Sociology
38 ideas, each explained on one page with a 60-second lesson you can play right there.
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Attachment Styles
Attachment styles describe patterns infants use to stay close to caregivers, shaping expectations in future relationships.
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Attention Economy
When information becomes abundant, human attention becomes the scarce resource that platforms and advertisers compete to capture.
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Authority bias
Authority bias is the tendency to assume an opinion or order is accurate simply because it comes from an authority figure.
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Behavioral addiction
Behavioral addiction is a compulsion to repeat a rewarding action despite real harm, sharing the same brain adaptations as drug addiction.
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Burnout (psychology)
Occupational burnout stems from unmanaged workplace stress.
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Codependency
Codependency is a relational pattern where one person enables another's self-destructive behavior through high self-sacrifice and control.
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Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort you feel when you hold conflicting beliefs, or when your actions clash with your values.
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Cold reading
Cold reading uses high-probability guesses and subtle body language cues to make strangers reveal their own details while believing the reader knew them.
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Confirmation Bias
Confirmation bias leads people to seek, interpret, and remember evidence that fits their prior beliefs while ignoring contrary facts.
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Conspicuous consumption
Conspicuous consumption is buying expensive goods or services beyond practical need to publicly display wealth, income, and social status.
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DARVO
DARVO stands for Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender.
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Doomscrolling
Doomscrolling is the habit of continuously consuming distressing digital content.
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Escalation of commitment
Why people double down on failing projects to protect their own past choices, violating standard cost-benefit reasoning.
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FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out)
FOMO is the anxiety that others are having rewarding experiences without you, intensified by social feeds into constant psychological distress.
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Foot-in-the-door technique
The foot-in-the-door technique gets people to agree to a huge request by securing a tiny yes first.
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Fundamental attribution error
The fundamental attribution error makes us blame people's character for their actions while ignoring their circumstances.
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Gambling
Gambling is the wagering of money or something else of value on a random event with the intention of winning a prize.
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Gaslighting
Gaslighting is the psychological manipulation of a person into questioning their own perception of reality.
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Habit
A habit is a routine behavior that is repeated regularly and occurs with little to no conscious thought.
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Ikigai
Ikigai is a Japanese concept that refers to a person's reason for living or what makes life feel worth it.
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Lifestyle creep
Lifestyle creep occurs when higher income leads to higher spending at the same rate, turning optional luxuries into perceived daily necessities.
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Love Bombing
Love bombing is the act of overwhelming someone with intense affection, flattery, and attention to influence them.
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Martyr complex
A martyr complex is a behavioral pattern where a person actively seeks out or holds onto suffering instead of solving it.
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Narcissism
Narcissism is a self-centered personality style marked by an excessive preoccupation with oneself and one's own needs, often at the expense of others.
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Nostalgia
Nostalgia is a bittersweet emotional longing for past events, people, or places that cannot be recovered.
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Parkinson's law
Parkinson's law states that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
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Problematic smartphone use
Problematic smartphone use describes compulsive phone habits and distress without requiring a formal addiction diagnosis.
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Procrastination
Procrastination is an avoidance coping behavior where people needlessly delay tasks despite knowing the delay will cause negative consequences.
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Reciprocity (social psychology)
Reciprocity is the learned social norm of returning favors and harms.
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Scarcity (social psychology)
Scarcity causes people to place higher value on limited items, driving panic buying, impulse purchases, and biased decisions.
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Self-Control Self-control is the ability to regulate your thoughts, emotions, and behavior when facing immediate temptations and impulses.
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Self-efficacy
Self-efficacy is an individual's belief in their ability to act in the ways necessary to achieve a specific goal.
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Self-serving bias
Why we attribute our successes to personal skill and blame our failures on outside factors to protect our self-esteem.
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Social proof
Social proof occurs when people copy others to determine correct behavior during uncertain situations, often leading to genuine belief.
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Spotlight effect
The spotlight effect causes people to overestimate how much others notice their appearance, mistakes, and nervous feelings.
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Subjective well-being
Subjective well-being measures personal evaluations of life through emotional moods, life satisfaction, and meaning rather than external wealth.
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Traumatic bonding
Traumatic bonding is a psychological attachment that an abused person develops toward their abuser, not toward other victims.
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Work–life balance
Work–life balance is the equilibrium between a person's job and their personal life, including family, leisure, and health.