6,078 articles
Second-wave feminism
Second-wave feminism, the women's movement of the 1960s to early 1980s following first-wave suffragism, addressed workplace equality, reproductive rights, and domestic life. Key figures include Friedan, Steinem, Beauvoir, and Black feminist critics.
Secret society
Secret society: an association keeping membership, purpose, or rituals concealed, from Freemasonry and the Illuminati to African initiation societies and college fraternities; defined by initiation rites, oaths of secrecy, and claimed hidden knowledge.
Sectarianism in Glasgow
Sectarianism in Glasgow: Protestant-Catholic tension expressed chiefly through the Old Firm football rivalry, marches, and religion-linked identity, with strong perceptions (88%) but low reported personal experience.
Section 28
Section 28 (Clause 28, Section 2A) was a 1988 UK law banning local authorities from 'promoting homosexuality', in force until 2000 in Scotland and 2003 in England and Wales; repealed after Stonewall's campaign, never used to prosecute.
Section 377
Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (1860), drafted under Thomas Macaulay, criminalized "carnal intercourse against the order of nature" and spread across British colonies; India's Supreme Court read it down in Navtej Singh Johar (2018), and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita deleted it from 2024.
Sedentism
Sedentism is year-round residence in one settlement, contrasted with hunter-gatherer mobility. It preceded agriculture in the Natufian Levant, arose with millet in wetter north China after 8.1 ka, and appears among high-altitude Tibetan foragers.
Seduction
Seduction is persuading someone to sexual activity; also a US legal tort and felony (1848–1935 heart balm era), an eighteenth-century literary genre, and the modern pick-up artist industry criticized for weak evidence.
Seema Chishti
Seema Chishti, Indian journalist and editor of The Wire since January 2023; formerly Indian Express Deputy Editor and BBC World Service Hindi editor; author of Note By Note and Sumitra and Anees.
Sefwi
Sefwi is an Akan people and region in Ghana's Western Region, comprising three traditional states and long a refuge for people fleeing wars to the north and east.
Sehnsucht
Sehnsucht is the German concept of intense, often painful longing for ideal, unattainable states of life, distinct from nostalgia; studied in lifespan psychology by Baltes and Scheibe with six core characteristics and cross-cultural comparisons.
Self-actualization
Self-actualization, also known as self-realization, is the full realization of one's potential, a concept coined by Kurt Goldstein and central to Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
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.
Self-Compassion Scale
The Self-Compassion Scale (SCS) is a 26-item questionnaire measuring how people respond to their own suffering, developed by psychologist Kristin Neff and published in 2003, with translations into at least 22 languages.
Self-concept
Self-concept is the set of an individual's beliefs about who they are, distinct from self-esteem. Covers the Shavelson hierarchical model, self-concept clarity, cultural self-construal, aging self-perceptions, and measurement.
Self-control
Self-control: effortful regulation of impulses and delayed gratification in service of long-term goals. Covers Mischel's marshmallow test, Baumeister's strength model and ego depletion, its replication and conceptual crisis, and measurement problems.
Self-deprecation
Self-deprecation is self-directed criticism or humor downplaying one's abilities or worth. Studied as one of four humor styles (self-defeating) in the Humor Styles Questionnaire, it can signal humility and build trust, or correlate with low well-being when chronic.
Self-determination theory
Self-determination theory (SDT), developed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, is a psychology framework holding that autonomy, competence, and relatedness needs underlie motivation, wellness, and internalization across education, work, and health.
Self-disclosure
Self-disclosure is the voluntary sharing of personal information and feelings with others, central to social penetration theory (Altman & Taylor, 1973) and Jourard's 1964 work, governing intimacy, reciprocity, privacy calculus, and online and therapeutic disclosure.
Self-efficacy
Self-efficacy, introduced by Albert Bandura in 1977, is the belief in one's capability to execute behaviors that produce specific outcomes. It arises from four sources (mastery, vicarious experience, persuasion, emotional states), is domain-specific, and is distinct from outcome expectancy.
Self-efficacy scale
A self-efficacy scale is a psychometric questionnaire measuring a person's belief in their own capability to perform tasks, a construct Albert Bandura proposed in 1977.
Self-esteem
Self-esteem is a person's overall positive or negative evaluation of themselves, also called self-worth. Measured mainly by the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale; studied through level, stability, and contingency, lifespan change, and links to achievement and social media use.
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Self-fulfilling prophecy: a prediction that brings about its own truth; coined by Robert K. Merton in 1948, also called the Pygmalion effect in education. Effects are real but typically small; automated prediction raises new concerns.
Self-hating Jew
Self-hating Jew: pejorative for Jews who criticize Israel or Judaism; also a psychological concept of internalized antisemitism coined by Anton Kuh, analyzed by Theodor Lessing (1930) and Kurt Lewin (1941).
Self-help
Self-help, also called self-development, is the practice of improving one's mental health, behavior, or circumstances without continuous professional treatment, typically through books, structured programs, or digital tools.
Self-image
Self-image is the mental picture a person holds of themselves, closely tied to self-concept, self-esteem, and self-identity; measured chiefly by Rosenberg's 1965 10-item scale, shaped by social comparison, and studied in clinical and body-image research.
Self-Made Man (book)
Self-Made Man (2006) is Norah Vincent's immersion-journalism memoir of 18 months living as a man, "Ned," joining a bowling league, dating, and infiltrating a monastery; a New York Times bestseller from Viking.
Self-realization
Self-realization, equated with self-actualization in psychology, is the development and expression of one's true potentials; defined philosophically by Routledge, tied to eudaimonic well-being by Ryan and Deci, and critiqued for Western individualist assumptions.
Self-report inventory
A self-report inventory is a psychometric questionnaire in which respondents answer standardized written items about their own thoughts, feelings, or behaviors, scored into composite measures.
Self-serving bias
Self-serving bias: the attribution bias of crediting one's successes to internal causes (ability, effort) and blaming failures on external causes (luck, unfair bosses). Large meta-analytic effect (d = 0.96), smaller in Asian samples and with depression.
Selfishness
Selfishness: the tendency to act excessively or solely to benefit oneself even at others' disadvantage. Also called egoism-related self-focus; studied as egocentric, adaptive, and pathological forms, measured by the Selfishness Questionnaire, and distinguished from self-care and narcissism.