elective affinity

a feeling of sympathy, attraction, or connection to a particular person, thing, or idea. The term was originally used to refer to certain chemical processes but took on a new figurative sense after the publication in 1809 of The Elective Affinities, a novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). It is often used to mean those preferences and common feelings that constitute a cultural or national identity or that distinguish groups and subgroups from one another.

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Psychology term of the day

November 18th 2024

skewness

n. the degree to which a set of scores, measurements, or other numbers are asymmetrically distributed around a central point. A normal frequency distribution of data is shaped like a bell, with equal values for each of its three indices of central tendency—the mean, the median, and the mode. Approximately 68% of the scores lie within 1 standard deviation of the mean and approximately 95% of the scores lie within 2 standard deviations of the mean. When a distribution has a few extreme scores toward the high end relative to the low end (e.g., when a test is difficult and few test takers do well), it has a positive skew (or is positively skewed), such that the mean is greater than the mode. When a distribution has a few extreme scores toward the low end relative to the high end (e.g., when a test is easy and most test takers do well), it has a negative skew (or is negatively skewed).