# Question
Title: Performance of a group solving a cognitive task: How does it scale?
Some intellectual, cognitive and perceptual tasks can be solved collaboratively. It is common knowledge that group performance is better than that of each single individual due to exchange of information (and without going into issues of motivation).

One widely known phenomenon is *Wisdom of Crowds* \- when a group decision is much more accurate due to the averaging of individual biases. However, it is not the only possibility. Sometimes, a task can be divided into parts (and each participant works efficiently on his/ her own). Sometimes there are tasks too difficult to solve but easy to demonstrate that an answer is correct (and it suffices to have only one person in the group who answers correctly to make the group decision correct).

What I am interested in is, how the group performance scales with the group size? (The measure of performance can be error rate, time needed to complete a certain task or the deviation from the right answer.)

The question is motivated by one of my recent works, arXiv:1109.2044.

EDIT (clarification):

I am the most interested in low-level cognitive tasks (e.g. perceptual or linguistic), especially two-choice decisions (but also multiple choice, counting of blobs, solving a puzzle...). However, other quantifiable measures for cognitive task (including, say, time to complete a certain programming project vs number of programmers) are of my interest as well.

When it comes to the relation to my paper, I am curious if I miss an important reference or if my theoretical results can be supported (or undermined) by any existing experimental results (or even related in other context).

# Answer
It's a big topic. The relationship between group size and performance on a cognitive task is going to vary by several factors.

Here are a few thoughts:

* The form of interdependence adopted by the group on the task will matter. When everyone can just work independently (e.g., taking calls in a call centre), then it makes sense that output would increase almost linearly with increasing group size, in the absence of motivation or learning issues.
* In the context of project teams, software teams, and so forth, I imagine the issues would be a lot more complex and that in some situations increasing group size might even reduce performance of the team. There a few articles cited here that discuss this.
* A classic study in the context, albeit from a motor task, of the relationship between group-size and group performance is that by Ringelmann (see the wikipedia article) that looked at rope pulling power as a function of group size. The basic finding was that average pulling power declined with group size. This has been interpreted as evidence of social loafing, but their are also coordination issues as well.
* Some tasks are heavily influenced by the performance of the weakest or strongest member. For example, a musical group will often sound bad if only one member plays poorly. Or other tasks it will be strongest member, as you say if you have are playing at a trivia night, and you have one person with all the right answers on the table.
> 12 votes

# Answer
I recently read a paper, which showed a mathematical model for performance scaling of research groups in different scientific branches. I'm aware you were originally asking for smaller "cognitive tasks" and project-like group-processes in the comments, but output and quality of publications/patents is probably anyway a better and more objective measure on a larger scale. Also, the paper shows that optimal group sizes in different academic disciplines varies strongly, so comparing, e.g. single groups in math and biology solving tasks is probably not very meaningful (Jeromys 1st comment) for your original question and only valid for exactly that discipline/distinct cognitive task, which would make a general analysis/conclusions tricky/impossible.

Assumptions:

> The extent to which a group’s research quality is higher or lower than average is a function of many parameters such as the innate calibre, education and experience of its members, the quality of managerial support and of facilities and infrastructure, the impact of external and international collaborations, the prestige and confidence inspired by the institution and by past successes, etc. All of these parameters contribute to the quality of an individual group but, in general, research quality is size independent according to this argument. \[...\] However, it would be naive to retain this viewpoint alone because it neglects the importance of interactions between group members.

The model:

A group has $N$ members, therefore the total number of pairs of individuals along which channels of communication can open is

$N\_{T}=N(N-1)/2$ (quadratical scaling)

So group quality tends to rise continuosly with quantity. The main statement of the article however is that the rise of quality is independent of group quantity after a group reaches a upper critical mass ($NN\_{C}/2$ linear scaling) and increaes only with much smaller slope further, basically because a single researcher can only communicate meaningfully with a limited number of other researchers (sub-groups build within big groups, specialization)

Comparison with available data:

I will not copy paste all the data fits here, look them up in the paper, well worth and interesting, many academic disciplines are compared in different countries and match the model and quadratic scaling quite well in different academic disciplines.

So the scaling for groups is the same, as mainly determined by meaningful face-to-face communication, the different critical mass among different academic disciplines has probably to do with the necessary amount of researcher you need to run, for example, a high-technology research laboratory (many students who master the single instruments) vs. mathematics (formalized language, not the broad spectrum of problems like in natural sciences) vs. humanities (reading and discussing a lot of literature)

Implications:

To improve overall research performance in a country, increase groups below the size of the critical mass instead of further increasing of already abnormal big research groups, where a slope for performance scaling dependent on $N$ still exists, but is much smaller than below the critical mass

Side note: Apart from this critical research group size I'm aware of a new trend in bigger companies to forbid or restrict e-mailing for the majority of employees, because only a marginal amount of this e-mails is really important according to studies (15% I rememember mentioned by Volkswagen AG, but not the source currently)

**References**
Kenna R, Berche B (2011). Critical masses for academic research groups and consequences for higher education research policy and management. Higher Education Management and Policy 23 (3), 9-29.
> 11 votes

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Tags: decision-making, mathematical-psychology, problem-solving, collaboration, wisdom-of-crowds
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# Question
Title: Is it possible to distinguish recall and calculation?
Say I ask subjects what $20 \cdot 20$ is. Is there any way, besides introspection, to evaluate whether subjects recalled the answer or calculated the answer? In general, I would expect that the recalled answer would be presented faster, however some calculations can be done quickly and sometimes it can take a while to recall information.

# Answer
A consensus within cognitive psychology is that there really is no such thing as "computation", though that depends how you define it. It seems all arithmetic ( + - * / ) is simply fact retrieval from long-term memory. More complex problems simply rely on the fact that we can break them down into simpler problems. For instance, when you learn to solve 364+192, you're really doing a set of simpler retrieval operations, e.g.:

```
Add 4+2 (6)
Add 9+6 (15)
Add 3+1+1 (carrying the one-- 5)

```

The only true "computation" aside from fact-retrieval is counting, which we resort to when we don't have a fact required... e.g., If I forget 4x6, then I'll add `4+4+4+4+4+4`

There's still the question of whether someone memorizes 20x20=400, or whether they break this down into smaller components (2x2=4, add two 0s). It would be hard to tell what strategy someone is using here, but reaction time may give a clue. Retrieval time is going to be influenced by the number of steps in the problem, and the strength of the memory for each retrieval. John Anderson has used his ACT-R (http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/) model explicitly to model reaction time in arithmetic which can give you quantitative predictions. Still, I think in most cases it will be difficult to distinguish between such a small difference in reaction time.

Re: cognitive arithmetic as mental fact-retrieval, see Ashcraft, 1992. Or, this quote from Ashcraft, 1995:

> As I have suggested elsewhere (Ashcraft, 1992), a broad consensus has developed across models for issues of basic memory representation and processing. Current theories (e.g., Ashcraft 1992; Campbell & Oliphant, 1992; Sigel & Jenkins, 1989) propose that the simple whole-number facts (i.e. single-digit operands 0 + / x 0 through 9 + /x 9 are stored in an associative or network representation in long-term memory,with the strength of the network connections among operands and answers reflecting the degree of learning and mastery, and probably the degree to which the representations can be accessed via automatic processing. \[…\] Processing strategies other than retrieval are prominent only in Siegler's model \[…\]

M.H. Ashcraft (1992). Cognitive arithmetic: A review of data and theory. Cognition, 44, 75-106.

M.H. Ashcraft (1995). cognitive psychology and simple arithmetic: a review of summary and new directions. mathematical cognition.
> 9 votes

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Tags: memory, methodology
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# Question
Title: Does completing a thesis make you a better practicing psychologist?
I am a strong believer in the importance of the scientist-practitioner model for psychology. I think that training in the scientific method is a major component of what makes a person trained in psychology more employable.

In many jurisdictions, a student wanting to be registered as a psychologists is required to complete one more research theses. For example, in Australia, a student will typically complete an undergraduate fourth year thesis and a thesis as part of a larger masters or doctoral program. While it is obvious that training in research will make a student a better researcher, I have heard some people question whether completing a research thesis will make the student a better practising psychologist.

Thus, my questions are:

* What empirical research exists that has tested whether completing a research thesis in psychology makes you a better practising psychologist?
* What theoretical frameworks justify or challenge the value of completing a research thesis in terms of improving practical skills required by a psychologist?

# Answer
> 10 votes
You might want to study differences in PsyD and PhD clinical psychologists. The thesis per se doesn't seem to be the question but the focus on research. A PsyD dissertation generally does not involve the conducting of an original line of research while the PhD does. I can't think of a better way to equate your groups at the moment.

As a comment I'd like to mention that the benefits of a scientist-practitioner model reach beyond the immediate and are best seen long term, as the practice of psychology evolves. Someone trained only in therapeutic techniques is trained in a stagnant psychology and is ill equipped to understand new research that motivates changes in the field. They may change but the decision to won't be as well grounded in science and will be more based on their clinical judgment.

If you've ever been to a clinical conference where the budding field of clinical neuroscience was endorsed by a speaker through a careful presentation of (astoundingly powerful) research and logical argument you'd see an embarrassing number of practitioners making serious scientific errors dismissing the idea. And it's not just a bias against new but an inability to make sound scientific judgments. The ridiculous case of Autism and vaccines and how many psychologists actually endorsed that research highlights how we need better scientific training. A training that many an experienced scientist can tell you really only comes through practice.

