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Dissociative disorders—class of disorders in which traumatic events or unpleasant memories cause a massive repression of these into the unconscious mind.

Dissociative fugue—sometimes called the “traveling amnesiac” disorder, in which a person moves away and assumes a new identity, with amnesia for the previous identity.

Dissociative identity disorder—formerly known as multiple personality disorder, a rarely seen dissociative disorder in which two or more distinct personalities exist within the same person.

Divergent thinking—thinking that produces many alternatives or ideas; creativity.

Dizygotic or fraternal twins—twins who develop from two different eggs fertilized by two different sperms.

Dominant gene—the gene expressed when the genes for a trait are different.

Dopamine—a neurotransmitter that stimulates the hypothalamus to synthesize hormones and affects alertness, attention, and movement. Lack of dopamine is associated with Parkinson’s disease; too much with schizophrenia.

Double-bind—a theory that serious mental illness can be expressed in an individual who has been given mutually inconsistent messages, such as love and hate, typically from a parent during childhood.

Double-blind procedure—research design in which neither the experimenter nor the participants know who is in the experimental group and who is in the control group.

Down syndrome—usually with three copies of chromosome-21 in their cells, individuals are typically mentally retarded, have a round head, flat nasal bridge, protruding tongue, small round ears, a fold in the eyelid, and poor muscle tone and coordination.

Drive-reduction theory—theory of motivation that focuses on internal states of tension such as hunger that motivate us to pursue actions that reduce the tension and bring us back to homeostasis or internal balance.

Dualism—sees mind and body as two different things that interact.

Echoic memory—auditory sensory memory.

Eclectic—use of techniques and ideas from a variety of approaches to psychotherapy.

Ectomorph—Sheldon’s body type characterized by thin, frail body, introversion, and intelligence.

Educational psychologists—psychologists who focus on how effective teaching and learning take place.

EEG (electroencephalogram)—an amplified tracing of brain activity produced when electrodes positioned over the scalp transmit signals about the brain’s electrical activity (“brain waves”) to an electroencephalograph machine.

Effector—muscle cell that contracts or gland cell that secretes.

Efferent neuron—also called motor neuron, nerve cell in your PNS that transmits impulses from sensory or interneurons to muscle cells that contract or gland cells that secrete.

Ego—Freud’s personality structure that is the only rational component; it serves as the mediator between the id and superego and also as the decision-maker for the personality.

Egocentrism—seeing the world from one’s own perspective; the inability to see reality from the perspective of another person characteristic of the preoperational child.

Elaboration likelihood model (ELM)—accounts for how attitudes can be changed.

Elaborative rehearsal—movement of information into long-term memory by making it meaningful.

Electroconvulsive treatment (ECT)—is used as a last resort to treat severely depressed patients; involves passing small amounts of electric current through the brain to produce seizure activity and a change in affect.

Embryo—the developmental prenatal stage (from about 2 weeks through 2 months after fertilization) when most organs begin to develop.

Emotional intelligence—the ability to perceive, express, understand, and regulate emotions.

Emotions—feelings, highly subjective personal tendencies to respond to internal and external variables; includes physical arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience.

Encoding—the process of converting information into some form that enables it to be stored into our memory system.

Encoding specificity principle—retrieval depends upon the match between the way information is encoded and the