71 articles
Self-Assessment Manikin
The Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) is a non-verbal pictorial questionnaire that measures pleasure, arousal, and dominance of emotional reactions, introduced by Bradley and Lang in 1994.
Smile
Smile: facial expression from zygomaticus major contraction; the Duchenne smile adds orbicularis oculi (AU6). Distinguished from other facial expressions by reward, affiliative, and dominance functional types, Darwin-Duchenne history, facial feedback effects, and cultural variation in meaning.
Solitude
Solitude is chosen, voluntary aloneness, distinct from loneliness, the negative dissatisfaction with one's social life. Covers its definition, historical and cultural meanings, psychological well-being effects, and how enforced isolation differs from chosen solitude.
Stimming
Stimming, short for self-stimulatory behavior, means repeated movements or sounds such as hand flapping, rocking, or hair twirling used for self-regulation. Common in autism and ADHD but practiced by most people; usually harmless, with support needed mainly for self-injurious stims.
Suffering
Suffering is severe distress experienced in response to pain, loss, or illness, distinct from pain itself. Key frameworks include Eric Cassell's personhood model, Cicely Saunders' total pain, experientialist versus objectivist theories, and clinimetric measurement instruments.
Suicidal empathy
Suicidal empathy, coined by Gad Saad, is a polemical term for misplaced compassion driving self-destructive Western policy; popularized by Elon Musk in 2025 and Saad's 2026 book Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind, and criticized as rhetoric rather than science.
Tantrum
Tantrum (temper tantrum, temper outburst): a sudden, disproportionate outburst of anger or frustration in children, peaking between ages 1 and 4, usually from limited language and coping skills; daily or severe tantrums may signal clinical concern.
Theories of humor
Theories of humor: superiority, relief, and incongruity accounts, plus benign violation theory, explaining what makes things funny, from Hobbes and Freud to McGraw and Warren.
Valence (psychology)
Valence (psychology): the pleasantness–unpleasantness dimension of emotion, paired with arousal in Russell's 1980 circumplex model; also Lewin's subjective value of goal objects; contested in definition.
Vulnerability
Vulnerability: susceptibility to harm or a specific exploitable weakness. From Latin vulnus (wound); technical senses in information security (NIST/CVE), disaster management, and psychology (diathesis-stress model), paired with resilience.
World Happiness Report
Annual UN-affiliated report ranking countries by self-reported life evaluation on the Cantril Ladder (0-10), using Gallup World Poll data from 140+ countries since 2005; published by Oxford's Wellbeing Research Centre; Finland has ranked first since 2017.