Et-Ez

Ethics: concerns regarding what is acceptable human behaviour in pursuit of certain personal or scientific goals.

The professional bodies in most countries produce ethical guidelines for researchers and practitioners. See also Ethical Issues in Research.

Ethogram: a means of recording the behavioural repertoire of a particular species of animal.

Ethograms are used in time sampling and event sampling.

Ethological Approach: the study of animal behaviour in natural environments, emphasising the importance of inherited capacities and responses.

Ethnic Groups: cultural groups - eg: based on race or religion - living within a larger society.

Ethnicity: shared (perceived or actual) racial, linguistic and/or national identity of a social group.

Ethnocentricism: the belief that your own in-group - eg: religious group, nation, gender, etc - is superior to other cultures.

Etics: universals of behaviour.

Eustress: Hans Selye's (1980) term for low-level positive stress that helps energise and prepare people for important events - eg: first dates, exams, etc.

Eurocommunism: an umbrella term for the general tendency amongst Western European Communist parties in the 1970s and early 1980s to distance themselves from the outright control of the Soviet Union.

Evaluation Apprehension: the concern or anxiety felt when being assessed by someone else.

In research this may cause the participants to alter their behaviour so it will be more positively evaluated - effectively a form of demand characteristic.

In terms of the Bystander Effect, it may explain why people sometimes avoid offering help in case their efforts are evaluated negatively.

Evolutionary Psychiatry: an application of the Evolutionary approach which attempts to treat mental disorders by understanding the functions of the behaviours involved.

Evolutionary Psychology: this approach uses Sociobiology as well as social and cognitive factors to explain behaviour in terms of its evolutionary adaptiveness. Increasingly it has come to be dominated by Sociobiology - emphasising the ability to survive and reproduce the individual's genes in face of changes in the environment.

Event Sampling: a method of collecting data in an observation where a list of behaviours is drawn up and a record every time the target behaviour(s) occurs(s).

Exogenous: to do with external causes - eg: Exogenous Depression might be triggered by the death of a loved one or losing your job.

Experiment: research undertaken to investigate causal relationships.

Essentially an experiment tests whether making changes in the independent variable results in changes in the dependent variable.

Experimental Group: in an experiment with an independent groups design the group of participants who experience the independent variable or experimental treatment.

Experimental Hypothesis: see hypothesis.

Experimental Realism: the extent to which an investigation is experienced as a ‘real life’ scenario by participants because it is interesting or attention-grabbing.

Experimental Validity: see validity.

Explicit Memory: a subdivision of long-term memory that is based on conscious recollection.

Extended Family Field: a person's family of origin plus grandparents, in-laws, and other relatives.

External Locus of Control: see Locus of Control.

External Validity: aka ecological validity. See validity.

Extinction: the disappearance of a learned response when stimuli stop being paired (Classical Conditioning) or no reinforcement occurs (Operant Conditioning).

Extraneous Variable: see variable.

Extraversion: the terms 'Introvert' (somone focussed inward and preoccupied with their own thoughts) and 'Extravert' (someone outgoing and frequently the 'centre of attention') were coined by Carl Gustav Jung who concluded that these tendencies were essentially innate. Extraversion has been incorporated as a key scale into the Jungian-derived Myers-Briggs Type Indicator psychometric.
However, the foremost work on Extraversion is that of Hans J Eysenck who made it one of his biologically-determined Dimensions of Temperament.
Integrated SocioPscychology considers the possibility that how introverted or extraverted someone is may influence the manner in which they ascend Clare W Graves Spiral. It may be that introverts tend to ascend more via the self-sacrifice/conformist side and extraverts more by the express-self side.

Eyewitness Testimony: the descriptions given in a criminal trial by individuals who were present around the time of the crime.