# Question
Title: What causes an individual to not be able to hold all the details of a large project in memory?
**Background:** First of all, I'm not in any kind related to cognitive science, I'm a programmer. I'm not even sure that it's the right place for asking my question, but I'll try anyway. So, first of all, I'll describe the initial problem that motivated me to ask this question. There are some concrete examples.

* I join the programmers team that have rather big (but not huge) project. I'm trying to figure out how it works, how each part of the system cooperates with each other. I want to see how it works as a whole, so that I could say that I understand what's going on: what goes first, what goes next, without going into pretty much detail. I want to have this image in mind and to discuss the project with no need to diving into code, or to schemes describing the project, or any additional info. The thing that does not let me do this -- I fail to remember the system components, their execution precedence that may vary, and their interactions between each other.
* I got explanations of some project use case. Everything seems to be clear, but there comes a time when I realize that I can not hold all this in my head, can not keep all precedence of actions, the interactions between them. The whole thing becomes blurry.

I tend to see these cases having the same reason. As this reason results in my wish for better results achievement, I call it a problem. It may or may not be a "problem" from medical or any other point of view, but this is a problem for me anyway. So, when I talk about solving this problem, I talk about improving my results in area described above.

## Questions

* What is this problem called where a person can not hold all the details of a large project in memory?
* Is this a failure of memory?
* Is the problem due to lack of intelligence?
* Would any of the following reduce the problem: chess, poker, solving math problems, nootropics?

# Answer
I just completed an extensive study (and corresponding lit review) of how people learn. I think you are running into the classic difference between expert and novice users.

**Experts vs Novices**

It has been demonstrated that the knowledge structures in experts are different than those in novices. In particular, experts' knowledge is far more structured, and they are capable of immediately connecting concepts that novices are unable to see. (I have articles I can cite if you wish, but I'm just trying to get you on the right track here).

Bascially, people learn by slowly (or quickly) becoming "experts," that is, by organizing their conceptual models better around various concepts, such that the distinctions between them disappear into this web of schematic knowledge.

It has also been observed that novices remember learning "episodes" - e.g. hands-on exploration activities or (sometimes) lectures. As the novice becomes an expert, the details of these individual episodes tend to fuzz together and a unified cognitive schema emerges.

**Short-term Working Memory**

As was mentioned in a previous answer, short-term memory can hold 5-9 discreet "chunks" of information. To use programming terms, a `chunk` can either be a struct, where it represents actual data stored in working memory, or it can be a pointer to the location in long-term memory where a concept is stored. This helps explain why experts can perform so much more quickly than novices, because their working memory can be much more efficiently utilized.

People rely on working memory to learn. As you learn, new information is incorporated into your existing mental model (this is known as constructivism). This is an active process requiring the information to be reprocessed in working memory before it is stored into LTM.

**Implications**

The research above suggests that you need to take the system in pieces. Learn what each piece does via a series of hands-on `episodes`, then move on to the next piece. Then, come back and re-start this process. As you do so, you will find yourself becoming more and more familiar with this complex system.
> 8 votes

# Answer
I don't know if this is helpful, but I would chime in as a programmer. I would argue that few people truly know all the parts of a large system by heart, instead they know how to find out/debug what's happening within the project quickly.

**A lot of large, complex programming projects are a mess.** They are difficult to understand and maintain/navigate/debug. An Apple engineer once joked:

> "If you were as smart as you could be when you wrote the program, and it's twice as hard to debug something than to write it, how are you ever going to debug it?"

Large projects did not originate over a single day, but may be a result of an "evolution" over a few months or years. So the basic components which are simple get burdened by exceptions, special use cases, subclasses, multiple modes of operation and precedents as you have said.

Additionally, programmers in general rarely write useful, clear, up to date documentation of large complex systems (there's no energy left to do this at the end).

It is easier for the original developer to navigate such project without having to keep all details in memory, because the programmer knows what to search for. The name of the class, instance variable or a method would bring the original creator to the proper point within the project. But as a "new guy", you do not have the luxury of remembering many "landmarks" within the project. So it takes longer for you to find the solution or understand what's happening.
> 4 votes

# Answer
The problem that you are describing appears to be a problem of short-term memory. It is well known among psychologists and neuroscientists that most people can retain 7 +/- 2 numbers or words in short-term memory. For a programmer, I would describe short-term memory and the process of "recalling", as a process similar to searching in a tree structure.

I am a software developer too. I understand your frustration, and I assure you that most programmers have similar problems when dealing with complex projects. What I recommend you to do, is to find a good systems engineering book, and learn how to work with complex software projects. If you are working with a team, I recommend you to break apart your project into modules with high cohesion and low coupling. Assign a module to each member of the team, and workout the interfaces between the sub-systems. I also recommend you to set some kind of version control.
> 3 votes

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Tags: memory, intelligence
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# Question
Title: How much time is required to relearn a subject after x years?
I'm searching for research answering or giving any form of insight to this question: **How long does it take a person to relearn something (any type of learning) when relearning happens x, x+1, x+2...x+n years after initial learning?**

I've found some research by Ebbinghaus, but it concerns relearning after 24 hours. The variable in his research is number of repetetion (and not time between initial learning and relearning) which isn't what I'm looking for either.

In particular, I'm trying to figure out the effectiveness of students studying a subject in college, and how long students will need to relearn a subject, if they previously learnt it 5, 10 or 15 years previously.

### References

* Ebbinghaus, H. (1885). Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology. (H.A. Ruger & C.E. Bussenius, Trans.). New York: Teachers College, Columbia University.

# Answer
> 7 votes
Suppose a person learns a subject in college and waits for 10 years before learning it again. An exam is given one week after the person relearns the subject. So in this case, the ISI (inter-study interval) is very long compared to the RI (retention interval). The person will definitely forget some of the material after the 10 years. So how long they would need to restudy depends on how much they have forgotten. In this paper, Hal Pashler and others develop a model that predicts the spacing function based on the forgetting function for fixed retention intervals. The forgetting function depends on the type of material being studied and other variables. All other things being equal, it seems that testing/examinations would be one of the more efficient ways of relearning the material.

**References**

Mozer, M. C., Pashler, H., Cepeda, N., Lindsey, R., & Vul, E. (2009). Predicting the optimal spacing of study: A multiscale context model of memory. Advances in neural information processing systems, 22, 1321-1329. PDF

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Tags: learning, memory, educational-psychology, long-term-memory
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# Question
Title: Differences in willingness to correct errors made between human and computer interactions
I have a design where I present participants with a series of decisions, and then ask them about some of these decisions later. Similar work has found that even when the particular decision was made in error, and people 'should' realise this, participants carry on and attempt to justify the decisions anyway. I presented similar decisions but with a computer program acting as 'the experimenter', providing text boxes for input. Participants mentioned errors made in my study much more - they didn't carry on justifying an error.

This was an unexpected result. I suspect some of this may be due to participants not wanting to admit to making an error when they feel more identifiable, but I don't know where to start in terms of literature on the topic!

So essentially - **what are the differences in peoples willingness to admit and correct their own, or even others, errors, between social and computer interactions? and further, what causes these differences?**

# Answer
If I understand your question correctly, you have found that participants are more willing to admit to an error if they interact with a computer rather than a human being.

I would suggest reading up on related findings in the field of *social desirability*. Social desirability is the tendency of humans to think of themselves (*self-deceptive enhancement*) and try to present themselves towards others in a favorable way (*impression management*). There have been studies that suggest, that the effects of social desirability--or more precisely impression management--on reporting of sensitive or stigmatizing behavior are attenuated by interaction with computers rather than people (Turner et al., 1998; Joinson, 1999; King & Miles, 1995; Davis, 1999; Reips, 2011).

I suspect this effect is mostly a result of self-administration rather than being specific to computers, but may be a plausible explanation for your finding: Admitting mistakes is much more threatening to a person's self-worth than justifying a decision-- especially, when an experimenter is present.
> 4 votes

# Answer
Crash made a great point that discusses why people won't admit error to others.

But it isn't **just** about **social desirability**.

To explain why people WILL admit error to a computer?

It's **also** about **personal affirmation** and **self-direction**.

Cognitive dissonance - that stubborn attitude an individual will get after making a choice - can be blamed (in part) for this inability to admit mistakes. It is the reason that people will become brand loyal to overpriced products - they're not willing to admit they've overspent, and justify the decision to themselves by changing their mind. They didn't overspend because the item (and purchase decision) contains some intangible benefit (in this case, social desirability). Given the opportunity to re-adjust their decision, with no obligation to be "true" to their choice - and change their self image - individuals will choose the rational course and correct an error. Cognitive dissonance only occurs when your self-image is out of step with your actions, and it is easy to correct an action with a computer.

In addition, the ability to self-direct, self-select and self-motivate plays a large role in admitting errors. A person-computer interaction is essentially an individual activity, and admitting error is not threatening. A social interaction begins with certain assumptions (consistency) that an individual activity does not (consistent to whom?). As people are motivated to learn and grow (according to some), a threat-free, obligation free, expectation free activity provides that opportunity.
> 1 votes

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Tags: reference-request, social-psychology, experimental-psychology
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# Question
Title: What is the conceptual relationship between higher order thinking and inductive reasoning?
Higher order thinking seems like a larger construct than inductive reasoning but the constructs also seem related.

