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Mentalization-based therapy
Mentalization-based therapy, also known as Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT), is a psychodynamic psychotherapy for borderline personality disorder, introduced by Anthony Bateman and Peter Fonagy in their 1999 trial.
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.
Mercy
Mercy: compassionate forbearance or relief toward someone within one's power to punish or abandon, expressed through the works of mercy, zakat, clemency, and organizations from the Misericordie (1244) to the Sisters of Mercy and modern humanitarian agencies.
Mere-exposure effect
Mere-exposure effect, or familiarity principle: increased liking for a stimulus from repeated exposure, identified by Robert Zajonc in 1968; meta-analyses show an inverted-U exposure-liking curve, strongest with brief or subliminal presentations.
Merina people
Merina: largest of Madagascar's 18 ethnic groups, about a quarter of the population, highland rice farmers around Antananarivo of mixed Austronesian and African ancestry; historic rulers of the island until the 1896 French conquest.
Merkel-Raute
The Merkel-Raute, or Merkel diamond (power triangle), is the diamond-shaped steeple hand gesture of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, held in front of the stomach with fingertips touching; CDU campaign icon since 2013.
Merry Pranksters
The Merry Pranksters were Ken Kesey's 1960s counterculture group, known for the 1964 Day-Glo bus Furthur trip to New York and the Acid Tests with the Grateful Dead.
Mésalliance
Mésalliance (mesalliance, misalliance): a marriage with a person of lower social position, borrowed into English in 1782 from French; historically the violation of European nobility marriage rules, exemplified by morganatic marriages such as Franz Ferdinand's.
Meskwaki
The Meskwaki, also called the Fox, are an Algonquian-speaking Native American people, today the Sac & Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa and the only federally recognized tribe in Iowa.
Mestizo
Mestizo: Spanish term for a person of mixed European (especially Spanish) and Indigenous American ancestry; a colonial casta category and, via 20th-century mestizaje ideology, a national identity label in Mexico, Central America, and the Andes.
Mestizo Argentines
Mestizo Argentines are Argentines of mixed European and Indigenous American ancestry. The census has no mestizo category, but genetic studies show substantial Indigenous and African admixture, especially in the northwest.
Metacognition
Metacognition is the capacity to monitor, evaluate, and control one's own cognition (memory, perception, decision-making), studied since Flavell (1979) via confidence-accuracy measures and applied in education, clinical research, and AI.
Metacognitive monitoring
Metacognitive monitoring is the set of judgments learners make about their own comprehension, memory, or performance during learning tasks, guiding how they allocate study time and choose materials to restudy.
Method of loci
Method of loci, or memory palace (ars memoriae), an ancient mnemonic attributed to Simonides of Ceos: items are imaged at ordered familiar locations and recalled by mentally retracing the route; meta-analyses show medium-to-large recall gains.
Métis
The Métis are one of Canada's three constitutionally recognized Indigenous peoples, a distinct nation emerging from the fur trade in west-central North America around Red River, with Michif and Bungi languages, the 1816 Métis flag, the Red River Resistance led by Louis Riel, and the Manitoba Act, 1870.
MeToo movement
MeToo movement: anti-sexual-harassment campaign founded as 'me too.' by Tarana Burke in 2006; viral in October 2017 after Alyssa Milano's tweet following Weinstein allegations; millions of posts, global spread, and workplace and legal changes.
Metrosexual
Metrosexual: label for a heterosexual, usually urban man highly interested in fashion, grooming, and appearance. Coined by Mark Simpson in The Independent (1994); marketed in the 2000s around figures like David Beckham; now obsolete.
Mewar family dispute
Mewar family dispute: inheritance conflict in the erstwhile royal family of Mewar, Udaipur, begun by Mahendra Singh's 1983 partition suit, decided in 2020, stayed in 2022, and now contested over Arvind Singh's 2025 will between Lakshyaraj Singh Mewar and his sisters.
Mexican Americans
Mexican Americans (mexicano-americanos): the largest U.S. Hispanic origin group, over 34.6 million in 2013; incorporated through the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and later Mexican immigration, concentrated in California and Texas.
Mexican Student Movement of 1968
The Mexican Student Movement of 1968 was a wave of student protest in Mexico City against President Díaz Ordaz's government, ending with the army firing on a rally in Tlatelolco on October 2.
Mexicans
Mexicans (mexicanos) are the people of Mexico, about 130.9 million in 2025, plus 37.2 million people of Mexican origin in the U.S., the largest Hispanic group, counted as an ethnicity, not a race.
Mi'kmaq
The Mi'kmaq (Mi'kmaw, L'nu) are an Indigenous Wabanaki Confederacy people of Mi'kma'ki in Atlantic Canada and Maine, known for the Peace and Friendship Treaties (1725-1779), which ceded no land, and for Mi'kmawi'simk language revitalization.
Miami people
Miami (Myaamia) people, an Algonquian-speaking Native American people of the lower Great Lakes; today the federally recognized Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and the unrecognized Miami Nation of Indiana, with a revitalized Miami-Illinois language.
Miao people
Miao (苗) is China's official ethnonym for several Hmong-Mien-speaking groups: Hmu, Qo Xiong, A-Hmao, and Hmong proper. About 11 million people, over a third in Guizhou; diaspora Hmong reject the term as pejorative.
Michael Carroll (lottery winner)
Michael Carroll, Norfolk man who won £9,736,131 on the UK National Lottery in November 2002 at 19 while wearing an electronic tag; dubbed "Lotto Lout", jailed in 2004 and 2006, and broke by 2010.
Michael Glatze
Michael Glatze, American former gay-rights activist and founding editor of Young Gay America magazine, who renounced homosexuality in 2007, became an evangelical pastor in Wyoming, married Rebekah, and was portrayed by James Franco in I Am Michael (2015).
Michael Schwerner
Michael Henry "Mickey" Schwerner, New York CORE organizer and project director for Mississippi's 4th District, murdered with James Chaney and Andrew Goodman by Klansmen on June 21, 1964 during Freedom Summer; led to the 1967 Price convictions and Killen's 2005 manslaughter conviction.
Michael X
Michael X, born Michael de Freitas, was a Trinidad-born civil rights activist, the most publicized figure of Britain's Black Power movement, hanged in Trinidad in 1975 for murder.
Michel de Certeau
Michel de Certeau (1925–1986), French Jesuit historian and cultural theorist of mysticism, author of The Practice of Everyday Life, known for the strategy/tactics distinction and his critique of Foucault and Bourdieu.
Microaggression
Microaggression: term coined by Chester Pierce (1970) and revived by Derald Wing Sue (2007) for brief, often unintentional slights communicating hostile messages toward marginalized groups, with three subtypes (microassault, microinsult, microinvalidation) and an active scientific debate.