1,800+ MCAT terms, defined.

Memory is the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information. In the information-processing model, input passes from sensory to working to long-term memory, and long-term memory is explicit (episodic, semantic) or implicit (procedural,...

Stress is the physiological and psychological response to a demand or threat (a stressor) that a person appraises as taxing or exceeding their ability to cope. Most testable: appraisal matters, so the same event can be stressful for one...

Personality is the relatively stable pattern of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that characterizes a person across time and situations. The MCAT tests it through competing perspectives (psychoanalytic, humanistic, trait, social cogniti...

An attitude is a learned, relatively stable evaluation of a person, object, event, or idea, with affective, behavioral, and cognitive (ABC) components. Attitudes can influence behavior, but behavior can also change attitudes, as cognitiv...

Attention is the limited-capacity process of focusing awareness on some stimuli while giving others less processing. Most testable: models differ on where filtering happens (Broadbent early filter, Treisman attenuation, late selection),...

Anxiety is a state of apprehension, tension and worry about a possible future threat, usually with physiological arousal. It is a disorder when excessive, persistent and impairing. The MCAT often asks you to tell generalized anxiety, pan...

Intelligence is the cognitive capacity to learn from experience, reason, solve problems, and adapt. Theories differ: Spearman's single general factor (g) versus multiple types, as in Gardner's multiple intelligences and Sternberg's triar...

Motivation is the set of internal and external factors that start, direct, and sustain goal-directed behavior. The MCAT tests which theory explains a behavior (instinct, drive reduction, arousal, incentive, Maslow's hierarchy) and intrin...

Self-concept is the set of beliefs a person holds about who they are, built from self-schemas, personal traits, social roles and group identities. It is shaped by social interaction and feedback from others, and it is distinct from self-...

Depression (major depressive disorder) is a mood disorder with depressed mood or loss of interest and pleasure lasting at least two weeks, plus changes in sleep, appetite, energy and thinking. Most testable: it is unipolar, with no manic...

A trait is a relatively stable characteristic that shapes how a person tends to think, feel, and act across situations and over time. Trait theories, such as the Big Five, describe personality as a profile of traits. A trait differs from...

Operant conditioning is learning in which the consequences of a voluntary behavior change how likely it is to occur again. Reinforcement increases a behavior and punishment decreases it. Positive means a stimulus is added; negative means...

Cones are retinal photoreceptors for bright light, color and sharp detail, densest in the fovea. Most people have three types (short, medium, long wavelength), as trichromatic theory says; opponent-process theory describes later coding....

In operant conditioning, punishment is a consequence that makes a behavior less likely to recur. Positive punishment adds an aversive stimulus; negative punishment removes a desired one. The key trap: it is not negative reinforcement, wh...

Interference is forgetting that happens when other learned information competes with a memory and makes it harder to retrieve. Proactive interference is old material disrupting new; retroactive is new material disrupting old. It is one a...

Rods are retinal photoreceptors that work in dim light and detect brightness but not color. They are concentrated in the periphery of the retina and absent from the fovea, so dim objects are seen best slightly off-center. Cones handle co...

Aggression is behavior intended to harm another individual, whether physical or verbal. The MCAT ties it to biological factors (amygdala, testosterone, lower serotonin) and to learning, as in Bandura's Bobo doll study, where children imi...

Groupthink is a flawed group decision process in which the drive for harmony and unanimity overrides realistic evaluation of alternatives, so members silence doubts. It is most likely in cohesive, insulated groups with a directive leader...

Self-esteem is a person's overall evaluation of their own worth, the evaluative part of the self-concept. The most testable point is the contrast with self-efficacy, which is belief in one's ability to succeed at a specific task, not a g...

Conformity is changing your behavior, beliefs, or perceptions to match a group's norms because of real or imagined group pressure, usually without any direct order. The classic study is Asch's line-judgment experiment, where a unanimous...

Prejudice is a preconceived, usually negative attitude toward people because of their group membership. It is the feeling component of an attitude; stereotypes are beliefs and discrimination is behavior, and prejudice can occur without d...

Attraction (interpersonal attraction) is the tendency to like and want to approach or form a relationship with another person. The most testable point is that proximity, repeated exposure, and similarity usually increase liking, and simi...

The limbic system is a set of interconnected structures beneath the cortex, centrally the amygdala, hippocampus, and hypothalamus, that link emotion, motivation, and memory. Most testable: the amygdala handles fear and aggression, and th...

Arousal is the level of physiological and psychological activation, from drowsy to highly alert, driven by the reticular formation and sympathetic nervous system. Most testable: under the Yerkes-Dodson law, performance generally peaks at...

Classical conditioning is associative learning in which a neutral stimulus, repeatedly paired with a stimulus that already triggers a reflexive response, comes to trigger a similar response by itself. The most testable point is labeling...

