# Question
Title: Why doesn't psychology impose higher standards to solve its replication crisis?
This question is inspired by a previous one on Physics.SE. If we believe the answer to that question, particle physics doesn't suffer nearly as much from the reproducibility crisis because it has much higher standards than the social sciences.

> The 'replication crisis' is that many effects in social sciences (and, although to a lesser extent, other scientific fields) couldn't be reproduced.
>
> ...
>
> If anything, there is a suspicion that the practices at the LHC might even result in the opposite of the 'replication crisis;' analyses that find effects that are somewhat significant might be examined and tweaked until they decrease.

But if that answer is true, that suggests a simple way to solve the reproducibility crisis in fields like psychology: just impose higher standards.

Question: *why hasn't psychology (and other fields as a whole) done that? Or is that answer misrepresenting what psychologists already do?*

# Answer
> 4 votes
**High standards are being proposed, but not taken up very quickly.**

Psychology is currently undergoing a transition in methods between the traditional approach of hypothesizing after results are known (e.g., Bem, 1980) and new statistical and design methods that have fewer false positives, such as focusing on effect sizes and confidence intervals over significance, pre-registration, Registered Reports, sharing of code and data, replication, meta-analysis, multi-site replication such as the Psychological Accelerator and Many Labs, error detection tools, etc. Note that even if these techniques are demonstrably superior for inference quality, their uptake within the discipline and coverage in undergraduate and graduate coursework depends on current faculty changing their beliefs and practices. Historically in science, this is a slow and fraught process (Kuhn, 1962); sometimes fields have had to wait for faculty to die before new methods can take full root. It doesn't look like it will take that long, but I mention this to highlight the difference between superior methods existing and whether they are implemented within a field. Psychology is currently undergoing something of a struggle between reformers and supporters of the status quo.

@Chris Rogers makes another good point that measurement of psychological constructs such as motivation is necessarily indirect, and people are exceptionally variable by context, making the design of measures more contextual than in physics. The lack of stable evidence is not an indication of standards alone.

# Answer
> 2 votes
## The basis of your question

> ..particle physics doesn't suffer nearly as much from the reproducibility crisis because it has much higher standards than the social sciences

You said this in response to innisfree (2019)

> The 'replication crisis' is that many effects in social sciences (and, although to a lesser extent, other scientific fields) couldn't be reproduced. There are many factors leading to this phenomenon, including
>
> * Weak standards of evidence, e.g., $2\sigma$ evidence required to demonstrate an effect
> * Researchers (subconsciously or otherwise) conducting bad scientific practice by selectively reporting and publishing significant results. E.g. considering many different effects until they find a significant effect or collecting data until they find a significant effect.
> * Poor training in statistical methods.

You need to bear in mind, that what innesfree said is only part of many different **possible** reasons, which also doesn't really go in depth into the reasons. Saying that social sciences has much lower standards required to demonstrate an effect can be seen as inflammatory remarks which has no real merit due to the complexity of the situation.

## The short answer

The final part of your question:

> why hasn't psychology (and other fields as a whole) done that? Or is that answer misrepresenting what psychologists already do?

Makes your question a great (unbiased) question, and in a sense, that answer is misrepresenting what psychologists already do ... **in most cases** ... but then, there are arguments which **could** be made for those other situations.

## Psychology and the Replication Crisis

As I pointed out in the comments, there is a lot of debate, even within the field of social sciences, on what is pseudoscience within the social sciences and as you can see within the meta site, whilst I am a defender of Freudian and Neo-Freudian psychology, these areas of psychology, along with a few others are considered by some here to be pseudoscientific.

You can read those links to the meta site for more on that, but it is the replication crisis which underpins the debate and what is considered to be scientific within research and results, and what is pseudoscience.

The basis of the replication crisis is that:

> for anything to be considered scientific (not pseudoscience), experimental results should be reproducible and verified by other researchers

Henriques (2016) points out that

> psychology was defined by the application of scientific method(s) and psychologists conduct valuable research and have developed some key insights into animal behavior, cognition, consciousness, and the human condition.

