Glossary
Psychology Professor Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential psychology professor terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key psychology professor vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in psychology professor training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Adjunct
- Part-time instructor.
- Cognition
- Mental processes.
- Control group
- Group without treatment.
- Experiment
- Test of cause and effect.
- Hypothesis
- Testable prediction.
- Informed consent
- Agreement to participate.
- IRB
- Human research ethics board.
- Office hours
- Time set aside for students.
- Peer review
- Expert review of research.
- Replication
- Repeating studies.
- Sabbatical
- Paid leave for research.
- Sample
- Group studied.
- Statistical significance
- Unlikely due to chance.
- Syllabus
- Course plan.
- Tenure
- Permanent faculty status.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Psychology Professor practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Psychology Professor training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.