# Question
Title: Does the brain use the minimax algorithm?
The minimax algorithm is the basic way an AI can decide which move to make in a game.

The idea is that might be paraphrased as "prepare for the worst".

It seems such a fundamental way to decide what action to make in the world that it seems like the brain should implement such an algorithm in order to decide what to do next.

i.e. think of a possible action, and the worst thing that could happen in each case, then go for the least-worst option.

I expect the brain also takes probabilities into account. So that it might choose an action if the worst possible option is also extremely unlikely.

How would we test if the brain was using this algorithm?

# Answer
*I work in data science, I reach many of the conclusions that a psychologist might, by means of aggregating a lot of data and backtracking on it. I have no formal training and all my opinions are based on conclusions we tested & drew from our work that translated into nearly no bad business decisions and constant growth.*

Machine learning is not general intelligence. As such, although I believe that the comparison is not ill-willed, it's as far from the truth as it can be. ML is really a bunch of optimization problems that, when put together, form a coherent system that draws conclusions such as "is this a picture of an elephant?". Just as the brain does, there's a multitude of inputs and a central system that decides, mostly based on past experience what to do with said inputs.

> I expect the brain also takes probabilities into account. So that it might choose an action if the worst possible option is also extremely unlikely.

In popular culture, it's called "least resistance path", it's also a trait that I see nearly all intelligent life forms exhibit.

What I find through my work is that, although bias is frowned upon, it's also a beautiful thing. Personally, I'm a contrarian and I like to believe the good ol' "people are stupid", but in reality, they really aren't. All the experiences you go throguh train your brain in exactly the same manner you speak of. The problem occurs when the multitude of paths isn't known at the start, that is to say, you're unexperienced.

Bias is not necessarily helpful min-maxing that happens in the background.

By the way, don't confuse this with what learning is. Min-maxing as you call it is a higher-level process that is what we can observe from the brain forming connections.
> 1 votes

# Answer
The problem with minimax algorithms is that they do not take into consideration long-term plans. Sometimes, taking short-term risks (by making moves that are not fully bullet-proof) can result in long-term positions that are far superior. Highly skilled players weigh these in their decision making.

Similarly, making bold moves can also jeopardize the opponent's plans and thus, in the end can result in very good moves (that was Fisher's specialty).

As of the brain, it uses learning rules that are local (Page, 2000) and probably favors reinforcement (e.g., Sutton & Barto, 2015). It might mimick minimax in some situations, but it can probably also mimick other optimization procedures based on internal settings, biases, and predisposition.

We wished the brain was so "rationale" as to adopt a single, well-understood algorithm, but nop, no such luck!
> 1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-modeling
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# Question
Title: What is meant by "serotonergic" in "serotonergic psychedelics"
"Serotonergic psychedelics" is apparently a sub-class of psychedelics. Now, I believed that the pharmacological definition of psychedelics is that they all agonise 5HT receptors, especially the 2A subtype. However, the existence of this serotonergic sub-class implies that perhaps some psychedelics don't operate on serotonin receptors. Unless, something else is meant by "serotonergic".

Does *serotonergic* in this case refer to what receptors they agonise, or, what chemical the substances imitate. If the latter, that means that some psychedelic substances are able to agonise 5HT receptors without imitating serotonin, whereas the serotonergic psychedelics do this while imitating serotonin.

If the former, then that means that not all psychedelics agonise the 5HT receptors, meaning that "agonises the 5HT serotonin receptors, especially the 2A subtype", **is not** the definition of psychedelics.

# Answer
> 2 votes
**Short answer**
It's messy.

**Background**
The classical psychedelics (mescaline, DMT *etc.*) are derived from plants (peyote, ayahuasca) and have a long history of use by shamans and originally often mainly served religious purposes, before being exploited by the New World peoples for recreational (and occasionally scientific) purposes. LSD is also considered to be classic yet it is a synthetic derivative, but readily made from lysergic acid derivatives extracted from the mold *Claviceps purpurea*. These classic psychedelics are indeed all, primarily, 5HT2A agonists.

Having sad that, 'psychedelic' is a classical term meaning 'mind opening', and was first coined back in the 1950's. It's a broad, ill-defined term often associated with illicit drugs, hippies and alternative rock. The term serotinergic drug is more specific, while the term '5HT2A agonist' is yet even more specific. The former also includes MDMA, which is imo mind-opening, yet (generally) not hallucinogenic. The latter includes those drugs that produce profound hallucinations, i.e., the classic psychedelics.

This is the reason I tend to move away from 'psychedelic' as often soft drugs like THC are also termed 'psychedelic'. Hallucinogenics are a more specific class of drugs and is the one I think you are referring to, i.e., those compounds producing **hallucinations**, *i.e.*, sensations that are not there (a hallucination being 'a perception in the absence of external stimulus that has qualities of real perceptions').

Now what about non-serotinergic hallucinogens? Well, there are particularly potent hallucinogens that are primarily not serotinergic, but glutaminergic, particularly the dissociative anesthetics. These include PCP and ketamine that are hallucinogenic as they

> can produce visual and auditory distortions and a sense of floating and dissociation (feeling detached from reality)

However, here again it comes down to a matter of definition; a 'true' hallucination is a percept in the absence of a stimulus; a distortion is more akin to an **illusion**, namely

> an instance of a wrong or misinterpreted perception of a sensory experience

In addition, most and perhaps all hallucinogens are 'dirty' drugs, in that they affect multiple neurotransmitter systems and therefore have broad effects. MDMA for instance is psychedelic because of its 5HT effects but definitely has stimulant, dopaminergic properties too (having the methamphetamine backbone this isn't surprising of course).

In all, not only is the scientific terminology messy, also the science behind it is messy, as 5HT2A agonists may still have effects on other neurotransmitter systems too. This can explain why every 5HT2A drug has slightly, or even grossly different actions than structurally related ones.

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Tags: neuroscience, terminology, psychopharmacology, serotonin, psychedelics
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# Question
Title: About Tracking the psychological defense mechanism
I am searching to find about the method of understanding the reason of being unconsciousness of the psychological defense mechanism, as described here:

> In psychoanalytic theory, a defence mechanism (American English: defense mechanism), is an unconscious psychological mechanism that reduces anxiety arising from unacceptable or potentially harmful stimuli.

So I have one question :

What would happen, if using the psychological defense mechanisms of the third level:

Such as Intellectualization

In finding the path of changes in the psychological defense mechanism, what effect will it have on our psychological defense system?

Will this improve our understanding of the mental defense system?

Or it will strengthen that mechanisms (Intellectualization) in the mental defense system and return to the second level mechanisms such as (Schizoid fantasy or passive aggression) and further transfer to the first level reactions (denial, Distortion).

Thanks.

# Answer
The conscious and unconscious aspects of Sigmund Freud's ego-defence mechanisms refer to the awareness of the thought patterns and actions; and how they are affecting the person and those around them.

As an example, someone going through an intense traumatic experience can completely dissociate from the acts in play. There are examples of this in many areas of trauma. One example was discussed in my answer to the question “Can calmness happen during the fight-flight response?”

Having said that, here are differing levels of conscious awareness within the different defence mechanisms. Take a look at my answer to another question concerning dissociation as an example.

With this in mind, it doesn't make things so clear cut when talking about (un)conscious thought patterns and actions when referring to the defence mechanisms.

When dissociation is at play in the first linked example, after the traumatic event, the person who has been traumatised can find themselves unable to remember everything that happened during the event. Some combat veterans have said that they cannot remember how they got out of some situations when others around them got killed.

They didn't consciously make the decision to dissociate from the trauma, but:

> Dissociation is a psychological defence mechanism (Cardeña, 1994) which helps the person to get through the situation with as little harm as possible.

With regard to your example of ego-defence mechanisms (Intellectualisation), in order to intellectualise the incident in question, you need to consciously think about alternative thought patterns.

Another way of describing intellectualisation is by saying that it is creating some form of “justification” for the highly emotional and/or traumatic event (real or semi-real).

> Related to rationalization, intellectualization involves removing the emotion from emotional experiences, and discussing painful events in detached, uncaring, sterile ways. Someone who intellectualizes becomes very distant from their feelings, and when asked to describe their feelings may find it difficult. They may understand all the words that describe feelings, but have no idea what they really feel (Niolon, 2004).

I would add to that by saying that if you have no idea what you really feel, you will have no complete idea **why** you feel that way.

Glen O. Gabbard M.D. spoke about defence mechanisms, including intellectualisation, in pages 31 and 32 of his book (Gabbard, 2004). He basically talked about the relevant defence mechanisms with regard to “the patient's level of personality organisation”.

**Emphasis mine**

> The psychodynamic clinician uses a combination of defense mechanisms,internal object relations, ego strengths or weaknesses, and an assessment of reflective function to determine the patient’s level of personality organization (Table 2–2). This assessment differs from one based on DSM-IV-TR categories (American Psychiatric Association 2000). **It involves diagnostic understanding of the person, rather than a diagnostic label. Its value is primarily in the way it informs the psychotherapy**.
>
> **\[...\]**
>
> **Table 2-2** Level of organization
>
> | Neurotic level | Borderline level |
> | --- | --- |
> | Superego well integrated but punitive | Superego integration minimal; capacity for concern and guilt fluctuating considerably |
> | High-level defenses, including repression, reaction formation, intellectualization, doing and undoing, and displacement | Primitive defenses, including splitting, projective identification, idealization, and devaluation |
> | Identity reasonably stable, and internal object relations characterized by ambivalently regarded whole objects and triangular conflict | Identity diffusion and object relations of a “partial” rather than “whole” nature—split into “all good” and “all bad” aspects |
> | Notable ego strengths, including good impulse control, intact judgment, consistent reality testing, and capacity for sustained work | Nonspecific ego weaknesses, including impulsivity, impaired judgment, brief compromises in reality testing, and difficulty sustaining work |
> | Conflict-based pathology | Significant deficits existing alongside conflicts |
> | Intact reflective function | Impaired reflective function |
>
> **\[...\]**
>
> People who are neurotically organized experience a great deal of intrapsychic conflict, and they have intact reflective function so they can recognize that their representation of a person or event is not necessarily the same as the actual reality of the person or event. They also can understand that their behaviors are motivated by internal beliefs or feeling states. By contrast, people with a borderline level of organization often have substantial deficits in the self-structure alongside their conflicts and have poorly developed reflective function. They often experience things as just happening to them, rather than being motivated by internal states.

