# Question
Title: Could motivational interviewing techniques be used without engaging with a counselor?
I've found lots of info on motivational interviewing for strengthening a person's own motivation and commitment to change, but I'm wondering if this technique has been adapted to help people who won't or can't get to a counselor or therapist.

Is a therapist required to administer the interviews? Has anyone used the technique without having therapist appointments, e.g., could an interactive website provide similar guidance?

# Answer
> 1 votes
Performance reviews (Cardon & Stevens, 2004; Posthuma & Campion, 2008) are part of running an effective business. Are your employees performing at their best? If not, why is that?

> A performance review is a formal assessment in which a manager evaluates an employee’s work performance, identifies strengths and weaknesses, offers feedback, and sets goals for future performance.

Motivational interviewing can be part of the performance review process when setting SMART targets and goals, (more on that in a moment) and you don't necessarily need a trained psychotherapist for that. Although guidance from any Human Resources teams you may have will be beneficial. Aside from that, if the motivational issues involve physical disabilities or psychological issues, you do need the professional help of trained doctors and/or therapists.

The acronym SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-Bound (Bjerke & Renger, 2017; Reeves & Fuller, 2018).

| Smart | Measurable | Attainable | Realistic | Time-bound |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Set real numbers with real deadlines | Make sure your goal is trackable | Work towards setting and evaluating goals and targets which are challenging but possible | Be honest. You know what you and your team are actually capable of | Give a realistic and achievable deadline |
| Don't just say "I want more out of you" | Don't just hide behind buzzwords and jargon | Don't try to do everything in one day | Don't forget the hurdles which may need to be addressed | Don't keep pushing for a goal you **might** achieve **someday** |

When you as a manager are evaluating your employee on their performance, a good manager will not just look at the employee. But, they will also look at workplace — the ergonomics of the workplace, the resources available to them and any possible hidden issues. There may be personal issues your employee is facing (physical disabilities, psychological problems etc.).

When looking at the realistic element of the SMART target(s), everything needs evaluating together to form the list of targets. If the employee's personal issues need professional help, then maybe booking sessions with a workplace or external psychotherapist and/or doctor will need to be put down as one of the targets with a realistic set of deadlines.

If they are already seeing a psychotherapist or doctor, and you have the prerequisite permissions, maybe you can discuss the progress (without knowing the finer details) of the therapy and doctor treatment, along with any projected time-frames for realistic achievements.

## References

Bjerke, M. B., & Renger, R. (2017). Being smart about writing SMART objectives. *Evaluation and program planning, 61*, 125-127. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evalprogplan.2016.12.009

Cardon, M. S., & Stevens, C. E. (2004). Managing human resources in small organizations: What do we know?. *Human resource management review, 14*(3), 295-323. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2004.06.001

Posthuma, R. A., & Campion, M. A. (2008). Twenty best practices for just employee performance reviews: employers can use a model to achieve performance reviews that increase employee satisfaction, reduce the likelihood of litigation and boost motivation. Compensation & Benefits Review, 40(1), 47-55. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886368707312139

Reeves, M., & Fuller, J. (2018). When SMART goals are not so smart. *MIT Sloan Management Review, 59*(4), 1-5. https://www.proquest.com/openview/55e33fb984c921676bc765312e23c42e/1

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Tags: motivation, well-being, behavioral-economics
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# Question
Title: What does current research tell us about addictive behaviors in games?
I'm creating a game, and I would like to know what research I can consult to make it more "addicting".

The game is a casual one, like Candy Crush, Angry Birds, etc

# Answer
The most recent I can find is an **Open Access** paper from May this year:

Kim, D., & Lee, J. (2021). Addictive Internet Gaming Usage among Korean Adolescents before and after the Outbreak of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Comparison of the Latent Profiles in 2018 and 2020. *International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18*(14), 7275. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18147275

Other than that, there is:

Wegmann, E., & Brand, M. (2020). Cognitive correlates in gaming disorder and social networks use disorder: A comparison. *Current Addiction Reports, 7*, 356-364. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40429-020-00314-y
> 0 votes

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Tags: motivation, addiction
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title: Hyperperception model psychology?

text:
# Question
Title: Hyperperception model psychology?
Is hyperperception model related to Psychology or communication studies? I have read articles like (Carpenter & Spottswood, 2021) but still wonder which Psychology is it related to or is it just a communication theory?

# Answer
If you are referring to:

Carpenter, C. J., & Spottswood, E. L. (2021). The Hyperperception Model: When Your Partner's New Friends Inspire Jealousy and Failing to Use Social Distancing. *Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 24*(7), 439-443. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2020.0492

The article details give you a clue. For one, you have tagged the question correctly as a Social Psychology question, but it also crosses into Behavioural Psychology and a recently new branch of psychology called Cyberpsychology.

> Cyberpsychology is a scientific inter-disciplinary domain that focuses on the psychological phenomena which emerge as a result of the human interaction with digital technology, particularly the Internet — Source: British Psychological Society (BPS, n.d.)

## References

BPS (n.d.). *Cyberpsychology Section* https://www.bps.org.uk/member-microsites/cyberpsychology-section
> 0 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, cyberpsychology
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# Question
Title: What personality disorders is schema therapy successfully used for?
Schema therapy is a cognitive therapy based on people developing so-called "schemas" (as far as I understand, patterns of cognition and behavior) early in their lives and then using these schemas to their detriment later. Schema therapy is based on identifying these schemas and leading the patient to develop different mechanisms of dealing with these situations. (if any of that is very incorrect, I'd be happy to be corrected)

What personality disorders is this technique successfully used for? Are there any where it is recommended against?

# Answer
> 1 votes
The following is what I have found from looking at the various studies on the therapy.

After looking at studies related to a variety of mental health and personality difficulties, Masley et al. (2012) states that;

> The culminative message (both from the popularity of this model and the medium-to-large effect sizes) is of a theory that has already demonstrated clinically effective outcomes in a small number of studies and that would benefit from ongoing research and development with complex client groups.

Specifically looking at personality disorders, Jacob, G. A., & Arntz, A. (2013) found that treatment based on this model has been found to be very effective in several studies.

Looking for specific personality disorders, Sempértegui et al. (2013) points out that the the existing efficacy studies show positive outcomes of schema therapy for Borderline Personality Disorder but further work is required to achieve full empirical support of the model and therapy.

However, a more sobering review comes from Taylor et al. (2017), who state that

> Schema therapy has demonstrated initial significant results in terms of reducing EMS \[early maladaptive schema\] and improving symptoms for personality disorders, but formal mediation analytical studies are lacking and rigorous evidence for other mental health disorders is currently sparse.

## References

Jacob, G. A., & Arntz, A. (2013). Schema therapy for personality disorders—A review. *International Journal of Cognitive Therapy, 6*(2), 171-185. https://doi.org/10.1521/ijct.2013.6.2.171

Masley, S. A., Gillanders, D. T., Simpson, S. G., & Taylor, M. A. (2012). A systematic review of the evidence base for schema therapy. *Cognitive behaviour therapy, 41*(3), 185-202. https://doi.org/10.1080/16506073.2011.614274

Sempértegui, G. A., Karreman, A., Arntz, A., & Bekker, M. H. (2013). Schema therapy for borderline personality disorder: A comprehensive review of its empirical foundations, effectiveness and implementation possibilities. *Clinical psychology review, 33*(3), 426-447. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2012.11.006

Taylor, C. D., Bee, P., & Haddock, G. (2017). Does schema therapy change schemas and symptoms? A systematic review across mental health disorders. *Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 90*(3), 456-479. https://doi.org/10.1111/papt.12112

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Tags: clinical-psychology, psychiatry
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# Question
Title: Using multilevel modeling to assess gender differences in intervention effects of an RCT, and how to look at mechanisms of change
I'm looking for some help here - so I'm a grad student and stats newbie (but trying to move on from newbie status!) and attempting to figure out how to conduct the analyses I'm interested in but I'm feeling very lost.

I'm looking to do MLM with a large RCT (N=434) with the active treatment vs. services as usual (i.e., 2 treatment conditions), and I have four total timepoints - baseline, posttreatment, 6 months follow-up, and 12 months follow-up. The main purpose of the study is to look at gender as a moderator of treatment outcomes, and a secondary goal is to look at whether there are differences in mechanisms/mediators of treatment effects by gender as well. I spoke with a professor in the quant psychology department about my project and he mentioned that the strength of my project is that I have follow-up data with such a large sample (and high retention rates) with a marginalized, hard-to-reach population - so he suggested using MLM. Typically, when I've used MLM in the past, I've done it with looking at clusters or within/between individual change across multiple timepoints. But is there a way to use MLM to address my research questions - 1) to look at gender as a moderator of intervention outcomes in this large-scale RCT, and 2) to look at whether hypothesized, female-specific mediators of change are indeed more predictive of improved treatment outcomes for females relative to males? I'm feeling a little lost as to what would be my level 1 vs level 2 variables here.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!! Thank you so much!!

# Answer
> 1 votes
It doesn't make sense to use MLM merely because you have a lot of data, you use it because you have data with variance at different levels. That said, I very much prefer the terminology of "mixed effects models" rather than "multilevel" models for the sort of question you're asking, where you actually don't seem to be interested in variance at different hierarchical levels, but rather about the fixed effects. I'd recommend reading about mixed effects modeling and starting from there, though if you are familiar with MLM you will probably quickly discover they are exactly the same thing. There are also blogs out there talking about the terminology/approach differences that you might find helpful, like here: https://www.theanalysisfactor.com/multilevel-hierarchical-mixed-models-terminology/

In your case, it sounds like you have repeated measures in some subjects; therefore, it would make sense to have a random effect for subject, otherwise your data are violating assumptions of independence. However, your research questions are all about the fixed effects of gender and gender interactions with other parameters. The random effects here would seem to be more of a nuisance parameter that you include in your model but aren't likely to discuss at all.

