intentionalitynoun: Having goals, choosing actions to reach them, and often picturing the future you want.
inter-identity amnesianoun: A person has difficulty recalling experiences from another identity state, beyond what ordinary forgetting would explain.
interactionnoun: Mutual influence between two or more people, groups, or systems, where each affects the others.
interaction analysisnoun: Researchers describe and sort exchanges among people, groups, or people and systems to understand how those exchanges work.
interaction effectphrase: When one independent variable changes an outcome differently depending on another variable's level, their effects interact.
interaction process analysis (IPA)noun: Bales's observation method sorts group members' actions into 12 separate categories covering task activity and social or emotional responses.
interactional modelnoun: This personality framework explains behavior through the ongoing ways personal traits and situations influence one another.
interactional model of anxietynoun: This model proposes that anxiety at a particular moment arises from personal characteristics working together with circumstances.
interactional synchronynoun: People naturally coordinate their speech, movements, or responses with one another during an exchange.
interactional territorynoun: An interacting group forms a temporary social boundary around its space that discourages outsiders from interrupting.
interactionismnoun: A historical philosophical view proposes that a separate mind and physical body can each cause changes in the other.
interactionist view of intelligencenoun: This view holds that intelligence develops through biological tendencies and environments working together, making their contributions difficult to separate.
interactive advertisingnoun: An internet marketing approach encourages people to enter responses or details into a website as part of a promotion.
interactive group psychotherapynoun: A therapist helps group members explore their relationships within sessions and practice healthier ways of relating in daily life.
interactive sportnoun: A sport requires players to coordinate their actions with other participants as part of performing the activity.
Interamerican Society of Psychologynoun: A professional organization established in 1951 supports research and connections among psychologists across the Americas, including the Caribbean.
interattitudinal consistencynoun: The degree of agreement among related attitudes shows how well a person's evaluations support rather than contradict one another.
interaural differencenoun: A difference in a sound's timing, loudness, or wave alignment across the ears helps a listener locate its source.
interaural rivalrynoun: The hearing system faces competition when different, conflicting sounds reach each ear at the same time.
interbehavioral psychologynoun: Kantor's approach studies how an organism and its surroundings interact, emphasizing stimulus and response roles shaped by context and experience.
interblobsnoun: Regions between enzyme-rich patches in the primary visual cortex contain neurons generally less responsive to light wavelength than patch neurons.
interceptnoun: A plotted line crosses a graph's horizontal or vertical axis at this point.
interclass correlationnoun: A statistic expresses how closely two measured characteristics vary together when each uses its own measurement scale and variance.
intercoder reliabilitynoun: The consistency of separate coders' judgments shows how similarly they classify or score the same material.
intercorrelationnoun: A set of correlations describes how every pair of variables within a collection is related.
intercoursenoun: Sexual activity in which one person's genitals enter another person's body, especially the vagina.
interdecile rangenoun: Subtracting a distribution's 10th percentile from its 90th percentile measures spread while limiting the influence of extreme scores.
interdentaladjective: A speech sound has this quality when the tongue sits between the front teeth during its production.
interdental lispnoun: A speech pattern makes sounds such as s or z resemble th because the tongue extends between the front teeth.
interdependencenoun: When people or parts affect each other so a change in one changes the others.
interdependence theorynoun: This theory explains relationships through how people's choices affect each other's outcomes and how those outcomes compare with personal standards.
interdependent self-construalnoun: A person understands who they are mainly through relationships, social connections, and roles shared with others.
interdisciplinary approachnoun: People from different fields combine their knowledge and methods to understand a question or address a problem together.
interdisciplinary pain rehabilitation program (IPRP)noun: A coordinated team combines treatments for physical, psychological, and social aspects of pain, working toward shared goals tailored to the person.
interestnoun: A person's desire to focus on something important to them, such as an activity or goal.
interest factorsnoun: A person's preferences serve as clues about personality and possible job fit during career guidance or employee selection.
interest testnoun: A questionnaire explores preferred activities and compares interest patterns with occupations to suggest possible career matches.
interestingnessnoun: In the psychology of art, this quality draws curiosity and attention, often through complexity or uncertainty, without necessarily bringing pleasure.
interfemoral sexnoun: A sexual activity involves positioning a penis between a partner's thighs, without vaginal or anal penetration.
interferencenoun: Other information or noise that blocks learning, remembering, or a clear signal.
interference sensitivitynoun: A person has difficulty filtering out irrelevant information, allowing it to disrupt performance on a task.
interference theorynoun: Forgetting happens because other learning or memories compete and get in the way of recall.
intergenerational traumanoun: The effects of traumatic experiences can reach later generations through family relationships, social conditions, and possibly biological processes.
intergluteal sexnoun: A sexual activity involves positioning a penis between a partner's buttocks, without vaginal or anal penetration.
intergroup competitionphrase: When groups compete for limited rewards or status, tension and prejudice between them often grow.
intergroup conflictphrase: Open tension, disagreement, or fighting between different groups and the people in them.
intergroup dynamicsnoun: Social processes such as cooperation, competition, and favoritism shape how relationships between groups develop and change.
intergroup-contact hypothesisnoun: This hypothesis proposes that contact between members of different groups can reduce prejudice, especially under supportive conditions such as equal status.
interhemispheric fissurenoun: A deep cleft separates the brain's two cerebral halves, which remain connected by structures including the corpus callosum.
interhemispheric interactionnoun: The brain's two cerebral halves exchange signals through electrical, chemical, and other nervous system activity.
interhemispheric transferphrase: Moving learned information from one brain half to the other.
interim behaviornoun: An action tends to occur around the middle of the waiting period between successive stimulus presentations.
interindividual differencesnoun: People vary from one another in their traits, actions, abilities, or other characteristics.
interitem correlationnoun: Researchers compare responses across people to see how closely scores on different test questions vary together.
interitem intervalnoun: The elapsed time separating successive items in a presented sequence determines how far apart those items occur.