* **What is the connection between inductive reasoning and higher order thinking?**
* **Is inductive reasoning a subset of higher order thinking or is inductive reasoning a mental process of higher order thinking?**

# Answer
> 1 votes
*A few thoughts:*

I think of higher order thinking as a fuzzy concept. It is often used in educational psychology to between surface and deeper levels of subject engagement. It can also be used to discriminate between the kinds of thinking processes often seen as unique to humans.

Inductive reasoning is also a multifaceted construct, but it has both rich links both with philosophy and with cognitive psychology as can be seen in literatures on category learning and causal inference.

Certainly the principled and methodical processes of scientific induction (e.g., inference from data) involves many higher level thinking processes. However, many of the implicit processes of inferring categories and causal processes from experience might not be seen as higher order thinking.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology
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# Question
Title: In a central pattern generator based on reciprocal inhibition, how does one "side" get picked over the other to start out?
Consider two neurons, A and B, which reciprocally inhibit each other. If both of the neurons receive input at the same time, it seems to me that no oscillation will occur between the two. Such would occur only if one of the two is initially "favored" over the other. So what I'm wondering is, how does that happen? Is it essentially random?

# Answer
Noise will ensure that there will not be perfect symmetry and therefore that one has an advantage to fire first. Whichever one fires first will inhibit the other and ensure that the first one to fire will stay on for however long the dynamics of the pattern generator allow.
> 3 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, theoretical-neuroscience
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# Question
Title: Math or Physics: Which is the more relevant background to enter Cognitive Sciences and Psychology?
What would be a more suitable background to enter cognitive sciences, mathematical psychology, and study of emotions? I have the option of taking a Integrated Masters Degree in Mathematical Sciences, or Physical Sciences. Going into which field will allow me to contribute greater to the study of the mind? Also, which field gives me more research options for the same?

# Answer
> 9 votes
I would go with **Physics**.

Physicists study the world **using mathematics**, while mathematicians **study mathematics itself** which is a construct that does not necessarily exist in the real world (Albert Einstein once said: "as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."). This means that physicists encounter the interface between theory and experimentations, just like cognitive researchers, while mathematicians do not.

I think this is the reason why there are many examples of models developed in the study of Physics being applied successfully in cognitive science (e.g The famous Hopfield model (1982); Spin-Glass, Amit et al (1985); Ornstein-Uhlenbeck, Heath (2000); Diffusion, Ratcliff et al (2004) ). Obviously, all of these examples use math heavily. But while a mathematics student would study them using a theoretical approach, a physics student would probably study them emphasizing their application.

(PS. My bachelor's degree is in Math, Physics, and Computer science, so I think I can say I'm unbiased here... At least I hope so)

**References**

* Geometry and Experience, a lecture by Einstein A. English translation HTML
* Hopfield, J. J. (1982). Neural networks and physical systems with emergent collective computational abilities. Proceedings of the national academy of sciences, 79(8), 2554-2558.
* Amit, D. J., Gutfreund, H., & Sompolinsky, H. (1985). Spin-glass models of neural networks. Physical Review A, 32(2), 1007.
* Heath, R. A. (2000). The Ornstein-Uhlenbeck model for decision time in cognitive tasks: An example of control of nonlinear network dynamics. Psychological Research, 63(2), 183-191.
* Ratcliff, R., Gomez, P., & McKoon, G. (2004). A diffusion model account of the lexical decision task. Psychological review, 111(1), 159.

# Answer
> 4 votes
Now that @ofri has presented a good argument for physics, I'll give a few arguments for the benefits of a course in **maths**, and particularly a math course that focuses heavily on **statistics**.

There are many areas of psychology where a good understanding of statistics is very helpful. Statistics is particularly useful in psychometrics, mathematical psychology, and more broadly, any research involving multivariate or other more complex statistical methods. Furthermore, the statistics that is often taught in undergraduate psychology programs is often more applied, focussing on how to interpret common statistical techniques. If you have a degree in mathematics and statistics, you should be able to understand the techniques used in psychological data analysis in a deeper way.

In particular, calculus, linear algebra, probability, mathematical statistics, statistical computing, and a wide range of statistics subjects (e.g., introductory statistics, multivariate statistics, bayesian statistics, etc.) are a huge help when it comes to contributing to the psychological literature using advanced quantitative methods.

Also, when it comes to seeking an academic position, the capacity to teach statistics and research methods to psychology students is often a bonus, as is the capacity to consult and collaborate with fellow researchers on statistical methods.

*My background is as someone who has specialised in the interface of statistics and psychology. Thus, I am biased, but equally I consider that I am in a fairly good position to have seen the benefits to my own and many other people's psychological research careers in having good quantitative skills.*

# Answer
> 1 votes
Looking back at the history of current academic psychology, I would say that it has a tripartite foundation: The beginnings of psychology lie in ancient Greek to early modern **metaphysics**, that is the philosophical speculation about the nature of the soul (psyche). Many psychological concepts (such as the psyche itself, but also consciousness, volition, emotion etc.) are metaphysical in origin and nature, that is: they have never been empirically proven to exist. In this respect modern psychology and cognitive sciences are still metaphysical.

Since the eighteenth century philosophers (beginning with Christian Wolff) have attempted to conceive of a **measurement** of these psychic constructs. The theory and practice of this measurement has been developed by scholars from a more medical (such as Wundt) or more natural sciences background (such as Fechner and Helmholtz). If you wonder about the relevance of physics or geology to psychology, then you must first understand that scholars of that age were still almost always polymaths, educated and practicing in a variety of fields. If you look at their scientific biographies, you'll realize that they were not "physicists" or "physicians" in the currents sense, but interested in and researching the whole of "God's creation". What Fechner brought to psychology was not physics, but the methodology of physics: the experiment and the mathematical analysis of the experiment's results.

The third foundation of psychology today is, of course, **physiology**. Since the Descartes' substance dualism (that the soul is a substance independent of the body) has been effectively abandoned by modern philosophers in favor of a physicalist position (that the mind is an effect of the body or, specifically, the brain), psychology and, more specifically, neuropsychology has attempted to understand where in the brain which psychological processes are taking place, and how.

More and more of today's cognitive sciences are performed by biologists and medical scientist. Many researchers in our (psychology) department are already from a medical background, and the departments of medicine and biology have large laboratories doing psychological research. If psychology does not want to become irrelevant, psychologists have to become experts in neurophysiology.

Another huge influence is research by economists (Kahnemann etc.), who bring a lot of statistics with them. The relevance and status as a scientific discipline of psychology rest on the ability of psychologists to not only apply mathematical and statistical models developed in fields with different perspectives and purposes, but the ability to develop models and methods of mathematical analysis that fit psychological phenomena.

Unfortunately most psychologists and cognitive scientists lack in philosophy of science, so they don't understand when and where their research is leaving the firm ground of experimental science and entering the domain of metaphysical speculation.

What I believe is the best foundation for meaningful psychological research today is, therefore, threefold:

1. **Philosophy of science**
2. **Statistics**
3. **Neurobiology**

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Borsboom (2006) explains, why mathematics is fundamental to the development of psychology: most psychologists are unable to understand, develop and apply the theoretical models of item response theory, therefore current psychology is using classical test theory, which has several shortcomings.

Borsboom, D. (2006). The Attack of the Psychometricians. *Psychometrika, 71,* 425-440.

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If you downvote, please provide a critique, so I can amend my mistakes. A downvote without comment is not really helpful. Thank you.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, mathematical-psychology, psychophysics
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# Question
Title: What is the maximum number of objects an average human being can recognize at once?
I'm wondering, how many objects can the average human being can recognize?

For example, most of us can't look at this and say how many boxes there are without counting them:

But I think we can all recognize that there are only 3 boxes here (without manually counting):

So how many objects can an average human being recognize at once?

# Answer
The ability to enumerate objects without counting is known as subitizing.

Most studies suggest that we can subitize up to about 3 or 4 items (e.g. Starkey & Cooper, 1995). Enumeration of a small number of objects (i.e. subitizing) yields consistent response times regardless of the quantity of objects. Enumeration of larger quantities (i.e. counting) yields response times that increase linearly with the number of objects. This is taken as evidence that the two processes are computationally distinct.

Further studies in both neuropsychology (Dehaene & Cohen, 1994) and neuroimaging (Piazza et al., 2002) have supported the idea that separate neural substrates underly the two computational processes.

# References

> Dehaene, S., & Cohen, L. (1994). Dissociable mechanisms of subitizing and counting: Neuropsychological evidence from simultanagnosic patients. Journal of Experimental Psychology-Human Perception and Performance, 20(5), 958-975. PDF
>
> Piazza, M., Mechelli, A., Butterworth, B., & Price, C. J. (2002). Are subitizing and counting implemented as separate or functionally overlapping processes?. Neuroimage, 15(2), 435-446. PDF
>
> Starkey, P., & Cooper, R. G. (1995). The development of subitizing in young children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 13(4), 399-420.
> 16 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, perception
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# Question
Title: Neurotransmitters appearance in the evolutionary process
Recently I disagreed with the assumption, that lots of neurotransmitters came within recent 10,000 years of Homo Sapiens evolution. Judging from the available information sources, there is possibility of minor changes of brain reaction on neurotransmitters, but first assumption seems like nonsense for me.

So, are there any neurotransmitters, appeared only in human evolution history?

Then, are there reliable sources which will connect the appearance and development of biological species with appearance of neurotransmitters?

At last, are there significant acceleration of human brain evolution within last 10,000 years, connected with social processes or brain evolution for Humans occurring more gradually?

# Answer
*Neurobiology and Evolution are not exactly my field of expertise, but I'll try to answer anyway.*

> Are there any neurotransmitters that appeared only in human evolution history?

