# Question
Title: What are the neural substrates of retrieval induced forgetting?
## Retrieval-induced effects

It is well known that practicing retrieval of remembered items increases the probability of correctly recalling that item in future tests: the *testing effect*. **Retrieval-induced forgetting** (RIFo) and **retrieval-induced facilitation** (RIFa) are less known, but related phenomena with, in my view, large theoretical and practical implications for cognitive memory research and educational theory.

In RIFo, learned items associated with a remembered item subjected to retrieval practice appear to suffer from increased forgetting in future tests (Anderson, Bjork and Bjork, 1994). Some papers report that the inverse also appears to occur: in RIFa, the probability of recalling associated remembered items also increases (Chan, 2009). RIFo appears to be a reasonably robust phenomenon with many replications, while RIFa is not as well established an effect.

## The cognitive neuroscience of RIF

Where the classical view might have attributed the effect to relative strengthening of associations and decay, modern theories revolve around variations on an automatic inhibition process associated with recall attempts (Anderson, Bjork and Bjork, 2000). This might suggest that the PFC and frontal cortex more generally should be doing most of the legwork here, but is that empirically the case?

**What are the known neural substrates of RIFo (and RIFa) effects?**

## References

* Anderson, M. C., Bjork, E. L., & Bjork, R. A. (2000). Retrieval-induced forgetting: Evidence for a recall-specific mechanism. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 7(3), 522-530.
* Anderson, M. C., Bjork, R. A., & Bjork, E. L. (1994). Remembering can cause forgetting: retrieval dynamics in long-term memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20(5), 1063.
* Chan, J. C. (2009). When does retrieval induce forgetting and when does it induce facilitation? Implications for retrieval inhibition, testing effect, and text processing. Journal of Memory and Language, 61(2), 153-170.

# Answer
> 4 votes
The neural substrates most involved in retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) appear to be the **anterior cingulate cortex** (ACC), the **dorsolateral pre-frontal cortex** (DLPFC) and the **ventrolateral pre-frontal cortex** (VLPFC) (Bäuml, Pastötter and Hanslmayr, 2010). I will not pretend to one-up their concise summation of the evidence.

> The results are consistent with the view that the ACC detects interference from unpracticed material and the DLPFC and VLPFC resolve the conflict by strengthening the practiced memories and inhibiting the unpracticed memories.

**Evidence for ACC-DLPFC-VLPFC involvement in RIF**

Bäuml, Pastötter and Hanslmayr draw on a number of fMRI and EEG studies in order to support their narrative. Generally speaking, a study of electrophysiological correlates of RIF found that frontal activity was predictive of RIF effects (Johansson et al, 2007); this broadly concurs with my original intuition that the frontal regions are of primary importance in RIF.

More specifically, Wimber et al. (2009) reported fMRI evidence for ACC and DLPFC involvement during RIF, while fMRI evidence for VLPFC involvement was reported in Kuhl et al. (2007). These are only highlights of the main supports; a more complete basis is presented in the Bäuml, Pastötter and Hanslmayr (2010) paper.

**References**

* Bäuml, K. H., Pastötter, B., & Hanslmayr, S. (2010). Binding and inhibition in episodic memory—Cognitive, emotional, and neural processes. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 34(7), 1047-1054.
* Johansson, M., Aslan, A., Bäuml, K. H., Gäbel, A., & Mecklinger, A. (2007). When remembering causes forgetting: Electrophysiological correlates of retrieval-induced forgetting. Cerebral Cortex, 17(6), 1335-1341.
* Kuhl, B. A., Dudukovic, N. M., Kahn, I., & Wagner, A. D. (2007). Decreased demands on cognitive control reveal the neural processing benefits of forgetting. Nature neuroscience, 10(7), 908-914.
* Wimber, M., Rutschmann, R. M., Greenlee, M. W., & Bäuml, K. H. (2009). Retrieval from episodic memory: Neural mechanisms of interference resolution. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 21(3), 538-549.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, memory, cognitive-neuroscience, neuroanatomy, working-memory
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# Question
Title: Is the theory of Information Metabolism a reasonable scientific theory?
**Background**

I have been checking out various personality typing assessments lately when I came across a Personality typing system known as Socionics which aims at explaining relationships between people of different types. It's based on some of Freud's ideas, Carl Jung's Psychological Types and Anthony Kepinski's theory of Information Metabolism.

Socionics uses a mixture of all the above to create its own sound theory about human psyche for each *type* of person. Socionics is considerably different from MBTI and other typing systems in its approach largely due to ideas from Information Metabolism.

While digging out more about Information Metabolism theory, I have found out that it implies things like information that is exchanged between people are like inputs and outputs from our brain. Socionics theory seems to extend this concept saying *"Psychological features such as attention, interests, memory and motivation are components of this theory of information metabolism"*, because people differ in the way they process information.

Whether our brain really has parts corresponding to information elements like that is a different question, but I first doubt the scientific reason behind the theory of Information Metabolism. It seems to be based on Freud's ideas (which seem like mere observations), but yet on the other hand speaks about parts of brain.

**Questions**

* Is this theory of Information Metabolism based on Scientific grounds?
* Are there any theories/research like Information Metabolism that has been developed or in development and is/are scientific? Does CREATES brainset model qualify to be one such in development?
* This may seem like a tangential question, but I will ask it because it's somewhat related: Do these Information Elements, provided they really exist, influence our facial expressions and body language while we interact with others?

The last question is to check out the validity of infamous Visual Identification used in Socionics communities for typing people by *looking at them*.

**Other links**

* Wikipedia entry about Information Metabolism. (The resources in western community about Socionics and related theories are limited because the theory is largely developed in USSR and it looks like a counterpart of MBTI over there!)
* A wiki about Socionics which has articles about the theory.
* An excerpt from Carl Jung's Psychological Types which has been largely used in Socionics.

# Answer
**Is the theory of Information Metabolism a reasonable scientific theory?**

**Short answer:** No.

A literature search of Google Scholar and Web of Science for "information metabolism" finds no empirical evidence to support the theory. Furthermore, it appears that the theory of information metabolism is virtually only embraced directly by the author, Kępiński, himself.

**However:** It is *based on* scientifically sound principles of dissipative systems, thermodynamics and negentropy, as proposed by Nobel prize-winning physicist Ilya Prigogene. In some sense, though, it is based on science in the same sense a movie may be based on a true story. It's not a *trivially* wrong theory, but there does not appear to be any concrete support.

**CREATES and theories resembling information metabolism theory**

CREATES does not appear to have any scientific basis or relation to information metabolism theory whatsoever. However, the link you provided cites Carnot’s principle as a basis for the theory of information metabolism:

> “the organism is an open system and its negentropy rises or falls as results of processes described by the laws of life conservation and species conservation, respectively”

This is very similar to the principles of more modern embodied dynamical systems approaches to explaining behavior, such as the ecological psychology of Mace, Turvey and Shaw. Both ecological and information metabolic approaches appear to be epistemologically dynamicist, and therefore share an epistemological stance. They appear to differ strongly on the content theory of the cause of behavior (i.e., on what constitutes a meaningful scale for behavioral analysis): information metabolism theory draws more heavily on Freud and Jung, while ecological psychology draws on the work of James J. Gibson.

**Concluding remarks**

Information metabolism theory is not a reasonable scientific theory in 2015, but neither was it scientifically stillborn in 1970. It appears to have been a theory invented before its time; in this, it is also like Gibson, who similarly lacked both the theoretical and mathematical tools to specify and formalize ideas. The popularization of those tools in behavioral science would eventually lead to the development of ecological psychology as a full fledged school of thought in the decades after Gibson's death.

In the case of information metabolism theory, however, it appears that either the theory was entirely subsumed into socionics and therefore no longer exists as an independent theory, or simply that no one took up the mantle as the scientific star of psychoanalytic approaches rapidly waned around the same time.

**Edit:** There seems to have been some limited attempts to update the theory for modern dynamical systems tools around the turn of the millenium (Kokoszka, 1999; Kokoszka, Bielecki and Holas, 2001), but still nothing empirical to validate it.

**References**

* Kokoszka, A. (1999). Information metabolism as a model of human experiences. International journal of neuroscience, 97(3-4), 169-178.
* Kokoszka, A., Bielecki, A., & Holas, P. (2001). Mental organization according to the metabolism of information model and its mathematical description. International Journal of Neuroscience, 107(3-4), 173-184.
> 4 votes

# Answer
Here's a link to a socionics wiki page on a study of reinin types in Russia. http://www.wikisocion.org/en/index.php?title=Reinin\_Dichotomies:\_Study\_Results

They did a lot of research on experimental data to prove that reinin traits exist in different types of people.

If you don't know the reinin dichotomies, they are traits that were mathematically calculated by a Russian socionist named Grigoriy Reinin.

The traits are like the dichotomies of the types: sensation/intuition, logic/ethics that are combined to form a combination: INTp, ESFP, ESTj, INFj

The difference is that they categorize the combinations based on the patterns of traits.

For example, the reinin dichotomy Judicious/decisive is determined by whether the combination(socionics type) values Si and Ne(Judicious) or Se and Ni(Decisive).

So, the reinin dichotomy comes in as a further category of the already established types.

With that given, INTp and ESFp have Ni or Se as a first function or a suggestive function. Both of these functions are valued and so INTp and ESFp value Ni and Se. Therefore, they are categorized as Decisive because of definition I stated above (Decisive types value Se and Ni).

The names of this dichotomy would not have formed if this study of the Reinin types was not conducted. Using the correlation of identified types they find behaviors that align with these dichotomies.

