# Question
Title: Is there a cognitive bias for ascribing agency to inanimate objects?
I am curious to know if any research might have been done on this topic or if it is any way even described in scientific literature.

It's not uncommon for people to ascribe agency to inanimate objects and when objects "act" in ways that are contrary to the person's expectation (a computer that is loading files slowly, a car that won't start, an appliance that breaks frequently) some people can become angered and feel that this specific object is behaving maliciously towards them in particular.

Even when we rationally know that a computer program does not have consciousness and cannot intentionally target us we can still feel persecuted by it. I know there are a few cognitive biases that deal with incorrectly attributing malicious intent to other people (***attribution bias***, ***hostile attribution bias***, etc) but I have not heard of one regarding inanimate objects and yet it clearly exists. As a software developer I find this interesting as it impacts user experience. As an example, if software attempts to be overly personable by calling a person by their name and interacting with them so as to give the illusion that the software is "alive" might it increase the potential for people to ascribe malice to it when it behaves in ways they feel it should not or when there are frequent errors.

I want to be clear I am not suggesting that people literally or consciously believe that inanimate objects are sentient and possess agency, but that is how they behave and likely what at some level increases their frustration. When a person, for example, takes a tool that has been on the blink for a while and out of frustration smashes it or tears it apart I do not find it unreasonable to believe that the relief they feel is a shot of dopamine that they are getting for "justly" punishing the tool for it's "behavior". How many times have we heard a child or maybe even an adult exclaim, "That thing hates me!" Rationally they know the thing in question is not conscious yet at some level they feel it is actively persecuting them.

A classic example is in a *Canticle for Lebowitz* when one of the characters is having issues with a computer that is constantly misbehaving exclaims,

> "That thing-” he waved irritably toward the Abominable Autoscribe- "is a damned infidel or worse."

I was asked for scientific evidence, but I cannot provide any because that is in fact what I am asking about. Is this recognized as a cognitive bias and if so, has it ever been studied?

Personal information in messages (UX StackExchange)

Malicious Objects, Anger Management, and the Question of Modern Literature

Evil by Design: Interaction Design to Lead us into Temptation

# Answer
> 7 votes
Fortunately, some psychologists have looked into it, and in accordance to your observations, people do tend to attribute intentional agency to inanimate objects.

In the seminal work by Heider and Simmel (1944), participants were shown shapes of a triangle and disc moving around a two-dimentional landscape. They were not moving in random directions, but in ways that convinced the participants they were acting, fighting, playing or helping each other. When objects move in a purposeful manner, and not just fall to the ground aimlessly, we naturally tend to think they have intentions, belonging to the kind of beings with some kind of intelligence. See also Barrett and Johnson (2003): *The Role of Control in Attributing Intentional Agency to Inanimate Objects*.

Further more, this tendency is used by the camp of the skeptics, like Dan Dennet or Steven Pinker, to explain why people recognize many events around them as the actions of of gods or super-natural beings. By coincidence, they see some random event or movement, which has no obvious or natural explanation. The witness of such event looks for the agent behind it, and when one can't be found, it is attributed to a hidden or unseen intentional being. The way from there to gods, deities and religion, these thinkers claim, is very short. See Dennett's BREAKING THE SPELL.

# Answer
> 2 votes
Here is an interesting article on NPR about an AI version of the famous Milgram experiment (i.e. the psychological study of obedience to authority in which people were asked to give confederate researchers increasing shocks for making errors, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram\_experiment). The interesting finding here is that the study was replicated using robots that had to have their operating systems/memories destroyed - participants had a harder time doing this after spending time with a helpful, kind robot.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/01/28/170272582/do-we-treat-our-gadgets-like-they-re-human

Lots of other good references in the article above.

# Answer
> -1 votes
Computers interact with you and so we treat them like other, real people. Even expert MIT computer users behave this way. We all do it. I'll try to find the research on it. Someone actually wrote a book about this.

We also tend to blame ourselves when we can't accomplish something on the computer. This is great for computer programmers, but bad for people. The truth is a lot of error is attributed to bad design. So rather than feeling stupid, you can put the locus of control outside of yourself and say whoever made this program didn't empathize with you enough and perform enough tests or user observation.

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Tags: social-psychology, attribution
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# Question
Title: When a person starts to scratch, why does this often start others to scratch?
Often, when a person starts scratching and complains of being itchy, whether they suggest there might be a bug biting them (for example fleas, head lice, mites) another person with them will start to feel itchy, just at the thought of it. The cause may not always be an insect.

This seems to occur with sources of itching that cannot be seem, (for example with mosquitos that produce large bites and can usually be seen flying around, people may not tich unless being bitten. In fact they sometime joke how they are usually the ones being bitten and aren't now and the like), but this could be a false assumption on my part.

Why is it that people can feel itchy when another person feels itchy and starts scratching and complaining?

What happens within the brain, what changes occur neurochemically and along which neural networks and regions?

Is this influenced by how visible the cause of the itch and the resulting marks left by this (example bites)?

Is there theory about the evolutionary purpose of this, perhaps it is a survival mechanism to help prevent infestation?

Answers can address only one of these aspects being asked, as it encompasses many fields.

# Answer
> 2 votes
There are two functions that I'm aware of that are involved, though there of course may be more I'm simply unaware of.

The first is so-called mirror neurons. Cognitively, neurologically, and evolutionary, we generally assume that the brain tends to be very efficient to be able to get its immense job done in so little space, so quickly, with so little 'power' (food). One result of this pressure is re-use, so that the same parts of the brain that are used in active experience of something are also used for recalling, thinking about, and indeed perceiving others experience similar things (thus the mirror neurons). To see someone else itch compels us to think about itching, and to recall/think about/understand itching is to activate the same parts of the brain that register the concept of itching in ourselves.

This then neatly leads into (and overlaps) with another set of effects: conscious awareness and selective attending. The nature of our conscious awareness is that it is limited - we can't consciously attend to everything at once. And thus we have perceptual and cognitive filters (and we have lots of theories over time that have developed this context - I think the "leaky filter" hybrid model being the most recent, but I can't recall the name of the researcher(s) who came up with it).

This set of functions give us the cocktail party effect and the invisible gorilla experiments, change blindness, and so many fun others. It also effects how we respond to "how happy are you" questions; another fun experiment was that finding a nickle on a copying machine before you get asked about your happiness and satisfaction in life causes one to respond more positively to even general questions.

But I digress...

In contagious yawning - and in itching! - the act of perceiving someone itching can direct our attention to personal comfort and any potential itchiness. For instance, if you are fully dressed right now (including socks): you know that 'seam' at the end of the sock down by your toes? Does that always go above your toes on the top of your foot, or does it sometimes kind of work it's way down so it's at the bend of your toes underneath your foot?

Well, I have gone all morning without thinking about it, but now I realize my sock is a little twisted, I think the heel of the sock has slid a bit off-center, and the top of my boot is rather tight while the lower part of the laces could be tighter. Also, my ankle kind of itches a little.

The fact of modern life is, quite frankly, there is always something that could use a good scratching! Like my back right now...answering this question is making me wish for a scratching post. Multiple layers of clothes of varying fibers, little skin folds, body hair, all those tiny little follicles and pores mean there's bound to be at least one little pimple somewhere, and even if you are very flexible there's always places that aren't terribly easy to reach...

So perhaps a better question is "why aren't we itchy all the time?!" Thankfully, most of us have filters that consider many of these sensations relatively unimportant, so they don't get passed over into something that captures our conscious awareness. Also, we are busy: there's lots to think about in the world, so we tend to only think about it when we are given a cue like trying on clothing, or looking at an irritated/injured piece of skin...or seeing someone else itching.

Given these are cognitive processes, we can also view what happens when they go wrong, as manifested in symptoms and disorders such as intrusive thoughts, "sensitive skin" or tactile sensitivity (especially common in the autism spectrum), etc.

**TLDR;**

First we perceive, then we imagine, then we ***experience*** \- empathy! Sad songs can make us sad, in part because they remind us of the sadness that is an unavoidable part of life, and also in part because to think about sadness we can't help but feel at least a little sad; the only reason we aren't sad all the time is because there are happy things to think about, too.

Itching is like an elephant - try not to think about it. Oops, too late!

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Tags: social-psychology, neuroscience, neural-network, cross-modal
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# Question
Title: What areas of mathematics support the study of cognitive science?
Which areas of mathematics can be formally studied in a cognitive science major? Or: which areas of mathematics can support the study of brain. Some areas that seem relevant would be: mathematical logic, graph theory, linear algebra. Is any element of topology relevant? Please direct to links/sources if possible. Is network science being used in these fields? I am asking this question, as I want to study further in mathematics, and would love it if I could do so while pursuing cognitive science.

# Answer
> 9 votes
Here's my list of math subjects that support the study of brain (from a computational neuroscientist's perspective):

* **Linear algebra**
    + to understand high dimensions, to compute things quickly, foundation for other math
* **Calculus**
    + basics for everything continuous valued
* **Statistics**
    + to analyze any data, you need stats!
    + basis for modeling, regression, clustering, classification, and all
* **Differential equations** (basis for dynamical system)
* **Dynamical system**
    + intuition for neural dynamics (deterministic approximation)
    + modeling single neuron, synapse, small network
* **Statistical physics**
    + modeling large scale noisy neural dynamics
* **Information theory**
    + quantify how much "information" is coded in neural signal
* **Numerical computation**
    + your data and algorithm needs to be implemented in a computer
* **Convex optimization**
    + your statistics/model requires optimization
* **Probability theory** (basis for stochastic process and statistics)
* **Stochastic process**
    + model of neural signals, decision process (diffusion), basis for advanced statistics
    + point process theory is useful for dealing with neural spike trains
* **Time series analysis** (your data is a time series!)
* **Signal detection theory**
    + psychophysics is often designed to be a detection task

Brain is quite noisy, you need tools to deal with noise. More applied math than pure math is needed.

