Glossary of Psychological Terms
Definitions of terms used in psychology, psychometric testing and occupational assessment, organised alphabetically.
Saccadic movement
The rapid, jumping movement of the eyes from one fixation point to another, as occurs continuously during reading and general visual scanning.
Sample
A group of cases or individuals studied as representative of the larger population from which they were drawn, so that findings can be generalised beyond the sample itself. See also: biased sample, random sample.
Scapegoat
The target of displaced aggression or blame. In biblical tradition, a goat was symbolically sent into the wilderness once a year, on the Day of Atonement, carrying away the sins of the community. In modern usage, scapegoats are individuals or groups blamed for social frustrations or problems that are not, in fact, of their making.
Schema
A mental model, framework or structured pattern of knowledge through which new experiences are interpreted and organised. Central to Jean Piaget's account of how children make sense of the world at different developmental stages, and now widely used across cognitive psychology.
Schizoid
Relating to, or resembling features of, schizophrenia, though without necessarily meeting the full clinical criteria for the disorder — as in “schizoid personality.”
Schizophrenia
The most common category of psychosis, covering a wide range of symptoms and behaviours. The term comes from the Greek schizo (“split”) and phrenia (“mind”), a source of a near-universal popular misconception: “split mind” in the everyday sense of “split personality” actually describes multiple personality (dissociative identity disorder), an entirely different condition involving apparently separate personalities. The “split” in schizophrenia is instead between a person's thinking and feeling processes, disrupting the normal harmony between thought, emotion and action — so a person with schizophrenia might, for instance, show no emotion, or an incongruent emotion, while describing a tragic event. Difficulty communicating with others, delusions and hallucinations are also common symptoms.
Scotoma
A blind area within the visual field caused by damage to the retina or visual pathway, distinct from the small blind spot present in every normal eye where the optic nerve exits the retina.
Seashore test
A series of recorded tests assessing musical ability — pitch discrimination, rhythm, timbre and related skills — developed by American psychologist Carl Seashore.
Second-order conditioning
See higher-order conditioning — a form of classical conditioning in which a previously conditioned stimulus is used to condition a response to a new, second stimulus.
Selective attention
The deliberate focusing of attention on one particular stimulus or task, to the exclusion of other, competing stimuli in the environment. See also: cocktail party phenomenon.
Self
In humanistic psychology, a concept roughly equivalent to the ego in psychoanalytic theory: the part of the personality that maintains a continuous, conscious sense of its own identity over time.
Self-actualisation
According to Abraham Maslow, the ongoing drive to fulfil one's fullest potential and capacities, considered a hallmark of psychological health and the summit of his hierarchy of needs.
Self-concept
The full set of beliefs, perceptions and evaluations that together make up a person's overall view of themselves, including their self-image.
Self-esteem
The degree to which a person likes, values and feels worthy of respect as themselves.
Self-fulfilling prophecy
The phenomenon by which an expectation about one's own or another person's behaviour can, through its influence on how people act, actually bring that expected behaviour about — as demonstrated in the Rosenthal effect. See also: experimenter bias.
Self-image
The particular self a person believes themselves to be — a composite of many influences that may bear little resemblance to any objective assessment of that person, or to how others actually see them. Self-image begins forming very early in life and is, to a significant degree, rooted in early body image: an adult of normal or even above-average height may still privately think of themselves as small, because that was their relative size among peers when their self-image was originally formed. The judgements of significant other people also shape self-image profoundly, and these early-formed impressions can persist even as a person's actual social circumstances and the judgements others make of them change considerably in later life.
Self-serving bias
A form of the fundamental attribution error applied specifically to oneself — the tendency to attribute one's own successes to personal ability or effort, while attributing one's own failures to external circumstances.
Semantic differential
A technique developed by American psychologist Charles Osgood for studying how different people understand and relate to the same words or concepts. Participants rate a given term along several bipolar dimensions, such as good-bad or active-passive, and the resulting ratings are compared across individuals or groups.
Semantic memory
Memory for general factual knowledge and concepts, independent of the specific personal context in which it was learned — as distinct from episodic memory, memory for specific personally experienced events, though the two systems interact closely.
Semicircular canals
Three fluid-filled canals in the inner ear, oriented at right angles to one another, that detect head movement and relay information about balance and spatial orientation to the brain.
Senescence
A term used within developmental psychology to draw attention to the psychological stresses, conflicts and adjustments of old age and the ageing process, as well as its distinctive and potentially positive aspects.