For details of the study read this paragraph I have found that describes it:

In 2003, a socionics research group at the laboratory of interdisciplinary researches of The Institute of Biology and Psychology of Humans (IBPCH) has conducted a study which attempted to test for, characterize and substantially augment what is known about several Reinin groups, presented actual statements made by research subjects, as well as advance and test a number of hypotheses. Their publication can be found here: Reinin Dichotomies: Study Results.

The link that I have given you is the one stated in the paragraph above (Reinin Dichotomies: Study Results.)

This may not be about information metabolism or where or how it works in the brain but it is at least proof that there are types involved in different people and that there is a way to mark and categorize it. Also Model A, is not the only theory of socionics that exists, there are others that may have more potential like Model T.

Personally, I think that the psychological functions and aspects of socionics are just an extremely high model of the hierarchy of the mind. Very abstracted states of mind that survived in the evolution of humans or some other species before that. In other words, parts of the mind that can't be accessed through the brain structure. Rather, through something one could call as part of the "software" of the brain as apposed to the "hardware".

Instead of treating the aspects(Se,Ni,Fe,Ti,Te,Fi,Ne,Si) as physical parts of the brain structure(the "hardware") but rather as nothing but psychological and mental(the"software").
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, perception, cognitive-modeling, personality
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# Question
Title: What study examined the effect of number of traumatic life events on falling into poverty?
I recall a study that concluded the **risk of falling into poverty / homelessness** increases dramatically after experiencing 5 (or 7?) **traumatic life events**, such as

* Death of a loved one
* Abandonment by spouse
* Bankruptcy
* Being fired
* Foreclosure

etc (a **threshold effect**). That's about as clear a memory as I can form, and search engines don't help. Anybody know about this study? It might have been from New Zealand.

# Answer
This effect was identified in a report by the New Zealand Ministry of Social Development (Jensen et al., 2006). It specifically indicated that individuals experiencing eight or more "life shocks" (negative life events) experienced significantly more negative socioeconomic outcomes.

This effect is referenced on Wikipedia's Cycle of Poverty page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle\_of\_poverty), which links to a news story on the report (Berry, 2006) and the report itself.

A summary of the report's findings were later published in an academic journal (Jensen et al., 2007).
> 2 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, reference-request, sociology
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# Question
Title: Name this partner selection experiment where participants can see the value of others but not themselves and seek to pair with high value others?
A group of students is given playing cards to put on their head. They do not know the value of their card but can see the value of others.

The goal of each student is to partner with the highest value card they can find.

Experiment results indicated that students were able to infer their value from the number of approaches they received, and tended to partner with values similar to their own.

This study was cited in a popular science book published a few years ago - can anyone remember the book title or name the experiment? Many thanks.

# Answer
> 3 votes
I did not find a textbook that mentioned this activity, but I found several articles that describe this Pairing Game. Ellis & Kelly (1999) describe two variations on the game and its use in the classroom. Lewis & Gurung (2003) describe expanding the original game in order to teach additional relationship and social psychology theories. Elias & Pratkanis (2006) review a range of in-class psychology exercises, including the Lewis and Gurung paper. Eastwick & Buck (2014) describe making the game more complicated (but also more realistic) by incorporating a social relations model.

* Eastwick, P. W., & Buck, A. A. (2014). Too Much Matching A Social Relations Model Enhancement of the Pairing Game. *Teaching of Psychology, 41*(3), 246-250.
* Elias, S. M., & Pratkanis, A. R. (2006). Teaching social influence: Demonstrations and exercises from the discipline of social psychology. *Social Influence, 1*(2), 147-162.
* Ellis, B. J., & Kelley, H. H. (1999). The pairing game: A classroom demonstration of the matching phenomenon. *Teaching of Psychology, 26*(2), 118-121.
* Lewis, B. P., & Gurung, R. A. (2003). Mixing, matching, and mating: Demonstrating the effect of contrast on relationship satisfaction. *Teaching of Psychology, 30*(4), 303-306.

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Tags: social-psychology, reference-request, social-desirability
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# Question
Title: Is the logic of self-reported thoughts related to psychological disorders?
Depression seems to be a disruption in thought patterns. In particular, it is characterized by repetitive thoughts. Is it possible to characterize psychological diseases by looking at the logical structure of self reported thoughts?

For example, suppose Bob is depressed. He may be asked to free associate for 10 minutes. Then would counting the number of double implications be a good characterization of depression. This is a statement of the form $A \Longleftrightarrow B$.

So Bob may say things like "I am depressed because I have no friends" and "I have no friends because I am depressed." A normal person might have more statements of the form $A \implies B$. So he would say things like "I am happy therefore I should go to the gym. Going to the gym will make me stronger" etc.

# Answer
There's no theoretical reason to believe that depression is characterized by an increase in "double implications." If anything, the double implication you've posed (depression ⟺ no friends) is a pretty accurate understanding of the reciprocal relationship between the causes and consequences of depression (e.g., Stice, Ragan, & Patrick, 2004; Teasdale, 1983). So if depressed individuals have such an insight, then we might actually expect this to facilitate mood repair and regulation.

Otherwise, to my knowledge, no studies have examined the logical structure of depressive thoughts. Perhaps you might be aware that depression is characterized by cognitive distortions, but I'm guessing that this isn't the kind of "logic" that you're referring to.
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, abnormal-psychology, depression
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# Question
Title: Solving T-shaped maze (probability learning): differences between rats and humans
From Jonah Lehrer's book "How We Decide", he mentions the experiments with rats and Yale undergraduates.

I found the paper that (presumably) matches the experiment of rats.

> Brunswik, E. (1939). Probability as a determiner of rat behavior. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 25, 175–197. \[Reprinted in Hammond, K. R., & Stewart, T. R., 2001\]

But the results seem to be somewhat different from what he described.

Could anyone tell me where I can find the paper about Yale graduates performing the maze task?

Here's the excerpt from the book,

> "Look, for example, at this elegant little experiment: A rat was put in a T-shaped maze with a few morsels of food placed on either the far right or the far left side of the enclosure. The placement of the food was random, but the dice were rigged: over the long run, the food was placed on the left side 60 percent of the time. How did the rat respond? It quickly realized that the left side was more rewarding. As a result, it always went to the left of the maze, which resulted in a 60 percent success rate. The rat didn't strive for perfection. It didn't search for a unified theory of the T-shaped maze. It just accepted the inherent uncertainty of the reward and learned to settle for the option that usually gave the best outcome. The experiment was repeated with Yale undergraduates. Unlike the rat, the students, with their elaborate networks of dopamine neurons, stubbornly searched for the elusive pattern that determined the placement of the reward. They made predictions and then tried to learn from their prediction errors. The problem was that there was nothing to predict; the apparent randomness was real. Because the students refused to settle for a 60 percent success rate, they ended up with a 52 percent success rate. Although most of the students were convinced that they were making progress toward identifying the underlying algorithm, they were, in actuality, outsmarted by a rat."

# Answer
I was unable to find this in a scientific paper, and it is not clear from the sources I did locate that this work was ever actually published. However, I found other sources that reference this work and several similar studies comparing humans to rats.

The study you mention is also referenced briefly in Tetlock's (2005) book on political judgment; a discussion of Tetlock's interpretation of the results can be seen on University of Pennsylvania's Language Log (2005). That blog post also indicates the experiments are discussed to some extent in a textbook by Gallistel (1993); finding that book may provide more information.

A paper by Spragg (1934) describes exploring anticipatory responses in both rats and human (student) subjects. Overall and Brown (1959) examined decision making behavior in rats and humans (students) using a maze task.

* Gallistel, Charles R. (1993). *The organization of learning (Learning, development, and conceptual change).* A Bradford Book: 662 pages. ISBN-13: 978-0262570985
* Language Log. (December 11,2005). Rats beat Yalies? Doing better by getting less information? Retrieved from http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002700.html
* Overall, J. E., & Brown, W. L. (1959). A comparison of the decision-behavior of rats and of human subjects. *The American Journal of Psychology, 72*(2) 258-261.
* Spragg, S. S. (1934). Anticipatory responses in the maze. *Journal of Comparative Psychology, 18*(1), 51-73.
* Tetlock, P. (2005). Expert political judgment: How good is it? How can we know?. Princeton University Press. ISBN-13: 978-0691128719
> 2 votes

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Tags: reference-request, learning, performance
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# Question
Title: What causes people to rapidly lose skill after becoming moderately good at something?
I've noticed that people often manage to become moderately good at something, but seem to reach some sort of peak at that level and then rapidly start getting worse again.

I've seen this happen with videogames (most notably Starcraft 2), pool games, badminton, and even drawing/painting. People can get from complete beginner to a mediocre level in all these things, and then at some point they will start getting worse at them again. Not all the way back to a beginner level, but far enough to notice a serious difference in results.

If there are no physical changes that are causing this, is there any explanation for this problem with learning?

# Answer
> 4 votes
**S-shaped learning curves**

As per A Umar Mukthar's comment, the phenomenon is known as an **S-shaped learning curve**. They have been a known phenomenon in psychology for many decades, and were originally attributed to trial-and-error learning sets (Harlow, 1949). Harlow defined a **learning set** in the following manner:

> The monkeys *learn how to learn* individual problems with a minimum of errors. It is this *learning how to learn a kind of problem* that we designate by the term *learning set*.

**Meta-cognition and intra-individual performance variability**

Harlow's explanation has fundamentally not been changed too much, except perhaps that in modern cognitive research, we now call these **meta-cognitive strategies** rather than learning sets.