interjudge reliabilitynoun: Independent judges show this consistency when their evaluations of the same people, objects, or performances produce similar results.
interlanguagenoun: Someone learning another language develops a personal system of grammatical rules influenced by both their first language and the new language.
interleukinnoun: A protein messenger in the cytokine family helps cells coordinate immune activity, inflammation, or blood cell production.
interlocking pathologiesnoun: Problematic patterns within close relationships fit together in ways that maintain difficulties, often without the people recognizing the pattern.
interlocking reinforcement schedulenoun: An arrangement for reinforcement links separate requirements so that progress toward one changes what must be completed for another.
intermale aggressionnoun: Among nonhuman animals, males act aggressively toward other males, often to establish or challenge social rank.
intermarriagenoun: A marital union connects partners whose backgrounds differ in race, ethnicity, or religion.
intermediary variablenoun: A measured or proposed factor helps explain how one variable influences another.
intermediate care facility (ICF)noun: A residential setting provides nursing and medical support beyond housing and meals, with less intensive care than hospitals.
intermediate cellnoun: A Type III taste cell contains chemical messengers that help communicate taste signals to nearby nerve fibers.
intermediate neednoun: In Maslow’s theory, a psychological lack, such as missing love, security, or self-respect, motivates a person to seek fulfillment.
intermediate nervenoun: This facial nerve component carries sensory information, including taste, and helps regulate glands producing tears and saliva.
intermediate precentral areanoun: A region of the brain’s motor cortex helps plan movements, often using visual information and other outside cues.
intermediate processingnoun: Mental operations organize and interpret incoming sensory information between first noticing something and producing a response.
intermetamorphosis syndromenoun: A person holds a fixed false belief that particular people have become other people in both appearance and personality.
intermissionnoun: A person experiences a symptom-free interval while an ongoing disorder is still part of their condition.
intermittent explosive disorderphrase: A disorder marked by repeated sudden aggressive outbursts far bigger than the situation, not due to drugs or another disorder.
intermittent insomnianoun: Repeated periods of being unable to sleep interrupt a person’s sleep within a single night.
intermittent processingnoun: Information is handled through one sequence of mental operations at a time, with possible rapid switching between tasks.
intermittent reinforcementphrase: A reward pattern in operant conditioning where only some correct responses get reinforced, or strengthened.
intermodal matchingnoun: Someone recognizes through one sense an object previously encountered through a different sense.
intermodal perceptionnoun: The brain combines information gathered through different senses into a coordinated experience.
internal aimnoun: In classical psychoanalysis, an instinct seeks the inner satisfaction gained through a person, object, or action.
internal attributionphrase: Explaining someone's behavior by their personality, motives, or choices instead of the situation around them.
internal boundarynoun: Psychoanalytic theory proposes a division separating the practical, reality-managing ego from the instinct-driven id.
internal capsulenoun: A dense bundle of nerve fibers deep inside the brain carries signals between the cerebral cortex and lower structures.
internal carotid arterynoun: A major blood vessel travels from the neck into the skull and supplies much of the brain.
internal clockphrase: An inborn timing system that helps control sleep, waking, and other daily body rhythms.
internal conflictphrase: A struggle between competing feelings, wishes, or values within the same person.
internal consistencyphrase: How well test questions hang together by measuring the same trait in a consistent way.
internal controlphrase: A belief that your own choices and efforts mostly shape what happens to you.
internal culture conflictnoun: A person feels divided between loyalty to their own cultural group and attraction to the surrounding dominant culture.
internal environmentnoun: Conditions inside the body, including temperature and blood sugar, are regulated to support cells and organs.
internal evaluatornoun: A person employed full time within a service program also judges that program’s performance.
internal fertilizationnoun: A sperm cell joins an egg inside the body of the individual producing the egg.
internal frustrationnoun: Classical psychoanalysis proposes that forces within the mind, such as moral restrictions, can prevent satisfaction of instinctive urges.
internal granular layernoun: The fourth layer of the neocortex contains many small, star-shaped nerve cells and connections from other cortical neurons.
internal inequitynoun: Employees receive pay or benefits that are unfair compared with those of coworkers within their organization.
internal locus of controlphrase: Seeing your own choices and efforts as the main cause of what happens to you.
internal objectnoun: In psychoanalytic theory, a mental representation of an important person is experienced as a presence within oneself.
internal pyramidal layernoun: The fifth layer of the neocortex contains large pyramid-shaped neurons, including especially large Betz cells in motor regions.
internal respirationnoun: Chemical processes within cells release energy from nutrients and package it for cellular work.
internal rhythmnoun: Body functions or psychological states change in repeating patterns, sometimes coordinated with daily or seasonal changes outside the body.
internal saboteurnoun: Fairbairn proposed a self-critical part of personality that develops when a child suppresses needs left unmet by a parent.
internal validityphrase: Shows whether a study's results truly came from the tested cause, not hidden flaws or other factors.
internal working model of attachmentnoun: A person’s expectations about closeness and support develop partly through early relationships and guide later relationships.
internal-state ratingsnoun: People rate their own mood while viewing artwork or visual patterns to help researchers assess their reactions.
internalizationnoun: People unconsciously take in others' beliefs, feelings, or values and make them part of who they are.
internalized speechnoun: Silent words directed to oneself help with planning, practicing actions, weighing choices, or offering reassurance.
internalizing behaviornoun: Distress is expressed mainly through inner experiences, such as anxiety, depressed feelings, or bodily complaints, especially in descriptions of children.
International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP)noun: Founded in 1920, this international professional association supports using psychological science in practice and connecting applied psychologists across countries.
International Classification of Diseases (ICD)noun: The World Health Organization maintains this system for grouping and coding health conditions, including mental disorders.
International Council of Psychologistsnoun: Founded in 1941, this professional organization connects psychologists across countries to support psychology and its practical uses.
International Military Testing Associationnoun: This international organization brings researchers and practitioners together to discuss military personnel assessment and behavioral research.
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)noun: A standardized set of written symbols represents speech sounds across languages.