If you come up with a better way to produce a clinician on the day after they graduate then you haven't necessarily come up with a better way to train a psychologist.

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Tags: clinical-psychology
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# Question
Title: Does the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis apply to artificial (specifically programming) languages?
As a computer programmer, I have an intuition that the idea "language influences thought" is very relevant to programmers and programming languages.

* Is there any research that examines whether artificial languages influence thought?
* How can such a theory be expressed as a testable hypothesis?

# Answer
Firstly realize that Sapir-Whorf was proven wrong in the strong sense, but is accepted in the weak sense. I don't think there's really any doubt now that learning new symbols and languages, or just enhancing your vocabulary in one language, influences thought. Many mathematicians are especially proud of how accurately proofs communicate, and having gained this accuracy, the mind comes to expect it more and loathe ambiguities. You see this happen with a lot of people in quantitative disciplines.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of research, but you're not the first to think of it. Many programmers before have too (see wiki's references):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic\_relativity#Linguistic\_relativity\_and\_artificial\_languages

Of course, none of them were neuroscientists or psychologists. To test for **causality** would be difficult to control for (you'd have to provide a mechanism and we're only just about getting there at the neural systems level). On the other hand, I'm sure you would find a **correlation** between programmers and certain kinds of behavioral and cognitive traits very easily.

In the end though, I don't really think there's any doubt among neuroscientists or psychologists; it's just a matter of finding the neural mechanism. Language has been a pain in that regard.
> 14 votes

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Tags: linguistics
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# Question
Title: What type of behaviour is showing, but withholding, a reward?
A specific example of what I mean is: when you go shopping at a supermarket with a loyalty card system, and you do not participate, the receipt say something along the lines of

> If you had a loyalty card you would have earned 20 points.

My first impression was that this is some sort of punishment, i.e. because of your behaviour (not having a loyalty card) we're throwing these points that you earned away.

This is based on definition 1, for punishment, from the Penguin dictionary of psychology (2nd ed.):

> The administration of some aversive stimulus contingent upon a particular behaviour.

Then I wondered if it was just negative reinforcement, because the message would go away if I signed up for the card.

This is based on definition 2, for negative reinforcement, from the same book:

> Any event, stimulus or behaviour which, when its removal is made contingent upon a response, will increase the frequency or likelihood of that response.

Do either of these fit the bill? Compare that message with telling someone "You could had have this cake, if only you had been a few minutes earlier. Now I will throw the cake in the bin."

Is it possible to categorise this type of behaviour in behaviourism?

# Answer
The problem is that this doesn't fall under any of these conditioning definitions in behaviourism because the store isn't really trying to condition a response. They're just trying to get you to do one thing once. The behavioural techniques you mention are designed so that you get an organism to make a conditioned response spontaneously whenever the conditioned stimulus occurs (or is anticipated to occur or a second order associate occurs.. ok, it's more complicated than that).

It's also not really considered conditioning when it's done through insight.

That doesn't mean there's no science behind this. There's lots and it falls more under behavioural economics than psychology, unfortunately. (Consumer psychology hasn't really moved to be as complementary to behavioural economics as it probably should be.)

That said, these kinds of "nags" would be closest to negative reinforcement. They're encouraging a behaviour that removes an aversive stimulus... being reminded of a gain you did not receive. Punishment is typically more to extinguish a behaviour. They certainly don't want you to stop shopping. Sometimes it's hard to see what it is until you figure out the goal behaviour.

(As an aside, what they want more than anything is your personal information. That's what they're trying to get.)
> 9 votes

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Tags: terminology, behaviorism, consumer-psychology
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# Question
Title: Introductory resources on developmental psychology/neuroscience
I'd like to be able to answer questions such as:

* What neuro/psychological functions underly competences such as empathy (or others - see background below)?
* What neurotransmitters are of particular importance in those functions?
* What genes are known to be associated with those neurotransmitters?

**Any suggestions on textbooks or review papers that would be a good starting point?**

---

### Background

I'm an M.Sc. student in epidemiology (with a psychology undergrad) and my thesis is on "gene x environment" interactions (GxE). The outcome I'm interested in is child competence (construct which can be subdivided in subcomponents such as compliance, attention & empathy) at 18 months. The main environmental predictor is mother sensitivity.

I now need to focus on some specific genes and would like to be able to choose those with a clear rationale (rather than, say, search through the literature to find the most commonly studied genes); However, at this point I lack the knowledge required to do so.

# Answer
For an introduction to neurotransmitters (and the field of neuroscience) a good book to start with is Principles of Neural Science (Kandel, Schwartz, and Jessel, 2000). It is a standard reference used by many undergraduate and graduate courses in neuroscience/related fields. The next edition is due for publication in October. During development neurotransmitters act different than in adults, so you may also be interested on a review in this topic (Herlenius & Lagercrantz, 2004); Although the time frame is earlier than what you are looking at.

In general I think you should start off by looking for possible neural mechanisms and any associated brain regions underlying the specific phenomenon you are interested in (in your example, empathy, or other subcomponents of social-emotional competence measured by the Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment (Carter et al., 2003)). I.e. Singer (2006) reviews the neural basis of empathy (as well as Theory of Mind); one section talks about implications for development.

After knowing what brain regions to focus on, you can look into anatomical/physiological research for better understanding of cellular type/structure, connectivity, synaptic characteristics, and neurotransmitters specific to these regions as well as genes that may affect normal function of a transmitter (i.e. genes that control protein channels, enzymes/transmitter metabolism etc.). Here are two newer reviews, which link empathy to neuronal circuits and genes (Chakrabarti et al., 2009; Walter, 2012).
> 6 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, reference-request, developmental-psychology
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# Question
Title: What is the relationship between post-traumatic stress disorder and fugue states?
The introduction of the new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders ("DSM-5") is on the horizon. With it are coming some new, evidence-based diagnoses for dissociative disorders \[1\], which include conditions such as dissociative fugue (which will now be classified as dissociative amnesia) and dissociative identity disorder.

Fugue states have always been fascinating to me, Wikipedia states that they are

> a rare psychiatric disorder characterized by reversible amnesia for personal identity, including the memories, personality and other identifying characteristics of individuality...Fugues are usually precipitated by a stressful episode, and upon recovery there may be amnesia for the original stressor.

Post-traumatic stress disorder is also precipitated by a stressful (and potentially life threatening) episode, and causes anxiety and autonomic hyperexcitablity.

I've never seen anything written about the level of stressor that can induce a fugue state, but based on their common etiology, I would assume that PTSD and fugue states are related psychologically and neurologically.

To what extent is this true, are these two seemingly different end products of the same initial event? Is there an anatomical substrate that is common to both? Does changing the status of "dissociative fugue" -\> "dissociative amnesia" mean they should be considered in isolation?

> \[1\] Spiegel, D., Loewenstein, R. J., et al. (2011), Dissociative disorders in DSM-5. Depress. Anxiety, 28: E17–E45. doi: 10.1002/da.20923

# Answer
> 10 votes
Dissociative Disorders are really fascinating to me as well. Fugue states/episodes as well as dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder) in particular.

PTSD must be differentiated from disorders that can exhibit phenomenological similarities, such as borderline personality disorder and dissociative disorders (including dissociative amnesia). I include borderline personality disorder because it is \[particularly\] difficult to distinguish from PTSD, and the two can coexist or even be causally related!

A stressor or traumatic event is the causative factor in the development of PTSD, by definition. As people respond to events as being traumatic differently, the stressor alone is not sufficient enough to cause the disorder. In this case, the presence of intense fear or horror is necessary. The clinical features of PTSD include avoidance and emotional numbing, among other things, and patients may present dissociative states, which is the focus of this topic.

> "Patients with dissociative disorders do not usually have the degree of avoidance behavior, autonomic hyperarousal, or history of trauma that patients with PTSD report."

An essential feature of dissociative amnesia is "an inability to recall important personal information, *usually of a traumatic or stressful nature*". As in this (as well as borderline personality disorder and PTSD) disorder, many patients have histories of prior abuse or trauma.

Symptoms found only in dissociative amnesia include features of recurrent blackouts, fugue states/episodes, fluctuations in skills, habits, and knowledge. Patients presenting PTSD and/or with borderline personality disorder usually don't present these symptoms. The common factor/symptom is the possible presence of dissociative episodes/states, though they may be precipitated by differing presentation of stressors.

Patients with borderline personality disorder can present transient or short-lived dissociative (or even psychotic) episodes that are almost "circumscribed, fleeting, or doubtful".

Sorry, now I worry I may not have properly answered your question(s). Liken to how different stressors or traumatic events can be experienced in varying degrees in different people, different people can cope or respond differently to them as well. PTSD (like hypervigilance), borderline personality disorder (intense black-and-white thinking, emotional lability), and dissociative disorders (amnesia, blackouts, etc.).

### References

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Tags: abnormal-psychology, psychiatry, ptsd
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# Question
Title: Is it possible to quantify cognitive bias?
We know that bias exists, and that it affects our judgment and perception. This effect has to do with user's experience in life. That experience is taken care of by the brain, and if you counter a situation again, you have a predefined pattern of how to react. This can be changed over time, if other experiences is added. Wikipedia defines cognitive bias as:

> a pattern of deviation in judgment that occurs in particular situations, leading to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality. Implicit in the concept of a "pattern of deviation" is a standard of comparison with what is normatively expected.

