text:
What are some key behaviors that stone-age humans evolved to help them survive and reproduce?
In Wikipedia's article on evolutionary psychology, two of six given key premises of EP are as follows:

Different neural mechanisms are specialized for solving problems in humanity's evolutionary past.
The brain has evolved specialized neural mechanisms that were designed for solving problems that recurred over deep evolutionary time, giving modern humans stone-age minds.

I am neither a professional psychologist nor a professional biologist, but I am very curious as to where I could (preferably in a freely available paper, website, etc.) find a list of the aforementioned "problems in humanity's evolutionary past."
Assuming that Wikipedia's claim that we still have stone-age minds is correct, I would like to know which tasks we performed during the stone age that shape the tasks that we can perform effectively today.  For example, did some task of hunter-gatherers (like gathering berries and hoarding them) eventually translate into going grocery shopping at a supermarket and buying 75 items?  (I can't think of any better examples, unfortunately.)
Thanks for any help you can provide.  I glanced at this page, but couldn't find a good list of EPMs.

Anything beyond the genetic evolution of neural pathways into modern upper level Hippocampal developments and the functions of the lower order animalistic instincts in the basal ganglia would be speculation. Possible observation of the processes of evolution can be seen in the conception to birth biological development process however behaviors in the womb are highly limited.

Welcome to cogsci.SE Philip, and interesting question!  As a bit of an EP skeptic, I'll be very curious to see what answers you get.

Thanks!  I am thinking about asking a separate question about evolutionary psych in general, as I think it's very fascinating but am also unsure of how to evaluate its veracity.  (At least it's not Freud.)

That could be a very interesting question also--although might be hard to avoid being too broad.

Actually, having read more on EP and approaches to psych in general, I'm leaning towards agreeing with the first comment, which I would accept as an answer, if posted as such.  Upon reflection, I am starting to think that EP is sort of quackery--about as bad as Freud.  I guess I was wrongly intrigued by the fact that it has the word "evolutionary" in it...but it doesn't seem to present a ton of testable hypotheses.  This is the same criticism I have of Freud.


text:
'Always Give a Reason Why' - How to describe this subject area?
I summarise http://rayedwards.com/always-give-a-reason-why/:

In Dr. Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence, he cites a research study showing that simply adding the word “because” to a request multiplies the likelihood of compliance.
Interestingly, the study seems to indicate that the legitimacy of the reasons supplied did not seem as important to the outcome as you might suppose. In fact, it seems hardly necessary to have a real reason at all.
For example, you might ask to cut line at the post office, and be more likely to get a “yes” response from the person in front of you if you simply frame your question by saying something like, “Would it be possible for me to please cut a front of you in line, because I’m really in a hurry.”

I recognise the lack of substantiated evidence in the above quote, but I'm interested in learning about such empirically, scientifically proven behaviour and human psychology (eg through reputable peer-reviewed articles). To clarify, I seek not the hard data itself, but only conclusions and tips supported by credible evidence. I only chanced upon that above link, so to discover more in this area methodically and productively,  what are some key words terming this subject? Where should I start?
I've no training in sciences, so I'd cherish answers and advice written in lay, simple, readable language.

This particular study, sometimes called the "Xerox Experiment", was done by Ellen Langer, who studies "mindfullness", but that may not be what you are looking for.  It is also cited on Wikipedia under Attitude Change - Heuristic Processing:

For example, people are more likely to grant favors if reasons are
  provided. A study shows that when people said, "Excuse me, I have five
  pages to xerox. May I use the copier?” they received a positive
  response of 60%. The statement, “Excuse me, I have five pages to
  xerox. I am in a rush. May I use the copier?” produced a 95% success
  rate.

It is worth noting however, that a study published in the same year by Stanley Milgram (famous for his obedience experiments in the 60's), cited on Wikipedia under "Breaching Experiments", about people giving up their seats in the subway found a similar success rate when no reason was given, but a significantly lower compliance rate if a trivial reason was provided:

the second condition, the trivial justification ... a much lower number gave
  up their seats.

A related field that a layman might find more accessible, is called "behavioural economics", and there is also a lot of overlap with "cognitive bias".  Search YouTube for Dan Ariely, you'll learn lots of neat tips and tricks just like this one, backed by peer-reviewed studies, about how easily people can be manipulated.

A very important thing to note in the xerox example is that the statement containing the 'because' explanation is also longer. In other words, it will involve more communication. Maybe more communication vs. less communication will lead one to be more likely to give up the xerox.

I for one would probably fit Milgram's findings. A silly (or phony sounding) excuse/reason to me sounds worse than simply saying "please" after a request. I do wonder if there are personality factors behind that... which might even explain the difference in findings between such studies.

@Ana: you probably mean the other way around. The reason in the subway was longer "I can't read standing up" and less plausible.

Cialdini's book Influence is great, I wish I hadn't lost my copy of it...I always considered that to be a social psych book, so perhaps you should study social psychology if you have an interest in this sort of thing.  You could also consider glancing at his Wikipedia page for more information about where his journal articles were published...this could provide some clues as to which journals/textbooks to look into.
Also note, the idea of adding the word "because" to a request is related to the idea of pretexting, which is studied by social engineers.  While (I think) this isn't technically considered part of psychology, I would imagine that social engineering is considered relevant to cognitive science.
Disclaimer:  I am not a professional psychologist, just an enthusiast.

Summary:

Don't just give any reason. a certain type of "grating" reason (as explained in 2nd half of my post) has been shown to backfire and be worse than none.
A syntactically correct but semantically (fairly) meaningless reason could be classified as a peripheral route to persuasion. In low stakes situations, a vacuous (but not grating) reason may work better than none, but as the stakes increase so does the scrutiny applied to the reason.

Let me start by elaborating on  experiments mentioned by Arnon Weinberg (because I think some of the details are necessary before trying to conclude from the perspective of later works):
Actually Wikipedia doesn't detail the Xerox experiment well enough. The actual result was a bit more complicated: for small favors (in which the requester had fewer [actually 5] pages to copy than the recipient of the request [who had 20]) it made no difference whether the reason given was non-informative ("placebic") or real/plausible. But when the favor was "big" (the requester had more copies [20] to make than the recipient [who had 5]), the reason given did make a difference... and in fact giving a "placebic" reason was no better than no reason at all for big favors.

Also (contra to what Ana said) in the xerox experiment the reasons were terse, either bare request "Excuse me, I have 5 (20) pages.
May I use the xerox machine?" or +"because I have to make copies" ("placebic") or +"because I'm in a rush" ("real"). I think that Cialdini’s logic for always giving a reason is that in this experiment giving a reason was not worse than giving none (in any scenario), but also keep in mind that "not worse" does not equal "always better"; giving a "placebic" reason for a big favor didn't work (but also didn't hurt).
I think that in the Milligram subway experiment the reason given was worse than "placebic" though. In the xerox experiment you cannot really refute the "placebic" reason "because I have to make copies" with respect to the use of the xerox (you can't [easily] make copies otherwise). So while it may sound weird it's not that grating (to me). On the other hand in the Milligram subway experiment, the reason was "I can't read my book standing up" which is something that most people can mentally refute as probably fake right away... But this is just me theorizing. It would be nice if someone redid one of the experiments with 4 arms for the argument given: none, implausible, neutral/repetition, and plausible.

In the (very highly cited ~8K cites in GS, ~10x the Xerox experiment) "Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion" of Petty and Cacioppo (1986), giving a "placebic" argument would probably be classified as a peripheral route to persuasion. They note (actually it's one of their "postulates") that

As motivation and/or ability to process arguments is decreased, peripheral cues become relatively more important determinants of persuasion.

By peripheral cues they mean among other things repetition (Trump being a good recent example, heh), distraction etc. I guess a "placebic" reason counts as a form of distraction. But also note that in the Xerox experiment the placebic reason is also a form repetition "I need X because I need X", alhouth with a slightly different formulation for the 2nd X.
Petty and Cacioppo actually discuss the Xerox experiment of Langer on p. 159, remarking after summarizing it that

Folkes (1985) provided a partial replication of this effect. In two field studies using the inconsequential request (making five copies), respondents were equally willing to comply whether the request containing the valid or the placebic reason. In a thind study, however, the subjects were asked to guess how they would respond to the requests and to "think carefully before answering". When instructed to think before responding, the valid reason produced significantly more anticipation of compliance than the placebic reason.

Furthermore!! Folkes pretty much did what I hoped someone would do, and also tested with an obnoxious reason:

Although providing a partial replication of Langer et al.(1978), Folkes takes issue with Langer's assertion that the placebic information is processed "mindlessly". Folkes argues that if the reasons are processed automatically under low consequences conditions, then a poor reason should as effective as a valid one. However she found a that a poor reason (e.g. "because I don't want to wait") was significantly less effective than a valid or placebic one under low consequence conditions.

