# Question
Title: Would an electroencephalogram detect a chip in you brain that is sending signals?
To clarify the question, if you had a chip inside your brain that is sending bytes via wi-fii, bluethoot or other kind of waves, would the encephalogram detect anomalous activity?

Are the waves amplitude of normal brain electromagnetic activity very different from what a chip sends?

# Answer
EEG is commonly band pass filtered in the range of 0.1-1000 Hz at the absolute widest; more often closer to 0.1-200 Hz, or even less. Hence, there is no need to sample at higher frequencies, which would make it harder to store and process the data, given this is the normal range of biological signals.

Bluetooth and wifi are in the high 100s MHz to GHz range, *i.e.*, nowhere near the EEG wavelengths. In effect, these signals from cellphones, wireless routers, microwaves, *etc*., do not interfere with the EEG.

You might pick up lower frequency carrier artifacts, however, depending on the manner of transmission.
> 0 votes

# Answer
EEG electrodes are designed to record the electrical activity of the brain over the scalp. As @Bryan said the frequency of interest is usually less than 200 Hz, although it is possible to record up to 5KHz(e.g. BrainAmp). But we should keep in mind that even in the higher sampling frequencies, it is only recording the electrical potential over the scalp, while the communication devices you mentioned are using electromagnetic fields (Bluetooth and wifi) or radio frequencies (e.g RF modules) for communication, and seems irrelevant to compare these frequency ranges to the sampling rate of the recording device (apples and oranges).

However, any electronic device needs the power to run, and your device needs to be supplied with electrical source (i.e. batteries), and depending on how it is powered I think it would be possible to detected it with altered EEG on the electrodes above it. There exist passive implants that do not need external sources of energy to function, but they are not good enough to transfer data at the bitrates you mentioned. Bluetooth and wifi have a lot of power consumption and need batteries to function.

To sum up, it depends on how your device is powered, and if there is a source of electrical activity, it will alter the EEG and you can detect it, although, you might not be able to say on which frequency exactly is working on (is it Bluetooth, wifi, RF, etc. ?).
> 1 votes

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Tags: brain, software, brain-waves
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# Question
Title: Source for turning cone cell opponent process diagram into equations
There is a diagram on wikipedia that is part of the article on the opponent process. I assume practical equations have been developed, at least reasonable approximations, but they appear to be missing from the diagram.

There is a quanitity C1 that comes from the L and M cones, and is supposed to represent red minus green. There is a quantity C2 - C3 that comes from all three cone types. If C1 is positive it is a red hue, otherwise green. If C2-C3 is positive it is a yellow hue, otherwise blue.

However actual equations for C1 in terms of cone responses, or for C2-C3 in terms of cone responses, or for A (Brightness) in terms of all three cones *and* the rod responses are completely missing.

As a related question, that should possibly be separated (let me know if it needs to be a new question):

While RGB defined color can vary with the display device, it would be very useful to have a rough approximation that turns an typical 3 byte RGB triple into a triple of approximate cone and rod responses along with a model of cone and rod saturation (i.e. as you stare at a point how does the cone response change over time). I am sure this has been done and is well known in the right places. Could you point me to it?

# Answer
I think there are 3 questions here:

(1) What are the equations of the the cone opponent colorspace? You answered the question yourself, it is literally additions and subtractions of the response of the 3 types of cones. Note that this is an approximation, more than 10 pathways composed of over 80 cell types have been identified. There are also some small controversies, like that it is unclear whether the S cone contributes to the luminance axis or not. This specific colorspace is called the DKL colorspace. It has been shown by Derrington, Krauskopf & Lennie (hence the name) to account extremely well for the activity of cells in the lateral geniculate nucleus (a relay between the retina and the primary visual cortex). However it is not a very meaningful colorspace perceptually speaking. It is a linear transformation of the LMS cones colorspace, thus as shown by Erwin Schrodinger they are indistinguishable.

A depiction of the DKL colorspace from the psychopy documentation.

(2) Where are the rods? Well rods are not thought to contribute to color perception. A simple demonstration of that is that at low-lights levels (called scotopic vision) you lose the ability to discriminate colors. The reason is that rods are more sensitive than cones.

(3) How to relate a monitor RGB colorspace to the DKL colorspace? As I said the LMS colorspace and the DKL colorspace are linear transformations of each other. This is also true for the CIEXYZ colorspace, and any RGB colorspace. The LMS and DKL colorspaces are based on a standard observer from the CIE (Commission Internationale de l'Eclairage, a committee that fixes standards for anything related to visual displays): 2 sets of measurements of the cones sensitivity functions agreed so well that they were averaged and the result was decided to be a "standard observer". The XYZ colorspace is based on a somewhat arbitrary transformation of these spaces. In any case any of these spaces can be recovered from any of the others using a simple matrix multiplication. transformation matrices for standard colorspace (LMS, DKL and XYZ) are known and can be found on the internet. For a specific monitor you would need to measure its properties and compute it yourself.

Derrington, A. M., Krauskopf, J., & Lennie, P. (1984). Chromatic mechanisms in lateral geniculate nucleus of macaque. The Journal of physiology, 357(1), 241-265.

Schrödinger, E. (1994). On the relationship of four-color theory to three-color theory. Color Research and Application.
> 1 votes

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Tags: vision, color
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# Question
Title: Is exercise considered a 'fight-flight' situation by our brain?
When you do heavy exercise like running, your heart rate, and breathing increases, is it because of the sympathetic nervous system controls it? Or the Sympathetic nervous system only activates on the fight-flight situation? Or is the exercise considered a fight-flight situation by our brain?

# Answer
Interestingly, intense exercise elevates levels of cortisol, which is the primary stress hormone. However, since this intense exercise usually only lasts for a short time (except maybe for ultra-marathon runners), it is considered acute rather than chronic stress. Other "intense" activities, like sex, also elevate levels of stress hormones. This just goes to show you that some stress is good. Generally, only chronic stress is bad (or brief very intense stress from trauma).
> 2 votes

# Answer
The sympathetic nervous system's primary process is to stimulate the body's fight-flight-or-freeze response. It is, however, constantly active at a basic level to maintain homeostasis (Brodal, 2004).

The heart rate and breathing increase is needed for homeostasis due to the need for more blood oxygen and fuel by the muscles.

## References

Brodal, P. (2004). *The Central Nervous System: Structure and Function* (3 ed.). US: Oxford University Press. pp. 369–396. ISBN 0-19-516560-8.
> 0 votes

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Tags: behavior, brain, stress
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# Question
Title: Source of data for US suicides (by month or quarter) 2019 vs. 2020
In attempt to answer the question: " Have US suicides increased in March/April 2020 compared to 2019 ?". I've been unable to find any published US data for **either** 2019 or 2020.

Does anyone know of any published data?

Update: Resources already checked: United Health Foundation CDC Suicide Facts & Figures American Soc for Suicide Prevention World Population Review-US NVDRS (cdc) and of course, Wikipedia Common to all of these is that the most recent data is 2018

# Answer
**At the time of writing this answer, suicide data is not publically available post 2018**.

CDC’s WISQARS™ (Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System) is an interactive, publically accessible, online database that provides fatal and nonfatal injury, violent death, and cost of injury data from a variety of trusted sources.

The CDC states:

> Mortality data come from the National Center for Heath Statistics (NCHS), CDC annual mortality data files. NCHS mortality data are derived from the Multiple Cause of Death data. For more information, contact NCHS at (301)436-8500 or nchsquery@cdc.gov — or visit the NCHS website.

The National Death Index (NDI) service has death records added annually, approximately 10-12 months after the end of a particular calendar year. This information is *available to investigators solely for statistical purposes in medical and health research*. The service is **not accessible** to organizations or the general public for legal, administrative, or genealogy purposes. To access the NDI service, you need to complete an NCHS application form.

The final 2018 NDI file is available for both NDI Routine searches and NDI Plus searches.

The *Early Release File* for 2019 is now available for searching. See completion percentages by state

The *Early Release File* is now updated quarterly. The current searchable version will always be the most recent version.

The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) in an agreement with the National Association of Public Health Statistics and Information Systems (NAPHSIS) implemented a restrictive rule for publically reporting National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) state- and county-level death data for years 2008 and later, in order to avoid inadvertent disclosure of cases.
> 1 votes

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title: Nocebo Viral Epidemic

text:
# Question
Title: Nocebo Viral Epidemic
If one had sufficient control of the correct institutions, how difficult would it be to create a "pandemic" that is simply a result of the nocebo effect? In other words, can the nocebo effect have such far-flung consequences as described below?

For example (this may not be completely accurate, just something from a biology noob), let's assume that one entity controlled all sample testing locations and decided to return a result for 90% of people with the flu or some common disease saying that have Virus. Let us also assume that there is a paper published about VirusX saying that it has CommonDisease-esque symptoms but more serious and deadlier. Would it be possible to enough people display the nocebo symptoms that it becomes newsworthy, causing people to unexpectedly come down with "VirusX" even though this is just the nocebo effect?

Just to clarify, I do not think Covid-19 is fake. For anyone who does, I would highly recommend a visit to the CDC's or the WHO's website to convince yourself otherwise. This is simply a thought experiment to help better understand the implications of the nocebo effect.

# Answer
> 4 votes
A historical example of what you describe is the 14-17th centuries "dancing manias" where hundred of people would start dancing to exhaustion for no apparent reasons. Sometimes causing death. There are many case studies of mass psychogenic illness, you'll find examples in the wikipedia page of this topic. Note that this is typically the default diagnostic: because there seem to be no biological cause for the mass illness, it is assumed to be of psychogenic cause.