I can't give you a complete answer of how you should structure your models with the information provided (and don't think I really should, unless you want to collaborate and give authorship - setting up the model to answer questions like this is pretty much the main intellectual effort for a project like this), and there's a whole separate world of mediation analysis, but I think this should be enough to get you working towards a solution.

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Tags: experimental-psychology, statistics
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# Question
Title: How effective is cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety disorders?
How effective have cognitive behavioral therapy type techniques been shown and proven to work for anxiety based on published literature?

Citations please.

# Answer
> 11 votes
Meta-analyses are usually pretty accurate, as they essentially bring together the data from many studies that investigate the same topic of interest together and use statistical methods to effectively get the most conclusive answer possible, throughout all of the studies assessed, just HOW effective is a certain treatment?

For your specific question, there's one in particular that strongly supports CBT for anxiety. It looks at 71 different studies (that's a ton). It also investigates it's effectiveness in a variety of different environments and versions of it's therapy. It was even published only last month.

> Clin Psychol Rev. 2013 Jul 20;33(8):954-964. doi: 10.1016/j.cpr.2013.07.003.
>
> **A meta-analysis of nonrandomized effectiveness studies on outpatient cognitive behavioral therapy for adult anxiety disorders.**
> Hans E, Hiller W. Source Department of Clinical Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany.
> Electronic address: hans@uni-mainz.de.
> Abstract
> **OBJECTIVE:** The primary aim of this study was to assess the overall effectiveness of individual and group outpatient cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for adults with a primary anxiety disorder in routine clinical practice.
> **METHOD:** We conducted a random effects meta-analysis of 71 nonrandomized effectiveness studies on outpatient individual and group CBT for adult anxiety disorders. Standardized mean gain effect sizes pre- to posttreatment, and posttreatment to follow-up are reported for disorder-specific symptoms, depression, and general anxiety. The mean dropout from CBT is reported.
> **RESULTS:** Outpatient CBT was effective in reducing disorder-specific symptoms in completer (d=0.90-1.91) and intention-to-treat samples (d=0.67-1.45). Moderate to large (d=0.54-1.09) and small to large effect sizes (d=0.42-0.97) were found for depressive and general anxiety symptoms posttreatment. Across all anxiety disorders, the weighted mean dropout rate was 15.06%. ***Posttreatment gains for disorder-specific anxiety were maintained 12months after completion of therapy.***
> **CONCLUSIONS:** \****CBT for adult anxiety disorders is very effective and widely accepted in routine practice settings.\**** However, the methodological and reporting quality of nonrandomized effectiveness studies must be improved. © 2013.

Across 71 studies, the conclusion used the word ***"very effective,"*** which is very rare to see in any study in the conclusions section, ***especially a meta-analysis***, the weighted mean dropout rate across all different types of its application was only 15.06%, AND gains were generally maintained for 12 months (maybe more, I don't have full text) after beginning therapy.

The only caveat they mention is that the methodology and reporting quality must be improved, but I feel that's a general trait that almost all studies need improvement in.
Plus when you investigate SEVENTY-ONE (71) studies, statistical laws start to take over anyway.

Based on this, I'd have to say that there is very, very strong evidence that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is an effective treatment for anxiety disorders.

In my opinion, and as an analogy, it's almost just as if not more proven than using aspirin or acetaminophen to relieve a simple headache. It just works according to the literature, which, if you have that many studies then "routine clinical analysis" really does become reality. More and more clinical psychologists are switching over to this method or attempting to make some sort of derivative of it.

# Answer
> 3 votes
Frankly, I don't see how the meta-analysis of 70-something non-randomized studies from the self-accepted answer is such amazing evidence. On the other hand, there's a 2008 meta-analysis of just the randomized (and double-blind) studies (RCTs), and these are not so few either:

> We included studies that randomly assigned adult patients meeting DSM-III-R or DSM-IV criteria for an anxiety disorder to either CBT or placebo. Of 1,165 studies that were initially identified, 27 met all inclusion criteria. \[...\]
>
> Random effect models of completer samples yielded a pooled effect size (Hedges’ g) of 0.73 (95% confidence interval, 0.88–1.65) for continuous anxiety severity measures and 0.45 (90% confidence interval, 0.25–0.65) for depressive symptom severity measures. The pooled odds ratio for completer treatment response rates was 4.06 (95% confidence interval, 2.78–5.92). The strongest effect sizes were observed for obsessive-compulsive disorder and acute stress disorder. The advantage of CBT over placebo did not depend on placebo modality, number of sessions, or study year.
>
> Our review of randomized placebo-controlled trials indicates that CBT is efficacious for adult anxiety disorders.

The notion of placebo is however not always clear when it comes to psychtherapy; in this meta-analysis it

> had to involve interventions to control for nonspecific factors (e.g., regular contact with a therapist, reasonable rationale for the intervention, discussions of the psychological problem). Placebo interventions that included active treatment ingredients for the target problem (e.g., an intervention that specifically instructs participants to engage in exposure exercises to test certain predictions or to challenge a maladaptive thinking style) were not included

Also only double-blind studies were included in these 27:

> (c) Participants and evaluators were blinded to treatment condition (i.e., participants and evaluators were not aware whether they received active treatment or placebo intervention); (d) The evaluators were blinded to treatment conditions (i.e., evaluators were not aware which treatment condition participants had received; and (e) the description of drop-outs was provided.

---

There's even a newer (2018) meta-analysis of the same kind

> The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for anxiety-related disorders based on randomized placebo-controlled trials. We included 41 studies that randomly assigned patients (N = 2,843) with acute stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), panic disorder (PD), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or social anxiety disorder (SAD) to CBT or a psychological or pill placebo condition. Findings demonstrated moderate placebo-controlled effects of CBT on target disorder symptoms (Hedges' g = 0.56), and small to moderate effects on other anxiety symptoms (Hedges' g = 0.38), depression (Hedges' g = 0.31), and quality of life (Hedges' g = 0.30). Response rates in CBT compared to placebo were associated with an odds ratio of 2.97. Effects on the target disorder were significantly stronger for completer samples than intent-to-treat samples, and for individuals compared to group CBT in SAD and PTSD studies. Large effect sizes were found for OCD, GAD, and acute stress disorder, and small to moderate effect sizes were found for PTSD, SAD, and PD. In PTSD studies, dropout rates were greater in CBT (29.0%) compared to placebo (17.2%), but no difference in dropout was found across other disorders. Interventions primarily using exposure strategies had larger effect sizes than those using cognitive or cognitive and behavioral techniques, though this difference did not reach significance. Findings demonstrate that CBT is a moderately efficacious treatment for anxiety disorders when compared to placebo. More effective treatments are especially needed for PTSD, SAD, and PD.

Since this 2018 meta-analysis presented itself as the successor of the one a decade before (it shares some authors as well) it still included OCD, acute stress disorder, and PTSD even though these are no longer classified as anxiety disorders in DSM-5.

It's also interesting that there few RCTs of CBT in GAD though (only 2).

Also RCTs aren't all the same quality-wise...

> the strength of the effect of CBT depended on whether the analysis was conducted on completer or ITT \[intent-to-treat\] samples, with completer samples producing significantly larger effect sizes, though not ORs \[odd ratios\], compared to ITT samples. Such a discrepancy between ITT and completer samples is particularly important given that CBT was associated with significantly greater dropout rates than placebo in the present analysis, a result not found in Hofmann and Smits (2008). Notably, this result appeared to be driven by greater dropout rates among CBT patients in PTSD studies, which has also been found in previous meta-analytic research (Imel, Laska, Jakupcak, & Simpson, 2013). Such a finding suggests that for PTSD studies, the superior effect of CBT compared to placebo may be inflated by lack of data from dropouts.
>
> \[...\] only 16 of the 41 studies included used ITT analyses, and the use of completer analyses appeared to lead to greater effect size estimates. Even among studies using ITT analyses, results from our risk of bias assessment indicated that many studies did not account for missing data properly, or did not provide adequate information for why data were missing or how missing data were dealt with. Relatedly, the present results may have been influenced by publication bias. In addition, criteria for treatment response varied between studies, potentially contributed to increased heterogeneity in the effect sizes for categorical outcomes.

They also note that meta-analyses using only waitlists as opposed to more active placebos had reported even greater effect sizes:

> For instance, the metaanalysis by Bandelow et al. (2015) comparing CBT to waitlist produced an overall effect size of 1.23 for anxiety disorder symptoms. In contrast, we observed that CBT was associated with an effect size of 0.56 when compared to placebo.

---

The metaanalysis of Bandelow et al. is also interesting in its own ways; although it targeted fewer disorders (I think they adopted to the DSM-5 view) namely only Panic disorder/agoraphobia, GAD and Social anxiety disorder, it compared treatments multiple treatments, with some interesting conclusions:

> In direct comparisons, individual CBT/exposure was significantly more effective than waiting list, psychological placebo and pill placebo conditions (Table 3). Group CBT was superior to waiting list, but not to pill placebo. Relaxation and non-face-to-face therapies were superior to waiting lists.

In that last table, "Fail-safe N" (number of negative studies needed to reject the hypothesis that a treatment differs from a control group) and "Egger P" estimate publication bias; the "adjusted d" is using the publication-bias-correcting ‘trim and fill’ method of Duval and Tweedie (2000). (Alas the meta-analyses of Hofmann and Smits did not report something like this.)