General adaptation syndrome is Hans Selye's three-stage model of the body's response to prolonged stress: alarm, resistance, exhaustion. The most testable point is the order. Stress that continues past resistance leads to exhaustion and...

Taste (gustation) is the chemical sense in which dissolved molecules bind receptor cells in taste buds, mainly on the tongue. The five basic tastes are sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. Everyday "flavor" also depends heavily on smell.

The fundamental attribution error is the tendency, when explaining other people's behavior, to overweight dispositional (internal) causes like personality and underweight situational (external) ones. The most testable point is the contra...

A circadian rhythm is a roughly 24-hour cycle in physiology and behavior, such as sleep and wakefulness, body temperature, and hormone release. It is driven by the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of the hypothalamus and reset by light, whi...

A stereotype is a generalized belief about the traits of a social group, applied to individual members of that group. It is the cognitive piece of the trio: stereotype (belief), prejudice (attitude or feeling), discrimination (behavior).

Somatosensation is the body's sense of touch, pressure, vibration, temperature, pain, and body position, detected by receptors in the skin, muscles, and joints. Its signals reach the somatosensory cortex in the parietal lobe, where corti...

Psychosocial theory, in the MCAT sense, is Erikson's theory that personality develops through eight lifespan stages, each built around a social crisis such as trust vs mistrust or identity vs role confusion. The most testable point is ma...

Habituation is a decrease in response to a harmless stimulus that is presented repeatedly. It is a simple form of non-associative learning, since no stimuli are paired. The most testable point: a new or different stimulus can restore the...

Consciousness is awareness of yourself and your surroundings, and it varies across states such as alertness, drowsiness, sleep, hypnosis, meditation and drug-induced states. Most testable: waking and sleep states have characteristic EEG...

The representativeness heuristic is a mental shortcut that judges how likely something belongs to a category by how closely it resembles a typical member. It often leads people to neglect base rates, so a good match can seem likelier tha...

Coping is the set of thoughts and behaviors a person uses to manage a stressor and the emotions it causes. The MCAT usually sorts it into problem-focused coping (changing the stressor) and emotion-focused coping (managing the emotional r...

Social facilitation is the change in a person's performance when others are present. The presence of others usually improves performance on simple or well-learned tasks and tends to worsen it on complex or unfamiliar ones, so task diffic...

The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut in which people judge how likely or common something is by how easily examples come to mind. Vivid, recent or emotional events are easy to recall, so their frequency is often overestimated.

Self-efficacy is a person's belief in their ability to succeed at a specific task or goal, a concept from Bandura's social cognitive theory. Higher self-efficacy tends to predict more effort and persistence, and it is task-specific, unli...

B.F. Skinner was the behaviorist who developed operant conditioning: behavior is shaped by its consequences. Reinforcement increases a behavior and punishment decreases it. The most testable point is telling positive from negative reinfo...

Cognitive dissonance is the uncomfortable tension felt when a person's attitudes conflict with each other or with their behavior. People are typically motivated to reduce it, often by changing an attitude to fit the behavior. Less extern...

The elaboration likelihood model (Petty and Cacioppo) says persuasion works through two routes: the central route, based on careful thought about argument quality, and the peripheral route, based on surface cues. Which route dominates de...

A stimulus is any event, object, or energy that can be detected and can evoke a response. The most testable point: in classical conditioning, a neutral stimulus repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus becomes a conditioned stimu...

Encoding is the first stage of memory: converting incoming information into a form the brain can store. The most testable point is that deeper, meaning-based (semantic) encoding usually gives better recall than shallow encoding by sound...

Altruism is helping another person at a cost to oneself when the motive is the other's welfare, not a reward. The MCAT tests whether a case fits genuine empathy (empathy-altruism hypothesis) or self-interest (social exchange, reciprocity...

A personality trait is a relatively stable tendency to think, feel, and act in a certain way across many situations and over time. The MCAT tests trait theories, especially the Big Five, which place people along continuous dimensions, an...

Attachment is the enduring emotional bond between an infant and a caregiver, which gives the infant a secure base for exploring. The most testable point is Ainsworth's Strange Situation, which classifies infants as secure, avoidant, ambi...

Inclusive fitness is an individual's genetic success counted through its own offspring plus the extra offspring of relatives it helps, weighted by relatedness. It explains how altruism toward kin can evolve even when helping costs the he...

A drive is an internal state of tension, produced by an unmet biological need such as hunger or thirst, that pushes an organism to act to reduce it. In drive-reduction theory, reducing the drive restores homeostasis, but the theory does...

Recall is retrieving stored information from memory without being shown the item, as in a short-answer question. It is typically harder than recognition, where you only pick out the correct item from options.