ethnocentrism

1. the practice of regarding one’s own ethnic, racial, or social group as the center of all things. Just as egocentrism is a sense of self-superiority, so ethnocentrism is the parallel tendency to judge one’s group as superior to other groups.

2. the tendency, often unintentional, to base perceptions and understandings of other groups or cultures on one’s own. Also called ethnocentricity. See also ingroup bias; racism; sociocentrism. —ethnocentric adj. [first described by U.S. sociologist William G. Sumner (1840–1910)]

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Psychology term of the day

September 1st 2024

transfer function model

1. a model used in functional magnetic resonance imaging to describe the shape of responses. A neuron receives a number of inputs, each of which comes via a connection that has a strength or weight; these weights correspond to the synaptic efficacy of the neuron. Each neuron also has a single threshold value. Activation of the neuron is determined by the weighted sum of the inputs minus the threshold. The activation signal is passed through a transfer function to produce the output of the neuron.

2. in time-series analysis, a type of model used to forecast a time series that is influenced by present and past values of other time series.