I've also found 1 paper testing this question explicitly (ref below). They brought groups of participants to a research center supposedly "to test the side effects of a new carrier compound for an antiviral medication", a placebo participants had to ingest. In a "Pill" group actors feigned to feel suddenly sick with flu-like symptoms. In a "Pill+Media" group participants also then viewed a 1h long documentary on the 1918 flu epidemics. Both groups were compared to "control" group without pills, without actors, without the documentary. Experimenters assessed the participants well-being in different ways, both physiological and psychological. They found far more reported symptoms (by a factor of 11) in the 2 experimental groups than the control group, but not more in the Pill+Media than the Pill alone group. They also found no difference in the physiological variables between groups (heart rate and blood pressure). It's a hard experiment to conduct and it seems reasonably well done (although I'm admittedly not very knowledgeable in social psychology). It suggests that it is quite easy to induce psychogenic symptoms in an otherwise healthy population. However medias didn't seem to increase the effect (at least a documentary about a 100 years old epidemics, and at such a short term) and there seem to be no physiological effects of the nocebo stimulus (again, at least at such a short term).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing\_mania

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass\_psychogenic\_illness

Broderick, J. E., Kaplan-Liss, E., & Bass, E. (2011). Experimental induction of psychogenic illness in the context of a medical event and media exposure. American journal of disaster medicine, 6(3), 163.

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Tags: social-psychology, placebo
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# Question
Title: What is the state of the art research of the consciousness level for high-level cognitive activity?
Everybody knows situations where activities requiring concentration and high level consciousness can over time become a "background" task.

For example:

* you read a text aloud but think about other things
* you drive a car but it just "happens" and you can listen to the news

**Question:** is it measurable to demonstrate how an activity "goes background" in the brain? What is the current state of research, or at least what are proper neuroscience terms to look for in this context?

# Answer
One approach to this is to search for "habituation", "learned task", "concomitant task", "dual task" and "multiple task" studies, which may include cognitive and physical aspects (memory, reaction time and such). "Background tasks" are usually related to computers.
> 3 votes

# Answer
This would be a combination of couple of things, dependant upon what type of "activity" you are referring to. It can be broken up into two aspects, the physical and the cognitive aspect.

The cognitive aspect is your mind becoming **"unconsciously competent"** of completion of the activity. There are **4 measureable stages of competence** involved in the process of progressing from incompetence to competence in a skill. When your activity becomes a "background" task, you have reached unconscious competence in the task in reference.

The physical aspect has to do with **procedural memory**, which is a type of **implicit memory**. Procedural memory is created through procedural learning, or repeating a complex activity over and over again until all of the relevant neural systems work together to unconsciously produce the activity.
> 3 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, cognitive-neuroscience, reference-request, consciousness, brain
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title: Power issues with mixed models

text:
# Question
Title: Power issues with mixed models
I'm designing a psychology experiment in which we're interested in how working memory load affects performance in a theory-of-mind task. Independent variable is working memory load, dependent variable is theory-of-mind task performance.

In our within-subjects design, we have 2 working memory conditions (high load and low load). We have 2 stimulus sets (one for each working memory condition, counterbalanced across participants) to prevent carry-over effects between working memory conditions.

The problem is that performance in our task is driven not only by working memory condition, but also by stimulus set to a large extent. My colleague believes this can be dealt with using mixed models. However, I have some doubts about taking this approach, and would rather take the time to adjust the stimulus sets so that performance within each subject is as comparable as possible between both stimulus sets (under the same working memory condition).

If I were to take my colleague's advice, would there be any issues for example with power? And are there resources that you could point me to so that I can understand this issue better?

Edit: There were some questions about sample size and analysis setup. I'm aiming for around 40 participants, but have only just started collecting data.

To clarify, I'm not against using mixed models per se, but I'm wondering: 1) whether there might be a loss in power which is proportionate to the imbalance in effects between the two stimulus types, 2) whether I may need to take steps to compensate for this loss in power, and 3) if so, what steps to take (e.g., is there a way to calculate, roughly, how many more participants I would need given a certain effect size for stimulus type? Or is there perhaps a smarter way to set up the analyses?).

The analysis setup is to perform a linear mixed model, with dependent variable as proportion of correct responses, with fixed effects as working memory load (high vs. low), stimulus type (set 1 or 2), and their interaction, and with mixed effects as intercepts for subjects and items. Then we'd compare this fit with fit of a reduced model without these fixed effects.

I hope this clarifies my question, and appreciate help answering the 3 questions stated in my edit.

# Answer
> 2 votes
Could you maybe check in simulation? I'm a huge fan of the workflow described here: https://betanalpha.github.io/assets/case\_studies/principled\_bayesian\_workflow.html

You are asking question #3 of 4, the "inferential adequacy" one, right? Can you run some simulations with varying 'true stimulus-set gap' and just see how big a gap you can tolerate with your design?

You don't need to know the true data generating process to do this, generating responses from the model tells you something useful about the model+design setup, in this workflow reality has to wait until question #4. Also an important question, but checking against reality comes *after* passing the tests you're talking about.

Although you don't need to know how people actually come up with their responses, you *do* need to be Bayesian enough to be comfortable putting priors on all the parameters. If it's important to convince a colleague with the results, might be worth checking that's not a dealbreaker for them!

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Tags: statistics, experiment-design
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# Question
Title: Any other studied psychological phenomena like reactance?
Consider the following situations

* You are walking along a narrow ledge overlooking a void. You know you should not look down but .. you do
* You have an annoying little morsel of food stuck between your teeth. You know very well that trying to prise it loose with your tongue is a futile effort. But you still do it...

I am in the process of putting the finishing touches to a game where the natural tendency of the player to perform actions that will result in scoring points will in fact result in a smaller win. Everything in the game play push the player to force an early win with a low score.

I would like to review any studies of such phenomena in psychology so I can leverage a more value into the overall player experience. Reactance comes close to describing what the player is naturally pushed to do but not quite... . Are there any other effects of the same ilk that might come closer? If so, are there any good studies of what drives/amplifies these effects?

# Answer
> 2 votes
You may wish to look at Steindl, et al. (2015).

This paper presents an overview of research into Reactance that has been done since Miron and Brehm's 40 years review (2006) of all research since Brehm first proposed reactance theory (1966).

## References

Brehm J. W. (1966). *A theory of psychological reactance*. New York, NY: Academic Press.

Miron A. M. & Brehm J. W. (2006). Reactance theory – 40 years later. *Zeitschrift Für Sozialpsychologie/Journal of Social Psychology, 37*(1), 9-18. https://doi.org/10.1024/0044-3514.37.1.9

Steindl, C., Jonas, E., Sittenthaler, S., Traut-Mattausch, E., & Greenberg, J. L. (2015). Understanding psychological reactance: New developments and findings. *Zeitschrift fur Psychologie/Journal of Psychology, 223*(4), 205-214. https://doi.org/10.1027/2151-2604/a000222

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Tags: video-games
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title: Sublimation & Cathexis

text:
# Question
Title: Sublimation & Cathexis
I was aware about a term called Sublimation. Recently, I came along a word called Cathexis. After looking for its meaning in the dictionary, I realised, that it is not the synonym of Sublimation despite the meaning being quite similar. How do I differentiate between Sublimation and Cathexis? Are there any similarities as well?

# Answer
I would say subliminal is more cognitive, while cathexis is more emotional, though can be triggered/catalysed cognitive or subliminal.

Subliminal is hard to define though, and cathexis from the field of psychoanalysis is kind of speculative. However there is obviously some kind of mechanism occuring, and having good words for the phenomenas occuring in the brain is useful, but prone to misunderstandings.

The wikipedia article is useful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathexis
> 1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, social-psychology, psychology, cross-cultural-psychology
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# Question
Title: Why are the Big Five factors of personality correlated?
One of main characteristics of Five Factor Model is that factors are not orthogonal as in some other personality models.

* Why it is tolerated that those factors are not independent?
* Is it possible to find biological basis if factors are not independent?

# Answer
> 4 votes
There are no personality models in which the factors are orthogonal in the strict sense of being at 90 degrees from one another, unless an orthogonal rotation method is used to extract them. I think you meant to say that the Big Five factors are less independent (or more strongly inter-correlated) relative to the factors in other models.

Whether or not one wants to obtain orthogonal factors depends on what one is trying to achieve. In most cases, you want an orthogonal solution if you want simple structure, i.e. you want to figure out which factor indicators unambiguously cluster together to form a relatively independent factor. But in general, factors are allowed to correlate because that just happens to be the "reality" and there is no theory suggesting that they should be completely independent. There are of course plenty of reasons why relatively independent factors might correlate and it doesn't mean that biological bases cannot be found; it could mean that there are biological bases that are shared among traits and there are those that are unique to each trait. For example, the relationship between Openness and Extraversion could in part be due to shared genes related to exploration (I forget the source for this).

# Answer
> 3 votes
This previous answer talks about evidence for a global or possibly two factor model partially explaining the correlations between the Big 5. In general this global factor may reflect some form of positive, well-being, social adjustment type variance.

More generally, having orthogonal factors is desirable from a parsimony perspective. It's useful when predicting other outcome variables. However, orthogonality is not the only criteria. in fact many psychological scales are explicitly hierarchical with global scales accompanied by correlated subscales (e.g., many cognitive measures; the facets in the NEO-PI-R, etc). As @AlexR notes factor analysis can force an orthogonal rotation, but this doesn't mean that scales formed by summing corresponding items yield uncorrelated scales.

I have heard it said that the Big 5 is too complex to have a natural mapping to biological processes. That said, height and weight are correlated and they certainly have a biological basis. So orthogonality is not a requirement. And twin studies support the observation that personality has a fairly large heritable component.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I would like to answer this question from a mathematical point of view.

The word "openness" means something that is real and correlated with some other aspects. Let's assume a 3 dimensional space.

If we would like to choose the other dimensions as perpendicular to this first one, we could simply define them by their correlation with the first one being 0.

