Glossary A

All-or-nothing thinking is classifying objects or events as absolutely right or wrong, good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable, and so forth with nothing in between. All-or-nothing thinking is engaging in black-or-white thinking. Thinking in extremes, such as all good or all bad, with nothing in the middle.

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Allegiance effect refers to a characterization of psychotherapy outcome research such that investigators commonly find the most effective treatment is the one to which they hold a theoretical allegiance.

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Allegory of the cave refers to Plato's description of individuals who live their lives in accordance with the shadows of reality provided by sensory experience instead of in accordance with the true reality beyond sensory experience.

Allele refers to a member of a pair of genes; the alternate state of a gene at a given locus.

Alleles refers to alternative forms of the same gene.

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Allergy refers to an immune system response characterized by an abnormal reaction to a foreign substance, such as dust, pollen, fur, etc.

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Allopathy refers to a conventional or Western medicine that treats disease by the use of remedies to produce effects different from those produced by the disease under treatment.

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Allophones refer to acoustically different speech sounds (phones) that are not functionally different (i.e., are the same phoneme) in a particular language. For example, [p] and [ph] are allophones of the phoneme /p/ in English.

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