faking

n. the practice of some participants in an evaluation or psychological test who either (a) “fake good” by choosing answers that create a favorable impression, as may occur, for example, when an individual is applying for a job or admission to an educational institution; or (b) “fake bad” by choosing answers that make them appear disturbed or incompetent, as may occur, for example, when an individual wishes to be exempted from military service or exonerated in a criminal trial. —fake vb.

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Psychology term of the day

May 9th 2024

state space

1. a graphical representation used to characterize game playing and other search-based problem solving. A state space has four components: (a) a set of nodes or states, (b) a set of arcs linking subsets of the nodes, (c) a nonempty set of nodes indicated as the start nodes of the space, and (d) a nonempty set of goal nodes of the space. The goal nodes are identified by either a property of the state itself (e.g., a checkmate) or a property of the path leading to the goal state (e.g., the shortest path). An architecture such as a production system or classifier system can generate a state-space search. Computational state-space analysis and computer simulations of problem solving often are used as well in the study of how people pursue goal-directed behavior. See also graph; search; tree.

2. multidimensional space, particularly as related to the depiction of the results of classification methods used to group objects with similar characteristics and patterns of behavior.