In other disciplines, measurement is a valuable tool. One would wish for a scale of deviation from "what is normally expected".

**Is it possible to quantify cognitive bias?**

# Answer
If you come to this question from the **bayesian tradition**, then there is only one place where you can sneak in bias: your prior. This dovetails nicely with the wikipedia definition:

> a pattern of deviation in judgment that occurs in particular situations, leading to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality.

Since bayesian updating is considered to be 'rational', the only place to sneak in 'irrationality' (in quotes because we are using these terms very loosely) is in the prior before you were given any evidence/observations. So for a bayesian, **measuring bias is measuring the prior**.

### Measuring a prior

Conveniently, Kalish et al. (2007) have a nice mechanism for measuring people's priors: have $n$ participants: $1, ... , n$ and give the first one some real input-output pairs on the relevant task to learn from. To train the $i + 1$th participant:

1. take the $i$th participant,
2. give them some inputs and ask them what they think the output should be,
3. use the input-output pairs they generate to train the $i+1$th participant.

Then, towards the end of the chain, the participants will start to converge towards their prior or inherent bias.

### Example

A real example is of people's bias in functional relationships. The first person is given 25 $(x,y)$ pairs from some function $y = f(x)$. A person at stage $i$ is given 25 $(x,y)$ pairs from the person at stage $i - 1$. The person is then tested by being given an $x$ value and asked for a $y$, 25 times. The results of this are passed on to the person at trial $i + 1$ as the training data. The results:

Show that people have a strong bias towards positive linear relationships. One could apply a similar procedure to other domains, but of course finding a good way to do so is a particular domain is an important research question for an experimental psychologist.

### References

* Kalish, M., Griffiths, T. & Lewandowsky, S. (2007). Iterated learning: Intergenerational knowledge transmission reveals inductive biases. *Psychonomic Bulletin & Review*, 14, 288-294. doi: 10.3758/BF03194066
> 9 votes

# Answer
Bias can be quantified in many different ways. In human memory research carried out in the cognitive psychology tradition, there are simple ways to think about it. One basic measure of cognitive bias is merely called *bias*, and it's a measure of the absolute accuracy of an individual's probability judgments. You average probability judgments across a given subject, then average performance, and subtract one from the other. The magnitude and direction of this discrepancy could be argued to reflect a task-specific cognitive bias.

That's not useful without a concrete example. Say I ask you 10 questions tapping your general knowledge about the world (e.g., "Who invaded Rome by crossing the Alps with elephants?") After you respond, I ask you to rate your confidence on a scale from 0% (not at all confident) to 100% (entirely confident). We do this for nine more questions.

After you've taken this short test, I can easily calculate your bias by averaging your accuracy across the 10 questions (say you get 2 wrong, so 80%) and subtracting your average confidence across those questions (say it's 73%). It's a 7% difference, and you were more accurate than you were confident, so your bias is said to be 7% -- you were *underconfident*.

There are lots of other ways you can think about this. Say, for instance, you weren't interested in overconfidence or underconfidence, but rather, just the degree to which your performance differed from your estimations. Here you could just use the squared value of the difference to represent probability accuracy.
> 8 votes

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Tags: methodology, measurement, bias
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title: Can learning styles be changed?

text:
# Question
Title: Can learning styles be changed?
Fleming's model of learning suggests 3 types of learners :

1. Visual: Learns by visually taking screenshots of data or by remembering pictures/scenes etc.
2. Auditory: Learns by hearing; can be by hearing oneself speak
3. Kinesthetic/Tactile: Learns by doing physically, experimenting or trying to convert a passive learning experience into a physically active/involved one.

I find myself to be a Tactile learner. I learn by doing, creating experiments. I struggle with imagery and audio for learning. Is there any way I can train myself to change my preferred learning type?

# Answer
> 9 votes
### Pashler et al

It is worth reading the critical review of learning styles by Pashler et al. To quote some of the summary:

> Our review of the literature disclosed ample evidence that children and **adults will, if asked, express preferences about how they prefer information to be presented to them**. There is also plentiful evidence arguing that people differ in the degree to which they have some fairly specific aptitudes for different kinds of thinking and for processing different types of information.

However, they reviewed experimental evidence comparing the learning outcomes of students that either were or were not assigned to educational interventions based on their learning style, and found almost no evidence of differences.

> which was judged to be a precondition for validating the educational applications of learning styles. Although the literature on learning styles is enormous, very few studies have even used an experimental methodology capable of testing the validity of learning styles applied to education. Moreover, of those that did use an appropriate method, several found results that flatly contradict the popular meshing hypothesis.
>
> We conclude therefore, that **at present, there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments into general educational practice**. Thus, limited education resources would better be devoted to adopting other educational practices that have a strong evidence base, of which there are an increasing number. However, given the lack of methodologically sound studies of learning styles, it would be an error to conclude that all possible versions of learning styles have been tested and found wanting; many have simply not been tested at all.

### References:

* Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., Bjork, R. (2009). Learning Styles Concepts and Evidence. *Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9*, 105. ARTICLE.

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Tags: learning, neuro-linguistic-prog, educational-psychology
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# Question
Title: What is the term for judging based on a simulation of the same parameters on oneself
Allow me to outline the observed process and three hypothetical examples below. For the sake of keeping the samples simple, I will ignore prior moral or religious convictions that a regular person would hold.

A person is confronted with an issue or approach to be judged. The person places themselves in the hypothetical situation and evaluates the implications for themselves according to their beliefs and convictions. The outcome of the evaluation determine the person's stance on the issue.

**What is the term for this decision mechanism?**

I figured "empathy" at first but that would require emotional transference with a real or hypothetical individual which is not given in this case. "Reverse Projection" came to mind as well, but it is a very loose fit and projection usually implies the unawareness of the person projecting while the process above is not influenced by the person's awareness.

---

### Examples of mechanism in use:

***Issue***: Is killing good or bad?

*Person*:

If someone were to kill me, it would end my life which is bad. --\> Killing is bad.

***Issue***: Should a government provide free healthcare financed by taxation to everyone without restriction?

*Person A* (history of health issues, low income job, insecure):

If I become sick again, I may not be able to afford the treatment myself. The added taxation will not concern my income bracket. The added security net thus increases chances of my survival at no or little expense to me. --\> Yes, a government should provide free healthcare financed by taxation to everyone without restriction.

*Person B* (health freak, high income job, arrogant):

I take care of my health which is why I am not sick. The added taxation would take away from the money I make while providing no additional benefit to me. --\> No, a government should not provide free healthcare financed by taxation to everyone without restriction.

# Answer
> 6 votes
In naïve realism, the subject acknowledges others' points of view while affirming the superiority of his/her own. Ross and Ward (1996) review the literature. I tried to write a summary of their fine paper, but I couldn't do it justice. I provide a link to it below.

In selfishness or unenlightened self-interest, the subject may consider multiple points of view, but ultimately chooses by myopically predicting maximal net personal gain.

In philosophy, moral relativism is concerned with (inter-personal or inter-group) differences in moral judgements, and whether and how they can be reconciled. My point here is that your subjects' moral relativistic beliefs may impact their decision mechanisms and thus may be worth surveying.

### References

> * Ross, L., & Ward, A. (1996) Naive realism in everyday life: Implications for social conflict and misunderstanding. In T. Brown, E. S. Reed & E. Turiel (Eds.), Values and knowledge (pp. 103–135). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. \[pdf\]

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Tags: terminology, social-psychology, decision-making
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# Question
Title: Has an upper-limit on the physical spacing represented by grid cells in Entorhinal cortex been probed?
There is considerable research reporting activity of unit recordings from grid cells in the Entorhinal cortex (e.g. \[1\]) - typically of rats running around in enclosed spaces.

Is there any information on the upper-limits of the physical distance represented by the spacing between grid cells (and hence presumably an upper-limit of the distance between place cells) in a single 'space', in any species?

\[1\] Sargolini F et.al. *Conjunctive representation of position, direction and velocity in entorhinal cortex* (2006). Science 312: 758-762.

# Answer
There are a few factors which confound an effort to find such an upper bound for grid size. Since these experiments normally require the rat to be attached to the recording apparatus to ensure the quality of the recorded data, the first obstacle would be perfecting the ability to record from the entorhinal cortex while the rat is untethered, through telemetry or bluetooth-enabled systems. Systems with enough throughput for the task are just becoming available (see here and here).

While the recording technology may be getting there slowly, in order to establish the periodicity of the grid cells, the rats must be trained to run around their environment using cues. In \[1\] the "polarity" of the bounded area was changed by rotating a white card in one corner. The grid cell activity is thus dependent on "allothetic" cues from the environment. Giving the rats *carte blanche* (forgive my pun) to roam around in a larger, less well defined area to test the scaling limits on grid cells might not provide enough constant visual cues to get a consistent grid map.

That's what we are not able know just yet, but what do we know?

In the rat it is known that the field spacing varies from 50 cm to 3 m depending on how far dorsal or ventral you are in the medial entorhinal cortex (within layer II). The average of the distance varied from 39-73 cm across different cells, though the standard deviation remains small (3.2 cm) \[1\]. Spacing and field size got larger as you moved from the postrhinal border (from dorsal to ventral) \[1\],\[2\]. Stabilization of the measurements required at least some exposure to the experimental enclosure before measurements were taken.