Probably not. **The common human neurotransmitters we know of, are also found in other animals**. More surprisingly, most of them are also found in organisms with no nervous-system, such as microorganisms and plants. This has even led some to advocate the change of the name neurotransmitters to biomediaters (Roshchina, 2010).

It is believed that most of the changes in the nervous system occur at the circuitry level, and are not the introduction of new types of neurotransmitters. For example, Venter et al (1988) write:

> The presence of hormones, neurotransmitters, their receptors and biosynthetic and degradative enzymes is clearly not only associated with the present and the recent past but with the past several hundred million years. Evidence is mounting which indicates substantial conservation of protein structure and function of these receptors and enzymes over these tremendous periods of time. These findings indicate that the evolution and development of the nervous system was not dependent upon the formation of new or better transmitter substances, receptor proteins, transducers and effector proteins but involved better utilization of these highly developed elements in creating advanced and refined circuitry.

And Winer and Larue (1996) write:

> Many features in the mammalian sensory thalamus, such as the types of neurons, their connections, or their neurotransmitters, are conserved in evolution.

However, it is important to remember that there are changes related to the neurotransmitters and how they are used in the brain. For example, Burki and Kaessmann (2004) showed that one gene encoding the enzyme glutamate dehydrogenase, which is important in the neurotransmitter glutamate recycling process has appeared less than 23 million years ago in our evolution. Grailhe et al (2001) show that one type of Serotonin recceptor has disappeared somewhere in the evolution between rodents and humans.

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References

* Roshchina, V. V. (2010). Evolutionary considerations of neurotransmitters in microbial, plant, and animal cells. In Microbial Endocrinology (pp. 17-52). Springer New York.
* Venter, J. C., Di Porzio, U., Robinson, D. A., Shreeve, S. M., Lai, J., Kerlavage, A. R., ... & Fraser, C. M. (1988). Evolution of neurotransmitter receptor systems. Progress in neurobiology, 30(2-3), 105.
* Winer, J. A., & Larue, D. T. (1996). Evolution of GABAergic circuitry in the mammalian medial geniculate body. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 93(7), 3083-3087.
* Burki, F., & Kaessmann, H. (2004). Birth and adaptive evolution of a hominoid gene that supports high neurotransmitter flux. Nature genetics, 36(10), 1061-1063.
* Grailhe, R., Grabtree, G. W., & Hen, R. (2001). Human 5-HT5 receptors: the 5-HT5A receptor is functional but the 5-HT 5B receptor was lost during mammalian evolution. European journal of pharmacology, 418(3), 157-167.
> 6 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, evolution
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# Question
Title: Do people estimate combined probabilities differently to uncombined ones?
Suppose, somebody has to estimate the likelihood of one of the following events (or has to estimate which event is more likely):

1. A coin is tossed six times and each time the result is heads. (combined)
2. A 64-sided die is rolled and the result is 1. (uncombined)

Since 2⁶ = 64, both events are obviously equiprobable. However, somebody with less statistical prowess might think otherwise. Also, in a more complex scenario (e.g., in a board game) at least one of the probabilities may be impossible to calculate for almost anybody (at least in a short time).

I am interested in studies that investigate, **whether combined probabilities (1) are estimated to be higher, lower or equal than uncombined probabilities (2)**, even if the actual probabilities are identical.

I am also interested in studies, which investigate the influence of the presentation of the scenario on the estimation of probabilities: **Is the same scenario perceived differently, if presented in a way that emphasises combinedness?** For example, one could simply ask somebody to estimate the probability that one of his close relatives will die within a year (uncombined) or one could ask him to list all his close relatives, their age and state of health first (combined). After all, a lot of probabilities with real-life applications are combined.

Note that I am not interested in which of the estimates is more accurate, only which one is higher.

# Answer
The probability of conjunctive events (**all** six tosses are heads) are overestimated, relative to a single event of similar overall probability.

This result has been shown by Paul Slovic, in an experiment that is described in its abstract as follows:

> This study examined the effects on the attractiveness of a gamble, of manipulating the number and structure of the independent events on which the gamble's outcomes were contingent, while holding the expected value constant. 3 manipulations were studied. The most effective was the situation where a gamble offering a payoff with probability equal to p was changed into a gamble whose payoff was contingent on the joint occurrence of 4 independent events, each having a probability equal to p^(1/4). Although individual differences were substantial, **the majority of Ss behaved as if the probability of the compound event was much greater than p**, its true value.

Similar results were obtained by Maya Bar-Hillel, in several experiments. In one of them she presented subjects with displays similar to this one:

A path in this array is defined as any line which originates at any element of the first row, connects it with any element in the second row, proceeds to pass through any element in the third row, and so on to the last row.

The subjects were asked to estimate the proportion of paths in such displays that cross only X's, relative to all paths. Results show a robust (and quite large) overestimation of this proportion.

**References**

* Slovic, P. (1969). Manipulating the attractiveness of a gamble without changing its expected value. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 79(1p1), 139.
* Bar-Hillel, M. (1973). On the subjective probability of compound events. Organizational behavior and human performance, 9(3), 396-406.
> 5 votes

# Answer
I believe these questions are dealt with by "support theory," the seminal publications being:

* Tversky, A., & Koehler, D. J. (1994). Support theory: A nonextensional representation of subjective probability. *Psychological Review, 101*(4), 547-566.
* Rottenstreich, Y., & Tversky, A. (1997). Unpacking, repacking, and anchoring: advances in support theory. *Psychological review, 104*(2), 406.

One of the basic findings accounted for by support theory is an *unpacking effect* whereby people judge an event that implicitly consists of a disjunction of many events (e.g., the probability that a person will "die from a natural cause") as less probable than the sum of the probability estimates for some component events that one could "unpack" the original hypothesis into (e.g., the sum of \[a\] the probability a person will die from heart disease, \[b\] the probability a person will die from cancer, \[c\] the probability a person will die from other natural causes). For example, in one study reported in Tversky & Koehler (1994), participants on average judged the probability of the implicit disjunction above ("death from a natural cause") to be 58%, and the probability of the unpacked version to be 22% + 18% + 33% = 73%. In the words of Tversky & Koehler, "unpacking an implicit disjunction may increase, but not decrease, its judged probability" (p. 549).

There is a lot more to support theory than just this unpacking effect, but a more complete summary of the theory is beyond my knowledge.
> 6 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, decision-making, rationality
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# Question
Title: Analyzing control questions data for a survey
I have an experimental study with a list of demographic and related questions and in order to identify data from participants that were potentially just answering the questions at random (to get through them more quickly I would assume), I've included two very similar 7-point likert scale questions at different points in the survey. My assumption would be that since the questions are reflective, the answers participants should give will be at least somewhat similar between the two questions (eg, it should be very unlikely that a participant answers 7 to one question yet 1 to the other).

I haven't yet collected the data, however I would like to have a method for determining which sets of data are suspicious (might be considered for exclusion in analysis) based on these control questions. One method might be to simply determine where the data fit on a Gaussian distribution. However, I think that the limited discriminating power of a 7-point scale would make this an improper test. My other idea was to do a cluster analysis on the data, looking for five groups: three along the line of correlation (between the questions), and two to examine unusually high/low and low/high values. I thought this could provide better suggestions for which data sets might be unusual since it wouldn't use somewhat arbitrary comparisons, it would only use the data given.

I'd really appreciate any suggestions for a better method, or improvements I could make as well as any comments toward more "standard" practices in this area, since I'm somewhat new to research.

# Answer
> 4 votes
You seem to be concerned with reliability, and more specifically internal reliability. Internal reliability is the degree to which different questions are measuring the same construct. This concept is used often in psychology and is usually measured using Cronbach's alpha. However, it is typically used to measure the reliability of a *test*, and not the reliability of an *individual*.

As Jeromy Anglim points out, I think it's important to consider the goal here. Using a two question Likert scale is probably not good enough to reliably detect outliers: What if the respondent checked all '4s' on a 7-point Likert scale? Reversing the scale would have no effect.

One alternative approach is to employ an **instructional manipulation check** (Oppenheimer et al., 2009). The gist of the technique is to trap participants into answering a question in a *specific way* that they could only have done by reading the instructions carefully. Here is an example from a survey administered by Facebook:

While this technique may throw out a few good participants, it will almost certainly raise the signal-to-noise ratio of your data by only including participants who followed instructions and read questions before answering.

Another tried and true technique is to use a computer-administered test and look at reaction times. You may be able to throw out a few responses (or whole participants) by simply looking for outliers in response time that are below the mean.

> Oppenheimer, D. M., Meyvis, T., & Davidenko, N. (2009). Instructional manipulation checks: Detecting satisficing to increase statistical power. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(4), 867-872.

# Answer
> 3 votes
**Preventing random responding:** An important first step is to think about ways to prevent random responding from occurring in the first place. A few ideas include: administer the survey face to face; have an experimental invigilator present; communicate the importance of the research to participants and the importance of participants taking the research seriously; use financial remuneration.

That said, there are situations where participants do not take a study seriously responding randomly for example. This seems to be particularly an issue when collecting data online.

**General approach**: My overall approach to this is to develop multiple indicators of problematic participation. I'll then assign penalty points to each participant based on the severity of the indicators. Participants with penalty points above a threshold are excluded from analyses.

