A dispositional attribution occurs when an individual’s behavior is attributed to factors internal to themselves. Examples of dispositional factors include one’s personality, talent, or perseverance. Those are all internal and enduring characteristics of the person. The opposite is situational attribution, which refers to attributing outcomes to situational or environmental factors rather than personal factors. Distributional

A person with an external locus of control believes that they do not have control over their success or failure. This is the opposite of an internal locus of control, which is a belief that you can change your situation through your own hard work and effort. People with an external locus of control are

Situational attribution refers to when an individual’s behavior is attributed to factors in the environment. These factors may include the environment (see: environmental factors), other people’s behaviors, umpire bias, and so on. One of the first psychologists to study attributions was Fritz Heider in his seminal work in 1958, The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. Situational

Explicit memory is a type of long-term memory that deals with facts and experiences. It is juxtaposed to implicit memory, which happens without conscious effort. The names of famous people in history or science, or the dates they did something notable, are the kinds of information that we keep in explicit memory. This type of

Reciprocal determinism is a model of human behavior. The model states that there are three factors that influence how people act: person factors, environment factors, and behavior factors. The term “reciprocal” means that each factor affects the others, and vice versa. So, factor A effects factor B, and in return, factor B also affects factor

Self-esteem is a combination of the thoughts and feelings a person has about themselves. What they think about their personality and abilities, and whether those thoughts are positive or negative. Self-esteem is usually described as high or low, but there is a lot of room in between those two ends. A person that likes their

George Engel first articulated the biopsychosocial model in 1977, proposing that understanding a person’s medical condition requires assessing not only their biology but also psychological and social influences. The biopsychosocial model encompasses three primary elements: physiological, psychological, and sociocultural aspects. For example, biological factors can include a person’s age, genetic makeup, health history, and gender.

A personal fable is a term used in psychology to describe the belief that one’s thoughts and feelings are unique, special, and somehow more important than those of other people.  It is often associated with adolescents as they begin to explore their identities in relation to others. Developed by David Elkind in 1967, the theory