# Answer
> 0 votes
I can only give my experience, which is that it did not help one bit.

I had two lots of 6 sessions, and was described as a " very compliant patient"

It was like standing on a motorway trying to persuade one car to slow down, sometimes they did, but there were so many more it was exhausting.

I have no doubt it works for some, but I rather think its effects are being over hyped.

Try this :

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/conquer-fear-flying/201402/why-cbt-cant-regulate-anxiety

Its relatively cheap and is fashionable.....but as I said..did absolutely nothing for me and for others I know.

I guess at least it is without side effects....as long as those administering it do not see the patient as the problem if it fails.....its too easy to do that

Gina x

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Tags: abnormal-psychology, clinical-psychology, anxiety
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# Question
Title: Do cognitive distortions not exist at all in non-depressed people?
Cognitive distortions like `All-or-nothing thinking`, `Fortune Teller Error`; do they exist in non-depressed people with a low intensity as well or they do not have these things at all? In other way, having cognitive distortions is the root cause of depression or having those distortions with high intensity is actually the root cause of depression?

# Answer
## The short answer is yes.

While research has indicated that anxiety, stress or depression can lead to cognitive distortions (Panourgia & Comoretto, 2017), they can exist without it (Gilbert, 1998).

> It is suggested that cognitive distortions are natural consequences of using fast track defensive algorithms that are sensitive to threat. In various contexts, especially those of threat, humans evolved to think adaptively rather than logically. Hence cognitive distortions are not strictly errors in brain functioning and it can be useful to inform patients that ‘negative thinking’ may be dysfunctional but is a reflection of basic brain design and not personal irrationality.
>
> **\[...\]**
>
> Many forms of cognitive distortion can be seen to use the (previously) adaptive heuristic of *better safe than sorry*.

If the cognitive distortions are developed without stress, depression, or anxiety, and they are not corrected, thinking can eventually be more distorted and lead to one or more of these mental health problems.

A cognitive distortion is **an assumption we make based on minimal evidence, or without considering all the evidence**. Conspiracy theorists are often found to have cognitive distortions.

HealthLine points out that:

> In the 1960s, psychiatrist Aaron Beck pioneered research on cognitive distortions in his development of a treatment method known as cognitive behavioral therapy.
>
> Since then, researchers have identified at least 10 common distorted thinking patterns

These are:

* **Polarised Thinking**
Sometimes called All-or-nothing or black and white thinking because there is no middle ground (no grey areas). When you’re convinced that some people are just doomed to always fail while others are destined for success, that the people in general are either good or evil, you’re probably engaging in polarised thinking.
* **Overgeneralisation**
Can be similar to and part of polarised thinking, but it is where you reach a conclusion about one event and then incorrectly apply that conclusion to everything else in life.
* **Catastophising**
This is where people either dread or assume the worst when faced with the unknown.
* **Personalisation**
Taking things personally when they’re not connected to or caused by you at all.
* **Mind Reading**
Assuming you know what others are thinking.
* **Mental Filtering**
Ignoring positives and focusing exclusively on negatives.
* **Discounting the Positive**
Like mental filtering, you are discounting the positive and having a negative bias in thinking. **People who tend to discount the positive don’t ignore or overlook something positive. Instead, they explain it away as a fluke or sheer luck**.
* **"Should" statements**
“Should” and “ought” statements are often used by the thinker to take on a negative view of their life. Examples could be, "I should have known that!" or "I ought to have done that instead!"
* **Emotional Reasoning**
The belief that the way you feel about a situation is a reliable indicator of reality.
* **Labelling**
Where prejudices often come from. It is where people reduce themselves or other people to a single — usually negative — characteristic or descriptor, like “drunk” or “failure”.

Therapy can be a good resource to deal with cognitive distortions. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is touted as the best form of therapy to deal with cognitive distortions, but as I pointed out in another answer, among other reasons discussed why CBT may not be suitable for everyone,

> The Countess of Mar in the House of Lords suggested the results of a trial into the effectiveness of CBT and GET (graded exercise therapy) had been artificially inflated (BACP, 2013)

## References

BACP. (2013). Policy. *Therapy Today, 24*(2), p. 52. https://www.bacp.co.uk/bacp-journals/therapy-today/archive/

Gilbert, P. (1998). The evolved basis and adaptive functions of cognitive distortions. *British Journal of Medical Psychology, 71*(4), 447-463. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8341.1998.tb01002.x

Panourgia, C., & Comoretto, A. (2017). Do cognitive distortions explain the longitudinal relationship between life adversity and emotional and behavioural problems in secondary school children?. *Stress and Health, 33*(5), 590-599. https://doi.org/10.1002/smi.2743
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, depression, study-cognitive-sciences
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# Question
Title: Can stress situations force people to smile?
I've seen many times in my life how people occasionally smile when trying to remain calm under huge stress regarding natural disasters, deaths, big losses, etc. It happened to me also.
Everything I find about it is just tips on how to `make yourself happy by forcing a smile`, but I doubt people was smiling intentionally - it was coming out naturally.
Was there any research on it? Is it a thing?

# Answer
In research (Ansfield, 2007)

> Smiling when distressed was most prevalent in conditions in which participants reported the greatest emotional distress. Specifically, while viewing distressing videos, men reported experiencing greater overall distress and also smiled more than women, especially in social conditions and while viewing intensely (as opposed to moderately) distressing stimuli. In general, smiling was related to more negative affect while viewing distressing videos but to more positive affect after viewing such stimuli.

As for reasons why this happens, that is down to opinion. As men are more inclined to smile in inappropriate situations such as these, one possible reason is the result of the gendered stereotype that men and boys don't cry. A criminology study was put together on this topic (Goodey, 1997).

> \[T\]he image of the ‘fearless’ male, from childhood onwards, is not a helpful one.

and causes issues when men and boys become stressed and/or depressed and need therapy (Branney & White, 2008).

## References

Ansfield, M. E. (2007). Smiling when distressed: When a smile is a frown turned upside down. *Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33*(6), 763-775. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167206297398

Branney, P., & White, A. (2008). Big boys don't cry: Depression and men. *Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 14*(4), 256-262. https://doi.org/10.1192/apt.bp.106.003467

Goodey, J. (1997). Boys don't cry: Masculinities, fear of crime and fearlessness. *The British Journal of Criminology, 37*(3), 401-418. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.bjc.a014177
> 4 votes

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Tags: stress
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# Question
Title: What measure or criteria wording can be used to track trends in p factor?
Background: you can use factor analysis on mental illness to get a general psychopathology factor, like the g factor in intelligence but instead a general mental illness factor.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4209412/

Intent: I am interested in using a forecast aggregation platform to predict whether we will discover a Flynn effect like trend in p factor, either up or down. https://www.metaculus.com/questions/

Caveat: Flynn may be hollow for g, and in theory something like that could happen with a p factor trend too. That's fine. Our forecast question can be agnostic about the nature of the trend, in order to be reliably resolvable without too much administrative effort.

*Specific need:* what simple metric, or criteria wording, could be shown to the forecasters, such that they could predict something that will reliably resolve? In forecasting, the event description must be unambiguous. This is harder than people new to forecasting tend to expect. One thing that might affect our criterion choice is how we think future researchers will measure such a thing, as piggybacking off already-reported metrics can make forecast question-writing easier.

E.g. suppose if we had the following wording: "Will there be data to support a trend in the p factor, at least equivalent to an average 2 IQ point-per-decade change, either up or down, during any 10-year period before 2040?" Would it be easy for people not working in any related field to kind of just, do a cursory search around 2040 (or every few years) and clearly tell if such a thing has happened? If not, what would be a better way to word it?

Any input appreciated!

# Answer
Bottom line: I think what you are interested in is trends in psychopathology, rather than p-factor.

The terms "g" and "g-factor" are actually 2 constructs often conflated in the literature. One way that they are used is to refer to a shared variance or correlation coefficient between intelligence sub-tests, calculated at a population level using a factor analysis, to produce a value between 0 and 1. This definition is more precisely referred to as "psychometric g" or "Spearman's g". Another way that they are used is to refer to a general underlying (physical but unknown) mechanism through which intelligence is generalized in the brain, measured at an individual level using IQ tests, with values averaging 100 and a standard deviation of 15. This definition may be referred to as general intelligence or IQ. Currently, work on p-factor mostly refers to a construct analogous to a "psychometric p", whereas easily determining trends requires analysis of general psychopathology testing analogous to IQ.

Unambiguously defining a forecasting question on secular trends in psychopathology has a few requirements:

* **Qualified tests:** IQ actually refers to a variety of different tests that either label themselves as IQ tests, or are generally considered as such. There are numerous general psychopathology tests, such as SCL-90, MINI, AUDADIS, SBQ, and many more (see Constantinou & Fonagy, 2019 \- Appendix A for a sample) that have been used in p-factor research. Unfortunately, the tests do not self-label, nor is a comprehensive list available anywhere that I can find (though try Wikipedia for a starting point).
* **Data pool:** Research on cross-cohort trends using these tests has been done in the past - examples: Collishaw (2015), Bor et al (2014), Schürmann & Margraf (2018), Kronström et al (2021). Note that thus far such research has been sporadic, and limited to specific populations. A relatively good example is Twenge et al (2010) which uses the MMPI, and even reports results in terms of standard deviation:

> ... among American college students (N=63,706) between 1938 and 2007 on the MMPI and MMPI-2 and high school students(N=13,870) between 1951 and 2002 on the MMPI-A. The current generation of young people scores about a standard deviation higher (averaged=1.05) on the clinical scales ...