When first encountering a novel problem, participants will adopt one strategy and work to improve their performance on that, but eventually they will discover other strategies. When participants *shift* strategy thus to an unpracticed strategy, their performance declines, then improves again.

Because all strategies for the same problem tend to share at least some overlap, as participants explore an increasing proportion of the space of possible meta-cognitive strategies, shifting to a novel strategy requires decreasing amounts of new practice. The magnitude of the performance decline associated with strategy shifts is therefore gradually eliminated with prolonged practice (Murre, 2014).

**References**

* Harlow, H. F. (1949). The formation of learning sets. Psychological review, 56(1), 51.
* Murre, J. M. (2014). S-shaped learning curves. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 21(2), 344-356.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, learning, developmental-psychology, metacognition
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# Question
Title: Name of cognitive bias when you diminish one's competency based on someone else's for the same function?
Let's say you have a REALLY good manager, and he leaves. So you tend to underestimate/judge the next manager's competencies because the previous one was really good.

How you call the cognitive bias related to that ?

# Answer
> 6 votes
The broad topic is norm theory. Kahnemann & Miller (1986) give a nice overview of the topic. The specific effect is a *contrast effect*.

Higgins & Lurie (1983) have an experiment which matches the situation nicely. In their experiment, subjects read a series of short stories describing the sentences handed out by various judges for similar crimes. Some judges were harsher or more lenient than others. As you might expect, a specific sentence (e.g. Judge Wilson sentenced the guilty person to 3 years of prison) was judged as being more harsh if the other judges tended to give shorter sentences, and more lenient if the other judges tended to give harsher sentences.

Their result also suggests that your memory of the first manager's competency (the really good manager) will be affected by the exposure to the new manager. They brought the subjects back to the lab a few days after reading the original stories. When subjects came back, they were given a new set of sentencing decisions to read. Then they were asked to recall how long the sentence was of a specific judge (e.g. Judge Wilson) from the first session. The memory for the original sentence was skewed by the new stories that they read. If the new stories all tended to be lenient, then subjects underestimated Judge Wilson's original sentence. If the new stories were all harsh, then subjects overestimated Judge Wilson's original sentence. They call this a change-of-standard effect.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, bias
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# Question
Title: Is procrastination associated with overweight?
I came to think of how working out requires a will to "get things done". Some people are successful in their career while working regularly out at the same time, and some people are procrastinating both exercise and career related actions. To "get things done" often takes some physical effort as well, which may make a difference in body fat.

**Is there be an association between overweight and general procrastination/lack of motivation?**

# Answer
> 4 votes
No. An association between overweight and procrastination appears to have no direct empirical support to speak of.

The most direct evidence I can find on the matter was a study into industrial workplace productivity's association with overweight, which found **a very small (approximately 1%) loss in productivity over other workers associated with moderate or extreme obesity**, but this was explained in terms of decreased ability and increased time to perform physical tasks (Gates et al., 2009) rather than self-regulation, motivation or time management. In particular,

> Moderately or extremely obese workers (BMI 35) experienced the greatest health-related work limitations, specifically regarding time needed to complete tasks and ability to perform physical job demands.

It does appear there have been some *conceptually* similar economics investigations into whether overweight is associated with engaging in hyperbolic discounting more generally (Scharff, 2009), but overall, **there does not seem to be any empirical reason for believing that overweight is associated with procrastination in any practically meaningful sense**.

**References**

* Gates, D. M., Succop, P., Brehm, B. J., Gillespie, G. L., & Sommers, B. D. (2008). Obesity and presenteeism: the impact of body mass index on workplace productivity. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 50(1), 39-45.
* Scharff, R. L. (2009). Obesity and hyperbolic discounting: Evidence and implications. Journal of Consumer Policy, 32(1), 3-21.

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Tags: motivation, health-psychology, self-discipline, procrastination
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# Question
Title: Does high IQ correlate with good social skills?
Are people with a high IQ more likely to have good social abilities? Are they more likely to be popular?

Wikipedia lists that IQ helps with school performance, job performance and income. It's possible to be good at those things without interacting much with other people.

Social skills being the ability to achieve goals such as winning friends, doing well in negotiations, being successful at romance and being good at networking.

# Answer
> 18 votes
The question is more complicated than it seems.

Even though it is easy to agree to that some people are more competent in their social behavior than others, it has proven to be **very difficult to define** what we mean when we talk about social skills (or "social intelligence", "social competence"). Is it the ability to manage social relationships, does it contain empathy, is it the knowledge about how social relationships work, the number of friends, or being good in negotiations, as you define it? Over the years, researchers have used partly overlapping and partly distinct definitions. For the difficulties associated with conceptualizing social intelligence refer to this review by Kihlstrom and Cantor (2000).

Consequently, this difficulty is also reflected in the **difficulty of measuring social skills**. A wide variety of measures have been developed. Based on the multitude of conceptual approaches it is clear that the results of these measures will often diverge. For example, Riggio et al. (1989) conducted a study in which participants completed a large number of standardized measures of social intelligence. The measures included tests that measured the ability to perceive the feelings and intentions of others, the ability to assess interpersonal relationships, various measures aimed at testing the ability to predict social behavior of others and the ability to perceive feelings of others. The correlations of these measures "ranged from -0.20 to 0.44, with a mean r of 0.20". Thus, they had some overlap among each other, but this overlap was pretty low. Riggio et al. also measured academic intelligence (with a variety of measures) and found that "the measures of academic and social intelligence ranged from -0.10 to 0.52, with a mean r of 0.15". Some have used results like these to question the usefulness of social intelligence as a construct. Others have questioned whether it is possible to distinguish social from other forms of intelligence at all. The methodological problem becomes even clearer if you keep in mind that most social intelligence tests are based on paper-and-pencil (self-report) questionnaires that do not necessarily overlap with peer reports or actual tests of social skills (in an assessment center, for example). In light of these difficulties, it may not be surprising that a prominent review of the literature regards the search for "social skills" as a concept as "long, frustrating, and fruitless" (Landy, 2005).

Even though the field does not seem to have found consensus in the mean time, more recent research shares the idea that it is necessary to take the **multidimensionality of social intelligence** into account when conceptualizing and measuring them. From this perspective, there will be elements of social intelligence that have a stronger overlap with "pure reasoning" measures of IQ than others. For example, Jones and Day (1997) found in research with sample of high school students that indicators of "crystallized social knowledge" (declarative and procedural knowledge about social events) were highly correlated (r=.79) with academic problem solving (which is closely to related to what is measured with classic IQ tests). However they were not so strongly related (r=.29) to "social-cognitive flexibility" (the ability to apply social knowledge flexibly to solve novel problems). A strong point of this research is that the researchers combined self-ratings and tests with teacher ratings to assess all of these constructs. These findings suggest that some parts of social intelligence (social knowledge) are virtually indistinguishable from general intelligence. However, other elements of social intelligence (applying social knowledge) are somewhat positively related to intelligence (more intelligent = somewhat better in social problem solving on average).

**References**

Jones, K., & Day, J. D. (1997). Discrimination of two aspects of cognitive-social intelligence from academic intelligence. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89, 486–497. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.89.3.486

Kihlstrom, J.F, & Cantor, N. (2000). in R.J. Sternberg (Ed.), Handbook of intelligence, 2nd ed. (pp. 359-379). Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Landy, F. J. (2005) The Long, Frustrating, and Fruitless Search for Social Intelligence. In K. R. Murphy (Ed.) The Emotional Intelligence Bandwagon: The Struggle Between Science and Marketing for the Soul of EI. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates, 2005

Riggio, R. E., Messamer, J., & Throckmorton, B. (1991). Social and academic intelligence: Conceptually distinct but overlapping constructs. Personality and Individual Differences, 12, 695–702. doi:10.1016/0191-8869(91)90225-Z

# Answer
> -1 votes
No. There is no correlation between IQ and social skills.

This means that some people have a high IQ and have 'good' social skills while other people have a high IQ but 'bad' social skills.

Likewise, some people have a low IQ and have 'good' social skills while others have a low IQ and 'bad' social skills.

IQ, or intelligence quotient, is calculated by completing a number of tasks (in areas such as mathematics, language, etc.) in a test-like situation and comparing the results with results obtained by 'everyone else.'

Social skills are usually measured by asking questions about the individual. "Does the person cooperate or conflict with others?" "Does the person tend to offend or please others?" "Does the person have many or few friends?" etc.

You can measure a person's 'emotional intelligence' but this is not covered in a standard IQ test.

These measurements, IQ and social skills, are not the same, and the information that psychometrists have collected over the years show that there is no link between IQ scores and social skills.

Also, try not to see an IQ score and actual intelligence as the same thing. Many psychologists and psychiatrists believe that an IQ score is not an accurate portrayal of person's actual intelligence, for a large number of reasons.

For more information and research about these topics, search for the following names:

* Howard Gardener - first man to propose the inaccuracy of IQ scores
* Robert Sternberg - a prominent researcher in intelligence
* David Wechsler - developed the most wisely-used IQ tests

*(I have a bachelor's degree in psychology, and I also passed this information by my supervisor, who has a Master's Degree in Educational Psychology. We perform psychological assessments every day.)*

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Tags: intelligence, iq
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# Question
Title: Where can I find stimuli for steady-state visually-evoked potentials?
I am a student working on a project which deals with Steady State Visually-Evoked Potentials (SSVEP) Stimuator. Does anybody know where can I find stimuli (checkerboard or single graphic) as a video file? It's very difficult to find these files on the Internet. I am not allowed to use videos from youtube.

