6,078 articles
Privacy
Privacy: the right or condition of controlling access to oneself and one's personal information, also called the right to be let alone. Defined by Warren and Brandeis (1890), a human right under UDHR Article 12, and regulated today through laws such as the EU GDPR.
Private household
A private household is a person living alone or a group sharing a dwelling and providing for their own everyday needs, as distinct from institutions like prisons or hospitals.
Priya Parker
Priya Parker is an American facilitator, mediator, and author of The Art of Gathering and The Art of Fighting (2025), and host of the New York Times podcast Together Apart.
Probabilistic reversal learning task
The probabilistic reversal learning task is a behavioral paradigm in which participants choose between options with partially reliable reward probabilities that periodically swap, probing reward learning under uncertainty.
Problem solving
Problem solving: the cognitive process of moving from a given state to a goal state when no solution method is known. Covers problem space theory (Newell and Simon), heuristics, working memory limits, insight, and complex problem solving research.
Procrastination
Procrastination is the voluntary, unnecessary delay of intended tasks despite expecting negative consequences. Also called dysfunctional delay; affects up to 20% of adults and 50% of students; CBT shows moderate treatment effects.
Profession
Profession: an occupation distinguished from ordinary work by specialized knowledge, controlled training, and self-regulation. Central concept of the sociology of professions, studied through functionalist, interactionist, and conflict approaches since Durkheim and Weber.
Professional ethics
Professional ethics is the set of principles and values central to a profession, expressed in codes of ethics such as the APA, ABA Model Rules, and nursing and engineering codes, combining aspirational principles with enforceable standards.
Profile of Mood States
The Profile of Mood States (POMS) is a 65-item self-report checklist measuring mood across six dimensions, developed by McNair, Lorr, and Droppleman and first published in 1971.
Prohibited degree of kinship
A prohibited degree of kinship, also called a prohibited degree of relationship, is a family relationship, by blood or marriage, within which marriage is legally or religiously barred.
Project Chanology
Project Chanology (Operation Chanology) was Anonymous's 2008 protest campaign against the Church of Scientology, triggered by takedown attempts on a leaked Tom Cruise video, combining DDoS attacks, pranks, and global Guy Fawkes-masked street protests.
Projective test
Projective test: ambiguous-stimulus personality assessment (Rorschach Inkblot Test, Thematic Apperception Test, sentence completion, drawings) based on the projective hypothesis; controversial psychometrics, worldwide clinical use, multimethod complementary role.
Prolonged exposure therapy
Prolonged exposure therapy (PE) is a trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral treatment for PTSD developed by Edna Foa, in which patients repeatedly revisit trauma memories and confront avoided situations.
Promiscuity
Promiscuity, also called promiscuous sexual behavior, means having many different sexual partners or casual relationships. Distinguished by its etymology, self-report measurement problems, evolutionary context, double standards, and links to relationship outcomes and STD transmission.
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.
Propaganda Movement
The Propaganda Movement (1882–1896) was a Filipino reform campaign led by Rizal, del Pilar, and López Jaena in Spain, centered on the newspaper La Solidaridad, demanding assimilation and Cortes representation; its failure fed the 1896 Katipunan revolution.
Propaganda techniques
Propaganda techniques are recurring persuasive methods like name-calling, glittering generalities, transfer, card stacking, and bandwagon, first cataloged by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis in 1937 and now targeted by SemEval detection benchmarks and inoculation-based pre-bunking.
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.
Prostitution
Prostitution, also called sex work for consensual adult exchanges, is the exchange of sexual services for compensation. Key facts: four legal models (criminalization, Nordic model, legalization, decriminalization), Sweden's 1999 buyer-only ban, New Zealand's 2003 decriminalization, and health evidence on policing.
Prostitution in China
Prostitution in China is illegal but widespread since the 1978 reforms; estimates range from one to ten million sex workers, enforced through administrative fines, detention, and the saohuang dafei campaign system.
Prostitution in Hong Kong
Prostitution in Hong Kong: selling sex is not itself illegal, but brothel keeping, living on earnings of prostitution, and controlling sex workers are Crimes Ordinance offences, producing the one-woman brothel model and colonial-era regulation history.
Prostitution in Japan
Prostitution in Japan (売春) is prohibited by the 1956 Prostitution Prevention Law, which punishes solicitation and mediation but not buyers, while a large gray-zone sex industry operates under the Entertainment Businesses Law.
Prostitution in Macau
Prostitution in Macau: selling sex is not criminalized but organized prostitution is not legalized; migrant women on tourist or entertainer visas dominate saunas and hotels, with trafficking enforcement under penal code Article 153-A.
Prostitution in Singapore
Prostitution in Singapore is not itself a crime, but solicitation, pimping, brothel-keeping, and trafficking are offences under the Women's Charter; over 100 licensed brothels operate mainly in Geylang, under a system rooted in the 1870 Contagious Disease Ordinance.
Prostitution in South Korea
Prostitution in South Korea is banned under the Act on the Punishment of Arrangement of Commercial Sex Acts (성매매처벌법), which punishes buying, selling, arranging, and financing sex while protecting victims. Its history includes state-sponsored US camptown (kijich'on) prostitution, disease-control clinics, and 2025 litigation against the US military.
Prostitution in the Philippines
Prostitution in the Philippines: criminalized under Revised Penal Code Article 202 until RA 11862 (2022) repealed it; now prosecuted mainly under the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act (RA 9208), which treats sellers as victims and targets exploiters.
Protest
Protest: coordinated public collective action expressing dissent, opposition, or vindication. Covers tactics (marches, strikes, boycotts, 250 nonviolent methods), theory, datasets (1.2M events, 1980–2020), effectiveness debates, and assembly-rights law.
Protestant views of marriage
Protestant views of marriage are the teachings of Protestant churches on what marriage is and when it may be dissolved, beginning with the Reformation rejection of marriage as a sacrament, which opened divorce and remarriage.
Protestant work ethic
Protestant work ethic, or Calvinist/Puritan work ethic, coined by Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-05): the thesis that Calvinist calling, predestination, and asceticism fostered diligence, frugality, and capitalism.
Protests against Donald Trump
Protests against Donald Trump: mass demonstrations during his 2017-2021 and post-2025 presidencies. Largest sustained US protest movement; Women's March, Hands Off, and No Kings days; overwhelmingly nonviolent.