* **Normalized results:** The below image from Caspi et al (2014) shows what psychopathology test results look like when normalized - notice the similarity to IQ test results. However, most psychopathology test results are not normalized in this manner, making them challenging to compare.

|  |
| --- |
|  |

* **Stable p-loadings:** Just as IQ trends may be hollow for g, psychopathology trends may be hollow for p. Accordingly, if you wanted trends in actual p-factor, then cross-cohort studies testing it for stable shared variances or loadings would be needed as well (analogous to the Jensen effect in IQ). Currently, the p-factor construct faces much criticism and has yet to prove itself tenable. This is not an issue if you are willing to be agnostic about p.

Given all these caveats, you may phrase a forecasting question along the lines of: "Using results from general psychopathology tests, measuring p-factor at an individual level, will there be data to support a trend ..." Resolution of this question would be dependent on such tests being sufficiently identifiable, popularized, and normalized at the time of the beginning of the predicted trend.
> 1 votes

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Tags: measurement, abnormal-psychology
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# Question
Title: How to distinguish introvert personality, social anxiety disorder and mild autism?
There are the following similarities between introvert personality type, Social anxiety disorder and mild autism

* Disinterest in social interaction
* Interested in objects than people
* May be afraid of being centre of attention
* Have difficulty in people skills
* May lack eye contact
* May have special interest and hyperfocus
* Have difficulty guessing others' mind

How to distinguish these conditions are due to introvert personality, social anxiety disorder and mild autism?

# Answer
There is an ongoing debate as to whether it is best to view personality disorders as being categorical or dimensional in nature. Your question infers the perspective of the categorical view. The alternative dimensional perspective suggests that the three disorders you mention are very similar, that is, these three conditions overlap to a large extent with a slight shift along an (as yet unnamed) dimension.

Hopwood, C. J., Kotov, R., Krueger, R. F., Watson, D., Widiger, T. A., Althoff, R. R., Ansell, E. B., Bach, B., Michael Bagby, R., Blais, M. A., Bornovalova, M. A., Chmielewski, M., Cicero, D. C., Conway, C., De Clercq, B., De Fruyt, F., Docherty, A. R., Eaton, N. R., Edens, J. F., … Zimmermann, J. (2018). The time has come for dimensional personality disorder diagnosis. Personality and Mental Health, 12(1), 82–86. https://doi.org/10.1002/pmh.1408
> 0 votes

# Answer
The 3 said conditions look very similar, but their meaning is different. but they indicate different parameters or different directions. Overlap can happen, such as an "introvert autistic" or an "extrovert autistic"

Introversion is an aversion or avoidance of social situations.
Social anxiety is a fear of social situations.
Autism is an extremely broad range of conditions, which may include inability to process social information.

How does they differ?

**Introversion**: It is sort of very old term, very broad and general one.

**Social anxiety disorder (Social phobia)** means a fear of social situation.

* Social anxiety does not necessarily mean a lack of social understanding.
* Social anxiety may be seen from very young age or may develop at a later age due to trauma, stress, etc.

> Social anxiety disorder typically starts in childhood or adolescence. Among individuals who seek treatment as adults the median age of onset is in the early to mid-teens with most people having developed the condition before they reach their 20s. However, there is a small subgroup of people who develop the condition in later life. Some people can identify a particular time when their social anxiety disorder started and may associate it with a particular event (for example, moving to a new school or being bullied or teased).
>
> --- Social Anxiety Disorder: Recognition, Assessment and Treatment. NICE Clinical Guidelines, No. 159. National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (UK).Leicester (UK): British Psychological Society; 2013. NCBI Bookshelf

**Autism** seemingly is a genetically determined set of conditions, although it invites bullying, discrimination, hatred etc that may further intensify social anxiety.

* The word autistic comes from the word "autos" that mean "self"; but this self-limiting does not necessarily comes from an aversion of people, but it generally comes from an inherent lack of social understanding. There may be deficit of understanding other people's intentions and mindsets ("lack of cognitive empathy") or may have an unusual or different "theory of mind"; may have context blindness i.e. an inability to process how the same task evoke different reactions at different social contexts.
* Autistics may have a problem understanding or using nonverbal communication such as posture, gesture, proxemics, etc.
* Autistic people often want friend, and often forge for friend. The social aversion or friendship aversion may be secondary; due to misunderstandings, failed communications, rejection, trauma etc.
* Autism often comes with one or more co-morbid disabilities like dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, developmental coordination disorder, pragmatic language disorder, nonverbal learning disorder, prosopagnosia etc.

Notably, Due to pressure from society, autistics may develop various masking mechanisms and tricks (such as laughing when everybody laughs, force maintain eye contact, force greetings etc) so that they appear less neurodivergent.

The take-home message is that, the psychologist/ psychiatrist who have to distinguish the 3 conditions need to be utmost cautious and aware not just the behaviour but the inherent cognitive 'reason' behind the symptoms.
> 0 votes

# Answer
Here is an article which is very helpful for finding information about What is Avoidant personality disorder & social anxiety. I personally found it very informative because i have seen that many people around me who suffered. https://sympdisease.com/what-is-avoidant-personality-disorder-social-anxiety/#Is\_avoidant\_personality\_disorder\_an\_anxiety\_disorder
> 0 votes

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Tags: personality, autism, aspergers, social-cognition, introversion
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title: What is verbal memory useful for?

text:
# Question
Title: What is verbal memory useful for?
A friend of mine did the Verbal Memory Test at http://humanbenchmark.com/ and got an extremely high score (almost 300 words). English is not his first language and he knew the meaning of only about two thirds of the words (if that's something to take into account).

> About the test
>
> This test measures how many words you can keep in short term memory at once.
>
> The number of words you need to remember grows continually, until you can't keep them in your head anymore.
>
> Go as long as you can. You have 3 strikes until game over.
>
> Your score is how many turns you lasted.

Does this have any practical use or influence in other areas of cognition?

# Answer
This is one of several variations of the *word span* test, used in many studies of working and short-term memory. It is a type of memory span test:

> ... memory span is the longest list of items that a person can repeat back in correct order immediately after presentation ... Items may include words, numbers, or letters.

Short-term memory is a cognitive capacity that is a component of verbal intelligence. However, the simple word span is not a great measure of verbal intelligence:

> ... memory span with digits and words is only weakly related to performance in complex cognitive tasks such as text comprehension, which are assumed to depend on short-term memory.

Performance on verbal memory tests can vary substantially based on the parameters of the test, the effect of practice and training, and the testing environment.

Nonetheless, research suggests that strong performance on the word span task - in particular, the non-word span variation which uses "pseudowords" that sound like real words but aren't - is indicative of superior **secondary language acquisition** capability (Juffs & Harrington, 2011). There is also some evidence that word span may be predictive of ability to follow complex instructions (Kim, Bayles, & Beeson, 2008; Jaroslawska et al, 2016). Of course, these results may not be applicable to the word span recognition variation of the task.
> 0 votes

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Tags: measurement, memory, intelligence, test, language
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# Question
Title: Why studying is difficult than playing games and watching movies, social media etc?
I am aware of dopamine and I often watch videos related to this. My question is why studying is difficult but watching social media and movies seem easy. if it is about novelty that "When we experience novel things dopamine is released" then I am a research student, I read the novel and interesting ideas but still it's hard to focus on research papers than youtube videos!

Does the mind don't like hard/ challenging scenarios? How to overcome this issue? Dopamine detox? or something like this?

# Answer
The research on "what makes games fun" focuses on *Engagement* b/c it's easier to measure.

There are several criteria which games/movies have that studying often does not (but *could* have)

1. **Tuned Difficulty Level**. A well made movie/book will have layers of "mystery" to discover. The idea is that every consumer will be able to "just barely figure out" the mystery. Or perhaps figure it out sooner or later (as in The Sixth Sense. )
2. **Emergent Events** \- dramatic reveals or you get the "super gun" or magic sword in a video game and suddenly there is a power shift (as when Pac Man ate the power ups that allowed him (or Ms PacMan) to eat the ghosts.
3. **Observable Progress** (games are better at this than books/movies).

The good news is that you could probably gamify your studying. I found it helps to have study groups. So if parts of the studying are easy for you, you can increase the challenge by teaching others, whereas you could learn the harder (for you) parts *from* someone else.
> -1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, dopamine, study-cognitive-sciences
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title: Measuring happiness in Children

text:
# Question
Title: Measuring happiness in Children
I am in a cross cultural, multilingual setting. I would like to measure happiness / frustration of children before and after changing rules about food and water before surgical operations are performed. What suggestions would you have for measuring happiness in both verbal and non-verbal children (verbal children may not speak English)? I would prefer a type of visual analog scale to be answered by the child if able and the parent.

# Answer
Try the World Database of Happiness, if you haven't already.

https://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/collections/measures-of-happiness/what-is-this-collection-measures-of-happiness/

There is a collection of validated 'happiness' measures here.
> 2 votes

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Tags: happiness
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# Question
Title: Where to find STORIES about successes with Attachment Disorders
I'm reading about Emotion Focused Therapy and Attachment Disorders. Often this is so analytical it's hard to apply it to the "real world".

It occurs to me that reading stories about real people dealing with any sort of emotional difficulties would be a helpful way to understand & apply the concepts.

**I've tried** googling on "patient stories, EFT, Attachment" but I'm getting research on the value of stories/narratives, not the actual stories.

Any suggestions?

# Answer
> 1 votes
Try looking for case studies based on results from The Adult Attachment Interview (Mary Main). This will help you in finding "real-life" stories, that are interpreted using key concepts, such as coherence and reflective functioning.

Try this to start linking attachment concepts to emotion focused therapy. Cordeiro (2019) examines influence of the AAI on parent-child emotion focused therapy.

