Concepts (page 82)

  • The Two-Factor Theory of Delusions

    The two-factor theory is the leading cognitive account of monothematic delusions, and it requires two things to go wrong rather than one. Factor one is an anomalous experience that prompts the…

  • The Uncited Conclusion

    The uncited conclusion is the pattern in which a book's endnotes stop before its closing chapter, so that the pages a reader will actually act on carry nothing behind them. The apparatus is…

  • The Uncited Mechanism

    The uncited mechanism is sourcing that clusters on the decoration and vanishes on the explanation. A claim with a named institution and a quotable statistic gets an entry in the apparatus. A claim…

  • The Uncredited Ancestor

    The uncredited ancestor is a framework presented without its lineage, so that an idea with decades of research behind it arrives looking new and unsupported. The vault's position is that this is a…

  • The Unfalsifiable Frame

    The unfalsifiable frame is the failure in which a theory is built so that almost nothing could refute it, because a denial is absorbed as further evidence for it. Agreement confirms the theory…

  • The Unquantified Claim

    An unquantified claim is a comparative claim made without any of the magnitudes that would let a reader check it. It is this site's own name for a pattern rather than a term from the literature. The…

  • The Vicious Circle of Deprivation

    The vicious circle of deprivation is John Bowlby's claim, in his 1951 report for the World Health Organization, that deprived children grow into parents unable to provide a normal home life, so that…

  • The Von Restorff Effect

    The von Restorff effect, also called the isolation effect, is the finding that the odd item in a list of similar items is remembered better. Hedwig von Restorff showed in 1933 that it holds even…

  • The Watching Eyes Effect

    The watching eyes effect is the claim that people behave better when something resembling a pair of eyes is present, even a crude drawing. The evidence is split by what is measured. Pooled studies…

  • The WEIRD Critique

    The WEIRD critique is the claim that behavioural science has described a narrow slice of humanity and reported the result as a description of people. Joseph Henrich, Steven Heine and Ara Norenzayan…

  • The What-The-Hell Effect

    The what-the-hell effect is the tendency of dieters to eat more once they believe their diet is already broken for the day. Peter Herman and Janet Polivy gave it that name in a 1980 chapter on…

  • The White Cube

    The white cube is Brian O'Doherty's name for the modern gallery's blank walls, controlled lighting and objects isolated on plinths, treated not as a neutral way to display art but as an ideology in…