6,078 articles
Theories of humor
Theories of humor: superiority, relief, and incongruity accounts, plus benign violation theory, explaining what makes things funny, from Hobbes and Freud to McGraw and Warren.
Theory of mind
Theory of mind (ToM), or mentalizing, is the capacity to attribute beliefs, desires, and intentions to others. Covers false belief tasks, neural systems, development, autism debates, and LLM evaluation.
Theory of multiple intelligences
Howard Gardner's 1983 theory of multiple intelligences holds that intelligence comprises seven or more relatively independent capacities, from linguistic to interpersonal; mainstream psychometrics instead supports a general factor g.
Theory of planned behavior
Theory of planned behavior (TPB), Icek Ajzen's 1985/1991 social psychology model: intention, driven by attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control, predicts behavior; distinguished from the theory of reasoned action by the perceived-control construct.
Theory of reasoned action
Theory of reasoned action (TRA), Fishbein and Ajzen's 1967/1975 model: behavior is predicted by intention, which is formed by attitude toward the behavior and subjective norm; extended by Ajzen's theory of planned behavior adding perceived behavioral control.
Theta Noir
Theta Noir is an art collective founded in 2020 by Mika Johnson and others that venerates a future AGI called MENA through rituals, songs, and occult-inspired performance art. Known for NFT memberships, non-anthropocentric AI ethics, and self-describing as a performance art project rather than a cult.
Thích Quảng Đức
Thích Quảng Đức (釋廣德), Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk (1897–1963) who self-immolated in Saigon on 11 June 1963 protesting Ngô Đình Diệm's persecution of Buddhists; Malcolm Browne's photo won World Press Photo of the Year.
Think and Grow Rich
Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill's 1937 self-help classic from The Ralston Society, presents thirteen success principles, from Desire to the Master Mind group, said to derive from a Carnegie-inspired study; still in print, heavily reproduced, with disputed sales figures and an undocumented origin story.
Think-aloud protocol
A think-aloud protocol is a research method in which participants verbalize their thoughts while performing a task, letting researchers analyze cognitive processes and problem-solving strategies.
Think/no-think task
The think/no-think task is a memory paradigm, modeled on the go/no-go task, in which participants repeatedly retrieve or suppress cue-associated items, producing measurable suppression-induced forgetting.
Thinking outside the box
Thinking outside the box: creativity metaphor from Guilford's nine-dot puzzle. Follow-up studies (Alba & Weisberg; Burnham & Davis) showed explicit out-of-the-box instructions do not raise solution rates.
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Thinking, Fast and Slow is Daniel Kahneman's 2011 bestseller on System 1/System 2 thinking, heuristics, biases, and prospect theory, and the replication debates over its priming and ego-depletion claims.
Third culture kid
Third culture kid (TCK), also called global nomad: a child raised for a year or more outside a parent's passport country due to the parent's work, coined by Ruth Hill Useem; distinct from immigrant, refugee, and adoptee children.
Third gender
Third gender: a social or legal category for people classified beyond the male/female binary. Covers hijras, two-spirit roles, Herdt's Third Sex Third Gender scholarship, critiques, and legal third-gender markers such as India's NALSA ruling and Nepal's O passports.
Third man factor
The third man factor, or third man syndrome, is the experience of an unseen presence offering encouragement during life-threatening situations, named after Ernest Shackleton's 1916 South Georgia crossing.
Third place
Third place (also third space): sociology term coined by Ray Oldenburg in The Great Good Place (1989) for informal gathering spots beyond home and work, such as cafes, libraries, and pubs, defined by eight characteristics and linked to community cohesion.
Third-wave feminism
Third-wave feminism is the feminist movement that began in the United States in the early 1990s, reacting to second-wave feminism, post-feminist backlash, the Anita Hill hearings, and Riot Grrrl, with intersectionality as its core concept.
Thomas Beatie
Thomas Beatie, born Tracy LaGondino, is the American transgender man known as the pregnant man who gave birth to three children in Oregon between 2008 and 2010 and won an Arizona appeal recognizing his marriage.
Thomas Francis and Ruth Reardon O'Brien
Thomas Francis and Ruth Reardon O'Brien, parents of Conan O'Brien: a Harvard microbiologist and pioneer on antimicrobial resistance, and the second woman partner at Ropes & Gray; married 66 years, died three days apart in December 2024.
Thomas Robb (Ku Klux Klan)
Thomas Robb (born 1946) is a Christian Identity pastor and National Director of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (Knights Party), based near Zinc, Arkansas, which he took over from David Duke in the 1980s.
Thor Heyerdahl
Thor Heyerdahl (1914–2002), Norwegian ethnologist and explorer, crossed the Pacific on the balsa raft Kon-Tiki in 1947 (101 days, Peru to Raroia) to argue Polynesia was settled from South America; later Ra, Ra II, Tigris voyages; theory rejected by DNA.
Thou shalt not commit adultery
Thou shalt not commit adultery, the seventh commandment (Exodus 20:14; Deuteronomy 5:18), prohibits sex with another man's wife or by a married woman outside marriage; biblical law punished it by death, later Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions redefined its scope, and 90% of Americans still call affairs morally wrong.
Thought-terminating cliché
Thought-terminating cliché (also thought-stopping cliché): a short ready-made phrase that ends discussion instead of answering it. Coined by Robert Jay Lifton in his 1961 book on thought reform; no experimental replication of the effect exists.
Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire
The Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire (TFEQ), also known as the Eating Inventory, is a 51-item self-report questionnaire measuring cognitive restraint, disinhibition, and hunger, published by Stunkard and Messick in 1985.
Thule people
Thule people, Neo-Inuit whale hunters from northern Alaska (developed ca 1000 AD), spread over 6,500 km east to Greenland by 1200 AD, replaced the Dorset with minimal contact, and are ancestors of modern Inuit.
Tiger parenting
Tiger parenting, popularized by Amy Chua's 2011 Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, is strict, achievement-focused childrearing: high monitoring, moderate hostility, low warmth. Research finds it is uncommon among Asian American families and yields worse mental-health outcomes than supportive or authoritative parenting.
Tiggy Legge-Bourke
Tiggy Legge-Bourke, now Alexandra Pettifer, was nanny to Princes William and Harry. In 2022 the BBC paid her substantial damages for Martin Bashir's fabricated affair and abortion claims used to obtain the 1995 Diana Panorama interview.
Tigrayans
Tigrayans (Tegaru) are a Tigrinya-speaking ethno-linguistic group of northern Ethiopia, about 6% of the population, mostly Oriental Orthodox, historically centered on Axum, ruled Ethiopia via the TPLF from 1991 to 2018, and endured the 2020–2022 war.
Tilly Smith
Tilly Smith, English schoolgirl from Oxshott, Surrey, recognized 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami warning signs on Mai Khao Beach, Phuket, prompting evacuation of about 100 people; honored by Clinton at UN.
Tim Ballard
Tim Ballard, former DHS special agent, founded Operation Underground Railroad (now Our Rescue) in 2013 and inspired the 2023 film Sound of Freedom; he resigned in 2023 amid sexual misconduct lawsuits, church excommunication, and investigations that ended without charges.