## References

Cordeiro, K. M. (2019). *Engaging Caregivers in the Service of Their Child's Mental Health: An Examination of Emotion-Focused Family Therapy and the Adult Attachment Interview.* http://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/handle/10315/36330

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Tags: emotion-focused-therapy
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# Question
Title: Can a subject develop learned helplessness without being conditioned?
In my understanding of this answer, the reason for person A to develop learned helplessness while person B to do not mostly (if not totally) boils down to the explanation styles of the two. But then would that mean that learned helplessness can develop without the subject being conditioned helpless? If I tell my friend that "It's impossible for you to solve a math problem, so don't bother trying it", then would my friend develop learned helplessness, even when he haven't known what math is?

# Answer
> 1 votes
I think what you are asking pertains to how learned helplessness is defined. If sticking to the traditional behavioral definition, then yes, 'learned helpless' is a response to an accumulation of stimulus-response events. See (Lerner, et al. 2018)

However, if you depart from the traditional behavioral definition, you can incorporate the individuals role in contributing to the learned helplessness. Moreover, learned helplessness is no longer the result of being a passive recipient to stimulus-response events. So in this case, your friends learned helplessness of math is not only dependent on you (includes the role of the individual, like mood, previous math experience, etc.), and is not dependent on the amount of times it was reinforced (that the math problem is hard, you can't do it).

Departing for the traditional behavioral definition, the newer approach is in line with developmental systems approaches that prioritize the role of the individual. See Sameroff (2009).

## References

Lerner, R. M., Lewin-Bizan, S., & Warren, A. E. A. (2011). Concepts and theories of human development. In M. H. Bornstein & M. E. Lamb (Eds.), *Developmental science: An advanced textbook* (pp. 3–49). Psychology Press. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2010-22284-001

Sameroff, A. (2009). The transactional model. In A. Sameroff (Ed.), *The transactional model of development: How children and contexts shape each other* (pp. 3–21). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/11877-001

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Tags: personality, rationality, learned-helplessness
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# Question
Title: What is the name of this bias or phenomenon?
He lied.

You changed your mind.

I reconsidered my decision.

What is the name for this type of cognitive bias where you are easier on yourself when you describe your behavior, but harder on the second person and hardest on others? It's similar to the justification of your actions in certain situations e.g., when someone cuts you off in traffic, he's a jerk. But if you cut someone off it's because you are really in a hurry and it's justified.

But what I'm specifically looking for is the name of the phenomenon where the same behavior/quality of the first, second and third person are described by decreasing levels of charitability.

# Answer
Russell Conjugation (or emotive conjugation).

The tendency of people to regard their own characteristics more charitably than those of others, and to rank others according (at least in part) to proximity to earshot:

> I am firm, you are obstinate, he is a pig-headed fool.
>
> I am righteously indignant, you are annoyed, he is making a fuss over nothing.
>
> I have reconsidered the matter, you have changed your mind, he has gone back on his word.

Eric Weinstein expands:

> Russell Conjugation (or “emotive conjugation”) is a presently obscure construction from linguistics, psychology and rhetoric which demonstrates how our rational minds are shielded from understanding the junior role factual information generally plays relative to empathy in our formation of opinions.
>
> I frequently suggest it as perhaps the most important idea with which almost no one seems to be familiar, as it showed me just how easily my opinions could be manipulated without any need to falsify facts.
>
> Historically, the idea is not new and seems to have been first defined by several examples given by Bertrand Russell in 1948 on the BBC without much follow up work, until it was later rediscovered in the internet age and developed into a near data-driven science by pollster Frank Luntz beginning in the early 1990s.

Luntz, a US political and communications consultant:

> Luntz frequently tests word and phrase choices using focus groups and interviews. His stated purpose in this is the goal of causing audiences to react based on emotion. "80 percent of our life is emotion, and only 20 percent is intellect. I am much more interested in how you feel than how you think. ... If I respond to you quietly, the viewer at home is going to have a different reaction than if I respond to you with emotion and with passion and I wave my arms around. Somebody like this is an intellectual; somebody like this is a freak."
> 3 votes

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Tags: terminology
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# Question
Title: What is the name of the cognitive bias about groups of people with the same beliefs about others?
Last year I read an interesting magazine article about some papers on a cognitive bias about group beliefs.

The papers highlight the fact that we tend to judge in a stronger way the same behavior if the person is not part of our social circle. So for example we tend to judge smokers more harshly if they are not our relatives.

I am looking for the name and/or references to this cognitive bias.

# Answer
> 1 votes
This is called in-group favouritism:

> ... a pattern of favoring members of one's in-group over out-group members. This can be expressed in evaluation of others, in allocation of resources, and in many other ways.

Also see more generally: In-group\_and\_out-group.

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Tags: social-psychology, terminology, bias, attitudes
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# Question
Title: Why a "weak homophilic relationships" can be amplified by "cumulative advantage"
Murase, 2019 has a sentence that

> Thus even a relatively weak preference for homophilic relationships would tend to be amplified over time, via a cumulative advantage

Basically, they mean that **weak homophilic relationship (relationship between people having no common acquaintance) can be amplified over time due to cumulative advantage**. However, they did not explain why it happen, could you please help me to explain it?

I did a search about "cumulative advantage" but I still cannot not link the concept to this situation

> Cumulative Advantage states that once a social agent gains a small advantage over other agents, that advantage will compound over time into an increasingly larger advantage. The effect is well known and is embodied in "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer".

# Answer
A homophilic relationship is: "the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others"

I'd re-write

> "the rich get richer"

in this context (or vice-versa) as:

> "those with weak homophilic relationships get more homophilic relationships"

in the context of this paper. Basically, because this structure of relationship is conducive to forming more homophilic links, its presence tends to encourage more homophilic groups, even if the extent of homophily starts out weak.

You can think of a strong community structure where everyone in an in-group is friends with everyone else; anyone introduced to the group is going to end up with a relationship with everyone in the group.

The authors are saying the same is true even if the links are initially weak.
> 1 votes

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Tags: social-networks
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# Question
Title: What is the relation between "homophily indices" and "group polarization" level?
Homophily is the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others (Murase,2019). I expect that there is a measure of homophily level, called homophily indices.

Group Polarization is that people tend to change their idea due to the normative influence (social comparison interpretation), which is considered an echo chamber. This is my conclusion when reading the definition of "group polarization theory" and work of (Cinelli,2021). **Is it a correct conclusion?**

> According to group polarization theory, an echo chamber can act as a mechanism to reinforce an existing opinion within a group and, as a result, move the entire group toward more extreme positions. Echo chambers have been shown to exist in various forms of online media such as blogs, forums, and social media sites.

**I am wondering is there any relationship between homophily index and group polarization level? In specific, the relationship between homophily and normative influence** Is there any reference for that?

# Answer
Although social categorization studies like Sherif’s (1954) Robber’s Cave study demonstrate that “the mere act of categorization” (Bigler et al. 1997, p.530) into groups is enough to manipulate intergroup processes, results corresponding with Bigler’s (1997) control group separating students based on novel color categories shows otherwise. That is, only children in the gender condition reported an increase in gender stereotyping, while children assigned to irrelevant colored groups (divided by color) did not show a stereotyped view corresponding to their color team. While Piaget’s intergroup theory suggests that both the gender and control condition should have showed an in-group allegiance to their team, alternatively, Bem (1983) posits that the perceptual salience of groups by themselves is not enough. Rather, Bem (1983) argues that the “functional use of a particular category by social institutions” is a necessary piece in the process of intergroup attitudes.

You propose two approaches to social categorization (inter-group processes), homophily and group polarization theory. Homophily proposes that individuals associate with others based on similarity (as demonstrated in the Robber's Cave study), while group polarization adds another layer to intergroup processes, its social function (as demonstrated in the latter references I include above). Likewise, normative influence has a social function.

**References**

Bigler, R. S., Jones, L. C., & Lobliner, D. B. (1997). Social categorization and the formation of intergroup attitudes in children. Child development, 68(3), 530-543.

Bigler, R. S. (1997). Conceptual and Methodological Issues in the Measurement Of Children’s Sex Typing. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 21(1), 53–69. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1997.tb00100.x

Bem, S. L. (1983). Gender Schema Theory and Its Implications for Child Development: Raising Gender-Aschematic Children in a Gender-Schematic Society. Signs, 8(4), 598–616. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173685

Sherif, M. (1954). Experimental study of positive and negative intergroup attitudes between experimentally produced groups: robbers cave study. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma.
> 3 votes

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Tags: social-psychology
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# Question
Title: Whether "group polarization" and "social segregation" is the same?
In a paper of (Murase, 2019) use both terms "group polarization" and "social segregation".

The "group polarization" is explained here, and the author also documents about the "social segregation" as

> The relationship between homophily and segregation has been recognized long ago.(...)In another approach to social segregation, opinion dynamics is used so that similar people can influence each other

I am wondering whether these two terms "**group polarization**" and "**social segregation**" are the same?

# Answer
> 3 votes
Social segregation and group polarization are different concepts.

Social segregation, (i.e. racial segregation, residential segregation, sex segregation) is defined as "the separation or isolation of people or other entities so that there is a minimum of interaction between them"

Group polarization refers to when an individual's attitude or opinion changes after the influence of a group, to be more extreme (or polarized) than prior to being exposed to the group (Sieber & Ziegler, 2019).

**References**

Sieber, J., & Ziegler, R. (2019). Group Polarization Revisited: A Processing Effort Account. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 45(10), 1482–1498. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167219833389

APA Dictionary of Psychology: https://dictionary.apa.org/segregation

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Tags: social-networks
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# Question
Title: Does the "learned" in "learned helplessness" refer specifically to behaviorism's conditioning?
I was said that because the experiment of Seligman that gave birth the theory of learned helplessness was an expansion of Pavlov's experiment, hence the word "learned" in the term should be understood as conditioning, not learning in general. So perhaps it's better termed as "conditioned helplessness"?