International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia (IPSS)noun: A World Health Organization research project compared schizophrenia diagnosis and symptoms across nine countries using standardized interviews.
International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA)noun: Founded in 2007, this professional organization supports research on well-being and strengths, responsible practical applications, and sharing findings.
International Society for Sport Psychology (ISSP)noun: Founded in 1965, this worldwide organization connects different professions to advance psychological research and practice involving sport and exercise.
International Union of Psychological Science (IUPsyS)noun: Founded in 1951, this union connects psychological organizations across countries to exchange scientific knowledge and organize international meetings.
Internet addictionnoun: A debated label describes difficult-to-control internet use that causes significant distress or interferes with daily functioning.
Internet memenoun: An image, phrase, video, or other idea spreads widely online as people share it, often creating variations.
Internet-based group contingencynoun: Small teams earn rewards for jointly meeting substance abstinence goals, with evidence of abstinence submitted through an online monitoring system.
interneuronnoun: A nerve cell links other neurons within the brain or spinal cord, helping process signals between them.
interobserver reliabilitynoun: Independent observers give consistent ratings when assessing the same person, behavior, or object.
interoceptionnoun: Awareness of signals from inside the body, such as heartbeat, hunger, or stomach discomfort.
interoceptive conditioningnoun: In this experimental form of classical conditioning, stimulation delivered directly to an internal organ becomes a cue for a learned response.
interoceptive stimulusnoun: A signal originating within the body can trigger sensations such as hunger, discomfort, or a full bladder.
interoceptive systemnoun: Specialized sensors and nerve pathways detect internal bodily conditions, such as stomach stretching or changes in blood pressure.
interoceptornoun: A specialized sensory cell detects changes inside the body, including changes in internal organs.
interocular distancenoun: The spacing between the centers of both pupils is measured while the eyes hold a steady gaze.
interocular transfernoun: A visual aftereffect caused by stimulating one eye can also appear when viewing through the other eye alone.
interpersonaladjective: Describing feelings, actions, or skills involved in dealing with other people.
interpersonal accommodationnoun: People adjust their preferences and make compromises to build or maintain satisfying relationships.
interpersonal attractionphrase: A person's positive feelings and interest that draw them toward another person or relationship.
interpersonal competitionnoun: Individuals try to perform better than one another in a situation where success depends on relative performance.
interpersonal concordance orientationnoun: In Kohlberg's proposed third stage of moral reasoning, people judge actions by whether they please others and earn approval.
interpersonal conflictphrase: A clash between people because their goals, values, or attitudes do not fit.
interpersonal distancenoun: People choose how much physical space to leave between themselves and others during an interaction.
interpersonal factornoun: An influence can shape relationships between people or arise from those relationships, such as support from friends.
interpersonal gapnoun: A speaker's intended message can differ from how that message affects the listener.
interpersonal group psychotherapynoun: A therapist helps group members examine their current interactions to understand relationship patterns and practice healthier ways of relating.
interpersonal influencenoun: People or groups directly pressure others through demands, threats, promised rewards, or promised approval.
interpersonal intelligencenoun: Gardner's multiple intelligences theory proposes a distinct ability to understand other people and relate effectively to them.
interpersonal learning groupnoun: A group helps members understand themselves better and develop skills for relating to other people.
interpersonal perceptionnoun: Observing how someone acts helps people develop judgments about what that person wants, believes, or considers important.
interpersonal process recall (IPR)noun: A counselor reviews recorded sessions with a supervisor to explore the thoughts and feelings involved in therapeutic interactions.
interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT)phrase: A brief therapy that improves symptoms by focusing on current relationship problems and social roles.
interpersonal reconstructive psychotherapynoun: An integrative therapy helps people with personality disorders understand and change lasting relationship difficulties linked to attachment experiences.
interpersonal relationsnoun: People form connections and interact in ways that often carry emotional or social importance.
interpersonal stressphrase: Stress that comes from trouble between people in a relationship, which can harm mental and physical health.
interpersonal theorynoun: Harry Stack Sullivan proposed that relationships shape personality, personal security, identity, and the forces driving behavior.
interpersonal zonenoun: A range of physical spacing is commonly used during interactions, depending on familiarity, formality, and cultural expectations.
interphasenoun: During the period between divisions, a cell carries out ordinary functions and may prepare to divide again.
interpolated tasknoun: An activity inserted between two research tasks fills a delay or helps hide how those tasks are connected.
interpolationnoun: An unknown value is estimated using known values that lie on either side of it.
interpositionnoun: A depth clue for one eye: a nearer object blocks part of a farther one.
interpretverb: To explain what something means, such as a person's behavior, feelings, or test results.
interpretationnoun: A therapist's explanation of a person's feelings or behavior using the therapy's guiding ideas.
interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA)noun: A qualitative research approach examines people's accounts to understand how they make sense of their experiences.
interpretive responsenoun: A therapist offers a reply that highlights a possible deeper meaning or motive behind something a client has said.
interpretive therapynoun: A therapist explores conflicts, dreams, avoided feelings, and resistance, offering explanations connected to the client's experiences.
interpretivismnoun: A philosophical view holds that knowledge depends on interpretation and allows multiple valid understandings of reality.
interquartile range (IQR)noun: A measure of spread subtracts the 25th percentile from the 75th percentile, covering the middle half of ordered data.
interrater reliabilityphrase: Shows how much different trained judges agree when scoring the same person, behavior, or object.
interresponse time (IRT)noun: The elapsed time separating one response from the next is measured, usually for repeated responses of one kind.
interrogativenoun: A sentence form or grammatical verb mood is used to ask a question.
interrogative suggestibilitynoun: A person's answers may be shaped by leading questions or changed after negative feedback about earlier answers.
interrogatoriesnoun: Formal written questions seek information relevant to a legal case, often during preparation for trial.
interrole conflictnoun: The demands of different roles a person holds clash, making it difficult to meet them together.