The definition is mathematic. Given a vector finding ortogonal ones means finding something that could exist or not in the nature.

Given 5 dimensions which are correlated and really exists (i.e. the big five traits), we could easily find a new space made by one real dimension and 4 dimension ortogonal to the first one **which doesn't exist in the reality**.

Then we could project every person analisys from the Big Five Space to the second perfectly orthogonal space.

Every dimension of the second space could be also defined as a mix of the dimensions of the first space.

You could ask for a better answer here but I hope something of what I said was clear.

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/382195/translation-an-orthogonal-transformation

# Answer
> 0 votes
It is often assumed that the five factors are theoretically orthogonal (https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199352487.013.20). In practice, the the five factors are highly correlated; however, this is usually ignored in favour of the assumed theoretical orthogonality. An alternative explanation is that the correlation has been ignored due to the absence of a better model in which the dimensions are biologically based and strictly orthogonal.

A more recent development posits a two-dimensional taxonomy in which the dimensions (affiliation and dominance) are strictly orthogonal. The biological basis for these two dimensions are identified in the research (affiliation/oxytocin/Putamen) and (dominance/testosterone/Prefrontal cortex). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227877

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Tags: measurement, personality, test
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# Question
Title: Why humans like to rank things, make lists etc.?
I was wondering if anyone can provide some scientific explanation on why humans seem to like organising (cultural) items in arrangements such as lists, rankings, best-ofs etc. Some reference to scholarly literature on the topic would be also appreciated. Thanks!

# Answer
> 1 votes
Taxonomic classification seeks to identify similarities and differences between entities to assist in conceptualizing and communicating (Bailey, 1994).

Rouse (2004) discusses Motivational Systems Theory which seeks to explain why we strive to perform, a component of which is learning, understanding and communicating.

**Bailey, K. D. (1994)** Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences: Typologies and taxonomies. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. doi: 10.4135/9781412986397

**Rouse, K. A. G. (2004)** Beyond Maslow’s hierarchy of needs what do people strive for? Performance Improvement, 43(10), 27–31. doi:10.1002/pfi.4140431008

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Tags: behavior, behavioural-neuroscience
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title: Is sexual desire an emotion?

text:
# Question
Title: Is sexual desire an emotion?
I see that in the Wikipedia page of emotion classification, sexual desire is only mentioned once (in Parrott's tree-structured list of emotion). It is absent from other kinds of classification.

What is sexual desire?

> Sexual desire is a motivational state and an interest in “sexual objects or activities, or as a wish, or drive to seek out sexual objects or to engage in sexual activities”. Synonyms for sexual desire are libido, sexual attraction and lust. Sexual desire is an aspect of a person's sexuality, which varies significantly from one person to another, and also varies depending on circumstances at a particular time. Not every person experiences sexual desire; those who do not experience it may be labelled asexual.

What is emotion?

> Emotions are biological states associated with the nervous system brought on by neurophysiological changes variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioural responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is currently no scientific consensus on a definition. Emotion is often intertwined with mood, temperament, personality, disposition, creativity and motivation.

So it seems to me that you can consider sexual desire as an emotion. However, the lack of it in other kinds of classification make me question about that. I think sexual desire is common and basic enough to have a consideration in most classifications.

# Answer
> 3 votes
Sexual desire, libido, horniness, titillation, lust and eroticism are all listed as emotions in the Atlas of Personality, Emotion and Behaviour (Mobbs, 2020). In the atlas taxonomy, emotion is defined the perception of a neurological impulse that initiates behaviour (typically abstract nouns).

The full catalogue is available at: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4792323

Mobbs AED (2020) An atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour. PLoS ONE 15(1): e0227877. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227877

# Answer
> -2 votes
The Wikipedia page of desire counts it as emotion:

> Desire is the emotion of longing or hoping for a person, object, or outcome. The same sense is expressed by words such as "craving". When a person desires something or someone, their sense of longing is excited by the enjoyment or the thought of the item or person, and they want to take actions to obtain their goal. The motivational aspect of desire has long been noted by philosophers (for example, stating that human desire is the fundamental motivation of all human action) as well as by scientists (see motivational salience).

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Tags: emotion, sexuality
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title: Vigilance is an emotion?

text:
# Question
Title: Vigilance is an emotion?
I've always loved pondering emotion theories and usually agree with them, but Plutchik describes the intense form of anticipation to be Vigilance, and this is quite confusing to me.

Vigilance as defined on wiki:

"In modern psychology, vigilance, also termed sustained concentration, is defined as the ability to maintain concentrated attention over prolonged periods of time."

This describes a character trait and not an emotion. So my question is has the meaning of vigilance changed since Plutchik's theory, and if so what would be the modern equivalent of this emotion. Or did Plutchik drop the ball on this part of an otherwise excellent theory.

# Answer
> 2 votes
Plutchik's model is certainly visually appealing; however, the two dimensions of the model have no neurological or biological basis.

The Atlas of Personality, Emotion and Behaviour (Mobbs, 2020) is an alternative with an established neurobiological basis. The atlas catalogues over 3,000 emotions which include vigilance. Alternative emotions would include: alertness, caution, diligence, attentiveness, observance, and watchfulness.

A visualisation of the atlas is shown below.

Mobbs AED (2020) An atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour. PLoS ONE 15(1): e0227877. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227877

Plutchik, R., & Conte, H. R. (1997). Circumplex Models of Personality and Emotions. American Psychological Association.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Well, there's a bunch of problems with Plutchik's theory in general.

Plutchik uses vigilance to describe a high arousal state of exploration. He administered a (dichotomous) semantic differentiation task to study different emotion words, and vigilance was above all described as good (vs. bad), strong (vs. weak), active (vs. passive), and constrained (vs. spacious). Based on these ideas, vigilance could probably be considered an emotion.

However, whether this is an emotion depends (1) on your theory of emotions and (2) on how the word is used (conceptually/semantically).

From the contemporary theory of constructed emotions, vigilance could be an emotion if you use it to conceptualize your affect in a given situation. So if you feel negative, highly aroused and alert, and believe there are a million spiders hiding nearby, you could conceptualize this affective state as vigilance ("I feel vigilant"). In this case, vigilance would be an emotion. (According to these criteria, virtually any string of letters could be an emotion.)

However, if vigilance is only describing a particular state of attentional deployment, then it wouldn't be considered an emotion (although it would still be a conceptualization, but of your attention, not your affect).

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Tags: social-psychology, emotion, terminology
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# Question
Title: Does Transcranial Direct-Current Stimulation (tDCS) enhance cognitive function?
From the book "The future is faster than you think" by Peter Diamandis, Steven Kotler:

“Consider the nine-dot problem, a classic test of creative problem-solving. Connect nine dots with four lines in ten minutes without lifting your pencil from the paper. Under normal circumstances, fewer than 5 percent of the population can pull this off. In a study run at the University of Sydney in Australia, none of their test subjects did. But then the researchers took a second group of subjects, and used transcranial direct stimulation to artificially mimic many of the changes produced during flow. What happened? Forty percent solved the problem—a record result.”

What is the current scientific consensus on this question?

This appears to be the study mentioned:
Brain stimulation enables the solution of an inherently difficult problem
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304394012003618

An APA reference to the study was requested.
Here is one such reference:
Using transcranial direct current stimulation to enhance creative cognition: Interactions between task, polarity, and stimulation site.
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-24133-001

# Answer
There is no consensus on this question. This technique is relatively new, and has not been widely used so far. I know of one paper (below) that used this technique alongside intra-cortical recordings and do report convincing effects on LFPs (the overall activity of a local area) and behavior of non-human primates, but not on individual neurons. So this technique does have the potential to modulate brain activity on behaving humans.

For the paper you cite specifically, I do not know whether it is true or not. But solving the 9-dots problem is a hard and unspecified problem that presumably involves the participation of millions of neurons all over the brain. That you could improve performance so much by applying such a simplistic pattern of stimulation is more than highly dubious (in my opinion even laughable). It may be true, but if you asked me to bet I would feel very comfortable betting a large sum of money that such a result would not be replicated in a rigorous, large-scale, double-blind study.

As for consensus, you'll find multiple meta-analyses and reviews (example below) arguing that tDCS has no effect whatsoever on behavior. It doesn't mean there aren't studies reporting real effects in the mix, but the vast majority of studies I have seen so far were very dubious.

Krause, M. R., Zanos, T. P., Csorba, B. A., Pilly, P. K., Choe, J., Phillips, M. E., ... & Pack, C. C. (2017). Transcranial direct current stimulation facilitates associative learning and alters functional connectivity in the primate brain. Current Biology, 27(20), 3086-3096.

Horvath, J. C., Forte, J. D., & Carter, O. (2015). Quantitative review finds no evidence of cognitive effects in healthy populations from single-session transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Brain stimulation, 8(3), 535-550.
> 3 votes

# Answer
Short answer: Most literature reviews and meta-analyses on cognitive enhancement from tDCS have found some promising effects, but it is too early to tell which specific effects will replicate.

> ... there is mixed evidence about whether tDCS is useful for cognitive enhancement in healthy people. Several reviews have found evidence of small yet significant cognitive improvements. Other reviews found no evidence at all ...

For examples of at least partially favourable reviews, covering many hundreds of studies, see Brunoni & Vanderhasselt (2014), Coffman, Clark & Parasuraman (2014), Price et al (2015), Dedoncker et al (2016) and Dedoncker et al (2016), Hill, Fitzgerald & Hoy (2016), Mancuso et al (2016), Summers, Kang & Cauraugh (2016), Hashemirad et al (2016), Weinberger, Green & Chrysikou (2017), Martins et al (2017), Katsoulaki, Kastrinis & Tsekoura (2017), Strobach & Antonenko (2017), Schroeder et al (2017), Ali, Mansoury, & Samaneh (2017), Schroeder & Plewnia (2017), Reteig et al (2017), Sellaro, Nitsche & Colzato (2017), Lucchiari, Sala & Vanutelli (2018), Huo et al (2019), Mayer et al (2020), and Wikipedia.