I have only seen topology being used a handful of times, and they were not very useful nor impressive. I love set theory and mathematical logic, but sadly never used it nor seen it being used.

In addition, real/complex/functional analyses are also useful, just in general.

# Answer
> 9 votes
I will deviate from the other answers and give more pessimistic response based on my experience as a mathematician and theoretical computer scientist that spends some of his time in a psychology department.

1. In cognitive science, neuroscience, and psychology (like in most sciences) you will never *do* mathematics in the definition, lemma, theorem, proof sense.
2. Instead, **you will rely on using (or modifying) mathematical tools others built**, and doing calculations with them. (for a list of tools, see Memming's answer and more detail here on dynamic systems)
3. Most of your colleagues will not know what you are doing (since the usual extent of training is linear regression),
4. and even the ones that are trained in mathematical tools will usually use them in a rather black-box way without making deep connections to other parts of mathematics.

If you want to *do* mathematics and prove theorems then your are better off in one of the following fields allied to cognitive science:

1. Mathematical linguistics -- although most people here still focus on tool use, there are some that prove things using ideas from category theory, mathematical logic, and a bit of topology (through Curry-Howard-Lambek crrespondence and Stone duality).
2. Economics -- most of the proofs here seem to be performances, but sometimes deep results are proven, usually related to game theory and decision theory. A solid grasp of analysis will be useful and topology will be relevant since most results follow from fixed-point theorems.
3. Computational learning theory -- this subfield of theoretical computer science often can use very deep mathematics (usually from graph theory, combinatorics, optimization, discrete Fourier analysis, probability, and information theory) in its proofs, and has a history of interaction with cognitive science which has unfortunately waned in recent years.

# Answer
> 3 votes
I would say that the maths that are most useful in cognitive science are the ones that have to do with decision theory. So I would include linear algebra (with its matrixes, and "transition" or changes of state analysis), as well as probability and statistics, with their "expected values" and resulting decision trees. Computational and information analysis, with their "data structures" might also be helpful. The last thing I would include is optimization.

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Tags: mathematical-psychology
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# Question
Title: Any studies on the phenomenon of photo-taking even in dire situations?
I have noticed a tendency these days for people to take pictures of the things they see in the public with their phones. This is fine, but I have found that it has gone to an extend where in a dire situation, people were too busy taking pictures of the scene (for blogging, Facebook, etc) to call the police or help the victims.

Having that said, I'm not sure if this is just my own observation. Are there any studies or even terms or keywords describing and explaining such phenomenon?

# Answer
> 9 votes
**Firstly historical background:**

The phenomena of people witnessing atrocities and not acting predates photo taking. It is known as Diffusion of responsibility or Bystander effect. (1) The likelihood of an individual offering assistance or calling for help is inversely proportion to the number of people present in the group.

This phenomena can be attributed to the concepts of deindividuation (2) and victim blaming (3). Deindividuation is the notion that an individual loses their independent consciousness to a degree as being drawn into a group consciousness, that acting within a group, revokes all personal responsibility and accountability for actions or inactions.

Victim blaming is the propensity for people to blame the victims of violent crimes for somehow being complicit in bringing about the crime. By reckless behavior, perceived immoral conduct. This can the false comfort people seek as a protection, that it wouldn't happen to them, as such events are not part of chance, but rather have causal roots within the victim.

I believe the cause underlying this mentality runs deeper into the human psyche and taps into a primitive part of human nature that will form a subconscious alliance with the perceived stronger aggressor and so have less mercy towards the weaker victim. This is seen in more personal and extreme cases in the Stockholm Syndrome and on the coninuum of domestic violence. The following quote demonstrates this argument where the threat is real and present. I postulate this fear is underlying within many people's subconscious.

> It is important to remember that Stockholm Syndrome develops subconsciously and on an involuntary basis. The strategy is a survival instinct that develops as an attempt to survive in a threatening and controlling environment. (4)

**Photo taking:**

There has always been a voyeuristic nature to photography. (5)

The advent of internet communication, social media and the glut of social networking platforms have given rise to a popular form of communication, via the image. Pinterest being a good example. The availability of new technologies enabling people to take photos and upload instantly online, makes a tragic scene an tantalising opportunity for individuals to gain recognition online. Perhaps enhancing their perceived status or popularity, at the very least gaining them attention.

**The psychology of the photographer:**

This is a little researched area. I cannot find much on this topic, maybe somebody else can.

This book by Joel Morgovsky examines some of these issues (I am unable to quote further than the following):

> While photographs are the most abundant image form in the world today, they are, at the same time, also the least carefully analyzed. Not one psychologist, to this writer’s knowledge, has attempted to apply relevant research on imagery and the creative process to the study of photographs as personal and cultural communications. Writers, painters, sculptors and scientists have served for years as illustrations of the creative personality, the creative process, and the creative product; photographers and photographs have not (Lindauer, 1977). (6)

It appears Joel Morgovsky has an interest in ongoing research into this:

> According to Div. 1 (Society for General Psychology) member Joel Morgovsky, pictures aren't just windows through which we look out onto the world--they also serve as mirrors into the photographer's mind. (7)

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References:

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Tags: social-psychology, terminology
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title: Build model to explain data

text:
# Question
Title: Build model to explain data
I'm not a psychology student, but I'm doing a subjective experiment which is similar to magnitude estimation: simply measure the effect of different stimulus through a number from 1-10.

Now I need to build a model to explain those numbers, i.e. why different patterns corresponds to different numbers. I find it so difficult and vague that I don't really know how to proceed. Any complicated mathematical model can explain data very well. Are you based on biological evidence?

# Answer
It's a little unclear what you're asking. In general, psychologists try to build models that are parsimonious; this often means only introducing new parameters (particularly free parameters) into a model when they are absolutely necessary. You are right that with a sufficient number of free parameters, one can build a model that fits the data perfectly. But such a model has no generalizability: if you overfit your model to your data, the model will predict novel data very poorly.

Additionally, a model is preferred when its parameters have some psychological plausibility. That is, a parameter of the model should correspond to some psychological construct (e.g. working memory capacity, neural noise, etc). This is particularly important because it tells psychologists something about cognition and behavior, which is often the goal. If the parameters of a model are completely arbitrary, it's not always clear what we learn from it.

You are again correct that the choice in how to model psychological data is still vague. One many choose between any number of formalisms, such as neural networks or symbolic systems, and it is common for a phenomenon to be modeled in many different ways. Indeed, much of the cognitive modeling literature is full of numerous approaches to the same problem, with each author arguing in favor of their own approach.

The best way to figure out how to model your data is to read other papers that model the same or similar tasks. Look at what other researchers have done, and assess the merits of their approach. If possible, read multiple papers that model the same task in different ways (often researchers from opposing camps will cite each other).
> 3 votes

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Tags: methodology, cognitive-modeling, mathematical-psychology
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# Question
Title: What's the relationship between priming and anchoring?
I've recently been dabbling in the behavioral literature, reading about cognitive biases such an anchoring, when one of my friends asked me how this phenomenon differed from the classical cognitive psychology construct of priming. It struck me as odd that I couldn't form an explanation that convincingly tweezed them apart: both appear to be about prior exposure to a stimulus changing the reaction to subsequent stimuli. All I can come up with is that anchoring is generally used in a more narrow context while priming seems more like an umbrella term. That, or they could just be field specific terms for the same underlying cognitive processes. **Is there some consensus as to how anchoring and priming are related?**

One relevant paper I've found suggests that priming (along with hypothesis testing) constitute the underlying mechanisms that operate within the anchoring *paradigm*. However, this is just one (rather old) paper, so I think question as to the consensus viewpoint is still valid.

# Answer
> 10 votes
**Priming**: Stimulus A influences perception/processing of stimulus B. E.g. you walk past an Italian restaurant and smell pizza. When you enter the supermarket and consider what you want to make for dinner, you might be more strongly inclined to bake a pizza, then when you hadn't smelled the delectable pizza from the restaurant.

**Anchoring**: The first information in a series if informations influences your processing of the whole of this information. E.g. if you are asked to guess (not calculate) the result of 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 you might guess a higher number compared to your guess of the result for 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 x 7 x 8, because the first number in that calculation (1 versus 8) influences your judgment.

So the theoretical difference is that while in priming one stimulus influences the processing of *another*, later stimulus, in anchoring the form of the beginning of the information influences the processing of *the whole* information.

Nevertheless it has been suggested that anchoring is caused by an underlying priming (Mussweiler & Strack, 1999; from the abstract):

> Results of four studies support the notion that anchoring effects are mediated by mechanisms of hypothesis-consistent testing and semantic priming. ... Study 4 suggests that self-generation of knowledge contributes to the robustness of the effect, thus resolving the seeming inconsistency that anchoring effects are at the same time remarkably robust and mediated by typically fragile semantic priming mechanisms.