interrupted time-series designnoun: Researchers evaluate an intervention by comparing patterns in repeated measurements collected before and after its introduction, without random assignment.
interscorer reliabilitynoun: The consistency of scores from separate evaluators shows how similarly they judge the same people, performances, or objects.
intersegmental arc reflexnoun: A reflex pathway carries signals across different spinal cord segments through sensory neurons or connecting neurons to motor neurons.
intersegmental reflexnoun: An automatic response is controlled by a nerve circuit spanning multiple segments within the spinal cord.
intersegmental tractnoun: A short bundle of nerve fibers links different levels within the spinal cord.
intersensory perceptionnoun: Information arriving through different senses is combined into a unified experience of an object or event.
intersexadjective: People with innate variations in sex characteristics that fall outside typical male or female patterns may be described this way.
interspecies interactionnoun: Organisms belonging to different species affect one another through brief encounters or ongoing relationships.
interstimulus interval (ISI)noun: The gap between stimulus presentations is usually measured from one stimulus ending until the next begins.
interstitial cellnoun: A cell occupies spaces among other tissues or structures; in the testes, these cells produce testosterone.
interstitial cell-stimulating hormone (ICSH)noun: Another name for luteinizing hormone emphasizes its role in signaling cells in the testes to produce testosterone.
interstripesnoun: Regions in visual area V2 have relatively low cytochrome oxidase activity and receive signals from interblob regions in V1.
intersubjectivitynoun: People share and develop an understanding of one another's personal experiences, feelings, or perspectives.
interthalamic adhesionnoun: A small mass of gray matter spans the third ventricle between the thalamus's two halves in many people.
intervalnoun: A span between two values, often used to group scores or show likely limits.
interval dataphrase: Numbers with equal steps between values, but zero does not mean the measured thing is absent.
interval estimatenoun: Sample data are used to estimate a range of plausible values for a characteristic of a larger population.
interval of uncertaintynoun: When measuring sensitivity to differences, a range separates changes judged just undetectable from those judged just detectable.
interval reinforcementphrase: Rewards the first response after a set or changing amount of time, no matter how many tries happened before.
interval samplingnoun: Researchers select participants at regular positions on a list, beginning at a chosen starting point.
interval scalephrase: A measurement scale with equal steps between numbers but no true zero showing none of the thing.
interval variablephrase: A measured quality with equal gaps between scores, so score differences mean the same amount.
intervening variablenoun: A factor helps explain how one variable influences another by acting between them.
interventionnoun: A planned action used to change a problem, behavior, or stressful situation for the better.
intervention program for childrennoun: An organized set of services supports children whose development may need extra educational, emotional, nutritional, or medical help.
intervention researchphrase: Studies test whether a planned change, like therapy or diet, improves outcomes compared with before or with another program.
interventionistnoun: A trained professional takes action to improve someone's symptoms, health, behavior, or circumstances.
interventricular foramennoun: An opening allows cerebrospinal fluid to pass from a lateral brain chamber into the third ventricle.
interviewnoun: A planned conversation used to gather specific information for hiring, research, diagnosis, or treatment.
interview group psychotherapynoun: Slavson's historical psychoanalytic group treatment addressed proposed conflicts in love and sexual drives through emotional expression, insight, and checking reality.
interview schedulenoun: A prepared document lists the questions planned for an interview.
interviewer effectnoun: An interviewer's personal characteristics or behavior can change how someone answers their questions.
interviewer stereotypenoun: An interviewer's mental picture of the perfect employee becomes a standard that may hide actual applicants' strengths.
interviewer trainingnoun: Instruction and practice help people develop the skills needed to conduct effective interviews.
intestinal lipodystrophynoun: A historical label describes impaired fat absorption in the intestine, associated with Whipple disease and sometimes nervous system damage.
intimacynoun: A very close relationship marked by deep understanding, affection, and comfort with emotional or physical closeness.
intimacy problemnoun: A person has difficulty developing emotional or physical closeness, including trust, sharing personal feelings, or sexual contact.
intimacy versus isolationnoun: Erikson's proposed sixth developmental stage concerns forming close relationships in young adulthood while keeping a clear sense of self.
intimate partner violencephrase: Abuse or controlling behavior by a current or former romantic partner, including physical, sexual, or emotional harm.
intimate zonenoun: The nearest space around someone's body is commonly shared during interactions with people they feel very close to.
intonationnoun: The rise and fall of voice pitch during speech that helps show meaning or emotion.
intoxicantnoun: A substance temporarily changes mental functioning and may alter perception, judgment, mood, or movement.
intoxicationnoun: A temporary state after using a drug that disrupts thinking, feelings, behavior, or body control.
intoxication defensenoun: A legal argument claims that intoxication affected someone's ability to form criminal intent or bear responsibility for an offense.
intra-attitudinal consistencynoun: The evaluations making up one attitude agree in being favorable or unfavorable rather than pointing in opposite directions.
intracarotid amobarbital procedurenoun: Clinicians inject amobarbital into a carotid artery to temporarily quiet one brain hemisphere while testing language and memory.
intracarotid sodium Amytal test (ISA)noun: This Wada test uses an artery injection of amobarbital to temporarily reduce one brain hemisphere's activity during cognitive tasks.
intracellular fluidnoun: Liquid contained inside a cell's outer membrane forms its internal fluid environment.
intracellular thirstnoun: Thirst develops when cells lose water as dissolved substances become more concentrated in the fluid around them.
intracerebral hemorrhagenoun: Bleeding inside the brain tissue after a blood vessel breaks, often causing a dangerous kind of stroke.
intraclass correlationnoun: A statistical measure describes how similar measurements are within groups, including agreement among people rating the same subjects.
intraconscious personalitynoun: A historical concept proposes that a less conscious identity state can know another state's experiences in dissociative identity disorder.
intracranialadjective: Something described this way is located or takes place inside the skull.
intracranial hemorrhagenoun: Blood escapes from vessels inside the skull, either into brain tissue or into spaces surrounding it.
