projection

Meaning: In the psychoanalytic view, the ego uses defense mechanisms to keep anxiety down when the id's impulses clash with the superego or reality. In projection, the person pushes an unacceptable impulse outward and sees it in someone else. A student who feels intense resentment toward a roommate, but denies it and insists the roommate resents them, is projecting. The impulse is not acknowledged as their own. (In neuroscience, a different sense of the word is an axon pathway carrying signals from one brain region to another.)

On the MCAT: A passage gives a short vignette and asks which defense mechanism it shows. Look for the person's own feeling or trait being credited to another person. Answer choices usually include displacement, reaction formation, denial, repression, rationalization, regression and sublimation, so the task is to tell them apart.

Common confusion: Students mix up projection with displacement. In displacement, the person knows the feeling is theirs but aims it at a safer target (angry at a boss, snaps at a sibling). In projection, the feeling is attributed to someone else ("they are angry at me"). Reaction formation is different again: the person acts in a way opposite to the true impulse. Projection is also not the same as simply assuming others think as you do.