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Endocrine system—ductless glands that typically secrete hormones directly into the blood which help regulate body and behavioral processes.

Endomorph—Sheldon’s body type characterized by round, spherical body; love of comfort, sociability.

Endorphins—neurotransmitters similar to the opiate morphine that relieves pain, and may induce feelings of pleasure.

Engineering psychologists—psychologists who do research on how people function best with machines.

Engrams—memory traces of information one acquires during life encoded in the brain.

Episodic memories—personal experiences that become consolidated into our long-term memory.

Equipotentiality—theory that any behavior can be taught to any organism.

Equivalent-form reliability—when two different versions of a test on the same material are given and the scores are highly correlated.

Escape behavior—behavior that terminates an ongoing event; negative reinforcement.

ESP (extrasensory perception)—controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input.

Ethical guidelines—suggested rules for acting responsibly and morally when conducting research or in clinical practice.

Ethnocentrism—belief that our culture or social group is superior to others.

Ethologists—scientists who study animal behavior and how it has evolved in different species.

Eustress—physiological and emotional arousal that may be productive and motivating.

Evoked potentials—EEGs resulting from a response to a specific stimulus presented to the subject.

Evolutionary psychologist—studies how natural selection favored behaviors that contributed to survival and spread of our ancestors’ genes; evolutionary psychologists look at universal behaviors shared by all people.

Excitatory neurotransmitter—chemical secreted at terminal button that causes the neuron on the other side of the synapse to generate an action potential (to fire).

Exhaustion stage—third stage of Selye’s general adaptation theory when our resistance to illness decreases and we are susceptible to many stress-related disorders.

Existential therapies—focus on helping clients find purpose and meaning in their lives and emphasize individual freedom and responsibility.

Experiential intelligence—according to Sternberg, is made up of thinking in different ways, having insight, and being able to see more than one way to solve a problem.

Experimental group—in a controlled experiment, the subgroup of the sample that receives the treatment or independent variable.

Experimenter bias—a phenomenon that occurs when a researcher’s expectations or preferences about the outcome of a study influence the results obtained.

Explicit memory (declarative memory)—long-term memory of facts and experiences we consciously know and can verbalize.

External locus of control—based on Julian Rotter’s research, the belief that what happens to you is due to fate, luck, or others.

Extinction—the weakening of a response. In classical conditioning it’s the removal of the UCS and in operant conditioning it occurs when the reinforcement for the behavior is removed.

Extravert (also extrovert)—originally described by Jung, a person who exhibits the traits of sociability, and positive affect, and prefers to pay attention to the external environment.

Extrinsic motivation—the desire to perform a behavior for a reward or avoid punishment.

Face validity—a measure of the extent to which content of a test, on its surface, seems to be meaningfully related to what is being tested.

Factor analysis—a statistical procedure that identifies common factors among groups of items by determining which variables have a high degree of correlation.

False consensus bias—the tendency of a person to perceive his or her own views as representative of a general consensus.

Farsighted—too little curvature of the cornea and/or lens, focusing the image behind the retina so distant objects are seen more clearly than nearby objects.

Feature detectors—individual neurons in the primary visual cortex/occipital lobes that respond to specific features of a visual stimulus.