intracranial pressure (ICP)noun: Pressure inside the skull comes from brain tissue, blood, and cerebrospinal fluid, and excessive levels can disrupt brain function.
intracranial stimulation (ICS)noun: Implanted electrodes deliver electrical current directly to a brain area to change its activity.
intradimensional discriminationnoun: A person or animal distinguishes things that differ along just one feature, such as brightness or size.
intrafamily dynamicsnoun: Family members influence one another's thinking, emotions, and actions through patterns of interaction that shape their relationships.
intrafusal fibernoun: A specialized muscle fiber inside a muscle spindle helps sensory nerve endings detect how much the muscle stretches.
intragroup competitionnoun: Members of the same group try to outperform one another for success, recognition, or resources.
intragroup conflictnoun: People belonging to one group disagree over relationships, tasks, or how work should be organized.
intragroup territorial behaviornoun: Individuals within a shared group claim and protect particular spaces as their own.
intraindividual differencesnoun: A single person's abilities, traits, or behaviors differ from one another, revealing a pattern of relative strengths and weaknesses.
intralaminar nucleusnoun: A cluster of nerve cells sits within the internal white matter sheet of the thalamus.
intralaminar systemnoun: A network of thalamic nerve cells helps regulate sleep and wakefulness through connections with broader brain arousal systems.
intramaze cuenoun: A feature located inside a maze, such as an odor or surface texture, can guide navigation.
intramuscular injection (im injection)noun: A needle delivers a substance directly into muscle tissue, where it can be absorbed.
intransitivitynoun: A relationship linking the first item to the second and the second to the third need not link first to third.
intraocular pressure (IOP)noun: Fluid inside the eye creates pressure that, when too high, can contribute to damage affecting vision.
intrapersonaladjective: Describing thoughts, feelings, decisions, or self-views that happen within one person.
intrapersonal conflictnoun: In psychoanalytic theory, opposing wishes, motives, or mental forces create tension within a person.
intrapersonal intelligencenoun: Gardner's multiple intelligences theory proposes an ability to understand one's own feelings, motives, and strengths.
intrapsychicadjective: Happening within a person's mind, such as inner wishes, ideas, or conflicts.
intrapsychic ataxianoun: A historical psychiatric concept describes poor coordination among a person's thoughts, feelings, and intentions.
intrapsychic conflictphrase: A struggle between opposing wishes or parts of the mind inside one person.
intrarole conflictnoun: A person faces incompatible expectations or demands within a single social or work role.
intrauterine device (IUD)noun: A small contraceptive device placed inside the uterus uses copper or a hormone mainly to prevent fertilization.
intravenous drug usenoun: A person injects a drug into a vein, allowing it to enter the bloodstream directly and often act quickly.
intravenous injection (iv injection)noun: A needle delivers a substance directly into a vein so it enters the circulating blood.
intraverbalnoun: In behavior analysis, words prompt a learned verbal response that does not match them word for word, such as an answer.
intrinsic activitynoun: In pharmacology, this measures how effectively a drug activates a receptor after binding to it.
intrinsic behaviornoun: An activity provides its own reward, making doing it satisfying without needing a separate prize.
intrinsic eye musclesnoun: Small muscles inside each eye adjust lens shape for focusing and control pupil size.
intrinsic motivationphrase: Wanting to do something because it feels interesting or satisfying, not because of rewards or pressure.
intrinsic reinforcementnoun: An activity becomes more likely to happen again because of a rewarding result that the activity itself produces.
intrinsic religionnoun: A person follows religion because living their faith matters in itself, rather than mainly serving other goals.
intrinsic rewardnoun: A valued experience, such as enjoyment or satisfaction, comes directly from doing an activity.
introceptionnoun: A personality trait describes how much someone attends to understanding their own and other people's needs, motives, and experiences.
introitusnoun: An anatomical opening provides entry into an internal body cavity or tubular structure.
introjectionnoun: Unconsciously taking in another person's attitudes or traits so they feel like part of your own mind.
introjective depressionnoun: A pattern of depression involves harsh self-judgment, feelings of failure, and pressure to meet excessively demanding personal standards.
introjective personalitynoun: Some psychoanalytic theories propose a personality pattern centered on achievement and self-evaluation, with possible vulnerability to severe self-criticism.
intromissionnoun: The insertion of something into something else usually means penile entry into the vagina in sexual behavior research.
intronnoun: A stretch within a gene is copied into RNA but removed as that RNA is processed.
intropunitiveadjective: Someone responds to frustration by directing blame, anger, or criticism toward themselves.
introspectionnoun: Looking inward to notice and examine your own thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and mental judgments.
introspectionismnoun: A historical approach holds that examining one's own conscious experience should be psychology's main research method.
introspective methodnoun: Researchers study conscious experience by asking people to report what they notice in their own minds.
introversionnoun: A personality style marked by focusing on inner thoughts and feelings and often preferring quiet, independent activity.
introversion–extraversionnoun: A personality dimension ranges from a quieter, inward focus to a more outgoing, socially engaged focus.
intrusion errornoun: During a memory test, someone reports an item that was never included in the material they studied.
intrusive thoughtsphrase: Unwanted thoughts that pop in and interrupt what you are doing, even when you try to push them away.
intuitionnoun: A quick understanding that comes without deliberate thinking or step-by-step reasoning.
intuitionismnoun: In fuzzy trace theory, people are proposed to favor rough meanings in memory over exact details when thinking and deciding.
intuitive judgmentnoun: A decision rests on feelings or impressions whose basis may be partly unconscious and difficult to explain.
intuitive knowledgenoun: Understanding seems to arrive as a gut feeling and may draw on remembered information outside conscious awareness.
intuitive stagenoun: Piaget proposed that around ages four to seven, children develop grouping and number ideas while reasoning remains strongly guided by appearances.
intuitive typenoun: Jung proposed a personality type that adapts mainly through unconscious clues and impressions only faintly noticed.