## Further reading

## References

Cardeña, E. (1994) The domain of dissociation. In: *Dissociation: Clinical and theoretical aspects*, Edited by: Lynn, S. J. and Rhue, J. W. 5–31. New York, NY: Guildford Press.

Kernberg, O. F. (1976). Technical considerations in the treatment of borderline personality organization. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 24(4), 795-829. https://doi.org/10.1177/000306517602400403

Gabbard, G. O. (2004). *Long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy: A basic text*. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing. Available from https://www.academia.edu/31570203/Glen\_O\_Gabbard\_Long\_Term\_Psychodynamic\_Psychotherapy\_A\_Basic\_Text\_Core\_Competencies\_in\_Psychotherapy\_2004_

Niolon, R. (2004) *Defences*. PsychPage http://www.psychpage.com/learning/defenses.html
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, psychoanalysis, freud
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# Question
Title: Is Orwellian Double-think Psychologically Possible?
In George Orwell's *1984*, a great deal of space is devoted to explaining "Double-think," part of The Party's method of "reality control." Here's a particularly clear passage:

> Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty...

Another really good passage describes the practice of doublethink. O'Brien, a member of the inner party, produces a photograph of some people who are supposed to have never existed. But then he destroys it.

> "It exists!" he \[Winston, the protagonist\] cried!

> "No," said O'Brien... "Ashes," he said. "Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does not exist. It never existed."

> "But it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I remember it. You remember it."

> "I do not remember it," said O'Brien.

It's interesting (and terrifying), but I suspect it isn't possible.

As I understand, in Freudian theory, repression is an unconscious process that happens to traumatic or unacceptable memories. That's clearly different from doublethink, even if it were possible (and there doesn't seem to be any evidence that it is.)

Is doublethink actually possible? Are there any documented examples of it? Is there anything similar to it, possible or otherwise?

# Answer
> 1 votes
When double-think is explained to mean

> the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

It can be seen to be the same as repression in a sense, whereby one version of events is known, but repressed in favour of an alternative version of events, but it isn't repression in the true sense of the word when referring to the Freudian theory of ego-defence mechanisms.

When you look at my other answer today regarding the defence mechanisms, I pointed out that they can involve both unconscious and conscious thought processes and actions.

As for repression, it is a powerful ego defence mechanism whereby it can prevent a thought or memory which can be psychologically damaging from reaching the conscious.

When mentioning the interaction between O'Brien and Winston in your question, where O'Brien was trying to instil in Winton that some people didn't really exist when they did, I can see where the confusion lies when linking that to repression. The knowledge of these people's existence is trying to be altered by O'Brien and Winston was wanting to have nothing to do with it.

The key to the whole idea of repression is that it is a completely unconscious defence mechanism. When we deliberately and consciously try to push away thoughts, this is suppression.

Although some claim that suppression is a psychoanalytical myth with no scientific support, fMRI data suggest otherwise. For more on that, you can read *Defense Mechanisms: Neuroscience Meets Psychoanalysis* in Scientific American

Also:

Anderson, M. C., Ochsner, K. N., Kuhl, B., Cooper, J., Robertson, E., Gabrieli, S. W., ... & Gabrieli, J. D. (2004). Neural systems underlying the suppression of unwanted memories. Science, 303(5655), 232-235. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1089504

and

Bailey R, Pico J. (2020) Defense Mechanisms. In: *StatPearls*. Treasure Island, FL: StatPearls Publishing. Available free from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK559106/

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Tags: memory, psychoanalysis
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# Question
Title: Why both hypokinetic and hyperkinetic changes are seen in Parkinsons?
In Parkinsons disorder the substanstia nigra pars compacta get affected and there is destruction of the dopaminergic neurons, which ultimately disturbs the direct and indirect pathways. Now we know indirect pathway is overall inhibitory to movement and direct pathway is overall stimulatory. Now because both of these pathways are not working properly, can we consider this as a reason for both hypokinetic and hyperkinetic disorders seen in Parkinsons? Or there is some other explanation.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I am not highly proficient in neuroscience, but I managed to find the following from Sonne et al. (2020) which may help while you wait for a more proficient answer. (Emphasis mine)

> While most forms of Parkinson disease are due to the insidious degeneration of the substantia nigra over a lifetime or during old age, **the cause of that degeneration is unknown**. These forms of Parkinson disease are termed idiopathic due to their unknown cause. A great deal of research is being done to identify these causes, which can include peripheral inflammation,\[15\] metabolic insufficiency,\[16\] and various environmental toxins,\[17\]\[18\]\[19\] which have been shown to affect the substantia nigra. Several other neurological conditions exhibit parkinsonian-like signs and symptoms by affecting the dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra. These include drug-induced parkinsonism in which a patient is taking a pharmaceutical compound, such as antipsychotics and antihypertensive, that affects dopamine metabolism.
>
> 15. Brydon L, Harrison NA, Walker C, Steptoe A, Critchley HD. Peripheral inflammation is associated with altered substantia nigra activity and psychomotor slowing in humans. Biol Psychiatry. 2008 Jun 01;63(11):1022-9. \[PMC free article\] \[PubMed\]
> 16. Yang L, Wang H, Liu L, Xie A. The Role of Insulin/IGF-1/PI3K/Akt/GSK3β Signaling in Parkinson's Disease Dementia. Front Neurosci. 2018;12:73. \[PMC free article\] \[PubMed\]
> 17. Langston JW, Irwin I, Langston EB, Forno LS. 1-Methyl-4-phenylpyridinium ion (MPP+): identification of a metabolite of MPTP, a toxin selective to the substantia nigra. Neurosci Lett. 1984 Jul 13;48(1):87-92. \[PubMed\]
> 18. Gash DM, Rutland K, Hudson NL, Sullivan PG, Bing G, Cass WA, Pandya JD, Liu M, Choi DY, Hunter RL, Gerhardt GA, Smith CD, Slevin JT, Prince TS. Trichloroethylene: Parkinsonism and complex 1 mitochondrial neurotoxicity. Ann Neurol. 2008 Feb;63(2):184-92. \[PubMed\]
> 19. Tanner CM, Kamel F, Ross GW, Hoppin JA, Goldman SM, Korell M, Marras C, Bhudhikanok GS, Kasten M, Chade AR, Comyns K, Richards MB, Meng C, Priestley B, Fernandez HH, Cambi F, Umbach DM, Blair A, Sandler DP, Langston JW. Rotenone, paraquat, and Parkinson's disease. Environ Health Perspect. 2011 Jun;119(6):866-72. PMC free article PubMed

## Reference

Sonne J, Reddy V, Beato MR. (2020) Neuroanatomy, Substantia Nigra. In: *StatPearls*. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK536995/

# Answer
> -1 votes
The motor system has a LOT of paralell pathways. The model you state is very old and told in med school because it looks nice, but it just doesn't fit the reality. For example, there are a lot of papers trying to come up with models of tremor generation involving corticothalamic loops and beyond.

I suggest reading Motor Control chapters of this book, which is very short and introductory, but beautiful. Neurophysiology: A Conceptual Approach by R. Carpenter, fifht edition. Or you could go with Gazzaniga and even better Kandels'.

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Tags: neurology, neuroscience
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# Question
Title: What is the difference between recurrent and feedback synapses?
In the paper proposing recurrent convolutional neural networks (RCNN), "Recurrent Convolutional Neural Network for Object Recognition", it is stated that "recurrent synapses typically outnumber feed-forward and top-down (or feedback) synapses".

Up to this point, my understanding was that top-down processing and recurrent connections refer to the same thing... What is the difference between the two?

# Answer
The different types of connections can be histologically identified and separated on the basis of their connectivity in the cortex.

Recurrent synapses in the cortex can be defined as (Douglas & Martin, 1995):

> \[...\] connections between layer 2 and 3 pyramidal cells, in which a target neuron projects back to its source neuron in a tight positive feedback loop

Feedforward and feedback neurons can be histologically defined as (Berezovskii *et al*., 2011):

> In general, feedforward (FF) projections originate in the superficial layers of the cortex and terminate in layer 4, while feedback (FB) connections originate in the superficial and deep layers, and their axon terminals tend to avoid layer 4.

The cortical layers and their functions are schematically depicted in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1. Schematic of the cortex showing recurrent connections (rc) in layer 2/3 and feedforward and feedback connections that avoid layer 4. source: Rolls & Mills (2017)

**References**
**-** Berezovskii *et al*., *J Comp Neurol* (2011); **519**(18): 3672–83
**-** Rolls & Mills, *Neurobiol Learn Mem* (2017); **145**: 205–21
> 2 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, terminology, vision, neurophysiology
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# Question
Title: High blood pressure can lead to anxiety?
I know that anxiety leads to high blood pressure due to elevations of adrenaline.