So the conclusion is: don't just give any reason!
I'm not sure from which book of Cialdini the give-any-reason advice came. If it's from his 1984 Influence, then that could not have covered research that was published (a year) later. Cialdini has a 2001 book with the same title but a different subtitle though; hopefully that's more up-to-date, but I haven't checked.
Here's the actual data from Folke:

All requests were small in the Falke experiments (4 or 5 pages to copy) and also took place at two different locations; her experiment 2 was in the UK, the rest in the US. In Falke's experiments 1-3, she attempted to directly replicate (the small favor) experiment of Lange but with varying questions. Only in experiment 4 were the subjects instructed to think carefully before deciding.
The reason why Falke calls the grating reasons "controllable" is based on the level of volitional control (of the requester) implied in the reason:

Attribution research suggests that one distinction
  between good and bad excuses is in
  perceived controllability. An excuse can suggest
  one is compelled to perform an action
  or imply volitional control (Weiner, 1980).
  Lack of control mitigates responsibility for a
  transgression more than volitional control.
  Thus, when people ask favors for reasons
  they cannot control, their requests are more
  frequently complied with than when reasons
  for the requested favor are controllable
  (Barnes, Ickes, & Kidd, 1979; Weiner, 1980).
  In the copying machine paradigm, requests
  to go first because of controllable reasons
  (e.g., "because I don't want to wait") should
  be complied with less—they do not mitigate
  responsibility for needing the favor. When a
  person lacks control over the reason for wanting
  to go first (e.g., "because I feel really
  sick"), compliance should be greater.

Finally, Petty and Cacioppo also distinguish some personality factors affecting the result, in particular what they call "need for cognition". Individuals that rated higher on a self-reported measure for this factor had (objectively) more polarized attitudes on an argument than individuals who scored low on this measure.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


text:
The accuracy & malleability of memory for color
How accurate is colour memory for the standard person?
It would seem most people are quite good at remembering the colour of objects by visualising the object. But in some cases peoples visualisation could be wrong. This is the case I am interested in.
Can this visualised 'incorrect' colour be shifted in a specific way?
Is there any known reason why someone would visualise objects colour incorrectly in some set shifted way. E.g. They always remember things by their composite colour?

Motivation:
My memory self ranked:

Faces - Great
Names - Average
Geography - Poor
Colour - Non-existent

For some reason, I find myself incapable of remembering colours unless I specially label it with a colour, and often people will ask me to get something of theirs without telling me the colour, and I will be unable to find it because I can visualise it perfectly in the wrong colour.
One example I can remember. A large brick wall on my drive, I can perfectly remember(still can) that it was a light lime green, roughly this colour, and I was thinking about it in the car as I was planning my route mentally. Once I reached it I saw that it was purple, my girlfriend tells me essentially this colour.

I have removed the final portion (which was my sticking point with the self-help aspect of the question) and voted to reopen.  If you are concerned about how this neurological difference pertains to you, it's best to ask a clinician about it.

@ChuckSherrington Thank you :). When I said significance, I meant, 'is this a specific shift, say I am remembering in certain wave lengths' or something, not that I am medically concerned.

It was hard to tell that from the phrasing, but your first paragraph clarified all of that anyway.  Feel free to add in additional information.  We're not out to be draconian, the close reason is necessary to prevent a lot of "I have X, Y, Z symptoms, what's wrong with me?"-type questions, which this really wasn't at its core, anyway, but eliminating that ambiguity made it a stronger question.

I have edited the title to point more clearly to the central concern of the question; feel free to change it if you don't think it is accurate.

@Krysta Hey, always happy to get more attention on my post, thanks :).

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
What is the difference between feeling sad and feeling unhappy?
The first two questions on the Burns Depression Checklist ask about (1) Feeling Sad and (2) Feeling Unhappy. Specifically, they ask how much you have experienced:

Feeling sad or down in the dumps
Feeling unhappy or blue

What is the difference between these two questions?
References

The BDC is from the book Feeling Good, by David Burns.

It is common for psychological tests to include multiple items with similar meaning. These items are then combined to form an overall scale score (e.g., depression or depressed thoughts). Multiple items with a similar meaning are used to increase the reliability of measurement, which is also important for validity.
I don't think there is a huge difference in meaning between the two items, and presumably they are highly correlated. However, they may provide slightly different connotations to different people. Thus, by having multiple items, the scale may have improved reliability.

Do you know of any rules of thumb (or research) about the relationship between correlated items and scale reliability? I.e., how much reliability would having, say, two items correlated at 0.12 add as opposed to two items correlated at 0.36?

Spearman-brown prophecy provides some guidance about the expected increase in reliability. You can also perform an item analysis on the scale to check features like "alpha if item deleted".

I think that there is some difference, at least to me.
All emotions are results of thoughts.
Sadness is most likely a result of negative thoughts about past or future (and, therefore, disconnecting from present moment).
"Feeling unhappy" is often misunderstood, because people often mistake true happiness for external stimulation/excitement. So I think what people are experiencing, when they say they're feeling blue, is simple lack of excitement. It doesn't have much in common with happiness (which is almost the opposite - it comes from the inside and is permanent).

Welcome to cogsci.SE!  We are a science-based group, and generally expect answers based in research, not just experience or philosophizing; you may find this question helpful for community standards on good answers (http://meta.cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/122/advice-on-how-to-write-and-research-a-good-scientific-answer).

@Krysta thank you for your suggestion. I don't believe this question can be answered using any kind of research, as it is opinion-based in the first place. It's asking to differentiate between interpretations of two emotions, which is subjective.

I tend to agree that the difference is primarily in the kinds of thoughts and attitudes evoked by these states. Being unhappy colors ordinary experiences in negative light (ex: "what a crappy food is available in the cafeteria", "this product is defective", "customer service is awful").


text:
To what degree is emotional state visible in a person's eyes?
Is it true that a person's emotional state (such as arousal, fear, etc) can be determined by looking solely at the persons eyes?
Here I am assuming that this may be the case only in limited circumstances (specific scenarios or specific basic emotions such as fear) but if emotional state can be determined from the eyes, is there any research on the extent to which this is possible?

Can you clarify "soley person eyes" does it include facial muscles arround eyes and eyebrows or exclusivelly eyeballs?

Hi ICanFeelIt, in this case I was referring only to the eyeballs themselves, so excluding the facial muscles arround eyes and the eyebrows.

This question has mostly been asked in reverse in the research literature--not whether the eyes can show emotion (which is often called affect by psych researchers), but whether humans can accurately judge affective state based only on the eyes.  That ability varies somewhat depending on demographic parameters (age, gender, and socioeconomic class, as well as autism spectrum disorder status).
The "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" test, developed by Simon Baron-Cohen, tests exactly that, using stimuli like these.

Participants are asked to choose the most applicable emotion word for a picture restricted to the eye area.  Neurotypical controls are more successful at this task than autism spectrum participants; since most of the research has focused on showing differences between populations on this task and not on quantifying normal performance, the reported data on controls alone is difficult to interpret by itself. The test has fairly good test-retest reliability, but it has been criticized for gender bias since there are considerably more male eyes in the stimuli set than female eyes.  This is particularly problematic in light of Baron-Cohen's "extreme male brain" theory of autism.

Nice answer. It might be nice to show some samples from such tests as images, so that its more clear what the test involves.

Humans do commonly use the eyes, area around the eyes, and other eye-related information such as movement and orientation to deduce the emotional states of others.  What isn't as clear from research examining this capability however, putting aside subjects' confidence in their own skills, is how accurate / valid such assessments actually are.
But it turns out that the eyes alone can be used objectively to determine a wide variety of information about a person's mental state.
A fairly large research sub-field in this area is Pupillometry, the measurement of pupil diameter.  Just copying from a Scientific American article:

Scientists have ... used pupillometry to assess everything from
  sleepiness, introversion and sexual interest to race
  bias, schizophrenia, moral judgment, autism and
  depression.

Other research also shows a connection between mental states and eye-related information, such as eye contact and cognitive load, blinking and certain mental disorders related to dopamine, eye movement and memory recall, eye movement and beliefs, and of course, there's crying.
Though humans may not usually use those particular cues, we presumably evolved certain skills to discern emotional states from eyes as a survival mechanism, suggesting that the cues we use are generally valid.  For example, fear causes widening of the eyes / increase in exposure of the sclera (white of the eye), that has the evolutionary advantage of increasing peripheral vision, and the side-effect of alerting others around us to danger, and even to where the danger is.  Even infants are found to be quite skilled at discerning emotional state from the sclera, suggesting a genetic origin.
However in general, physical or physiological cues are only part of the picture, as other context information is also crucial for correct attribution of emotional states.  So in practice, eyes do not generally provide sufficient information for determining emotional state - humans use a lot of additional context information for that.

I'd like to add some nuance here.  While not isolated to reading emotion in the eyes, consider these images from Hillel Aviezer's work (1, 2):

In all four images above, the face is the same. What changes is the body language and objects in the scene.  What also changes is the emotions you perceive in each image (in alphabetical order: disgust, anger, sadness, fear).

Can you tell above which tennis players have just won or just lost?  It's hard, isn't it? They all look like they're in pain, but 1,4,6 have just lost and 2,3,5 have just won.  If you stick the faces back onto the bodies, you'll have better luck at telling who just won or lost.
The point is that we don't interpret the features of the face independently of its context.  When we lose context (like in the images Krysta linked), we will rely on concept knowledge about emotions (e.g., the prototypical Ekmanian fear emotion involves wide eyes, as Arnon pointed out).  But if you situate those wide eyes in several different contexts, then how you judge the emotion will change.