Intunivnoun: This brand names an extended-release form of guanfacine used to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
invalidadjective: Not measuring or predicting what it is supposed to measure or predict.
invariancenoun: Staying the same after a change in scoring, such as adding the same amount to every score.
invariant featurenoun: An object's characteristic stays stable across relevant changes in viewing conditions, helping people or machines recognize it.
invariant sequencephrase: The fixed order of development stages that children move through without skipping any.
invasiveadjective: Describing a hiring method that goes too far into a person's body or private life.
invention of new means through mental combinationnoun: Piaget proposed that around 18–24 months, children begin imagining objects and mentally working out solutions before acting.
inventorynoun: A questionnaire listing items used to measure behavior, interests, attitudes, or personality.
inverse agonistnoun: A drug that binds to a receptor and pushes its activity in the opposite direction of an agonist.
inverse correlationnoun: Two measured characteristics tend to move in opposite directions, with higher values of one accompanying lower values of the other.
inverse derivationnoun: A new word forms when speakers remove a piece they mistakenly assume was added to an older base word.
inverse dynamicsnoun: A calculation works backward from a desired or observed movement to the muscle forces needed to produce it.
inverse factor analysisnoun: A statistical method identifies groups of people with similar response patterns across several measured characteristics.
inverse kinematicsnoun: A calculation finds joint angles that could place a body part at a desired location or along a desired path.
inverse relationshipphrase: When one thing goes up, the other usually goes down.
inverse transformationnoun: Researchers replace each nonzero data value with one divided by that value before analyzing the results.
inverse-square lawnoun: A physical relationship makes one quantity proportional to one divided by another quantity squared, as in ideal sound spreading.
Inversinenoun: This brand names mecamylamine, a drug that blocks certain nicotine-sensitive receptors and has been used to lower blood pressure.
inversionnoun: In Piaget's theory, a person mentally undoes an operation by applying its opposite.
inversion of affectnoun: Psychoanalytic theory proposes that an instinctive urge can shift its aim toward the opposite direction.
inverted retinanoun: The vertebrate retina has light-sensitive receptor regions behind other retinal cell layers, so incoming light travels through those layers first.
inverted U-shaped distributionnoun: A frequency graph rises toward the middle because central values occur more often than values near either end.
inverted-U hypothesisnoun: A proposed pattern suggests performance improves as arousal rises, then worsens beyond a task-dependent peak.
investigatory behaviornoun: A person or animal explores unfamiliar objects or surroundings to gather information, sometimes without any outside reward.
investmentnoun: Putting mental or emotional energy into a person, idea, task, or goal.
investment modelnoun: A theory explains relationship commitment through satisfaction, the appeal of alternatives, and resources already devoted to the relationship.
invincibility fablenoun: A belief, often associated with adolescence, makes someone feel uniquely special and unlikely to experience dangers that affect others.
invisible displacementnoun: An object changes location while hidden, requiring the observer to work out where it went without seeing the move.
invisible playmatenoun: A child or adolescent invents a companion to interact with during pretend play.
invisible supportnoun: Someone receives practical or emotional help without recognizing that another person is providing support.
involuntaryadjective: Happening without a person's intention or conscious control, like a reflex or body process.
involuntary attentionnoun: A noticeable event or object automatically draws someone's focus without a deliberate decision to attend.
involuntary civil commitmentnoun: A civil legal process requires someone to enter or remain in a mental health facility without their agreement.
involuntary confessionnoun: An accused person admits guilt because of pressure, threats, or promises that undermine free choice.
involuntary hospitalizationnoun: A person is admitted to or kept in a psychiatric hospital without agreeing, under medical and legal authority.
involuntary musclephrase: A muscle that works automatically without conscious control, like muscles in the stomach and intestines.
involuntary nervous systemnoun: The autonomic nervous system regulates largely automatic body functions, including heartbeat, digestion, sweating, and pupil changes.
involuntary responsephrase: A body reaction happens automatically without conscious control, like pupils shrinking in bright light.
involuntary retrievalnoun: A memory enters awareness on its own, without someone deliberately trying to remember it.
involuntary treatmentnoun: A person receives treatment without giving informed consent, sometimes through a legal order.
involuntary turnovernoun: An organization counts employees whose jobs end without their freely choosing to leave during a specified period.
involutionaladjective: This adjective describes an age-related decrease in how well the body or one of its parts functions.
involved grandparentnoun: A grandparent in this role combines a loving relationship with grandchildren with regular practical care or financial support.
iodopsinnoun: A light-sensitive pigment in retinal cone cells helps detect color, with three forms having different wavelength sensitivities in humans.
ionnoun: An atom or molecule with an electric charge because it gained or lost electrons.
ion channelnoun: A protein passage through a cell's outer membrane lets selected electrically charged particles move across, helping cells send signals.
ion pumpnoun: A membrane protein uses energy to move electrically charged particles across a cell's boundary against their natural flow.
Ionaminnoun: This trade name identifies phentermine, a stimulant-like medication that reduces appetite.
ionotropic receptornoun: A receptor protein opens its built-in passage for charged particles when a matching chemical messenger attaches.
IOPabbreviation: Short for intraocular pressure, this measures the pressure of fluid within the eye.
IORabbreviation: Short for inhibition of return, this describes temporarily slower attention shifts back toward a location that was recently attended.
Iowa Gambling Task (IGT)noun: This decision-making test uses four card decks with different rewards and losses to examine choices with longer-term consequences.
Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS)noun: This set of standardized achievement tests measures learning across school subjects for children from kindergarten through eighth grade.
IPabbreviation: Short for information processing, this describes how the mind takes in information, works with it, and produces responses.
IPAabbreviation: These initials can mean independent practice association, interaction process analysis, International Phonetic Alphabet, or interpretive phenomenological analysis.
IPDabbreviation: Short for interaural phase differences, this describes differences in sound-wave cycle positions between ears that help locate sounds.
IPLabbreviation: Short for inner plexiform layer, this retinal region contains connections among bipolar cells, amacrine cells, and ganglion cells.