In a rectangular area, the grid cells form a tiling of equilateral triangles, with the grid points at each mutual vertex. In \[2\], the spatial periodicity of the grids was tested by placing the rats on a track, rather than in an enclosure, controlling for one of the dimensions. This supports the above notion that to strengthen the knowledge about the grid cells, the focus has been on restricting the area of the experiment, rather than opening it up. From this study, it has been learned that the smallest scales are represented at the dorsal level, with the largest number of cells. Phase precession, a phenomenon in which spikes for a particular grid cell occurred later in the cycle of the theta wave at the center of the cell, and earlier upon entering the grid, was seen to decrease with the increasing field width. All of this together adds up to the idea that multiple spatial scales can all be held within this one layer of the entorhinal cortex, and scaled up and down as necessary using the precession to code for the specified representation.

In terms of other species, there have been studies in humans \[3\] (but limited to transit through virtual worlds, for the sake of fMRI recordings), mice, and piglets (though electrophysiology was not done). None of these studies have progressed beyond the initial stages.

So, much is known about the spacing characteristics of the grids themselves, but the upper limit of their spacing will have to wait for better experimental technology, and a clever design of a large experimental field that has consistent enough landmarks for the rats to incorporate into their grid representations.

> \[1\] Hafting, T., Fyhn, M., et al (2005). Microstructure of a spatial map in the entorhinal cortex. Nature, 436:801-806.
>
> \[2\] Brun, V.H., Solstad, T., et al (2008) Progressive increase in grid scale from dorsal to ventral medial entorhinal cortex. Hippocampus, 18:1200-1212.
>
> \[3\] Doeller, C.F., Barry, C., Burgess, N. (2010). Evidence for grid cells in a human memory network. Nature, 463:657-661.
> 8 votes

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Tags: neuroscience
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# Question
Title: Bayesian models of faking in selection and recruitment settings
I'm doing some research looking at applying Bayesian models to faking personality tests in selection and recruitment.

I'm interested to know:

* What existing work has applied Bayesian models to faking in selection and recruitment?
* What studies have been done? What have they found? and what did a Bayesian perspective add to the analysis?

I'm interested in any application including

* different selection instruments: i.e., not just personality tests (e.g., intelligence tests, interviews, etc.)
* different approaches: modelling the decision to fake, modelling datasets that have examined faking, implementing faking detection algorithms, etc.

# Answer
> 5 votes
### Quantitative papers

There are a number of papers that didn't use a Bayesian approach but provide a relevant basis for developing quantitative Bayesian models:

* Zickar et al (2004) performed a mixed-model using item response theory to examine different classes of respondents to personality tests. While it doesn't appear to be a Bayesian analysis, it is an example of a more sophisticated quantitative model. Essentially it concludes that there is more than one type of "faking" process.
* Komar et al (2008) performed a statistical simulation of the faking process that represented various mathematical models of faking. While this study wasn't Bayesian in approach and it didn't involve data collection, the mathematical models discussed are relevant in describing parameters of interest to a Bayesian model of faking (e.g., proportion of participants faking, average magnitude of faking, variability in magnitude of faking, etc.).

### Bayesian papers

There are a couple of papers that I've found that have used a Bayesian approach to study faking.

* Kuncel et al (2011) in their review article of faking detection techniques discuss a general approach for assessing honest responding originally presented by Prelec (2004) known as *Bayesian Truth Serum*. The approach involves asking respondents to indicate their own response to a question and to estimate the proportion of the population that would give the same response. If the respondent's estimate of the population proportion is greater than the average estimate, then the response to that question is expected to be more honest. The argument is that if we acquire our beliefs about the population from our experience, we are more likely to over estimate the degree to which the belief is shared with others because our experience is biased to include ourselves. See also this paper by Ray Weaver.
* Ortega et al (2011) applied a Bayesian approach to faking bad in malingering contexts.

### References

* Komar, S, Brown, D. J., Komar, J. A., & Robie, C. (2008). Faking and the validity of conscientiousness: A monte carlo investigation. Journal of Applied Psychology
* Kuncel, N. C, Bornemann, M., and Kiger, T. (2011). Innovative Item Response Process and Bayesian Faking Detection Methods: More Questions than Answers. *New Perspectives on Faking in Personality Assessment* Edited by Matthias Ziegler, Carolyn MacCann and Richard Roberts.
* Ortega, A., Wagenmakers, E.-J., Lee, M.D., Markowitsch, H.J., & Piefke, M. (in press). A Bayesian latent group analysis for detecting poor effort in the assessment of malingering. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology. PDF
* Prelec, D. (2004). A Bayesian Truth Serum for Subjective Data. *Science*, 306, 462-466. PDF
* Zickar, M., Gibby, R. E., Robie, C. (2004). Uncovering faking samples in applicant, incumben, and experimental data sets: An application of mixed-model item response theory. *Organizational Research Methods, 7*, 168-190.

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Tags: io-psychology, bayesian, deception, selection-recruitment
---


# Question
Title: What article reported variability in supporting hypotheses across disciplines?
I recently read a blog post talking about a journal article that compared the degree to which journal articles support their hypothesis. A comparison was done across disciplines, and if I recall, psychology had a higher level of acceptance than many other disciplines.

* Does anyone know the reference to this article about variability in supporting hypotheses in journal articles across disciplines?

# Answer
> 6 votes
Fanelli D (2010) “Positive” Results Increase Down the Hierarchy of the Sciences. PLoS ONE 5(4): e10068. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0010068

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0010068

# Answer
> 4 votes
Thanks @Xurtio for letting me know the article.

For sake of completeness, the following shows the graph of interest:

> Name of discipline, abbreviation used throughout the paper, sample size and percentage of “positive” results (i.e. papers that support a tested hypothesis). Classification by discipline was based on the Essential Science Indicators database, the hard/soft, pure/applied and life/non-life categories were based on previous literature (see text for details). Error bars represent 95% logit-derived confidence interval.

---
Tags: reference-request
---


# Question
Title: What's the name of this visual search task?
I recall a visual search task where participants would search for a single item with either one or two distinct features. For example one would look for an X in a set of Os as "one feature" or instead they would look for a red X in a set of red Os, blue Os and blue Xes. The results indicated it was significantly harder to locate an item with two distinct features (a red X) while finding a single feature (an X) was almost instantaneous.

I'm sure I could find the studies on my own but I don't know the name of the search task. I recently saw a simplistic version on Facebook (this is *not* from a specific published article):

This version is the same basic idea of the single feature search. What's the name of this sort of visual search for distinct features?

# Answer
Aren't you just looking for a conjunction search task?

Normally it works like this: objects are described in terms of their features (e.g., colour, shape, etc.). If you tell people to search for a target with a given colour AND shape, then this is a conjunction of features, and is termed a conjunction task.

Note that there are complex dynamics in terms of how this works, and the second link below discusses this at length.

Here's some links on this type of thing:

http://www.mendeley.com/research/guided-search-an-alternative-to-the-feature-integration-model-for-visual-search/

http://www.mendeley.com/research/visual-search-stimulus-similarity-2/

Here are examples of Feature Search vs Conjunction Search from Wikipedia:
Feature Search:

Conjunction search:
> 7 votes

# Answer
This might not be exactly what you're after, but Ackerman, Beier, and Boyle (2002) wrote a paper where they factor analysed various perceptual speed tests along with other tests. In particlar, the test you are interested in seems to be a member of the sublass of perceptual speed tests that Ackerman et al labelled "Perceptual Speed: Pattern Recognition".

They used the following tests to measure the factor.

> 1. Finding a and t. In this test, participants scan for instances of “a” and “t” in text passages (passages were in Italian).
> 2. Mirror Reading. In this test, participants find target words written in mirrored text.
> 3. Summing to 10. In this test, participants circle pairs of numbers if they sum to 10.
> 4. Finding and ¥. This test is the same as Finding a and t, except the text was random symbols.
> 5. Canceling Symbols. In this test, participants scan a page for a single target figure among other simple target figures.

However, these tests were typically designed for paper and pencil administration and for measuring individual differences. I don't think they used the one-symbol for each trial approach. In particular, I remember a colleague using the Finding A's test in the Ekstrom battery.

### References

* Ackerman, P.L. and Beier, M.E. and Boyle, M.D. (2002). Individual differences in working memory within a nomological network of cognitive and perceptual speed abilities. *Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 131*, 4, 567. PDF
* Ekstrom, R. B., French, J. W., & Harman, H. H. (1976). Manual for kit o f factor-referenced cognitive tests. Princeton, NJ: Educational Test- ing Service.
> 2 votes

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Tags: terminology
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# Question
Title: What was her/his name again.....ahh got it!
You all know the situation described in the title. You forgot something and start to search your memory and then after quite a while it jumps right in front of you, out of nowhere.

My questions are:

1. What happens in the brain during that moment of awareness?
2. Is it different from when we know something right away, since the subconscious mind is working for quite a while to produce the answer?
3. Is it possible to measure this moment and was it done already?

# Answer
You'll want to look up literature on the "Tip of the Tongue" (TOT) phenomenon. It's been studied since the 60s I believe and can be experimentally reproduced.
> 7 votes

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Tags: memory, measurement
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# Question
Title: Are there emotions that only some people can feel?
Presumably, there are emotions that almost any person can feel, such as happiness, sadness, guilt, and embarrassment.