It also can also increase cortisol levels which as the Mayo Clinic points out:

* curbs functions that would be nonessential or detrimental in a fight-or-flight situation
* alters immune system responses
* increases sugars (glucose) in the bloodstream and
* suppresses the digestive system, the reproductive system and growth processes.

According to Jayne Leonard in Medical News Today (2019):

> having long-term high blood pressure — which doctors refer to as hypertension — can cause people to feel anxious about their health and future.

And, while interestingly she points out that:

> some medications for anxiety can increase blood pressure

I am not talking about fears about health after being diagnosed with high blood pressure due to arterial atherosclerosis for example.

**What I am referring to is the possibility of stress/anxiety being caused by the high blood pressure**, maybe creating an elevation of adrenaline or cortisol through some kind of neural connection with the heart and blood supply.

Is this possible?

Anxiety can lead to aggression and/or other behaviours — as an example (as @starckman pointed out in the comments) there is a study by Kouchaki & Desai (2015) that showed a link between anxiety and unethical behavior in the workplace — and **I was wondering if high blood pressure not caused by mental health problems could lead to those mental health problems and possibly elevate the blood pressure problems in a vicious cycle**.

## References

Kouchaki, M., & Desai, S. D. (2015). Anxious, threatened, and also unethical: How anxiety makes individuals feel threatened and commit unethical acts. *Journal of Applied Psychology, 100*(2), 360–375. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037796

Leonard, J. (2019). What is the link between anxiety and high blood pressure? *Medical News Today* https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/327212

# Answer
> 1 votes
Neuroticism can lead to hostility:

> A key finding in this study is the influence of N on a variety of distress types; Suls and Martin (2005) have observed the ‘neurotic cascade’ produced by N. Hyper-reactivity, differential exposure to negative events because of the environments high-N persons select and create for themselves, differential appraisal for events (e.g., perceiving experiences as more troubling than they really are), negative emotional transfer, and problems changing maladaptive ways of coping with distress and challenges **all combine to upset a high-N person, which may make them hostile**. However, high N does not drive outwardly directed narcissistic aggression.

However, I am not clear about the difference between anxiety and neuroticism, as well as between hostility and aggression.

## References

Egan, V., & Lewis, M. (2011). Neuroticism and agreeableness differentiate emotional and narcissistic expressions of aggression. *Personality and Individual Differences, 50*(6), 845-850. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2011.01.007

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Tags: neurophysiology, anxiety
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# Question
Title: How are related self-confidence and self-esteem?
What is the difference between self-confidence and self-esteem?

Is it that self-confidence is more about feeling secure concerning one's own capacity to address problems, while self-esteem is more about a global appreciation of one-self?

Are they separate, and to what extent? Is it possible to have high self-esteem but low self-confidence, and low self-esteem but high-self-confidence?

I guess that normally the two are correlated

# Answer
Technically, this is an English Language question really rather than about psychology or neuroscience.

Esteem is about **respect and admiration**. See https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/esteem

Therefore, someone who has self-esteem respects themselves and admires their achievements.

So to expand on that, if you have self-esteem, that helps to have self-confidence which leads to a sense of security in an emotional sense.
> 1 votes

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Tags: personality, terminology
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# Question
Title: Types of receptors on a single synapse or neuron
I have been googling and couldn't find the answer to these questions.

1. For a given synapse, can a post-synaptic neuron have multiple types of receptors for different neurotransmitters or is typically just one type of receptor for a given synapse?
2. For a given post-synaptic neuron, comparing across its dendrite synapses, can it have multiple types of receptors across different synapses or is it typically just one type of receptor for a given neuron?
3. Do the quantity and types of receptors on a neuron change over time?

Thank you - much appreciated.

# Answer
1. One synapse can have different types of receptors for the same neurotransmitter (NT) (example: Glutamate - most glutamatergic synapses have both AMPA and NMDA types of receptors). Synapses can also have receptors for different neurotransmitters (see link).
2. One neuron can also have different types of synapses which operate with different NT. An example of that would be shunting inhibition, when first comes excitatory synapse (NT - Glu), which depolarizes the membrane, but AP propagation is stopped by the inhibitory synapse (NT - GABA) which comes later.

Hope it helps, I am also just a beginner :)
> 3 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, neurophysiology
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# Question
Title: Why is inward electrical current negative?
I don't really understand, why the inward current (for example, during depolarization the flow of Na+ inside the cell) is negative? In the textbooks, it is always depicted with minus values (see picture). Ion current is supposed to be positive in the direction of positive charge movement, Na+ is positive, then why is the inward current negative? Thanks in advance.

# Answer
> 3 votes
This is just a chosen convention in biology. All that matters is we use a consistent convention. The one chosen is that outward positively charged ion movement is positive, inward positively charged current is negative; outward negatively charged current is negative, inward negatively charged current is positive.

It would be valid to do everything the opposite way, just change some signs in relevant equations, but since this is the convention everyone uses it's best to stay consistent with it.

Importantly, there is not really a conflict with "current direction is the way positive charge would flow" convention in physics, it's just that you have to determine a reference point. We think of the inside of a cell as the reference, so when positive charge moves from the reference to outside the reference (outward current), we call this positive current. We plot positive currents moving in the opposite direction as negative, which makes sense, but rather than only calling these "negative current" we recognize that this means positive charge is moving inward so a synonym is "inward current".

This convention is also consistent with the convention chosen for voltage. We describe a "negative membrane potential" when the inside is negative relative to the outside. Current is given by:

I = V/R

So, when membrane voltage is negative we say the inside is more negative than outside, and we get a "negative current" if we open some sodium channels and let those positive ions move in. If we used the other current convention we'd have to use a non-standard equation like

I = -V/R

or change the direction in which we describe voltage across the membrane to describe the potential of the outside rather than potential of the inside.

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Tags: neuroscience
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# Question
Title: What is the difference between emotions, intuition and affect?
From what I know, intuition is affect-based. But how do they differ?

# Answer
> 3 votes
**Affect** is a fundamental feature of consciousness and is a mental representation of input from the body to the brain. Affect corresponds to feelings of (un)pleasantness and activation (arousal).

**Emotions** are conceptualizations (interpretations) of your affect in a given context. You might feel pleasant and highly aroused (an affective feeling) on a roller coaster, and your conceptualization of that affect in that context would be "excitement" (an emotional feeling). In this sense, emotions are what we would traditionally consider to be "cognitive."

Source

Under this scheme, **intuition** doesn't really have a direct, formal relationship to affect or emotion, although intuitions are often affective (well, pretty much everything is affective). But see here for a more informed discussion of the literature.

# Answer
> 2 votes
## Intuition

is
> the ability to acquire knowledge without proof, evidence, or conscious reasoning, or without understanding how the knowledge was acquired (Miriam Webster Dictionary; Oxford English Dictionary)

## Affect

is
> the experience of feeling or emotion. (Hogg, et al. 2010)

## Emotion

is
> any relatively brief conscious experience characterized by intense mental activity and a high degree of pleasure or displeasure (Cabanac, 2002; Schacter, 2011). Scientific discourse has drifted to other meanings and there is no consensus on a definition.

An **emotion** can be an **affect** as a result of **intuition**

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## References

Cabanac, M. (2002). *What is emotion?* In: Behavioural Processes 60(2): 69-83
DOI: 10.1016/S0376-6357(02)00078-5 PMID: 12426062
**Free PDF Available** from ResearchGate

Hogg, M.A., Abrams, D., & Martin, G.N. (2010). *Social cognition and attitudes*. In: Martin, G.N., Carlson, N.R., Buskist, W., (Ed.), Psychology (pp 646-677). Harlow:Pearson Education Limited.

Schacter, D. L., Gilbert, D.T., Wegner, D.M. (2011). Psychology Second Edition. New York, NY:Worth Publishers. p. 310. ISBN 978-1-4292-3719-2.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Intuition is unrelated to the other two, because it is an aspect of cognition. Meanwhile affect is "the experience... of emotion", meaning that these terms are more or less synonymous.

# Answer
> -1 votes
Intuition: my environment is totally uncorrelated with anything I am aware of but it still leads me to believe something is about to happen.

Emotion: a state of mind evoked by physical sensations, particular memories, and expectations of the future.

Affect: the outward manifestation of my emotions which may or may not be deliberate.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, emotion, intuition, cognition
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# Question
Title: Why is the last part (transmit) of the Feynman learning technique optional?
I read some articles about The Feynman Learning Technique but I don't know why the fourth part, transmit, is optional?

From my perspective, the implementation part should be more important because the practice and theory breed feedback that can be used to optimize the theory.

# Answer
From your source:

> If you really want to be sure of your understanding, run it past someone (ideally someone who knows little of the subject). The ultimate test of your knowledge is your capacity to convey it to another. You can read out directly what you’ve written. You can present the material like a lecture. You can ask your friends for a few minutes of their time while you’re buying them dinner. You can volunteer as a guest speaker in your child’s classroom or your parents’ retirement residence. All that really matters is that you attempt to transmit the material to at least one person who isn’t that familiar with it.

This step being "optional" in this particular write up (it isn't noted as such everywhere) is just a practical matter; the author does not want you to be discouraged and feel the technique cannot be applied when you **don't have someone else to teach to** or don't feel comfortable doing this. It's suggesting that it's ideal to spread what you've learned as a final check on your knowledge, with some ideas here of how to accomplish that, but failing to do so doesn't make the other steps useless, it just makes it slightly incomplete.
> 4 votes

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Tags: learning, reinforcement-learning
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# Question
Title: What is the psychological term for disregarding correct but unwanted information?
Sometimes people seem to be very resistant to information that is in conflict with prior beliefs, even when this new information is very plausible.