First we need to define emotional state. If we define it as basic emotions then eyeballs are connected to those and we can see effects of PNS (Adrenal gland, fight or flight (or freeze)
More interesting is if we can find effects of higher order emotions (care, love, guilt) There are not much research about it. According to ie. Ledoux theory of emotion we could even guess about effect of higher emotions on state but it will not be precise.
http://dericbownds.net/bom99/Ch10/Ch10-4.gif
Third very important thing is eye movement, eyemovement can tell us a lot about cognition especialy perception and memory formantion (and rehearsal) and it could be one more puzze for educated gues of higher order emotions: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0064937


text:
Why do battered persons love their partners?
Many persons who have been beaten by their partner, no matter how violently, claims that they do not want to leave their abusive partner because they still love them. A common phrase is: "I love him/her more than anything."
Is there research into why these abused partners do not "fall out of love"?

I am specifically interested in the feeling of love, not in other reasons to stay with an abusive partner, such as the fear of further escalation of violence, common children, or material dependence.

for what its worth, I think pet animals (dogs in particular) show the same signs, for example signs of joy in seeing their destructive, violent masters again when they come home (just to be beaten later)

I long pondered the answer to this question myself.  The short answer is: Cognitive Dissonance*
("Cognitive Dissonance" is a hypothesized mental process in which two conflicting ideas are resolved through rationalization / attitude change, instead of addressing the underlying source of the conflict that the person may not be consciously aware of.  So here, we see two conflicting ideas - "I am being abused" and "I am not leaving" - resolved through a rationalization - "I love him", instead of addressing the underlying source of the conflict that the woman is not aware of - eg, "an addiction to the good times in the relationship."  More detail and references below.)
Long answer:
Research approaches to answering such a question are limited by ethical concerns, so most data on abusive relationships comes from self-reports, and most studies are conducted after the fact, though a few studies do examine self-reports during such relationships.
Reports of "love", "romantic narrative", or "emotional attachment" are common in such interviews, and often cited as the primary reason for staying.  However, like many other reasons for staying, victims often change their mind ("what was I thinking?") after break-up and recovery.  This suggests the possibility that emotional attachment may be a rationalization.
Real reasons for staying:
The likelihood of remaining in or returning to an abusive relationship is well predicted by other factors, such as economic dependency, social support, cultural factors, and characteristics of the abuse and the abuser.  This further supports the possibility that emotional attachment is a rationalization of an underlying reason that the victim is either unaware of or suppresses.
Consider another factor: In behavioural experiments, an intermittent reinforcement schedule is considered the most powerful schedule for addiction.  Abusive relationships typically involve a "cycle of abuse" (ie, intermittent) pattern.  Thus, "addiction" to the "good" periods of an abusive relationship may constitute the real reason for staying in some cases.
Rationalized reason for staying:
Dutton and Painter (1993) report that in their sample base, emotional attachment was highly correlated with intermittent abuse.  As is typical of addiction however, victims do not usually recognize the real reason behind it (eg, an intermittent schedule of abuse), and rationalize other reasons instead (eg, emotional attachment).
Dare, Guadagno, and Muscanell (2013) review the role of Cognitive Dissonance in abusive relationships:

Women in abusive relationships may experience high levels of
  dissonance resulting from their negative attitude towards the abuse in
  the relationship and their inability to leave the relationship. If
  they feel "trapped" in the relationship, they may be inclined to
  change their negative attitude pertaining to the relationship or the
  abuse, whether they know it or not. ... Once the woman commits to an
  attitude change that results in her adopting positive feelings towards
  the abusive relationship, she will continue to have those positive
  emotions due to the human nature of wanting to remain consistent with
  our thoughts and actions; therefore, reducing dissonance. ...
  Eventually, her experienced dissonance will be at a minimum because
  her actions and attitudes have become consistent – she remains in the
  abusive relationship while developing a progressively more positive
  outlook on the relationship. This does not mean she thinks abuse is
  acceptable and wishes to be in a violent relationship, rather she
  feels most comfortable within the relationship whenever her cognitive
  dissonance is at a minimum.

Victims effectively convince themselves that they "love" their partner as a rationalization of their real reasons for staying in order to reduce their Cognitive Dissonance.
*-Note that Self-Perception Theory is an alternative to Cognitive Dissonance Theory that makes essentially the same prediction in this context, so there is no particular reason to prefer one interpretation over the other.

Thank you for this extensive answer, +1. What makes me hesitate from accepting it, is the following: I have me two women over the internet. One of these women achieves orgasm by being beaten. She looks for a relationship in which she is beaten in a sexual context (but not outside of sex). The other women is sexually aroused by beind verbally and physically degraded and (quite heavily) abused. She looks for a relationship that includes this experience. These are of course extreme cases that some may see as pathological, [contd.]

[contd.] but what I wonder is if there is a continuum of these desires and wether some persons actively seek and bring about being abused. For example, it seems that in quite a few cases where women are being beaten by their partners, the first violent act (beating) was performed by the woman, effectively lowering the violence threshold in the male. I don't mean to imply that (all) battered spouses want to be beaten, but I do wonder if a submissive personality or low self-worth can lead to behavior that encourages the batterer. But this may be a separate question.

Well, the original question was about battered persons loving their partner, rather than battered persons inadvertently encouraging their partner's abusive behaviour, so that may be a separate question indeed.  On the other hand, the question of whether or not battered persons love their partner because of an (unconscious) affinity for abusive behaviour, is a very interesting one.  The literature certainly seems to focus on other factors, but that may be for political / ethical reasons.  A friend I discussed it with came up with a brilliant way to test this hypothesis: After ...

... successful anger management therapy or giving up alcohol for example, do persons with formerly abusive partners who have stopped being abusive tend to stop loving them or leave the relationship?  If they do, then I think that would support your hypothesis.  Even if only some do, and this can be correlated with a certain personality type, then I think the hypothesis would still hold water.  I believe however, that the general perception of successful anger management therapy is that it improves, rather than worsens relationships, so we are still left to speculate...

The word "love" in this sense represents an addiction to strong emotional stimulation. As the provider of that stimulation the abuser is "loved". Continued abuse brings with it familiarity with the feelings and intensity generated, which may be interpreted as love.
Love is not necessarily a healthy thing as evidenced by cases of abuse.

Are you claiming they love the familiarity of being abused?

I do not think they love the familiarity, but familiarity finds representation in the way love is constructed in this instance.

This makes sense, but do you have sources for this interpretation or is that your speculation?

There is a cycle to an abusive relationship. During this cycle, there are extremely happy moments (usually when the abuser is repentant and loving to the victim), fantasy segments (where the abuser fantasizes about abusing him/her again--s/he won't always admit to this section), the abuse (you know this part), and the apology and promise to never do it again. The last section is where the abuser promises all kinds of things to get the partner to stay--counseling, moving...whatever it is that the other wants.
In reality, abusive behaviors can be addictive. The abuser feels powerful when abusing the other person. Even before the cycle begins, the abuser is laying the ground work through manipulative arguments and psychological/emotional manipulations; then, when the abuse begins, the victim believes that it might actually be his/her fault. As odd as it sounds to those who have not been in this situation, the thought patterns have been slowly changed over time in order to achieve this.
It is a terrible cycle that takes a monumental amount of work to combat. For counseling to really work, both parties have to buy into it and really work at it. Even then, both parties may conclude that they bring out the worst in each other and dissolve the relationship.
Love does not mean abusing, nor allowing oneself to be abused. Sometimes, two people bring out the worst in each other. In these situations, it is better to part ways.

Do you have any references to back this up?


text:
Are good students truly good at all things?
Source: 'Putting a Bolder Face on Google' By LAURA M. HOLSON

At a recent personnel meeting, she homes in on grade-point averages and SAT scores to narrow a list of candidates, many having graduated from Ivy League schools, whom she wanted to meet as part of a program to foster in-house talent. In essence, math is used to solve a human problem: How do you predict whether an employee has the potential for success?
A scrum of executives sit around a table, laptops in front of them, as
  they sort through résumés, college transcripts and quarterly reviews.
  The conversation is unemotional, at times a little brutal.
One candidate got a C in macroeconomics. “That’s troubling to me,” Ms.
  [Marissa] Mayer says. “Good students are good at all things.”
Another candidate looked promising with a quarterly rating from a
  supervisor of 3.5, out of 4, which meant she had exceeded her
  manager’s expectations. Ms. Mayer is suspicious, however, because her
  rating hasn’t changed in several quarters.

What does research indicate about this claim? For example, can a preeminent literature or law student truly struggle in math, and vice versa, or is this just a common excuse/pretext? What branch of psychology does my question here concern?

This is pretty broad. Of course people can struggle with one subject while being good at something else. For example, I suck at basketball, but I managed to get through a MS in engineering (and working on PhD). Please narrow it down.

Fits Stack Exchange Academia

@rmayer06 Thanks, but I intended to refer to only academic subjects, and not sports. Does this tighten the context?

Not really. The academic world is just as broad, with some fields requiring different skills.  I also am lousy at drawing, but am a good musician (both artistic academic fields).

To me this question is concise and on topic. I vote to keep and not close.

@what: Thank you effusively for your support!