* But are there emotions that only a small fraction of the population can feel?
* How might it be established that an uncommon emotion existed?

# Answer
> 6 votes
There is strong evidence that there is indeed a interindividual differential distribution of emotional processes or capabilities. For instance, Bartels and Pizzarro (2011) could show that some antipersonality traits connected to the lack of compassion and empathy towards others are varying among people. Those who endorsed a more pragmatic and "straight" (utilitarian) view of life scored lower in social (and hence empathic) questionnaire batteries. When people are asked about their spiritual attitudes and habits and what emotions they connect to this, they respond very different. For example, mystical experiences - the strong feeling of oneness with the environment - are more likely to score on altruism and empathy (no reference ad hoc present). A more "realisitic", grounded person would deny having such feelings simply because his or her internal self-construction processes do not attach with the same strength to those emotions. They would have different emotional attachments. A very simple, common and intuitive (needs not really a scientific approach) illustration is when you consider "self-confidence" as an internal state. This is obviously a dramatically varying emotional state in humans. Overconfidence evokes internal security about own capabilities and the feeling of "i can master that", in contrast to a lack of confidence.

So, people have different default emotional states and they evoke different feelings in themselves due to different interaction with the environment.

### References

* Bartels, D. M., & Pizarro, D. A. (2011) The mismeasure of morals: Antisocial personality traits predict utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas. *Cogntion* PDF

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Tags: social-psychology, emotion
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# Question
Title: What do within-subjects studies of job applicant personality test faking say about the covariance between developmental and job applicant scores?
Some studies of faking personality tests in selection and recruitment have used a within-subject design. These studies involve administering a personality test in two conditions. One condition is assumed to measure honest responses (e.g., under honest instructions in the lab or for professional development purposes in an applied setting). A second condition is designed to elicit an authentic job applicant responses (e.g., role play instructions in the lab or a real-world job application in applied settings).

* What has such research found regarding the structure of the covariance between scores in developmental and applicant conditions? I.e., what is the size of the correlation and what is the shape of the bivariate distribution (I think that bivariate normal is unlikely)?
* What is known about the distribution of difference scores (i.e., applicant minus developmental)?

I'd also be interested in learning how findings vary based on features of the test, context, design, and so on.

# Answer
Richard Griffith and Patrick Converse (2012) provide a good review of personality faking research that has employed a within-subjects design to examine changes in responses to personality tests between an applicant and a development context.

The following represent my review of the papers identified by Griffith and Converse (2012). I take it as fairly well established in the literature that most, but not all, studies find differences in group means between between different applicant and non-applicant conditions. This review focusses on individual differences in whether people fake and the amount of faking.

### Arthur et al (2010)

Among other things, Arthur et al (2010) reported two studies that looked at differences in responding between participants completing a personality test as job applicant and then around a year later completing the same personality test as an anonymous research participant.

**SEM\_d**: The authors used the standard error of test-retest measurement $\text{SEM}\_d$ to classify in an operationalised way whether a participant had engaged in response distortion in the high-stakes context

* $\text{SEM}\_d \lt 1$ indicated lower score at time 2 (i.e., faking)
* $\text{SEM}\_d \gt 1$ indicated higher score
* $|\text{SEM}\_d| \lt 1$ indicated unchanged score (i.e., honest)

Results in study 1 suggested that for most personality scales a little over 30% of scores were classified as lower in the low stakes condition.

Of course this value should be interpreted in light of the fact that based on the normal distribution and the chosen cut-offs, one would expect around 16% above this cut-off. There are also issues of regression to the mean, and reduced reliability in the extremes that could be considered in a more sophisticated analysis. Finally, this indicator of faking does not provide information on the distribution of faking scores.

**SEM\_d by job applicant score**: They also explore the prevalence of score reduction relative to scores in the high stakes condition. They conclude that prevalence of score reduction does not vary with High stakes scores. However, the graphs are a little difficult to interpret (being stacked bar charts). Also, by design the graphs answer the question of what proportion of test takers at a given level are faking, which is interesting , but they don't answer the question of whether true score is related to faking.

**Correlation between applicant and research context scores**: Table 5 reports $\text{time}\_1 - \text{time}\_2$ correlations for both studies for the Big 5. Correlations are between .49 and .78. Such correlations make sense in light of the idea that some participants are answering honestly and others are faking. This should produce correlations a little lower than typical test-retest reliabilities.

Of course, many factors influence correlations of personality test scores in applicant and research contexts. In particular, reliability of the test and time between tests would be important. Thus, it's a little difficult to say how much of the observed reduction in the correlation is due to faking in the applicant context, and how much is due to other factors.

The researchers do provide an $n=44$ sample of participants in Study 1 who completed both conditions in low stakes contexts (i.e., existing employee and research contexts). These correlations are reported in Table 6. The following analysis using R shows the correlations for the two conditions, where theory would suggest that the High Stakes-Low Stakes (i.e., HL) condition should have smaller correlations, although the observed difference is fairly minimal.

```
x <- data.frame(matrix(c(0.53, 0.55, 0.51, 0.7, 0.66, 0.56, 0.49,
    0.5, 0.87, 0.75), ncol = 2))
names(x) <- c("HL", "LL")
row.names(x) <- c("Agreeableness", "Conscientiousness", "Emotional stability",
    "Extraversion", "Openness")
x$diff <- x$HL - x$LL
round(rbind(x, Mean = sapply(x, mean)), 2)
##                       HL   LL  diff
## Agreeableness       0.53 0.56 -0.03
## Conscientiousness   0.55 0.49  0.06
## Emotional stability 0.51 0.50  0.01
## Extraversion        0.70 0.87 -0.17
## Openness            0.66 0.75 -0.09
## Mean                0.59 0.63 -0.04

```

### Griffith et al (2007)

Griffith et al (2007) conducted a study where 60 applicants completed a 30-item measure of conscientiousness first in a job applicant setting. Then one month later, they completed the test under instructions to answer the test honestly and to fake.

They found a correlation between honest and applicant of $r =.50$, and a standardised difference between honest and applicant of $d = 61$. This shows that scores are increasing in applicant settings, and that there are individual differences in the extent to which this occurs. Although the absence of knowledge of the test-retest correlation in an honest-honest context makes it a little difficult to assess the degree to which this correlation is less than would be expected.

They also employed several indices to act as difference score thresholds, which classified 31 or 22 percent of applicants as faking depending on the index.

In a latter part of the paper there is also some discussion of variation in the size of the difference score.

### **Ellingson et al (2007)**:

Ellinson et al performed a study based on a large database of participants who had completed a personality test under the four combinations of development and selection contexts.

Average Development-development sample correlations were $.66$ were a little bit higher than average development-selection ($r=.62$) and selection-development ($r=.57$) correlations.

Average increases from session 1 to 2 suggested somewhat low levels of response distortion.

```
                           average scale d
development/development     0.14
development/selection       0.26
selection/development       0.04
selection/development       0.07

```

As far as I can tell, there was no specific discussion of the distribution of change scores.

### Others

Donovan et al (2008) and Peterson et al (2008) sound interesting, but they are conference presentations so the publications are not readily available.

### Summary

Thus, in summary, there is some evidence that the correlation is lower between applicant and development conditions than it would between two comparable development conditions. Presumably the size of this drop in correlation is related to the amount of faking, and that the amount of faking is related to the amount of individual differences in faking.

There is certainly a qualitative awareness of there being different categories of faking. Ellingson write:

> Conservative estimates from this line of research suggest that less than 20% of applicants intentionally distort their responses and that less than 4% of applicants do so to an extreme degree

However, I haven't yet read much from these within-subject studies about the distribution of faking scores, nor have I seen formal mathematical models of the change scores, even though the data would permit such analyses.

### References

* Arthur, W., Jr., Glaze, R. M., Villado, A. J., & Taylor, J. E. (2010). The magnitude and extent of cheating and response distortion effects on unproctored Internet based test of cognitive ability and personality. *International Journal for Selection and Assessment, 18*, 1-16. PDF
* Donovan, J. J., Dwight, S. A., & Schneider D. (2008). Faking in the real world: Evidence from a field study. In R. L. Griffith & M. H. Peterson (Chairs), *Examining faking using within-subjects designs and applicant data*. Symposium conducted at the 23rd Annual Conference for the Society for Industrial and Organisational Psyhcology, San Francisco, CA.
* Ellingson, J. E., Sackett, P. R., & Connelly, B. S. (2007). Personality assessment across selection and development contexts: Insights into response distortion. *Journal of Applied Psychology, 92*, 386-395.
* Griffith, R. L. & Converse, P. D. (2012). The rules of evidence and the prevalence of applicant faking in *New Perspectives on Faking in Personality Assessment*, Chapter 3, 34-52.
* Griffith, R. L., Chmielowski, R., & Yoshita, Y. (2007). Do applicants fake? An examination of the frequency of applicant faking behavior. *Personnel Review*, 36, 341-355. PDF
* Peterson, M. P. Griffith, R. L., O'Connel, M. S., & Isaacson, J. A. (2008). Examining faking in real job applicants: A with-subjects investigation of score changes across applicant and research settings. Paper presented at the 23rd annual meeting for the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, San Francisco, California.
> 1 votes

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Tags: io-psychology, deception, selection-recruitment
---


# Question
Title: Are there any applications of choice modelling to romantic relationships?
**Background:** I was at a talk today where the presenter discussed a study that involved a administering a couple of questions asking participants which of two people they would prefer as a relationship partner. To simplify things a little bit, in one example participants were asked whether they would prefer a rich ugly partner or a poor attractive partner.