IPO modelabbreviation: The input-process-output model explains results by tracing how internal activities transform incoming materials or information.
IPPAabbreviation: This professional organization advances scientific study of flourishing, shares research findings, and encourages responsible practical applications.
IPRabbreviation: Short for interpersonal process recall, this training method uses recorded therapy sessions and supervisor discussion to explore participants' experiences.
iproniazidnoun: This early antidepressant blocked monoamine oxidase, slowing chemical messenger breakdown, but was replaced because of toxicity.
IPSabbreviation: A mental condition where someone feels fully focused, confident, and performing at their best.
ipsativeadjective: Comparing a person's own traits or preferences to each other, not to other people.
ipsative methodnoun: This research approach compares someone's responses or scores with that same person's other responses or scores.
ipsative scalenoun: This rating system requires everyone to distribute the same fixed total of points or ranks among different items.
ipsilateraladjective: Located on the body's left together or its right together, rather than across from each other.
ipsilateral deficitnoun: A reduced ability appears on the body's left or right side matching the location of brain damage.
ipsilateral eyenoun: An eye is described this way when its left-or-right position matches that of the structure being discussed.
IPSPabbreviation: An inhibitory postsynaptic potential is a brief electrical change caused by incoming signals that makes a neuron less likely to fire.
IPSSabbreviation: This abbreviation names a World Health Organization pilot study comparing schizophrenia symptoms and diagnosis across nine countries.
IPTabbreviation: A brief therapy that improves symptoms by helping people handle relationship problems and role changes.
IQabbreviation: A score from intelligence tests showing how a person's thinking skills compare with others their age.
IQRabbreviation: Short for interquartile range, this measures data spread by subtracting the 25th percentile value from the 75th percentile value.
IRBabbreviation: A committee that reviews studies with people to protect participants and make sure the research is ethical.
iridocyclitisnoun: This condition inflames two eye structures: the colored iris and the ciliary body, which helps control focusing.
iridologynoun: This unsupported health assessment method claims that patterns and colors in the iris reveal conditions elsewhere in the body.
irisnoun: The eye's colored muscular ring adjusts pupil size to regulate how much light enters.
iris colobomanoun: A gap present from birth extends through part of the iris, often giving the pupil an unusual shape.
irkuniinoun: Another name for myriachit, this historically described pattern in some Siberian communities involves apparently involuntary copying of others' movements.
IRMabbreviation: An innate releasing mechanism is a proposed nervous-system process that triggers an inborn behavior sequence when a particular cue appears.
ironic mental controlnoun: Trying to push an unwanted thought out of awareness can instead make that thought more noticeable.
irradiationnoun: In Pavlov's historical account, activity was proposed to spread from one brain region across surrounding areas of the cortex.
irradiation effectsnoun: These are biological changes resulting from exposure to ionizing radiation, which can damage cells and affect development or brain function.
irradiation theory of learningnoun: Pavlov's historical theory proposed that stimuli become associated when the brain activity each produces spreads and overlaps.
irrationaladjective: Describes thoughts or choices that do not follow logic or good judgment.
irrational beliefphrase: A strongly held thought that does not fit the facts and can fuel upsetting feelings or actions.
irrational typenoun: In Jung's proposed personality system, this category groups people guided mainly by sensory experience or intuition.
irrationalitynoun: Thinking or choices that do not follow logic and may be strongly out of touch with reality.
irregularadjective: Describes a word form that breaks the usual grammar pattern, like went instead of goed.
irrelevant languagephrase: Speech made of sounds or words only the speaker understands, sometimes seen in schizophrenia or autism.
irresistible impulse rulenoun: This historical legal standard allowed a mental-disorder defense based on inability to control conduct, even when its wrongfulness was understood.
irreversible comanoun: This older label denotes brain death, the permanent loss of all brain function, including functions of the brainstem.
irreversible MAOInoun: An irreversible monoamine oxidase inhibitor blocks messenger-breaking enzymes until replacement enzymes are made, allowing certain brain chemicals to remain available longer.
irritabilitynoun: Being unusually easy to annoy, anger, or frustrate, often reacting strongly to small problems.
irritable aggressionnoun: Aggressive behavior becomes more likely under unpleasant conditions such as pain, hunger, or frustration, sometimes targeting any available object.
irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)phrase: A gut problem causing belly pain, bloating, and diarrhea, constipation, or both, often worsened by stress.
IRTabbreviation: A test theory that links each question's difficulty to a person's hidden ability level.
ISAabbreviation: This abbreviation names the Wada test, which temporarily suppresses one brain hemisphere to assess its language and memory roles.
ischemianoun: Too little blood reaches a tissue or organ because its blood vessels are narrowed or blocked.
ischemic heart diseasenoun: This heart condition develops when restricted blood flow through the coronary arteries leaves the heart muscle inadequately supplied.
ischemic penumbranoun: This region surrounds severely injured tissue and receives reduced blood flow, leaving cells at risk but potentially recoverable.
ischemic strokephrase: A stroke happens when a blocked blood vessel stops blood from reaching part of the brain.
Ishihara Test for Color Blindnessnoun: This vision test uses figures embedded in colored dot patterns to screen mainly for difficulty distinguishing reds from greens.