Senile dementia
An older term for dementia occurring in old age, sometimes referred to popularly as “senility.” A progressive, degenerative condition, it includes, for example, the later stages of Alzheimer's disease.
Sensation
The immediate experience produced by the stimulation of a sense organ — the eyes, ears, skin and so on — and a necessary first step before the higher-level process of perception can occur.
Sensitivity training
A technique aimed at improving interpersonal communication and relationship quality within small groups, rooted in humanistic psychology and drawing on the methods and experience of group therapy. Group leaders encourage open, honest discussion of feelings within the group, in the hope that increased sensitivity to interpersonal dynamics will carry over into participants' relationships outside the group.
Sensorimotor stage
According to Jean Piaget, the first stage of cognitive development, spanning birth to around age 2. During this stage, the infant initially experiences themselves as the centre of the world, only gradually coming to distinguish between self and other; the stage's other major achievement is object permanence.
Sensory deprivation
A situation in which people are deprived of the ordinary level of sensory stimulation encountered in everyday life. Experimental studies isolating people from sensory input as far as possible in a laboratory have found that participants quickly become bored and, before long, begin to hallucinate — suggesting that when the brain has nothing external to process and make sense of, it may generate its own sensations and patterns instead.
Sensory memory
The very first stage of the memory process, lasting less than a second, during which raw information is briefly registered by the sense organs before either fading or being passed on for further processing. See also: short-term memory, long-term memory.
Separation anxiety
In psychoanalytic theory, an infant's fear of losing their mother or primary caregiver. The consequences of an infant actually losing a mother, or her love and attention, have received extensive research attention well beyond psychoanalysis. See also: maternal deprivation.
Serendipity
Named after the island of Serendip in the tale of Sinbad (popularised in English via Horace Walpole): the experience of discovering something valuable while searching for something else entirely — a pattern found, to varying degrees, in the careers of major figures in psychology and science, including Freud and Pavlov, as well as in the everyday experience of browsing a dictionary or encyclopedia.
Serial learning
Learning a body of material in a specific, fixed order or sequence, as opposed to learning discrete, unordered items.
Shaman
An anthropological term for a religious or spiritual specialist within a society who is believed to mediate between the human and supernatural worlds, often combining roles of healer, mystic and community guide.
Shame culture
A culture that relies primarily on the threat of shame and public ridicule, rather than internalised guilt, to regulate individual behaviour and maintain social order. Such a culture can be vulnerable to rule-breaking that goes undetected, since there is less internalised self-regulation to prevent it in private. Contrasted with guilt culture.
Shaping of behaviour
A technique used in operant conditioning in which any behaviour that approximates the ultimately desired response is initially rewarded, with the criteria for reward gradually narrowed over successive steps until the exact target behaviour is achieved.
Shell shock
The First World War-era term for the psychological condition now generally understood as battle fatigue, combat fatigue, or, in modern clinical terms, combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder.
Shibboleth
Originally a Hebrew word whose particular pronunciation was reportedly used by an ancient Israelite tribe to identify friend from foe; now used more generally for a word, phrase or custom that serves as a marker of belonging to a particular group or of being genuinely “in the know.”
Shock treatment
See electroconvulsive therapy — the more colloquial, and now largely outdated, name for the procedure.
Short-term memory
The second stage of the memory process, following sensory memory and preceding long-term memory, typically lasting up to about 30 seconds. During this brief window, information is either transferred into a more permanent long-term store or allowed to fade and be lost.
Sibling rivalry
Competition between children within the same family, most often for parental attention, affection or approval.
Signal detection theory
An alternative to the older concept of a fixed absolute threshold of sensation, proposing instead that a person's detection of a given stimulus (“signal”) depends jointly on the underlying sensitivity of their sensory system and their motivation, expectations and decision criteria for responding.
Significant other
A term from sociologist George Herbert Mead for a specific individual who holds particular personal importance to someone, especially in shaping their self-image — as opposed to the generalised other, representing society's expectations more broadly.
Skinner, B. F. (1904-1990)
The most celebrated and influential exponent of behaviourism, both as a scientific approach within experimental psychology and, more controversially, as a proposed basis for organising society. His signature technique, operant conditioning, built on the earlier work of Pavlov and Watson. Skinner set out the broader social implications of his behaviourist philosophy in influential popular works including the novel Walden Two and the non-fiction Beyond Freedom and Dignity.
Sleep centre
A region within the hypothalamus whose electrical stimulation induces sleep, and whose surgical removal (in animal studies) disrupts normal sleep patterns.