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Sources:

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, terminology, anchoring, behavioral-economics
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# Question
Title: Why did Moray think Treisman's Attenuation Model was inconsistent with additional costs for simultaneous targets?
I have been reading http://psych.stanford.edu/~jlm/pdfs/Norman76.pdf, which on pp34-36 present an excerpt from a book by Neville Moray.

> Tone bursts of 3000 Hz were delivered to one ear and tone bursts of 2111 Hz to the other ear of observers. The onset and offset of the tone bursts were exactly simultaneous on the two ears, and controlled through a two-channel electronic switch."
>
> Subjects were required to press a left hand button when they heard an increment in their left ear, a right hand button when they heard an increment in their right ear, and a central button when they heard an increment in both ears. Four conditions of presentation were used. These were Single Mode (in which only one ear was used, the other being silent throughout; Select Mode (in which both ears received tone bursts, but the listener was to ignore one ear completely and only respond to the other); XOR Mode (in which both ears received tone bursts, but targets never occurred simultaneously); and IOR Mode (in which targets could occur either on the left ear or on the right ear, or simultaneously on both, the last condition being a logical AND Mode). In addition a control was run using IOR presentation Mode but requiring the listener to ignore thesingle targets and respond only to the simultaneous pairs with the AND response.
>
> It is rather curious that so little attention has been paid to the AND mode of presentation (simultaneous targets), Most of the experiments have been either Select Mode in which the listener accepts one message and rejects the other or, more rarely, XOR in which responses are made to targets in two messages, but targets are never simultaneous (Treisman and Geffen, 1967, for example), Indeed, while Deutsch. and Deutsch's model clearly predicts that the AND condition will show severe interference between the messages, Treisman's model makes no explicit prediction about AND signals, Treisman says that in the XOR condition and the Select Mode the listener can attenuate an unwanted message (hut there is no indication how rapidly such attenuation could be redirected in the XOR Mode). However, for the AND case, it is not clear that a listener should attenuate one and reject the other rather than rejecting both, or for that matter accepting-both, since the theory only says that the Select Mode can result in the attenuation of one message, not that in all competitive situations attenuation of all except one message must occur,
>
> The Table \[2.1\] shows that Treisman's model will not fit the facts. Notice the last three rows of data, AND is the percentage of ANDs (simultaneous targets) which were correctly detected in the lOR presentation mode. AND'" is where IOR presentation was used with AND response only (other targets being ignored) , Here again responses to ANDs are extremely poor ... NAND is the percentage of single responses made either to a left target, or a right target, or to what was really an AND.
>
> Now, if Treisman's model says that an: observer sharing his attention equally between two messages attenuates neither, AND should equal Singles. They do not. If he attenuates both messages ·when sharing equally between the two, NAND responses should be no better than AND responses, but they are. If the listener attenuates one channel and listens' only to the other, given that attention wandered from side to side the' observed results could be obtained; on the basis of the shadowing work Treisman maintains that information about crude physical characteristics is available from both messages even in Select Mode. But the data on AND responses shows that this is not true.
>
> Treisman's model does not then fit the data, and needs more elaboration to state explicitly what the predictions are from it about performance in the AND Mode.

As I see it Moray is arguing that since attention is being split evenly between ears, when targets occur simultaneously the Attenuation model says both the left target and right target should be attenuated equally. So then when they get through the filter and are analyzed for meaning they should either both be ignored (if they've been attenuated too much) or else both be noticed (if they haven't been attenuated too much). Since the attenuation would have been of the same magnitude if there was just a target in one ear, there's no reason for simultaneous targets to be harder than single targets. But there is, and so there's something wrong with Treisman's model.

Is that a correct understanding of Moray's argument?

# Answer
> 6 votes
Neville Moray has given permission for his answer (provided via personal correspondence) to be quoted here:

"Treisman said that physical characteristics such as loudness or pitch were not attenuated by selective attention, because although you can't hear semantic information from rejected messages in shadowing experiments, you can hear changes in pitch, or tell a pure tone from speech. So according to her you should be able to listen to two different tones simultaneously. But my experiment showed that you can't."

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Tags: attention
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# Question
Title: In SDT, are there other measures of detection sensitivity besides d'?
The reason I ask is that I often hear of alternate measures of response bias besides β, but have never heard of an alternate measure of detection sensitivity to d'.

If there is no other measure of detection sensitivity, is that a matter of mathematical necessity?

# Answer
Yes, there are several alternatives to d'.

First of all, **why do we need alternatives to d'?**

1. d' assumes the distribution of internal representation of signal and noise are Gaussian. This assumption is common, but may not be true, and a measure that does not make this assumption is more robust.
2. There are technical problems computing d' when the *Hit Rate* or the *False Alarm Rate* are 0 or 1 (d' becomes inf or -inf).

Proposed alternatives to d' include:

1. Area under the ROC (Green & Swets, 1966)
2. **A'** (Pollak & Norman, 1964), **A''** (Smith, 1995) which is a correction of A', and **A** (Zhang & Mueller, 2005) which is a correction of A''.
3. **S'** (Balakrishnan, 1998)

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Balakrishnan, J. D. (1998). Some more sensitive measures of sensitivity and response bias. Psychological Methods, 3(1), 68.

Zhang, J., & Mueller, S. T. (2005). A note on ROC analysis and non-parametric estimate of sensitivity. Psychometrika, 70(1), 203-212.

Smith, W. D. (1995). Clarification of sensitivity measure A'. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 39(1), 82-89.

Pollack, I., & Norman, D. A. (1964). A non-parametric analysis of recognition experiments. Psychonomic Science.

Green, D. M., & Swets, J. A. (1966). Signal detection theory and psychophysics (Vol. 1). New York: Wiley.
> 5 votes

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Tags: measurement, signal-detection
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# Question
Title: Are there any vocal chord experiments that attempt to synthesize communication externally?
I have an idea for an experiment. Basically, the experiment would be to create a novel transmission of *visual* information via the human vocal chords, but not as a traditional human spoken language per se.

The vocal chords are first trained by an external instrument to produce a specific pattern that is associated with an image such as a simple circle. In addition, a "listening" machine is calibrated to process the sounds emanating from the vocal chords.

At first, this doesn't sound so different than language as we use it now and how we interact with voice-recognition technology such as Siri, but what if the vocal chords were trained to produce patterns an order of magnitude more quickly than what is currently achievable? The current world record for speaking is 637 words per minute or 10 words per second.

Also, the patterns that I am thinking of would completely bypass our language processing centers and be immediately received by our visual cortex (or something like that). After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.

So, are there any vocal chord experiments that attempt to synthesize communication externally or come anywhere close to what I am proposing?

# Answer
> 3 votes
I have studied computational neuroscience, first as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, and then as a graduate student at UCSD and the Salk Institute.

As an answer to your question, to my knowledge, and after a quick search on google scholar, there are no studies that try to reroute auditory information to the visual cortex through the vocal chords.

And I wouldn't imagine there would be. Auditory (cochlear, thalamic and cortical) and visual (retinal, thalamic and cortical) processing centers are highly optimized for different flavors of information. Visual information is higher band-width, continuous along multiple dimensions, and relies on many parallel filters and aggregators. Auditory information is serial, and recursive.

Here's some information that might help you get to the heart of your inquiry. First, take a look at neural prosthetics in general. These facillitate information delivery directly to the nervous system, bypassing sensory input: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroprosthetics

For a look at sensory modality switching, take a look at delivering visual information through tongue stimulators (work pioneered by an interesting researcher named Paul Bach-y-Rita):

Finally, take a look at an experiment in which visual information is sent to the auditory cortex, by way of thalamic surgery in ferrets, if I have my citation correct. The auditory cortex proved to be able to adapt to the visual information by forming some structural characteristics of the visual cortex: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v404/n6780/abs/404841a0.html

Perhaps the most interesting part of that last link, in terms of your inquiry, is that the visual information did not bypass auditory processing centers. It transformed them.

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Tags: language, communication
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# Question
Title: How does ethnic identity contribute to a person's self esteem
The process of ethnic identity development is similar to the process of identity development in general. Often the precipitating event involves an experience during which the individual encounters prejudice and becomes aware of his or her group's under-representation in some activity or setting. Following this crisis, individuals engage in a period of exploration during which they immerse themselves about their ethnic heritage. I am interested in knowing more about how this process of self-exploration leads to increases in self-esteem?

# Answer
> 4 votes
I would look at Jennifer Crocker and Brenda Major's paper in 1989, Psychological Review, entitled "Social Stigma and Self-Esteem: The Self-Protective Properties of Stigma" which focuses on how being the target of social stigma can actually be protective of one's self-esteem. It's not precisely what you're discussing but it comes the closest in the literature I know and they're discussion and bibliography would likely be a good starting point. Hope this helps!

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Tags: social-psychology, developmental-psychology, positive-thinking
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# Question
Title: What is the best way to structure an ethnographic study?
I'm writing an ethnographic study for a human computer interaction module and I understand all the processes of conducting ethnography.

I am unsure of how to structure my study. Is it conventional to have it in an essay format, or are case studies preferred?

# Answer
> 2 votes
I have used ethnography for similar purposes several times. Structuring the interviews so that you are an apprentice and your subject plays the role of a master artisan works well.