For example, a patient might change a doctor, because he/she does not get the diagnosis he/she expected even if the diagnosis is correct.

How is the psychological term for this tendency?

# Answer
**Belief perseverance** is "the tendency to cling to one's initial belief even after receiving new information that contradicts or dis-confirms the basis of that belief" (Anderson, 2007).

Belief perseverance is usually regarded as a special case of the confirmation bias. (Also see these earlier questions.)

**References**

Anderson, C.A. (2007). Belief perseverance (pp. 109-110). In R. F. Baumeister & K. D. Vohs (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Social Psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
> 10 votes

# Answer
The term I would use is "cognitive dissonance." That is, there is "dissonance" between the result of one's cognitive processes, and the actual truth. According to psychologist Leon Festinger, people strive for internal consistency even at the expense of truth.
> 6 votes

# Answer
Isn't this just an effect of the Confirmation Bias?
> 3 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, social-psychology, terminology, bias
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# Question
Title: Why do people believe what they believe?
What is the basis or sequence of events that leads to someone believing something is true. Is there a framework that can be used to understand how people develop belief? How do they go about doing it?

Id imagine very few people who take human induced global warming to be fact would understand the underlying science to verify it for them selves. For most people global warming or Qanon is just someone telling them something. So how do they determine which is true.

# Answer
This is a good question, but keep in mind that when you ask a broad question, you typically get a broad answer - ie, I won't go into much detail.

**First Impressions**

In general, belief and attitude formation is thought to be implicit, rather than explicit. That is, when you ask someone for their belief or attitude, it may appear as though they simply look (introspect) into the part of their brain that encodes that belief or attitude, and then report on it. However, in experimental setups, beliefs and attitudes often appear to form in the process of reporting about them. A well known example of this is choice blindness, in which the initial act of explaining choices not actually made, forms subjects' subsequent attitudes.

Once formed, attitudes seem to persist through counterevidence. For example, suppose a person is provided with evidence that a fact is true, followed by evidence that it is false. If the evidence sources carry the same weight, then in total, the person ought to be ambivalent about the fact's truth. However, in experimental conditions, the first piece of information carries more weight than the second - that is, more evidence is required to change an attitude than it does to form it.

Well known examples of this effect include belief perseverance, in which the effect of initial evidence provided persists after being discredited; anchoring (and similar conservatism bias), in which the first piece of information provided disproportionately affects subsequent judgements; and the illusory truth effect (and similar continued influence effect), in which even a single exposure to false claims is not undone by subsequent discrediting information.

**Second Impressions**

In real-life situations, beliefs and attitudes are often not formed in isolation as they are in a lab. Thus, while a person being exposed to a new fact might form a new belief, they may instead relate it to a pre-existing belief. For example, when choosing between a mainstream or conspiracy theory, a person may prefer the first piece of information they are exposed to, as in a lab, or they may have pre-existing reasons to prefer one view over another.

The most common general framework for understanding the process of balancing new beliefs with pre-existing attitudes is that of cognitive consistency, which is a preference for our beliefs and attitudes to be congruent (not contradictory). This framework encompasses several well-supported theories, such as cognitive dissonance, self-perception theory, and balance theory, each of which proposes a slightly different underlying mechanism.

In summary, as a rough guideline, attitude formation balances overly-weighted initial evidence with the need for consistency across all beliefs and attitudes.
> 4 votes

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Tags: philosophy-of-mind, belief
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# Question
Title: Dialectical Behavior Therapy's Biosocial Theory - Social Environment Validates Patients' Maladaptive Behavior - As Defined By Who/What?
In Wikipedia's article about DBT, in the overview section it says:

> In DBT's biosocial theory of BPD, clients have a biological predisposition for emotional dysregulation, and their social environment validates maladaptive behavior.

According to the theory, "maladaptive behavior" - as defined by who/what - the patients' view of their social environments' various norms or the scientific-concesus of maladaptive behaviors (or something else)?

In some cases, patients' environments' view of what reoccuring behavior in the patient is maladaptive, there no agreement between that and the scientific concensus - that's why it's important for me to know which one the theory refers to.

*I'm assuming the article refers to the scientific concesus definition of "maladaptive behavior" but I want to make sure.*

# Answer
> 1 votes
Just as a point of note, you said you are quoting from Wikipedia, but it is actually WikiWand you are linking to.

The article cited Little, et al. (2018) which states that (**emphasis mine**):

> DBT is based on a biosocial theory of BPD, which posits that the core difficulties seen in this diagnosis stem from the relationship between two factors. Firstly, those diagnosed have a biological dysfunction of the emotion regulation system; and secondly, **their environment is invalidating, inhibiting the use of positive behavioural skills and reinforcing the use of less helpful ones** (Feigenbaum, 2007; Linehan & Kehrer, 1993)

Feigenbaum (2007) states (again, **emphasis mine**):

> The DBT model assumes that: (i) individuals with BPD lack key interpersonal and self-regulation skills, and (ii) **personal and environmental factors may frequently block and/or inhibit the use of behavioural skills or reinforce maladaptive actions**.

In psychology, when evaluating the client's environment, you need to look at things from the client's viewpoint, and reading those papers, it highlights that the term *maladaptive actions* or *maladaptive behaviours* refers to the consensus that they are as Anestis, et al. (2007) points out:

> actions for which cost outweighs benefit \[and\] is a defining feature of a host of psychological disorders, including depression, eating disorders, and substance abuse disorders (Bornovalova, Lejuez, Daughters, Rosenthal, & Lynch, 2005; Claes, Vandereycken, & Vertommen, 2005; Fischer, Anderson, & Smith, 2004; Joiner, Metalsky, Katz, & Beach, 1999; Keel & Mitchell, 1997)

The client believes that their environment backs up their notion that their behaviours are justified and therefore blocks any move towards more helpful behaviours.

## References

Anestis, M. D., Selby, E. A., & Joiner, T. E. (2007). The role of urgency in maladaptive behaviors. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 45(12), 3018–3029. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2007.08.012

Feigenbaum, J. (2007). Dialectical behaviour therapy: An increasing evidence base. *Journal of Mental Health, 16*(1), 51-68. https://doi.org/10.1080/09638230601182094

Linehan, M. M., & Kehrer, C. A. (1993). Borderline personality disorder. In *D. H. Barlow (Ed.), Clinical handbook of psychological disorders* (pp. 396–441). New York, NY: The Guilford Press.

Little, H., Tickle, A., & das Nair, R. (2018). Process and impact of dialectical behaviour therapy: A systematic review of perceptions of clients with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. *Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 91*(3), 278-301. https://doi.org/10.1111/papt.12156

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Tags: psychology, therapy, cbt, cognitive-therapy
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# Question
Title: How have mean raw IQ scores changed over time (e.g., over the last 100 years)?
I understand that by definition, the mean IQ is 100. And that over time IQ tests are updated to ensure that mean remains 100.

But if IQ scores were not updated, what would mean IQ be now and how has IQ changed over time?

# Answer
> 2 votes
Until recently, when people took older tests, they tended to score higher.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn\_effect

> The Flynn effect is the substantial and long-sustained increase in both fluid and crystallized intelligence test scores that were measured in many parts of the world over the 20th century.\[1\] When intelligence quotient (IQ) tests are initially standardized using a sample of test-takers, by convention the average of the test results is set to 100 and their standard deviation is set to 15 or 16 IQ points. When IQ tests are revised, they are again standardized using a new sample of test-takers, usually born more recently than the first. Again, the average result is set to 100. However, when the new test subjects take the older tests, in almost every case their average scores are significantly above 100.

The recent years saw a reversal of the Flynn effect.

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Tags: intelligence, iq
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# Question
Title: When delivering a bad news to someone, why shouldn't we show empathy at the beginning?
I've been preparing for a job as a customer service agent recently and there's a common topic called "delivering bad news". A bad news can be a delay in order or a delayed payment on the customer's side.

As an example, if I wanted to say that the order wasn't arriving tomorrow as scheduled, but would arrive 3 days later, I would say: "I'm terribly sorry to tell you that, but due to unexpectedly many orders in recent days, your order won't arrive tomorrow, it will arrive in 4 days". But, surprisingly, the tutorials instruct to say: "Due to unexpectedly many orders in recent days, your order won't arrive tomorrow, it will arrive in 4 days". What is more, in one video the speaker said explicitly that we shouldn't tell about being sorry at this point. We should apologise after it if it was company's fault. We shouldn't tell about being sorry at all if it wasn't company's fault; we should do it only after the customer has commented negatively (has shown anger or disappointment) on the bad news.

Surprisingly, I watched equivalents of these tutorials in the medical environment. The doctors should do exactly the same! They don't say "I'm very sorry, but we diagnosed lungs cancer", they just say "We diagnosed lungs cancer". It was a shock to me. Just like customer service agents, they show empathy only later, after the patient's reaction.

I don't understand why taking care about the listener's emotions at the point of delivering a bad news is inadvisable. Could you help me understand it?

# Answer
## The short answer — TLDR

The answer to this question within the field of psychology will depend on the psychological approach the answerer is affiliated to.

In short, while a certain amount of empathy is required in both the 2 main lines of thought — after-all, how are you going to be an effective therapist without it? — the way it is to be shown is down to opinion really, and that opinion will drive the policies regarding "I'm sorry..." responses.

