54 articles
Mentalizing task
A mentalizing task is a behavioral paradigm, usually built from stories, vignettes, or films, that measures how well a person infers others' beliefs, intentions, and feelings, called theory of mind.
Models of communication
Models of communication are simplified representations of messaging: linear (Shannon-Weaver, Lasswell), interactive (Schramm, Osgood, Berlo), and transactional (Barnlund), covering sender, message, channel, noise, feedback, and context.
Musa al-Gharbi
Musa al-Gharbi, American sociologist and Guardian columnist at Stony Brook University, author of We Have Never Been Woke (2024) on symbolic capitalists, the Great Awokenings, and elite status competition.
Negotiation
Negotiation is a communication process where parties seek an agreement by balancing shared and opposed interests. Roger Fisher and the Harvard Negotiation Project founded the field in 1979.
Nerd
Nerd: American slang, first attested 1951, for a socially awkward person devoted to intellectual or technical pursuits; related to geek, reclaimed by hacker culture, and central to stereotypes about STEM, gender, and fandom.
Non-apology apology
Non-apology apology (nonapology): a statement in the form of an apology that acknowledges no responsibility or regret. Covers its etymology, rhetorical devices like "if anyone was offended," and why politicians and corporations use it.
Nonverbal communication
Nonverbal communication (NVC), also called body language, is meaning transmission without words via face, voice, gesture, touch, and space; studied through encoding, decoding accuracy (r ≈ .32), and the disputed Mehrabian conjecture.
Norm activation model
The norm activation model is a social-psychological model, proposed by Shalom Schwartz in the late 1960s, explaining prosocial and pro-environmental behavior through activated personal norms, feelings of moral obligation.
Parasocial interaction
Parasocial interaction (PSI), also called parasocial relationship, is a one-sided bond with media figures, coined by Horton and Wohl in 1956; distinguished from reciprocal relationships by lack of mutuality, studied across influencers, celebrities, and AI agents.
Party
Party (social gathering): a hosted event where hosts invite guests for celebration or sociability; forms include the dinner party, cocktail party, house party, and festival, distinguished by time, place, and codes of behavior.
Patriotism
Patriotism: love of and attachment to one's country, distinguished from nationalism (beliefs in national superiority). Key subtypes: constructive vs blind patriotism; Kosterman-Feshbach 1989 distinction.
Pay it forward
Pay it forward, also called generalized or upstream reciprocity, is helping a stranger after receiving help from another. Experiments show equality propagates best, greed beats generosity, and resource asymmetry reduces it.
Pebbling
Pebbling (penguin pebbling) is a social-media relationship trend: sending small memes, gifts, or gestures to show someone you're thinking of them, named after gentoo penguins' courtship pebble-gifting.
Persona
Persona: the public face or social mask a person presents, from Jung's analytic psychology (Latin for actor's mask), contrasted with the private self; studied empirically as self-presentation and impression management, and now used for LLM role-playing.
Physical attractiveness stereotype
The physical attractiveness stereotype, also called attractiveness bias, is the tendency to see attractive people as having better traits and life outcomes, summarized as "what is beautiful is good."
Promise
Promise: a commissive speech act committing a speaker to a future action for a hearer's benefit, distinct from predictions and intentions. Covers Searle's felicity conditions, consideration in contract law, experimental economics of promise-keeping, and cross-cultural variation.
Prosocial behavior
Prosocial behavior is voluntary action that benefits others, including helping, sharing, donating, cooperating, and volunteering; distinct from altruism (costly, selfless) and helping (situational support), and studied across cultures, development, and demographics.
Proxemics
Proxemics, coined by Edward T. Hall in The Hidden Dimension (1966), studies interpersonal distance and cultural space use: four zones (intimate 0-45 cm to public >360 cm), cross-cultural variation, and VR and robot applications.
Public image of Melania Trump
Public image of Melania Trump (Melanija Knavs), Slovenian-born first lady 2017-2021 and from 2025: plagiarism-charge debut, fashion-driven image, Be Best, low visibility, weak polling, memoir and documentary.
Pygmalion effect
Pygmalion effect: one person's expectations for another become self-fulfilling prophecy, from Rosenthal and Jacobson's 1968 Oak School study; also called interpersonal expectancy effect, distinct from the Golem and Galatea effects.
Rapport
Rapport: a quality interaction experience defined by mutual attentiveness, positivity, and coordination (Tickle-Degnen & Rosenthal, 1990). Central to professional interviews, therapy, and healthcare; 126 measures reviewed in 2024 show no agreed definition or validated common scale.
Reply guy
Reply guy: derogatory internet slang for a person, usually a man, who persistently replies to social media posts, especially women's, with unsolicited, condescending, or flirtatious comments; coined on Twitter in the mid-2010s, catalogued in nine types in 2018, and now also a name for reply-based account growth on X.
Respect
Respect: an attitude of attention, deference, and acknowledgment of worth toward a person or object. Key distinction: Darwall's recognition respect (owed to all persons) versus appraisal respect (earned by merit); links to tolerance, self-respect, and dignity.
Road rage
Road rage, also known as driving anger, is deliberate violence or aggression by a driver or passenger using a vehicle or weapon, arising from a road incident.
Role model
Role model: exemplar whose behavior others observe and emulate, a term coined by Robert K. Merton in reference group theory. Distinguished from mentors (no prior relationship required); effectiveness depends on competence, similarity, and attainability.
Role theory
Role theory: sociological and social psychology framework explaining behavior as enactment of roles tied to social positions, with structural and symbolic interactionist traditions, concepts like role conflict and strain, and documented criticisms.
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-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-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.
Small-world experiment
Milgram's small-world experiment: chain-letter study measuring acquaintance paths to a Boston stockbroker; 64 of 296 chains completed, median 5.2 intermediaries; basis of six degrees of separation, critiqued by Kleinfeld and replicated by Dodds, Muhamad, and Watts.