The book, "Contextual Design" by Beyer and Holtzblatt provides several modeling techniques for expressing the information in some ways that add significantly to essay.

http://www.amazon.com/Contextual-Design-Customer-Centered-Technologies-ebook/dp/B003VM7GEC/ref=sr\_1\_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382970418&sr=8-1&keywords=holtzblatt

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Tags: methodology, hci
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title: SSRI Medications and Problem solving

text:
# Question
Title: SSRI Medications and Problem solving
I'm an Electronics Engineer and I work in Software Development. I'm on SSRIs, for years for different conditions, like bipoar, GAD, ..etc.

I feel that my problem solving abilities really dropped down, I would like to know from researchers, do these medications really affect the brain, or it stops it for more thoughts?
For exmaple those medications help for OCD, and that means it really stops or relax the thoughts, I feel the same no care feelings for solving mathematical, algorithmic problems or any thing that has huge brain activity.

I need to know what is the latest research for that area.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Memory impairments are connected to fluid inteligence... read this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16206235

Also consider that stress and ageing decrease fluid inteligence. In addition you said that you care less to solve... it is motivational not cognitive problem.

for real conclusion try to find if you did take any inteligence test (with norms) and try to visit clinical psychologist to compare your new result to old result.

Result from clinical psychologist is most important because maybe you have only impression.

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Tags: performance, problem-solving, clinical-psychology, bipolar-disorder, anxiety
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# Question
Title: Is there such a person as a "social" homosexual?
One of my former work colleagues was an (unhappily) married woman, who divorced her husband. Afterward, she "dated" (and lived with) a number of women.

Apparently "sex" wasn't the driving force in her new lifestyle. It was more that she wanted the dominant "man's" role in her relationships (she was a "boss" at work).

Conversely, could there be a male homosexual that was such mainly because of a submissive, passive, nature rather than sexuality?

And could such a woman and such a man find mutual happiness is a socially "roles reversed" relationahip between a dominant "masculine" woman and a submissive "feminine" man, while enjoying their natural physical "fit?"

# Answer
This question seems to be asking several things at once, but to answer to the title: yes, there exist "social" relationships where either one or all of the people involved are disinterested in sex. The term for a person who is not interested in sex is "asexual", and asexual people may be aromantic (not interested in any romantic relationship), or bi-, hetero- or homosexual (though bi-, hetero- or homoromantic would probably be a better term here). Scherrer (2008) reports on a survey of asexual people:

> In this sample, eleven participants described themselves as aromantic while twenty-five described themselves as romantically oriented. Like the issue of masturbation, I did not know to include questions regarding romantic identity, however, as this data suggests, this theme emerged as important for many participants. For Mark, his romantic identity, “means \[that\] I separate the romance feeling from the sexual aspect.” For Mark, as well as others, there is a difference between sexual and romantic identities. Alice, a twenty-two year old white woman, describes her identity as, “Asexual. (And aromantic, i.e. no 'romance drive', no desire to find a partner).” For Alice, as well as others, claiming a romantic identity is descriptive of a person's interest in being in a partnership. \[...\]
>
> While a romantic dimension might be a relatively unique axis of sexuality, asexual individuals in this survey also described their sexual identity in relation to the gender of their partner(s). Twenty three participants indicated some type of queer identity and twenty-eight indicated a heterosexual or straight gender identity. None of the self identified aromantic asexual individuals indicated gender as important in relationships, in contrast to those who identify as romantic, where all but one described the gender of their partner(s) as important to their sexual identity. Lydia, a twenty-two year old white woman, describes her sexuality saying, “I am asexual. I am also queer but that isn't about my sexuality. Just thought I'd mention that.” \[...\]
>
> While only twenty-three of the ninety (25%) participants who responded to this question indicated an lgbtq identity, this nonetheless represents a relatively substantial subset of participants who describe their romantic orientation incorporating same-sex attachments as either possible or preferred. For instance, Hannah, a twenty-four year old white woman emphasized that for her, “In asexual circles, I tend to identify as asexual or asexual lesbian. In the (sexual) queer community, I tend to identify first as queer, then lesbian, then asexual lesbian.” As this description of Hannah’s highlights, while adopting an lgbtq identity is not at odds with an asexual identity, neither are these identities uncomplicatedly related. Hannah invokes the sexual identity that both fits her sense of self, and fits the community she is actively engaged with. This is not dissimilar from other findings that individuals may invoke particular aspects of one’s sexual identity as they are relevant (or less stigmatized) in a given situation Chrobot-Mason et al., 2001; (Horowitz & Newcomb, 2001; Rust, 1992; 1996).
>
> Of the twenty-three queer individuals in this sample, eleven (48%) of them identified as bi-, bisexual, or bi-curious. This is a relatively high percentage of bi-identified individuals as in most studies that include bisexual and lesbians or gay males find much lower percentages of bi-identified people (Rodriguez-Rust, 2000; Rust, 1992). While I am not making a claim about the demographics of asexual communities, this concentration of bi-identities does illuminate the construction of asexual identities.

In addition to the article I cited, you may also want to take a look at http://www.asexuality.org/ , which has more information and perspectives on asexuality.

**References**

Kristin S. Scherrer (2008). Coming to an Asexual Identity: Negotiating Identity, Negotiating Desire. *Sexualities.* 2008 October 1; 11(5): 621–641. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2893352/
> 4 votes

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Tags: sexuality
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title: Make a search limited only to Medline?

text:
# Question
Title: Make a search limited only to Medline?
From what I can tell (and from what Wikipedia can tell), the Pubmed database forms a superset of the Medline database, throwing some extra stuff in there. However, is there any way to make a search in the Medline database *only*?

# Answer
> 3 votes
There are several MedLine search engines, some of them requiring an (academic) account. You may want to use

By searching PubMed with "all databases" selected, you will notice all the different databases PubMed is linked with, including the "Literature" section (PubMed database alone). Searching with the PubMed database alone will usually give the exact same results as the engines mentioned above.

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Tags: publication-process
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title: Q&A vs headings format

text:
# Question
Title: Q&A vs headings format
I am wondering, is there any research or just reasoning over whether a human perceives text easier if it is in questions and answers format or if it is structured with headings and sub-headings.

Questions and answers is close to the natural dialogue communication between two people, which is what we have been accustomed to for ages. One sided communication - text-to-reader is a very recent novelty, evolutionary speaking.

At the same time, I have this obscure gut feeling, that Q&A format, even if combined with headings, does not look "authoritative" enough. I cannot explain why, this is just the way I am feeling it.

The specific occasion for coming up with this whole question is that I am writing a job ad. And I have the feeling that if I use Q&A format, it won't look serious, won't be memorable, or something like that.

# Answer
I've seen somewhere that declarative headings in PowerPoint presentations are more effective. From a straight-on cognitive load standpoint, having to decipher a question and pick out the relevant topic words from among all of the different possibilities would certainly increase the extraneous cognitive load required to understand the material. So, my hypothesis is that heading format is better.
> 1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, perception
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# Question
Title: Why do people donate money to others engaging in activities for charity?
In the UK and elsewhere individuals often engage in activities (e.g., running, shaving your head, etc.) for the purpose of eliciting sponsorship. The money raised is then donated to charity.

**Questions**:

* What motivates people to give money to the participants who then give it to the charity?
* If the cause is worthy, why not give anyway?

**Possible explanations I have include**:

* The participant willingly endures hardship and people give money as a reward for that hardship. In other words, it is a form of an emotional blackmail. This would mean that someone apt at the type of activity should receive substantially less.
* The event is fun to watch and it is merely a PR opportunity.

# Answer
> 5 votes
When people ask others whom they have a relationship with to sponsor their activities for charity, the requester is providing two things to the potential donor:

* An awareness of the cause and the given charity which supports that cause (the cause is, in essence, a problem)
* An prepackaged opportunity to help the person they know contribute to the cause (a solution!)

An essential prior factor here is that most people in the developed Western world have had a sense of charity and 'giving to those less fortunate' culturally drilled into us for most of our lives. That's why when we hear of some charitable cause, we're immediately inclined to feel that 'this is important!'.

In many cases, to the person being asked to donate, the personal monetary cost seems more convenient than shaving their head or running an Iron Man. The friend who is asking you to sponsor their activities is perceived to be doing something more challenging or more uncomfortable than what they are doing themselves, and we feel like they're letting us off the hook.

# Answer
> 3 votes
One element of sponsorship-based charity is that it typically relies on existing social networks to generate donations. Thus, the participant is typically a friend, work colleague, family member, or fellow community member of the donor.

This will add a wide range of social processes to increase the likelihood of donation:

* At a basic information-processing level, the participant may make the donor aware of the charity and provide a simple method of donation.
* The participant's involvement in the activity may act as a trigger to legitimate the charity.
* The participant may create a subtle or not-so-subtle sense of social obligation that a donation is wanted or expected.
* The donor may see the opportunity to assist the participant as part of a mutually supportive relationship.
* The donation itself may be part of a broader view of encouraging a positive community.

This is not my area of expertise, but you might want to do a search of Google Scholar for articles on charity fund raising. For example, I found this article on participation in charity fund raising events.

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Tags: social-psychology, motivation, prosocial-behavior
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# Question
Title: Effect of time limits on problem solving
I recently took part in psychological testing as part of a recruitment process to a job. I was not happy about the evaluation I got and I asked for a feedback discussion with the psychologist. The psychologist told me (among other things), that I could perform well in a situation that was undisturbed, when I could concentrate and when there was no time limit. But isn't that true about all people?