The demarcation between what is science and what is pseudoscience within social sciences has been debated in many books and an attempt to create a solid demarcation has been put forward by Sven Ove Hansson (1996; 2008; 2013)

## Where does the problem lie?

As @StevenJeuris pointed out in the comments,

> The more 'high-level' observations are performed, the more room there is for noise, variance in data, and the need for subjective interpretations in the process.

'High level' cognitive functions (Driver, et al. 2007) (e.g. memory, awareness, thoughts, emotions, attention, executive function...) in humans cannot be physically recorded and measured, and therefore they can only be measured and recorded subjectively.

## How does this pose a problem?

Where there is no point of reference, either you need a very large group of people who fit a specified criteria in order to assess statistically how predominant certain traits are evident, or you start by assessing a few people (or maybe even one person) with a view to encouraging more research.

This could be seen when looking at Erikson’s Life Stages of Development (Erikson & Erikson, 1998) — also discussed in my answer to What happens to someone missing teenage years of development?.

Erik Erikson’s 8 life stages of man, originally put together in 1950 in his book *Childhood and Society*, was delevoped based on his own experiences of life. A 9th stage was added in 1998 as the Eriksons came to believe that,

> the role of old age needs to be reobserved, rethought (Erikson & Erikson, 1998: p. 62).

You could say that this theory on the stages of development is pseudoscientific, but without a better frame of reference, Erikson provided the best he could for the time being.

Where subjective measurement can also pose major problems is highlighted in Forde (2017). When you are trying to profile and treat for recidivism amongst sexual offenders, you can only rely on subjective observations. What Forde pointed out is that in this area of psychology within the prison system, psychologists are relying on questionnaires along with the psychologist's opinion on what is required, and he highlighted areas in which this can pose big problems, and why.

## How are standards kept as high as possible?

The debate as it stands is the attempt by all social scientists to ensure the best methods of observation can be maintained. Where deficiencies are highlighted, it is the social scientists' duty to ensure that those deficiencies do not affect their work, and where more research is needed, they attempt to conduct the necessary research to correct those deficiencies where possible.

The thing is that you need to remember that what fits one person, may not fit all people, as everyone is different in their own right. Each and every person will have been subjected to different internal and external influences. Without objective measurement techniques, there is no other way of scientifically coming to an agreement on what occurs and how within the high level cognitive functions.

So going back to the crux of your question,

> Does particle physics have much higher standards than the social sciences?

That is open to opinion, but based on the evidence I have put forward, the standards are as high as possible to date within the social sciences, and they are under constant review.

## References

Driver, J., Haggard, P., & Shallice, T. (2007). Introduction. Mental processes in the human brain. *Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 362*(1481), 757-760. doi:10.1098/rstb.2007.2085 pubmed: PMC2042528

Erikson, E. H. & Erikson, J. M. (1998). *The Life Cycle Completed*. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.

Forde, R. A. (2017). *Bad Psychology: How Forensic Psychology Left Science Behind*. London, UK: Jessica Kingsley Publishers

Hansson, S. O. (1996). Defining Pseudoscience. *Philosophia Naturalis, 33*(1): pp. 169—176
Info. at: https://philpapers.org/rec/HANDP

> With the publication of the second issue of the 2013 vintage, *Philosophia Naturalis* has ceased publication.
> Please order the single issue of the printed issue directly from the publisher via e-mail.
> (translated from https://www.klostermann.de/epages/63574303.sf/de\_DE/?ObjectPath=/Shops/63574303/Categories/Zeitschriften/Phil-nat)

Hansson, S. O. (2008) Science and Pseudo-Science. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2017 Edition)
Retrieved from: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2017/entries/pseudo-science

Hansson, S. O. (2013). Defining Pseudoscience and Science. In M. Pigliucci & M. Boudry (Eds.) *Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem*. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Henriques, G. (2016). The “Is Psychology a Science?” Debate. *Psychology Today*
Retrieved from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/theory-knowledge/201601/the-is-psychology-science-debate

innesfree (2019). Answer to: How do we know the LHC results are robust? *Physics StackExchange*
Retrieved from: https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/468900

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Tags: reproducible-research
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title: Handedness bias in Raven's Matrices

text:
# Question
Title: Handedness bias in Raven's Matrices
A few years ago I tried a Raven's Matrices IQ test on the Internet. In every test the bottom right element had to be deduced and this could always be done by scanning the first two rows to determine the pattern. It may also have always have been possible to deduce the solution by scanning the first two columns, although I am not sure that the test designer had this in mind.

