6,078 articles
Structure and agency
Structure and agency: the central sociological debate on how enduring social patterns relate to individual action, covering Giddens's structuration theory, Archer's morphogenesis, Bourdieu's habitus, and relational alternatives.
Structure mapping
Structure mapping is a cognitive psychology theory and method describing analogical reasoning as aligning relational structure between domains while discarding surface features, proposed by Dedre Gentner in 1983.
Structured interview
A structured interview is a standardized data-collection method in which question wording, order, and scoring are fixed in advance, so answers can be compared systematically across participants, interviewers, and sites.
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, "SNICK"), US civil rights organization founded April 1960 at Shaw University, Raleigh, by Ella Baker's sit-in leadership meeting; ran Freedom Rides, Mississippi Freedom Summer, Selma; turned to Black Power under Carmichael in 1966.
Stupidity
Stupidity is a behavioral label for unreasonable, counterproductive acts, distinct from ignorance, irrationality, and low IQ. The article covers its conceptual history, cognitive-bias research, bounded rationality, and organizational stupidity.
Sub-replacement fertility
Sub-replacement fertility is a total fertility rate below the replacement level of about 2.1 births per woman. Over half of all countries, including India, China, and the US, are below it; global TFR was 2.25 in 2024 and is projected near 1.6 by 2100.
Subconscious
The subconscious, or subconscious mind, is a popular and quasi-technical term for mental processes outside conscious awareness that still influence thought, feeling, and behavior, studied as unconscious or implicit processing.
Subculture
Subculture: a smaller cultural group within a larger culture, with distinct values, practices, and styles; traced from the Chicago School's deviance studies to the Birmingham CCCS's symbolic resistance, Hebdige, subcultural capital, and post-subcultural debates.
Subitizing
Subitizing, also known as subitization, is the rapid and accurate determination of the number of items in a small set, roughly four or fewer, without counting; the term was coined in 1949.
Subject-matter expert
Subject-matter expert (SME): a person with specialized, bona fide expert knowledge of a specific field or job, used in job analysis, elicitation, and design; marked by organized domain knowledge, specific automaticity, and known biases.
Sublimation (psychology)
Sublimation (psychology): a Freudian defense mechanism redirecting unacceptable sexual or aggressive impulses into socially acceptable activities such as art or sport; classified as a mature defense, but direct empirical evidence is lacking.
Subliminal stimuli
Subliminal stimuli are inputs presented below conscious perception, typically via brief masked flashes under 50 ms. They produce modest, replicable priming effects extending to semantic processing, while popular claims about subliminal advertising and self-help tapes lack support.
Subversion
Subversion is the covert, indirect effort to destroy or weaken an established system or government from within; from Latin subvertere, to overturn. Distinct from sabotage, espionage, and Apache Subversion, the version control software.
Success
Success, the attainment of valued goals, is studied through goal-setting field experiments, McClelland's achievement motivation, and well-being research showing ambition predicts career success but only weakly life satisfaction.
Sudeten Germans
Sudeten Germans (Sudetendeutsche), ethnic Germans of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia; about 3 million in interwar Czechoslovakia, annexed to Germany in 1938, and almost entirely expelled from Czechoslovakia in 1945-46.
Sue Pritzker
Sue (Susan S.) Pritzker, born Susan Stowell in 1948, is an American philanthropist, wife of Nicholas Pritzker, and co-president of the Libra Foundation, a social justice funder founded in 2002 with about $428 million in assets.
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.
Suicide attempt
Suicide attempt: a non-fatal, self-inflicted act with any intent to end one's life, also called attempted suicide or parasuicide. Covers definitions, US 2024 estimates (2.2 million adult attempts), post-attempt suicide risk, and risk factors.
Suicide of Amanda Todd
The suicide of Amanda Todd (October 10, 2012), a 15-year-old from Port Coquitlam, BC, followed webcam sextortion and blackmail; Dutch extortionist Aydin Coban was convicted in Canada in 2022, sentenced to 13 years, later converted to six Dutch years.
Suicide of Atul Subhash
Atul Subhash, 34, a Bengaluru techie also called Subhash Atul, died by suicide on December 9, 2024, leaving a 24-page note and video accusing wife Nikita Singhania of harassment, false cases, and a Rs 3 crore extortion demand; an abetment FIR followed.
Suicide of Charlotte O'Brien
Charlotte O'Brien, 12, a Year 7 student at Santa Sabina College, Strathfield, Sydney, died by suicide in September 2024 after reported bullying; her family's advocacy drove NSW and national anti-bullying policy change.
Suicide of Christine Chubbuck
Christine Chubbuck, Sarasota WXLT-TV Channel 40 reporter, shot herself live on air during Suncoast Digest on July 15, 1974; footage remains largely unavailable, and her story inspired the 2016 films Christine and Kate Plays Christine.
Suicide of Gabriel Taye
Gabriel Taye, an 8-year-old Cincinnati third-grader, died by suicide January 26, 2017, two days after a school bathroom attack; the case led to a Sixth Circuit immunity ruling and a $3 million 2021 settlement.
Suicide of Jacintha Saldanha
Jacintha Saldanha, an Indian-born nurse at London's King Edward VII Hospital, died by suicide in December 2012 after transferring a 2Day FM royal prank call from DJs Mel Greig and Michael Christian about the Duchess of Cambridge; the 2014 inquest ruled suicide and Australian regulation followed.
Suicide of Jamey Rodemeyer
Suicide of Jamey Rodemeyer, also described as the death of Jamey Rodemeyer: the September 18, 2011 suicide of a 14-year-old Williamsville, New York freshman after anti-gay bullying, which prompted a criminal investigation, school suspensions, Lady Gaga's response, and his parents' anti-bullying advocacy.
Suicide of Kurt Cobain
Suicide of Kurt Cobain: the Nirvana frontman, 27, shot himself in Seattle on April 5, 1994; ruled suicide by King County Medical Examiner, no Werther effect found, murder theories rejected by police.
Suicide of Lia Smith
Suicide of Lia Smith (2004–2025), Middlebury College senior and transgender former diver from Woodside, California, found dead October 23, 2025 in Cornwall, Vermont; the Chief Medical Examiner ruled suicide, and coverage linked her death to anti-trans policies.
Suicide of Megan Meier
Suicide of Megan Meier: October 2006 death of 13-year-old Megan Taylor Meier of O'Fallon, Missouri, after a MySpace hoax by neighbor Lori Drew posing as boy 'Josh Evans'; led to a failed CFAA prosecution and cyberbullying laws.
Suicide of Phoebe Prince
The suicide of Phoebe Prince was the January 2010 death of a 15-year-old Irish immigrant in South Hadley, Massachusetts, after months of bullying; nine classmates were charged.