**Stimulation protocols:**

One notable exception is Horvath, Forte & Carter (2015), which found no evidence of cognitive enhancement from tDCS. Aside from the criticisms that this review has received (see here, here, and here), it did serve to highlight certain issues within this field. A few more recent reviews concur: eg, Barti et al (2020), Galli et al (2019).

Reasons for the mixed results found in some reviews may be that many studies are under-powered (see also Medina & Cason (2017)), or not long enough (see also Westwood & Romani (2017)).

More importantly however, tDCS interventions are still in an exploratory phase, and protocols are not yet established and consistent across studies. There is variability in stimulation location, polarity, intensity, definition, and arrangements. Thus, studies reporting null results do not necessarily indicate ineffectiveness - rather, they may just be setting boundaries on effective protocols. Time will tell.

This issue is further exacerbated by the potential specificity of protocol to task and possibly even to individuals. Although the likelihood of 20 years of research involving numerous experiments by many independent labs being found entirely spurious is fairly low, it is too early to tell which findings will ultimately pan out. As many of the literature reviews conclude: More replication is desperately needed.
> 1 votes

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Tags: tdcs
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# Question
Title: Plutchik's emotions from negative to positive
I'm trying to order Plutchik's emotions model from the most negative to the most positive.

These are the emotions in alphabetical order:

```
anger, anticipation, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise, trust

```

I didn't find anything online regarding this. Can someone help me?

# Answer
> 3 votes
Negative to positive suggests a linear scale between negative and positive. The literature does not seem to support such a one dimensional scale.

There is a two-dimensional taxonomy that has the personality descriptor 'negative' in cell (-2,-2) and positive in (2,2), which suggests a diagonal line on the two-dimensional plane that best represents negative to positive (Mobbs, 2020).

The words are scored and sorted in accordance with the atlas as follows.

Mobbs AED (2020) An atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour. PLoS ONE 15(1): e0227877. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227877

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Tags: emotion, sentiment-analysis
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# Question
Title: What adjectives can be used to describe emotional intelligence competences?
After reading the book Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, I'm having a difficult time comparing emotional intelligence (EQ) with Intelligence Quotient (IQ).

When talking about someone's IQ we use adjectives as: intelligent, genius, fool, stupid, brilliant, etc.

What adjectives can we use to describe the competences of:

* being able to recognize and name one's emotions
* being able to recognize and name other people's emotions
* being able to understand the root cause of certain emotions
* being able to keep calm in the middle of strong emotions

Note: I'm not really sure if this question belongs to Cognitive Science Stack Exchange, if not please point me in the right direction.

Thanks

# Answer
These are the best words I could find using the atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour (Mobbs, 2020).

* **being able to recognize and name one's emotions**: self-aware, self-observant, reflective, contemplative.
* **being able to recognize and name other people's emotions**: empathic, compassionate, understanding, sensitive, sympathetic.
* **being able to understand the root cause of certain emotions**: wise, perceptive, insightful, discerning, astute.
* **being able to keep calm in the middle of strong emotions**: self-governing, self-restrained, temperate, level-headed, dispassionate, balanced.

Mobbs AED (2020) An atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour. PLoS ONE 15(1): e0227877. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227877
> 2 votes

# Answer
Well, you address things that are being addressed by different adjectives, in this combination contradicting in some of their other meanings.

If I should provide a list of common words for every trait you have described:

1. Sincere, honest (as of not being afraid to admit the emotions), self-aware (as of understanding what's going on inside)
2. Sensitive (feeling with others), empathetic, solicitous (caring for other people)
3. *Here I'm a bit lost but:* Insightful (a person that generally *understads*, but needs a context specification as it could as well apply to a mechanic and machines), wise (a general word for somebody with experience and the ability to use it).
4. Calm, wise (again, universal word that fits any context)... *Well anything you'd call Obi Wan Kenobi*

Now some of the therms might probably sound contradicting if used together. For example a *sensitive* person is not expected to withstand strong emotions calmly.

However these are just words I thought up. I'm not native English speaker so you only get the words that are frequently used.

I don't see what do all these words have to do with Cognitive sciences. I think this should get moved on English.SE. In that case I hope my answer gets deleted as native English speakers would downvote the hell out of me.
> -1 votes

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Tags: emotion
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# Question
Title: Does the concept of employee engagement add anything over and above traditional concepts?
The concept of "employee engagement" is popular in organisational consulting settings. A quick Google for "engagement survey" will yield many results. However, in some respects the concept often seems defined in terms of some combination of satisfaction, commitment, and motivation.

* Does the concept of employee engagement add anything new over and above satisfaction, commitment, and motivation?
* To the extent that it does overlap with previous constructs, does it still have value?

# Answer
> 3 votes
A few basic observations:

* Typical self-report measures of engagement and job satisfaction tend to be highly correlated (I'll try to find a reference later, but I think in the r =.7 range).
* As with many organisational psychology terms that bridge the scientific-practitioner divide, engagement has been operationalised in a wide range of ways.
* Volume 1, Issue 1 of Industrial and Organizational Psychology has a focal article and a large set of accompanying commentaries on the meaning of engagement and its value as a concept. See this pdf of the focal article.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Broadly speaking, employee engagement consultancies would say employee satisfaction does not correlate with employee attachment (staying) or employee effort (striving). They would say employee engagement thus translates into the behaviours that benefit organisations financially, whereas employee satisfaction does not.

Here’s how Gallup sees it:

> Gallup research shows that both employee engagement and employee satisfaction relate to meaningful outcomes. However, satisfaction is a broad, attitudinal outcome, like organizational loyalty or pride. It is hard to act on, and some facets of satisfaction are irrelevant to performance. Engagement, on the other hand, predicts satisfaction, as well as many other concrete business outcomes.

# Answer
> 0 votes
In my experience, employee engagement equates to:

* the willingness of the individual to expend discretionary effort to achieve goals,
* the loyalty of the individual towards the employer, and
* the willingness of the individual to creatively solve problems faced by the employer.

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Tags: io-psychology, commitment
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# Question
Title: Why do some people seem to disregard the choice of doing nothing (The Zero Choice)?
In many areas of life we have a choice between multiple options: if we are hungry and we want to go out to eat, we have a number of places to choose from (McDonalds, etc). However, we also still have the 'Zero Choice' (my terminology) of not eating out at all and getting food some other way.

In my personal life, I've noticed (perhaps falsly) that a fair number of people, once they've made a general choice (in the example: eating out), they disregard the 'Zero Choice' (not eating out) and become fixated on the sub-choices (where to eat out).

Is there a noticable difference in mental activity between people who don't consider the 'Zero Choice' and people who do?

---

Original Question:

> In my life I've noticed that people rarely see the 'nothing' choice. Rather than choosing `this` or `that`, there is also the choice of `neither` and `both`. People I've interacted with often weigh their `both`, `this`, and `that` options fairly well, but many completely miss the `neither/nothing` option.
>
> More specifically, I've seen this in a couple girlfriends I've had and a couple guy friends also. When trying to decide what to do, they'll settle on a type of activity (active/passive -\> general category -\> couple options) and then choose between a couple options. However, rarely in these options do they include the idea of something completely different. Meanwhile, this is something I do without thinking; other options are always present to me, and I have no difficulty in seeing, weighing, or choosing the `neither` option.
>
> These are poor examples and for that I apologize; but is this a recognized phenomenon? What neural differences are there between people who process the `nothing` option and people who don't?
>
> Has this even been researched at all? Cursory Googling (the most available to me right now) has revealed nothing; I could be searching for the wrong thing though...

# Answer
> 8 votes
More generally, you are asking about a common tendency to substitute a sub-set of alternative actions for the entire set without realizing it.

Beyond the contribution of pure habit, it seems to be related to several common decision making biases, including attentional bias and focusing effect, though it doesn't exactly match any. I don't recall seeing this investigated directly.

"Zero choice" is a poor choice of terminology, it evokes the "null hypothesis" (as Ben Brocka alluded to in the comments), which in decision making usually means "do nothing", not a call to consider a broader set of alternatives.

# Answer
> 5 votes
I'm reminded of the Gestalt idea of "functional fixedness," which, as defined by Wikipedia, "is a cognitive bias that limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used." When functional fixedness occurs, individuals get caught up in that particular use and ignore other alternatives. That's almost what's happening here; one gets caught up in the choice (traverses down the flowchart, if you will) and doesn't consider alternatives.

It's also possible (although I don't have any evidence on this) that it's cognitively less demanding to weigh similar options (e.g., Restaurant A vs. Restaurant B) than different ones (e.g., Restaurant vs. Dinner At Home).

# Answer
> 0 votes
If viewed through the lense of the Five Factor Model, the decision to do nothing (the Zero option) may be encompassed by the negative valence of 'Openness to Experience' or the negative valence of 'Extraversion'.

People who would take the zero option in the scenario outlined would be people:

* who are less open to experience (trying a new venue), and/or
* who are less extraverted and so less interested in mingling with others.

So, I think the scenarios outlined involves selection bias. The author of the question is associating with people whose personality is more aligned with positive valence Extraversion and/or positive valence Openness to Experience.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, decision-making
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# Question
Title: Looking for a source for Valence/Arousal values Russell's advance circumplex model of emotion?
I've been looking for a chart/table of Valence and Arousal values from the advanced Russell's model such as the one referenced in this article https://www.researchgate.net/publication/50805681\_Asymmetrical\_Facial\_Expressions\_based\_on\_an\_Advanced\_Interpretation\_of\_Two-dimensional\_Russells\_Emotional\_Model

I'm unable to find anything that isn't a picture, and what I'm really looking for is a table/spreadsheet with the emotions and the valence/arousal values for each emotion.