* **Do there exist individuals, who start performing better when there is time pressure?**
* **Of course there may be such individuals, but what would be a general rule that would apply to most normal mortal individuals?**

The scores I got were slightly above average in IQ tests (there were also personality tests). So I should not have problems with solving problems fast, too. At least I performed like other normal average people do. Still the psychologist wanted to stress the fact that I can perform well when I can concentrate and there is no time limit.

There were no tests in which I would have been disturbed in any manner. The tests were largely automated and the test room was a quiet classroom. Other applicants, other test subjects like me, were all also doing their tests quietly in front of computers. As far as I can recall, most IQ tests did have a time limit.

# Answer
This ted talk video would probably interest you.

It seems the current understanding is that it would depend on both the individual, and the type of task they are performing. Here are the general tendencies I've seen/been taught.

For physical tasks or tasks where the important factor is strength and effort, time constraints and rewards tend to increase the pace at which someone finishes the task. A simple example is track and field, where the contestants are generally able to perform better with the added pressure/motivation of the competition. No records are made in practice.

For more mental and creative tasks, time constraints and rewards tend to diminish one's ability to finish a task. For instance, musicians rarely make great music when they are told they have to.

Both of the above situations however, can be affected by the person completing the task. If youlook at sporting events with very tense situations, there is an understanding that some players "rise to the occasion" and some "shrink under pressure." One's anxiety level and self confidence will affect the psychology of how they approach a task, which will certainly affect the result of that task.
> 2 votes

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Tags: measurement, intelligence, performance, decision-making, problem-solving
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# Question
Title: Do we negatively perceive people who wear glasses?
Do we negatively perceive people who wear glasses? If so, why? Is it cultural stereotypes, a simple case of homophily, or is there more to it?

# Answer
No, people wearing glasses are not generally perceived negatively. Glasses affect various dimensions of person perception differently. To name a few, a commonly reported effect you may want to read up on is the *glasses stereotype*: If you wear glasses, people will tend to think of you as smarter (e.g., Hellström & Tekle, 1994, Terry & Krantz, 1993), but less attractive compared to those not wearing glasses (Hasart & Hutchinson, 1993; Lundberg & Sheehan, 1994; Terry & Kroger, 1976). This effect has been found regardless of whether the judges wear glasses themselves, although, when they do, the effect on attractiveness appears to be less pronounced (Terry & Kroger, 1976).

It appears, this effect is also moderated by the type of glasses you wear:

> The results show that faces without glasses were seen more attractive and more likeable than faces with full-rim glasses. Faces with rimless glasses did not differ from faces without glasses in their attractiveness or likability rating. Regarding the ratings of successfulness, and intelligence, the results show that individuals wearing glasses (both rimless and full-rim) were rated as more successful and more intelligent than individuals not wearing glasses. Regarding trustworthiness, individuals with rimless glasses were rated as significantly more trustworthy than faces without glasses. Ratings of cooperativeness did not differ between the face versions.

(From this online summary of Leder, Forster & Gerger, 2011)

* Hasart, J. K., & Hutchinson, K. L. (1993). The effects of eyeglasses on perceptions of interpersonal-attraction. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 8, 521-528.
* Hellström, A., & Tekle, J. (1994). Person perception through facial photographs: Effects of glasses, hair, and beard on judgments of occupation and personal qualities. European Journal of Social Psychology, 24, 693-705. doi:10.1002/ejsp.2420240606
* Leder, H., Forster, M., & Gerger, G. (2011). The glasses stereotype revisited: Effects of glasses on perception, recognition and impressions of faces. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 70, 211-222. doi:10.1024/1421-0185/a000059
* Lundberg, J. K., & Sheehan, E. P. (1994). The effects of glasses and weight on perceptions of attractiveness and intelligence. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 9, 753-760.
* Terry, R. L. and Krantz, J. H. (1993), Dimensions of Trait Attributions Associated with Eyeglasses, Men's Facial Hair, and Women's Hair Length. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 23: 1757–1769. doi: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1993.tb01064.x
* Terry, R. L., & Kroger, D. L. (1976) Effects of eye correctives on ratings of attractiveness. Perceptual and Motor Skills: Volume 42, Issue , pp. 562-562. doi: 10.2466/pms.1976.42.2.562
> 6 votes

# Answer
The simple answer is that it depends on the person.

Whenever you're talking about a perception, you have to first realize that perceptions are built on many things. Since a person's upbringing, social group, age, IQ, beliefs, expectations, and past experiences (to name a few) can affect one's perceptions, there is rarely a simple answer as to if, or why someone would have a particular perception.

That said, here's a few things that could have an effect on someone's perception.

People could very well have positive perceptions of people that wear glasses. There can be the perception that people with glasses are smarter/more intelligent and if the perceiver also wears glasses, it would be something they have in common, thus making them perceive them in a more positive light.

On the negative side, there could be the perception that those with glasses are weaker, old, more fragile or genetically inferior than they are. However, from my experience, generally the only people that have a negative percept of those that wear glasses are children and teens who are simply trying to find something different about another person in order to tease them, (or worse) not because of any thought out reason.

This would probably line up with parts of homophile, but not in the truest sense of the word as it would depend on the person.

As far as cultural stereotypes, they can surely affect one's perceptions of a people group. however, these stereotypes can be both good and bad.
> 2 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, perception
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# Question
Title: Is the ability to discern between living and non-living things learnt or innate?
This question What optical features do we use to distinguish “life” from “non-life”? on Philosophy SE prompted me to write this question.

The question poses, do we recognise a living thing, from what we already know to be a living thing. I am posting some of this to give a background of what prompted this question.

I quote from the original question:

> Imagine you see a picture of a tiger: You instantly recognize it being a living thing, more specific: Something you call "tiger". You have seen tigers before (or at least heard of them and saw pictures or so). You have some kind of (vague) concept of what a tiger might be and this thing fits perfectly in it. And you know that a tiger is a living thing and you believe that what you see is a tiger: So you believe that the thing you see is a living thing called tiger.
> ...
>
> What exactly are the features we all recognize living things kind of accurate (even though when they don't exist in reality and are, just like the Nasobēm, just imaginary animals someone invented)?

---

**I have modified this question to ask:**

**Is the ability to discern between living and non-living things learnt or innate?**

*In the original question the OP includes an image of a 'Nasobēm', a make believe creature that looks a little squid like.*

# Answer
> 4 votes
> Imagine you see a picture of a tiger: You instantly recognize it being a living thing, more specific: Something you call "tiger". You have seen tigers before (or at least heard of them and saw pictures or so). You have somekind of (vague) concept of what a tiger might be and this thing fits perfectly in it. And you know that a tiger is a living thing and you believe that what you see is a tiger: So you believe that the thing you see is a living thing called tiger.

Human beings are wired to innately discern living from non-living things. It does not need to be taught. There are no particular features, other than it is living and human beings are capable of perceiving this. It would appear it has nothing to do with conditioning or experience (except for the sake of providing words of other similar things to provide a description).

**As to why this is innate, requires further investigation.**

There are two theorised models of memory which pertain to the recognition and distinction between living and non-living things, both involving semantic memory.

A category-specific model and a modality-specific model.

**What optical features do we use to distinguish “life” from “non-life”?** perhaps is a little ambiguous, but we do process a lot of information and memory through our visual cortex.

Semantic memory is created through the vision, naming and functionality. Non-living things tend to be remembered semantically for their function. Whilst living things are processed more through vision and the names attached, and learned semantically.

When there is damage to the visual part of semantic memory, the ability to name living things is substantially damaged, whilst the ability to name non-living things, is affected on a much smaller curve. Whilst damage to the functional part of semantic memory, has no effect on the ability to recall names, when being shown images of living things, but does impair the ability to name non-living things (though not as severely as the damage to the visual semantic memory and name recall for living things). It's not the ability to discern living and non-living things that is affected, but identifying the name them.

Given this, it would seem, our brains are wired to automatically perceive and discern the difference between living and non-living things. So, even when shown a picture of a living creature, never be seen before, it is still instantly recognizable as a living creature. Just as the a person first recognizes each living creature they encounter in their lives, either in real life of through images.

There is a first time to see a tiger or a squid and the human being innately distinguishes this as a living thing. Just as they would the first time they see an image of a Nasobēm. Even mould, moss, fungus can be perceived as living (an eclectic example of unusual contenders).

Conversely, the first time an individual sees a rock, or a rocket, they can distinguish this as a non-living thing. Just as the first time someone sees an image of a flying cars. It does not have to exist to be distinguishable from living/non-living.

> ... the most straightforward interpretation of the double dissociation between knowledge of living and nonliving things is that these two bodies of knowledge are represented by two separate category specific components of the functional architecture of semantic memory. (1)

image courtesy of Neural Network Models and Cognitive Neuropsychology (1)

> For example, our knowledge of an animal such as a leopard, by which we distinguish it from other similar creatures, is predominantly visual. In contrast, our knowledge of a desk, by which we distinguish it from other furniture, is predominantly functional (ie, what it is used for). Thus, the distinctions between impaired and preserved knowledge in the cases reviewed earlier may not be "living/ nonliving" distinctions per se, but "sensory/ functional" distinctions ... (1)

image courtesy of Neural Network Models and Cognitive Neuropsychology (1)

*This being said, convoluted or abstract art work, could, possibly, be an area of crossover depending upon the individual's cognitive processes and so interpretation of lines and movement and what may appear out of a mess, as threatening. This is totally another topic altogether and my own hypothesis.*

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References:

* (1) Neural Network Models and Cognitive Neuropsychology
by MARTHA J. FARAH , PhD, and JAMES L. McCLELLAND, PhD PDF

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, perception, memory, intuition, semantic-memory
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# Question
Title: Does physical aerobic exercise ameliorate depression?
Studies seem to find correlation, but has the causal link been established?

