psychology

noun psy·chol·o·gy \ sī-ˈkä-lə-jē \

Updated on: 7 Apr 2018

Definition of psychology

plural psychologies

1 : the science of mind and behavior

2 a : the mental or behavioral characteristics of an individual or group

b : the study of mind and behavior in relation to a particular field of knowledge or activity

3 : a theory or system of psychology

Freudian psychology

the psychology of Jung

—

psychologist

play \sī-ˈkä-lə-jist\ noun

See psychology defined for English-language learners

See psychology defined for kids

Examples of psychology in a Sentence

She studied psychology in college.
the psychology of an athlete
the psychology of crowd behavior
We need to understand the psychologies of the two people involved in the incident.

Recent Examples of psychology from the Web

In recent years, researchers have found that psychology, not technology, could likely be the largest societal road block in transitioning to driverless vehicles.

— joshua emerson smith, sandiegouniontribune.com, "Poll: Majority of Californians fear self-driving cars," 3 Apr. 2018
To think that psychology is an indicator of weakness, truly is an ignorant statement.

— bob nightengale, USA TODAY, "Why Major League Baseball is '90% mental' now more than ever," 3 Apr. 2018
The psychology around a rise in rates isn’t necessarily straightforward either.

— neil irwin, New York Times, "What to Expect From the Housing Market This Spring," 28 Mar. 2018
While attending Waukegan High School, Mortensen enjoyed psychology and computers.

— sheryl devore, Lake County News-Sun, "Fire-eating hypnotist takes Three Brothers Theatre stage," 23 Mar. 2018
The research from psychology and political science actually has a few hints for us here.

— brian resnick, Vox, "Cambridge Analytica’s “psychographic microtargeting”: what’s bullshit and what’s legit," 23 Mar. 2018
Lastly, course revisions impacted a handful of art, biology, business administration, coed, mathematics, physical education, psychology and sociology classes.

— andrew j. campa, latimes.com, "New language courses to debut this fall at Glendale Community College," 21 Mar. 2018
Cambridge Analytica got the data by paying a psychology professor, Aleksandr Kogan, to create a Facebook personality quiz that harvested data not only about its own users but also about users' friends.

— timothy b. lee, Ars Technica, "Zuckerberg: Cambridge Analytica leak a “breach of trust” with users," 21 Mar. 2018
But psychology would still be the best way to understand it.

— Anchorage Daily News, "Trumpism is a psychology, not an ideology," 7 Mar. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'psychology.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

The roots of psychology

The word psychology was formed by combining the Greek psychē (meaning “breath, principle of life, life, soul,”) with –logia (which comes from the Greek logos, meaning “speech, word, reason”). An early use appears in Nicholas Culpeper’s mid-17th century translation of Simeon Partliz’s A New Method of Physick, in which it is stated that “Psychologie is the knowledg of the Soul.” Today, psychology is concerned with the science or study of the mind and behavior. Many branches of psychology are differentiated by the specific field to which they belong, such as animal psychology, child psychology, and sports psychology.