Eating disorders -  Disorders characterized by problematic eating patterns, extreme concerns about body weight, and inappropriate behaviors aimed at controlling body weight.

Echoic memory -  Auditory sensory memory.

Efferent nerves -  Bundles of axons that carry information from the central nervous system to muscles and sense organs.

Ego -  The component of the personality that manages the conflict among the id, the superego, and the constraints of the real world.

Egocentrism -  The inability to take someone else’s point of view.

Elaboration -  A type of deep processing in which information being learned is associated with other meaningful material.

Elaboration likelihood model -  The idea that changes to attitudes tend to be longer lasting when people think about the content of persuasive messages they receive.

Electric stimulation of the brain -  An invasive method of studying the brain, in which an implanted electrode activates a particular brain structure.

Electrocardiograph (EKG) -  An instrument that records the activity of the heart.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) -  A biomedical treatment that uses electrical shocks to treat severe depression.

Electroencephalograph (EEG) -  A device that records the overall electrical activity of the brain, via electrodes placed on the scalp.

Electromyograph (EMG) -  An instrument that records muscle activity.

Electrooculograph (EOG) -  An instrument that records eye movements.

Elimination by aspects -  The process of eliminating alternatives in a decision based on whether they do or do not possess aspects or attributes the decision maker has deemed necessary or desirable.

Embryo -  A ball of cells that develops during the embryonic stage.

Embryonic stage -  The period that begins two weeks after conception and ends two months after conception.

Emotion -  A complex, subjective experience that is accompanied by biological and behavioral changes.

Emotion work -  The process of acting out of an emotion that is not really felt.

Emotional intelligence -  An ability that helps people perceive, express, understand, and regulate emotions.

Empirically validated treatments -  Treatments that are shown by research to be more effective for a particular problem than a placebo or no treatment.

Empty nest -  The time in parents’ lives when their children have grown up and moved away from home.

Encoding -  The process of putting information into memory.

Endocrine system -  A network of tissues that allows the body to communicate via hormones.

Endogenous biological rhythms -  Biological cycles that originate from inside the body rather than depend on cues from the environment.

Endorphins -  A group of neurotransmitters involved in pain relief, pleasure, and modulating the action of other neurotransmitters.

Episodic memory -  The remembering of personal facts.

Ethics -  A system of moral values.

Etiology -  The cause or origin of a disorder.

Evolution -  A change in the frequency of genes in a population.

Excitatory postsynaptic potential -  A positive change in voltage that occurs when a neurotransmitter binds to an excitatory receptor site.

Existential therapies -  Therapies aimed at helping clients find meaning in their lives.

Expected value -  The process of adding the value of a win times the probability of a win to the value of a loss times the probability of a loss in order to make a decision.

Experiential intelligence -  The ability to adapt to new situations and produce new ideas.

Experiment -  A research method that provides information about causal relationships between variables.

Experimental group -  A group of subjects in an experiment for whom the independent variable is manipulated.

Experimenter bias -  A source of error that arises when researchers’ preferences or expectations influence the outcome of research.

Explicit attitudes -  Conscious beliefs that can guide decisions and behavior.

Explicit memory -  Conscious, intentional remembering of information.

Exposure therapies -  Therapies that aim to eliminate anxiety responses by having clients face real or imagined versions of feared stimuli.

Expressive language -  The ability to use language to communicate.

External attribution -  An inference that a person’s behavior is due to situational factors. It is also called situational attribution.

External locus of control -  The tendency to believe that circumstances are not within one’s control but rather are due to luck, fate, or other people.

Extinction -  In classical conditioning, the gradual weakening and disappearance of a conditioned response when a conditioned stimulus is not followed by an unconditioned stimulus. In operant conditioning, it’s the gradual disappearance of a response after it stops being reinforced.

Extraneous variable -  A variable other than the independent variable that could affect the dependent variable. It is not part of the hypothesis.

Extrinsic motivation -  The motivation to act for external rewards.

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) -  A type of exposure therapy in which clients move their eyes back and forth while recalling memories that are to be desensitized.