Is there a source for this that I can reference?

# Answer
Circumplex models of emotion with the dimensions 'arousal' and 'valence' are not grounded with neurobiological support.

There is however an alternative 'atlas' model with two dimensions that does have neurobiological support (Mobbs, 2020). The atlas model uses the dimensions of 'affiliation' and 'dominance' with broad emotional categories as shown below. The atlas is supported with a catalogue of over 3000 emotions each with precise coordinates.

The facial expressions for each location in the atlas is shown below:

Mobbs AED (2020) An atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour. PLOS ONE 15(1): e0227877. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227877
> 1 votes

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Tags: emotion, experimental-psychology
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# Question
Title: Can new emotions be created or discovered?
Related: Are there emotions that only some people can feel?

Is there any known observed or theoretical process by which new emotions could be observed or discovered?

Although one may argue over the exact number of emotions that exist today or the exact criteria that differentiate one from another, there is broad agreement on the general types of emotions that exist (e.g. most psychologists would agree that happiness, sadness, envy, anxiety, excitement, anger, disgust, lust, pride, etc. are emotions while pecan, horseradish, choke, stupid, chair, delta, redshirt, appoiapgpadvap, asdf, and yooe caph garharheq are not emotions). Those minor disagreements/edge cases are *not* what I am talking about, but a brand new emotion. Hypothetically, I can imagine that one might result from novel stimuli (or patterns of stimuli) never before experienced by humans (and thus resulting in a never-before seen affect on the brain), but I am not aware of any actual cases of this occurring or any known (outside of science fiction) theory of what sort of stimuli patterns might accomplish this or what such an emotion might be like.

If it has been shown that one of the "standard" emotions today arose *after* the advent of anatomically-modern humans (e.g. Cro-Magnon), I would consider that an answer.

In response to a comment by Bryan Krause, I am aware that there is a linguistic argument here. I'm imagining this as similar to the linguistic/neurological divide in color taxonomy. Famously, Russian does not have a single word for "blue" (instead, dividing it up into two separate colors), while Japanese historically did not distinguish between what English speakers call blue and green, but I believe it is fairly well understood that these distinctions happen at a fairly high level in the brain, rather than representing truly distinct forms of cognitive evolution. The color equivalent to my question could be whether it is possible for the brain to evolve, or for novel stimuli to generate, an *entirely new color that no one has ever seen before* and that cannot be reasonably described as a variant or subtype of an existing color. Some science fiction authors, famously H. P. Lovecraft, have tried to imagine a "new" color, so the idea that new cognitive experiences could be found is certainly not new.

Another way to ask this is whether the process of coming up with new words to describe emotions represents enhancements in the *understanding* of current emotions or whether it represents truly new emotions never before experienced or observed.

# Answer
> 1 votes
The atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour catalogues over 3,000 emotions (Mobbs, 2020). The atlas's approach taken to identifying and cataloguing the emotions was to start with existing lists of emotions and then using thesauri to identify synonyms and antonyms of emotions, which are themselves likely to be emotions.

I expect that over time, existing emotions will be subdivided into more specific variants which will then need to accepted by the curators of each dictionary. At the point these variants are included in dictionaries, the new emotion will be deemed to discovered.

Mobbs AED (2020) An atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour. PLOS ONE 15(1): e0227877. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227877

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, emotion, evolution, evolutionary-psychology
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# Question
Title: Is ignoring messages a learned behavior?
As someone that works troubleshooting stuff, I've seen a surprising amount of people that, when confronted with messages, warnings and errors, tend to seek help fast (or early in the process) in the hope someone will understand what their problem is, rather than reading the error and searching directly for a solution, or solving what they did wrong independently. To illustrate this, consider an example (I'm not sure if this captures the qi of the problem, but here it goes):

> User $A$ performs a certain action that leads to the current error/warning/message:
>
> > Error: your input was greater than two, please use $X$ tool when input is greater than two.

When the user is presented with an error message, there are 4 things that could happen:

1. User comes back and uses the correct tool.
2. User tries again until frustrated.
3. User tries again until frustrated and seeks help.
4. User tries again until frustrated, seeks help and doesn't get it. The user either figures out the message or just leaves things as they are.

My question: why do endings `2`, `3`, and `4` happen? Is the message too difficult for some people to understand, or do they believe they are not wrong and the tool should do what they want or the message should be more calling (IN CAPS or **bold**)? Do people ignore seemingly perfectly crafted messages? Or have we learned to ignore them, given all the *media* with which we are bombarded?

# Answer
> 3 votes
Several explanations could apply crossing psychology and linguistics:

**Cognitive**: It is perhaps bold to suggest that there could be a perfectly constructed error message. Reading comprehension and interpretation is impacted by a diverse array of cognitive processes, including literal, inferential and evaluative cognitive processes(Basaraba et al., 2013). Despite having comprehensive vocabulary and general knowledge, individuals may still encounter difficulties with text comprehension due to metacognitive deficits with memory and reading strategies(Oakhill et al., 2015), diversity of cultural background(Yousef et al., 2014), and developmental opportunity(Paris & Hamilton, 2009). Given the extensive array of cognitive processes required to comprehend text, it is not surprising that a range of interpretations will exist, no matter how well constructed the response is.

**Opportunity cost**: The amount of time an individual will devote to solving the conundrum of the error message is dependent on their other priorities(Kurzban et al., 2013). The individual is unlikely to know in advance how much time it will take to comply with the error message, so they are likely to make assumptions. If the opportunity cost associated with the estimated time is less than the value the individual estimates is associated with other opportunities, then they are unlikely to respond in the manner expected.

**Learned behaviours** will also be involved. If the user has learned from prior interactions that the same result can be achieved through non-compliance, then they are likely to repeat this learned behavior in the future.

In addition to the above, self-efficacy(Bandura & Locke, 2003) and embarrassment avoidance(Jiang et al., 2018) may have a role to play.

Bandura, A., & Locke, E. A. (2003). Negative self-efficacy and goal effects revisited \[Review of Negative self-efficacy and goal effects revisited\]. The Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(1), 87–99. psycnet.apa.org. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.88.1.87

Basaraba, D., Yovanoff, P., Alonzo, J., & Tindal, G. (2013). Examining the structure of reading comprehension: do literal, inferential, and evaluative comprehension truly exist? Reading and Writing, 26(3), 349–379. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-012-9372-9

Jiang, L., Drolet, A., & Scott, C. A. (2018). Countering embarrassment-avoidance by taking an observer’s perspective. Motivation and Emotion, 42(5), 748–762. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-018-9673-7

Kurzban, R., Duckworth, A., Kable, J. W., & Myers, J. (2013). An opportunity cost model of subjective effort and task performance. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36(6), 661–679. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X12003196

Oakhill, J. V., Berenhaus, M. S., & Cain, K. (2015). Children’s reading comprehension and comprehension difficulties. In A. Pollatsek & R. Treiman (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Reading (pp. 344–360). Oxford.

Paris, S. G., & Hamilton, E. E. (2009). The Development of Children’s Reading Comprehension. In S. E. Israel & G. G. Duffy (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Reading Comprehension (pp. 32–53). Routledge.

Yousef, H., Karimi, L., & Janfeshan, K. (2014). The Relationship between Cultural Background and Reading Comprehension. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 4(4). https://doi.org/10.4304/tpls.4.4.707-714

# Answer
> 1 votes
There is a lot of context to extract from this:

For example if "using the X tool" requires a lot of time, it would be time-consuming to actually go by yourself and try for hours, when you could instead ask for help from someone who already has some knowledge of it.

Also, people are all different, some people want to know how "things work in their details," while some just want results, so they will seek the fastest way to do it.

But to conclude, I tend to notice that as the time passes and technologies increase, people tend to be lazy and stop thinking for themselves, except to think, "If it does not work, then the tool is broken, not me."

# Answer
> -1 votes
I don't know if this an answerable question but I **KNOW** exactly what you're taking about. I think much of it can be attributed to how humans learn new things.

People need to be reassured that the process, methods, and results they're getting are correct. When doing something for the first time yourself you need this feedback.

So I tend to attribute this behavior as a manifestation of this. Until a person has been properly grounded in something, their confidence in their own ability and performance of a set of tasks is low. Only with feedback from other humans that they're doing it correctly, does ones confidence rise to a point where they no longer need the affirmation/reaffirmation from others.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, social-psychology, learning, hci, human-factors
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# Question
Title: What evidences this technique of visualizing different color words in sequence, to help you sleep?
What's this technique called? Any evidence?

> I'll make it easier. Visualize the word Red. In big red letters. Examine your creation but don't judge harshly. After a few seconds, switch to the word Blue, in blue letters. Then again with Green. Now repeat the sequence or feel free to wander off into any pattern of colors.
>
> This is how it works. You can't think and feel at the same time (by feeling I mean any of the senses including vision) so exercising your vision causes your brain to shut down. You can do the same by listening intently, etc.
>
> This has usefulness beyond relaxing enough to fall asleep. I have a theory that high level problem solving requires switching to feelings. We feel our way through tough problems because conventional thinking is too tedious, inefficient.
>
> BTW, you now know how to meditate.

# Answer
> 2 votes
**Imagery Distraction**

The technique referred to is called 'imagery distraction' (Harvey & Payne, 2002).

Some evidence has been found for “imagery distraction” being associated with shorter sleep onset latency and less frequent and distressing pre-sleep cognitive activity.

> The success of the “imagery distraction” task is attributed to it occupying sufficient “cognitive space” to keep the individual from re-engaging with thoughts, worries, and concerns during the pre-sleep period.

