6,078 articles
Past life regression
Past life regression, also called past-life therapy, is a controversial hypnotic technique for reexperiencing supposed previous lives; researchers attribute its narratives to suggestion, cryptomnesia, and false memory.
Patel
Patel is a Gujarati surname from the title for village headman (Sanskrit pattakila), carried above all by the Patidar landowning caste of Charotar, Gujarat, formerly called Kanbi, and by many other groups worldwide.
Path dependence
Path dependence: concept, also called lock-in or non-ergodic dynamics, describing processes whose outcomes hinge on contingent early events amplified by self-reinforcement; defined via contingency plus self-reinforcement, studied with Markov-chain models, and tested in fisheries and QWERTY research.
Pathfinders (Seventh-day Adventist)
Pathfinders is the Seventh-day Adventist Church's youth club program for ages 10-15, official since 1950, with six classes, about 350 honors, two million members in 160+ countries, and international camporees.
Pathological lying
Pathological lying, also called pseudologia fantastica or mythomania, is a psychiatric phenomenon of chronic, disproportionate, largely unmotivated fabrications, first described by Delbrück in 1891 and not a standalone DSM-5 diagnosis.
Patidar (પટેલ)
Patidar (પટેલ), formerly Kanbi, is a dominant land-owning agrarian caste of Gujarat with Leuva and Kadva sub-castes, about 15% of the state's population, prominent in trade, the diamond business, BJP politics, and the 2015 OBC reservation agitation led by Hardik Patel.
Patience
Patience, in psychology, is the capacity to wait calmly under frustration, adversity, or suffering; related to delay of gratification (marshmallow test) and measured as interpersonal, daily-hassles, and life-hardships patience, with health and academic correlates.
Patriarchy
Patriarchy: a social system of male dominance over women, central concept in feminist theory (Millett, Firestone, Hartmann), with private-to-public forms, critiques, and intersectionality shift.
Patrick Bouvier Kennedy
Patrick Bouvier Kennedy (1963) was the third child of President John F. and Jacqueline Kennedy, born five and a half weeks premature at Otis AFB and died of respiratory distress syndrome at 39 hours; his death spurred surfactant research.
Patrick Gower
Patrick (Paddy) Gower, New Zealand journalist and TV presenter, former Newshub political editor, creator of the Patrick Gower: On… documentaries, host of Paddy Gower Has Issues, now with Stuff and author of This Is The F#$%ing News (2024).
Patrick Kennedy (farmer)
Patrick Kennedy (farmer) was an Irish cooper who emigrated from County Wexford in 1848. He died in Boston in 1858, the paternal great-grandfather of John F. Kennedy.
Patrick Little (neo-Nazi)
Patrick Little is an American neo-Nazi activist and former Marine sergeant who ran as a Republican for the 2018 California US Senate seat against Dianne Feinstein, polled second at 18 percent, was expelled from the California GOP convention, finished 12th, and later ran for office in Idaho and for president in 2020.
Patriotic Women's Association
The Patriotic Women's Association (Aikoku Fujinkai) was a Japanese women's organization founded by Okumura Ioko in 1901 to aid families of soldiers killed or disabled in war.
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.
Patrisse Cullors
Patrisse Cullors, also known as Patrisse Khan-Cullors, is an American artist and activist born in Los Angeles in 1983, best known as a co-founder of Black Lives Matter.
Patti Stanger
Patti Stanger, the Millionaire Matchmaker, is an American third-generation matchmaker who founded the Millionaire's Club in 2000, starred in Bravo's The Millionaire Matchmaker (2008–2015), and returned on the CW in 2024.
Pattukkottai Alagiri (பட்டுக்கோட்டை ஆழகிரி)
Pattukkottai Alagiri (பட்டுக்கோட்டை ஆழகிரி), also spelled Azhagiri, 1900–1949, Tamil Self-Respect Movement orator called the 'whirlwind speaker' and 'Anjaa Nenjan', co-led the 1938 Trichy-to-Madras anti-Hindi march.
Patty Wetterling
Patty Wetterling, American child-safety advocate from St. Joseph, Minnesota; mother of abducted Jacob Wetterling; co-founded Jacob Wetterling Foundation, prompted the 1994 federal sex offender registry act, chaired NCMEC, later criticized registries.
Paul Burrell
Paul Burrell (born 1958) is a former royal servant, footman to Queen Elizabeth II and butler to Diana, Princess of Wales until her 1997 death; his 2002 theft trial collapsed and his 2003 memoir A Royal Duty sold over 3 million copies.
Paul Ekman
Paul Ekman (1934–2025), American psychologist at UCSF, founder of modern affective science; proposed universal basic emotions and co-developed the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) with Wallace Friesen, plus micro-expression and deception ('leakage') research.
Paula Ben-Gurion (פולה בן-גוריון)
Paula Ben-Gurion (Paulina Monbesz, 1892–1968), wife of Israel's first prime minister David Ben-Gurion and Israel's first "First Lady"; met him in New York in 1915, a trained nurse who managed his health, household, and Sde Boker home.
Pauli effect
Pauli effect: physics-folklore joke claiming technical equipment failed whenever Wolfgang Pauli entered a lab; Otto Stern banned him, a Göttingen train anecdote and rigged chandelier fed the legend, unlike the real Pauli exclusion principle.
Pauline Pfeiffer
Pauline Pfeiffer (1895–1951), American journalist for Vanity Fair and Vogue, second wife of Ernest Hemingway from 1927 to 1940; mother of Patrick and Gregory, editor of his manuscripts, died after an adrenal tumor rupture.
Pavlovian conditioning task
A Pavlovian conditioning task is a behavioral paradigm in which a neutral stimulus repeatedly paired with a biologically significant stimulus comes to elicit a learned anticipatory response.
Pawnee people
Pawnee people: Caddoan-speaking Plains nation of four bands (Chaui, Kitkahahki, Pitahawirata, Skidi), historically of Nebraska earth-lodge villages, removed to Oklahoma in 1874-75; today the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma has over 3,500 enrolled members.
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.
Peace
Peace, in peace research, means more than the absence of war: negative peace is the absence of direct violence, while positive peace, per Johan Galtung, adds social justice and the absence of structural and cultural violence, underpinning UN peacebuilding and indices like the Global Peace Index.
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.
Pederasty
Pederasty (Greek paiderastia) is the erotic relationship between an adult male and an adolescent boy, historically institutionalized in ancient Greece as erastes-eromenos mentorship, later practiced in Rome, and criminalized under Christianity; distinct from pedophilia in definition.
Pedophile advocacy groups
Pedophile advocacy groups, including NAMBLA (founded 1978, Boston), the Rene Guyon Society, and the Childhood Sensuality Circle, advocate adult sexual behavior with children and its decriminalization; later online movements promoted the 'minor attracted person' terminology.