# Answer
There are different theories about the causes of depression. Three of them assume a cause that could be affected by aerobic exercise.

**Neurochemical theory of depression:**

It seems that depression might be caused by low serotonin and/or noradrenalin levels. Physical activity releases both neurotransmitters, thus alleviating depressive symptoms.

**Cognitive theory of depression:**

It seems that negative cognitive schemata cause depression. Sports improves self-efficacy and other schemata.

**Diathesis–stress model of depression:**

Depression is the result of a predispositional vulnerability combined with stress from adverse life experiences. Aerobic exercise relaxes the sympathetic nervous system thus alleviating stress and, as a consequence, depression.

Maybe someone else will come up with studies showing a causal connection. These (and other) theories might explain the connection.
> 2 votes

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Tags: depression
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title: Is consciousness a biological function?

text:
# Question
Title: Is consciousness a biological function?
I'm watching a TED Talk by John Searle who is claiming that consciousness is a biological function. Is there any indisputable evidence for or against this assertion?

# Answer
Consciousness is a broad concept.

In a binary world (conscious/not conscious), biological evidences are irrefutable. For example, a 2009 Brain article stated that "Impaired consciousness during temporal lobe seizures is related to increased long-distance cortical-subcortical synchronization." (Arthuis et al.). A 2012 Lancet Neurology article had the following sentence "the consciousness system,a specialised set of cortical-subcortical structures, maintains alertness, attention, and awareness" (Blumenfeld) - a system that is described on wikipedia. Here, we can see that the binary view of consciousness can be divided into smaller pieces.

Dehaene et al. ("Conscious, preconscious, and subliminal processing: a testable taxonomy", Trends in cognitive science, 2006) proposed a more complex view within a 2 by 2 frame: consciousness is a product perception (weak and strong) and top-down attention (absent and present) - the fully conscious experience arising in the "strong perception/present attention" case. Here again, biological evidences are strong, but the type of the published article (*opinion*, not a review-type article) says that consciousness is far from being well understood - not even well defined.

An interesting aspect: the first two articles cited here (1st paragraph) are written by neurologists - meaning pure biology. Dehaene et al. (2nd paragraph) are cognitive psychologists and philosophers - a wee bit more of humanities but still biologically grounded. When it comes to philosophy alone, consciousness can completely loose its biological link: William Lycan, for example, argued in his book Consciousness and Experience that at least eight clearly distinct types of consciousness can be identified (organism consciousness; control consciousness; consciousness of; state/event consciousness; reportability; introspective consciousness; subjective consciousness; self-consciousness) (from wikipedia). And when it comes to non-science, the views on consciousness are purely spiritual (The 144 Levels of consciousness).
> 5 votes

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Tags: consciousness
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# Question
Title: Non coitus sexual activity and the brain
Most animals will only engage in sexual activity that can result in reproduction. There are some exceptions; Bonobos, for instance, engage in a lot of sexual activity that does not involve coitus.

Human beings have a large range of sexual activities and fetishes that do not involves exual intercourse that can result in pregnancy (I am not referring to the use of birth control).

Oral sex, anal sex, and a variety of fetishes that do not involve coitus between a human male and female.

Given that the origin of sexual acts pertained to reproduction, somewhere along the line there has been development in the brain of humans and some animals, to include sexual activity for pleasure and acts that have no possibility of impregnating the female.

It can be argued why and what purpose these acts have, whether they are indeed part of the mating process. I am not interested in this so much as, the development in the brain which has offered this variation in sexual activity to some species.

This is not at all a social-psychological question, but a question focusing on evolution, embryology and the brain. From a macro to microscopic view, if applicable.

What is the difference in the brains for animals capable of these great differences in sexual activity and what part of the brain is responsible for this?

*edit*

I am not assuming that all sexual activity involves pleasure. Dogs are known to dry mount other dogs in an assertion of power. So there does appear to be a development throughout evolution, as to the use of sexual activity and communicate and purpose. Definitely, human beings have a wide range of *pleasurable* sexual activity derived from non-vaginal intercourse, that the vast majority of species do not. It could be argues to be *counter evolutionary* for want of a better term, as, like much human behavior, it serves no purpose in the continuation of the species.. OR maybe it does. Either way, it is an interesting advent of behavior.

# Answer
The first question is, what is normal human sexual behavior. The answer to this changes over time. For example, a hundred years ago masturbation was thought to cause physical degeneration and be a sin, today it is perceived as healthy, even recommended. Research shows that adolescent girls who masturbate have more and stronger orgasms as adults.

So, if anal sex is normal, then there should not be any basic difference in how the brain processes this from vaginal coitus. The difference between different normal sexual practices should be like that between different words that you hear (as compared to non-verbal sound, which should be processed differently). Maybe anal and oral sex where processed differently a hundred years ago or in different cultures. I don't know of any research into this, but maybe there is.

Paraphilias like fetishes, pedophilia, incest, voyeurism and other "deviant" sexual behavior have not been well researched. There are many psychodynamic and cognitive theories of paraphilias, but since you ask for the brain, I'll focus on biological theories here. The following is taken from the chapter on paraphilias in Davison & Neale, *Abnormal Psychology*.

* Since most paraphiliacs are men, it has been theorized that androgen plays a role in the etiology of paraphilias. Research into hormonal differences between paraphiliacs and normal people have had ambiguous results.
* **Sadism and exhibitionism appear to be caused by malfunctions of the temporal lobe (Mason 1997; Murphy, 1997).**
* Life experiences (like childhood abuse) are seen as the most important factor in a complex net of causes.

Besides psychological therapies of paraphilias (that will obviously influence the brain), there are biological therapies:

* castration: results were highly ambiguous, so this therapy has been largely abandoned
* medroxyprogesterone acetate lowers the testosterone level in men, cyproterone acetate lowers the androgene level, both reduce sexual appetency: this works in many paraphiliacs, but when they stop taking the medication the symptoms return; also, the substances can cause infertility and diabetes

As you can see, that's not much, and only two articles deal with the difference in brains. There may be more in recent articles.

---

The sources for the temporal lobe malfunction:

Mason, F. L. (1997). Fetishism: Psychopathology and theoriy. In D. R. Laws & W. O'Donohue (Eds.), *Sexual Deviance* (pp. 75-91). New York: Guilford.

Murphy, W. D. (1997). Exhibitionism: Psychopathology and theoriy. In D. R. Laws & W. O'Donohue (Eds.), *Sexual Deviance* (pp. 22-39). New York: Guilford.
> 7 votes

# Answer
> What is the difference in the brains for animals capable of these great differences in sexual activity and what part of the brain is responsible for this?

In my opinion is a matter of **creativity** and **curiosity**. Evolved species try to interact with their ambient in unusual ways, testing different approach to the same "problem" not only to satisfy primary needs but also to satisfy secondary needs as the need to try new things, something we call **curiosity**, and to socialize with the others members of our species. Primitive species interact with instinct-based responses to satisfy primary needs.

So I think you need an evolved frontal lobe capable to mediate divergent thinking, be able to modulate neurotransmitters such as norepinephrine then you will need an evolved anterior cortices and striatum.
> 6 votes

# Answer
My answer to this question would be pretty straightforward. From a neurobiological standpoint, sex causes the release of various pair-bonding influencing hormones oxytocin, vasopressin and dopamine.

These "feel good" hormones promote bonding and basically encourage the couple to stay together.

The more the pair have sex, the more these hormones get released. Non-functional sex would just increase the pair bond via these hormones. When a couple stays together, their offspring would have a greater chance of reaching adulthood and themselves producing more offspring.
> 5 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, evolution, sexuality, animal-cognition, neuroanatomy
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# Question
Title: Which physical properties of a stimulus can a human attend to?
I am not only curious about speech, but for concreteness in illustrating my question, I consider the case of speech perception. Assume a listener is presented with an acoustic waveform. The wave causes deviations from the atmospheric pressure at the listener's eardrum. Thus, the acoustic pressure as a function of time “comes for free”, so to speak. Mechanically so.

From sound pressure we can derive amplitude, and by the fourier transform, amplitude as a function of time is transformed to the frequency domain. That is, amplitude as a function of time becomes amplitude as a function of frequency. We use this transformation because it reveals properties of the wave which are perceptually relevant, e.g. formant frequencies. Presumably, listeners can attend to properties of the waveform describable under this transformation.

But what about mathematical models of the acoustic wave which are not simply transformations on the wave, but which derive some richer structure from amplitude fluctuations over time. For instance, what about a model which constructs a higher dimensional representation of the wave from the one-dimensional pressure fluctuations? (Imagine that instead of amplitude being a point moving back and forth along the real number line, the wave is represented as a point moving around in, say, 3-dimensional space). Say that such a model revealed a perceptually relevant property P of the waveform. Would the listener be able to “hear” P directly, or would would she need to engage in some information processing task to recover P from pressure fluctuations over time?\*

\*I realize that human listeners don't actually manipulate equations in their heads. I use the mathematics just to describe the underlying neural computation.

# Answer
I found a paper called Summary statistics in auditory perception (McDermott, Schemitsch & Simoncelli, 2013) that might be relevant to your question. If you can't access it in full, you can a great description of the paper here. Please note that I'm writing about it from memory and that some details might not be correct.