# Answer
Researchers are often willing to share their stimuli. If you know of a paper that uses the same kind of stimuli that you want to use, you could try emailing the authors. A friendly request with a brief explanation of why you want the stimuli usually works.
> 3 votes

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Tags: methodology, vision, evoked-potentials
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# Question
Title: How can we realize when a sociological question is impossible to answer?
In my language there is a famous common sense statement which tells the populations are swinging back and forth from one extreme to the other.

The idea behind is that, at a sociological level, the influence of many psychological factors (such as the dichotomous thinking and similar cognitive distortions) are leading the populations to tend to big breaks and changements.

Would it be possible to investigate it from a sociological point of view? **How can we realize when a sociological question is impossible to answer?**

# Answer
> 8 votes
**Short version:** A question is possible to answer sociologically if and only if its **scale** and **region** (informally speaking, its context) are completely defined and its variables of interest are **operationalized**.

**Long (really long) version:** The following answer may be colored by my quantitative background, but if you give me the benefit of the doubt here and there, this should generalize fairly well. My apologies for any untoward implications in advance.

# Is my question amenable to empirical inquiry?

This is more than a question unto itself, but I will try to keep it as brief and general as possible while still answering the sociology-specific question. Sociological questions must be amenable to empirical inquiry. A question is amenable to empirical inquiry *if and only if*:

* The variables of interest have been operationalized. If we are interested in "society," **how** exactly do you measure change in society? (I strongly recommend reading mfloren's excellent answer in the link.)
* The region of interest has been completely defined. If we are interested in "society," **where** exactly should we start measuring our variables of interest?

There are (*very*) different views on how to interpret the evidence so collected, a fair covering of which is beyond the scope of this answer. In the cognitive sciences, I would say the dominant views tend to be in line with falsificationism and/or instrumentalism. Broadly speaking, this area is covered by the study of epistemology.

# What is the scale of my question?

A question's **scale** refers to the level of detail involved. How "big" is the question? Informally speaking, the scale of an empirical question conveys information about the characteristics of the spacetime region we are investigating, and what level of precision/detail we are investigating it at.

## Example: Cosmological or Quantum?

A prototypical example here that I think most people are familiar with from basic physics would be the cosmological scale—the largest known scale—and its opposite, the quantum scale, which is the smallest known scale. Informally speaking, the "physics scale" runs from least energy involved to most energy involved.

This is the simplest to understand because most of physics can be captured by how much energy is involved. In the biological sciences, it becomes more complicated. We might talk about trophic levels in a conceptually similar way when asking questions about ecologies, but we might also talk about the embryonic or neural scales for other questions. In other words, they are, in a very direct sense, different facets of the same "object." In general, the closer we get to a first-person human level of analysis, the more difficult it becomes to sufficiently define questions, and the further away we get, the easier it becomes.

## Sociobehavioral science: Within or between individuals or groups?

In the social and behavioral sciences, we tend to look at the amount of people involved, the qualitative relationship between those people, and whether we are interested in the question at the **intra-individual**, **between-individual**, **intra-group** and/or **inter-group** level. As with the cosmological and quantum scale, or embryonic and neural scales, these are not ontologically distinct—scales are a strictly epistemological concept. Informally speaking, a question is **sociological** if it is a question about the collective behavior of relatively large groups of people (i.e., if regions and variables are defined relative to other 'groups' rather than in terms of their constituents' individual behavior or minds).

# What field is appropriate for my question?

Once we have defined the **scale** and **region** (or area) of our question, and we have **operationalized** our variables of interest, we can say whether a particular **field** is an appropriate context for situating our question in. If our question is, "How do modern bridges hold up so much weight?", then we *could* situate this in terms of quantum physics, but doing so would be a grossly excessive level of detail, so we'd probably want to use engineering instead.

**So it is for the study of behavior and the human condition: it is important to use the right tool for the job.** (Actually, I prefer to liken fields to painting styles, but the tool metaphor tends to get the job done faster, and I feel like this has already gotten long enough.)

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Tags: methodology, sociology
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# Question
Title: Why do people often do unnecessary things while performing a main task?
And this is not about procrastination (I'm almost certain).

I've been noticing it since childhood that people (me included) tend to do unnecessary side activity, especially if they're invested in the main activity.

Examples of main activity: having a thoughtful conversation, watching an interesting movie, crafting something manually.

Examples of side activities: doing tricks with a pen, playing with shirt buttons, doodling, tearing a piece of paper into smaller parts, attaching and detaching magnets, in other words almost anything slightly amusing/interesting/touch-pleasant.

The side activity tends to increase with the intensity of main activity, only ceasing at the point where the main activity takes all the concentration a person can manage to attain.

What causes this? Does it somehow help us perform the main activity? Then how exactly? Or is it a reaction to performing something effortsome?

# Answer
In the whole scheme of human consciousness, these movements may be a result of what one individual person's autonomic and central nervous system has been conditioned to *expect*. While awake during different hours of different days, implying different variables to be present depending on \[social code\] *etc,* our central nervous system (CNS) has a threshold for response- the level of response/arousal to sensory input accompanied by these variables stated above will ultimately help someone read what their basal level of arousal is. If that basal level arousal is not met in a certain social context (this basal level has increased via techna-cultural advancement) than the body may expend this energy via other methods of movement or concentration.
> 1 votes

# Answer
Based on the article in my answer here, shifting attention and voluntary movement cause changes in the brain. In the example below, the cat's Raphe nucleus firing is subdued as the cat is orienting to look.

I would hypothesize that shifting focus between the fun activity (ex:playing with a pen) and conversational partner can help with the thinking process.
> 1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology
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# Question
Title: Research operationalizing so-called strategic thinking?
Is there contemporary research in trait psychology, which attempts to operationalize the structures behind a strategic thinking style? I'm thinking of a style of problem solving as taught in officer training, and to a lesser extent, manifesting in strategically-oriented games like chess.

I realize that this sounds perhaps a little vague. However, in common usage it's not unusual to refer to a person's being a "strategic thinker" or a "problem solver". I wanted to know whether these traits have been studied or deconstructed in a more formal capacity, so as to define them in a manner consistent with trait psychology.

**Are there scientific definitions of strategic thinking with empirical support?**

# Answer
There is a large body of research on **complex problem solving** that is highly relevant to your question.

The starting point of this research was a critique of classic reasoning and problem solving research which seemed to focus on very small problems (such as the Tower of Hanoi), which may not capture the complexity of many real world problems that people face. The initial goal of this research was to conceptualize the characteristics of such problems.

In an attempt to find the common denominators of various definitions, Frensch and Funke (1995) define complex problem solving in the following way:

> \[Complex problem solving\] occurs to overcome barriers between a given state and a desired goal state by means of behavioral and/or cognitive, multistep activities. The given state, goal state, and barriers between given state and goal state are complex, change dynamically during problem solving, and are intransparent. The exact properties of the given state, goal state, and barriers are unknown to the solver at the outset. CPS implies the efficient interaction between a solver and the situational requirements of the task, and involves a solver’s cognitive, emotional, personal, and social abilities and knowledge.

The **method** of choice to investigate complex problem solving has been to use **computer-simulated microworlds** to pose complex problems, such as trying to improve the success of a simulated city as its mayor, fighting a wildfire, or running a factory (Brehmer & Dörner, 1993, Dörner, 1997). In line with the definition, the performance in these simulations is determined in a complex way in that it is based on many decision variables, who are highly interconnected, and affect each other in a dynamic way. Furthermore, at the outset of the simulation, these variables and their relationships are intransparent and the simulation may be characterized by conflicting goals that have to be achieved by setting priorities and reaching compromises.

From this description, it may be clear that this research has focused more strongly on the "problem side". However, it has also explicitly incorporated **personality and characteristics of the decision maker**, such as motivation, certain (strategic) knowledge, and emotion regulation (see for example, Wenke et al. 2005). For example, much research has been devoted to the question whether the ability to solve complex problems can be distinguished from general intelligence. Some studies (e.g. Wüstenberg et al. 2012) suggest that even though performance assessed with in complex computer-simulated problems is highly related to intelligence, it can indeed predict behavior above and beyond IQ (incremental validity).

**References**

Brehmer, B., & Dörner, D. (1993). Experiments with computer-simulated microworlds: Escaping both the narrow straits of the laboratory and the deep blue sea of the field study. Computers in Human Behavior, 9, 171–184.

Dörner, D. (1997). The logic of failure. Recognizing and avoiding error in complex situations. New York: Basic Books.

Frensch, P. and Funke, J. (1995) Definitions, Traditions and a General Framework for Understanding Complex Problem Solving. In P. A. Frensch and
J. Funke (Eds.), Complex Problem Solving: The European Perspective.(Hillsdale, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum). 3-25.

Wenke, D., Frensch, P. A., & Funke, J. (2005). Complex problem solving and intelligence: Empirical relation and causal direction. In R. J. Sternberg & J. E. Pretz (Eds.),Cognition and intelligence: Identifying the mechanisms of the mind (pp. 160–187). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Wüstenberg, S., Greiff, S., & Funke, J. (2012). Complex problem solving — More than reasoning? Intelligence, 40, 1–14. doi:10.1016/j.intell.2011.11.003
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, personality, terminology, problem-solving, military-psychology
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# Question
Title: Binaural Beats meets Sound-Color-Synesthesia
> Binaural beats, the perception of which arises in the brain for specific physical stimuli. ... The effect on the brainwaves depends on the difference in frequencies of each tone: for example, if 300 Hz was played in one ear and 310 in the other, then the binaural beat would have a frequency of 10 Hz. \[Wiki\]

Does someone with the form of Sound-Color-Synesthesia, see the color connected with the 10Hz tone, when hearing 300/310 Hz tones?