With regard to your job as a customer service representative/agent, if you don't want to have problems with your superiors, you should follow the protocol laid down by your employers.

If you feel a different approach should be adopted, maybe you could approach your line-manager for consideration.

With regard to other situations, it is down to opinion.

## The full answer

**Note:** In my answer, there will be talk of therapists and clients. Where the *therapist* is referenced, this applies to anyone in a position of trust such as a doctor, dentist, customer service representative/manager etc.

## There are 2 main approaches in psychology — Psychodynamic and Person-Centered

### The Psychodynamic Approach started by Sigmund Freud

As pointed out by Jane Holder (2013), this approach to psychology involves analysis of resistance through ego-defence mechanisms, along with transference and counter-transference as described by Stephanie Cobb for the British Psychological Society (BPS, 2015):

> Transference has been defined as ‘the client’s experience of the therapist that is shaped by his or her own psychological structures and past’, often involving ‘displacement onto the therapist, of feelings, attitudes and behaviours belonging rightfully to earlier significant relationships’ (Gelso & Hayes, 1998, p.11). Countertransference describes the therapist’s reaction to the client in terms of both feelings and behaviour.

A psychodynamic theorist will talk about psychological detachment requirements with regard to transference and counter-transference so will advocate total compartmentalisation to separate the lived experiences of the client and the therapist from each other.

The bottom line with the psychodynamic approach is

* **You must only relay the facts pertaining to the situation**
* **The client's experience(s) are not yours to own to convey, and you should not be sharing your feelings about the situation with them either.**

### The downside of the psychodynamic approach

This approach can be seen to be very cold and stand-offish leading to possible feelings of resentment towards the therapist, which can be unnoticed by the therapist due to the detachment with the client's "here and now".

### The Person-centered approach started by Carl Rogers

Again, Jane Holder (2013) covers this:

> The person-centred approach focuses on the belief that we are all born with an innate ability for psychological growth if external circumstances allow us to do so. Clients become out of touch with this self-actualising tendency by means of introjecting the evaluations of others and thereby treating them as if they were their own.
>
> \[In therapeutic environments\] As well as being non-directive the counselling relationship is based on the core conditions of empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard.

A person-centered theorist will talk about the need for these core conditions, and therefore will advocate empathy and concern for the client's current well-being. This is sharing the fact that **while you still don't pass *your* feelings about their situation to the client as the experience is not your own, you pass on that you feel sorry for how *they* are feeling**.

### The downside of the person-centered approach

As a therapist, you can be so invested in your client's here and now, that you can suffer from too much empathy.

## So what SHOULD you do?

In answer to your question with regard to your job, no matter whether your job is a customer service representative/agent or something else, if you don't want to have problems with your superiors, you should follow the protocol laid down by your employers.

If you feel a different approach should be adopted, maybe you could approach your line-manager for consideration.

With regard to other situations, it is down to opinion.

With the fact that psychodynamic approach can be cold and the person-centered approach can lead to excessive empathy in play, a more balanced approach can be employed. That's where the integrative approach comes in.

## The Integrative Approach

An integrative theorist will be somewhere in between. As the name suggests, the integrative approach is

> a combined approach to psychotherapy that brings together different elements of specific therapies. Integrative therapists take the view that there is no single approach that can treat each client in all situations. Rather, each person needs to be considered as a whole and counselling techniques must be tailored to their individual needs and personal circumstances.
>
> Integrative counselling maintains the idea that there are many ways in which human psychology can be explored and understood - no one theory alone holds the answer. All theories are considered to have value, even if their foundational principles contradict each other - hence the need to integrate them.

With an integrative approach, you can be more psychodynamic when dealing with trauma for example and more person-centered with news of a death in the family. This is so that you can separate yourself from the emotional and empathic elements of dealing with the trauma whilst still having empathy for the client in their current situation.

## References

BPS. (2015). What passes between client and therapist? *The Psychologist 28*(7) 600-603. https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-28/july-2015/what-passes-between-client-and-therapist

Gelso, C. J. & Hayes, J. A. (1998). *The Psychotherapy Relationship: Theory, Research, and Practice*. New York: Wiley. https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/The+Psychotherapy+Relationship%3A+Theory%2C+Research%2C+and+Practice-p-9780471127208

Holder, J. B. (2013). The main counselling approaches: What are they? *Counselling Directory* https://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/memberarticles/what-are-they-comparing-and-contrasting-the-three-main-counselling-approaches
> 1 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, emotion, language, empathy
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# Question
Title: Near-dream states producing closed-eye visual rendering of the environment
Sometimes when I'm about to fall asleep, or have slept but not fully awakened, I experience a weird phenomenon. I'll describe it with a recent example:

> I had come home from school, and it was still light out. I was lying in bed, quite tiredly, and fell asleep with my clothes on. I think this is relevant, because it makes for an unnatural sleep, which I've heard it can produce things like sleep paralysis. My laptop was lying in front of my face, and when I started waking up, I had a moment of consciousness. I was still half-asleep, eyes closed, and in front of me, I could see the laptop. But not clearly; I was seeing its silhouette, like x-ray through my eyelids.

> This has happened to me in other settings, where I've seen my bedroom through my eyelids. Sometimes, when I've fallen asleep at the school desk, I've "seen through" my eyelids and my desk, down at my feet.

What could possibly cause this? The visual renderings are usually quite accurate. My question is, why would the brain conjure these images up? Why would it try to show me representation of my environment in these half-sleep states?

# Answer
It would seem like what you are experiencing is eidetic memory (Eidetikos) and/or Hypnogogia. Reasons as to how and why this may occur are still being studied. Consider the following here:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1885948/

"Visual Cues for the Retrieval of Landmark Memories by Navigating Wood Ants" by Robert A. Harris, Paul Graham, and Thomas S. Collett

> Even on short routes, *ants can be guided by multiple visual memories*. We investigate here the cues controlling memory retrieval as wood ants approach a one- or two-edged landmark to collect sucrose at a point along its base. In such tasks, ants store the desired retinal position of landmark edges at several points along their route. They guide subsequent trips by retrieving the appropriate memory and moving to bring the edges in the scene toward the stored positions.\<

And..

> Some ants, having located a reliable source of food, shuttle back and forth along idiosyncratic, visually guided routes (e.g., \[1–5\]); the final stage of their route to a goal is guided by a stored local view or snapshot of the surroundings as seen from a vantage point close to the destination (review \[6\]). A view of a familiar object stored as a snapshot seems to be encoded in terms of a small set of distinct features, such as oriented edges, color, and retinal size \[7–9\]. In some experimental situations, ants and bees attend to high-contrast boundaries of objects and guide their path to their destination by moving so as to shift edges in the current retinal image toward their stored retinal positions in the snapshot \[7, 9\]. If the visual scene is manipulated so that some edges are missing and cannot be matched to the snapshot, the insects will steer as best they can with the remaining edges \[7, 9\].\<

What this seems to be like for us is what has been known as the "Method of Loci".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method\_of\_loci

> The method of loci is a strategy of memory enhancement which uses visualizations of familiar spatial environments in order to enhance the recall of information. The method of loci is also known as the memory journey, memory palace, or mind palace technique. This method is a mnemonic device adopted in ancient Roman and Greek rhetorical treatises.\<

So, in one sense the brain *may* perform this operation for some purpose(s) of survival and navigation but these may not be the only reasons. Given that they emerge in these states as you describe makes it even more difficult to ascertain as you are presumably safe and are not in the process of moving about the room.

Also something to consider which I have shared before is the following paper on Electromagnetic Field Theories of Mind: https://philarchive.org/rec/JONETO?all\_versions=1

Hope this helps!
> 1 votes

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Tags: sleep, visualization, imagery
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# Question
Title: What caused psychologists to be so wrong about the size of working memory?
They used to think that the size of working memory was 7 items, on average.

Now, according to fMRI, it's believed to be only 4.

---

Source: In his TED talk, around 5:20, Peter Doolittle says the estimate had to be revised:

> We tend to remember about 4 things. It used to be 7. But with functional MRI, apparently, it's 4.

# Answer
> 2 votes
In the TED talk he's making a joke ("memory used to be X, now it's Y!"). Likely referencing the "good ol' days" trope where one talks about how things used to be different when the comedian/speaker/audience was younger, or more specifically the tendency of memory to decrease with age.

The "span" of working memory depends on the type of "object" being remembered, how exactly it is remembered, and what other distractions or tasks are interfering. The original "7 +/- 2" paper is quite old, and although it did propose a limited working memory capacity with a particular span, I do not think it supports your claim that psychologists "used to think that the size of working memory was 7 items". Rather, in *one experiment* with *one type of object* the average was 7 items. People had to do further experiments with other types of items to find out if the span was constant over all objects; once doing those experiments, they found that it was not, but consistently found that there was some capacity beyond which it was difficult to remember more objects without more elaborate strategies or training (such as the "memory palace"/method of loci).

Wikipedia has a pretty extensive article on memory span that is probably a good place to start if you're interested in the topic. Some of the characteristics listed on that page that influence the span include relatedness of the items, distractors, rhythm and rate of how objects are presented, modality (auditory, visual, etc), motor cost (longer words take more "space"), how exactly responses are scored (total recalled? number before error? how are adjacent/similar objects scored?), and other distractions.