The type of imagery seems less important. So visualizing coloured words should be equally as effective as counting sheep.

Harvey, A. G., & Payne, S. (2002). The management of unwanted pre-sleep thoughts in insomnia: distraction with imagery versus general distraction. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 40(3), 267–277. doi:10.1016/s0005-7967(01)00012-2

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Tags: sleep
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# Question
Title: Anxiety vs Stressfulness in the Big Five?
From these sources (, , ) I have figured out that anxiety and stressfulness are generally defined as:

* **Anxiety** \- Prone to have generalized anxiety, panic, specific phobias, worry as well as feeling tension, nerviousness.
* **Stressfulness** \- Feeling helpless, overwhelmed under stress, pressure or when facing emergency situations.

But isn't feeling helpless and overwhelmed cause you to feel anxious? And isn't feeling of helplessness and overwhelmed basically comes from anxiety? When I feel overwhelmed, it basically means that I am very anxious at the moment.

Another definition () might be that stressfulness is a proclivity to feeling panic. But isn't panic is just a final stage of being anxious?

What is the difference between **anxiety** and **stressfulness**?

# Answer
Your question indicates that your research indicates a close association between stress and anxiety. I've tried a few different approaches to separating these terms but with limited success. Investigation included a review of:

1. Concomitant literature
2. Biological associations
3. Personality disorders
4. Lexical relatedness
5. Concomitant therapies

**Concomitant literature**

The Journal of Anxiety, Stress & Coping is dedicated to anxiety and stress, which indicates that they are very closely related topics. The aims of the journal include:

> understanding of the relationship between psychological and physiological processes during stressful and anxious states

Google scholar identifies over 3 million articles concurrently including stress and anxiety, indicating some level of association or correlation.

**Biological associations**

* Stress and anxiety appear to be associated in heart disease (Chauvet-Gelinier & Bonin, 2017).
* Neuropeptides have been identified that concurrently relate to stress and anxiety (Heilig, 2004; Cohen, 2012).

**Personality disorders**

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), lists the adjustment disorders (page 286) concurrently with stress and anxiety. Interestingly, the DSM lists the word 'stress' 237 times and 'anxiety' 1280 times.

**Lexical**

The Oxford and Collins dictionary lists *anxiety* and *stress* as synonyms. Merriam Webster lists them as near synonyms.

One definition of synonym is that you can use two words interchangeably in a sentence without loss or alteration of meaning.

Anxiety and stress are both abstract nouns and emotions, being able to be used in the sentence: "I feel a sense of *anxiety*" and "I feel a sense of *stress*".

The curators of the Oxford and Merriam Webster dictionaries appear to believe that anxiety and stress are closely associated.

My own research is in the lexical analysis of personality, emotion and behaviour (Mobbs, 2020). The words stressed and anxious can be visualised as follows. It is visually apparent that the terms are highly related, possibly synonyms. The question mentions Big-5; both anxious and stressed are in the region of the atlas denoted by the Big-5's neuroticism dimension.

**Therapies**

A range of therapies appear to be targeted at concurrently dealing with stress and anxiety, such as:

* Group therapy (White, 1992)
* Talk therapy,
* Cognitive behavioral therapy (Hopkinson, 2019)
* Dialectical behavior therapy (Fitzpatrick, 2019)
* Music therapy (Umbrello, 2019)
* Physical exercise (Mikkelsen, 2017)

**References**

Chauvet-Gelinier, J. C., & Bonin, B. (2017). Stress, anxiety and depression in heart disease patients: A major challenge for cardiac rehabilitation. Annals of physical and rehabilitation medicine, 60(1), 6-12.

Mikkelsen, K., Stojanovska, L., Polenakovic, M., Bosevski, M., & Apostolopoulos, V. (2017). Exercise and mental health. Maturitas, 106, 48-56.

White, J., Keenan, M., & Brooks, N. (1992). Stress control: a controlled comparative investigation of large group therapy for generalized anxiety disorder. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 20(2), 97-113.

Hopkinson, M. D., Reavell, J., Lane, D. A., & Mallikarjun, P. (2019). Cognitive behavioral therapy for depression, anxiety, and stress in caregivers of dementia patients: A systematic review and meta-analysis. The Gerontologist, 59(4), e343-e362.

Fitzpatrick, S., Bailey, K., & Rizvi, S. L. (2019). Changes in Emotions Over the Course of Dialectical Behavior Therapy and the Moderating Role of Depression, Anxiety, and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Behavior Therapy.

Umbrello, M., Sorrenti, T., Mistraletti, G., Formenti, P., Chiumello, D., & Terzoni, S. (2019). Music therapy reduces stress and anxiety in critically ill patients: a systematic review of randomized clinical trials. Minerva anestesiologica, 85(8), 886-898.

Heilig, M. (2004). The NPY system in stress, anxiety and depression. Neuropeptides, 38(4), 213-224.

Cohen, H., Liu, T., Kozlovsky, N., Kaplan, Z., Zohar, J., & Mathé, A. A. (2012). The neuropeptide Y (NPY)-ergic system is associated with behavioral resilience to stress exposure in an animal model of post-traumatic stress disorder. Neuropsychopharmacology, 37(2), 350-363.

Mobbs, A. E. (2020). An atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour. PloS one, 15(1), e0227877. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227877
> 1 votes

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Tags: personality, big-five
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# Question
Title: Equivalent Circuit of cell membrane potential
From chapter $7$ of Kandel et all's Principles of Neural Science:, Go to page 12, Box 7-2 (particular image attached below)

The author claims that $$V\_m = E\_{Na} + I\_{Na} / g\_{Na}$$ on one side of the equation and then says $$V\_m = E\_{K} + I\_{K} / g\_{K}$$ by looking at the other side of the circuit.

But how can this be? Since the battery is showing a negative side facing $V\_{in}$ doesn't it have to be

$$V\_m = -E\_{K} + I\_{K} / g\_{K}$$

Am I misunderstanding something or did the author make a mistake in calculation?

# Answer
> 1 votes
The author has just chosen to draw the battery "backward" in the diagram to go along with the negative sign. In the equations, the direction of the battery should just be oriented by convention according to outward vs. inward.

Note that $E\_{K} = -75 mV$. If you were to use instead your equation:

$$V\_m = -E\_{K} + I\_{K} / g\_{K}$$

you would need to take $E\_{K} = 75 mV$ and you'd arrive at the same answer.

I'd say there is a bit of a physics vs. biology clash here; in physics, it's more typical to go with certain explicit/literal conventions which then fit nicely into particular equations, and that's how you're thinking about it. In biology, we tend to take some shortcuts.

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Tags: theoretical-neuroscience
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# Question
Title: Why does the Elaboration Likelihood Model not account for truthfulness of the message?
This is a sample problem with the answer I am stuck on:

> **Question:** According to the elaboration likelihood model, which of the following does NOT predict whether a message will be persuasive?
>
> A. The length of the message
> B. The attractiveness of the person delivering the message
> C. The truthfulness of the message
> D. The trustworthiness of the person delivering the message
>
> **Answer:** The correct answer is C. According to the elaboration likelihood model, the truthfulness of the message itself is not actually a characteristic used to determine whether a message will be persuasive (choice C is correct). The message characteristics (including length) do predict persuasiveness (choice A is wrong), as do the source characteristics (including the attractiveness and the trustworthiness of the person delivering the message; choices B and D are wrong).

Wouldn't the truthfulness of the message still be a factor, since it is a characteristic of the message itself (via the central route with message characteristics)? I get why the other answers are wrong. I don't get why C is correct.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Not my area, but an interesting question.

The Elaboration Likelihood Model appears to divide messages between that which is true and that which is persuasive. If you are intent on determining whether a message is true, it must go the rough the central route which will take protracted effort.

However, very often we are less interested in what is true and more interested in taking cues from others so that we avoid the laboursome effort of intensive thought.

To answer your question, if the message is persuasive, then no about of truth or falsity of which you are unaware will influence you.

I could not see it in the article, however, I imagine that if you were *a priori* aware that a message is false, you would naturally be more circumspect about allowing a false argument to be persuasive.

Modern advertising seems to revolve around persuasive arguments rather than truthful arguments (I'm not saying they are false, but the investment effort is making the commercial persuasive rather that factual).

The following except from Kitchen (2014, page 2034) clarified the issue for me.

> The premise of ELM is that **when elaboration likelihood is high, information processing will occur via the central route. Resultant attitude formation, change or endurance is derived from extensive consideration of the message arguments and will be more persistent** (Haugtvedt and Petty, 1989) and predictive of an individual’s subsequent behaviour (Petty and Cacioppo, 1983). When elaboration likelihood is low, processing occurs via the peripheral route. **The peripheral route to persuasion requires little cognitive effort, instead relying upon peripheral cues such as source credibility and heuristics** (Petty and Cacioppo, 1983). As such, attitudes formed via the peripheral route are relatively unaffected by argument quality, are temporary in nature, and are not as predictive of subsequent behaviour as those formed using the central route (Petty and Cacioppo, 1983).

Kitchen, P. J., Kerr, G., Schultz, D. E., McColl, R., & Pals, H. (2014). The elaboration likelihood model: review, critique and research agenda. European Journal of Marketing. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJM-12-2011-0776

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, neuroscience, social-psychology, sociology
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# Question
Title: Postgraduate level books on personality psychology
I have an undergraduate degree in psychology and I'm currently pursuing a master's degree in a different field. However, I am still interested in many aspects of psychology, including personality psychology. During my undergrad, I took two courses on personality, one dealing with personality at large, and one dealing with psychopathology. I'm looking for a more advanced book on personality psychology to read over the summer, perhaps a textbook that is read as part of a postgraduate degree in personality psychology. I'm not interested in psychopathology. Any recommendations?

