Find over 25,000 psychological definitions


discrimination learning

a conditioning or learning experience in which an individual must learn to make choices between alternative stimuli, some of which may be highly similar. To facilitate the learning, typically one of the stimuli is associated with a reinforcer or goal object and the other is not. For example, a cat may have to learn to find food under a white cup on the left side of an area in which there are white and black cups on both sides. Also called discriminative learning.

Browse dictionary by letter

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Psychology term of the day

January 18th 2025

group fallacy

group fallacy

1. the assumption, regarded as erroneous, that the actions and experiences of people in groups cannot be understood completely through analysis of the qualities of the individual members.

2. the mistaken assumption that a group is totally uniform, whereas in fact members differ from one another in many respects. See also outgroup homogeneity bias.