Glossary of decision-making & cognitive science

The LifeByLogic Glossary is the encyclopedia layer of an evidence-based publication of decision-support tools. Each entry defines a term used across our tools and methodology pages, anchors it to its peer-reviewed origin, surfaces common misconceptions, and explains how the concept appears in our measurement work. Entries are written for the general reader; technical depth is preserved in the cited primary sources.

The 88 entries below are organized by the lab cell where each term most often surfaces. Many terms cross labs; the grouping reflects primary association, not exclusive ownership.

• Brain age — estimated biological age of the brain relative to chronological age
• Chronotype — individual circadian preference (lark, owl, intermediate)
• Cognitive reserve — resilience of cognitive function against brain pathology
• Sleep cycle (90-minute) — the ultradian NREM–REM architecture of sleep
• Neuroplasticity — the brain's capacity to reorganize structure and function
• Sleep need — the daily duration of sleep an individual's body requires for healthy function
• Sleep debt — the cumulative deficit between sleep need and actual sleep
• ADHD — Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder; DSM-5 criteria, three presentation specifiers, comorbidity, treatment evidence
• ASRS Screener — the 18-item Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (Kessler 2005, WHO public domain) with embedded 6-item brief screener
• RAADS-14 Screen — the 14-item Eriksson, Andersen & Bejerot (2013, Molecular Autism, CC BY 2.0) factor-analytic short form for adult autism screening; cutoff 14, three subscales
• Autism Spectrum Disorder — DSM-5-TR neurodevelopmental condition involving social-communication differences and restricted/repetitive features including sensory atypicality (Criterion B.4)
• AuDHD — co-occurring autism and ADHD; one of the most common adult neurodevelopmental comorbidity patterns
• Autism camouflaging — compensatory strategies that mask autistic features in social contexts; CAT-Q (Hull 2019); a major driver of late diagnosis and autistic burnout
• Late-diagnosed autism — autism identified in adulthood after years of unrecognized struggle; the female phenotype, AuDHD, and camouflaging are major drivers
• Mentalizing — the cognitive ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others; theory of mind; the largest RAADS-14 subscale (7 items, max 21)
• Social Anxiety — DSM-5-TR Social Anxiety Disorder (300.23) and the second RAADS-14 subscale (4 items, max 12, item 6 reverse-coded)
• Sensory Reactivity — atypical responses to sensory stimuli; DSM-5 Criterion B.4 added 2013; the third RAADS-14 subscale (3 items, max 9)
• Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria — popular ADHD-related term for intense rejection responses; lacks formal DSM/ICD status; one pattern within broader emotional dysregulation
• Alexithymia — Sifneos 1972 personality trait of difficulty identifying and describing emotions; TAS-20 instrument; ~50% prevalence in autism (Kinnaird 2019)
• Emotional dysregulation — transdiagnostic Gross process model; DERS instrument (Gratz & Roemer 2004); core feature of adult ADHD, BPD, cPTSD
• Maladaptive daydreaming — Somer 2002 clinical construct; MDS-16 instrument; proposed DSM-5-TR criteria not adopted; comorbid with ADHD, OCD-spectrum, autism
• Default mode network — Raichle 2001 task-negative network; Buckner 2008 anatomy; intrinsic activity supporting mind-wandering and self-referential thought
• Neurogenesis — adult hippocampal neuron generation; Eriksson 1998 first evidence; Boldrini 2018 vs Sorrells 2018 contemporary dispute on persistence into adulthood

• Cognitive bias — systematic deviation from rational judgment
• Anchoring effect — estimates pulled toward irrelevant numerical primes
• Confirmation bias — preference for information that confirms prior beliefs
• Bias blind spot — seeing bias in others while missing it in oneself
• Heuristic — mental shortcut for judgment under uncertainty
• Big Five — the dominant empirical personality framework (OCEAN)
• OCEAN — per-trait drill-down on each Big Five dimension
• Generalized Anxiety Disorder — persistent and excessive worry meeting DSM-5 criteria over 6+ months
• GAD-7 Screener — the 7-item Spitzer 2006 anxiety screening instrument
• Dunning-Kruger Effect — Kruger & Dunning 1999 self-assessment-and-skill paradigm; substantially weakened by Nuhfer 2017 and Gignac & Zajenkowski 2020 critiques
• Halo Effect — Thorndike 1920 evaluation-spread bias; one of the most replicated findings in social psychology; resistant to awareness training
• High-functioning anxiety — popular clinical-cultural term for anxiety with maintained external performance; lacks DSM/ICD status; usually corresponds to GAD on evaluation
• Dark triad — Paulhus & Williams 2002 narcissism-Machiavellianism-psychopathy framework; Moshagen 2018 D-factor as common-core critique
• Fundamental attribution error — Ross 1977 attribution-spread bias; Malle 2006 meta-analysis showed effect smaller and more cross-culturally variable than originally claimed
• Locus of control — Rotter 1966 internal-external dimension; Levenson 1981 three-factor revision (internal, powerful others, chance)
• Negativity bias — Rozin & Royzman 2001 four-component framework; Baumeister 2001 narrative review (not meta-analysis); positivity-ratio claims refuted
• Survivorship bias — Wald 1943 SRG memoranda; Brown-Goetzmann-Ibbotson-Ross 1992 mutual fund quantification; the iconic bomber diagram is a 2016 reconstruction
• Self-sabotage — folk term for undermining one's own goals; self-handicapping (Berglas & Jones 1978), goal conflict, and self-defeating behavior
• People-pleasing — self-suppression in the service of approval; sociotropy, unmitigated communion, and the need for approval
• Shiny object syndrome — chasing novelty over follow-through; novelty seeking, sensation seeking, and the explore–exploit trade-off
• Approach–avoidance conflict — one goal that both attracts and repels; Miller's 1944 gradient model and the BIS/BAS systems
• Self-regulation — steering impulses, emotion, attention, and effort; control theory, dual-systems models, and the ego-depletion debate