I would say that the reasoning behind a statement such as "good students are good in all things" is not one concerning the possibly wide variety of interests and abilities but one of emotional stability and general life competency.
No one in their right mind would doubt that different people are interested in different things and therefore not equally motivated to learn all skills and all knowledge. Most people would probably also agree that not everyone is equally talented at everything. Even the best students can be divided into those that excel at one topic and those that excel at another. There are rare individuals who excel in a lot of areas, but usually the best violinist is not also the best physicist, etc. So while "good" students are probably "good" in most areas, they are not the best everywhere. This makes the statement in question less severe, allowing us to rephrase it as:
"In most individuals, there appears to be a correlation between performance in different areas. Only very rarely is one person a top achiever in one field and a total looser in another."
The reason for this is that performance is, as we view "intelligence" today, not the result of an area-specific talent for, say, language versus maths, but that people differ in such characteristics as memory capaciy or processing speed, and that all skills depend on all of these physiological capacities. You need good memory for both language and math, you need processing speed for music as well as for physics. Therefore, someone who is good at maths is potentially also good at most everything else.
But more important than that all performance in all areas is based on the same physiological requirements is that the statement in question is, as I see it, not about ability at all, but about mental health.
What that woman is saying is that a person successful at life knows that good marks in school or college are important and has the will to get those good marks. Consistent good marks show not superior ability alone, but that a person has the emotional stability, familial support, and the physiological requirements to be successful in their lives in general.
If someone does not have straight As, with maybe a rare B, then you can almost always assume that they (a) are not good, or (b) have personal problems, or (c) are not interested. You want neither in an applicant. In that sense, a "good" (as in "good for our company") employee is (at least) "good" (that is, B) everywhere.

From my studies, I didn't come across any link between moral development and intelligence.
I saw some research that shows people with high IQ are 20% more prone to suicide.
A more rational society could have lower crime/offenses rates. But violence and wrong doing would still exist because more people would derive their morality from the evolutionary theory or some hedonist ethical philosophy (instead of utilitarian philosophy).

This is not an answer to the question (even in the overly broad terms that you seem to construe it in), and is also rude: "I know that you don't understand my answer"

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
The 'self' and partitioning of the brain
I would be very grateful if someone could direct me towards any literature on the following thoughts:
I have always wondered if my brain were split into 2 and separated while being kept alive and then rebuilt into 2 fully functioning brains, which one would I (my current self/consciousness) occupy.
Of course this is all debatable but I came to a fairly satisfactory answer (for myself) that there exists some sort of module within the brain that emulates my conscious self and whichever half of the brain got that module would be the one my current consciousness would inhabit.
But it then seems that consciousness is simply an illusion from the brain. That the question if (in the Ship of Theseus type of thinking) your whole body where to be decomposed and rebuilt would the new consciousness still be the same as the old is simply answered by the fact there was no real consciousness in the first place.
I however find this very hard to wrap my head around as it seems like a logical answer, yet every waking moment I feel as if I have a very real consciousness.
Could anyone direct me to a book that discusses this in more detail?

Not really a philosophy question. This is more neuro-science. There are people whose 2 hemispheres do not talk to each other. The part of the brain that connects the two halfs together and co-ordinates everything is the corpus callosum. Wikipedia here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_callosum

I don't think the two are mutually exclusive especially when discussing consciousness. Thanks for the link.

People that have damaged their callosum can have two different consciousnesses as they cannot talk to each other and arrive at a single awareness. It has been seen in these instances that sometimes the left side will want to do one thing and the right another. But then, each cell in your body as a separate existence, life, from your total body also. There was a yogi some years ago that had learned how to control his mind to such an extent that he could right two different letters on different subjects, one with each hand, at the same time.

Right, what I essentially want to find out about is, if your consciousness gets split in 2 which one would you then occupy.

Do you have to occupy either?  One valid viewpoint in that extreme surgical situation is that "you" cease to exist, and two new "entities" begin existence when the surgeon wield its knife. The actual answer to your question is dependent on the definition of the Self, which is not 100% agreed upon between schools of philosophy.  I believe you could pick the answer you want, and then go find a school of philosophy that agrees with you; there is simply that many differing opinions.

Uhhh this isn't really cogsci/neuroscience.  Hell, it's not even an empirical question.  Why on earth was this migrated here?

Anything capable of awareness has a point of view. If the awareness is great enough, we call it 'consciousness'. With enough capacity to be aware, it is inevitable that there will be multiple centers of awareness. If two or more of those are "big enough", there will be two or more consciousnesses. It does not matter if those happen in the same or different bodies. We have multiple awarenesses all the time, that is why we can do two or more things at once, also be alerted to rapidly changing conditions (danger or surprise) and have unconscious conclusions arise, all at once. This is normal.


text:
What is the simplest entity that would be considered "conscious"?
Generally, we think of humans as having a (relatively) advanced level of consciousness, but we don't think of simple molecules as having any sort of mental capacity at all. So where in between does the phenomenon of consciousness arise?
Update: I have chosen G.Tononi's definition: the quantity of consciousness corresponds to the amount of integrated information generated by a complex of elements

Define consciousness using testable terms.  (This is a bit hard.)

According to me, degree of consciousness == degree of understanding. I think consciousness is a subset of unsupervised learning where the goal is to find hidden structure in unlabeled data.
I think scientists should recognize that animals evolved higher level reasoning for a reason, that is to understand their environments. That's what we call 'consciousness'. And that's testable empirically.

Understanding what, exactly?  What subset of unsupervised learning from unlabeled data (which all life forms perform)?

Based on our current understanding of things, this is in principle impossible to answer. Consciousness cannot be inferred, only experienced. Other beings' consciousness or lack thereof is inaccessible to us. However... No never mind. Suffice it to say that it would take some tremendous leap in technology to even get close to answering this question.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's a philosophical question.

The limitations of today's scientific instruments do not negate the validity of this question unless you consider that it's impossible to create a falsifiable definition of consciousness.

@ChristianHummeluhr Can you explain to me why you consider this question to be outside the scope of Cognitive Science? If consciousness is an emergent property then there must be a measurable 'tipping point'. If it isn't an emergent property then everything is consciousness, including stones.

Because it's a question of philosophy, not a question of cognitive science. Or, if you prefer, the simplest entity that we have reached scientific consensus having consciousness on are humans. But again, that's basically just scientists going "well of course HUMANS have consciousness." It's not really science.

That's why I posted this question. Science doesn't progress due to consensus. It makes progress based on definitions that can be measured in a precise manner. Do you consider that consciousness is outside the scope of cognitive science? There's integrated information theory...which you may or may not subscribe to.

@ChristianHummeluhr There's no precise definition of consciousness yet it's meaning is assumed in several questions such as this one: http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/can-we-be-conscious-of-our-dreams?rq=1~
Double standards?

If you do possess a precise and measurable definition of consciousness, I would suggest editing the question, and then I or someone else may initiate a reopen vote. It would be quite an answer unto itself. As written, it seems distinctly philosophical.

@ChristianHummeluhr I'll have the question edited by the end of this week.

@ChristianHummeluhr I have edited my question and have chosen to use G. Tononi's definition. If you should insist on another definition I'd like to hear it.

@AidanRocke Thank you for the edit. However, the definition still does not allow a cognitive answer to your question. All organisms, even single celled ones, satisfy the given definition in some capacity or other. What you need is a measurable definition, which means you'd need to commit to a specific measure of complexity. I know it's not a good feeling to have a question closed, but you'd really have more luck on philosophy

You might want to read up on Integrated Information Theory (IIT).

As strange as it may seem the answer to the question is that when two braincells or neurons work together a small conciousness is created. We have billions of neurons so that conciousness would be rather small. Of course, this depends on the definition of counciousness and neurons.

This is just a quasi-philosophical argument with no basis in reality.

Then please provide your answer to the question, because it must have an answer. Do you think 100000 neurons are required or more? Of course I have chosen the most generous definition of counciousness possible.

Two neurons generally can't "work together" on their own. The smallest unit of complex processing is believed to be the cortical minicolumn, which consists of a few hundred neurons. Even then, I don't think you could say that a cortical minicolumn exhibits consciousness.


text:
How can you forgive (and not only forget) evildoers without any remorse?
Given the mental and physical health benefits of forgiveness, how is it usually approached in psychological treatment? Despite hours of reading, I still don't understand, and can't even pinpoint why not. Please remark the following assumptions which restrict my definition of 'malefactor' to forgive:

1. The malefactor fails to repent or rue in any way, such as Mutsuhiro Watanabe (who tortured Captain Louis Zamperini about whom I write below) or the Holocaust perpetrators.
2. I ask about genuine forgiveness of the malefactor, and not merely forgetfulness.
3. The malefactor recognised his/her actions' turpitude but still wilfully executed them.

This question was motivated by such virtuous paragons as  Ms Eva Kor and Capt Louis Zamperini, the latter of whom advised someone else by citing Mark Twain:

“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”

I recognise the futility in simply remaining enraged about past injustices, so I'd argue that one should act to resolve this resentment, such as by apprehending and punishing their captors. This is exactly the argument that has bewitched me but that I'd like to surmount; I want to appreciate: How and why could (even) tortured war veterans and concentration camp survivors decide against any revenge?

This seems a little broad as you seem to be asking about forgiveness in the general sense. Would you mind restricting it to clinical psychology or some specific treatment that you have questions about?

I suspect the answer to "why/how do some people forgive" (cultural/upbringing?) might be different from "how might one come to forgive" (treatment/techniques?), so I agree with @Seanny123 that the question could be narrowed down a bit, but still think it's manageable as-is, so voting to leave open.