The choices of what is problematic depends on the type of study:

* If a study is performed in a **face to face** setting, the experimenter can take notes recording when participants engage in problematic behaviour.
* In **online survey** style studies I record reaction time for each item. I then see how many items are answered more quickly than the person could conceivably read and respond to the item. For example, answering a personality test item in less than about 600 or even 800 milliseconds indicates that the participant has skipped an item. I then count up the number of times this occurs, and set a cut-off.
* In **performance based tasks**, other participant actions may imply distraction or not taking the task seriously. I'll try to develop indicators for this.

Mahalanobis distance is often a useful tool to flag multivariate outliers. You can further inspect the cases with the largest values to think about whether they make sense. There is a bit of an art in deciding which variables to include in the distance calculation. In particular, if you have a mix of positively and negatively worded items, carelessness is often indicated by a lack movement between the poles of a scale as you move from positively to negatively worded items.

In general, I also often include items at the end of the test asking the participant whether they took the experiment seriously.

### Discussion in the Literature

Osborne and Blanchard (2010) discuss random responding in the context of multiple choice tests. They mention the strategy of including items that all participants should answer correctly. To quote

> These can be content that should not be missed (e.g., 2+2=\__), behavioral/attitudinal questions (e.g., I weave the fabric for all my clothes), non-sense items (e.g., there are 30days in February), or targeted multiple-choice test items \[e.g., “How do you spell ‘forensics’?” (a) fornsis, (b) forensics, (c) phorensicks, (d) forensix\].

### References

# Answer
> 2 votes
This is not directly an answer to your question but, in line with my comments to another answer, my main advice would be “don't worry about it”.

Jeromy Anglim's tips are all good but I am still unconvinced that this is an important issue for most people. Since you are new to research, there are probably dozens of other things you should worry about.

Furthermore, if you do see evidence that there is a problem (extremely short response times, contradictory answers, large number of respondent providing absurd answers to open-ended questions), I would argue that you should first step back and ask yourself if what you are asking is reasonable (Do the task make sense? Can people be expected to have an opinion about the topic you are investigating? Are you demanding too much effort?) rather than trying to sort out “bad” respondents.

If you really want to dig into the subject and look up some literature, another name for this phenomenon is “satisficing”. “Response set” is a related idea that might be of interest.

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Tags: methodology, survey
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# Question
Title: Can we increase our higher order thinking (HOT) skills by practicing inductive reasoning?
I previously asked about the conceptual links between higher order thinking and inductive reasoning. This question focuses on the potential for improving higher order thinking through practicing inductive reasoning tasks.

For instances, in order to become a good dancer, one must exercise leg muscles, improve coordination, learn how to breathe and so on. Is their an analogy with acquiring higher order thinking skills?

If so, where can one find the main literature on how this process works?

# Answer
This is more of a comment than an answer. In fact it's more of an advice.

Higher-order thinking and inductive reasoning have rather vague definitions, in my mind. They seem to also come from different backgrounds. If you don't mind, I think it's easier to approach your situation rather than your question. You might find it refreshing to think of higher-order thinking as a phenomena that occurs under certain conditions; in addition to thinking of it as a muscle (which is implied by your question). Specifically, if you look at higher-order thinking, as you call it, as a state to be entered into, some of the greater facilitators are ability to relax and to change perspectives effectively with emphasis on relaxation. This is within the scope of neurolinguistics, if you'd prefer a contemporary approach; if you don't mind going old school with this, more or less any meditation, should lead to noticeable improvements or autogenic training might float your boat.

I hope this is helpful. I regret not providing any references. Edits are welcome.
> 1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, learning, training
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# Question
Title: Is there a place where I can find inconsistent images?
I would like to find some images in which there are logical inconsistencies. I want to use them for practicing my attention towards those kinds of logical errors (so that I could more easily spot them in my dreams, I am not sure if this works, but I just want to test.). I remember back in the high school someone showed me a picture where one is supposed to find such logical inconsistencies and picture included shadows facing wrong directions, things affected by winds in different directions etc.

# Answer
The University of Adelaide has a lot of information concerning inconsistent images:

http://www.hss.adelaide.edu.au/philosophy/inconsistent-images/

There are also a few of those on this page:

http://www.hss.adelaide.edu.au/philosophy/inconsistent-images/galleries/#sl
> 5 votes

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Tags: dreams
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# Question
Title: Are there "6 degrees of separation" for ideas?
Sites like linkedin.com are built on the idea that you can be related to any person in the world though around 6 people. One person knows another one, that one another one, and in the end you are connected through intermediate connections.

I'm interested if something similar exists for ideas - **does human mind naturally connect and infer from different ideas to find a relationship between ideas?** I'm thinking about this in the context of Freudian dream interpretation. In his book on the analysis of dreams, Freud repeatedly lists examples where he uses analysis and logic to find meaning in dream imagery and experiences.

This makes me curious if what Freud has discovered is some function of memory or thinking that establishes connections between unrelated ideas through intermediate ones.

For example, there is no connection between cats and space flight. But ones mind may try to connect them through a cartoon episode which involved super intelligent cats from the outer space invading earth in spaceships. Now there is a connection between cats and space flight.

What **I'm trying to ask is if it is natural for the mind to bridge gaps between unrelated ideas through intermediate ones, especially if/when a person is actively looking for a connection?** if there are 6 jumps between two unrelated ideas/concepts, then there are 6 degrees of separation.

# Answer
> 6 votes
You are asking two different questions in your title and the text. I will answer the text question, explain why you are asking two different questions, and comment on the title question.

The human mind seems to have some sort of relational structure for how it works with ideas. This is usually study in the domain of memory via free recall. In a free recall experiment, a participant will memorize a list of items and then be asked to recall them in any order. Alternatively, there might be no list to memorize and instead the participant may be asked to name as many of some common things as they can quickly (for instance: name all the animals you know). The experimenter tracks the time delays between recall of items, and uses that to infer the "mental distance" between concepts.

It a typical experiment, you will see clustering effects with participants quickly naming a bunch of objects of one type before taking slightly longer to transition to another type and then name many objects of that type quickly. As an example, I might be asked to name cartoon characters and I would start listing:

> "Bart" \[short delay\] "Homer" \[short delay\] "Marge" \[short delay\] "Lisa" \[short delay\] "Maggie" \[long delay while my mind switches from 'The Simpsons' cluster to 'Futurama' cluster\] "Fry" \[short delay\] Leela \[short delay\] Dr. Zoidberg \[etc\]

This suggests that I naturally connect and infer different relationships between ideas. In particular, the temporal structure of my recall reveals that I known concepts like "The Simpsons" and "Futurama" and I connect certain names to each other because they share a relationship of "being on the same show". Of course, how I structure my categories and recall is shaped by my expertise.

As an experimenter, I could represent the way people structure their ideas as a graph/network, with individual ideas represented as nodes and closely related ideas (or ones between which people usually transition often or quickly) connected by edges. Free recall is then a random walk on this network. The netwok is similar to a social network, except there nodes are people and edges exist between friends. However, just because what you are studying has a network structure, doesn't mean that it has "6 degrees of separation".

The "6 degrees of separation" idea is a subset of all networks that are known as small-world networks. Small-world networks are defined as networks on $n$ nodes where the longest shortest path (i.e. the fewest edges you need to follow to get from any arbitrary node to any other arbitrary node) is of length about $\log n$. Many networks, say a regular grid, are not small-world (in the case of the regular grid, the length of the longest shortest path is proportional to $\sqrt{n}$ which is much bigger than $\log n$). Thus, the question in the body of you post is not necessarily related to the title.

However, if we take a highly clustered small-world network and perform a random walk on it, then the results will be similar to what we see in free recall experiments. In particular, the random walk will tend to wander for a while in one cluster until taking a jump to another cluster where it would again linger. Thus, the relational structure of ideas might be consistent with small-world networks.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, ideation
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title: Picture of eye promotes good behaviour

text:
# Question
Title: Picture of eye promotes good behaviour
I remember a study about how a picture of an eye made people more well behaved. The experiment was in an unsupervised coffee room where there was a box where participants were expected to deposit money after getting their coffee. However, due to lack of supervision, the participants had the option of leaving no money in the box and getting a free coffee. The study had two conditions, when a picture of a plant hung over the coffee maker and a picture of an eye. They found that participants contributed more money in the eye condition.

**What is the original reference and name of this study?** What mechanisms did the authors propose to explain this effect? Have the results been replicated in similar studies? How does the increase in contribution compare to cases with passive surveillance like an easily visible camera in the room (but not eye shaped)?

# Answer
> 9 votes
A study that used the field setting you describe is done by Bateson et al. (2006).

As for the mechanism, they write:

> we believe that images of eyes motivate cooperative behaviour because they induce a perception in participants of being watched. Although participants were not actually observed in either of our experimental conditions, the human perceptual system contains neurons that respond selectively to stimuli involving faces and eyes (Emery 2000; Haxby et al. 2000), and it is therefore possible that the images exerted an automatic and unconscious effect on the participants’ perception that they were being watched. Our results therefore support the hypothesis that reputational concerns may be extremely powerful in motivating cooperative behaviour.

Similar findings have been found in a lab setting by Haley and Fessler (2005). They also compared the effect to other cues (such as auditory cues) of presence of others and found similar effect. So I don't have a direct answer to the surveillance camera scenario, but these results suggest the effect would be similar.

However, it is clear that this effect depends on many variables. For example, it has been shown not exist in darkness (Tane and Takezawa, 2011), and to depend on culture (Raihani and Bshary, 2012).