This got me interested in whether anyone had extended this idea to a comprehensive choice modelling study. I.e., get a large number of participants to compare pairs of possible partners with different characteristics and estimate the utility of different characteristics.

**Question:**

* What if any journal articles have examined relationship partner preference using a choice modelling methodology?
* What were the main findings?

# Answer
> 5 votes
Speed dating seems to provide an ideal setting for the type of study you seek. There are several relevant papers (see References below and Google search human mate preferences speed dating).

There is no consensus among researchers, but here's a sampling of some of the supposed *findings*:

* Buston & Emlen claim that people choose mates from their league, i.e., those they think have comparable traits, which lie in four categories: "wealth and status, family commitment, physical appearance, and sexual ﬁdelity".
* Todd et al. claim support for parental investment theory because "men chose women based on their physical attractiveness, whereas women ... chose men whose overall desirability as a mate matched the women's self-perceived physical attractiveness"

> ### References
>
> * Buston, P. M. & Emlen, S. T. (2003) Cognitive processes underlying human mate choice: the relationship between self-perception and mate preference in Western society. PNAS 100: 8805-8810. \[pdf\]
> * Todd, P. M., Penke, L., Fasolo, B., & Lenton, A. P. (2007) Different cognitive processes underlie human mate choices and mate preferences. PNAS 104: 15011-15016. \[pdf\]

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Tags: social-psychology
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# Question
Title: Do people have a tendency to stick to one opinion after they formed it?
Scytale's assessment, from the science fiction novel "Dune Messiah" (1969)

> When a creature has developed into one thing, he will choose death rather than change into his opposite.

While reading some discussions on Meta Stack Overflow, it dawned on me that it might not be the best format to start constructive discussions. Once people pick sides in a discussion, they have a very high tendency to stop approaching the discussion from the other angle. People will dislike certain parts of a proposal, and then become vehemently against the entire thing, instead of trying to participate in resolving the issues they raise.

Is this an established psychological phenomenon?

# Answer
> 17 votes
Yes. But why should it be so? One can approach the question from a number of directions. For instance, Cass Sunstein talks about how information cascades can create the path-dependent effects you describe: person A says something, which steers person B toward the same opinion, with the result that group decision-making heavily overvalues inputs of early responders. (James Surowiecki also did an excellent popular science treatment of this topic.)

So much for the hobgoblin of little minds for groups. Within the individual, the topic has been addressed through the dissonance literature, in which cogitation contrary to an established position carries unpleasant consequences, both hedonic and adaptive. Particularly, maintaining a consistent set of mental beliefs seems to be important for efficient action selection, possibly as a consequence of the way semantic information (including motor control programs) is represented in the brain.

The result of all this is that, as you suggest, people establish a position, and then are motivated to keep it, which is not news. What is surprising is that this annoying behavior is probably highly adaptive and a consequence of our neural architecture for knowledge representation and decision-making. In other words, a feature and not a bug.

# Answer
> 14 votes
Adding to what shanusmagnus said: What you refer to is indeed an established psychological phenomenon called Confirmation Bias. The bias consists of

> the seeking or interpreting of evidence in ways that are partial to existing beliefs, expectations, or a hypothesis in hand (Nickerson, 1998).

Confirmation Bias apparently is among the most studied biases in psychology (Mercier & Sperber, 2011), and there is a lot of evidence for its existence (for a review see Nickerson, 1998). Mercier and Sperber (2011) also state that

> While there is some individual variation, it seems that everybody is affected by some degree, irrespective of factors like general intelligence or open mindedness (Stanovich & West, 2007; 2008a; 2008b)

I also remember reading an interview with Hugo Mercier, in which he said that all attempts at training people to get rid of their Confirmation Bias have been unsuccessful, but I don't have any citations to back this up.

Mercier and Sperber (2011) recently formulated a theory called the Argumentative Theory, which is in line with what shanusmagnus said, namely that Confirmation Bias may be a feature rather than a flaw. In their Argumentative Theory Mercier and Sperber argue that reasoning may have developed not in order to be best suited for solving problems, but rather to convince others in discourse. They argue from an evolutionary point of view that the capability of doing so provides an evolutionary advantage.

<sub> Mercier, Hugo, und Dan Sperber. Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory. *Behavioral and Brain Sciences* 34, Nr. 2 (April 2011): 57–74.
Nickerson, R. S. Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology; Review of General Psychology 2, Nr. 2 (1998): 175.
Stanovich, K. E., und R. F. West. Natural myside bias is independent of cognitive ability. *Thinking & Reasoning* 13, Nr. 3 (2007): 225–247.
Stanovich, K. E., und R. F. West. On the failure of cognitive ability to predict myside and one-sided thinking biases. *Thinking & Reasoning* 14, Nr. 2 (2008): 129–167.
Stanovich, K. E., und R. F. West. On the relative independence of thinking biases and cognitive ability. *Journal of personality and social psychology* 94, Nr. 4 (2008): 672. </sub>

# Answer
> 6 votes
A possibly relevant take on this question is provided by a computational model described in \[1\]. Although the main thrust of the paper is that selfish agents, by being habitual (sticking with their choices), contribute to The Common Good (in spite of themselves, so to speak), the argument is also made that habituation increases individual fitness.

**References:**

\[1\] Davies, A. P., Watson, R. A., Mills, R., Buckley, C. L., & Noble, J. (2011). “If You Can’t Be With the One You Love, Love the One You’re With”: How Individual Habituation of Agent Interactions Improves Global Utility. Artificial Life, 17(3), 167–181. Link

# Answer
> 5 votes
Relevant entries from Wikipedia's list of cognitive biases:

* Backfire effect \- when people react to disconfirming evidence by strengthening their beliefs.
* Confirmation bias \- the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.
* Irrational escalation \[or Escalation of commitment\] – the phenomenon where people justify increased investment in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment, despite new evidence suggesting that the decision was probably wrong.

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Tags: terminology, social-psychology
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# Question
Title: Visual search: complexity of positive vs negative search tasks
Thinking about experiments where participants perform visual search tasks, I remember hearing in a Cog Psych lecture that if the instructions of the task were of the form "find the element that has property X", the participants would accomplish the task faster and with greater ease than when the instructions were of the form "find the element that does not have property Y".

It was then discussed that this exemplifies one of the themes in cognitive psych: The cognitive processes handle positive information better than negative information. Is this positivity effect?

I wonder if there is something about the second task that is algorithmically more complex than the first. Would a computer show the same slow-down for these tasks? Anyone know of any research exploring this?

# Answer
> 5 votes
Building on @JohnPick's answer and my comment, but being a little bit more formal. The difference can be explained by the difference between parallel versus sequential processing, and the difficulty of the predicate being evaluated. Your specific question is answered by Treisman (1985) (which I summarize in the second section) but I try to provide a more general explanation.

### Basic idea

Whenever we say "does the element have property $X$", we usually pick a very simple property for $X$, which can be checked quickly. On the other hand a predicate like "does not have property $Y$" becomes something like "has propert $\neg Y$" and is usually a much more difficult property to evaluate. Thus, I expect the main problem is not in the negation, but the fact that $X$ is usually much faster to evaluate than $\neg Y$. In general, we would expect similar effects with other experiments that use a very easy property $X$ versus a very difficult but still positive property $Z$.

However, if this was the only factor, we would only see a constant-factor slow-down, which would we expect to be interpreted as quantitative but not qualitative slow down. This is where we throw in parallel processing. If we assume that the vision system is capable of highly parallel processing, but the difficulty of the property evaluation involved must be very low or we need to switch to sequential processing. In a computer, think GPU: the GPU can do many many simple calculations in parallel, but we have to use the slower CPU to do difficult computations one at a time.

### Relevant literature support

Classic work like Treisman (1985) suggests that my assumption of very bounded computations being done in parallel, while more complicated properties require attention and sequential processing is a reasonable one. In particular, Treisman completely answers your question:

> It suggests that search for the presence of a visual primitive is automatic and parallel, whereas search for the absence of the same feature is serial and requires focused attention.

### Testing the theory with non-negative properties

To test my whole theory we can consider the following experiments. We present the participant with $N$ integers $r\_1, ... r\_N$ arranged randomly in the visual field, each integer is colored $c\_1, ... , c\_N$. We ask one of two possible questions:

1. Property $X$: Name a green number, or
2. Property $Z$: Name a number divisible by $3$.

As we increase $N$ from $1$ up to some reasonable limit, we get a function of reaction times $f\_X(N)$ and $f\_Z(N)$ for the two cases:

1. If both predicates ($X$ and $Z$) are processed in the same way (i.e. ever both parallel or both sequential), then we expect that $\forall N \\; \frac{f\_X(N)}{f\_Z(N)} \approx \frac{f\_X(1)}{f\_Z(1)}$. In other words, we expect just a constant slow-down from the fact that checking in a single number is green is easier than checking if it is divisible by $3$.
2. If $X$ is processed in parallel, while $Z$ is not, then we expect $\forall N \\; \frac{f\_X(N)}{f\_Z(N)} \> \frac{f\_X(N + 1)}{f\_Z(N + 1)}$. In other words, as we add one more item to the visual field, the parallel processing is slowed down significantly less than the sequential processing.