@Seanny123 Thanks for your comment. Alas, I know little of clinical psychology so am unsure how to restrict my question, but would you please like to do so on my behalf? I (merrily) permit anyone to edit my question.

@ArnonWeinberg Thanks for your support. Please feel free to edit, as per my comment above.

@LawArea51Proposal-Commit I changed the scope to be more clinical psychology oriented. Feel free to open up another question about how forgiveness is approached in a cross-cultural manner.

@Seanny123 Thank you! Your edit's sterling. Since it was you who kindly recommended it in your comment, would you like to write the 'cross-cultural' question?

The prerequisite for forgiveness is actually completely straightforward and easy to comprehend:
Understand and accept the humanity of the perpetrator.
Most people are convinced that there is a fundamental difference between themselves and those that commit heineous crimes. Once you understand that the difference is at best gradual; once you face your own propensity for cruelty and violence; once you understand how an unfortunate combination of hereditary and environmental factors have lead to the deed -- you have laid the foundation upon which you may forgive the individual guilt.
This is really a broad topic, but think how the Milgram experiments showed how almost anyone could be talked into torturing another even without any valid reason. Now add to that everything that can go wrong in a person's life and it becomes quite understandable how someone can break and turn into a "monster". I am often surprised there is actually so little major crime!
For some victims it is helpful to learn what made the person that abused them who they are.
The second part is the wish to forgive. For that you need to understand the futility and destructiveness of revenge. Revenge does not bring back a killed loved one; it does not undo the experience of torture; all it does is turn you into the kind of person you despise: a person that tortures and kills. Successful revenge does not lead to happiness. Where forgiveness can cause a feeling of enlightenment and release, revenge fixes the state of loss and trauma and adds to it your own guilt.
Therapy will grant you a space and time for sorrow and rage and then attempt to help you let go and realize that a good and happy life are still possible if you turn towards it and allow it to happen.
This is usually not something that can be achieved by reading books. If you suffer from trauma you will profit from seeing a qualified therapist.

I think forgiving is a reasoned view. If we do not forgive people we lock ourselves into bigotry, viewing everyone's intentions reactively and with confirmation bias as to who we think they are. People who do evil by accepted definitions of same, might instead be viewed as representing one extreme of a spectrum. If overcoming confirmation bias is a learned skill, the ability to forgive might also be a learned skill and something we can choose to do better at.


text:
Are there any studies (fMRI scans, etc) showing why some people (supposedly) are more open to hypnotism?
In this article published in Harper's magazine back in 1996, journalist David Foster Wallace described his experience with hypnotist Nigel Ellery (see the last section of the article, titled "THE HEADLINE ENTERTAINMENT"). Mr Ellery was providing part of the entertainment on the cruise ship that David was on.
As to hypnotism, David writes that:

First off, we learn that not everyone is susceptible to serious hypnosis: Nigel Ellery puts the Celebrity Show Lounge's whole 300-plus crowd through some simple in-your-seat tests to determine who is suggestibly "gifted" enough to "participate" in the "fun" to come.

In the footnote to that paragraph just quoted, David writes that:

I, who know from hard experience that I am hypnotizable, think about sports statistics and deliberately flunk a couple of the tests to avoid getting up there.

The question I wanted to ask is, are there any studies looking into why some people would be more susceptible to hypnotism?
What I am particularly interested in is whether this has something to do with a habitual activation or inactivation of parts of the brain, or perhaps the levels of some neuromodulators?

I haven't looked, but it's very unlikely that such papers exist or are anything other than garbage.  Susceptibility to hypnotism is very high-level, abstract, and presumably non-specific (that is to say, not specific to hypnotism).

Overall, while there are developing cognitive neuroscience theories of how hypnotic states are produced, there does not appear to be any known cognitive neuroscience basis for individual differences in hypnotic susceptibility based on a reasonable Google Scholar, Web of Science and Scopus search on the topic.
There is at least some evidence to suggest that highly hypnotic participants exhibit different EEG activity patterns (Sabourin et al., 1990). A later review of the hypnosis literature proposed an attentional explanation for the difference in hypnotic behavior for highs and lows (Crawford, 1994). They specifically propose that:

highly hypnotizable persons (highs) possess stronger attentional filtering abilities than do low hypnotizable persons, and that these differences are reflected in underlying brain dynamics.

Finally, a still later study more specifically implicated the anterior cingulate cortex, the thalamus, and the ponto-mesencephalic brainstem in the production of hypnotic states (Rainville et al., 2002), but they make no mention of differences of highly and less hypnotically susceptible individuals. This seems to be a trend in the literature I reviewed, suggesting the concept may have been abandoned.
References

Crawford, H. J. (1994). Brain dynamics and hypnosis: Attentional and disattentional processes. International journal of clinical and experimental hypnosis, 42(3), 204-232.
Rainville, P., Hofbauer, R. K., Bushnell, M. C., Duncan, G. H., & Price, D. D. (2002). Hypnosis modulates activity in brain structures involved in the regulation of consciousness. Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 14(6), 887-901.
Sabourin, M. E., Cutcomb, S. D., Crawford, H. J., & Pribram, K. (1990). EEG correlates of hypnotic susceptibility and hypnotic trance: Spectral analysis and coherence. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 10(2), 125-142.


text:
How many hours of speech do kids hear before learning a language?
I'd like some estimates of how many hours of English speech kids typically are exposed to before reaching various levels of mastery.
I realize this is a very fuzzy question, but I'm sure ballpark numbers must exist. The motivation for this question is trying to get a lower bound for the required size of a training corpus for automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems.

Children, when they learn their first language, do not learn this language, rather they "learn the world". An adult spends some time of his day on learning a (second) language, and much time on other tasks. For an adult, the two (or more) activities are mostly separate. For a child learning a first language, learning this language is inseparably entwined with learning about what his perceptions mean and what his actions effect. It takes a normal child about 12 to 16 years to fully grasp the depths of his mother tongue, because a basic understanding of the world takes that long. And with "the depths" I do not mean all the words and perfect grammar, but a basic average ability to understand and express yourself in your mother tongue.
For a teenage or adult native English speaker learning a second language, an average of 575 (for "easy" languages) and 2200 class hours (for "difficult" languages) was estimated to reach a high level of proficiency (sources at Wikipedia). To this you have to add homework and self-directed learning for and after classes, so your overall learning hours will multiply. Numbers will differ for native speakers of other languages (because learning a language that is similar or even related to your own is easier).
(Do not forget that humans need time for knowledge to "settle". If you try to learn to much in too little time, the new knowledge pushes out what has not yet been "fixed" in your long term memory. So you need to spread these actual learning hours over several months or years, allowing for rest and active practise.)

Learning a language is a fuzzy concept and I am not sure how it relates to ASR. Individuals who are born deaf can often learn and master written and spoken language. To an extent many are exposed to hundreds (thousands) of hours of speech while observing mouth shapes and feeling the face and throat, but they have never heard the speech. I am not sure how this relates to ASR.
I think pre-lingually deaf individuals who receive a cochlear implant later in life are a good comparison for ASR. They have the advantage of having a fully developed brain and motor system and a grasp (possibly mastery) of the language prior to the implant unlike infants. They tend to reach asymptotic speech recognition performance within a few months.


text:
Do introverts engage in too much self-control or do they lack impulsivity?
Regardless of whether people are extraverts or introverts, if they are asked to act in an extraverted way, this improves their mood (for example Zelenski and others 2012). My question is concerns the reasons for why introverts don't engage in extraverted behavior. According to dual process models of behavior (for example Strack, Deutsch, 2014), human behavior is a combination of impulses and more reflective behavior (for example self-control). It strikes me that extraverted behavior is often quite impulsive (e.g. posting a funny picture of oneself on facebook). So, do introverts lack these impulses, or are they too inclined to keep them under control? Is there any research that has tried to disentangle the two processes?

Personal experience, speaking as an introvert: I have these impulses. Taking the example of posting a funny picture on Facebook, I do get the thought "this looks so funny, I should share this with people!". But then what you call "self-control" kicks in, and my mind asks: "Will people really care about this? What if someone misunderstands it? Should I write a clarifying comment beneath it? Is there anyone on my friendlist that I don't want to see this?" Result: I send the funny picture to my closest friend instead of sharing it with the world.

I would argue that your definition of extraverted behavior is off mark. Engaging in conversations with multiple people in real life or drifting from one circle to another at a party are examples of extraverted behavior. Posting a funny picture while being alone is not, and I doublt it would have the same mood lifting benefits (no mirror neuron activation, no emotional contagion)

This may not be a perfect answer to your question but it should be of help. Essentially, I think that research on personality suggests that self control (and thus a lack of impulsivity) may be part of the reason why introverts don't engage in extraverted behavior.
According to personality research on arousal [1], levels of extroversion and introversion are linked to peoples' arousal levels. Extroverts are argued to be under-aroused (in terms of brain arousal) therefore they seek out new stimuli, while the opposite is the case for introverts. Hence as introverts already over-aroused, they are more likely to avoid new stimuli.
While the research you have cited suggests that introverts would actually benefit from seeking more social interaction, the fact that they do not is not particularly surprising as humans frequently fail to act in ways that benefit themselves.
[1]https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Arousal


text:
What are the pros and cons of the hot sauce paradigm to measure aggression?
The hot sauce paradigm is a way to measure aggressive behavior in the lab. Participants are asked to give a portion of hot sauce to another person (who they know hates hot sauce) and who will have to eat it all, ostensibly as part of a taste test.
What are the pros and cons of the hot sauce paradigm?

