Elsevier's Dictionary of Psychological Theories (Electronic book text)

In attempting to understand and explain various behaviour, events, and phenomena in their field, psychologists have developed and enunciated an enormous number of best guesses or theories concerning the phenomenon in question. Such theories involve speculations and statements that range on a potency continuum from strong to weak. The term theory, itself, has been conceived of in various ways in the psychological literature. In the present dictionary, the strategy of lumping together all the various traditional descriptive labels regarding psychologists best guesses under the single descriptive term theory has been adopted. The descriptive labels of principle, law, theory, model, paradigm, effect, hypothesis and doctrine are attached to many of the entries, and all such descriptive labels are subsumed under the umbrella term theory. The title of this dictionary emphasizes the term theory (implying both strong and weak best guesses) and