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Tags: memory, experimental-psychology, working-memory, short-term-memory
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# Question
Title: What is the primary mechanism behind nationalism, sports-team-ism, product-ism etc.?
I'm interested in doing research on the subject of nationalism, but I believe that what I'm looking for is more generic than that. I observe that nationalism looks similar to the way that people feel about their sports team or their favorite product or their religion or their race. People proselytize for these things, and people sometimes kill over them (e.g. -- soccer riots). I note also that this kind of devotion can also produce strong negative feelings towards the other teams, countries, etc.

In each case, a person exhibiting this behavior with respect to a country, sports team, or product has at least one of the following characteristics (maybe others?).

1. Person **identifies** personally with X.
2. Person feels a sense of **belonging** with others who also identify with X.
3. Person is inclined to **convince others** that they should also follow/admire/believe X.

Is there an underlying mechanism behind these symptoms or term that describes this behavior? What is the body of study that examines these types of behaviors (causes, definitions, and effects)? If there isn't a particular term for this as a generic subject of study, are there at least some studies that examine the common features of these behaviors?

What I have researched so far: This question helped a little bit in thinking about this issue, but I'm not sure it answers my question. Also, Maslow's hierarchy of needs points to "respect by others" and "belonging" as posibilities, but I don't know much beyond that or where to look.

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Update

I'm stuck. I'm just not sure that ingroups and outgroups really characterize the **fundamental mechanism behind why people hold some beliefs with evangelistic or violent fervor**. That feature of human nature is not dependent on the existence of a group. If I try to convert someone to my way of thinking, I am not doing so because of a group to which I belong. Certainly group behaviors that @PEEJWEEJ mentioned can feed such sentiments, but like I mentioned to @Ana, I'm not convinced that the group itself is the cause. Perhaps I could be persuaded otherwise, but I think there's something else going on here.

# Answer
The terms you are looking for are ingroups and outgroups. From wikipedia:

> In sociology and social psychology, an ingroup, is a social group to which a person psychologically identifies as being a member. By contrast, an outgroup is a social group to which an individual does not identify. For example, people may find it psychologically meaningful to view themselves according to their race, culture, gender or religion. It has been found that the psychological membership of social groups and categories is associated with a wide variety of phenomena.

Googling got me to this book chapter on the topic, but there's plenty more information out there.
> 4 votes

# Answer
In group, out group behavior would likely be the base topic for which you're looking.

I have my own thoughts and theories on the topic, but if you want to delve into some psychological reasons for why in group, out group behavior occurs, you may want to look at **group think**, (people tend to go along with groups even if they disagree at first) **the bystander effect** (when responsibility is dispersed among many people, it's less likely someone will do anything about a problem) and **confirmation bias** (the tendency to see evidence as confirming what you already believe).

If you want some more biological/neurological reasons for the cause, look into mirror neurons. The research suggests that when someone sees something happen to someone else, good or bad, the person seeing it feels essentially the same emotions as the person experiencing it, and the intensity of the observer's feelings seem to be correlated to the amount which that person looks and identifies with the observed person.
> 3 votes

# Answer
Another useful source might be research that manipulates group membership, especially to create totally new groups. If membership alone is the mechanism for these effects, then we'd expect ingroup favoritism even with novel, manipulated groups. And that's what is found. Tajfel's work, and follow-ups, show that individuals quickly and easily categorize people by group membership, and then use that membership to determine cognitions and behaviors.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimal\_group\_paradigm
> 1 votes

# Answer
Humans tend to evaluate things primarily based on similarity/proximity with thyself and their faiths both in terms of time, space. Their association tendency is directly proportional to the similarity and a feeling of self-worth.

Associative memory and availability heuristics are classical examples. Ref: Thinking fast and slow - Daniel Khneman

For eg: Nationalism is space associated. Most likely people identify themselves among a people of similar beliefs. In other words nationalism can be thought of as something like a religion (but based on different fundamental principles; likely to be termed as constitutions).

If some association can improve one's feeling of self-worth we humans tend to assume the association with that particular identity be it physical thing (leader, boss, celebrity) or conceptual thing (religion, 'isms, Philosophy). Association with a product is something of this kind. This is the principle behind shopping derived satisfaction.

**EDIT** The answer I posted has got its roots largely from "Thinking fast and slow" by Daniel Khneman.

Self-worth and the feeling of "I" is Freudian based.
> 1 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, experimental-psychology
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# Question
Title: Is there any scientific evidence that lack of physical affection has adverse effects in human adults?
There is an often-cited quote by Virginia Satir, saying

> “We need 4 hugs a day for survival.
> We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance.
> We need 12 hugs a day for growth.”

This has been cited a lot, but I could not find a source for said quote. Furthermore, I tried to find scientific evidence that hugs or other signs of physical affection are required for "survival".

Traina, C. (2005). Touch on Trial: Power and the Right to Physical Affection. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics states the following (emphasis mine):

> This essay's thesis is simple and seemingly quixotic: Affectionate, firm, apprpriate touch **is a human need** and a moral right. Infants and children **require** attentive, affetctionate, intimate touch from adults in order to thrive.

Floyd, K. (2015). Affection Exchange Theory. In The International Encyclopedia of Interpersonal Communication (eds C.R. Berger, M.E. Roloff, S.R. Wilson, J.P. Dillard, J. Caughlin and D. Solomon). states (emphasis mine):

> Affectionate communication is fundamental to the human relational experience. Across cultures, the expression of affection contributes to the formation, maintenance, and satisfaction level of close personal relationships. Floyd's affection exchange theory (AET) proposes that affectionate communication evolved among humans due to its contributions to the important **goals of survival** and procreation. This article introduces and evaluates AET, and details empirical work identifying the benefits of affectionate behavior for relationships and individual physical and mental health.

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This suggests that physical intimacy is a necessity for survival. However, I was unable to find any studies that showed that there were clear, observable and repeatable adverse effects on human adults from a lack of physical affection. Are there any studies on that matter?

# Answer
> 3 votes
Short answer: No, science-based sources (including Healthline and Floyd, if you read them carefully) don't claim that physical contact is necessary for survival. Most of the literature on touch deprivation is focused on the *benefits* of physical affection.

**Survival:**

While social isolation is often confounded by physical constraints (as in solitary confinement) or mental health factors (as in hikikomori), there are also cases of voluntary isolation with positive outcomes, such as recluses, hermits, and anchorites. Some notable cases of these involve little or no physical contact with others for many years, without apparent adverse effects. There is a selection bias here - this lifestyle is more likely to be adopted by people who prefer less contact - that precludes conclusions about the general public, but it seems safe to say that **physical affection is not strictly speaking necessary in adulthood** for survival.

The situation in childhood, which is covered better in the other question, is more difficult to test. One example is the case of "bubble boys" such as David Vetter, who spent virtually his entire 12-year life from birth without any direct physical contact with others, though he received much non-physical affection, and appeared to "thrive" as best as can be expected under the circumstances.

**Adversity:**

Reviews of affection deprivation (eg, Floyd, 2014; Floyd, 2020) mainly focus on the association between *perceived* lack of physical affection and negative outcomes. As these are mostly correlations, they are not very convincing with respect to causality. Evidence that touch deprivation may have a *causal* effect on mental and physical health, as reviewed by Ardiel & Rankin (2010) and Field (2010), is largely based on the remedial effects of handling or massage of children with developmental and behavioral issues. However, such studies may also simply indicate that physical affection is an effective treatment, but not necessarily the cause, of underlying issues.

Historically, many children have been raised with high levels of emotional affection but little or no physical affection from their parents - notably in Victorian-era England \- and this parenting style does not universally lead to adverse effects in adulthood. For example, some traditional Asian parenting styles are described as "warm" but not physically affectionate, while leading to positive outcomes in adulthood. Lack of controls in such studies preclude firm conclusions, as children may receive physical affection from others (eg, their nursemaids, siblings, or friends) in lieu of their parents. Affectionate parenting styles are recommended for their potential benefits, but **evidence for lack of physical affection (independent of emotional affection levels) being responsible for negative outcomes is weak** overall.

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Tags: social-psychology
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title: Superego and Moral Standards

text:
# Question
Title: Superego and Moral Standards
I am not well read in psychology, but when I dealt with Sigmund Freud and his Psychodynamic Theories, I couldn't answer a question by myself. Or maybe I don't understand it that much.

My question is based on the definition of superego: "Superego is one outcome of adaptation to the social environment, a product of continuing ego development." (https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/superego)

what if I am a human being with no morals? I understand, that humans act according to these 3 principles in Freud's theory. But imagine someone who knows that he has no moral standards. Someone who doesn't bind himself to the social morals, rules, and obligations. Who just doesn't give a \****. Who is being immoral (from the society perspective). Doing the things as he likes and wishes. So in that case, this person doesn't adapt himself to the social environment. Does that mean that this human being has no superego?

# Answer
> 1 votes
The Superego is a fairly flimsy concept under empirical scrutiny and is typically measured only in clinical settings. Arlow (1982), notes that the way it is measured or appears is often unreliable and that the structure by no means has the same effect on everyone.

When looking at issues that go against a societal or personal "superego", one would probably do better to study guilt or shame as mechanisms that regulate moral behavior.

There is a distinction between guilt and shame, with one being more internal and the other external, for the most part (Smith, 2014). These are better indicators as to why someone would act without conscience, at least than using the concept of the superego.

References: Arlow, J. A. (1982). Problems of the Superego Concept. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 37(1), 229–244. doi:10.1080/00797308.1982.11823365

Smith, R. (2014, June 2014). What is the difference between guilt and shame? Retrieved from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/joy-and-pain/201406/what-is-the-difference-between-guilt-and-shame

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Tags: social-psychology, moral-psychology, ethics, freud
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# Question
Title: Bias distrusting area of expertise while implicitly trusting other domains?
I've run across descriptions of this bias before, but cannot find it right now... I checked Wikipedia's list of cognitive biases to no avail.