The hot sauce paradigm was reviewed as part of a paper discussing laboratory measures of aggression. They argued that the hot sauce paradigm's main advantages are that it is very economical, easily quantifiable, less likely than other methods to be interpreted competitively, and that it has ecological validity (Ritter and Eslea, 2005).
Given the prevalence of its use, there appears to be a surprisingly limited amount of validation studies for the hot sauce paradigm. Adachi and Willoughby (2011) reported the following in a more tangential discussion of aggression measures.

Lieberman et al. [1999] found that scores on [the hot sauce] paradigm were positively related to both trait and physical aggression scores on the Buss and Perry (1992) Aggression Questionnaire, supporting the convergent validity of the Hot Sauce Paradigm, although to date no study has measured its association with aggressive behavior outside the lab.

Ayduk, Gyurak and Luerssen (2008) suggested that one threat to the hot sauce paradigm's validity comes from rejection sensitivity (RS): "a processing disposition to anxiously expect, readily perceive and overreact to rejection." They reported that failing to control for RS could influence the results in a hot-sauce paradigm, but that statistical control was sufficient to guard against it.
The Ritter and Eslea (2005) review also provides an extensive and general critique of the hot sauce paradigm and other classic aggression measures, but this is not readily summarized. The potential problems raised by the review relate to mediating variables, social cognition, affect, questions of overt/covert aggression, among others. Overall, the biggest weakness of the method appears to be the apparent inability to conclusively rule out the influence of mediators and moderators.
References

Adachi, P. J., & Willoughby, T. (2011). The effect of video game competition and violence on aggressive behavior: Which characteristic has the greatest influence?. Psychology of Violence, 1(4), 259.
Ayduk, Ö., Gyurak, A., & Luerssen, A. (2008). Individual differences in the rejection–aggression link in the hot sauce paradigm: The case of rejection sensitivity. Journal of experimental social psychology, 44(3), 775-782.
Buss, A. H., & Perry, M. (1992). The aggression questionnaire. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 452– 459.
Lieberman, J. D., Soloman, S., Greenberg, J., & McGregor, H. A. (1999). A hot new way to measure aggression: Hot sauce allocation. Aggressive Behavior, 25, 331–348.
Ritter, D., & Eslea, M. (2005). Hot sauce, toy guns, and graffiti: A critical account of current laboratory aggression paradigms. Aggressive Behavior, 31(5), 407-419.


text:
Do women talk more than men?
If you believe the stereotype, women are much more talkative then men. Is there a kernel of truth to this stereotype? I have seen media reports of studies trying to debunk this as a myth. However, some people seem to doubt whether these studies are based on representative samples. What is the current state of the science on this question?

Funnily enough, there was a Science article published on this (see here).
In their sample of university students, Mehl et al. had participants wear a specialized device that recorded audio samples from daily life (The EAR). They report that (emphasis mine):

The data suggest that women spoke on average 16,215 (SD = 7301) words and men 15,669 (SD = 8633) words over an assumed period of, on average, 17 waking hours. Expressed in a common effect-size metric (Cohen’s d = 0.07), this sex difference in daily word use (546 words) is equal to only 7% of the standardized variability among women and men. Further, the difference does not meet conventional thresholds for statistical significance (P = 0.248, one-sided test). Thus, the data fail to reveal a reliable sex difference in daily word use. Women and men both use on average about 16,000 words per day, with very large individual differences around this mean.

Although, it's possible that we might see systematic differences depending on factors other than sex (e.g., SES, age).
References

Mehl, M. R., Vazire, S., Ramírez-Esparza, N., Slatcher, R. B., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2007). Are women really more talkative than men?. Science, 317(5834), 82-82.

Based on the previous answer, I digged a little deeper myself and found some other interesting data. The Mehl et al. paper is indeed great because it sampled naturally occurring speech occurring over several days. Previous research seems to rely mainly on speech sampled in specific situations. Nevertheless, the evidence seems to converge. I found two meta-analyses. One looks at gender-differences in talkativeness in kids and the other is about adults.
The main results:

In adults (Leaper & Ayres, 2007), men were actually slightly more
talkative (d=-.14)
the talkativeness of men was higher in mixed-gender interactions (d=-.28) than in same-gender interactions (d=-.09), reflecting mens' attempts to dominate conversations with women?
men were more also more talkative when discussing impersonal topics (d=-.79), whereas women were more talkative involving self-disclosure (d=.39), in line with gender norms
In kids (Leaper & Smith, 2004) there was no overall difference in talkativeness (d=.07, n.s.)
for younger children (<3years), girls were more talkative (d=.32), while there was no difference for kids aged 3-16 (d=.08), likely reflecting different language development speeds for boys and girls

All in all, the idea that there is a kernel of truth to the stereotype of woman being more talkative than men seems to be refuted.
References
Leaper, C., & Ayres, M. M. (2007). A meta-analytic review of gender variations in adults’ language use: Talkativeness, affiliative speech, and assertive speech. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11, 328–363. doi:10.1177/1088868307302221
Leaper, C., & Smith, T. E. (2004). A Meta-Analytic Review of Gender Variations in Children’s Language Use: Talkativeness, Affiliative Speech, and Assertive Speech. Developmental Psychology, 40, 993–1027. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.40.6.993


text:
How else can we eliminate wrong underlying beliefs, when even science fails?
Source: Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?, 2015 March, by Joel Achenbach

[Andrew] Shtulman [of Occidental College] ’s research indicates that as we become scientifically literate, we repress our naive beliefs but never eliminate them entirely. They lurk in our brains, chirping at us as we try to make sense of the world.

This staggered and overwhelmed me: How else can we correct, improve, and refine our lurking, substratal intuitions or instincts that are wrong? I ask NOT about simply  accepting or tolerating facts or science superficially (as insinuated by this excerpt), and remain traumatised.
Footnote: The author has a BA in Politics, and not in science, if this implies anything?

The quote suggest that these beliefs are merely naive, not that they are wrong.  What axe are you trying to grind here?

This isn't directly relevant, but remember that science isn't observable fact. Science generally gives us theories that have not yet been disproven. Witnessing observable facts is different from accepting scientific theories.

Our memory act as a very powerful database, being able to store a huge load of data. Thing is, that "instinctive data" you learned someday is still there. It might get erased eventually, but as it is "fetched" and used, it gets stronger.
Memory retrieval act akin to a computational weighted-graph navigation, where once you need to remember something, you start navigating in your memories. Memories with greater "weight" or "importance" may be fetched earlier and given a stronger "stamp", i.e., they are more relevant in a given context.
CONSTANTINI, WIKIPEDIA *sigh*:

Learning and memory are direct consequences of attentional processing: the more attention is directed or devoted toward something, the more likely it is that it will be later learned and remembered.

SURESH, PAVAN KUMAR, AISHWARYA:

[page 2, §2] Another example which everyone can associate or relate to is remembering an almost forgotten event after a very long time. It so happens that, when we come across a bite of a cookie after decades or smell of a perfume after a long time, we take time to recall what it is about and our association with it.
...
[page 3, §3] [In a face querying context] In the Memory Repeat, the brain repeats the same querying activity until it deduces a relationship between the second image and the fifth image. Once a relationship is establishes, corresponding activities that are chained/outlined to form a bountiful array of events.
Based upon the data present at the back of the brain, relevant output can be expected. The output might be an association of that image with certain events. It can either be the first time they met or the assignment that any
  had done together or a project/ paper that they had worked upon or classes they had attended, etc.
  It should, however be noted that not all images can yield a positive result. Some associativity (read: data) may have gotten erased as the passage of time.
A positive result is named as Hit Rate and False Alarm Rate. Hit rate is the positive outcome of a query while False Alarm Rate is the irrelevant or negative outcome of the querying. False alarm rate is the output when an image (or a face) is identical to another image.

If the data is fetched, but never used, it will eventually wear off from the results, but it will only disappear from your brain upon physical memory removal, which takes time.

It is not very clear to be how this answers the question?

The Debunking Handbook provides an excellent guide to construct a myth-debunking article. The message that impacts me most is to focus on the fact, not the myth.

This is to increase the familiarity with the fact rather the myth, but for those who take the myth as their worldview, giving any counter-argument will only lead to by misunderstood or distorted, because it threatens their core beliefs and identity. They will cherrypick the information by selectively seek out which pieces that bolster their views (confirmation bias). In this case, it's best to focus the effort to the undecided majority, rather than the unswayable minority. However, if the message must be sent directly to them, it should couple with self-affirmation (make the person feel good), or be framed in a less threatening way.
My view
But I think sugarcoating is no difference than cherrypicking. Let's say that person A is actually more correct than person B, but just a single moment that A considers themself as knowing better, then they are also in the same position of B, and sooner or later it's their turn to cherrypick B's words, despite how hard A tries to keep an opened mind. As long as A still worry about elucidating B, then they cannot be mindful about what B says.
If we are locked in our own perspective, then we need to transform our perspective first. Putting ourselves into other's shoes is easier said than done, but when the perspective transformation can be visualized, then it will be fun. If both sides can see the fun from it, then each of them will be mindful in the topic, and the conversation will be joyful.
I have two articles that explains my ideas in details:

Making concrete analogies and big pictures.
Straightforwardness, Fearlessness and Improvisation: How to find the fresh perspective?