According to Learning - Wikipedia:

> Learning is the process of acquiring **new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences**.

It's clear that people with learned/conditioned helplessness acquiring new behaviors, but do they acquire new understanding, knowledge, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences?

Related:
What is the difference between conditioning and learning?
How does one escape learned helplessness?
Are association, conditioning, and symbolic learning the same thing?

# Answer
Wikipedia explains that there's not one theory of learned helplessness but several, some more encompassing than others with respect to what is learned:

> Research has found that a human's reaction to feeling a lack of control differs both between individuals and between situations, i.e. learned helplessness sometimes remains specific to one situation but at other times generalizes across situations.\[7\]\[9\]\[10\] Such variations are not explained by the original theory of learned helplessness, and an influential view is that such variations depend on an individual's attributional or explanatory style.\[11\] According to this view, how someone interprets or explains adverse events affects their likelihood of acquiring learned helplessness and subsequent depression.\[12\] For example, people with pessimistic explanatory style tend to see negative events as permanent ("it will never change"), personal ("it's my fault"), and pervasive ("I can't do anything correctly"), and are likely to suffer from learned helplessness and depression.\[13\]

(Aside: contra to the somewhat one-sided way in which Wikipedia discusses this, the expanded theories were not that easy to demonstrate reliably, at least not with a sizeable effect.)
> 3 votes

# Answer
In 1967 Maier and Seligman first proposed the concept of learned helplessness in their paper Failure to escape traumatic shock. 50 years later they published another paper Learned Helplessness at Fifty: Insights from Neuroscience. Here is what they says (emphasis mine):

> We theorized that helplessness was cognitive and that it was learned. The animal must “detect” the lack of contingency as defined above and so must have “expected” that in the future shock would be independent of its responses. This was a radical suggestion for the 1960s. The learning theories of that era held that organisms could only learn associations or pairings, for example a response paired with shock strengthened this association (acquisition) or a response paired with no shock weakened this association (extinction). The rationale for the narrow associationistic view stemmed from behaviorists' shunning cognitions in animals and it seemed that the integration of two conditional probabilities—the probability of shock given a response integrated with the probability of shock in the absence of that response and then generalized across all responses—must be highly cognitive. **Importantly we called the theory “learned” helplessness, rather than “conditioned” helplessness, because integrating these two conditional probabilities did not seem compatible with the associationistic premise that both Pavlovian conditioning and instrumental learning held dear.** Emblematic of the tension between learning theory and cognitive theory was an encounter at the Princeton conference in which we first laid the theory out to the major learning theorists (Maier, Seligman & Solomon, 1969): Richard Herrnstein, a prominent Harvard Skinnerian, retorted, “You are proposing that animals learn that responding is ineffective. Animals learn responses; they don't learn that anything.”

FYI: What does this sentence of Richard Herrnstein regarding learned helplessness theory mean?
> 1 votes

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Tags: learning, terminology, behaviorism, conditioning, learned-helplessness
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# Question
Title: What does "psychology of salience" mean?
Han et. al., (2021) documented that

> Motivated by the **psychology of salience**, we also make a second key psychological assumption that receivers attend more to extreme outcomes

I am wondering what does "psychology of salience" mean here. I search for the meaning and see that

> Salience in psychology. Distinctiveness, prominence, obviousness. The term is widely used in the study of perception and cognition to refer to any aspect of a stimulus that, for any of many reasons, stands out from the rest

However, I cannot fit this meaning to the sentence of Han,2021 as above. Could you please help me to sort it out?

## References

Han, B., Hirshleifer, D., & Walden, J. (2021). Social transmission bias and investor behavior. *Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, First View*, 1-42. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022109021000077

# Answer
The American Psychological Association (APA) points out that the Salience Hypothesis is

> a theory of perception according to which motivationally significant stimuli (objects, people, meanings, etc.) are perceived more readily than are stimuli with little motivational importance. It has relevance in social perception, advertising, and linguistics.

In social psychology, discussion on social salience is talking about the extent to which a particular target draws the attention of an observer or group. More on that can be found at Wikipedia

So as Han, et al. (2018) — cited in your question — points out, more extreme outcomes receive more attention.

For some examples, the term **salience** is discussed at iResearchNet.

> The term salient refers to anything (person, behavior, trait, etc.) that is prominent, conspicuous, or otherwise noticeable compared with its surroundings. Salience is usually produced by novelty or unexpectedness, but can also be brought about by shifting one’s attention to that feature. Salience usually depends on context. A child would not be particularly salient at his or her school, but would be at a nursing home. The act of crying would not be salient at a funeral, but would be at a job interview. A salient feature can be thought of as the “figure” that stands out against the “ground” of all other nonsalient features.
> 3 votes

# Answer
There are different approaches to the psychology of salience. One approach is based in social inter-group theory that holds that we assign more meaning to "social categories that are made salient in the environment" (Bigler & Liben 2006, 2007, as cited in Hillard & Liben, 2010). More specifically, this facet of salience is called social-group salience.

In response to your question about the research you cited which follows:

"Investors discuss their strategies and convert others to their strategies with a probability that increases in investment returns."

Perhaps group-polarization is at work here, related to the inter-group approach to salience I explained above. That is, the tendency to adopt more extreme view after being exposed to others opinions.

**References**

Hilliard, L. J., & Liben, L. S. (2010). Differing levels of gender salience in preschool classrooms: effects on children's gender attitudes and intergroup bias. Child development, 81(6), 1787–1798. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01510.x
> 1 votes

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Tags: social-psychology
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# Question
Title: What does this sentence of Richard Herrnstein regarding learned helplessness theory mean?
In Maier, S. F., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2016), Learned Helplessness at Fifty: Insights from Neuroscience, the authors quote an objection of Richard Herrnstein, a prominent Harvard Skinnerian (emphasis theirs):

> You are proposing that animals learn *that* responding is ineffective. Animals learn *responses*; they don't learn *that* anything.

What does this sentence mean? I'm not sure what the emphases on the `that`s try to convey. I'm not even sure if the phrase `they don't learn that anything` is grammatical.

<sub>Note: I ask this question here instead in ELL or ELU because it requires the answerers to have a decent understanding in psychology, in particularly behaviorism. </sub>

# Answer
When we say that Alice "learned that X", X is generally an assertion, and we are saying that Alice now has some kind of representation of the assertion in her head, and knows it to be true.

When we say Bob has learned a *response*, we just mean that Bob now has a tendency to respond in that way when he experiences a given stimulus. We aren't saying anything about what's going on in Bob's head.

So the word "that" is important - it indicates that what follows is some kind of concept that is being held in the head. That's why Herrnstein emphasized it.

The sentence "They don't learn *that* anything" is grammatical if you treat "anything" as a variable that can stand for any assertion. Herrnstein is saying that it's never valid to say, of an animal, "it learns that \[whatever\]."
> 3 votes

# Answer
"learning ***that*** responding is ineffective" is alluding to a cognitive process, separate from the behavioral process. Put simply, a thought process.

While, "animals learn responses" is alluding to traditional behaviorism, more specifically 'learned responses'. For example, Pavlov's dog experiment demonstrates classical conditioning, or Skinner's box experiment demonstrates operant conditioning. Conditioning elicits a learned response, there is no implied thought process, like in cognitive approaches (or other approaches to psychology such as psychoanalytic, humanism, positive psychology, etc.). So, this statement is speaking in favor the behavioral tradition's perception of learned helplessness, rather than Seligman's approach.
> 4 votes

# Answer
> You are proposing that animals learn that responding is ineffective.

Breakdown:

The following sentence relies on this sentence's grammatical structure for meaning. It would make less sense if it were on its own.

> Animals learn *responses*; they don't learn *that* anything.

Note the italics; this represents stress emphasis. The first one is to emphasise “responses” (noun), as opposed to “responding” (verb); the difference is that verbs (in the active voice) require a subject, whereas nouns don't. Making this distinction suggests that the verb suggests agency on the part of the animals, and the noun does not.

Breakdown:

* **Animals learn *responses*;** they … — first clause
* *responses*; **they don't learn *that* anything.** — second clause

> learn *that* anything.

This part is complicated. The emphasis on “*that*” is sort of to quote it, and make it not a part of the grammar of the sentence. Recall the previous sentence:

> animals learn that responding is ineffective

The complicated bit is saying that all statements of the form:

“don't” – i.e., that they're not true, and don't really happen. In other words, it's saying that animals cannot learn facts about facts; any sentence where you'd say “animals learn that” and then something, is wrong. (According to this person, anyway; I don't agree.)
> 1 votes

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Tags: behaviorism, learned-helplessness
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# Question
Title: Where to begin with Political Psychology literature?
I am a law and public policy scholar, and I'm currently developing a civics curriculum for YouTube. As a phd, I'm (perhaps to an unhealthy degree) concerned with being able to cite good science whenever it's available.

However, my own field of political science has rather let me down. I am trying to gather data about the impacts of citizen engagement with government in a number of ways, and one of the key mechanisms I'm looking at is contacting one's electeds ("write your congressman!" etc.).

The problem is I'm not able to find literature on electeds' response to such communications (real or self-perceived) but have noticed some studies in behavioral psych that are next door to these themes.

Lacking in a solid base of literature to begin from makes this search even harder and so...

Q: Which authors/texts are considered foundational in political psychology, or behavioral psychology that covers political contexts?

# Answer
> 2 votes
*Open versus Closed: Personality, Identity, and the Politics of Redistribution* (Johnston, Lavine, & Federico, 2017) is a good reference that talks about how political engagement relates to psychology. Includes review of literature in this area.