Does it work otherway round as well? Are there even examples known?

What light does this shed, on how the brain works (maybe restricted to the Synesthesia people)?

**Edit** is there anyone around here who can test that? Experience reports are welcome.

# Answer
Unfortunately, it appears **there is currently no research investigating how synaesthetes experience the binaural beats effect**. If any such research does exist, it does not appear to be available (in English) via Google Scholar, Web of Science or Scopus.

Furthermore, there is little research on binaural beats generally. I covered some of the scarce research that does exist on binaural beats in my answer to the question, "Is there scientific evidence on the benefits of binaural beats?", which may be of some interest to you. However, the findings are generally inconclusive and do not allow us to theorize on how a synaesthete might experience the binaural beats effect. On the evidence, therefore, **it is currently equally conceivable that synaesthetes do or do not experience binaural beats differently from healthy participants at all.**
> 6 votes

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Tags: perception, color, synesthesia
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# Question
Title: Criteria for evaluating cognitive systems
In the first chapter of the book "How to Build a Brain", Chris Eliasmith quickly establishes some criteria which he will use to evaluate Spaun, the cognitive system described in the book. He describes them in great detail in Chapter 8, but below is my attempt at summarizing them.

---

# 1. Representational Structure

## Systematicity

The system should connect concepts in an inter-connected way and understand there are classes of concepts, since human thought is systematic. For example, given `blue ball` and `red square`, it should be possible for the system to reason about the concept of `blue square`.

## Compositionality

Concepts should be created off of the combination of concepts to the degree supported by real cognitive systems. For example, given the concepts of `pet` and `fish`, it should be possible to reason about the novel concept `pet fish`.

## Productivity

The system should be able to create many representation based off of a few basic representations to the degree supported by real cognitive systems.

## The Massive Binding Problem

The system should identify a binding operation that scales well.

# 2. Performance Concerns

## Syntactic generalization

Ability to exploit the structure of language regardless of content.

## Robustness

Losing a few neurons or being exposed to noise shouldn't break the system.

## Adaptability

You should be able to use a single system for multiple task.

## Memory

The system should be able to show the relation to the various types of memory (working, long-term).

## Scalability

Large portions of the brain should be modeled and able to complete a wide variety of tasks.

# 3. Scientific merit

## Triangulation

Contact with the most sources of experimental data as possible.

## Compactness

Good theories can be stated compactly and without ad-hoc additions.

---

He explains in the chapter that this is actually a synthesis of various other criteria proposed by various authors. Although the scientific merit seems rather straightforward to me and has been elaborated upon on great length, the other criteria I am less certain about in terms of completeness and acceptance. Have attempts at unified criteria been made before? Are there more complete criteria? Are these criteria at odds with any other ideas about what a cognitive system should embody?

# Answer
> 3 votes
# Some things omitted

1. Although the criteria addresses learning new tasks in Adaptibility, it doesn't address the ability to switch between tasks easily.
2. Although Triangulation does address matching data, it doesn't discuss grounding the data in the real world vs. data fed from a dataset. In other words, it doesn't address the quality of the data matched.
3. Compactness doesn't address how easy anything is to explain or grasp. This might actually be wise, as understanding is highly dependent on tools available to the person grasping at comprehension.

# Are there more complete criterion?

The criterion provided above provide a high-level view of the goals that should be sought after by any cognitive system, however this does not address *how* a system should pursue this goal.

For a more complete evaluation of the methods and tools that should be used, please see Terry Stewart's PHD thesis A Methodology for Computational Cognitive Modelling which outlines a set of statistical methods and tools for cognitive scientists (even without a significant statistical background) to use.

# Answer
> 4 votes
Hofstadter provides a detailed set of criteria in Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies. Some of his criteria that I do not see mentioned above concern *the flow of information-processing*: whether or not the model evaluated *flows through possibility space in a psychologically plausible way*, and how to measure that.

For instance... Suppose the following: "A bat and a ball cost usd110. The bat costs usd100 more than the ball. How much is the ball?"

Now, cognitive psychology has shown that people are primed to say "the ball costs usd10." Which is wrong! A good cognitive model should also "think" usd10, before considering usd5. Otherwise, it doesn't respect information-processing flow.

He also mentions, metaphorically, the idea of including "lesions" in the model, such that, if some component of the model is "lesioned", the expected outcome from that component should drastically change.

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Tags: reference-request, theoretical-neuroscience, computational-modeling
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# Question
Title: Questionnaire regarding the motivation to be physically active
Does anyone know a questionnaire regarding the motivation to be physically active? That is, the motivation to move more (i.e. walk, cycle, run) and sit less on a daily basis.

# Answer
> 7 votes
David Markland's website has several related questionnaires and scales that are available for research use. The *Behavioural Regulation in Exercise Questionnaire* seems like a good fit:

> *The Behavioural Regulation in Exercise Questionnaire* (BREQ) measures different forms of motivation for exercise based on Deci and Ryan's (1985, 1991) continuum conception of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.

There are several other related instruments also available on the same website:

> *The Exercise Motivations Inventory-2* (EMI-2) is a measure of participation motives or reasons for exercising. *The Exercise Motives and Gains Inventory* (EMGI) is a recent development that complements the EMI-2 to provide scales assessing perceived gains from exercise that correspond to the EMI-2 scales.
>
> *The Perceived Environmental Supportiveness Scale* measures perceptions of the extent to which exercise professionals provide individuals with support for their psychological needs (i.e., autonomy support, structure and involvement).
>
> *The Exercise Causality Orientations Scale* (ECOS) measures individual differences in the tendency to be autonomous, controlled or amotivated in exercise contexts and is derived from Deci and Ryan's Causality Orientations Theory.
>
> *The Locus of Causality for Exercise Scale* is a short measure of the degree to which individuals feel self-determined with respect to exercise.

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Tags: measurement, motivation, exercise
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# Question
Title: What salient features of a {conditioned stimulus,unconditioned stimulus} pair are represented in the lateral amygdala?
In classical conditioning, a conditioned stimulus (CS, e.g., a tone) is presented just before an unconditioned stimulus (UCS, e.g., a mild toe pinch) in repeated trials, such that the CS will eventually evoke the unconditioned response (e.g., withdrawal reflex) on its own.

Such memories of fear and discomfort are said to be held in the lateral amygdala, with a representation of the CS and its UCS (Díaz-Mataix et al, 2011).

Certain areas of the brain have particular representations of stimuli, e.g., a tone of a given frequency, as the primary auditory cortices have "tonotopic" zones in which different areas have a differential response to separate frequencies.

Since the CS/UCS pairing is more abstract than a single tone, I'm curious as to what type of representation of the CS/UCS is actually encoded within the local subnetworks amygdala. I can't imagine that, for the above example, a particular area holds a representative frequency of a tone used as a CS in tight collaboration with a "pain" signal. It might be realistic, but anatomically, that whole area would also have to reflect an exhaustive set of all of the other possible "life events" that the animal has experienced.

So, is this representation in the lateral amygdala just a placeholder to retrieve other pertinent memories stored elsewhere in cortex -- is the hippocampus a major player in keeping this sorted? If, in fact, all these pairings are just weak bindings of diverse stimuli, why is it so difficult to untangle and extinguish more complex types of fears in human patients?

> Díaz-Mataix, L., Debiec, J., LeDoux, J.E. & Doyère, V. (2011). Sensory-specific associations stored in the lateral amygdala allow for selective alteration of fear memories. The Journal of Neuroscience, 31, 9538-9543.. PDF

# Answer
The lateral amygdala appears to be involved in representing **fear memories after extinction** (Hobin, Goosens and Maren, 2003). The extent of the lateral amygdala's involvement in representing these appears to revolve around the **context** of the {CS, UCS} pair. The authors state the following in their abstract:

> Similarly, the majority of LA neurons exhibited context-dependent spike firing; **short-latency spike firing was greater to both CSs when they were presented outside of their own extinction context. In contrast, behavioral and neuronal responses to either non-extinguished CSs or habituated auditory stimuli were not contextually modulated.** Context-dependent neuronal activity in the LA may be an important mechanism for disambiguating the meaning of fear signals, thereby enabling appropriate behavioral responses to such stimuli.

You appear to be right to suspect the hippocampus' involvement. In a subsequent study by Maren and Hobin (2007) using a similar Pavlovian methodology to the previous study, the authors reported that hippocampal activity was associated with regulation of context-dependent lateral amygdaloid activity and concluded the following:

> After saline infusion, rats froze more to the CS when it was presented outside of its extinction context, but froze equally in both contexts after muscimol infusion. In parallel with the behavior, **lateral nucleus neurons exhibited context-dependent firing to extinguished CSs**, and **hippocampal inactivation disrupted this activity pattern**. These data reveal a novel role for the hippocampus in regulating the context-specific firing of lateral amygdala neurons after fear memory extinction.

Finally, a context-related function of the lateral amygdala seems to provide a simple and plausible explanation for why fear extinction is far more difficult in human patients than laboratory rats: humans encounter a virtually infinite and certainly unpredictable space of possible contexts, whereas lab rats, by the nature of their unfortunate lot in life, tend to encounter relatively few and predictable contexts.

(I found it somewhat difficult to cover all the bases for your question and subquestions, so please comment if I need to expand on something.)

