mobility

1. the capacity to move or be moved, such as the ability of people to transport themselves between home and work or community facilities by such means as walking, driving a car, or traveling by public transportation. See also motility.

2. the ability of an infant to creep, crawl, walk, or otherwise move through space.

3. in sociology, the extent to which individuals are able to move between localities, occupations, or social classes. See geographical mobility; social mobility. See also horizontal mobility; vertical mobility. —mobile adj.

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Psychology term of the day

November 21st 2024

self-evaluation maintenance model

a conceptual analysis, related to social comparison theory, in which an individual is assumed to maintain a positive self-evaluation by (a) associating with high-achieving individuals who excel in areas with low relevance to his or her sense of self-worth and (b) avoiding association with high-achieving individuals who excel in areas that are personally important to him or her. [developed by U.S. social psychologists Abraham Tesser (1941– ), Jennifer D. Campbell (1944– ), and their colleagues]