Sleep deprivation
Prolonged prevention of sleep eventually produces significant adverse effects, including hallucinations and disturbances of thought and behaviour. Some sleep and dream researchers argue that dreaming itself, specifically, is the most critical function being disrupted by sleep deprivation, noting that beyond the absence of dreaming, it is otherwise difficult to detect major physiological differences between sleep and simple restful wakefulness.
Sleeper effect
A term used in several related senses within the social psychology of attitude change, most often describing a shift in attitude or opinion measured some time after an initial study or persuasive communication — a phenomenon that can complicate the accuracy of opinion polling. It is also used for cases where a persuasive message becomes more, rather than less, influential after a delay, and to describe the gradual dissociation, over time, between a message's content and its original source, which can make people more receptive to a message from a source they initially distrusted.
Slip of the tongue
See parapraxis — an unintended verbal error, interpreted in psychoanalytic theory as a possible clue to unconscious material (a “Freudian slip”).
Sociocentric
Regarding one's own society or culture as inherently superior to all others, and as the ultimate standard against which everything else should be measured. Closely related to ethnocentrism, and typically involving a degree of egocentricity projected onto the level of the group.
Sociology
The academic discipline concerned with the study of society in general, and of social organisation, institutions and relationships in particular.
Sociometry
A term and associated technique invented by American psychiatrist Jacob L. Moreno, designed to systematically measure and map what members of a group think and feel about one another.
Sociopathic personality
See antisocial personality — an older term, now generally superseded in clinical usage.
Sod's Law
The informal, humorous axiom that if something has the potential to go wrong, it eventually will — closely related to, and often used interchangeably with, Murphy's Law.
Somatising
A term used in psychotherapy for the process by which psychological stress or conflict manifests as physical bodily symptoms, as seen in psychosomatic illness.
Sour grapes reaction
Convincing oneself that something one cannot have was never really worth having in the first place. In clinical psychology, this pattern is generally termed rationalisation; in social psychology, it is understood as an attempt to resolve underlying cognitive dissonance.
Spaced practice
Any form of learning in which practice sessions are separated by intervals of time, though without necessarily arranging those intervals for maximum learning benefit, as distributed practice specifically aims to do.
Speech centre
A general term for brain regions particularly associated with the ability to produce and understand spoken language. See also: Broca's area, Wernicke's area.
Split personality
See multiple personality — the popular but often misleading term for what is now called dissociative identity disorder.
Split-brain technique
A surgical procedure severing the connections between the brain's two hemispheres, historically used, for instance, to relieve severe, otherwise uncontrollable epileptic seizures. People who have undergone this surgery lose the ability to integrate sensory information and coordinate movement across both sides of the body, since the two hemispheres can no longer directly communicate; each hemisphere instead appears to take over some functions independently, in effect functioning as two separate, semi-autonomous processing systems within one brain. These striking effects are the direct result of the physical surgical procedure and have no connection whatsoever to psychological phenomena such as dual, multiple or split personality, or to schizophrenia — conditions with entirely different underlying causes, despite the superficial similarity in popular language.
Spontaneous recovery
In conditioning, the reappearance of a previously extinguished conditioned response after a period of rest, even without any further pairing of the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli.
SQ3R
A long-established study method for learning from textbooks, standing for its five steps: Survey the material broadly, form Questions about its content, Read the material thoroughly, Recite the key points from memory, and Review the material again afterward.
Statistical significance
The probability that a study's results could have arisen purely by chance rather than reflecting a genuine effect. By current scientific convention, a probability of 5 in 100 or less (a significance level of 0.05) is generally considered the threshold for results to be regarded as statistically significant. See also: null hypothesis.
Statistics
A branch of applied mathematics used to analyse data gathered in the study of behaviour, allowing researchers to evaluate their findings and draw inferences that extend beyond the specific sample studied to a wider population.
Stereoscopic vision
The perception of depth and distance arising mainly from the brain's merging of the two slightly different images projected onto the retina of each eye, due to their separated positions on the face.
Stimulus generalisation
In studies of conditioning, the principle that a response conditioned to occur in reaction to a particular stimulus will also tend to occur, to some degree, in response to similar stimuli. Compare with stimulus discrimination, in which an organism learns to respond only to the specific original stimulus.
Strabismus
Commonly known as a squint: a condition caused by poor coordination of the eye muscles that prevents both eyes from focusing on the same point simultaneously.
Stranger anxiety
A fear response to unfamiliar people, particularly unfamiliar faces, that typically emerges in infants at around 8 months of age as part of normal social-cognitive development.