More specifically, research is covered that explores the role political figures have in informing what Americans want from the government, and how individual difference in psychology contribute to this.

They find that for politically active citizens these attitudes are not driven by self-interest, but by a desire to express the traits and cultural commitments that define their identities.

This book is a great general reference that speaks to the dynamic between those that are politically engaged and elected officials.

More specific to your question, Sherman et al. (2020) examines communication in the exchange between citizens and elected officials on climate policy. Sample was drawn by

> ...recruiting citizen activists who lobby the US Congress for a carbon pricing policy to address climate change (Sherman et al., 2020, p.576).

In this way, 4 social psychological approaches including: affirmation, social norms, legacy and immediacy, were examined to assess how citizens think about and contact political leaders. Sherman's et al (2020) results show:

> A strategy of establishing shared values and common ground (affirmation) was used most frequently overall. While, emphasizing the long-term costs and benefits of addressing climate change (legacy) was employed less frequently than affirmation and seen as less effective by activists, but it was the only strategy that was associated with perceived increases in Congressional Representatives’ support of the policy.

**References**

Johnston, C., Lavine, H., & Federico, C. (2017). *Open versus Closed: Personality, Identity, and the Politics of Redistribution*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/9781316341452

Sherman, D., Shteyn, M., Han, H., & Van Boven, L. (2021). The exchange between citizens and elected officials: A social psychological framework for citizen climate activists. *Behavioural Public Policy, 5*(4), 576-605. doi: 10.1017/bpp.2020.41

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Tags: reference-request, behavior, political-psychology
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# Question
Title: Do you think depressed people relate to dark and depressive internet memes, almost like a coping mechanism?
For example, this study found that they could be usefull

# Answer
In a similar vein, research shows a link between self-identification with "darkness" and depression, however a causal link in this relationship has not be supported.

More specifically, Bowes et al. (2015) found that teens that identified as "goth" were more likely to self-report depression, as compared to teens who did not identify with this sub-culture. While findings suggest that identification with goth culture is associated with depression, a causal link can not be implied. Data was obtained from the *Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children* (Bowes et al., 2015). Sample participants were approximately 15 years old at the first time point, and 18 years old at the second.

**References**

Bowes, L., Carnegie, R., Pearson, R., Mars, B., Biddle, L., Maughan, B., Lewis, G., Fernyhough, C., & Heron, J. (2015). Risk of depression and self-harm in teenagers identifying with goth subculture: a longitudinal cohort study. The lancet. Psychiatry, 2(9), 793–800. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(15)00164-9
> 1 votes

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Tags: depression
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# Question
Title: Asking for reference of specific meaning of "group polarization"
I am a finance student. Today I read a paper of Cinelli,2021 and face the phrase "group polarization theory"

From this link, I found an idea that

> Those who don’t initially agree with that decision are likely to change their mind to agree with the majority

And this process goes through 3 main theories:persuasion, comparison and differentiation

I am wondering is there any paper that tells the same thing as that? I prefer a peer-reviewed paper over the website as a citation.

# Answer
The APAs dictionary points out that group polarization is

> the tendency for members of a group discussing an issue to move toward a more extreme version of the positions they held before the discussion began. As a result, the group as a whole tends to respond in more extreme ways than one would expect given the sentiments of the individual members prior to deliberation. Polarization is sustained by social comparison (see social comparison theory), by exposure to other members’ relatively extreme responses (see persuasive arguments theory), and by groups’ implicit social decision schemes.

I am at a loss on why you need a peer reviewed paper to cite its definition when a reputable site comes up at the top of a general Google search, but an example would be Hsuanwei Michelle Chen (2013) who discusses this in virtual communities.

> This study examines group polarization, the phenomenon that group members tend to become more extreme in their decisions after group discussions, in the setting of virtual communities, specifically on stock message boards.

## References

Chen, H. M. (2013). Group polarization in virtual communities: the case of stock message boards. *iConference 2013 Proceedings* (pp. 185-195). https://doi.org/10.9776/13174
> 2 votes

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Tags: social-psychology
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title: On talking people out of delusions

text:
# Question
Title: On talking people out of delusions
One psychatrist I know recently wrote, offhand: "I remember when I was a student I tried so hard to convince someone that they weren't royalty, hours of passionate debate, and it just did nothing."

This got me thinking - are there published descriptions of what it feels like to try and convince a person with a grandiose delusion that it's wrong? When this fails, what are their responses to arguments, etc.? I feel like I've read fictional descriptions of this scenario plenty of times in various fiction books, but maybe in reality it looks different and now like I'd imagine?

# Answer
There is surprisingly little information, publicly, on how you should support someone suffering from delusions, but there is a good set of information from Australia's New South Wales Government website at https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/mentalhealth/psychosocial/strategies/Pages/communicating-psychosis.aspx

2 key points relevant to your query are that you **should not** state any judgements about the content of the person’s beliefs and experiences; and you **should not** argue, confront or challenge someone about their beliefs or experiences.

Let's say someone believes they’re the Queen of Denmark, and not Queen Margrethe II. Your telling them they’re crazy will result in them still believing they’re the Queen of Denmark — but now also believing you’re crazy for disagreeing. Attacking someone with a clinical delusion almost always causes them to put up their defences and retreat further into their beliefs.

Equally, feeding into their delusion will only give them more reason to think their beliefs are justified.

Austraila's Queensland Government have also published some guidelines (PDF) on how to help someone suffering delusions.
> 5 votes

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Tags: reference-request, psychiatry
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# Question
Title: Recent Peer Review Studies on How Many Have Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Are there any peer-reviewed studies that show what percent of the population are believed to have Narcissistic Personality Disorder that have been published within the past ten years? I have read about studies that list the percent of people with NPD, but all of them came out on or before two thousand ten and may no longer be accurate and some of them weren't even peer-reviewed.

# Answer
> 5 votes
While not a peer-reviewed study per se, but the DSM-5 says that the prevalence of Narcissistic Personality Disorder in the population is 6.2%, or approximately one out of sixteen members of the population (6.25%). The DSM-V was published in 2013 and is a peer-reviewed text, so it is within the 10 year criteria you mentioned and this fact is mentioned in more recent sources like an article for Psychiatric Times published in 2016. Another study from 2019 doesn't mention Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but does mention how approximately 3% of the population (or about 1 in 33) has Antisocial Personality Disorder, another disorder that is a common dual-diagnosis with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Then, there is a 2020 study that shows 1.6% (1 in 60) to 5.9% (1 in 17) of people have borderline personality disorder or BPD, which can be associated with a lack of empathy and lead to behaviors that can be mistaken for NPD. This is similar to Histrionic Personality Disorder (which doesn't cause people to suffer from a lack of empathy like with NPD, but can appear that way due to how it is difficult for those with HPD to recognize the emotions of others and thus lack emotional intelligence) that affects less than or equal to 2% of the population according to the University of Arizona College of Medicine.

# Answer
> 2 votes
In response to your question on the prevalence of NPD, I've listed some research here:

1. Dhawan, Kunik, Oldham, and Coverdale (2010) did a systematic review of literature on the prevalence and treatment of NPD from Jan 1980 to Aug 2008.
2. Twenge and Foster (2010) updates a US based meta analysis of the prevalence of NPD among college students (based on literature from 1982 to 2008). Second, they compare NDP scores of students over time on one college campus (1994-2009).
3. Wilson & Sibley (2011) assess prevalence of NPD in New Zealand, unlike many studies that are based in the US. Increasing with age was related to lower Narcissism scores.

Related, I recommend Campbell, Miller, & Buffardi's (2010) research that attends to cultural influences, and change over time in NPD.

More specifically, Campbell, Miller, & Buffardi (2010) use perceptions of national character (PNCs) to assess cultural levels of narcissism. In their first study,

> archival data show that American perceptions of national character (PNCs) assessed with the five factor model (FFM) closely fit with the profile of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).

Furthermore, cross-national comparison shows

> that U.S. PNCs of NPD were the highest among examined cultures.

Here is a reference that is a little later than 2010 on this topic, that may help find more empirical research after 2010:

Paris, J. (2014). Modernity and narcissistic personality disorder. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 5(2), 220–226. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028580

**References**

Dhawan, Kunik, Oldham, Coverdale, (2010) Prevalence and treatment of narcissistic personality disorder in the community: a systematic review,Comprehensive Psychiatry.

Twenge, J. M., & Foster, J. D. (2010). Birth Cohort Increases in Narcissistic Personality Traits Among American College Students, 1982–2009. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1(1), 99–106. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550609355719

Wilson, M. S., & Sibley, C. G. (2011). 'Narcissism creep?': Evidence for Age-Related Differences in Narcissism in the New Zealand General Population. New Zealand Journal of Psychology, 40(3).

Keith Campbell, W., Miller, J. D., & Buffardi, L. E. (2010). The United States and the “Culture of Narcissism”: An Examination of Perceptions of National Character. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1(3), 222–229. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550610366878

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Tags: personality, abnormal-psychology, statistics, psychology, personality-disorder
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# Question
Title: Source of sensory data related to cognitive effort
How does the brain assess cognitive effort? Is there a chemical that is being created or consumed at a rate that is proportionate to the amount of effort felt?

I'm mostly interested in short term effort, such as in short-term-memory tasks.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I assume this is a question about perceived mental effort, which is closely related to (though not the same as) cognitive load, and is a specific kind of introspection, or more generally metacognition. In general, introspection tends to rely on self-perceived heuristics, rather than direct insight of mental process, and this is likely the case for mental effort. Scheiter, Ackerman, & Hoogerheide (2020) summarize as follows:

> ... in metacognitive research, it is well established that people do not have access to their actual knowledge. They assess their chance of success by utilizing heuristic cues which are both experience-based (gut feeling, mainly based on fluency) and theory-based (based on beliefs and lay theories). Referring to effort appraisals as metacognitive judgments brings to the fore the heuristic cues people may utilize to infer their effort assuming that they cannot sense reliably their effort.