The authors had a task where participants had to judge whether two sound excerpts are same or different. These sound excerpts could, further, have similar or dissimilar summary statistics, meaning that some higher-order regularity was superimposed on the initially generated sounds (such as the somewhat regular pattern of the sound of sea waves crashing, or the wind picking up, or a fire crackling). So, the sounds could differ in a local way (which specific frequency was displayed at some moment) or in a global way (what were the higher-order regularities of these sounds). They then displayed these sounds in pairs for variable amounts of time.

They found that people were better at discriminating sounds from each other when the sounds lasted longer - which is logical - but this was only true if the complex sound textures were different from each other. When the textures were mutually similar, people actually got worse if they listened to the (potentially different) sounds for a longer time.

The interpretation the authors gave is that the auditory system first encodes simple features of sounds, but, once confronted with too much stimulation to keep track of, it instead extracts higher order regularities and relies on these for perception.

I do not have a technical background so I can't go into detail about what these higher order regularities represent, mathematically speaking. But the links come with some images with explanations, and you might be able to glean more information from them than I.

Here is the abstract:

> Sensory signals are transduced at high resolution, but their structure must be stored in a more compact format. Here we provide evidence that the auditory system summarizes the temporal details of sounds using time-averaged statistics. We measured discrimination of 'sound textures' that were characterized by particular statistical properties, as normally result from the superposition of many acoustic features in auditory scenes. When listeners discriminated examples of different textures, performance improved with excerpt duration. In contrast, when listeners discriminated different examples of the same texture, performance declined with duration, a paradoxical result given that the information available for discrimination grows with duration. These results indicate that once these sounds are of moderate length, the brain's representation is limited to time-averaged statistics, which, for different examples of the same texture, converge to the same values with increasing duration. Such statistical representations produce good categorical discrimination, but limit the ability to discern temporal detail.

edit: I found a link to the pdf of the second paper I mention.
> 3 votes

# Answer
*I'm not completely sure what you ask. I give my comment as an answer, because there is more space here. I'll delete it, if you feel I'm off the mark.*

As far as physical theory goes (and I understand it), sound is the movement of air molecules and the resulting fluctuation in density. Measuring these density fluctuations and representing them in numbers gives us a wavelike, undulating function with the properties of waveform (sinuous, square, sawtooth), frequency, amplitude, and transversality (is the wave upright or leaning backward or forward?). Did I miss anything?

Now, you seem to assume that our eardrums perceive the frequency (tone pitch) and amplitude (loudness) of an acoustic wave, but maybe not the transversality or waveform. But that's an error in reasoning.

We don't perceive waves. We perceive changes in air pressure. It does not matter what wave represents these changes mathematically. Any change (of a certain magnitude) stimulates our ear drums. Measuring the oscillation of the ear drum will give you a similarly complex wave (though probably not the same as the wave of air density fluctuation, because of different physical properties of the material of the ear drum). What we have is the "translation" of density fluctuations in a substance into the oscillations of a membrane. Both can be modelled as waves, and some changes in those waves will occur in the process of translation (probably some fine complexities will get evened out, resulting in a less finely "spiky" but more "smooth" wave), but there is no property of the wave that will get completely lost or be ignored.

The same goes for the other senses. Our eyes don't perceive color, saturation or luminosity, they are stimulated by photons (or whatever). Our cognition represents, i.e. "perceives", the electrical impulses from our receptors as color, brightness etc., so we like to think in a model that includes these properties, but our eyes don't react to "color" at all. There is no color in the physical world, just the movement of particles.

*Maybe this helps you to clarify your question.*
> 1 votes

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Tags: perception, psychophysics
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# Question
Title: What is the causal relationship between extreme jealousy and poor mental health?
Jealousy can be a powerful and destructive force. It can take over reason.

Can severe to extreme jealousy precipitate or contribute to poor mental health, at the extreme, psychosis.

Or, is it poor mental health that can manifest pathological jealousy?

or both.

# Answer
> -1 votes
```
"My friend buys a new car. Obviously I'll feel jealous"

```

What is **obvious** about this?

*Friend*, his *Pleasure* and your *Jealousy*, does it appear to be a logical frame of mind?

When we accept this belief to be obvious, then it becomes our way of thinking. Therefore, the belief as small as this, may be lying somewhere in our rational neurons, never allowing us to question the logic behind its existence...

Jealousy stems from the *immaturity* and the fact that we use the term **friend** very loosely. The one whom a person is jealous of, can not be considered to be a friend.

Secondly, we are always told that it's the **competition** that takes us through in life. Competition is a very strong ideology. If not explained in a positive sense, it may give birth to jealousy... Therefore, you may find otherwise rational people being envious of others nearly everyday...

The one belief that snatches away peace and spiritual awareness like no other sentiment ever can...

# Answer
> 7 votes
I think it can go both ways. According to Tesser's Self Evaluation Maintenance Theory, any two people in a relationship make themselves feel better by comparing themselves to each other. The key idea is that if you are closer to a person then you will tend to feel more jealous. For example, suppose your best friend got a really fancy car. You will naturally feel jealous. However, what if someone told you that Bill Gates got a really fancy car? You wouldn't feel jealous.This is similar to mental construal theory mentioned in this post.

If you tend to be jealous of someone close to you all the time I would think this would lead to depression. Depression is marked by rumination which is what happens if you are constantly jealous. Then again, if you are depressed because of some acute stress (e.g. death in a family) then you could feel jealous of other people without this particular stress.

One of the best ways of overcoming jealousy is to accept that you are jealous and empathize/congratulate the person you are jealous of. Exercises like mindfulness meditation would help promote empathetic behaviors.

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Tags: social-psychology, emotion, well-being, psychiatry, clinical-psychology
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# Question
Title: What is Attention Deficit Disorder on adults and how is it treated?
Attention deficit disorder often corrupt other people's thought on the person that has ADD. The person with ADD is very forgetful, and often get agitated easily. Moreover, people with ADD can to be thought of stupid and weird, also they tend to have unstable relationship among family, colleagues, etc.

I would like to know what makes a person have an ADD, and if it is curable of how it is treated.

# Answer
> 1 votes
It doesn't sound like your just looking for some general info about the psychological disorder of ADHD. The thing you should maybe start out with is understanding that there are two different sub-types which will have different effects.

Rather than explain everything, I would point you to a couple links that should answer your questions:

For a basic definition you can look at the CDC page on ADHD.

Here is some basic info that should get you started on understanding the disorder.

wikipedia should fill in anything else that you want to know, if you have a more specific questions, feel free to ask.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, social-psychology, abnormal-psychology, psychiatry
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# Question
Title: The effects of pain on cognitive function and incidence of depression
There have been studies about the link between depression and cognitive function..

There have been studies between pain and cognitive function. This has, also, been discussed in this question here.

There have been studies linking pain and depression.

**From a biochemical viewpoint:**
**Are pain, depression and cognitive function intrinsically linked?<br>Is it possible for chronic pain not to have an effect on cognitive function and the likelihood of depression?**

# Answer
This may be more of a non-answer than an answer, but here it goes.

When you're talking about the effect of something like pain, it's valuable to first understand some of the complexity. While it's easy to put things in boxes in practice, (physical pain, emotional pain, etc.) it's very difficult to put those things in boxes when you're talking about a neuropsychological response like pain. While there are breakthroughs being made in understanding specific parts and functions of the chemical soup that is the human brain, it's still largely a mystery as to how those parts interact, not to mention how our psychological state affects/is affected by our brains.

Can pain affect mood and general ability to function? I think it's safe to say it can. When we feel pain all kind of stress hormones with significant amounts of adrenaline, (such as Corticosteroid) are release that ideally will only be there for a short amount of time and then fade away. When you have chronic pain, your body doesn't get a chance to recover from the heightened state of arousal. This is known to affect many parts of general function negatively and probably is somewhat similar to the affect of long term chronic pain.

As far whether there is an intrinsic biochemical link between an actual depressive disorder and the brain's ability to function, I think there just isn't enough understanding about what happens in the brain to answer that properly. Depression itself is still a hot topic of debate as to how it develops, and since plenty of evidence supports it being both a psychological and neurological disorder, it would also depend on the individual's psyche as to whether they would develop depression. Pain, even chronic pain, has been dealt with successfully by people without much change in their life. Chronic pain has also destroyed people's lives. Any response is probably possible. At this point there are simply too many variables (many of of which are not yet understood) in order to make any statement as to what is normal.

The brain has really only began to be explored and understood, and while theories abound, with many questions like this the only honest answer at this point is that we don't know. At least not yet.
> 4 votes

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, depression, pain
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# Question
Title: The Ben Franklin effect and cognitive dissonance
The Ben Franklin effect is the phenomena that if a person does a favor toward another person, there is an increased likelihood that the person will do another favor for that person. The same is true for acts of harm. A person who has inflicted harm on another person is more likely to repeat an act of harm.

It is theorised this is to relieve cognitive dissonance and the gap between feelings towards the person and the act.

How can the Ben Franklin effect best be explained, what research has been done about this, is it adequately explained in cognitive dissonance theory or other theory?

# Answer
> 6 votes
The **Benjamin Franklin** Effect is generally cited as being an example of **cognitive dissonance**, which is when your brain struggles to reconcile your beliefs with your actions.