**References**

* Bateson, M., Nettle, D., & Roberts, G. (2006). Cues of being watched enhance cooperation in a real-world setting. Biology letters, 2(3), 412-414.
* Haley, K. J., & Fessler, D. M. (2005). Nobody's watching?: Subtle cues affect generosity in an anonymous economic game. Evolution and Human behavior, 26(3), 245-256.
* Tane, K., & Takezawa, M. (2011). Perception of human face does not induce cooperation in darkness. Letters on Evolutionary Behavioral Science, 2(2), 24-27.
* Raihani, N. J., & Bshary, R. (2012). A positive effect of flowers rather than eye images in a large-scale, cross-cultural dictator game. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 279(1742), 3556-3564.

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Tags: social-psychology, reference-request, experimental-psychology, prosocial-behavior
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# Question
Title: Effect of paper type on evaluation of resumes
I heard about an experiment that have shown an effect of the type of paper a resume was printed on, on the evaluation of the resume. If I remember correctly, resumes printed on heavier paper, or attached to heavier writing pads were evaluated as better.

I may have some of the details wrong (for example, it may have been some other job application forms, and not resumes), but hopefully the gist is right.

I tried to look for the reference, but couldn't find it. Does anyone know of a reference presenting such an experiment?

# Answer
> 4 votes
Some findings:

These articles all seem to deal with paper color (white vs off-white), not quality, and the advent of personal computers and laser printers after this research was completed clearly outdates some of the research questions (e.g. typeset vs typewritten resumés).

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Tags: reference-request, io-psychology, bias
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title: Lexical Decision (Web-)App

text:
# Question
Title: Lexical Decision (Web-)App
I want to make a lexical decision experiment, is there any freely available software for this? A Javascript-based webapp would suit me best, as it would run in the browser without the need to install anything.

# Answer
> 2 votes
One option is to use Inquisit Web Edition. Here is an example script with a lexical decision task.

Unfortunately, it is **not free** and it requires installation of a **plug-in**.

Version 4 of Inquisit runs on OSX and Windows. Thus, it wont work in Linux or on phones, tablets, etc.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Just for reference, I ended up writing simple web-based lexical decision task software myself.

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Tags: methodology, experimental-psychology, software, linguistics
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title: When can anchoring backfire?

text:
# Question
Title: When can anchoring backfire?
Anchoring is a well-known phenomenon \[1\]. However, I just ran an experiment where the effect seemingly backfired. Basically, I asked people to estimate the number of jelly beans in a jar. In my anchor condition, people were given an estimate produce by the Jelly Bean Counter 5000 computer system which was purported to be highly accurate, then they were allowed to see the jar. They were then asked to estimate the number of jelly beans.

People who were not anchored were allowed to see the jar of jelly beans first, then estimate the count. Then, they were showed Jelly Bean Counter 5000's estimate. They were then allowed to re-estimate the number of jelly beans in the jar.

In all cases, Jelly Bean Counter 5000 provided the exact number of jelly beans in the jar.

The results are shown in the figure below. Basically, people who were anchored with the Jelly Bean Counter 5000 number were about 62% accurate. People who made their own estimate first (self-anchoring) were initially about 46% accurate, but after seeing Jelly Bean Counter 5000's estimate, they increased to about 72% accurate.

I'm at a loss to explain why people exposed to an accurate estimate (Jelly Bean Counter 5000) ended up being less accurate than people who formed their own inaccurate opinion first. Can anybody provide any alternative explanations? Are there any theories that might be applicable?

\[1\] Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Science, 185(4157), 1124-1131.

# Answer
I think there is a significant confound in your experimental design: **The anchored subjects only make 1 estimate whereas the "no anchor" subjects make 2 estimates.** Note that on the first estimate the anchored subjects were much closer to the anchor than the non anchored ones, which is entirely consistent with Tversky's heuristic.

Also, "In all cases, Jelly Bean Counter 5000 provided the exact number of jelly beans in the jar." means that this isn't really a standard anchoring task. Normally, anchoring values aren't correct (in fact much of the anchoring work involves very incorrect anchors). **This task confounds being close to the anchor with being close to the correct answer.**

You might have an interesting finding: more anchoring after a non-anchored guess, but without correcting for the 2-guess and perfect anchor confounds your results can't be properly interpreted.
> 7 votes

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Tags: anchoring
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# Question
Title: Any studies on lack of imagination and creativity?
Is there a formal scientific term for this type of personality?:

1. Main priorities are: family, phsyical and financial protection of the family and self. (Little to no creativity. Strong desire to reproduce.)
2. Learning a process or a system with no desire to improve process/system in any substantial way.
3. Avoidance of major change. Strong attraction for familiarity and incremental improvement only.
4. Understanding through physical experiences but with medium to low abstract thinking skills. (Low imagination.)
5. Attraction to physical movement (as participant or spectator): dance, slapstick comedy, sports. Avoidance of certain mental activities. (Jock stereotype.)

Apologies for my lack of scientific bg. I have no formal edu.

The reason I ask is because I am building a UI and this "personality" appears to be dominant among the mass market. However, I have no idea where to begin when it comes to science journals and psychology terms.

# Answer
Personality and individual differences research has a range of constructs that relate to what you are talking about:

You seem to describing a "type" of individual. However, a multidimensional continuous approach is probably a better model of individual differences. For example, you describe a person with low intelligence (i.e., concrete thinking, low abstract reasoning). However, from memory intelligence and traits like openness only correlate weakly if at all. Thus, the characteristics you describe don't necessarily go together. What you seem to be describing is a stereotype, which probably has a poor match to reality where people tend to vary on a range of factors. Sure you can probably point to some point who fit the type, but there will be plenty more than only reflect some of those characteristics.

With regards to a person's main desires being protection of self and family both physically and financially, this sounds like a description of a lot of people. There are plenty of motivational theories and evolutionary models of human psychology which would reinforce such motives as very important to people.
> 3 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology
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# Question
Title: What is the linguistic equivalent of functional fixedness?
Recently, I saw a crossword clue: (5 letters) "They help you after a crash." After going through the list of EMTs, firemen, police officers, etc. I realized that the answer was "IT Guy." This seems to me, to be analogous to the phenomenon of functional fixedness, and I was wondering if there is some linguistic equivalent to functional fixedness?

# Answer
I'm not sure whether this can explain your crossword experience, but perseveration is a fairly well-studied phenomenon in word production. Individuals with aphasia (a neurogenic language disorder) often exhibit perseveration errors in tasks like picture naming. For example, imagine trial *N* is a picture of a dog and the participant responds "dog" (correct) and trial *N+1* is a picture of a car and the participant again responds "dog" (perseveration error). Stark (2007) provides a good historical review of theories of perseveration in aphasia, which generally propose either failure to inhibit the representation of the previous response or failure to sufficiently activate the representation of the new stimulus (and it is possible that both can happen: Fischer-Baum & Rapp, 2012). Like other speech errors, perseveration errors are also produced by typical (non-aphasic) adults, just much less frequently than in aphasia.

More general kinds of perseveration - inability to stop focusing on a particular topic - are associated with deficits of executive function (possibly related to frontal lobe dysfunction or damage) and a variety of psychopathologies, such as depression.

References:

Fischer-Baum, S., & Rapp, B. (2012). Underlying cause(s) of letter perseveration errors. *Neuropsychologia*, 50(2), 305–318. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.12.001

Stark, J. (2007). A review of classical accounts of verbal perseveration and their modern‐day relevance. *Aphasiology*, 21(10-11), 928–959. doi:10.1080/02687030701198239
> 3 votes

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Tags: language
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title: How do I change my tiredness patterns?

text:
# Question
Title: How do I change my tiredness patterns?
All of you probably know what the human 'circadian cycle' is, and depending on your personality, you would either be a night-owl or a morning-lark.

I am interested in understanding the patterns of alertness and tiredness **throughout the entire day, between waking up and sleeping**.

Personally, my alertness gears up in the morning until 12.30 pm, after which I will, consciously or not, begin to feel very very drowsy. This happens even in the absence of lunch (lunch makes people feel tired because the body works to break down the carbohydrates). I will continue feeling tired and exhausted throughout the entire afternoon before I become alert again from 5 pm onwards. And then of course, in the night I am quite alert.

Here are my questions:

1. Has research been conducted on this?
2. Are there strategies to alter the patterns?
3. Does the tiredness have to do with eating patterns?
4. What are the relationships between tiredness and our circadian cycles?

# Answer
> 2 votes
To answer your questions (as to inspire you to do your own research and to avoid writing a book):

1. Yes, there is a TON of research on circadian rhythms... There are also many ongoing research projects. I might suggest doing a google scholar search. You might also try getting access to academic peer reviewed journals through your local library, university/college, schools, etc.
2. There are certainly strategies to alter the patterns. For example, amount of exposure to sunlight and time of day, amount of exercise and time of day, eating patterns, etc. have all been shown to have a correlational effect on wakefulness vs. tiredness. If you do research on what effects our circadian rhythms, you will have an idea of how to alter them. There was an interesting study done on the circadian rhythms of nurses who worked shifts of varying lengths and their work productivity/effectiveness due to their circadian rhythms. You might want to try to find articles like that.
3. Yes, tiredness can certainly have to do with eating patterns. This is why many schools are implementing breakfast programs for children. Simply, food provides calories which provide energy. Without energy (and energy of the right type) we cannot function to our fullest ability. Different types of food would also effect one's circadian rhythm. You might wish to do some research on ghrelin and the circadian system. There is ongoing research looking into the effect of one's diet on their circadian rhythm.
4. At this point, the full extent of relationships between tiredness and circadian rhythms are unknown. However, there is strong correlational data which suggests that REM sleep patterns, circadian rhythms and tiredness vs. wakefulness is highly related. You might also wish to look up specific neural circuitry which effects one's circadian rhythms.