**References**

* Hobin, J. A., Goosens, K. A., & Maren, S. (2003). Context-dependent neuronal activity in the lateral amygdala represents fear memories after extinction. The Journal of neuroscience, 23(23), 8410-8416.
* Maren, S., & Hobin, J. A. (2007). Hippocampal regulation of context-dependent neuronal activity in the lateral amygdala. Learning & Memory, 14(4), 318-324. Chicago
> 5 votes

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, conditioning, reinforcement-learning
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title: 'Model-free' learning in humans

text:
# Question
Title: 'Model-free' learning in humans
In reinforcement learning, there is a stark distinction between model-based and model-free learning algorithms, where model-free methods don't make use any explicit information about the dynamics of the environment.

It seems like this distinction would have some analog in human learning, but I'm having a very hard time finding any mention of it. Perhaps it would conditioning versus more cognitive forms of learning? I'd be overjoyed if someone could find an article using the term 'model-free' to refer to some aspect of human learning, or just reassure me of the term's correct human analog.

**Does research on human learning featuring a model-free/model-based distinction exist?**

# Answer
As per the comments to the question, human research observing this distinction does exist. CHCH possibly alludes to an article by Gläscher, Daw, Dayan and O'Doherty (2010) which concisely defines the difference between model-free learning and model-based learning:

> Reinforcement learning (RL) uses sequential experience with situations (“states”) and outcomes to assess actions. Whereas model-free RL uses this experience directly, in the form of a reward prediction error (RPE), model-based RL uses it indirectly, building a model of the state transition and outcome structure of the environment, and evaluating actions by searching this model.

Gläscher et al. (2010) report fMRI evidence for neural activity consistent with model-based learning in the human intraparietal sulcus and lateral prefrontal cortex, and for model-free learning in the ventral striatum. They conclude:

> This finding supports the existence of two unique forms of learning signal in humans, which may form the basis of distinct computational strategies for guiding behavior.

# References

* Gläscher, J., Daw, N., Dayan, P., & O'Doherty, J. P. (2010). States versus rewards: dissociable neural prediction error signals underlying model-based and model-free reinforcement learning. Neuron, 66(4), 585-595.
> 6 votes

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Tags: terminology, learning, cognitive-modeling, artificial-intelligence, reinforcement-learning
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# Question
Title: Is decision making/theory/analysis applicable to game design?
I've done research over the last year in game design by reading some of the most well-known books in the field. Making interesting decisions is one of the fundamental elements of fun in games. I'm also learning( still a novice ) about cognition through two classes I'm taking the semester, Psychology of HCI and Human Factors Engineering.

It seems that what is said about decision making in cognitive psychology could also apply to the decisions we make in games. There's definitely choice and uncertainty while making these choices in games.

It seems one of the hardest parts of game design is coming up with game mechanics that cause the player to make interesting decisions based on these game mechanics.

**Could studying decision making/theory/analysis possibly help with this process of creating good game mechanics where interesting decisions emerge from the player analyzing and making decisions based on these mechanics?**

It seems obvious that this would be the case, but here recently I talked to someone in the psychology department who has a lot of experience in the subject of decision making who told me that it's not the same thing. They said decision making in the cognitive psychology realm isn't the same as decision making in games. They said you make weighted choices based on your options while playing games, which seems the same to me. But I'm still a novice in cognitive psychology so I feel I must trust the expert.

This is my attempt to get a second opinion.

# Answer
> 3 votes
This question seems to arise out of a slight terminological confusion. Empirical studies of human **decision-making** in particular are not covered by decision theory. **Decision theory** is the mathematical study of strategies for optimal decision-making between options involving different risks or expectations of gain or loss depending on the outcome. These sometimes overlap, such as in economics, but one need not use decision *theory* to study decision *making*.

Decision theory could conceivably have some uses in game design, such as identifying dominant strategies (strategies that are always optimal, regardless of what any other player does), but **decision theory takes the game rules as a given**. Hence, while it can help formalize the mechanics of a set of rules once they are designed, it doesn't have a way to actually generate rules. Decision theory is not so much helpful in designing game rules as in evaluating them.

You may be interested in what's called **mechanism design theory**, or reverse game theory. In contrast to decision theory, mechanism design theory is designed to work 'forwards' rather than 'backwards.' Instead of taking the rules of the game (or mechanism) as a given, **mechanism design theory takes the goal as a given and finds a suitable mechanism**. This seems to more closely fit what the question is looking for.

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Tags: terminology, decision-making, video-games, game-theory
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# Question
Title: What is the state of the art in computerised coding of Thematic Apperception Tests (TATs)?
Thematic Apperception Tests (TATs) involve showing test takers pictures and getting them to write stories based on the pictures. Coding such stories for themes and traits can be complex, time-consuming, and potentially suffer from issues of unreliability. Thus, it would be interesting to see whether automated computerised coding could make the process of scoring TATs more efficient, reliable, and valid.

* **What is the current state of computerised coding of TATs?**
* **How does the reliability and validity of computerised coding compare to human coding?**

# Answer
The state of the art in computer-scored Thematic Apperception Tests (TAT) as of 2015 appears to be that **computer-scored TATs do not exist**.

There does not appear to be any relevant results on Google Scholar, Web of Science or Scopus for any search I can think of including the term "thematic apperception" which yield any example or mention of computer-scored TATs, and all recent studies utilizing TATs have reported using standard versions (e.g., Turk et al., 2010). A 2013 book dedicated to the TAT, *A practical guide to the Thematic Apperception Test: The TAT in clinical practice* also fails to make any mention of computer-scored or otherwise computerized implementations of the TAT.

# References

* Aronow, E., Weiss, K. A., & Reznikoff, M. (2013). A practical guide to the Thematic Apperception Test: The TAT in clinical practice. Routledge.
* Turk, A. A., Brown, W. S., Symington, M., & Paul, L. K. (2010). Social narratives in agenesis of the corpus callosum: linguistic analysis of the Thematic Apperception Test. Neuropsychologia, 48(1), 43-50.
> 3 votes

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Tags: measurement, test, experimental-psychology, software
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# Question
Title: Rated model of driving-related processes and objects
The Salience, Effort, Effort and Value (SEEV) model for predicting the distribution of visual attention contains a parameter called 'value' which represents the importance of a certain area of the field of view concerning a given task context.

Does anyone know a project or study that actually did a 'value model' for the traffic context?

# Answer
A 2006 study by Horrey, Wickens and Consalus implemented a computational SEEV (Salience, Effort, Effort, Value) model for driving behavior that predicted scanning behavior, which I surmise is what was meant. The authors conclude:

> The most important practical implication of the current results is that a simple expected value version of the SEEV model provides a plausible and effective predictive model of scanning in driving.

This seems to fit your request.

**References**

* Horrey, W. J., Wickens, C. D., & Consalus, K. P. (2006). Modeling drivers' visual attention allocation while interacting with in-vehicle technologies. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 12(2), 67.
> 5 votes

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Tags: perception, reference-request, vision, attention
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# Question
Title: What is the basis behind the idea of Dom-Tert loops in Jung Function Theory?
I have come across a theory relating to Jung Function Theory normally addressed as 'Dom-Tert' loops. I will briefly explain:

In Jung Function Theory, everyone has 4 of 16 functions. They split into Introverted/Extroverted, Sensing/Intuiting, and Thinking/Feeling. These, in broad strokes, aim to explain how people function in both Information Gathering (S/N) as well as Information Processing (T/F) and whether that has a subjective base, or an objective base (I/E).

This theory lays out that the first (or **dom**inant) function and the third (or **tert**iary) function form a feedback loop, and the second function becomes underdeveloped. Below is an excerpt that hopefully gives an example of this at work (Myers Briggs notation is used as shorthand here):

> **ENTP/ESFJ: Ne/Fe or Fe/Ne--Narcissistic Personality Disorder.** This type often behaves impulsively and manipulatively, needing constant approval and admiration from others, running around investing in new thing after new thing, but never developing the self-confidence of a strong, subjective perspective. Fe used negatively may use its awareness of the cultural standards of others to intentionally offend or upset them, in order to service Ne's curiosity about the patterns in their responses. If Ti/Si were working properly, it would give the user a balancing sense of personal, subjective importance and free him of his dependence upon the adulation and unconditional acceptance of others. (Horrible example: Patrick Bateman from American Psycho.)

The crux being that everyone must use a balance of subjective and objective reasoning and perception to function correctly.

Now I realise that Jung Function theory is a favourite with armchair psychologists, and it's validity has been questioned, but I wanted to know if this theory is either **a)** expressed formally in any kind of Jung Function theory study, or **b)** if something like this imbalance leading to personality disorders exists in other psychological theories?

Where does this idea come from? The writer of the above forum post doesn't seem to take credit for the idea or even lead us to what inspired them.

# Answer
## Has dom-ter loops theory been expressed formally in any kind of Jungian function theory study?

Based on a reasonably diverse search of Google Scholar, Web of Science and Scopus, I am concluding that **dominant-tertiary loop theory seems to be an original proposal** by the author of the forum post cited by the question author. It appears to be a theory which has **not been peer reviewed**, and which has **not been validated** within the theoretical Jungian or empirical psychology literature. Hence, it appears that the answer to your question A is **no, dominant-tertiary loop theory has not been expressed formally in any kind of Jungian function theory study.**

## Can dom-ter loops explain personality disorders?

Because the theory is an original proposal which has not undergone peer review or scientific testing, **we cannot say whether or to what extent it might help to explain the development or maintenance of personality disorders** based on the available evidence (because there is none).

