Psychology and psychiatry often study phenomena that are “open concepts,” which necessitates precision in the language used to describe the phenomena. This is the argument posed by the authors of a recent paper that describes 50 terms that are commonly used in psychological and psychiatric scientific literature and that the authors believe are incorrectly used.
The 50 terms are broken down into 5 broad categories. Some of these terms apply to scientific literature in general and are not specific to psychology and psychiatry.
To see the full description of when and why the authors believe each term shouldn’t be used, see the original manuscript.
Inaccurate or Misleading Terms
- A gene for
- Antidepressant medication
- Autism epidemic
- Brain region X lights up
- Brainwashing
- Bystander apathy
- Chemical imbalance
- Family genetic studies
- Genetically determined
- God spot
- Gold standard
- Hard-wired
- Hypnotic trance
- Influence of gender/social class/education, etc.
- Lie detector test
- Love molecule
- Multiple personality disorder
- Neural signature
- No difference between groups
- Objective personality test
- Operational definition
- p = 0.000
- Psychiatric control group
- Reliable and valid
- Statistically reliable
- Steep learning curve
- The scientific method
- Truth serum
- Underlying biological dysfunction
- Acting out
- Closure
- Denial
- Fetish
- Splitting
- Comorbidity
- Interaction
- Medical model
- Reductionism
- Hierarchical stepwise regression
- Mind-body therapies
- Observable symptom
- Personality type
- Prevalence of trait X
- Principal components factor analysis
- Scientific proof
- Biological and environmental influences
- Empirical data
- Latent construct
- Mental telepathy
- Neurocognition
Frequently Misused Terms
Ambiguous Terms
Oxymorons