Basically, people working in some domain and having expertise in it, naturally tend to notice the problems in that area, such as incompetence of other people working in their field, bad policies and poor management decision making, etc, resulting in a disproportionate distrust of their own field of expertise. For example, healthcare workers are more likely to be vaccine hesitant because they distrust their own industry more than most due to personal experience with incompetence, mismanagement, politics, and corruption within their field.

However, this distrust does not carry over to other domains. So for example, watching a movie that portrays something you have domain knowledge in, you will quickly notice the inaccuracies and misrepresentation, but portrayals of domains outside your expertise will naturally be believable and perceived as accurate. Similarly, reading news stories about topics that you have expertise in, you will notice inaccuracies and bias immediately, but fail to recognize that the same level of inaccuracy and bias must exist in domains outside your area of expertise, implicitly treating such news stories as accurately reported.

What is this bias called?

# Answer
> 2 votes
I found what I was looking for. It's called the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect:

> ... You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. ... you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

That quote is attributed to Michael Crichton, who named the effect after his physicist friend Murray Gell-Mann, who discovered it.

This effect is not studied in psychology as far as I can tell, so it may not be real, but having a name for it helps learn at least that much.

# Answer
> 0 votes
**Anchoring bias** or **focalism** is:

> a cognitive bias where an individual depends too heavily on an initial piece of information offered (considered to be the "anchor") to make subsequent judgments during decision making. Once the value of this anchor is set, all future negotiations, arguments, estimates, etc. are discussed in relation to the anchor. Information that aligns with the anchor tends to be assimilated toward it, while information that is more dissonant or less related tends to be displaced. This bias occurs when interpreting future information using this anchor to gauge.

The example initially given in the Wikipedia article uses an initial price for a car set as a starting point for negotiations. However, experience can come into play as anchor points for evaluation of situations and employment negotiations etc.

Early research found that experts (those with high knowledge, experience, or expertise in some field) were more resistant to the anchoring effect (Wilson, et al. 1996). Since then, however, numerous studies have demonstrated that while experience can sometimes reduce the effect, even experts are susceptible to anchoring.

In a study concerning the effects of anchoring on judicial decisions, researchers found that even experienced legal professionals were affected by anchoring. This remained true even when the anchors provided were arbitrary and unrelated to the case in question (Englich, et al. 2006).

Also, this relates to goal setting, where more experienced individuals will set goals based on their past experiences which consequently affects end results in negotiations (Harvard Law, 2019).

An anchoring bias can also lead to a backfire effect, a name for the finding that given evidence against their beliefs, people can reject the evidence and believe even more strongly. The phrase was first coined by Nyhan & Reifler (2010).

Anchoring biases can be formed as a result of **illusory correlations**, which are phenomena within Psychology where people have been known to perceive a relationship between variables (typically people, events, or behaviors) even when no such relationship exists. A false association may be formed because rare or novel occurrences are more salient and therefore tend to capture one's attention (Pelham & Blanton, 2013). This phenomenon is one way stereotypes form and endure (Mullen & Johnson, 1990).

## References

Englich, B., Mussweiler, T., & Strack, F. (2006). Playing Dice With Criminal Sentences: The Influence of Irrelevant Anchors on Experts' Judicial Decision Making. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 32 (2): 188–200. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167205282152

Harvard Law (2019). The Anchoring Effect and How it Can Impact Your Negotiation. *PON - Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School* https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/negotiation-skills-daily/the-drawbacks-of-goals/

Mullen, B., & Johnson, C. (1990). Distinctiveness-based illusory correlations and stereotyping: A meta-analytic integration. *British Journal of Social Psychology. 29*(1): 11–28. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8309.1990.tb00883.x.

Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J. (2010). When corrections fail: The persistence of political misperceptions. *Political Behavior, 32*(2), 303-330. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-010-9112-2

Pelham, B. W. Blanton, H. (2012). Conducting Research in Psychology: measuring the weight of smoke (4th ed.). Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning. pp. 11–12.

Wilson, Timothy D.; Houston, Christopher E.; Etling, Kathryn M.; Brekke, Nancy (1996). A new look at anchoring effects: Basic anchoring and its antecedents. *Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 125*(4): 387–402. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.125.4.387

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Tags: terminology, bias, expertise, trust
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# Question
Title: How to measure confidence in non-binary (e.g. ordinal) choice tasks?
In metacognition literature, why is confidence, regardless of scale (Likert-type or continuous) and definition (e.g. decision confidence as a subjective probability of a decision being correct), mostly measured in binary decision tasks, such as 2AFC?

Is it psychologically valid to obtain confidence in other types of choice tasks, such as multiple-alternatives or ordinal ones, in a similar way?

# Answer
Non-binary choices complicate analysis unnecessarily, as most multiple alternative scenarios can be distilled into multiple binary choices.

Outside of metacognitive literature, I have seen studies that assume the naive Bayesian approach for multi-choice decision confidence, for example, from Satopää et al (2014) in forecasting:

> For now, assume that the event can take exactly one of a total of M≥2 different outcomes. Under pure ignorance, the forecaster should assign a probability of 1/M to each outcome. The more ignorant the forecaster is, the more we would expect him to shrink his forecasts towards 1/M.

However, this assumption may not hold in the uncalibrated confidence judgments of metacognitive tasks. There is an interesting paper by Li & Ma (2020):

> Experiments on confidence reports have almost exclusively focused on two-alternative decision-making. ... Here, we test ... a three-alternative visual categorization task. We found that confidence reports are best explained by the difference between the posterior probabilities of the best and the next-best options, rather than by the posterior probability of the chosen (best) option alone, or by the overall uncertainty (entropy) of the posterior distribution. Our results upend the leading notion of decision confidence and instead suggest that confidence reflects the observer’s subjective probability that they made the best possible decision.

This would make even 4-choice tasks much more difficult to interpret.
> 0 votes

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Tags: measurement, methodology, metacognition, confidence
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title: Endogenous Neural Activity

text:
# Question
Title: Endogenous Neural Activity
Could someone explain to me what exactly is endogenous neural activity? I am reading a lot of research papers, and I want to understand things thoroughly. Thanks for the response in advance.

This is the current paper that I am reading: https://www.nature.com/articles/pr199992

# Answer
> 2 votes
Quoting from the paper you refer to:

> These connections form before the retina can respond to light, but at a time when retinal ganglion cells spontaneously generate highly correlated bursts of action potentials. Blockade of this endogenous activity

By "endogenous" here they are referring to the spontaneous activity generated before sight begins mentioned in the previous sentence, which organizes the circuitry for vision. It's endogenous because it's not triggered by an external stimulus like light, it's internally generated.

More generally, people tend to refer to "endogenous" activity that is not specifically related to stimulus-evoked activity that an experimenter can manipulate. Sometimes this is also called "noise" though there is debate about whether this term should be used (not that the people using it actually think it's truly noise).

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Tags: neuroscience
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title: Does the mind create the body?

text:
# Question
Title: Does the mind create the body?
Everything we perceive is through the 5 senses. That means the body which is perceived through sense of feeling and seeing is also formed as an image in mind or brain? Is it correct that it is either the mind or brain that creates the body. Or some part of brain that creates the body?

Are there any articles or research along these lines?

One more thing I want to add that everything we are seeing, including the body, all appears in a small part of brain, and then we are projecting it outside?

# Answer
> 5 votes
**Q: Does the mind create the body?**

**A: The answer depends on what you mean by “the body”.**

1. If “the body” in the question means **“the body as we perceive it”**, the answer is **“yes”**. And, not only is the body in this sense is created by the mind, everything else in this world, the universe, and the reality as you perceive them are also created by the mind.\[1,2\]

It is easy to show that “the body as we perceive it” is created by the mind (or its physical counterpart – the brain) and is not the real physical body as it exists in the physical world. One of the easiest examples to show this is the finger sausage illusion (see the figure below).

Figure. Finger Sausage Illusion. A – the fingers as appeared when looked at directly and B – the fingers as appeared when one looks at the background beyond the fingers. \[3\]

Although the fingers as we see in our mind change (A \<-\> B), depending on where we focus our sight, the physical fingers themselves cannot change abruptly by just changing the sight’s focus. This proves that the fingers as we see in our mind is not the physical fingers that exists in the physical world.

2. But if “the body” in the question means **“the physical body as it exists in the physical world”**, the answer is **“no”**. The evidence is obvious and abundant in everyday life: just by the wish of our mind - we cannot create a new limb or new organ for the lost one; we cannot create wings to fly, gills to breath underwater, or an organ to sense echolocation even if we want to create them; and we cannot create a duplicate of our body just in case we need a limb/organ replacement.

**References**

1. Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati. How the brain constructs the world. Insights into processes underlying the integration and storage of sensory signals. ScienceDialy. February 9, 2018.
2. Wikipedia. Neural basis of self
3. Ukachoke C. 3.6. Sensory perception qualia as representations of the outside world In: The Basic Theory of the Mind. 1st ed. Bangkok, Thailand; Charansanitwong Printing Co. 2018.

# Answer
> 4 votes
**Short answers**
Yes, and yes

**Background**
The answer to your first question (I've re-worded it a bit)...

> is the outside world, such as the image of other people, a reconstruction of the collection of sensory inputs that are processed and merged in the brain?

