naturalistic environment

a type of laboratory environment that attempts to include many of the features found in natural environments. Examples are underground burrows for fossorial animals, flight cages for birds, and trees or other climbing structures for arboreal animals. Naturalistic environments allow the study of more species-typical behavior in captive animals while maintaining control over many other variables.

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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]