I wasn't sure how complex of an answer you wanted or your understanding of neural circuitry, so I haven't typed out the answers for you. Looking up various neurotransmitters would probably be a great place to start if you're interested.

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Tags: sleep, consciousness
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# Question
Title: How do you run a risk / gambling experiment using Qualtrics or Amazon Turk?
I want to run a simple probability matching gambling experiment: Each round has the participant pick Up or Down. The computer picks Up with a probability (p=0.7). If the participant gets it correct, they win 1 credit. If they get it wrong, they lose 1 credit. This runs for 100 rounds. It needs to run online.

The problem is that I don't think Qualtrics can do this. Qualtrics can branch and do randomness, but that randomness is geared toward randomization of a survey. The only way that Qualtrics can do this is to do 2^100 branching. This is not good.

**Does anyone know how to use Qualtrics to implement this type of study?**

Otherwise, we will use something else with Amazon Turk. We believe that the most direct route is to create our own HTML page that implements this as a javascript. None of the online systems that we looked at seem to work well. In pacticular: http://www.tatool.ch/ is good, but requires a java server. http://www.webexp.info/ is too complicated.

# Answer
This would be easy to implement in Inquisit. Inquisit has a web interface and is particularly designed for branching and randomisation of trials. If the coding sounds too complex, you can always contact Inquisit and pay them to program the task. From my experience, the cost is not that great for simple scripts.

You can see an example of the Iowa Gambling Task in Inquisit here. That's a lot more complex than what you are describing, but it should give you a feel for what is possible with Inquisit.

You could set up Inquisit with Mechanical Turk as you would most external surveys. See this discussion of mechanical turk.
> 1 votes

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Tags: experimental-psychology, internet, survey, mechanical-turk
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# Question
Title: How does personality moderate or mediate the relationship between stress and burnout?
My research is on work related stress and burnout amongst healthcare professionals and the role that personality play in either reducing or increasing levels of stress and burnout. I'm using the big five personality factors to research how each of these factors affect the relationship between stress and burnout.

* How does personality affect levels of stress in individuals?
* Can a person's personality be a mediating or moderating factor?

# Answer
> 3 votes
Personality is generally theorised to be a stable individual difference variable. Research has shown it to be highly stable over time. Thus, from a theoretical perspective it typically has a primacy in causal models.

Stress can be an ambiguous construct. It can refer to the objective existence of stressful stimuli or the way that individuals perceive those stresses.

From a theoretical perspective, personality is related to both the objective experience of stressors and the subjective perception of stressors. In particular, neuroticism refers to dispositions to experience negative emotions. Personality influences the world. For example, people put themselves into situations that may elicit more stressful experiences. Likewise, personality can influence the experience of stress through various mental models, interpretive schemas, rumination tendencies, and so on.

While one can imagine in the extreme that stress can alter personality (e.g., PTSD), in general personality makes more sense as a factor that has a causal influence on both the objective experience and perception of stressful experiences. In this sense, it **personality does not mediate the effect of stress on burnout**. This theoretically based conclusion is important. Statistical tests of mediation will provide rubbish information if you just plug in three intercorrelated variables like stress, personality, and burnout.

From a theoretical perspective personality should causally influence the objective presence of stress, the subjective perception of stress, and whether someone experiences burnout. It also makes sense that certain personality traits such as neuroticism would causally increase the relationship between objective stressors and subjective stress and ultimately more extreme forms of subjective stress such as burnout. However, in order to really test this idea, you need to get very good measures of objective stressors. Subjective measures of stress are likely to be influenced directly by personality which is likely to reduce the potential moderator relationship. Alternatively, you might just find that main effects are enough; i.e., that personality and objective stressors mutually contribute to burnout, but that there is no interaction effect (as would be implied by the moderator hypothesis).

There are thousands of empirical articles looking at correlates of personality, stress, strain, burnout and so on. I have read a lot of them many years ago. This answer focuses more on the theoretical underpinnings of any relationship.

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Tags: io-psychology, personality, well-being, stress
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# Question
Title: Are there any cognitive models for visual navigation?
I've seen a few neuroscience accounts of visual navigation and many A.I. projects, but no psychologically plausible accounts that actually solve the computational problem (i.e. produce a **working** model).

Obviously I realize that to ask for a *general* cognitive model of visual navigation would be too much, but surely someone has done some work on a small sub-domain (e.g. driving, navigating in video games, navigation in specific animals).

Any computational account along these lines would be appreciated, though a connectionist account would be preferred.

# Answer
> 4 votes
I wonder if any of the work using Act-R would be relevant. See these Act-R publications with accompanying PDFs on

(apologies if they're not relevant, this is outside my comfort zone)

# Answer
> 4 votes
Henderson summarizes very well a number of approaches on human gaze control during real-world scenes and tasks. http://cvcl.mit.edu/iap05/henderson\_03.pdf

In a nutshell, our visual system combines knowledge about the task (e.g. color of the search target) and external audio/visual stimuli (saliency) to control our gaze inside a scene. Quite insightful about how gaze control works during a task is the paper of Land and Hayhoe on gaze during a sandwich making task: http://cvcl.mit.edu/SUNSeminar/LandHayhoe\_eye\_actions\_VR01.pdf

Navigation is a task that requires a step-by-step approach. I am not aware of any visual navigation model, but I believe that the basic principles are the same. I hope it helps!

# Answer
> 3 votes
If you are looking for a 'brain model of visual navigation', you just have to google it! You will find a whole Ph.D. thesis that exactly covers all what you are asking for:

Learning Objects Places and Relation in a Brain Model of Visual Navigation.

http://books.google.com/books/about/Learning\_Objects\_Places\_and\_Relations\_in.html?id=yJo2twAACAAJ

That should help in your research.

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Tags: connectionism, cognitive-modeling, computational-modeling, vision
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# Question
Title: What are the effects of social rejection on the brain?
What are the effects of social rejection on the brain?

If the external circumstance can not change, how can the impact on the brain be reduced?

What is the average sensitivity to social rejection and are some not effect by it?

Any points in the right direction are helpful.

So far I have found only 1 study (Eisenberger et al., 2003) summarized as follows (but unable to make any conclusions):

> A ball is passed to a group of students except for one student, who does not know what the experiment is. When the ball is not passed to the "excluded" student, the brain of that excluded lights up in the same place as in physical pain.

### References

* Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302(5643), 290-292.

# Answer
> 6 votes
I followed your info and found 2 research papers:

1. Why Rejection Hurts? (In case you want to skim through more papers, visit Papers from Social And Affective Neuroscience Laboratory. **Naomi Eisenberger** is the director of this Lab.)
2. Belongingness as a Core Personality Trait: How Social Exclusion Influences Social Functioning and Personality Expression
    * To help you access this paper promptly, I shared a pdf version here.

I read through the paper 1 and skimmed paper 2 in order to extract conclusions that are relevant to your question:

```
    "If the external circumstance can not change,
     how can the impact on the brain be reduced?"

```

> From ***Why Rejection Hurts***
>
> * factors that increase or decrease one kind of pain **should affect the other kind of pain** in a similar manner.
> * participants reported **significantly less pain** when holding their partner’s hand than when they held a stranger’s hand
> * “If all this is true, does that mean that painkillers could reduce the pain of social rejection?” ... -- **in fact the answer is yes.**
>
> From ***Belongingness as a Core ...***

About the second question, I only digged a little bit.

```
    "What is the average sensitivity to social rejection
    and are some not effect by it?"

```

> * From a book named ***"Are You Ethical"*** by Steve Soto
>
> The following text does not directly answer the question, you could view it as a heuristic: When someone is less sensitive, she/he will be less affected by social rejection.
>
> * "On the other hand, others take rejection as an indication that others don’t realize that what they have to offer is beneficial, it only amplifies the faith they have in themselves, and they persevere that much harder. It is never taken personally, or as an affront. This is “a low level of rejection sensitivity”. -- Karen Horney

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Tags: neuroscience, social-psychology
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# Question
Title: Does the "use it or loose it" principle apply to the brain?
Does not using the brain decreases mental functioning? If so, is it recommended to keep using the brain, for example by learning new things or engaging in challenging activities (puzzels, quizzes *etc*.) up until old age?

# Answer
Yes, brain power is eroded via a lack of practice. This occurs through the processes called **synaptic pruning and brain plasticity**.

I will leave you with a very basic answer as I am unsure of your level of understanding of cognitive processes. First, you must understand neurons. Then, you can begin to understand synaptic pruning and brain plasticity. Finally, here is a link to a bunch more information and brain plasticity exercises.
> 8 votes

# Answer
Not using your brain might well be deleterious, but it's impossible not to use your brain unless you're in a coma or something. There are some cool studies on plasticity (see Shayna's answer above) in amputees, where the parts of the brain that control the amputated limb go unused but are taken up by other functions instead.

