6,078 articles
Deprogramming
Deprogramming: coercive 1970s-1990s American anti-cult practice of abducting and counterindoctrinating cult members, justified by brainwashing theory, later replaced by voluntary exit counseling after lawsuits ended the Cult Awareness Network.
Depth perception
Depth perception is the visual ability to judge distances in space using monocular cues (relative size, occlusion, perspective, motion parallax) and binocular cues (retinal disparity, convergence). Stereopsis, Wheatstone's 1838 stereoscope, cortical disparity detectors, clinical testing, and 3D displays distinguish it from related topics.
DeRay Mckesson
DeRay Mckesson (born 1985, Baltimore) is a civil rights activist, former school administrator, and co-founder of Campaign Zero who rose to prominence during the 2014 Ferguson protests, hosted Pod Save The People, and ran sixth in Baltimore's 2016 mayoral primary.
Deshastha Brahmin
Deshastha Brahmin (देशस्थ ब्राह्मण): a Marathi Brahmin sub-caste of the Deccan plateau, Maharashtra's largest and oldest Brahmin community, split into Rigvedi and Yajurvedi branches, traditionally priests, with gotras such as Kashyap and Bharadwaj.
Desi
Desi (Hindi/Urdu desī, from Sanskrit deśa, country) is a colloquial term for people, cultures, and products of the Indian subcontinent, especially South Asians abroad; recorded in English since 1880, diaspora noun sense since the late twentieth century.
Desmond U. Patton
Desmond Upton Patton is an American social work scholar at the University of Pennsylvania known for founding SAFELab and creating the CASM social media analysis method.
Development communication
Development communication, or Communication for Development (C4D), is the strategic use of communication technologies and processes to promote social change. Coined by Nora Quebral in the 1970s, it spans diffusion and participatory models used by FAO, the World Bank, UNICEF, and UNESCO.
Developmental psychology
Developmental psychology: life-span study of behavioral change. Frameworks include Piaget's stages, Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, Erikson's psychosocial stages, and attachment theory; distinct from child psychology, which covers only childhood.
Developmental science
Developmental science is an interdisciplinary field that describes, explains, and optimizes change across the life span, integrating developmental psychology, neuroscience, and biological, social, and behavioral sciences.
Developmental stage theories
Developmental stage theories (Freud, Erikson, Piaget, Kohlberg) describe human development as fixed sequences of qualitatively distinct stages; modern research favors gradual, domain-specific, culturally variable development.
Deviance (sociology)
Deviance in sociology is the violation of social norms, folkways, mores, or law (Sumner); unlike crime, it depends on social reaction. Main theories: Durkheim's functionalism, Merton's strain, conflict theory, and Becker's labeling theory.
Devil Anse Hatfield
Devil Anse Hatfield (William Anderson Hatfield, 1839-1921) was the Logan County, West Virginia patriarch and timber merchant who led the Hatfields against the McCoys in the Tug Fork feud; indicted for the 1882 McCoy killings but never tried.
Dexter King
Dexter Scott King (1961-2024), younger son of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King; chaired the King Center, led the King estate's intellectual property, met James Earl Ray, and died of prostate cancer.
Dhangar
Dhangar (धनगर/धंगड़), pastoral shepherd caste-cluster of Maharashtra, India; 22 endogamous castes from a common stock; NT (C) 3.5% quota; ST-status demand rejected by Bombay High Court in 2024; distinct from the Dhangad Scheduled Tribe.
Dialog (organization)
Dialog (organization), also Dialog Society, is an invitation-only secret society founded in 2006 by Peter Thiel and Auren Hoffman, holding off-the-record elite retreats; its membership grading system and 222-person 2026 retreat roster leaked in June 2026.
Diana Fox Carney
Diana Fox Carney (born 1965), British-Canadian development and climate economist, wife of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney; Oxford-educated, hockey player, ex-Canada 2020, IPPR, Pi Capital, Eurasia Group senior advisor.
Diane Nash
Diane Judith Nash (born 1938, Chicago) is an American civil rights leader, SNCC co-founder, and Nashville sit-in chair who coordinated the 1961 Freedom Rides and co-planned the Selma voting-rights campaign; awarded the 2022 Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Diane Rodríguez
Diane Rodríguez, an Ecuadorian trans activist, led campaigns for legal gender recognition and founded the Asociación Silueta X in 2008. She was the first trans woman to sit in the National Assembly.
Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health
Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, L. Ron Hubbard's 1950 book, introduced engrams, Clear, and auditing, became a bestseller, and evolved into Scientology despite rejection by medical and scientific bodies.
Diaper fetishism
Diaper fetishism (diaperism), part of the ABDL community, is erotic arousal focused on diapers, historically called paraphilic infantilism or adult baby syndrome; no longer a DSM-5 or ICD paraphilia, distinct from pedophilia.
Diaspora
Diaspora (Διασπορά) is a population that has spread from an original homeland to other countries while maintaining links to it. The term originally described the Jewish people.
Diaspora politics
Diaspora politics is the political engagement of emigrant communities with the politics of their homeland, including state policies such as external voting and diaspora institutions, now found in over half of UN member states.
Diathesis–stress model
Diathesis–stress model: psychiatric theory that disorders arise when an underlying vulnerability (diathesis, genetic or psychological) interacts with environmental stress; rooted in 19th-century predisposing/exciting causes, formalized by Meehl and Zubin & Spring.
Dichotic listening
Dichotic listening is a behavioral paradigm in which different sounds are played to each ear simultaneously, typically showing a right-ear advantage for speech, indicating left-hemisphere language dominance.
Dictator game
The dictator game is a behavioral economics experiment in which one player unilaterally splits an endowment with a recipient who cannot reject it, indexing altruism.
Didgoroba
Didgoroba (Georgian: დიდგორობა, "Day of Didgori") is Georgia's annual August 12 commemoration of the Battle of Didgori, won by King David IV over a Seljuk invasion in 1121.
Differential Ability Scales
The Differential Ability Scales (DAS), published in 1990, and its 2007 second edition, the DAS-II, are test batteries assessing cognitive abilities in children aged 2:6 to 17:11.
Differential item functioning
Differential item functioning (DIF) is a psychometric method that flags test items behaving differently for different groups, such as demographic subpopulations, after examinees are matched on ability.
Differential reinforcement
Differential reinforcement is a behavior-analytic procedure that reinforces a desired target behavior while withholding reinforcement from competing behaviors, used to reduce problem behaviors; variants include DRA, DRI, DRO, and DRL.
Diffusion of responsibility
Diffusion of responsibility is the reduced sense of personal responsibility people feel when acting in a group rather than alone; established by Darley and Latané's 1968 bystander experiments, it underlies the bystander effect and extends to advice-taking, online helping, and agency.