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confederate

n.

1. in an experimental situation, an aide of the experimenter who poses as a participant but whose behavior is rehearsed prior to the experiment.

2. in parapsychology, an individual who assists a supposed psychic by covertly providing him or her with information about a client's concerns, preferences, background, or situation, thus creating or strengthening the illusion of the psychic's paranormal abilities.

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Psychology term of the day

January 14th 2025

Kruskal–Shepard scaling

Kruskal–Shepard scaling

a type of multidimensional scaling applied to judgments of similarity or dissimilarity for pairs of items (e.g., cities). The dissimilarities are represented by distances between items in a highly dimensional space: Larger distances indicate greater dissimilarity. [William Henry Kruskal (1919–2005), U.S. statistician; Roger N. Shepard (1929–  ), U.S. experimental and cognitive psychologist]