Download Glossary of Key Terms

Glossary of Key Terms
Agonist: a drug that binds to a receptor of a cell and triggers a response by the cell. An agonist often
mimics the action of a naturally occurring substance.
Attribution: the process of giving reasons for why things happen.
Biopsychosocial: an approach that takes account of biological, psychological, and social variables.
Celebrity: a celebrity is a widely recognised or famous person who commands a high degree of public and
media attention. The word stems from the Latin verb celebrere, which translates as “emptyheaded attention
seeker”.
Client-centred counselling: a form of humanistic therapy introduced by Carl Rogers and designed to
increase the client’s self-esteem.
Clinical criteria: the key features than can be used to diagnose a condition.
Cognitive therapy: a form of treatment involving attempts to change or restructure the client’s thoughts and
beliefs.
Cognitive-behavioural therapies: a development of cognitive therapy where some elements of
behavioural therapy (such as focus on behaviour change) have been added.
Dispositional: where the cause of a particular behaviour is thought to have resulted from the person’s own
personality or characteristics, rather than from the demands of circumstances.
Dizygotic twins: fraternal twins derived from two fertilised ova.
Gambling: the wagering of money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome
with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods. Typically, the outcome of the
wager is evident within a short period.
Genes: units of inheritance that form part of a chromosome. Some characteristics are determined by one
gene, whereas for others many genes are involved.
Harm minimisation: a hierarchy of behaviours to carry out that reduce the level of damage caused by the
addictive behaviour.
Hedonism: the pursuit of pleasure.
Heuristics: mental shortcuts that people use to make judgements or social inferences. The most commonly
used are availability, simulation, anchoring, and adjustment and representativeness.
Monozygotic twins: identical twins derived from the same fertilised ovum.
Neurotransmitters: chemical substances that are released at the junction between neurons (a synapse) and
that affect the transmission of messages in the nervous system.
Opiates: a natural or synthetic derivative of opium that has similar pain killing and sedative effects.
Psychoactive substance: a chemical substance that exerts psychological effects including changes in
mood, cognition, and behaviour.
Psychoanalysis: Freud’s set of theories about human behaviour; also the form of treatment for mental
disorders he devised.
Reinforcement: anything that increases the probability that a behaviour will recur in similar
circumstances. The term is usually used of learned associations, acquired through operant or classical
conditioning, but it may also be applied to other forms of learning.
Self-esteem: the evaluative dimension of the self-concept, which is to do with how worthwhile and/or
confident a person feels about him- or herself.
Situational characteristics: a reason for an act or behaviour which implies that it occurred as a result of
the situation or circumstances that the person was in at the time.
Social inoculation: giving people the skills to resist social pressure.