Thanks for your reading.


text:
Are you more successful if you publicly commit to pursuing a difficult goal?
If you have an ambitious goal, does it help to publicly commit to that goal? For example, if someone is training for a long distance triathlon but doesn't know whether he/she will be able to pull it off or not. This person could tell his/her friends about my goal or post it on Facebook. What consequences does it have for people, if they do that? On the one hand, it might push them more, because they don't want to be embarrassed in front of others if they fail. On the other hand, this is a pretty negative focus and might be distractive.

Ok, I found something. Gollwitzer and colleagues (2009) have published an interesting paper on this question.
First of all, they say that, yes, publically stated intentions should lead to commitment, because the person wants to act in way that is consistent with the communicated intentions (e.g., Cialdini, Wosinka, Barrett, Butner, & Gornik-Durose, 1999). Second, public intentions should increase accountability (Lerner & Tetlock, 1999), which should also lead to an commitment effect.
However, they show that sometimes this can go wrong. Such public commitments may often be made in domains that are highly identity relevant and may thus be a means to reach some overarching goal. For example, committing to a triathlon may serve the goal of being a successful athlete. Now, symbolically, publicly committing to triathlon training may already help reaching this identity goal (because other people take notice of this effort). And thus ironically, it may be less necessary to actually reach the goal and diminish goal striving.
In line with these ideas they found that

Identity-related behavioral intentions that had been noticed by other people were translated into action less intensively than those that
  had been ignored (Studies 1–3). This effect was evident in
  the field (persistent striving over 1 week’s time; Study 1)
  and in the laboratory (jumping on opportunities to act;
  Studies 2 and 3), and it held among participants with
  strong but not weak commitment to the identity goal (Study
  3). Study 4 showed, in addition, that when other people
  take notice of an individual’s identity-related behavioral
  intention, this gives the individual a premature sense of
  possessing the aspired-to identity

I should boast with the finished triathlon on Facebook only afterwards, I guess.
References
Cialdini, R.B., Wosinka, W., Barrett, D.W., Butner, J., & GornikDurose, M. (1999). Compliance with a request in two cultures:
The differential influence of social proof and commitment/consistency on collectivists and individualists. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 1242–1253.
Gollwitzer, P. M., Sheeran, P., Michalski, V., & Seifert, A. E. (2009). When intentions go public: Does social reality widen the intention-behavior gap? Psychological Science, 20, 612–618. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02336.x
Lerner, J.S., & Tetlock, P.E. (1999). Accounting for the effects of accountability. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 255–275.


text:
Is there a term for enjoying or liking the feeling of guilt
Obviously not sociopathy - or anything like that.
I just wondered if there was a term for enjoying the sensations of guilt  :)
EDIT can you go on - and say something about the differences between fear and guilt :) ?

I don't think there's a term specifically for pleasurable guilt.
However, depending on whom you ask, there's a couple ways we can talk about this feeling.

If we assume that guilt can only be experienced as negative, then we might describe pleasurable guilt as pleasure about guilt (i.e., a positive meta-emotional experience of guilt; for a review on meta-emotions, see Mendonca, 2013).  In other words, you experience a sense of pleasure in response to, and perhaps alongside, your emotion of negative guilt.
If we take a psychological constructivist view of emotions (Condon, Wilson-Mendenhall, & Barrett, 2014), then we can hypothesize that even prototypically negative emotions can be experienced as positive (e.g., positive fear, or conversely, negative happiness; see also Wilson-Mendenhall, Barrett, & Barsalou, 2014). So guilt isn't necessarily negative, even though our prototypical conceptualization of guilt is that it's negative.  That is to say that guilt is not made up of a specific and consistent set of experiences, behaviors, and cognitions. Instead, it's a heterogeneous category that can include negative or positive experiences--depending on how the individual constructs his or her affective experience.  The photo below (taken from Condon et al., 2014) shows how fear might be conceptualized as either negative or positive--and perhaps you can extrapolate from there how guilt might be similar.

By the way, the fruit category is meant to show a continuum of typical-atypical fruit examples (orange-olive), which perhaps helps to clarify the idea of typical-atypical fear (and guilt).
EDIT: To be clear, fear tends to be conceptualized as a negative emotion involving anticipation of a negative event in the future (e.g., a snake will bite me).  Guilt tends to be conceptualized as a negative emotion about a negative past event for which you feel personally responsible.  In this case, I'm using fear to describe the continuum of typical vs. atypical emotions, but note that guilt will have a different continuum.

yeah i get it, like sensation seeking about guilt rather than fear ??

oh BTW i pretty much HATE (all) sensations of fear

@user3293056 Perhaps, e.g., feeling positive guilt about spending more money than you should have on something you've wanted since you were a child. In general, it's more difficult to come up with instances of positive guilt (vs. negative) because we don't typically think about guilt as positive.

the chance to change, the ability to take on new responsibility ? i dunno, i ...

"guilty pleasures" ?? maybe i'm mis labelling the emotion ? shame is a horrid little emotion, guilt seems to open up new possibilities, both intellectual and actional ...?

pretty much did answer my question, i think! would be interested in anything more i.e. the interface between 1 and 2, but it's not so important :)

@user3293056 It's possible that you could be "mislabeling" the emotion, but language in general tends to be imprecise for abstract concepts like emotions.  In general, though, there's still a lot more research to be done on emotion concepts and labels, so for now, a lot of your questions may not be easily answerable.

The term "Guilty pleasures" is interesting because it points to the fact that we often feel guilty because we do something that that is pleasurable: We eat the cake even though we know that it is wrong because it conflicts with our dietary goals. This is a classic self-regulatory conflict. However in some situations, pleasure may even be tied to breaking rules and a behavior might be all the more desirable exactly because it is a taboo (think of the "allure of the forbidden"). Maybe this is the kind of situation that you were thinking of.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia


text:
Why do those with viral infections feel better after wrongly taking antibiotics?
Though I'm unversed in science, I accept and understand that bacteria differ from viruses; so antibiotics don't help in viral infections. Regardless, because older family members still allege that antibiotics have mitigated their colds, can psychology explain their misbelief?
They claim that within a day of taking antibiotics, their ability to speak returns and  their sore throats are soothed. I can attest to this improvement; they do feel better. I'm also unversed in psychology, but can some placebo effect (again, NOT the antibiotics themselves) truly contrive such genuine relief?

Short answer:  yes, placebo effects even known to manifest themselves physiologically.  For instance, you could potentially observe a decrease in fever as a result of a placebo.

@blz I never knew about such strength of the placebo effect! Glad I posed this question.

The placebo effect accounts for 60% of the efficacy of medications (and other interventions) generally. This is for all situations, both where a "real" medicine (with known benefits) is used and when an inert substance is used (or even a harmful substance). You have to factor in the 60% likelihood of someone having an improvement "no matter what" and then calculate whether the intervention added to that, did nothing, or made things worse. So it is a biased playing field: people naturally just get better, and there is nothing you can do about that! You can, however, sell it. Pet rock, anyone?

Placebo effect is not the only explanation, although it can be a large component.
To be clear: Neither of the explanations below are reasons to use antibiotics for infections not due to bacteria. They do illustrate anchoring. Just because we call a drug an antibiotic and first note its effects to be killing bacteria does not forbid that drug from having other effects.
Antibiotics are anti-inflammatory
Bacterial and viral infections both induce an innate immune response, which includes the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Antibiotics can provide symptomatic relief by inhibiting the release of those cytokines, decreasing inflammation.
Bacterial super infections
The risk of a bacterial infection jumps during and shorty after a viral infection. Children, for example, are more likely to get strep throat after the flu. If the patient is unaware of two infections, taking an antibiotic will appear to treat the viral infection. It is, in reality, treating the bacterial rider.

+1. Thanks. I never knew about these positive benefits until now; so I pose my original question but with a biological focus here if you're interested: http://biology.stackexchange.com/q/30541/4466

There is a psychological component. Not all patients know the biology.

@mc389 Thank you. Yes, I agree. I meant that I wish to know both the psychology and biology behind this phenomenon, and so question this on both sites. Does this help? Or did you mean something else?

Can you simultaneously post? Cross-post?

No, I don't think so; but my question on Bio differs because there I ask about concrete biological effects. My question doesn't necessarily involve biological changes.

They might also just be getting better. The immune system could fight off the cold shortly after the antibiotics are taken, and they are misattributing the causality of getting better to the drugs instead of the immune system. People are prone to make errors in causal judgment of this kind.

Pretty much, for the same reason you're told to use rubbing alcohol to clean open cuts/sores. When you have a quite exposed inflamed area (e.g., lesions in sore throat), viruses are not the only things that can attack or lead to more inflammation. Antibiotics may not solve the "virus" problem, but they lighten the load as far as handling all of the innumerable other things that will gladly (opportunistically) attack the weakened tissue. It's not uncommon for people to get "secondary infections" after fighting off the primary or first one(s).
However, due to fears of evolving resistant strains of bacteria from antibiotic use, antibiotics are generally restricted to prescription-only in the united states. It's sort of a, "You'll suffer more, but for the greater good" philosophy.


text:
Do 10.000 hours of practice make you an expert?
With his book "Outliers" Malcolm Gladwell has widely popularized the idea that the requirement to become an expert in any field is largely to invest at least 10.000 hours of deliberate practice.