*However*, "perpetual brain exercises" like the brain training games/puzzles you see have shown no efficacy in actually increasing cognitive performance on any task, besides the specific game/puzzle you're playing. Playing a lot of chess does not make your brain any more powerful, it just makes you better at chess. See the following:

Owen, A.M., et al. (2010). Putting brain training to the test. *Nature, 465(7299)*, 775-778.
> 8 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, performance, educational-psychology, brain-training
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# Question
Title: When rating, is it better to set the expected goal in the middle with hard to reach upper bounds or higher with desired outcomes at the upper bounds?
The actual implementation that I'm interested in is a set of five scores from 1-5 (whole numbers) that are averaged together to compute an overall score (decimal values). However, I prefer to look at the simpler case of a single score from 1.0 to 5.0. The complete evaluation criteria is known to everyone and well defined.

Let's say that I'm asking a group of people to rate themselves (and, perhaps in the future, others) on a scale from 1-5, with 1 being the low end of the scale. Over time, I want people to change their behavior to some minimum standard, which is represented by some point on this scale (improve their score). I envision a "minimum standard" score that everyone is expected to achieve (or show measurable progress toward achieving) in the near future.

I see two options in formulating the range of values:

* The high end (a score of 4-5) is the desired state. A score of around 3 or 3.5 would probably be considered to be acceptable. Anything lower than a 2 may be considered unacceptable.
* The desired goal is in the middle (about 3). The low end of the scale (1) is unacceptable, the high end (5) of the scale is extremely difficult to obtain.

I'm leaning toward the first implementation, with the thought that people inherently want to make the numbers reach the high end of the scale. If people look at the high end and see that it's incredibly difficult to achieve, they will lose interest in measuring themselves and tracking progress. Therefore, a 5 should be hard, but not overly difficult, to achieve, with most people eventually working from a present state of 2-3 to a final state of 4-4.25.

I believe that this might be related in some way to gamification, but there's no reward system. It's simply expected behavior that one would rate yourself and embedded in the culture that you strive to demonstrate improvement in some way (in this particular case, by rating yourself and others on a well-defined scale).

Is there any research that can support or disprove my initial thoughts?

# Answer
You might want to read about goal setting theory (see the review by Lock & Latham, 2002). This literature talks about setting challenging but attainable goals that are specific and measurable.

You might also like to think about performance management systems. In particular a lot of organisations use management by objectives. In this case, goals are negotiated between the supervisor and the employee.

### References

* Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a Practically Useful Theory of Goal Setting and Task Motivation On November 9th, 2011· In Business Models, Business Theories. American psychologist, 57(9), 705-717. PDF
> 1 votes

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Tags: io-psychology, gamification
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# Question
Title: Is there any recent work on modeling how we rapidly acquire new knowledge?
I work with neural network models of human cognition a lot, and one thing that bugs me about them is the timescale: they learn over thousands of trials whereas humans seem to learn after a couple examples. So I've been wondering if this discrepancy has studied, and if so, what terminology has been used to study it. Specifically, I'd be very interested to see some work trying to get neural network models to learn at a more human timescale.

A good example is learning to play a new video-game. We can do this in a few minutes if there is a tutorial explaining the basic game mechanics to us. However, modeling the same process would involve slowly strengthening perceptual-motor associations and could take a very long time indeed.

Note that I know about one shot learning, and that is not quite what I'm talking about. That literature mainly revolves around image recognition and learning after a single presentation, whereas I'm curious about rapid learning more generally. This sounds a little vague, but the question "why do our models learn several orders of magnitude slower than us?" seems specific enough to have come up in the literature.

# Answer
> 9 votes
Humans actually exhibit both slow and fast learning and they have somewhat different properties. One distinction is between "declarative" memory (for example, facts like "tigers have stripes" or "Paris is the capital of France") and "procedural" learning (such as perceptuo-motor skills like riding a bike or playing a musical instrument). Declarative memory lends itself to fast learning but procedural memory requires a lot of practice.

Perhaps even more relevant to your question is that neural network models are also capable of fast and slow learning, depending on the sparseness of the representations and tolerance for disruption. One of the foundational papers on this topic (McClelland, McNaughton, & O'Reilly, 1995) described a neural network model with two "complementary learning systems": (1) A fast-learning hippocampal memory system that relies on sparse representations and is not able to maintain previously-learned information when learning new information (sometimes called "catastrophic interference"). (2) A slow-learning neocortical system that relies on distributed representations and is able to integrate many different examples into an overall structure that can support generalization.

References:

McClelland, J. L., McNaughton, B. L., & O’Reilly, R. C. (1995). Why there are complementary learning systems in the hippocampus and neocortex: Insights from the successes and failures of connectionist models of learning and memory. Psychological Review, 102(3), 419–457.

# Answer
> 4 votes
The question of how "rapid" learning could be possible relates to Hume's problem of induction -- how can we learn so much from so little. Historically, in both philosophy and psychology, the solution has fallen into one of two camps: either some form of the knowledge was already there to begin with (a 'nativist' view), or we use statistical inference to slowly update our beliefs (some early connectionist models fit into this camp, though in the last 20 years, there are forms of connectionist models that might suddenly/dramatically 'shift' weights in ways that can lead to the appearance of rapid learning).

A solution to the 'rapid learning' problem comes from Bayesianism - the idea that we're doing 'backwards inference' to get to a model of the world. This inference to the best model is weighed by both the likelihood of the data given a model, as well as (and here's the important part) our *prior beliefs* about how likely the model was before we observed new data. Bayesianism is not just a middle ground between nativism and empiricism; the reason it provides solutions to 'rapid inference' is because you're integrating the idea of 'probabilities' into the mix. That is, rather than there being one absolute truth, we can think of the learner as weighing multiple possible truths - with some a priori belief in each; new data comes in and allows us to rapidly update those possibilities, based on the likelihood of the new data under each.

The Bayesian framework also allows for hierarchical inferences (each set of prior beliefs is given by a more abstract set of prior beliefs) which can tie in nicely to ideas like 'core knowledge' (which fall under the nativism camp), while still providing a learning mechanism (which fall under the empiricist camp).

There is long standing research in vision and language which cover these Bayesian ideas, but in the last decade an explosion of research has come out of labs such as the Tenenbaum lab at MIT, the Griffiths lab at Berkeley, etc. that show how other cognitive/higher-order reasoning (such as causal inference) might be rapidly acquired under this framework. There are several overview papers on these themes which give background on the Bayesian approach, as well as empirical predictions that fall out of specific Bayesian models (many can be found by visiting the lab websites of the aforementioned individuals).

Bayesianism is complementary to models that include additional constraints, such as pedagogical inferences (see Pat Shafto's work) and other pragmatic inferences (e.g. see Mike Frank or Noah Goodman's work) -- all of which to lead to even more rapid inferences from limited data.

# Answer
> -2 votes
The question is slightly confused I feel, so I am not sure there is a good answer.

Neural network models are evolutionary and so possibly analogous to the evolution of the human brain (where learning takes place extremely slowly), not to simple human learning.

The brain does not learn skills by evolving a neural network to perform that skill (that would just be too slow). It is probably something like: the brain processes information then encodes its conclusions into memory (neurons).

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, learning, cognitive-modeling, computational-modeling, neural-network
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# Question
Title: How to analyse 3 by 3 design with Likert scale ratings?
I want to understand what would be the best way to analyze the results of an online likert-scale ratings of pictures on 3 dimensions. I have 3 groups of participants from different countries. They are not equal. I got the data into SPSS already but now I wonder what would be the appropriate way to deal with the data.

# Answer
Without knowing more, I imagine you could do a 3 x 3 mixed ANOVA with three levels to the within subjects factor "dimension" three levels to the between subjects factor "group". This is all predicated on the idea that each dimension is rated on the same scale.

Unequal group sizes typically wont be a major issue. The important consideration is that you have sufficient sample size in each group to give you reasonable precision. That said, it might be more of something to think about if you have unequal group variances.

There is also quite a lot of discussion on whether you can analyse Likert scales or Likert-type items using linear model approaches like mixed ANOVA. Perhaps see some of these discussions. In general, if you each variable is the mean of multiple items, then you should be less concerned about using the linear model. If you are dealing with single Likert-type items, then there may be a small amount of imprecision in your p-values. This can be a particular problem if you have floor or ceiling effect issues.

Here's a tutorial on mixed ANOVA in SPSS.
> 3 votes

# Answer
A rating scale is not necessarily a Likert scale. It sounds like you have a single rating for each picture across each dimension but I could be wrong. More details would be needed for better advice and Ana's comment should be answered in your question.

You would be best off doing a multi-level cumulative link model (multi-level ordinal regression). You can include subject and picture as random variables. See the ordinal package in R. The vignettes will be very helpful.

Keep in mind that with the pictures you also have item level variance and generalization issues that people doing research on words struggle with as well. Even if you can get reasonably good looking data for your analysis that satisfies an ANOVA you'll have to consider random and fixed effects issues of both the people and the pictures. The multi-level modelling can include both and avoid the sort of patchwork hoops required with ANOVA. Therefore, regardless of whether you have a true likert scale and you satisfy requirements for treating the responses continuously or you should be treating it as ordinal data, multi-level modelling is your best bet.
> 4 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, perception, experimental-psychology, statistics
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# Question
Title: Are there any free databases of audio-visual emotional stimuli (English)?
I am particularly interested in naturalistic and induced emotional content. I have found the SAVEE, the HUMAINE and the SEMAINE databases. I have read through the Terms for LDC (UPenn) and it seems somewhat complicated, especially as I am interested in their databases from 1993 and 2002. I have also found the EULA/ELDA resources, but these do not have much to offer. I have seen a passing reference to Glenn I. Roisman's database of Adult Attachment Interview recordings which seems to be perfect but I cannot get through to anyone from that team to inquire about availability.