# Answer
> 3 votes
The best place to start is probably THE personality psychologist, Gordon Allport. He wrote several texts that give a good overview of the issues facing the investigation of personality. He gives a fairly critical look at defining and measuring personality. Highly recommended reading if you plan on delving into personality theory.

His books on the topic:

Personality: A psychological interpretation. (1937) New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.

Becoming: Basic Considerations for a Psychology of Personality. (1955). New Haven : Yale University Press.

The Nature of Personality: Selected Papers. (1950; 1975). Westport, CN : Greenwood Press.

The Person in Psychology (1968). Boston: Beacon Press

The Psychologist's Frame of Reference (1940).

Pattern and Growth in Personality. (1961). Harcourt College Pub.

Personality & social encounter. (1960). Boston: Beacon Press.

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Tags: personality
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# Question
Title: Relationships Between Specific Behavioral Characteristics Associated With Clinical Diagnosis of Narcissists & Sociopaths
In the past 3½ decades, I've discussed, read, and studied a significant number of mental health practitioner claims, random anecdotal experiences, and clinical study abstract summaries & reports regarding what is now called Narcissist Personality Disorder (NPD) and how this disorder relates to the psychological condition referred to as a sociopath. When I first looked into how the clinical community faced these two very similar conditions, I found most qualified sources to be mostly consistent in what they indicated.

However, always open to opposing views, I've also read or been informed by others that seem to indicate the earlier claims have all made the same assumptions, and what was considered a common error. The conflicting sources suggested that the earlier sources all conflated the clinical behavior characteristics of the NPD condition with those exhibited by and leading to a diagnosis of a sociopath.

In response to the resulting muddied waters, I found some clarity, at least to myself, in the notion that all Sociopaths are narcissists, but not all narcissists are sociopaths. In other words, when further confused and contradicted, I've always had a tendency to fall back onto those conclusions I arrived at years ago when first settling on a satisfactory understanding of the two.

This understanding concluded that if a subject who was previously diagnosed with NPD was to be clinically diagnosed with the more severe condition of a sociopath, (I assume when formally diagnosed, the vernacular is more sophisticated than what I'm using here) the mental health practitioner making the determination would be required to observe, document, and assess any quantified increases in magnitudes of or changes to exhibited behavioral characteristics common to both the diagnosis of the NPD and the sociopath conditions, as well as any behavioral characteristics associated with either condition but presenting in novel form with the subject.

From what I can remember, a number of these exhibited behaviors were very similar to, if not the same as those used in diagnosing someone with NPD, just at some sorry of elevated measure. Others were similar to those used with NPD, but would exhibit distinct differences if done so by a sociopath. Finally, some of those exhibited behaviors which contribute to the diagnosis of a sociopath seemed completely divorced from and in a few instances conflict with those suggesting a diagnosis of NPD.

Frustratingly, what I have not retained are the specific characteristics or symptoms which triggered the very conversations I remember having. But what I do remember, and do so very clearly, was the lack of intellectual satisfaction I always felt walking away from these discussion related to the unreconciled relationship I always felt these two conditions have to one another, where the parallels in behavior characteristics begin and where they end, or whether or not my fall back conclusion which always seemed to relation static was actually valid, at least from the clinical standpoint.

I know I'm going to be told I can only present one question per post. As such, I'm going to get ahead of that criticism by providing my only question here:

**Are there any relationships, similarities, or differences between the specific behavioral characteristics associated with a clinical diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) and those associated with a clinical diagnosis of a sociopath?**

That said, the following are not questions to be answered, rather meant to ensure those attempting to provide an answer have been provided a clear understanding of precisely what the single question above is trying to ask.

The following should not be considered additional questions needed to be answered, that would be very anti-stack of me to do. Instead, the following offer additional granularity and detail in the form of drill down questions. These are meant for purposes of guidance in answering the single, not a multiple set of questions noted in bold above.

Basically, I'm restating the same question in a few different ways at a few different levels to ensure the full breadth of the single question is understood and hopefully answered:

1.1 - What are the actual, clinical differences between NPD and the disorder colloquially known as a sociopath?

1.2 - Are the two conditions, NPD and the condition of sociopath, actually considered to be clinically related?

1.3 - Is the relationship really as simplistic as it always just a case of a narcissist exhibiting more acute levels of behavior which is common to both conditions, meet or exceeded a certain behavioral threshold, and thus jumped to the diagnosis of the more severe of the two conditions, and is now a sociopath?

1.4 - If that's the case, what are the specific behavioral characteristics used to make this determination in the clinical setting?

1.5 - What are the predetermined thresholds, how is the associated behavior quantified, and how are those metrics measured?

See, those are simply all small parts of the same question. That's why they are numbered 1.X, to ensure that they are simply detailed parts of the single question in bold.

For the record, this question is being asked to assist me in determining whether specific people I've been exposed to during my life at various times and to various effects to me, were as I suspect, likely diagnosable as sociopaths. All are narcissists, but the lines of delineation are not stated very clearly.

# Answer
The Atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour uses a lexical approach that may assist with your question(Mobbs, 2020). The atlas catalogued over 20,000 English language words describing emotion, personality traits and behaviour. The emotions, traits and behaviours used to define each construct are visualised using heat-maps in two dimensions: affiliation and dominance.

The narcissistic and sociopath disorders you refer to are shown with other constructs for comparison:

* Narcissistic personality disorder (Fig AC)
* Antisocial personality disorder (Sociopath) (Fig X)
* Conduct disorder (Fig Q)
* Dark Triad (Fig H)
* Criminal behaviour (Fig K)
* Synonyms of unethical (Fig J)

From a lexical perspective, these constructs are all located in the top-left hand corner of the atlas thus highly related. To specifically answer your question, the similarities of these constructs are that these behaviours are all dominant and disaffiliative. The differences between these constructs is a matter of degree.

The DSM-5 is the clinician's diagnostic manual. The DSM prescribes a number of time and severity based diagnostic criteria to clinically diagnose each specific disorder. The relevant chapters of the DSM are concise and in plain English, so suggest you read the relevant chapters for each specific disorder(American Psychiatric Association, 2013). In addition to the DSM, one would need several years of education and clinical experience to correctly apply the DSM, so would urge caution in attempting diagnosis.

**References**

American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). American Psychiatric Association.

Mobbs, A. E. D. (2020). An atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour. PloS One, 15(1), e0227877. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227877

**Declared interest**

I am the author of the atlas paper.
> 1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, abnormal-psychology, clinical-psychology
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# Question
Title: Revenge attitude: is it innate or acquired in human
I am trying to understand what is the root cause for revenge? I understand anger is caused by the gap between expectation/anticipation and the reality. But as to revenge, I am not satisfied just with identity related or social order maintenance or reciprocity. While resources pointing to the direction of getting started, any valuable input, views, opinions and research outcomes would be very much helpful.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Open access sources from Google Scholar:

Jackson, J. C., Choi, V. K., & Gelfand, M. J. (2019). Revenge: A multilevel review and synthesis. Annual Review of Psychology, 70, 319-345. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010418-103305

Lambert, A. J., Eadeh, F. R., & Hanson, E. J. (2019). Anger and its consequences for judgment and behavior: Recent developments in social and political psychology. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 60, 103-173. https://psyarxiv.com/svcux/download?format=pdf

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, social-psychology, personality
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# Question
Title: Question about the role of the sensory receptors compared to the sensory cortoces
I have two questions regarding the fact that each sensory receptor has its specific ion channels that open in response to a specific stimulus (for example, ion channel that opens when streching for somatosensation), and is connected to correspondent sensory cortex.

1. Did our sensory system developed perfectly so that each ion channels in the sensory receptors are connecting to the corespondent sensory cortex? If not, can you elaborate and give examples?
2. Theoretically, what would happen if they weren't corresponding? And specific, if for example, we had sound receptor that was connected to the visual cortex?

Thanks!

# Answer
Without going into the business of ion channels, sensory receptors connect to specific brain areas (although there are relays in-between). For vision it is V1 in the occipital cortex, for audition A1 in the temporal cortex, for somato-perception S1 in the parietal cortex. Olfaction, gustation and the vestibular systems don't seem to have a clear "primary" area like audition, vision and somatoperception. The orbito-frontal cortex seems to be quite involved in olfaction/gustation, but it's also involved in a lot of different stuff. For the vestibular system some areas of the parietal cortex are also quite involved, but also in other stuff.

Primary areas receive direct connections from the sensory organs (again, with relays in-between) and are organized topically. For example, the visual cortex has a retinotopic organization where adjacent cells in the cortex encode information from adjacent cells on the retina. A1 has a (somewhat looser) tonotopic organization, and S1 has a "body-topic" organization (called the homunculus). Those pathways a quite fixed and quite distinct. There is no way to have a "mix-up" between them, and you never see that. There can be some "mix-up" within one pathway. For example amblyopia in vision where the visual cortex does not develop as expected and results in some visual loss (less than 20/20 vision in one eye).

So yes, the sensory organs develop well (with some exceptions) and project to very distinct areas all over the brain (frontal, parietal, occipital and temporal lobes). What would happen if you rewired the brain is unclear. There was one famous experiment where optical nerves in ferrets were connected to the auditory cortex. Experimenters observed a cortical map similar to what they would have expected in visual areas. So it suggests that at least the visual and auditory cortices are "interchangeable". But then these areas have their own connections to other areas, so what actually happens is anyone guess (do you "hear" visual stimuli?). Those are deep philosophical questions, similar to "do we all see colors similarly?", that we are far to have a good handle on scientifically.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual\_cortex

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory\_cortex

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary\_somatosensory\_cortex

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical\_homunculus
> 0 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, cognitive-neuroscience, brain, sensation, sensory-perception
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# Question
Title: Aesthetic pleasure hormone or neurotransmitter
When a human watched a beautiful painting, a beautiful animation, sees a beautiful nature scene what hormone or neurotransmitter is produced in the organism that he feels the aesthetic pleasure?