So let’s say your beliefs about your job are that you deserve to be paid a higher rate, you deserve to be treated more respectfully by your employer and your skills are being wasted in your current role

For every day that you go to work in that same job, your brain has to deal with cognitive dissonance. Your brain is thinking, “you believe this, but you do that—the two don’t gel. What’s going on?”

**Dissonance** means literally “*lack of harmony between musical notes.*” In this case, it’s a lack of harmony inside your brain—the thing that controls everything you think and do! So you feel uncomfortable, or uneasy. You carry around a lot of tension. Your body doesn’t like this, and neither does your brain.

**David McRaney** describes it like this:

```
“When you experience this arousal it is as if two competing beliefs
 are struggling in a mental bar fight, knocking over chairs and smashing bottles
 over each other’s heads. It feels awful, and the feeling persists until
 one belief knocks the other out cold.”

```

To compensate, your brain changes your beliefs—after all, your actions can’t be undone. You’ve already gone to work. You’re sitting at your computer, banging your head on the desk. But your thoughts can change. Your beliefs about yourself can change. Because your brain is malleable.

So all of a sudden you find yourself rationalizing your behavior.

Jecker and Lendy verified the phenomenon in a study that challenged participants to an intellectual contest. The winners were subsequently either:

```
1. Asked to return their prize money by the researcher
   because he had been using his own money and was running short
2. Asked by a secretary to return their prize money
   because it was from the department and budget was running low
3. Allowed to keep their prize money (i.e. not approached).

```

Everyone was then surveyed to see how they liked the researcher.

**Consistent with the Franklin effect**, **group 1** rated him higher than **group 3** showing that a personal request for a favor increases likeability.

In addition, group 2 rated the researcher lower than group 3 suggesting that an impersonal request decreases likeability.

**Dale Carnegie**'s book, How to Win Friends and Influence People where the request for help is explained as a subtle but effective form of flattery.

As Carnegie suggests, when we ask a colleague to **do us a favor**, we are signalling that we consider them to have something we don't, whether more intelligence, more knowledge, more skills, or whatever.

*This is another way of showing admiration and respect*, something the other person may not have noticed from us before. This immediately raises their opinion of us and makes them more willing to help us again both because they enjoy the admiration and have genuinely started to like us.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, motivation, cognitive-modeling, behaviorism, cognitive-dissonance
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# Question
Title: Has there been any research done that contrasts point-based and achievement-based gamification methods?
Stack Exchange is a good example of these two methods of gamification:

I am curious as to whether there has ever been any research done that defines and contrasts these methods? I am specifically interested in discovering what sort of goals and behaviors collecting achievements encourage as opposed to collecting points. How do end-users respond differently to these methods? Or do they?

Taking Stack Exchange as an example, we could ask what sort of behaviors are we attempting to encourage with reputation as opposed to badges that *require them to be separate entities*?

# Answer
Reputation is a recognition system for participation, while the badges represent the type of participation.

Reputation amasses over time simply by recognizing that the individual is participating in a meaningful way, and that their experience can be judged by the amount of reputation. Badges, on the other hand, show where their aptitude and participation lies (Such as being a prolific editor, having insightful answers, etc.)

Both of these will appeal to people in different ways, and both will contribute to a thriving site, as it encourages several levels of participation. The reputation will be more of a benefit system, as you get increasingly advanced privileges on the site for higher reputation, and the badges are the "pat on the head" motivation.

While I don't have access to the full text, the precis for this article suggests that they presented specifically on the Stack Exchange model, and the badge/reputation system as applied to an online community. Other than that, most of the gamification models that I found searching scholarly articles were more geared toward education and social media rather than Q&A type sites.
> 9 votes

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Tags: motivation, gamification
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# Question
Title: How can I incentivize users to perform creative tasks?
Gamification is often used to incentivize people into performing small, repetitive tasks. For example, as a Stack Overflow user, I receive 2 reputation points for an accepted edit. I can earn badges by reviewing series of potentially problematic questions, etc. This seems to work fairly well since the user is given a reward for a easily achievable objective.

In contrast to this, what elements are required to incentivize users into performing creative tasks? Unlike with small 'assignments', a creative task bears the risk of not being solved satisfactory, therefore the user risks investing an effort without being rewarded.

Simply offering a higher reward introduces its own set of problems like having to deal with cheating, therefore my question:

How can I incentivize users to perform creative tasks (e.g., creating a new recipe)?

# Answer
> 6 votes
I think the methods you describe (i.e. those employed by Stack Exchange) work for creative tasks as well.

Asking good questions, and providing helpful answers can be considered *creative*. It's entirely possible that a user can put a lot of effort into an answer only for it to not solve the problem at all.

Whilst it can be disheartening when content isn't as good as you imagined, the feedback given (through upvotes and comments) allows you to improve upon what you've already produced, with the hope that it can be salvaged into something *useful*. This is essentially the benefit of gamification for sites like SE, by *rewarding* good content it encourages users themselves to *improve* and expand their knowledge - **it's a learning experience**.

So if a user is put off from submitting a recipe because they fear the community will react negatively to it, then maybe it was **never very good to begin with**.

# Answer
> 4 votes
This is actually a perfect fit for the best kind of gamification that illuminates the progress you're already making (but weren't aware of)

**1. Break the creative task into steps in a creative process**

**2. Measure that progress for the user.**
You don't even need to reward progress, just how them how it gets them closer to the goal. Success may not be guaranteed, but if you can show them that the Process is the best way to get there and that it often succeeds you can get buy in on that. (You can also reward them for that progress but it should be intrinsic not extrinsic

**Example**

Let's use creating an Advertising campaign (I've been watching a lot of The Pitch lately )

1. Interview customers to find out what they like about the brand.
2. Interview the brand owner to find out why *they* they think the customers like them.
3. Restate that in a dozen different ways, iterating though different ways of viewing that and focusing on benefit to the user
I've done that with my own products. I'll work with a marketing guy and he'll ask "what makes your product unique" and I'll give a feature and he'll ask "no, what does that do for the USER", etc.
4. Synthesize the benefits in #3 down to their essense.
5. Come up with **lots** of way to express #4.
This is pobably where most people think advertising *starts*. The benefit of our new product is that it's a comprehensive app in a world filled with apps that each to a tiny piece of what our target users need. So our ideas were : The Last App you'll ever need. That seemed a little too much so we went with "The One App That Does It All". (We had lots of other ideas but narrowed it to this.)

Measure their progress in each of these. Compare a successful outcome's process to an unsuccessful one.

# Answer
> 3 votes
Using your analogy of creating a recipe:

On a site where recipes are shared, users should earn points for the times when their recipe is upvoted, but they should **not** lose any reputation/points/levels, if it is down-voted. This can discourage creativity and experimentation.

I think that not having bad things happen when there recipes (or otherwise) go wrong or at not generally well-liked, should be a key element in the design of a gamification system for a site like that.

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Tags: gamification, creativity
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# Question
Title: How can employee anxiety over poor evaluation be avoided by management?
When implementing gamification, what are steps that management can take to prevent a culture of anxiety among employees, when employees feel they are constantly being monitored and begin to worry that they will be judged as poor performers at their work?

For example, employees may grow anxious over things like:

* Ranking near the bottom of some leaderboard
* Having fewer badges than others
* Not being as excited about the gamification of their work as other employees

What should management avoid to prevent this kind of anxiety?

What can management do proactively to prevent such fears or put them to rest, without getting rid of competition altogether?

# Answer
Make it less obvious.

If you can implement gamification a bit more subtly, then any anxiety employees may have of being evaluated based on a leaderboard will be reduced.

For example a 'leaderboard' could implemented as a statistical tool, to determine the usability of an application. If you take feedback from less performant employees, then they may feel that they are benefitting. This keeps the competition element present, but also has the added advantage of improving your application.

The top answer to this question raises a good point about **keeping the stakes low**, if you *do* offer any tangible rewards (which would help with those less interested in badges) you must ensure that they are of low value. Focusing on *rewarding* employees for good work is (typically) better than ranking them based on performance, this could also be on a team level to take stress away from individuals.
> 2 votes

# Answer
This is definitely a legitimate concern and one that can't be completely avoided but it can be mitigated.

The first thing to consider is whether people rank at the bottom because the standards are too high or because they are not a good fit for their position. This is where relative performance comes in. Being at the bottom of the leaderboard isn't so bad if you're not far from everyone else. If the gap between last place and second to last place is huge then there may be a problem (for the person at the bottom).

The second thing to consider is that it's not necessarily bad to identify poor performers. It makes it easier for managers to identify who they should work with and helps employees know they need to step things up.

With those things in mind, if gamification is causing anxiety here is what I would recommend. You'll need to shift the focus so that it is more about recognition that performance evaluation. What I mean by that is that achievements (for example) should be viewed as a celebration of good work rather than an expectation of normal work. Help people understand the expectations. Consider building a more cooperative system where the gamification is on a team level rather than an individual level. You may or may not also have competition among teams.

You're always going to have people who compare themselves to the best and that may create seemingly unattainable standards for some people. Gamification has the added benefit of exposing to a degree what those people do to be good and in a well designed system, their performance can act as a blueprint for others to follow.

Ultimately you have to understand your culture. A Customer Support team might thrive on cooperation and generally needs a different approach than a Direct Sales team that feeds on competition. The competitive nature of the system can be adjusted by focusing on different things and building systems that emphasize team goals rather than individual goals if needed.
> 1 votes

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Tags: performance, io-psychology, gamification
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