**Do you know any other databases of naturalistic/induced emotional stimuli which would be audio-visual and in English?**

# Answer
We have been using audio databases from THE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF EMOTION AND ATTENTION. Video databases we received from Anna Esposito & Maria Teresa Riviello: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1694104 http://dl.acm.org/author\_page.cfm?id=81100065756&CFID=220607811&CFTOKEN=47568792
> 3 votes

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Tags: perception, emotion
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# Question
Title: How to measure dominance and submissiveness?
**Introduction**

Interpersonal dimensions of personality (Sullivan, 1953) have been described in a circular model, the interpersonal circumplex, since Leary (1957). The two dimensions that define this circumplex are warmheartedness(pleasantness) versus coldheartedness and dominance versus submissiveness. Two better known measures based on Leary's concept are Mehrabian's Trait Dominance-Submissiveness (Mehrabian & Hines, 1978) and Trait Pleasure-Displeasure Scales (Mehrabian, 1978) (which combine with a Trait Arousability Scale, Mehrabian, 1977, into the PAD; Mehrabian, 1996b), and the Interpersonal Adjective Scale (IAS-R; Wiggins, Trapnell & Philips, 1988).

If you analyse the dominance/submissiveness scales from these instruments, it becomes clear that dominance is here understood to be the *ability to assert oneself*, while submissiveness is the complementary *inability*:

> The 26 items of the Trait Dominance-Submissiveness Scale ... assessed the generalised feelings of control and influence over one's relationships and life circumstances (e.g. 'I control situations rather than let them control me' (+), 'I work best when someone has outlined a job for me' (-), or 'Domineering people don't intimidate me' (+)). (Mehrabian, 1996a)

The adjectives related to submissiveness in the IAS-R make this negative construct of submissiveness even more clear: timid, bashful, shy, forceless, are four of the eight self-descriptors from this scale.

Contrary to this perspective on submissiveness as incompetent and powerless, other conceptions are possible: some egalitarian individuals might not be unable to dominate others, but simply unwilling; some loving individuals might find fulfillment in selfless devotion; and with the ever expanding service economy, hopefully professional service providers enjoy serving their customers – it would be a dismal life for a majority of us, if we didn't.

Submissive pleasure is an important factor in certain forms of romantic relationships, from the wife choosing a traditional provider/facilitator-household in feminist times to the happy spanking BDSM couple.

**Question**

Are there measures, scales or instruments that measure a positive, joyful concept of submissiveness, as it is conceived by BDSM?

If not, is there a measure of the "service provider personality"?

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*References*

* Leary, T. (1957). Interpersonal diagnosis of personality. New York: Ronald Press.
* Mehrabian, A. (1977). A questionnaire measure of individual differences in stimulus screening and associated differences in arousability. Environmental Psychology and Nonverbal Behavior, 1, 89-103.
* Mehrabian, A. (1978). Measure of individual differences in temperament. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 38, 1105-1117.
* Mehrabian, A. (1996a). Analysis of the big-five personality factors in terms of the PAD Temperament Model. Australian Journal of Psychology, 48, 86-92.
* Mehrabian, A. (1996b). Pleasure-arousal-dominance: A general framework for describing and measuring individual differences in temperament. Current Psychology, 14, 261-292.
* Mehrabian, A., & Hines, M. (1978). A questionnaire measure of individual differences in dominance-submissiveness. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 38, 479-484. doi:10.1177/001316447803800235
* Sullivan, H. S. (1953). The interpersonal theory of psychiatry. New York: Norton.
* Wiggins, J. S., Trapnell, P., & Philips, N. (1988). Psychometric and geometric characteristics of the Revised Interpersonal Adjective Scales (IAS-R). Multivariate Behavrioral Research, 23, 517-530.

# Answer
I am using TRUE (http://www.salleurl.edu/tsenyal/true/features.html) and SAM (Self-Assessment Manikin) interface includes a scale for dominance, along with valence and activation. The scale allows you to rate dominance from 'controlled' to 'in control' on a scale from 1 to 9.

### References

* Planet, S., Iriondo, I., Martínez, E., & Montero, J. A. (2008). TRUE: an online testing platform for multimedia evaluation. In Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on EMOTION: Corpora for Research on Emotion and Affect at the 6th Conference on Language Resources & Evaluation (LREC 2008). Marrakech, Morocco.
> 7 votes

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Tags: measurement, personality
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# Question
Title: Why different responses to target and distractor in three-stimulus oddball procedure?
In the three-stimulus oddball procedure, there is an infrequent target in a background of frequently occurring standard stimuli and infrequently occurring distracter stimuli. My question is, since the target and the distracter are both infrequent, how do we make the difference between them? Why do we expect different responses to them? Since I am not allowed to answer my question I post here: I assume that the difference is done in the instruction done to the participant.

# Answer
I assume you are talking about a difference in neural activity?

The difference in processing of targets and distracters does not come from their relative frequency, but from their task-relevance: you are paying attention to the targets, thus increasing gain. In auditory MMN, this attention component becomes evident slightly later than the prediction component, and might be missing completely for ignored stimuli (e.g. when the participants are watching a movie while listening to a stream of sounds). Naatanen has more than one review paper that goes into this, this one probably the most recent.
> 3 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, perception, measurement, experimental-psychology, test
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# Question
Title: Why do our senses evoke different subjective experiences
I'm wondering why there are different subjective experiences when our sensor systems are technically the same neurons that just get excited by different stuff (photons, soundwaves, ...).

So why does it *feel* different to hear something than to see something when both are just electrical impulses?

I'm of course aware of the concept of qualia ("redness" etc.), but I haven't found this question being discussed in relation to that.

**Edit:**

Of course I'm not claiming that the most outer part of the sensor systems work in the same way. However all of them produce (or their function results in) electrical frequencies. I highly doubt that if you'd input the frequencies produced by a retina to the neurons of an auditory system, this would result in vision.

From what I understand and know, all sensory systems output electrical signals. Apart from differing frequencies I would say they(the signals) are the same. At the same time, I doubt that it's just the frequency spectrum in an electrical system that makes a signal "vision" or "sound" to our subjective experience.

# Answer
> 6 votes
Don't know the answer (I think no one does), but you should have a look at this paper: A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness. O'Regan JK, Noë A., BBS 2001 PUBMED

In short the proposed answer is that modalities are subject to different sensory-motor contingencies. For example, when you move forward the visual input undergoes very structured changes, but auditory input undergoes a different set of changes. So what makes seeing feel different than hearing is that the relationships between motor output and sensory input are different.

You might also be interested in sensory substitution experiments. The brain is to some extend able to acquire new 'senses', when specifically structured information is provided to an existing sense. For example, it appears to be possible to 'see' (whatever this means in this context) when brightness information is transduced to touch or electrical stimulation of the tongue Wikipedia

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Tags: perception, consciousness, philosophy-of-mind, qualia
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# Question
Title: Can prolonged neural adaptation lead to HPPD?
The human brain adapts to a constant stimulus of our neural system. For instance, if we ride a train and look out of the window for a long time and the train stops, we have the feeling of slowly moving backwards.

There are other, more extreme stimulus like a neave strobe as shown in this picture:

This particular animated image produces a rapid neural adaption causing us to see things moving for about 10 seconds. I have also observed that binaural beats cause minor ear ringing symptoms if listened to for a longer period of time.

The burning question here is: **Can prolonged stimulus to such images or sounds cause Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder**?

# Answer
No. This disorder requires the sufferer to have used hallucinogenic substances in the past:

> Previous use of hallucinogens by the person is necessary, but not sufficient, for diagnosis of HPPD. For an individual to be diagnosed with HPPD, the symptoms cannot be due to another medical condition.

from Wikipedia following the DSM-IV criteria reproduced here.

> A. The reexperiencing, following cessation of use of a hallucinogen, of one or more of the perceptual symptoms that were experienced while intoxicated with the hallucinogen (e.g., geometric hallucinations, false perceptions of movement in the peripheral visual fields, flashes of color, intensified colors, trails of images of moving objects, positive afterimages, halos around objects, macropsia, and micropsia).
> 5 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, perception, abnormal-psychology, optical-illusion
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# Question
Title: Self-fulfilling stereotypes: Have researchers tried inventing new group stereotypes?
Studies on the stereotype threat have typically used stereotypes that that are common in contemporary culture, i.e. the canonical example being the study that showed African American SAT scores lowered when faced with the stereotype that African Americans are less intelligent than other groups.

Have there been any studies where researchers invented a stereotype (i.e. something random, like "Hispanics perform more poorly at jump rope than other groups") and tested to see if it had any effect on well controlled test subjects?

Have there been any social studies where scientists have tried inventing a new stereotype and implanting it into the mainstream population? (I doubt this because of ethics issues, but it would certainly be interesting!)

# Answer
> 7 votes
The "blue eyes brown eyes exercise" involves a completely arbitrary and invented stereotype.

During part of the exercise, Jane Elliott treated the blue-eyed children as the superior group. The following day, Elliott reversed the exercise, treating the brown-eyed children as the superior group. She treated people with the superior-eye-color-of-the-day as highly intelligent and able to learn, and people with the "inferior" eye color as inherently lazy and stupid.

I hear that, during the exercise, the new stereotype does have a significant effect on the subjects.

Perhaps this exercise by a schoolteacher doesn't really qualify as a "well controlled experiment" performed by a "scientist", but it sounds pretty close to what you were looking for.

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Tags: social-psychology
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