I would say it is not *trivially* wrong, in the sense that it doesn't appear to be internally inconsistent or inconsistent with Jungian theory in any egregious way, but at the same time, the lack of empirical evidence implies that we have no credible reason to believe that it explains anything at all. **It is conceivable, but not probable, that dom-ter loops can explain personality disorders.**

## Does the idea exist in other personality theories?

**Short answer:** No.

**Long answer:** The more popular modern personality theories differ in fundamental ways from Jungian theory's ontology of the mind, and one of these differences in particular makes the existence of such a theoretical explanation of personality disorders unlikely to work out.

The reason is that psychodynamic theories assume personalities are a driving force underpinning behavior in a fundamentally **dynamic** (intrinsically time-dependent) way, while theories like the Big Five tend to be more static (time-independent) and descriptive than explanatory. That's why it's meaningful to talk about discrete types in Jungian theory, because **it is conceivable that stable classes of patterns of behavior can emerge from interaction over time between these driving forces based on their relative contribution to determining behavior**.

Static theories such as the Big Five or Cattell's 16PF do not have the same notion of intrinsic dynamics and interaction over time, so **they can't lead to the same notion of discrete types**. Instead of discrete types, the development of personality disorders is today mostly based on a statistical **diathesis-stress model**, which, for example, might hold that people who are high on **neuroticism** in the Big Five are statistically more likely to develop **anxiety disorders** given the right **stressor**. The statistical basis allows for more fine-grained analysis of interactions, but also makes them more difficult to understand and identify with.

## Closing remarks

Satisfying negative answers are always difficult to write in the cognitive sciences, so I hope I have covered all the bases. Please let me know if I need to elaborate or explain on anything.
> 6 votes

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Tags: personality, cognitive-modeling, jung
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# Question
Title: Does society swing back and forth from one extreme to the other?
Consider 2 groups of any number of persons. Assume that the "dominant" group acts without any regard for the other group. Assume that there seem to be no consequences in the short time for the dominant part. In a generalized experiment over a very long time, I think the feelings of the oppressed group will create motivation to react.

## **Let's consider an example:**

Women's rights had been limited for centuries. More recently the situation has been changing, and nowadays the opposite is being argued:

There was also an interesting study on the prevalence of sexual dependency among men and women: the number of male patients was 5 times greater than the number of female patients.

Consider the hypothesis: **"History goes from one extreme to the other."** Oppression & exploitation of one group **leads to** discomfort, **which leads to** motivation to react and fight, **which leads to** reaction (from the oppressed side) and maybe guilty feelings (on the oppressor's side), **which leads to** an egoistic solution, which is not always the more ethical. (In this case, a partial oppression of the previously dominant group).

# Answer
**Short answer:** This question does not have a sociological or other scientific answer because it cannot be studied empirically as currently conceived, but it is a valid question all the same. It may still be possible for a humanistic field of study, such as History, to provide a satisfying answer.

**Long answer:** There is currently no way to define what or how any observable variables might map on to "society," "oppression" or "exploitation" in a sufficiently specific sense. Because we cannot **operationalize** what exactly change in society over time means, or whether society's current state is an "extreme" in a way we can systematically observe and record, we cannot give **scientific evidence** (sociological or otherwise) one way or the other.

Therefore, depending on **which** and **how many** variables we choose as our measure of society's change over time, and **how long** we choose to study them for, we may find that society does oscillate between extremes, or that it doesn't, or that it goes through periods of oscillating and not oscillating, or that some parts of society do oscillate while other don't, or a virtually infinite set of other conceivable models.

With no way to distinguish the relative **likelihood** of different models using empirical evidence, we have no credible scientific reason to believe any of them are more likely than any other, and hence no ground on which to base potential scientific theories on. **Colloquially speaking, we cannot theorize about evidence we don't know how to collect.**

**Concluding remarks**

I am providing a negative answer to this question because it is the top result on Google for its title, because it has survived my close vote, because I answered the author's directly related question, "How can we realize when a sociological question is impossible to answer?" and, last but not least, because I like bounties.
> 5 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, sociology
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# Question
Title: Looking for happines in marriage survey according to living/not living together before marriage
Do you know any research/survey results comparing how happy do people feel in marriage (after a few years) comparing marriages who lived together before marrying and living separately?

There are many studies into comparing divorce rate among spouses living or not living together before marrying, but I think it has a serious flaw - religious views can make couples still live together in marriage even though they feel unhappy. I think feeling happiness could be more interesting statistic.

**Is premarital cohabitation associated with later marital satisfaction?**

# Answer
A study reported, in the 80's, that **unmarried cohabitation prior to marriage was associated with "significantly" lower marital satisfaction**, but did not report an effect size. They also reported that **the duration of unmarried cohabitation was unrelated to marital satisfaction**(DeMaris and Leslie, 1984). A later study by the same lead author from the 90's reported that **unmarried cohabitation predicted later divorce after controlling for time in union** (DeMaris and Rao, 1992), which I include because time in union could be a confounding factor and I could not find direct evidence.

Wydick (2007) gave a game theoretic account of why unmarried cohabitation may lead to relatively decreased marital satisfaction which I am not qualified to evaluate, but the paper cites a number of empirical studies that support DeMaris' older thesis, so this paper may also be of some interest.

Not to speculate, but this is subjectively surprising to me. When I began the literature search, I was confident the idea was nonsense, and yet here we are.

## References

* DeMaris, A., & Leslie, G. R. (1984). Cohabitation with the future spouse: Its influence upon marital satisfaction and communication. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 77-84.
* DeMaris, A., & Rao, K. V. (1992). Premarital cohabitation and subsequent marital stability in the United States: A reassessment. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 178-190.
* Wydick, B. (2007). Grandma was right: Why cohabitation undermines relational satisfaction, but is increasing anyway. Kyklos, 60(4), 617-645.
> 4 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, love, religion
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# Question
Title: Are there any studies (fMRI scans, etc) showing why some people (supposedly) are more open to hypnotism?
In this article published in Harper's magazine back in 1996, journalist David Foster Wallace described his experience with hypnotist Nigel Ellery (see the last section of the article, titled "THE HEADLINE ENTERTAINMENT"). Mr Ellery was providing part of the entertainment on the cruise ship that David was on.

As to hypnotism, David writes that:

> First off, we learn that not everyone is susceptible to serious hypnosis: Nigel Ellery puts the Celebrity Show Lounge's whole 300-plus crowd through some simple in-your-seat tests to determine who is suggestibly "gifted" enough to "participate" in the "fun" to come.

In the footnote to that paragraph just quoted, David writes that:

> I, who know from hard experience that I am hypnotizable, think about sports statistics and deliberately flunk a couple of the tests to avoid getting up there.

The question I wanted to ask is, are there any studies looking into why some people would be more susceptible to hypnotism?

What I am particularly interested in is whether this has something to do with a habitual activation or inactivation of parts of the brain, or perhaps the levels of some neuromodulators?

# Answer
Overall, while there are developing cognitive neuroscience theories of how hypnotic states are produced, **there does not appear to be any known cognitive neuroscience basis for individual differences in hypnotic susceptibility** based on a reasonable Google Scholar, Web of Science and Scopus search on the topic.

There is at least *some* evidence to suggest that **highly hypnotic participants exhibit different EEG activity patterns** (Sabourin et al., 1990). A later review of the hypnosis literature proposed an attentional explanation for the difference in hypnotic behavior for highs and lows (Crawford, 1994). They specifically propose that:

> highly hypnotizable persons (highs) possess stronger attentional filtering abilities than do low hypnotizable persons, and that these differences are reflected in underlying brain dynamics.

Finally, a still later study more specifically implicated the **anterior cingulate cortex**, the **thalamus**, and the **ponto-mesencephalic brainstem** in the production of hypnotic states (Rainville et al., 2002), but they make no mention of differences of highly and less hypnotically susceptible individuals. This seems to be a trend in the literature I reviewed, suggesting the concept may have been abandoned.

## References

* Crawford, H. J. (1994). Brain dynamics and hypnosis: Attentional and disattentional processes. International journal of clinical and experimental hypnosis, 42(3), 204-232.
* Rainville, P., Hofbauer, R. K., Bushnell, M. C., Duncan, G. H., & Price, D. D. (2002). Hypnosis modulates activity in brain structures involved in the regulation of consciousness. Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 14(6), 887-901.
* Sabourin, M. E., Cutcomb, S. D., Crawford, H. J., & Pribram, K. (1990). EEG correlates of hypnotic susceptibility and hypnotic trance: Spectral analysis and coherence. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 10(2), 125-142.
> 6 votes

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, philosophy-of-mind, fmri, hypnosis
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# Question
Title: Does social interaction increase intelligence?
Unless I am mistaken, I recall hearing an English teacher say that social interaction can increase IQ, but I found no sources discussing this when I searched on Google and Google Scholar for it. So, can social interaction increase IQ or intelligence?

# Answer
**NB: my apologies, not enough rep points to post additional links.**

this is far too nebulous a statement, and if it were true, would most likely be based on non-experimental data. one example that immediately comes to mind is case studies looking at the effects of social deprivation amongst children in romanian orphanages. there are also a lot of different ways to interpret this question.

for example, is it possible that your teacher was actually referring to vygotsky's zone of proximal development -- a theory of childhood learning, wherein learning is thought to occur best when interacting with an older, slightly more competent peer?

in animal behavioural models involving rodents and the like, there is robust empirical evidence that *social deprivation* is associated with cognitive deficits.

some examples:

when looking at animal models one caveat, amongst many, however, is obviously the presumption that we are modelling the same phenomenon in animals as we are in humans. in this case, it certainly *looks* like social deprivation studies might give us a clue about the effect of social interaction in humans. but could this be modelling something else, say, environmental deprivation? in other words, is there something intrinsically important about social interaction, or is it a form of environmental enrichment, one whose contribution could be supplanted if one were to be exposed to alternative stimuli. but i digress.