...is simply and straightforwardly a 'yes'. Sensations picked up in the periphery are collected and processed centrally in the brain. So yes, it is all in the eye of the beholder, and as Bach-y-Rita (2003) famously put it:

> We see with the brain, not the eyes

Your second question is a more interesting one in my opinion, namely

> ...are perceptions of the outside world all processed in the brain and then projected, as if they were outside?

The answer here is also 'yes', quite obviously given the answer to the first question, yet it is a fascinating and active interdisciplinary area of research spanning psychology, neuroscience and philosophy. It is of much interest now, given the COVID-19 crisis, and the many hours people spend talking to computer screens instead of 'real' colleagues, friends or family.

The phenomenon you are referring to is beknown to me as **distal attribution** (Auvrey *et al*.,2005), which can be defined as:

> ...the ability to attribute the cause of our proximal sensory stimulation to an exterior and distinct object

The phenomenon has attracted a lot of interest in the arena of **sensory substitution**, where a lost sense (*e.g.* vision) is replaced by another (*e.g.* touch) (Stronks *et al.*, 2015). An example device is the BrainPort V100, where visual information is transferred from a head-worn camera to a tactile display worn on the tongue (Stronks *et al.*., 2016) (Fig. 1). The cool thing in regard to your question is that blind folks using this or similar devices have been reported to feel a disconnection between outside and the tactile information the device provides on their tongue. However, after prolonged use, subjects using a related (predecessor) device of the BrainPort, the TVSS, reported that they started to feel the tactile sensations to be actually located outside of their body. Specifically, this happened when the users were able to direct the camera image themselves, rather than receiving static images projected onto their backs.

The TVSS system is shown in Fig. 2. It was a massive device built in the 1960's by Bach-y-Rita and colleagues to substitute vision for tactile sensations. The camera is on the left in the picture and the 200-tactor display is mounted in the rest of the back support of the dental chair. At first the camera was held stationary to project stationary images onto the back of the subjects. While successful, the tactile images on the back lacked the feeling of externalization. However, when the users were able to handle the camera themselves, they started to actually sense the objects to be 'out there' in space.I note, however, that these observations are rather anecdotal, but were obtained from reputable sources. The experiments are dealt with in White (1970).

Fig. 1. BrainPortV100 device. It consists of an electrotactile tongue display unit connected to a glasses-worn camera. picture courtesy: News Salute

Fig. 2. Bach-y-Rita's Tactile to Vision Substitution System (TVSS). picture courtesy: Tongue Vision

**References**
**-** Auvrey *et al*., *J Integr Neurosci*; **4** (4), 505-21
**-** Bach-y-Rita *et al*, *Int J Human-Computer Interact* (2003): **15**(2): 285-95\]
**-** Stronks *et al*., *Brain Res* (2015); **1624**: 140-52
**-** Stronks *et al*., *Exp Rev Med Dev* (2016);**13**(10): 919-31
**-** White, *IEEE Trans Man–Machine Syst* (1970); **11**:54–58

# Answer
> -2 votes
This question actually can be answered rather with the interdisciplinary fields of neuroscience / philosophy, since it was already Platon around 400 B.C. with his Allegory of the cave asking what is the reality or what do we just perceive. This led to the question of what reality or existence of objects actually is. This is true for every human being.

Later on, the German philosopher Schopenhauer explained that this is also true on an individual basis. Even if the brain generally aims to perceive through the five senses in almost the same way as all people do, it might differ how we precicely conceive these impressions as he stated in his famous quote

> With the same environment, everyone lives in a different world.

("Bei gleicher Umgebung lebt doch jeder in einer anderen Welt." Schopenhauer: "Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit", 1851)

A modern and even more abstract way of defining perception is given by Predictive coding propesed by Karl Friston which states that all impressions are processed in such a way that minimizes suprise, i.e. tries to infer from known to unknown or one could say using all prejudices. This theory can be described very mathematically and does not state how exactly it works physiologically. Simply put, the perception works in such a way that minimzes energy.

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Tags: neuroscience, reference-request, brain
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# Question
Title: Is the inability for people to accept they may be wrong on a topic (and the rationales for that) something that psychology ever discusses in depth?
Pride, shame, hubris and ego being factors in whether a person is able to consider they may be wrong on a statement, claim or stance on a topic. Not only consider wrongness, but accept or note their change of mind.

# Answer
This was discussed by Erich Fromm, a German social psychologist. In his popular book "To Have or to Be?" he explains this mode of attached to one's own conviction as the modes of existence related to "Having" as if this was one's property that it is about to defend. On the other hand, people living in the mode of "Being" do not "posess" their ideas but are open to learn new things, the best what can happen in a conversation.
> 1 votes

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Tags: personality, motivation, behavior
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# Question
Title: How to offer support to an American acquaintance with depression?
So, an online acquaintance of mine has mentioned that they're suffering from severe depression recently, and my natural response is to want to offer them support and encouragement - maybe suggest that they should see a psychologist and get some medication for the condition. However, I'm uncertain of how to do so, since I remember reading that depression can cause you to interpret things that people say to you in a negative light, and it's my understanding that the American health system is not the greatest, and thus they might not be able to afford medication.

How should I approach this? Naturally, I don't want to do more harm than good, and cause them to start thinking things like "he's being smug about how his country's medical system is better than mine" or "I can't afford medication; I'm worthless because I'm poor". Are there any general guidelines on how non-medically trained people should approach interactions with depressed people?

# Answer
## How untrained people should approach interactions with depressed people or any other mental health problem?

**The main point to make is that you must not try to counsel them.**

I believe you may have worked this out for yourself, and I don't want to sound patronising and *"tell you how to suck eggs"*, but to be clear **being untrained, you can cause more harm than good if you try to counsel them.**

### The only thing you can do is be a good listener and listen without judgement.

The moment you start to judge that person on what they say, you start to be harmful to them.

## If faced with talk of suicide

If you are faced with talk of suicide, while Rebecca's answer in meta.stackexchange.com mentioned in the comments by @BryanKrause suggests not to repeat *"canned comments about suicide hotlines"*, you do need to bear in mind your own position in all this.

### Remember — trained or untrained, you cannot be there for that person 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It will not be healthy for you or them.

In a slightly different way to what is suggested in MTL's answer to the same question in meta.stackexchange.com you can tell them:

> I am here to listen right now, but please bear in mind that I may not be here all the time. Any time I'm not around to talk to and you feel suicidal, there are helplines available for you to call too and a full list is available at http://suicide.org/international-suicide-hotlines.html

When dealing with talk of suicide, Rebecca's answer is very good for pointers regarding worries you may have, so it may be beneficial for you to take some time to read through what she says.
> 2 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, depression
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# Question
Title: What is the scientific term for the tendency to see familiar patterns in things, that are actually something completely different?
What is the scientific term for the tendency to see familiar patterns in things, that are actually something completely different? One of the most common examples of this bias, is the perception of human faces in clouds, cars and all kinds of other objects.

What I am looking for is a lower level misperception, which people are usually aware of on a higher, cognitive level. I.e., people either are, or can easily become aware of the fact that they are not actually seeing a face (or another familiar pattern).

# Answer
Pareidolia is the term you are looking for. It is often used for the specific case you mention of seeing faces in other objects, but it's actually a more general concept that covers other types of patterns and even other (non-visual) modalities.

A search of Google Scholar returns many relevant results.
> 5 votes

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Tags: perception
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# Question
Title: Is there a benefit for humans to lose memory access when under elongated periods of stress?
Long term anxiety causes memory loss. Sources: https://www.calmclinic.com/anxiety/signs/memory-loss and https://now.uiowa.edu/2014/06/stress-hormone-linked-short-term-memory-loss-we-age

Are there theories about the biological purpose of this connection? Is there a benefit for humans to lose memory access when under elongated periods of stress?

# Answer
Disclaimer : this answer isn't backed by any source, aside from personal experience.

Edit : found a source https://health-clevelandclinic-org.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/health.clevelandclinic.org/what-happens-to-your-body-during-the-fight-or-flight-response/amp/?amp\_js\_v=a6&amp\_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQHKAFQArABIA%3D%3D#aoh=16167791861704&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp\_tf=Source%C2%A0%3A%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fhealth.clevelandclinic.org%2Fwhat-happens-to-your-body-during-the-fight-or-flight-response%2F

My psychiatrist explained to me that people with anxiety are often in "survival mode". Not only when they are having a panick attack, but most of the time, because of the high stress levels. Imagine being constantly in danger. Thats' how we feel.

When in danger, our bodies prioritize all other important organs (heart, lungs...), and our cognitive capacities become impaired. When in danger, the last thing our body wants to do is to remember what's happening. All it wants to do is to flee that situation, or to fight the danger.

In addition, anxiety leads to exhaustion, which also impairs our cognitive capacities.

Again, I don't know if my psychiatrist made this up or if it's scientifically proven, but I thought it was an interesting insight.

I also have a little theory about it. I know it sounds stupid, but from my personal experience, a lot of events can be traumatic for someone with anxiety. An event (or even a simple thought) that is stressful for a normal person can completely destroy me.

I had a tendency as a child to block those memories so I won't remember them and trigger a panick attack. I remember whispering to myself "forget it" 3 times and move on with something else. It came to the point that I didn't even force myself to forget. I forgot the thing right after it happened.

The point is that we probably don't remember things because we trained ourselves to forget. But that's just my theory.

Feel free to respond and tell me what you think. And if you have some sources to back up or refute what I just wrote, please share them :)

Edit : found an article on training memory suppression https://www.healthline.com/health/how-to-forget-something#how-to-forget
> 1 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, memory, long-term-memory, anxiety, short-term-memory
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