# Answer
> 7 votes
I would doubt that the effect you described is an example for the positivity effect, which is a form of attributional bias, rather than connected to basic perceptual phenomena.

Instead I think that the experimental results you described can be explained by a priming effect. Priming describes the phenomenon that the exposure to one stimulus influences the processing of following stimuli. If the first stimulus shares perceptual, semantic, or conceptual similarities with the next stimulus, processing is enhanced (positive priming). If it provides conflicting information, processing can be depressed (negative priming).

**Would a computer show the same behavior for these tasks?**

Attempts to explain (positive) priming effects usually discuss an activation of associated memory contents, which, in turn, lead to enhancements in the following processing steps.

Since memory access is often indeed a limiting factor of computer performance, priming effects can possibly observed with computers, too. Computer have different types of storage systems which differ in access speed (e.g., hard disc, RAM, cache). For instance, information that is (pre-)loaded into cache memory (which is limited) can be accessed faster than information that is stored on the hard disc. Since it is context dependent which information is in cache memory at a point in time (i.e., it depends on the things you are doing at the moment), memory contents connected to the things you do right now are probably accessed faster (because they are in the cache) than other memory contents, hence, a priming effect.

# Answer
> 4 votes
As others have already noted this doesn't seem like a positivity effect. However, what you are describing is an *asymmetry* in search. This means that it's easy to do things one way (looking for a specific feature) than the other (looking for the absence of a specific feature).

There's a great introduction and review of the literature relating to this available in a published paper which is also online here:

http://search.bwh.harvard.edu/pdf/IntrotoSearchAsym.pdf

Note also that the paper I've linked to comes from a special issue of a journal in which there are several other papers which deal with search asymmetries.

UPDATE: New paper just out, on exactly this topic: http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xhp/38/3/580/

# Answer
> 3 votes
This is off the top of my head. No references to the literature.

Assuming the elements are all in the subjects's present visual field, the brain interprets the two tasks as:

* **Positive task:** Property $X$ is somewhere in your present visual field and thus can be seen immediately. Tell me which element has that property. **\[2 steps\]**
* **Negative task:** Search the $n$ elements in your visual field until you find the one that doesn't have property $Y$. **\[$\frac{n}{2}$ steps, on average\]**

In contrast, an unintelligent computer program would use an exhaustive search algorithm for both tasks and thus require $\frac{n}{2}$ steps, on average, for either task.

# Answer
> 3 votes
I wouldnt call it a positivity effect. Its rather a "semantic congruity" effect. **Selection** tasks in which the subject is supposed to select an option with a particular property are quicker than those in which she is supposed to select an option without the property. However, **rejection** tasks in in which she is supposed to select an option with the property are slower than those in which she is supposed to select those without the property. Its the compatibility between the task (selection vs rejection) and the characteristics of the objects (contains the property vs does not contain the property) that really determine decision time.

Birnbaum and Jou ("A theory of comparative response times and difference judgments", 1990) have a discussion of this, with appropriate citations.

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Tags: perception, computational-modeling, cognitive-modeling
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title: Savant syndrome and Cognitive bias

text:
# Question
Title: Savant syndrome and Cognitive bias
Take the case of an autistic savant with exceptional memory skills.

Is this person less prone to cognitive biases involving memory skills such as availability heuristic bias than a normal person due to his exceptional memory skills?

**EDIT**

Does more memory skills reduce the chances of cognitive biases relating to memory or its the ability to recall them effectively that reduce the chances or is it a combination of both?

Also, does lack of information be perceived as a cognitive bias?

# Answer
> 7 votes
In general, no. People with excellent memories can just as easily misapply the availability heuristic as people with poor memories.

To see why, consider a situation where a reasoner is asked to estimate the relative frequency of murder and suicide. Because examples of murder or more "available" (i.e., more easily recalled) than examples of suicide, the reasoner may conclude that murder is more common than suicide. This conclusion would be mistaken: murder is actually less common than suicide, and murders are only more "available" because they are more likely to be reported in the media than suicides. Note that the problem with this inference is NOT inaccurate memory, but a failure to recognize that memories do not reflect the actual frequencies of murder and suicide.

Of course, someone who has specifically memorized statistics about causes of death -- something that an autistic is perhaps more likely to do -- may be able to draw on that knowledge to answer the question correctly.

> For more information on the "suicide paradox," see http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/08/31/new-freakonomics-radio-podcast-the-suicide-paradox/

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Tags: memory, abnormal-psychology, autism, bias, savant-syndrome
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title: Face-Blindness: Have I seen you before?

text:
# Question
Title: Face-Blindness: Have I seen you before?
Sometimes when I meet new people, I feel like I have seen them before. Their faces might look similar to people's faces, I have really have met before.

The wiki article on Difficulties with Facial Recognition states that:

> Prosopagnosia is an inability to identify faces and face-like objects. This represents a failure to encode incoming visual information. Neurological studies indicate that prosopagnosia is associated with bilateral lesions of the central visual system, primarily located in the mesial occipitotemporal region.

I don't have problems with identifying faces, I just group them too often.

### Questions

* Why do novel faces sometimes look familiar?
* Is this related to a kind of face-blindness?
* What is the neural basis for this phenomena?

### Related questions

# Answer
Feeling as though you have seen a face before is perfectly normal. It may reflect actual similarities between the new face and the face you have seen before. There are people who genuinely look like each other, an example being celebrity look-a-likes. **It may also reflect a commonly observed cultural/ethnic effect where people of a different ethnicity look more similar** (Meissner & Bringham, 2001).

In terms of what happens in the brain, besides processing by the basic visual system (LGN, V1), the ventral visual pathway and areas associated with object and face recognition are involved with identifying the face. Particularly, these three core regions show space-specific responses: **fusiform gyrus, lateral inferior occipital gyri , and posterior superior temporal sulcus** (Haxby et al., 2000; 2001).

> A model of the distributed human neural system for face perception (Image from Haxby et al., 2000.)

There is ongoing debate that the fusiform area plays a broader role in that of **visual expertise**, rather than just face perception (Gaulthier et al., 2000; Xu, 2005). Although less is known about temporal aspects of face processing, this is starting to be the focus of newer studies such as Zheng et al., 2012.

I haven't found any known explanation but if you feel that the way you perceive similarity in faces is not normal, then you may be interested in reading about **false facial recognition** problems following brain damage (\*Rapcsak et al., 1996) or (slightly different) **misidentification syndromes** (Hudson & Grace, 1999; Breen et al., 2000).

\*Unfortunately I could not access this article to summarize it.

<sub>**References**</sub>
> 10 votes

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Tags: terminology, perception, autism, neurology
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# Question
Title: Does having a sense of purpose increase longevity?
There is evidence that people who retire early tend to die earlier than people who do not. One interpretation of this finding is that having a sense of purpose improves psychological health and that psychological health is linked to physical health.

What is the evidence for the validity or invalidity of this interpretation? (I am equally interested in the validity of this interpretation with respect to early retirement and with respect to other measures/correlates of purpose.)

> http://longevity.about.com/od/healthyagingandlongevity/a/retirement.htm

# Answer
I did a little search and found an article by Moen (1996) which seems relevant. Moen summarised the existing evidence as follows:

> Poor physical health is frequently a reason for retiring (Anderson & Burkhauser, 1985; Bound, 1991; Chirikos & Nestel, 1989; Palmore, Burchett, Filenbaum, George, & Wallman, 1985), leading to a view of a unidirectional link between health and retirement (see Figure 1). In support of this one-way model, most of the existing research literature has shown that retirement per se is not directly related to early mortality or health decline. However, there is some evidence that being retired affects psychological symptoms (Bosse, Aldwin, Levenson, Spiro, & Mroczek, 1993; Ekerdt, 1987). Other studies show that retired individuals sometimes report improvements in their (subjectively rated) health status following retirement (Ekerdt, Bosse, & Locastro, 1983). Most early research on retirement suggests that being retired has no deleterious effects on either physical or psychological health; most retirees say they are satisfied with their retirement and some even report better health (Atchley, 1976; Barfield & Morgan, 1968; McGoldrick & Cooper, 1989; Streib & Schneider, 1971). However, research on the effects of the loss of the work role through retirement often ignores the complexity of the retirement transition, including issues of timing, previous health, and quality of the employment experience (McGoldrick & Cooper, 1988). George (1993) pointed out that most research on stress and well-being fails to consider either the social contexts or the timing of potentially stressful life experiences, such as retirement.