Stream of consciousness
A term introduced by nineteenth-century American psychologist William James (whose brother, novelist Henry James, is considered one of the pioneers of “stream of consciousness” fiction), intended to emphasise the continuous, flowing nature of conscious experience, in contrast to a competing tendency in early psychology to break consciousness down into discrete, separately studied units.
Stress
Physical and psychological strain, typically persisting over a period of time, that threatens a person's or animal's ongoing ability to cope effectively with a given situation or set of demands.
Stroboscopic effect
A visual illusion of continuous movement produced by a rapid sequence of separate, stationary images, as in film. See also: phi phenomenon. The term is also used more specifically for the effect produced when a genuinely moving object is illuminated by a rapidly flashing (strobe) light, which can make its motion appear frozen, slowed or reversed.
Stroking
In transactional analysis, any act that conveys caring recognition of, and attention to, another person — by analogy with the literal physical stroking and handling that supports healthy development in infants.
Strong Vocational Interest Blank
A widely used questionnaire measuring a person's interests, with results compared against the typical interest profiles reported by people already working successfully in various occupations, in order to suggest well-matched career directions.
Subconscious
Something not currently in full conscious awareness but readily capable of being brought into consciousness. Most often used loosely, in a general or physiological sense, to describe a point along the continuum running from full waking awareness to deep sleep; its nearest psychoanalytic equivalent is the preconscious, and it should not be confused, as it commonly is in popular usage, with the unconscious, a distinct and more clinically specific concept.
Subculture
A distinct culture existing within a larger, broader culture, sharing many of that parent culture's core features while retaining its own particular characteristics, practices or values.
Subjective
Describing something that exists within one's own individual experience and is not directly accessible to or verifiable by others. Contrasted with objective.
Sublimation
In psychoanalysis, a defence mechanism in which unacceptable unconscious impulses are redirected into socially and consciously acceptable forms of activity or expression. Freud regarded sublimation as society's principal, healthiest way of managing the underlying tension created by repression, and it is generally considered the most socially constructive of the classic defence mechanisms.
Superego
Literally, from the Latin, “over the I”: in Freud's model of personality, one of the three main structural components, alongside the ego and the id. Like the id, with which it is perpetually in tension, the superego operates largely at an unconscious level. It represents the internalisation of restrictions on the id's impulses, reflecting the moral standards and behavioural expectations instilled by parents and by society more broadly — functioning, in effect, as the personality's conscience.
Superordinate goal
In social psychology, a goal that cannot be achieved by any one group acting alone, requiring the active cooperation of two or more otherwise separate or competing groups. Deliberately introducing such shared goals is regarded as an effective way of reducing intergroup conflict and improving relations between groups.
Surrogate
A person or thing that psychologically takes the place of another — for example, an older sibling functioning as a mother surrogate, or a therapist functioning, in a patient's mind, as a father surrogate. In psychoanalysis, the term is also used for a person or object, often appearing unconsciously in a dream, whose function is to disguise the true identity of whoever or whatever is actually generating the underlying powerful feelings involved.
Survey research
A research technique for gathering data from large numbers of people through the use of structured questionnaires, typically combined with systematic sampling methods to ensure the results generalise to a wider population.
Survival value
A physical or behavioural characteristic that increases the likelihood that an individual organism, or an entire species, will survive and successfully reproduce within its environment.
Symbiosis
Originally a biological term for the permanent, mutual dependence of two different organisms on each other for survival. Sometimes used more loosely, and metaphorically, by psychologists to describe two people whose relationship appears to sustain and reinforce each other's individual psychological difficulties. See also: folie à deux.
Symbolic interaction
A sociological approach to social psychology emphasising the central role played by language, gesture and other social symbols in people's conscious efforts to construct their sense of self and their understanding of the world, treating distinctively human qualities as products of this ongoing social interaction rather than as fixed, pre-social givens.
Sympathy
The capacity to genuinely feel, to some degree, what another person is feeling — an emotional, shared experience, as distinguished from empathy, which is generally treated as a more cognitive act of understanding another's feelings without necessarily sharing them.
Synaesthesia
The experience of a sensation in one sensory modality being triggered by stimulation of a different one — for example, perceiving music as having distinct colours, or associating particular numbers with particular colours.
Systems theory
A theoretical framework treating a “system” as any set of interconnected elements forming an organised, coherent whole — such as the central nervous system or a kinship system — and seeking to identify general principles that apply across many different kinds of systems by comparing their underlying structures and functions.
Social anthropology
The branch of anthropology concerned with studying social systems, institutions and cultures across different societies, historically with a particular focus on non-literate, small-scale societies.