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• Classic-Fiction

Sexual orientation—the direction of an individual’s sexual interest.

Sexual response cycle—Masters and Johnson’s four stages of bodily response during sex: excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution.

Shadow—according to Jung represents our baser instinctual urges we attempt to keep hidden from others.

Shallow processing—encoding into memory superficial sensory information without making it relevant which seldom results in enduring memory.

Shaping—positively reinforcing closer and closer approximations of a desired behavior through operant conditioning.

Short-term memory—also called working memory, which can hold about seven unrelated items for about twenty to thirty seconds without rehearsal.

Simultaneous conditioning—in classical conditioning the CS and UCS are paired together at the same time; weaker conditioning technique than the ideal delayed conditioning.

Single-blind procedure—research design in which participants don’t know whether they are in the experimental or control group.

Signal detection theory—maintains that minimum threshold varies with fatigue, attention, expectations, movitation, and emotional distress, as well as from one person to another.

Situational attributions—inferences that a person’s behavior is caused by some temporary condition or situation the person was in.

Sleep—a complex combination of states of consciousness each with its own level of consciousness, awareness, responsiveness, and physiological arousal.

Sleepwalking—most frequently a childhood sleep disruption that occurs during stage 4 sleep characterized by trips out of bed or carrying on of complex activities.

Social clock—idea that society has certain age expectations for when someone should marry and have kids and people feel compelled to meet these expectations or face a crisis.

Social cognition—refers to the way people gather, use, and interpret information about the social aspects of the world around them.

Social facilitation—improved performance of well-learned tasks in front of others.

Social group—two or more people sharing common goals and interests interact and influence behavior of the other(s).

Social impairment—worsened performance of a newly learned or difficult task when performed in front of an audience.

Social interactivist perspective—babies are biologically equipped for learning language which may be activated or constrained by experience.

Social learning theory—Bandura’s idea that we can learn behavior from others by first observing it and then imitating it.

Social loafing—the tendency of individuals to put less effort into group projects than when individually accountable.

Social motives—learned needs that energize behavior; acquired as part of growing up in a particular society or culture.

Social psychologists—psychologists who focus on how a person’s mental life and behavior are shaped by interactions with other people.

Social psychology—the study of how groups influence the attitudes and behavior of the individual.

Social referencing—observing the behavior of others in social situations to obtain information or guidance.

Social skills training—cognitive behavioral therapy where the therapist can model the behavior for the client and then place the client in a simulated situation for practice.

Sociobiology—study of the biological basis of social behavior.

Sociocultural approach—psychological perspective concerned with how cultural differences affect behavior.

Somatic nervous system—subdivision of PNS that includes motor nerves that innervate skeletal (voluntary) muscle.

Somatization disorder—somatoform disorder characterized by recurrent complaints about usually vague and unverifiable medical conditions such as dizziness, heart palpitations, and nausea which do not apparently result from any physical cause.

Somatoform disorder—a mental disorder involving a bodily or physical problem for which there is no physiological basis.

Somatosensation—the skin sensations: touch/pressure, warmth, cold, and pain.

Somatotype theory—William Sheldon’s theory that body types determine personality.