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Optic nerve—nerve formed by ganglion cell axons; carries the neural impulses from the eye to the thalamus of the brain.

Optical or visual illusions—discrepancies between the appearance of a visual stimulus and its physical reality.

Oral stage—Freud’s first psychosexual stage; pleasure derived from sucking; crisis is weaning from bottle or breast fixation: dependent personalities who are smokers, overeaters, talkative, etc.

Organismic self—according to Rogers, the original (real) self that strives toward positive goals until it is influenced by society.

Out-group—groups to which we do not belong.

Out-group homogeneity—belief that members of another group are more similar in their attitudes than they are.

Ovaries—gonads in females that produce hormones necessary for reproduction and development of secondary sex characteristics.

Overconfidence bias—the tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments which proves to be a hindrance in problem solving.

Overgeneralization or overregularization—application of grammatical rules without making appropriate exceptions.

Overjustification effect—where promising a reward for doing something we already like to do results in us seeing the reward as the motivation for performing the task. When the reward is taken away, the behavior tends to disappear.

Pancreas—gland near stomach that secretes the hormones insulin and glucagon that regulate blood sugar necessary for fueling all behavioral processes. Imbalances result in diabetes and hypoglycemia.

Panic disorder—unpredictable attacks of acute anxiety accompanied by high levels of physiological arousal that last from a few seconds to a few hours.

Parallel distributive processing (PDP)—performing several operations simultaneously as opposed to serially or one operation after another.

Parallel processing—to simultaneously analyze different elements of sensory information such as color, shape, brightness, etc.

Paranoid personality disorder—symptoms include delusions of persecution that are generally organized around one theme.

Paranoid schizophrenia—a form of schizophrenia in which the person suffers from delusions of persecution, grandeur, reference, or control.

Parapsychology—study of paranormal events that investigates claims of ESP, including telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and telekinesis or psychokinesis.

Parasympathetic nervous system—subdivision of PNS and ANS whose stimulation calms your body following sympathetic stimulation by restoring normal body processes.

Parathyroids—endocrine glands in neck that produce parathyroid hormone which helps maintain calcium ion level in blood necessary for normal functioning of neurons.

Parietal lobes—region on the top of the cerebral cortex the front strip of which is the somatosensory cortex that processes sensory information including touch, temperature, and pain from body parts; association areas perceive objects.

Peg word mnemonic—memory device which uses a scheme (“One is a bun, two is...”) we memorize, then associate with names or objects in a series.

Percentile score—the percentage of scores at or below a particular score.

Perception—the process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting sensations, enabling one to recognize meaningful objects and events.

Perceptual constancy—perceiving an object as unchanging even when the immediate sensation of the object changes.

Peripheral nervous system (PNS)—portion of the nervous system outside the brain and spinal cord. It includes all of the sensory and motor neurons, and subdivisions called the autonomic and somatic nervous systems.

Peripheral route of persuasion—(according to the elaboration likelihood model) changes attitudes by pairing superficial positive stimuli (supermodels and celebrities) with an argument; leads to unstable change in attitudes.

Permissive parenting style—parents set no firm guidelines for behavior and tend to give in to demands of the child.

Persona—according to Jung, this is the outward part of the personality or the mask we wear when