What is the scientific basis of this conclusion?
It seems to have originated from this research by Ericsson et al. (1993). In what way does this paper support the conclusion of a 10.000 hour rule?
What is the current state of the research on this question?

Reference
Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100, 363–406. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.100.3.363

This isn't a peer-reviewed source, but it gives a digestible overview of the limits to the "10,000 hour rule":  http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/09/malcolm_gladwell_s_10_000_hour_rule_for_deliberate_practice_is_wrong_genes.html

Haha, I didn't see this was written by Hambrick. He makes very good points, but he really has a bone to pick with deliberate practice for some reason.

The answer is more involved than it seems. Expertise research programmes, including Ericsson's line, has tended to blend quantitative and qualitative research methods (e.g., case studies, talk-aloud protocol, etc.), and there is a veritable host of critiques and qualifications that apply. For the scope of this answer, I will therefore try to err on the side of too restrictive than too broad.
10,000 hours?
The 10,000 hours figure, supposing that you are right to pin Malcolm's work on this article, appears to derive from an analysis of retrospective practice accounts of violinists. In any case, from the article, page 379.

"The number of hours of practice accumulated by a violinist at a given age can be easily calculated by adding the yearly estimates at and below that age. The average number of hours of accumulated practice for each of the four groups is shown in Figure 9 as a function of age."

In my experience, rather than giving the 10,000 hours figure, Ericsson himself instead often proffers 10 years, as he does in the abstract of this article. This is more consistent with recent research on effects like spaced repetition and the generation effect, since using hours seems to imply that hours of deliberate practice are interchangeable and independent, which they are evidently not. I don't know if it's meaningful to give a year value, but I subjectively doubt it.
Is deliberate practice effective?
I will interpret the second question as, "What is the state of research on the training efficacy of deliberate practice?" instead of the alternative meaning about 10,000 hours, which I have argued is flashy, but not meaningful or central to expertise acquisition.
Deliberate practice has been studied and compared with traditional training and educational methods fairly extensively across a number of domains. Here, I will restrict myself to studies dated 2011-2015 which were not published by K. A. Ericsson himself. I found a convenient meta-review of 14 studies, which found deliberate practice combined with simulations to be effective for clinical training (McGaghie et al., 2011), the area in which deliberate practice sees the most use by far.
Multiple recent studies have taken a critical view of Ericsson's strong theory of deliberate practice (i.e., performance is a monotonic function of deliberate practice), but no one appears to seriously dispute that it is a substantial factor in expertise acquisition for some domains. A critical meta-analysis of deliberate practice by Macnamara, Hambrick and Oswald (2014) reported:

"We found that deliberate practice explained 26% of the variance in performance for games, 21% for music, 18% for sports, 4% for education, and less than 1% for professions."

Concluding remarks
For the purpose of this question, I would say this: on the one hand, the number of hours is meaningless and more likely than not to vary substantially between domains, persons and situations. The 10,000 hours figure is therefore only illustrative, not practically meaningful.
On the other hand, there is evidence to support the efficacy of deliberate practice as a learning strategy. Finally, though it remains influential, recent research suggests that deliberate practice alone is not sufficient to explain expertise acquisition, and that interacting factors need to be considered.
Despite the waning star of strong-form deliberate practice theory, I thoroughly recommend Ericsson et al.'s Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (2006) for an introduction to this increasingly relevant area of psychology. Personally, I think the recent studies finding that deliberate practice doesn't seem to predict anything in some domains are absolutely fascinating, but I can only speculate as to why.
References

Ericsson, K. A., Charness, N., Feltovich, P. J., & Hoffman, R. R. (Eds.). (2006). The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance. Cambridge University Press.
Macnamara, B. N., Hambrick, D. Z., & Oswald, F. L. (2014). Deliberate Practice and Performance in Music, Games, Sports, Education, and Professions A Meta-Analysis. Psychological science, 25(8), 1608-1618.
McGaghie, W. C., Issenberg, S. B., Cohen, M. E. R., Barsuk, J. H., & Wayne, D. B. (2011). Does simulation-based medical education with deliberate practice yield better results than traditional clinical education? A meta-analytic comparative review of the evidence. Academic medicine: journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges, 86(6), 706.

Ericsson doesn't emphasize on the precise number of hours needed to be a world-level expert. What he emphasizes is the importance of deliberate practice in gaining expertise.
BTW, Macnamara et al.'s meta-analytic research has some severe weaknesses. For example,

Not representative : They categorized the previous researches into 5 domains -- sports, games, education, professions, and music. For instance, in the professions domain, they concluded that DP explains 1% of variance in performance. However, the more carefully you look into their research, the more you will be surprised. The professions domain includes only 4 researches. Researches about soccer referees, pilots, insurance sales agents, and computer programmers. Even more the sample size for each effect size in that domain doesn't go over 100. For games domain, there are 8 researches and the six are about chess and the rest two are about scramble. I don't think it can represent something like "professions" or "games".
Not balanced : If a paper included multiple effect sizes for different samples (for example, the study divided the sample group into ages), their research treated each one as significant as any other effect sizes from different papers. The problem with this is it could be biased by that particular research setting and method. For example, in the education domain, the total number of effect size analyzed here is 51, and almost half of them came from just two papers. How they defined and measured the deliberate practice and performance in those studies might have had a bigger influence to the result of the meta-analysis.
Loose definition of performance and deliberate practice : The definitions of those two were not strictly following what Ericsson has emphasized. For example, in the study of pilots, they considered flying hours as deliberate practice hours. And in the study of computer programmers, they considered job level as performance -- it has been already shown job level is not a good predictor for performance. Also, in the study of soccer referees, they asked the referees to recall the accumulated hours of deliberate practices, and moreover, their definition of deliberate practice included running and flexibility trainings, and even sauna times, whereas the performance was perception and judgment test like foul and offside assessments. You see they measured and compared so remotely related things.

There are more to point out, but I will stop here and let you read it and think yourself. Their research data is open at https://osf.io/rhfsk/ and their methodological details are at http://pss.sagepub.com/content/suppl/2014/07/01/0956797614535810.DC1/DS_10.11770956797614535810_SupplementalMethodsandResults.pdf
Recent researches in deliberate practices has been focusing on the quality of deliberate practices and I am more interested in this area.


text:
Why does anger "cloud the mind"?
There are a lot of anecdotes on frustration and anger inhibiting judgement and problem solving. Examples include "anger clouding the mind" in pop culture, or in programming, where a rule of thumb is to walk away from your computer when you're stuck on a problem for more than 20 minutes.
I'd like to know the physiological reason why the more frustrated or angry a person gets while trying to solve a problem, the less likely the problem gets solved?

Since this question has reemerged, I'll point out that I don't think it's actually true (at least not in all--or even most--contexts)... and the answer below isn't quite coherent.

@mrt what would you say that is missing in the answer? I am very curious what your thoughts are about the matter.

@RobinKramer see the comment he made in the answer below. There should be primary sources in the answer.

It is a biological/chemical response. Once in a stressful situation, you're not supposed to act smart or able to solve a rubik cube, but punch whatever is getting you angry and/or getting the hell out of the place.
The adrenaline, and other stuff, discharge are responsible for
increased blood pressure, heart rate and what-not (Nordqvist, 2013):

Anger is not just a mental state of mind. It triggers an increase in heart rate, blood pressure and levels of adrenaline and noradrenaline. Anger has survival benefits, and forms part of our fight or flight brain response to a perceived threat or harm.
When a human or animal decides to take action to stop or confront a threat, anger usually becomes the predominant feeling and takes over our behavior, cognition and physiology.

Actually, we do get more acute cognitive abilities... though at the expense of others :

The brain shunts blood away from the gut and towards the muscles, in preparation for physical exertion. Heart rate, blood pressure and respiration increase, the body temperature rises and the skin perspires. The mind is sharpened and focused.

Blood is shifted AWAY from the frontal cortex, responsible for nice thoughts (Hanscom, 2014):

When the real or perceived threat persists we feel or are trapped. This, of course, leads to frustration and anger, which causes adrenaline levels to really skyrocket. The result is that your blood supply is shifted largely to the skeletal muscles, which enables you to flee danger. Other effects include:
Decreased blood flow to your brain – especially to the frontal cortex where most thinking occurs.

Spektor, Treister, et al (2011) states in their study that observing anger in others increases analytical problem solving whilst hindering creative problem solving (not really related):

Studies 1 and 2 supported two of our predictions: Observing
another person’s anger influenced observers’ thinking processes,
and the way anger is expressed shaped this effect. Observing anger
hindered the solving of creative problems and enhanced the solv-
ing of analytic problems.

Are you saying the primary reason is because blood is redirected from the "how do I fix this problem" and over to "how do i kill this thing/run away from it" and the supporting muscular skeletal tissues?

I'm not sure how reliable the Hanscom link is.  There are some things on there that aren't really true (or sound like lay theory).  I think primary sources are generally preferred here on cogsci.SE.

@mrt agree. I'll search for better sources.