Also is it the same chemical as when we hear a beautiful music?

If there are many like for example dopamine, oxytocin and endorphin then which one is the main responsible for the pleasure?

# Answer
μ-opioid receptors (MOR) have been demonstrated to be involved in our perception of beautiful faces (https://www.medicaldaily.com/seeing-pretty-faces-rewards-brain-perceiving-beauty-all-chemical-reaction-269074).

Here’s one study that demonstrates an uptick in dopamine upon listening to music: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-12135590
> 2 votes

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Tags: neuro-transmitters, aesthetics
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# Question
Title: Can I still get involved in psychology/neuroscience with a computer science degree from several years ago?
In the three years since getting my B.S. in Computer Science I have become more interested in biology again (my original major) and also in psychology and neuroscience. My current job -- which is more Information Technology than actual Computer Science -- is not fulfilling. My level of interest when learning about the brain and/or mind is so much higher than, say, learning about the architecture of some web application.

* Is moving into psychology and/or neuroscience as drastic of a switch as I think it is? Does anyone have any advice for how best to start down that path?
* If I decide to do this, I am assuming some graduate school will be required. Given that I finished undergrad with just average grades, is it a fool's errand to even consider going down this road?

# Answer
> 3 votes
I don't think it's foolish.

If you want to make the switch, I'd look into BS-requiring lab tech jobs in labs doing things you are interested in, and trying to apply for graduate school in a year or two if that works out well.

These are jobs that recently-graduated students often do for a year or two while strengthening an application for graduate school, and in my experience a CS background can be quite useful to many labs. The lab I work in often takes on undergraduate assistants in CS, and some of those students choose to keep working after graduating (or come from elsewhere after graduating).

Titles for these jobs vary a lot by institution, but I've seen "research intern", "junior scientist", "research technician", etc. You can both look at job postings and try to contact professors directly; know that both methods may have a high rejection rate. You'll have the best chance if you both a) learn enough about what particular labs are doing to be able to describe why working there would interest you, and b) don't paint yourself into such a narrow focus that many opportunities are ruled out. Don't be afraid to contact past professors even if you've been out of school for a bit and ask their advice.

Expect to take a pay cut compared to your industry job, and to not have much (any) negotiating power. The things you would want to stress when you apply are that you are interested in making a career move to academia and pursuing a graduate degree, but want to get research experience. Look for jobs where you'll have an opportunity to work on projects and *publish* rather than becoming de facto IT support.

Poor undergraduate grades will hurt you - grad school applications can be very competitive, especially at better known schools (but don't discount other research institutions; good mentors are more important than Ivy-tier names). Your goal would be to accrue research experience and solid letters of recommendation: these can compensate a lot for average grades. At the same time, you should make it a personal goal to learn more about the specific fields of research and research questions you might be interested in, even if they're outside the work you start doing initially.

I'm speaking from a US perspective, so if you are elsewhere things may be a bit different. Good luck.

# Answer
> 3 votes
I second everything Bryan Krause said. I'm just adding few more thoughts and personal experience. I'm originally an electrical engineer, I started a PhD in psychophysics, got involved in some physiology projects along the way, and decided after my PhD (now quite a long time ago) to switch to basically straight physiology. Having an engineering background is not hurtful, on the contrary. If you check you'll realize there is a high proportion of engineers among neuroscientists. That's not a coincidence, modern neuroscience has been strongly influenced by electrical engineering, information theory, and increasingly computer science. But when you get involved in research none of these distinctions are really meaningful. On a given week I might participate in a surgery, program a new experiment, fix an electrical recording system and write a paper. No one cares what my original training was, only whether I'm able to do these stuff or not.

That being said there is a difference between how to think as an engineer (what's the most efficient way to solve a problem) and as a scientist (what does that mean). I've seen plenty of engineers unable to change the way they think. In science it is better to fail at something while understanding why, than succeeding without knowing why. I would still encourage you to do a PhD even if you want to remain an engineer, there is a big need of high-skills research engineers. Thinking like a scientist is really the only skill you need. If you are motivated you'll quickly learn any topic you want. You don't even need to be that smart to make it through grad-school frankly.

To answer your first question I would recommend you read a few introductory textbooks. See if you find it easy to go through them. Non-fiction books (or blogs, or whatever) are great, but deceiving because they make science sound exciting. The truth is 90% of science is painfully boring. You need to make sure you find even technical aspects interesting (e.g. I find phylogenetics or neuroanatomy fascinating, but I'm sure I would be unable to complete a PhD in these fields because doing these experiments sounds so boring to me).

To answer your second question getting into a prestigious grad school will be very challenging without good grades. But don't let that discourage you. I wasn't an especially good student either and I became what I would describe as a successful scientist nonetheless. I can guarantee you no one cares what grades I had in grad-school, and even less in undergrad. That's also pretty common among scientists. Diligently learning everything you are taught does not necessarily correlate with critical thinking (as long as you learn other stuff of course). I totally agree with Bryan Krause you shouldn't get too concerned about getting into a prestigious grad-school. (1) There are plenty of good mentors in "lower-tier" universities. The overall quality of the grad-school might be a little lower but that does not nearly compensate for having a good mentor. (2) I often tell undergrads and grad students that a PhD is more like a resume: it demonstrates you have learned techniques but no one expect you to do amazing work. Just like grades, no one cares where you went to grad school. I don't know where any of my colleagues did their PhD. (3) Prestigious grad-schools are pretty toxic environments: very competitive and not very friendly.

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Tags: neuroscience, psychology
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# Question
Title: Is there an analog to the five factor model for emotion?
To the best of my understanding, the five factor model of personality comes from a factor analysis on a large list of adjectives that can be used to describe an individual's personality. It is validated, in some sense, by its usefulness in predicting behavior and life outcomes in a wide range of contexts.

It seems like something very similar could be done for emotion. I.e. list words describing a persons present state (angry, remorseful, sad, bitter, frustrated, etcetera) and do a factor analysis on those. Then, see if the resulting model (assuming that the analysis yields something useful) is predictive of shorter term / state dependent behavior.

Has any work like this been done?

# Answer
> 1 votes
The recently published Atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour is possibly what you are looking for(Mobbs, 2020). Over 3,000 emotions are included in the analysis, a summary of which is below. The article has a more comprehensive version. The five factor model was derived through factorisation whereas the atlas was developed using a lexical/network approach.

**References**

Mobbs AED (2020) An atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour. PLOS ONE 15(1): e0227877. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227877

**Declared Interest**

I am the author of the atlas paper.

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Tags: emotion, statistics, big-five
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# Question
Title: What is the most comprehensive system of describing human emotions or states of mind?
Reading about the human mind, I sometimes come across attempts to classify human emotions using various scales. The one that comes to mind most often is the 6 scale circle model shown below.

**Is there one or more models of human states of mind or emotions that as of 2014 is most accepted or best regarded by the fields of cogsci/psychology/psychiatry?**

To clarify my question - using a model like that, any ordinary experience of "being" can be identified as consisting of various shades of different emotions represented by the model. ?

or

or even an attempt to create a periodic table:

# Answer
There a are globally two perspectives

* the discrete perspective uses a categorization system. There are many different systems, with more or less core emotions and sub-emotions. As the one shown in your post.
* the dimensional perspective considers one, mainly two, sometimes more, scales to identify an emotional value. Valence (happy/sad) and arousal (sleepy/excited) are quite frequent for those models.

It's not so easy to choose between the two perspectives. And there are different models for each perspective. Discrete based models are easier to handle by anyone because they make use of usual names. But it suffers a bias of interpretation of those names meaning. In this way, indicating a level of valence or arousal is maybe more accurate, but less user-friendly.

For the dimensional perspective, Scherer's Component Process Model version (2005) is quite comprehensive, based on the updated model of Russell (2003).

Depending of the model, some tools are developed to assess the emotion.

**References:**

Scherer, K. (2005) *What are emotions and how can they be measured?*

Russell, J. A. (2003). Core affect and the psychological construction of emotion. *Psychological Review*, 110, 145-172.
> 15 votes

# Answer
The recently published Atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour catalogues over 3,000 emotions (Mobbs, 2020). A summary of the emotions is below with a more comprehensive version included in the article. The atlas uses the dimensions of affiliation and dominance compared to the Russell model of affect and vallence. The article identifies the neurological and hormonal basis for the selection of affiliation and dominance as dimensions.

**References**

Mobbs AED (2020) An atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour. PLOS ONE 15(1): e0227877. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227877

Russell, J. A., Lewicka, M., & Niit, T. (1989). A cross-cultural study of a circumplex model of affect. Journal of personality and social psychology, 57(5), 848. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.57.5.848

**Declared Interest**

I am the author of the atlas paper.
> 3 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, emotion, measurement, philosophy-of-mind, categorisation
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# Question
Title: Could a psychiatrist have their license revoked for using a new type therapy procedure on patients?
I'm a writer and, in this story I'm currently writing, a psychiatrist researches a new therapy method before finally testing it on his patients. My plan, however, was to eventually have his license revoked, but I wonder on what grounds exactly? Would it be because of using an officially unapproved therapy on patients? Does this mean that a therapy can only be publicly used if approved by either a state board that oversees psychologist/psychiatrist or the ethics committee of the APA?

I apologize if this is a strange or weirdly worded question, but I'm not sure how to delicately word this.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Gross and/or repeated breaches of ethical standards is normally cause for revocation of any professional licence (e.g. psychology, medicine, law, accounting, engineering). Possibly relevant ethical standards may include:

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Tags: psychiatry, therapy, ethics
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