Einstellung

n. an expectation or readiness associated with particular stimuli. It may foster a degree of mental inflexibility by instilling a tendency to respond to a situation in a certain way. For example, a person who successfully solves a series of problems using one formula may apply that same formula to a new problem solvable by a simpler method. The contemporary term for this concept is mental set. [German, “attitude”]

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Psychology term of the day

February 28th 2025

common metric

a unit or scale of measurement that is applied to data from different sources. In a meta-analysis, for instance, the results from multiple studies may need to be placed on a common metric so that they may be meaningfully compared.