> but I found no sources discussing this when I searched on Google and Google Scholar for it.

rather than social interaction and intelligence, searching for the keywords *social deprivation* and *social isolation* may prove more fruitful. instead of IQ, you should use some of the purported factors of IQ, such as *working memory*. but generally, you will likely find more data on animal behavioural studies than humans.

one exception to this may be the effect of social interaction and acquisition upon language ability, particularly foreign languages. in these domains, you will likely find more robust evidence to support the importance of social interaction:

* Foreign-language experience in infancy: Effects of short-term exposure and social interaction on phonetic learning.

> So, can social interaction increase IQ or intelligence?

the cliff's notes of it:

1. i think you could confidently say that social deprivation has deleterious effects on cognitive ability.
2. social interaction is significant in the development of language development, perhaps also verbal ability.
3. social deprivation notwithstanding, its contribution in a normative population is unclear.
> 6 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, intelligence
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# Question
Title: What research exists in the areas of formulating questions and "problem shaping"?
After recalling Eric Steven Raymond and Rick Moen's How to Ask Questions The Smart Way and a discussion in a systems engineering course regarding the impact of the proper formulation of a problem in order to achieve the optimal solution(s), I began to look for research into methodologies that can be used to formulate a question prior to asking it.

In Raymond and Moen's post, they have a few short lines touching on what I'm referring to. They mention to prepare your question by thinking it through and to beware of asking questions based on false assumptions. However, I'm more interested in psychological research into how people go about these activities, preferably in some kind of methodology or framework that can be applied to assess how one is formulating questions or even how to go about forming a question that can then go through a methodology similar to Raymond and Moen's process.

Searching for information about asking questions has so far yielded things about creating surveys with effective questions and how questions can influence answers. Perhaps I'm not using the right terms or looking in the right fields.

I found the term "problem shaping" on Wikipedia. The article (which is a stub) describes the concept that I'm looking for. However, I checked into the related articles and they don't appear to describe anything that I'm looking for in more depth. The "see also" pages appear to focus on topics related to problem solving, not actually formulating and shaping the problem. It seems that in order to effectively solve the problem, you need an appropriately formulated problem statement, yet I can't find anything about the methodologies or processes to do so stated formally.

My specific questions:

* Is there any research (of any level of scientific rigor) in the frameworks or processes of developing a good question or problem statement?
* If so, what are some examples of work done and what information or products have been generated?
* If not, what topics might be used to provide insights to gain a deeper understanding of the formulation of questions or problem statements?

# Answer
> 2 votes
**There are no known domain-general ways of formulating good questions and problems**—what constitutes a good question or problem formulation depends on the field or domain. A good psychology question is different from a good literary question, which in turn is different from a good business question.

Because there are no known domain-independent ways of formulating good questions and problems, but I believe this is a valuable question, I will focus my answer on the limited literature covering **the formulation of good behavioral and social science questions**. In general, while formulating good questions is specific to the domain or related set of domains of interest, research on ideation or idea generation is covered by the field of creativity research (but this does not cover *good* questions).

# Research heuristics and hypothesis generation

## Theory

Many scientific methodology courses focus almost entirely on **study design** and **hypothesis testing** appropriate for the field, while neglecting the critical aspects of **hypothesis generation** and **research heuristics**. Research is somewhat scarce, but some frameworks *have* been proposed, of which I am most familiar with **McGuire's 49 research heuristics** (McGuire, 1997). These heuristics are grouped into five categories, which I will try to briefly summarize.

1. **Sensitivity to provocative natural occurrences:** Systematically paying attention, making systematic observations, looking for anomalies (unexpected, nonobvious relations) and attempting to explain these.
2. **Simple conceptual analysis:** Thought and experiments conceptual analysis such as counterexamples, imagining counterfactuals, reversing causal direction and so forth on a defined set of phenomena.
3. **Complex conceptual analysis:** Deductive reasoning and generalization, convergent-divergent ideation processes and metatheorical techniques.
4. **Reinterpretations of past research:** Expert knowledge, reevaluating the scope of evidence accounted for and meta-analysis or review.
5. **Collecting new or reanalyzing old data:** Quantitative and qualitative analysis of new evidence, or novel analysis of existing evidence.

McGuire's theoretical framework is not the only one. Lubart and Getz (1998), for example, proposed three different research heuristics within the domain of psychology based on a historical analysis of psychological research. They named these the **trilogy-of-mind** heuristic ("the mind comprises cognition, conation and affection"), the **emotions-as-moods** ("complex human emotion reduces to simple moods") heuristic, and the **analysis-of-variance** ("the map is the territory") heuristic. Both frameworks are ultimately based on analysis of heuristics researchers have used, rather than directly investigating these heuristics' efficacy, however.

Others have questioned whether the search for such heuristics is a good idea in the first place. For example, a critique of research heuristics in a related field leveled by Anderson, De Dreu and Nijstad (2004) is the dilemma that **research heuristics may "routizine" research**. This is a possible problem, and they also report evidence for "a heavy focus on replication–extension, cross-sectional designs, and a single level of analysis in innovation research." However, **it is not clear that this routinization caused by research heuristics**.

## Evidence

Unfortunately, the neglect of hypothesis generation in scientific training is reflected in the empirical literature, if not the theoretical literature. **There are no or very limited empirical research programmes or frameworks directly investigating the relative or absolute efficacy of different research heuristics or approaches**, even in terms of relatively obtainable measures like impact factor or publication rate. Therefore, although I subjectively find them helpful, **we ultimately cannot say with confidence whether or which of any of McGuire's (or others') heuristics are effective for formulating good questions and problems or not**.

# References

* Anderson, N., De Dreu, C. K. W. and Nijstad, B. A. (2004), The routinization of innovation research: a constructively critical review of the state-of-the-science. J. Organiz. Behav., 25: 147–173. doi: 10.1002/job.236
* Lubart, T. I. and Getz, I. (1998), The Influence of Heuristics on Psychological Science: A Case Study of Research on Creativity. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 28: 435–457. doi: 10.1111/1468-5914.00083
* McGuire, W. J. (1997). Creative hypothesis generating in psychology: Some useful heuristics. Annual review of psychology, 48(1), 1-30.

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Tags: reference-request, methodology, problem-solving, ideation, creativity
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# Question
Title: Do the motivations and fears behind Enneagram have any scientific reasoning?
**Background**

The Enneagram personality typing system defines set of motivations and basic fears for its nine personality types among people.

The system seems to be aimed at personal development of a person, and uses various approaches for the same (like one type integrating into other - which is essentially the person overcoming their basic fears using their motivations in a different manner etc.). For more info regarding the system, look here.

A large part of this system seems spiritual and based on very strange assumptions, but equally strangely - I don't know why or how - many people identify themselves with these basic motivations and fears in a way that doesn't seem like Forer effect - at least to me. The system is flexible enough that a person can identify his/her motivations towards one type and to some extent towards another type.

**Questions**

* Are the motivations and fears for people listed in Enneagram typing system discussed in any other scientific theory about motivations among people?
* There doesn't seem to be much of Forer effect taking place because people seem to identify themselves and *"grow into other types"*. If we assume people are basically overcoming their fears doing so, what is the scientific term/explanation for such a process?
* Provided we have a flexible system here, people may *develop* in a more complex manner than by just overcoming their basic fears while integrating/dis-integrating into other type. What are people doing to themselves doing so?

# Answer
**The Enneagram model of personality (Riso and Hudson, 1999) has limited and mixed scientific evidence supporting it.** One of the few studies reporting on the model's validity (Newgent et al., 2004) concluded the following in their abstract.

> Results of 287 participants were analyzed. Alpha suggests an adequate degree of internal consistency. **Evidence provides mixed support for construct validity using correlational and canonical analyses but strong support for heuristic value.**

Newgent et al. (2004)'s interpretation is consistent with my own reading of the limited Enneagram validation literature that exists. However, other validation studies *do* report their results in more unequivocally positive terms.

One such study claimed that they distinguished Enneagram types using a unique pattern of traits, values and implicit motives, thereby demonstrating that the Enneagram typology provides a way of describing the "whole person" (Sutton, Allinson and Williams, 2013). Another claimed that the enneagram typology appears to have diagnostic, prognostic, and heuristic value for the study of personality structure and dynamics (Wagner and Walker, 1983).

These claims are based on simple statistically significant relationships, however, which is frankly speaking more consistent with the interpretation of Newgent et al. (2004).

## References

* Newgent, R.A., Parr, P.E., Newman, I. & Higgins, K.K. (2004). The Riso-Hudson Enneagram type indicator: Estimates of reliability and validity. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 36, pp. 226–237.
* Riso, D. R., & Hudson, R. (1999). The Riso-Hudson Enneagram type indicator. New York: The Enneagram Institute.
* Sutton, A., Allinson, C., Williams, H. (2013). Personality type and work-related outcomes: An exploratory application of the Enneagram model, European Management Journal, Volume 31, Issue 3, June 2013, pp. 234-249, ISSN 0263-2373. doi: 10.1016/j.emj.2012.12.004.
* Wagner, J. P. and Walker, R. E. (1983), Reliability and validity study of a Sufi personality typology: The enneagram. J. Clin. Psychol., 39: 712–717.
> 3 votes

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Tags: measurement, personality, terminology, motivation, validation
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