ISIabbreviation: Short for interstimulus interval, this usually measures the pause from one stimulus ending until the next begins.
island deafnessnoun: A person hears pitches above and below a particular range but has reduced or absent hearing within that range.
island of Reilnoun: Another name for the insula, this folded-away brain region contributes to emotion, taste, awareness of bodily states, and other functions.
islands of knowledgenoun: These are small, separate areas of detailed expertise within a larger field of study.
islets of Langerhansnoun: Small groups of pancreatic cells release hormones, including insulin and glucagon, that help control blood sugar.
iso-prefix: This word beginning adds the meaning of equality or similarity to the word it joins.
isocarboxazidnoun: A rarely used antidepressant MAOI, a drug that blocks breakdown of mood chemicals, for hard-to-treat depression.
isochronynoun: Parts of complex ongoing movements often occur at evenly spaced times, even when the task does not demand regular timing.
isohedonic trapnoun: A criticism of Berlyne's theory challenges its prediction that experiences causing equal arousal should receive equal liking.
isolatenoun: A person kept apart from others or seldom chosen by group members.
isolate monkeynoun: A monkey used in research grows up entirely alone after being removed from maternal care during its earliest life.
isolated brainnoun: In animal research, surgical cuts at specific midbrain or brainstem levels separate brain regions from lower nervous system connections.
isolated explosive disordernoun: A historical diagnostic label described one extreme violent outburst disproportionate to its trigger and unexplained by other conditions or substances.
isolating languagenoun: A language of this type usually expresses each smallest unit of meaning as its own word.
isolating mechanismnoun: A barrier limits reproduction between populations or species, helping populations remain distinct or develop into different species.
isolationnoun: Being cut off from other people, groups, or usual contact can reduce support, learning, and belonging.
isolation effectnoun: People often remember an item better when it stands out from the other items around it.
isolation experimentnoun: Researchers separate an animal from others of its species to study changes in behavior or other functioning.
isolation of affectnoun: In psychoanalytic theory, a proposed unconscious defense separates a distressing memory from the feelings normally connected with it.
isolation syndromenoun: Brain damage causes severe difficulty understanding language and producing spontaneous speech, while repeating words remains relatively preserved.
isolation tanknoun: An enclosed tank lets a person float, usually in salty water, while greatly reducing light, sound, and other sensory input.
isomerizationnoun: A molecule's atoms rearrange without changing their number or types, sometimes changing its properties, as happens during vision.
isomersnoun: Molecules share the same numbers and types of atoms but differ in how those atoms are connected or arranged.
isometric contractionnoun: A muscle produces force while its overall length stays the same, such as when holding an object still.
isometric controlnoun: A control device responds to applied force against resistance, with little or no movement of the device itself.
isometric tremornoun: Involuntary shaking occurs while a person deliberately tenses a muscle without otherwise moving the body part.
isomorphismnoun: Gestalt psychologists proposed that the organization of conscious perception corresponds to the organization of underlying brain activity.
isoniazidnoun: An antibiotic treats tuberculosis and can disrupt vitamin B6 activity, sometimes affecting nerve function.
isophilianoun: Sullivan used this historical label for affection toward people of one's own sex without sexual behavior.
isopropyl alcoholnoun: This alcohol serves as a cleaner, solvent, and disinfectant, but swallowing it can cause poisoning and depress brain activity.
Isopto Carpinenoun: This brand name identifies pilocarpine eye medicine, which narrows pupils and helps lower pressure inside the eye.
Isopto Eserinenoun: This brand name identifies physostigmine eye medicine, which blocks acetylcholine breakdown and has been used to lower eye pressure.
isosensitivity functionnoun: A graph plots successful detections against false alarms as response thresholds change, showing the ability to distinguish signals from noise.
isotonic contractionnoun: A muscle changes length while maintaining roughly constant tension, as when shortening to lift a steady load.
isotonic controlnoun: A control device responds to displacement from its starting position, with little resistance, rather than to the force applied.
isotretinoinnoun: A medicine related to vitamin A treats severe acne; its possible links with mental health changes remain debated.
isotropynoun: A property or response remains the same across different directions or orientations.
ISPabbreviation: An Individual Service Plan sets personal goals and coordinates services and support for someone with a disability.
ISSPabbreviation: This worldwide professional group supports scientific study and practical applications of psychology in sports and exercise.
issue-relevant knowledgenoun: Information connected to an attitude's subject becomes available in memory when a person encounters that subject.
ITabbreviation: A test measure of how briefly someone needs to see something and still identify it correctly.
IT cortexabbreviation: The inferotemporal cortex, on the lower temporal lobe surface, helps the brain recognize visual shapes and objects.
ITAabbreviation: The Initial Teaching Alphabet uses 44 symbols with consistent sound mappings to help children begin reading English.
ITBSabbreviation: This standardized achievement test battery measures school skills across several subjects for children from kindergarten through eighth grade.
itchnoun: An uncomfortable skin sensation produces an urge to scratch and involves sensory pathways that interact with pain pathways.
ITDabbreviation: Interaural time differences are tiny gaps between a sound's arrival at each ear that help locate its source.
item analysisnoun: Checking how well each test question works by studying its statistics, such as difficulty and how well it separates people.
item characteristic curve (ICC)phrase: A graph showing how likely a person with a certain ability level is to answer one test question correctly.
item discriminabilitynoun: A statistical measure shows how well a test question distinguishes people with different levels of the ability being assessed.
item response theory (IRT)phrase: A test theory that predicts each question's correct-answer chance from a hidden ability level and item features.
item scalingnoun: A test question is assigned a location along a measurement scale, often according to its difficulty.
item validityphrase: Shows whether one test question actually measures the specific trait or skill it is supposed to measure.
iterated bootstrappingnoun: A statistical method repeatedly resamples data with replacement, then resamples those samples to refine estimates through additional stages.
iterationnoun: A calculation step repeats until its result stops changing enough or another specified stopping condition is reached.
iterative designnoun: Designers repeatedly test a product and use what they learn to improve the next version.
itinerancynoun: In this clinical usage, excessive travel between places can include repeatedly seeking new hospitals while presenting fabricated illness.
itinerant teachernoun: A teacher travels among schools or classrooms to give students specialized instruction.
ITPAabbreviation: This standardized assessment compares children's spoken and written language abilities with age norms to help identify learning and communication needs.
IUDabbreviation: An intrauterine device is a small contraceptive placed inside the uterus that mainly prevents sperm from fertilizing an egg.
IUPsySabbreviation: An international union of psychology organizations supports scientific exchange and cooperation among psychologists across countries.
IVabbreviation: In an experiment, the factor the researcher changes to see how it affects results.
IVFabbreviation: In vitro fertilization combines eggs and sperm outside the body, after which an embryo may be transferred into a uterus.

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