The actual heuristic cues used in this particular case are unclear, but there are some good leads. The related metacognitive assessment of task difficulty - known as cognitive ease or "fluency" as quoted above - appears to use latency as a heuristic. That is, how long it takes to complete a mental process is indicative of its difficulty. This heuristic could also be useful for judging mental effort (eg, Moore & Picou, 2018), but not in a straightforward way: Longer tasks tend to require more effort, but also allocating more effort makes tasks take less time. Thus, how task difficulty influences effort appraisals may depend on how subjects interpret the relationship between effort and difficulty.

Accordingly, research findings suggest that while in many cases difficult (longer) tasks are associated with more effort, in others task difficulty is interpreted to indicate engagement, so difficult (longer) tasks are the result of less effort expended (Miele, Finn, & Molden, 2011; Koriat, Nussinson, & Ackerman, 2014; Fisher & Oyserman, 2017; Koriat, 2018; also see meta-analysis by Baars et al, 2020), depending on personality, instructions, and context. Other heuristic cues may also affect effort appraisals, such as positive or negative feedback (Raaijmakers et al, 2017), and performance incentives (Garrison, 2020).

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, neuroscience, perception, bias, metacognition
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# Question
Title: Why capable of social learning not implies capable of having culture?
In Do Animals Have Culture?, the article defines that

> Cultures are those group-typical behavior patterns shared by members of a community that rely on socially learned and transmitted information.

They also say that

> Neither evidence of group-typical behavior patterns nor a demonstration that the species is capable of social learning is in itself strong evidence for culture.

I understand group-typical behavior patterns does not implies culture, as the article explained

> The term “culture” does not apply to inherited genetic information or the knowledge and skills that individuals acquire on their own.

However, I don't get why not "capable of social learning is in itself strong evidence for culture". If we define that culture as shared behavior patterns that acquired by social learning. How is capable of social learning not implies capable of having culture?

# Answer
It all really depends on your definition of "culture" (which is the main point of the entire article that you linked: that it is non-trivial to come to a concrete definition), but I think they're just saying that social learning is not itself culture by their definition.

An example might be social learning in rats: rats will observe other rats eating or smell their mouths to infer what they've eaten, and use that to guide their own behavior (Galef & Wigmore 1983). Normally, rats are very careful eaters when they encounter a new food source. Rats can't vomit and aren't able to purge what they've eaten, so they will taste a little to see how they feel afterwards. However, if they know other rats are eating a food, they can skip this step.

This behavior is definitely social learning, but is it culture? Doesn't seem like it to me, or to them. For one, this is not a "group-typical behavior pattern". It may result in some rats eating Cheetos more readily rather than tasting first, but this is a pretty temporary effect. They would have all eventually eaten the Cheetos even without the social learning aspect, it just would have taken them a bit longer. It also won't differentiate this group of rats from another: they do not become a Cheeto-eating rat clan, they're just a few rats who happen to be eating an available food. If you make Cheetos available to any other group of rats they will also be Cheeto-eating rats for as long as those are available.

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Galef Jr, B. G., & Wigmore, S. W. (1983). Transfer of information concerning distant foods: a laboratory investigation of the ‘information-centre’hypothesis. Animal Behaviour, 31(3), 748-758.
> 5 votes

# Answer
Learning from the two behavioral approaches to social learning, classical (Pavlov) and operant conditioning (Skinner), are based on the accumulation of stimulus-response events. See (Lerner et al., 2018). The individual's role in influencing the learning is passive, animals with less cognitive capabilities can be conditioned. Thus, the capacity of behavioral learning does imply the capacity to make inferences (cognitive /individual component) about their shared community.

However, if you depart from the traditional behavioral definition of learning (such as cognitive approaches, etc.), these frameworks are designed to accommodate for the individuals role in contributing to the learning process. Moreover, learning is no longer the result of being a passive recipient to stimulus-response events. So in this case, learning is now also dependent on you (includes the role of the individual, like beliefs, previous experience, etc.), and is not solely dependent on the amount of times it was reinforced . The learner is more active, makes inferences and reflections about their role and relation to others, such as perception of culture.

Lerner, R. M., Lewin-Bizan, S., & Warren, A. E. A. (2011). Concepts and theories of human development. In M. H. Bornstein & M. E. Lamb (Eds.), Developmental science: An advanced textbook (pp. 3–49). Psychology Press. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2010-22284-001
> 2 votes

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Tags: anthropology
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# Question
Title: Are dedicated response boxes really better in precision than regular keyboards?
There are various (very pricey) commercial response boxes or pads (perhaps most notably Cedrus) that purportedly offer higher precision than regular keyboards. (Note that my question focuses on precision, not on accuracy, though similar doubt applies to the latter too.) However, I cannot find any study (peer-reviewed or not) that verifies this. Instead, I find studies that show that regular keyboards are very precise anyway (e.g. this, showing max 3-4 ms standard deviation). **In any case, is there any actual evidence out there for better precision with dedicated commercial hardware?**

# Answer
> 3 votes
**Short answer**
It all depends on *what* you wish to measure; if you are after measurements where a few milliseconds matter, response boxes are the way to go.

**Background**
RT measurements are finicky; USB peripherals add polling latencies to your recorded response times. This can add unacceptable latencies (8 ms or so) to RT estimates. Apart from this effect on *accuracy*, graphics latencies in visual tasks, or syncing issues in auditory-visual tasks can seriously mess up the stimulus timing. Further, first-time calling of MATLAB commands are notoriously sluggish and they may add unacceptable latencies to the first trial. MATLAB in general is also notoriously bad in controlling exact stimulus timing; it's simply not designed for this type of experiment.

Windows in general is a platform not suited well for real-time operations, because it maintains its own agenda in terms of which process is run first in the cue, this may be virus scanning, updating, or your reaction time experiment. Since different operations in the queue may add different delays in your experiment, trial-to-trial errors are introduced with variable magnitudes, messing up your *precision*. Mac OS is better, and Linux beats them both in terms of exact timing control.

The Psychophysics Toolbox help site and associated user forum have a wealth of information on these things.

Response boxes solve these issues, because the time stamping is controlled by the hardware inside the box, taking the load of all the timing processes away from the pc. This substantially reduces latencies (hence improving accuracy) and takes away much of the variability as well (hence improving precision).

But everything depends on the type of reaction time you are after. Are you interested in millisecond-range responses (standard react as-fast-as-you-can tasks), or do a few seconds more or less not matter (tasks where subjects get the time to make a cognitively evaluated choice)? In the former, response boxes are the way to go, in the latter it all really doesn't matter and a keyboard or a mouse will do the job just fine.

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Tags: measurement, methodology, experimental-psychology, psychophysics, reaction-time
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# Question
Title: What do experts consider best mental techniques to avoid succumbing to temptations?
The Internet offers conflicting advice on how to resist temptations. For example, this article stresses the importance of willpower:

> Animals appear to obey their appetites in the moment; people — at least, adult people — can say “no” to what may be immediately tempting, for the sake of the greater material rewards or moral virtue that come from reining ourselves in. Yet most of us fail to rein ourselves in as much as we would like, at least in some part of our lives. In one way or another, failures of willpower are at the root of countless problems in our society — obesity, addictions, violence, relationship problems, consumer debt, to name just a few.

On the other hand, this book says:

> Willpower doesn't work. ... Clearly, the research on willpower explains human behavior. But only on the surface level. The very fact that willpower is required comes from several fundamental sources:
>
> * You don’t know what you want, and are thus internally conflicted.
> * Your desire (your why) for your goals isn’t strong enough.
> * You aren’t invested in yourself and your dreams.
> * Your environment opposes your goal.
>
> Once these four principles are aligned within yourself, the internal debate is over.

What's the current scientific view on how to avoid succumbing to temptations? What techniques are considered best? I'd be especially grateful for references to good-quality science-based books or articles about this matter.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) is a popular approach to managing thoughts (cognitions) encompassing "temptation", however there are others.

Here is an interesting case study that applies CBT to manage temptation to steal among those exhibiting kleptomania.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, decision-making, executive-function
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title: Gender stereotypes

text:
# Question
Title: Gender stereotypes
Guys i am new in gender studies, but somethings is really puzzeling to me. In Gender, nature, and Nurture from Richard A. Lippa there are comment about role of gender stereotypes in making "typical male or female work in home at so on": in our culture - typical women should take care about children and man should make money.

How ever my question is: Do gender stereotypes are product of culture traditions and history of your society or do gender stereotypes main reason for roles differenciation by genders?

Edited detail: it was mentioned that I underestimated how broad this theme actually is. So I decided to actually to prefer a Western culture point of view.

# Answer
To answer your question, (from a social constructivist approach to gender stereotypes, and gender roles) both from "gender roles" and "culture". However, there are other approaches to conceptualizing gender in development that differ.

For example, a main feature of Liben and Bigler’s (2002) social constructivist orientation is its adherence to group membership as a guide to conceptualize the development of gendered attitudes & beliefs relating to self and others, moreover, in linking sex-typed characterizations of the self to attitudes about others.

**References**

Liben, L. S., Bigler, R. S., Ruble, D. N., Martin, C. L., & Powlishta, K. K. (2002). The Developmental Course of Gender Differentiation: Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Evaluating Constructs and Pathways. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 67(2), i–183. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3181530
> 1 votes

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Tags: psychology, gender
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