• Sunk cost — past expenditure that should not influence current choices
• Opportunity cost — the value of the best alternative not chosen
• Stay-vs-go decision — structured framework for voluntary departure choices
• Decision hygiene — practices that reduce noise in judgment
• Career pivot — substantive shift in role, function, or industry
• Career capital — accumulated stock of knowing-why, knowing-how, and knowing-whom
• Decision fatigue — Baumeister ego-depletion derived; failed Hagger et al. 2016 multi-lab replication; Vohs et al. 2021 RRR found small effect
• Analysis paralysis — folk-psychological pattern covering multiple constructs; Scheibehenne 2010 meta-analysis showed near-zero choice-overload effect on average
• Loss aversion — Kahneman & Tversky 1979 prospect-theory component; well-replicated; 2:1 ratio is paradigm-dependent (Gal & Rucker 2018 critique)
• Prospect theory — Kahneman & Tversky 1979 / 1992; foundational behavioral economics framework; 2002 Nobel; replicates well across 19 countries (Ruggeri 2020)
• Bounded rationality — Simon 1955/1956 framework; satisficing and procedural rationality; foundational alternative to expected-utility theory
• Nudge theory — Thaler & Sunstein 2008 choice architecture; Mertens 2022 vs Maier/Szaszi 2022 publication-bias dispute over true effect size
• Risk aversion — Bernoulli 1738 expected utility; Pratt-Arrow measures; Rabin 2000 calibration theorem; distinct from loss aversion

• Eudaimonia — Aristotelian concept of human flourishing
• Flourishing — multidimensional well-being across life domains
• Subjective well-being — self-reported life evaluation and emotional state
• Life satisfaction — cognitive evaluation of one's life as a whole
• Presence of Meaning — the currently-experienced sense that one's life has meaning
• Search for Meaning — the active drive to find or deepen meaning
• Major Depressive Disorder — mood disorder defined by 5+ of 9 specific symptoms over 2+ weeks (DSM-5)
• Depression Screener — the 9-item Kroenke 2001 instrument for screening depression severity
• Burnout — syndrome of chronic workplace exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy; WHO ICD-11 (2019) classification; Maslach 1981 three-dimensional model
• Perceived Stress — subjective appraisal of life as unpredictable, uncontrollable, and overloading; Lazarus & Folkman 1984 transactional model
• Chronic Stress — persistent activation of the body’s stress response; HPA axis dysregulation; broad health consequences
• Allostatic Load — cumulative biological wear-and-tear from chronic stress; McEwen 1998 framework; composite biomarker indices
• Loneliness — subjective feeling that one’s social relationships are inadequate; multi-dimensional construct (Weiss 1973); central to U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory
• Social Connection — umbrella construct integrating objective social ties and subjective sense of belonging; positive-construct counterpart to loneliness and isolation
• Social Isolation — objective state of having few social contacts and limited social interaction; distinct from loneliness; predicts mortality independently (Holt-Lunstad 2015)
• UCLA Loneliness Scale — most widely used self-report instrument for loneliness; UCLA-20 V3 (Russell 1996) and UCLA-3 brief screen (Hughes 2004)
• Weiss Loneliness Typology — foundational distinction between emotional loneliness (close-confidant deficit) and social loneliness (friend-group deficit); Weiss 1973
• Flow state — Csikszentmihalyi 1975 challenge-skill-balance construct; mixed contemporary evidence; FSS instruments; replication concerns at extreme states
• Self-compassion — Neff 2003 three-component framework; SCS-26 instrument; strong meta-analytic support (MacBeth 2012; Zessin 2015); factor-structure debate active
• Growth mindset — Dweck implicit-theories framework; failed multiple major replications (Sisk 2018, Macnamara & Burgoyne 2023 meta-analyses)
• Interoception — Sherrington 1906 / Craig 2002 internal-state perception; Garfinkel 2015 three-dimensional model (accuracy, sensibility, awareness)
• Learned helplessness — Seligman 1967 original triadic-design work; Maier & Seligman 2016 reformulation reversed the causal direction
• Purpose in life — Frankl meaning-orientation; Steger 2006 Meaning in Life Questionnaire; Hill 2014 mortality findings; distinct from life satisfaction
• Self-determination theory — Deci & Ryan 1985/2000 framework; autonomy-competence-relatedness as basic psychological needs
• Self-efficacy — Bandura 1977/1997 belief in one's capacity; four sources (mastery, vicarious, verbal persuasion, physiological)
• Window of tolerance — Siegel 1999 interpersonal-neurobiology framework; clinically influential; measurement-validation gap and contested polyvagal-theory framing (Grossman 2023)

• Decision support system — structured tool aiding human judgment
• Self-report (in research) — data collected from participants' own accounts
• Validated instrument — measurement tool with established psychometric properties
• Effect size — magnitude of a relationship or difference

Each entry is written by Abiot Y. Derbie, PhD. Entries follow a consistent seven-section structure: canonical 50-word definition, conceptual origin, research evidence, common misconceptions, how LifeByLogic measures the construct, related terms, and selected primary references. Source citations are drawn from peer-reviewed primary literature. See the editorial policy for our sourcing and review standards.