Psychocentric
adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A tourist who tends to avoid adventures and risks, preferring the familiar.
"[A] non-flyer was likely to experience many of these same problems which often resulted in very severely restricted life styles. Basically, we can see that this is a self inhibited, nervous, and non-adventuresome type of person. We call this individual the Psychocentric, from "psyche" meaning "self," and "centric" meaning the centering of one's thoughts or concerns on the small problem areas of one's life."
- 1 Primarily focused on the mind or spirit, especially as opposed to the body.
"I have confessed that I feel drawn to you by many psychocentric influences."
- 2 Of a tourist: tending to avoid adventures and risks, preferring the familiar; self-inhibiting.
"These experts type some aerophobes as psychocentric individuals so self-focused on imaginary problems they have little energy left to enjoy life. Other fearful flyers are stymied by territory-boundedness—an unadventurous spirit."
Example
More examples"I have confessed that I feel drawn to you by many psychocentric influences."
Etymology
The adjective is derived from psycho- (prefix meaning ‘relating to the mind or soul’) + -centric (suffix meaning ‘having a specified object at the centre, or as the focus of attention’). The noun is probably derived from the adjective. Adjective sense 2 (“of a tourist: tending to avoid adventures and risks”) and the noun sense (“tourist who tends to avoid adventures and risks”) were coined by the American travel researcher Stanley C. Plog in a paper presented to the Southern California Chapter of the Travel Research Association on 10 October 1972, which was later published in February 1974: see the quotation.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.