### References

* Anderson, K. H., & Burkhauser, R. V. (1985). The retirement-health nexus: A new measure of an old puzzle. The Journal of Human Resources, 20, 315-330.
* Atchley, R. (1976). The sociology of retirement. New York: Schenkman.
* Barfield, R., & Morgan, J. N. (1968). Early retirement: The decision and the experiences. Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research.
* Bound, J. (1991). Self-reported objective measures of health in retirement models. The Journal of Human Resources, 26, 108-137.
* Bosse, R., Aldwin, C. M., Levenson, M. R., Spiro, A., & Mroczek, D. K. (1993). Change in social support after retirement: Longitudinal findings from the normative aging study. Journal of Gerontology, 48, 210-217.
* Chirikos, T. N., & Nestel, G. (1989). Occupation, impaired health, and the functional capacity of men to continue working. Research on Aging, 11, 174-205.
* Ekerdt, D. J. (1987). Why the notion persists that retirement harms health. Gerontologist, 27, 454-^57.
* Ekerdt, D. J., Bosse, R., & Locastro, J. S. (1983). Claims that retirement improves health. Journal of Gerontology, 38, 231-236.
* George, L. K. (1993). Sociological perspectives on life transitions. Annual Review of Sociology, 19, 353-373.
* McGoldrick, A., & Cooper, C. (1988). Early retirement. Chichester, England: Gower
* Moen, P. (1996). A Life Course Perspective on Retirement, Gender, and Well-Being. *Journal of Occupational Health Psychology*, 1, 131-144.
* Palmore, E. B., Burchett, B. M., Filenbaum, G. G., George, L. K., & Wallman, L. M. (1985). Retirement: Causes and consequences. New York: Springer.
* Streib, G. F, & Schneider, C. J. (1971). Retirement in American society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
> 5 votes

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Tags: aging, well-being, health-psychology
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# Question
Title: Are IQ tests "biased" against individuals with Asperger's Syndrome?
One person makes the claim over at his response to the Quora question Do people with Asperger's have above-average IQs simply because the ones with below-average IQs simply get diagnosed with autism instead?.

> No.
>
> **Intelligence testing as most neurologically typical people understand it, is heavily biased toward individuals with expressive and receptive language ability which is often impaired in persons with autism to a greater degree than in persons with Asperger's.**
>
> As an example: imagine an intelligence test that was written in English being administered to a person who grew up speaking French. That person might be quite bright but would likely score very low. There have been numerous documented studies of the effect of language bias in intelligence testing that makes the idea of standardized intelligence testing a questionable endeavor.
>
> From personal experience, my own son has rather severe language impairments and, if tested with a written or verbal test, would almost certainly have an MR diagnosis in addition to his autism. However, when tested with strictly non-language based testing methods, has proven himself to be quite bright (in the empirical sense, that is. Watching him spend 30 seconds on a strange computer before finding his favorite YouTube videos shows that he knows quite well what he's doing).

Is he right when he says that "Intelligence testing as most neurologically typical people understand it, is heavily biased toward individuals with expressive and receptive language ability which is often impaired in persons with autism to a greater degree than in persons with Asperger's."?

And could IQ tests be biased against Aspies in other ways? Could they also be biased in favor of Aspies in certain ways as well?

# Answer
Depends which IQ test you use - individuals with ASDs show a typical "pattern" on the WAIS, which can cause it to appear like they have lower IQs. When tested with tests which aren't biased in this way, they appear to have the same IQ range as neurotypicals.

The assumption that those with an ASD are cognitively impaired pervades both popular and scientific literature - those who are minimally verbal or non-verbal (i.e. those who do not show fluency in their speech) are often labelled as ‘low-functioning’. The characteristic cognitive profile shown by the WAIS is commonly interpreted as a unified deficit known as ‘weak central coherence’, the tendency to focus on low-level details as opposed to the higher-level ‘whole’ (Happé, 1999). Much of the recent research regarding the neuroanatomical signature of autism relies on the untested assumption that cognitive strengths of autistic individuals as shown by the WAIS are nothing more than low-level by-products of high-level deficits. Dawson et al. (2007) have shown using Raven’s Progressive Matrices (Raven, Raven, & Court, 1998), a complex yet general test of intelligence, that the WAIS severely underestimates autistic intelligence (by an average of 30 percentile points). It is therefore recommended that though the WAIS has a number of useful psychometric properties which can be applied in the diagnosis of autism, it is not used as a measure of intelligence in such populations.

### References

* Dawson, M., Soulieres, I. Gernsbacher, M., Mottron, L. (2007). The Level and Nature of Autistic Intelligence. Psychological Science. PDF
* Happe, F. (1999). Autism: Cognitive deﬁcit or cognitive style? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3, 216–222.
* Raven, J., Raven, J.C., & Court, J.H. (1998). Raven manual: Section 3. Standard progressive matrices. Oxford, England: Oxford Psychologists Press.
> 15 votes

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Tags: intelligence, abnormal-psychology, autism, aspergers
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# Question
Title: The feeling a person gets when they finish a series
Take for example, a person reading a good book series that they enjoy. While they are reading it, they typically look forward to finishing each volume, as well as the whole series. However, when they actually finish the series, they may feel disappointed that there are no more books in the series that they can read. I have observed the same pattern with movie and game series as well.

Is there a name for this feeling of disappointment that comes at the completion of a long task? What might a psychologist tell a patient to do if suffering from such symtoms? Can they look at the situation from a different perspective, for example, that would allow them to feel differently about their completion?

# Answer
I am not sure if there is a specific name for sadness or feelings of emptiness following the completion of a long task, such as finishing the last book in a series. I will need to research this further to see if I can find any studies related to it. I can speak from personal experience and state that I too have felt this, so I believe it is a natural phenomenon. I would be interested to see what others say about it.

Regarding how Psychology would treat an individual complaining of such thoughts, one of the things covered in the Landmark Forum is how to change your conscious, logical thinking as a means of affecting your emotions. As an example, if one felt sadness or loss at the completion of a task, a therapist might encourage the individual to think about the positive: what they accomplished, what they enjoyed during their experience, what they learned or how they grew. By consciously thinking about specific things one can draw emotions connected with those thoughts.

The Wikipedia article on the Landmark Forum describes this as:

> * There is a big difference between what actually happened in a person’s life and the meaning or interpretation they made up about it
> * People create their own meaning to life – none is inherent in the world
> * People can “transform” by simply declaring a new way of being instead of trying to change themselves in comparison to the past

At it's root, this school of thought comes from the Socratic method, a form of inquiry based around allowing logic to overrule emotion. To address the sadness one feels, one might ask themself a series of questions:

* Why am I feeling sad?
* What reasons do I have to feel sad?
* Haven't I accomplished something good?
* Am I not proud of myself for finishing the task?
* Did I enjoy doing the task?
* Is feeling sad helping me?
* Do I *want* to feel sad?

By using logic in such a fashion, the idea is that one can change their feeling by reinforcing the positive emotions.

**Edit:** Note that upon further research, I have found that representatives of the Landmark Forum themselves state:

> What we do is personal and professional growth training and development. It's not therapy, it's not psychology, it's not psychological in nature

That's a quote from Deborah Beroset Miller, Director of PR for Landmark Education. Therefore my answer is anecdotal and not actually based on any specific Psychology research that I can find at this point. I will continue to search for actual research to back up my claims...
> 3 votes

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Tags: terminology, emotion
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title: Does pain reduce cognitive abilities?

text:
# Question
Title: Does pain reduce cognitive abilities?
Does subjecting a person to pain reduce his cognitive abilities?

If so, what is the process that reduces the ability? (By process, I mean the changes happening in the nervous system as a result of the pain and the subsequent loss of cognitive abilities)

Does this differ with gender?

# Answer
For the purposes of this question, it would likely be useful to consider "pain" as simply a stimulus demanding the attention of the individual. In this light, any decrease in "cognitive abilities"—however you define that phrase—would likely be explainable as resultant from the same cognitive decrease that accompanies multitasking (or "task switching", as it is sometimes referred to) in general, which is a well-known and well-published finding.

Relevant papers can be found at the above link.
> 7 votes

# Answer
Yes is does. I know from personal experience that if I have a sinus headache or any other type of pain it hinders my work (software developer). I do not believe gender would make any difference, however I do know studies have been done and have proven that red haired people tend to be able to tolerate more pain.

Here is a couple of references for you

Disruption of Attention and Working Memory Traces in Individuals with Chronic Pain - http://www.anesthesia-analgesia.org/content/104/5/1223.full

Red Hair and Pain - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red\_hair#Pain\_tolerance\_and\_injury
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, physiology, pain
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# Question
Title: Compared efficiency of different spaced-repetition memorisation techniques
Spaced repetition is a memorization technique that works by reviewing question/answer pairs according to a schedule that depends on performance.

Be it software or paper flashcards, there are various techniques to calculate the review schedule. For instance: Leitner, SM0, SM2, ... new techniques appear from time to time. Each new scheduling technique is trying to surpass the others, the goal being to calculate the intervals smartly, for instance so that a question is shown just before the student forgets the fact.

**Is there work comparing the "efficiency" of some of those scheduling techniques?** (few reviews, well-memorized) Preferably research involving a reasonable number of human experiments.

# Answer
A quick Pubmed search shows a couple of potential useful papers. The more promising:
> 6 votes

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Tags: memory, encoding, mnemonic
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# Question
Title: What science or psychology is behind the Landmark Forum's coursework?
The Landmark Forum is a self-help seminar focusing on helping individuals to make positive changes in their lives by chaing their point of view and using logic to break down emotions to change the way one feels.

According to Wikipedia, the Landmark Forum is based on est, the Erhard Seminars Training, which itself is based on the Socratic Method. However, is there any science or actual psychology behind the Landmark Forum?

# Answer
This isn't a direct answer to your question .

I got the sense that Landmark was in the same category as other so called 'power' therapies such as neurolinguistuc programming etc. The 7:30 report - a *credible* Australian current affairs program - did an story on Landmark last year.

**References**

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2011/s3367386.htm

Devilly, Grant J. (2005) "Power Therapies and possible threats to the science of psychology and psychiatry", Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 39, No. 6, June 2005, pp. 437-445(9)
> 4 votes

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Tags: reference-request, positive-psychology
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