It occurred to me that there could be a built-in bias favouring right-handed people or people who first learned to read horizontally from left to right.

It should be fairly simple to devise experiments to test for such bias but an (admittedly rather cursory) Internet search found nothing relevant.

Has there been any such research?

# Answer
> 2 votes
There isn't much of a difference in IQ tests between left and right-handed people. I don't know if this is (more) significant on a sub-test like Raven's.

On the other hand there's some correlation between both handedness and first-language script direction and the phenomenon of mirror writing. So the native script direction may be relevant to a test like Raven's. I don't know if they adjust for it (e.g. by rotating the matrix) when it's "translated" to Hebrew or Japanese.

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Tags: iq, cross-cultural-psychology, writing, handedness
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# Question
Title: What is the evolutionary advantage of being embarrassed?
What I am trying to understand is why do I feel embarrassed in certain situation.

E.g. when I'm talking to people, why do I think about being judged or sounding stupid that would result me in embarrassment. I have been considered as "intelligent" since I was a kid and may be making or looking stupid goes against my own belief of me being 'intelligent'?

Also, when I'm playing a game or playing music, I think about embarrassing myself, making mistakes and think what may the audience/team mates thinking about me? So I avoid it and when I actually get a chance of play, I make mistake and regret/punish myself mentally for making a mistake or regret quite a bit. So, basically, this results me in being low confident.

I'm thinking about "impressing people" and me resulting in an embarrassing situation, acting stupid, sounding stupid would spoil my "impression". However, I want to act stupid or sound stupid sometime and be ok with it. Somehow my biology/mind prevents me every time and I feel the resistance.

So, in search of understanding the reason, I wanted to ask if this has any evolutionary benefit or is it part of natural selection? E.g. having a better chances of survival, when you express less/ be quiet or shy, so that others are not threatened by you?

Can anybody with more knowledge shed some light or possibly guide me to help my situation?

Thanks for reading a long post!

# Answer
Marks and Nesse investigated evolutionary causes of anxiety disorders and reported about embarrassment in particular:

> Social threats evoke responses that promote group acceptance, for example, submission to dominants and to norms of dress, mien, odor, speech, customs, beliefs. **This prevents dangerous extrusion from the group. Mild shyness and embarrassment can promote acceptance.** If shyness and embarrassment are excessive, however, then fitness suffers, as in several anxiety disorders: pervasive shyness in avoidant personality disorder; gaze aversion and fear of scrutiny, of shaking, and of blushing in social 252 I. M. Marks and R. M. Nesse phobia; fear of excreting near others in sphincteric phobias (Marks 1987, pp. 362-371); terror of looking or smelling abnormal in dysmorphopho- bia; fear of behaving antisocially in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Impulses to behave in ways that would cause social rejection may arouse general anxiety without the subject being aware of those punishable impulses, thus helping to conceal them from others (Nesse 1990). We do not emphasize a distinction between fear of specific dangers and anxiety aroused by nonspecific dangers or unconscious impulses, because in all cases the state, whether anxiety or fear, is aroused by a cue that **indicates a threat to reproductive resources.**

*Nesse, Randolph M. "Fear and fitness: An evolutionary analysis of anxiety disorders." Ethology and sociobiology 15.5-6 (1994): 247-261. https://doi.org/10.1016/0162-3095(94)90002-7*
> 5 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, social-psychology, performance, evolutionary-psychology
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# Question
Title: If a two-tailed test shows significance and the mean is higher, can you infer that one condition is significantly higher?
Condition A has M=5, SD=1
Condition B has M=10, SD=1

If a two-tailed test gives p\<.05, can you infer that Condition B was *significantly higher* than Condition A without conducting a one-tailed test?

# Answer
> 3 votes
Yes.

A two-tailed test simply corrects for the appropriate probability of observing a difference as large as you observe given the null hypothesis is true. This probability is twice the one-tailed probability (in effect, a two-tailed test with alpha=0.05 is the same as two one-tailed tests each with alpha=0.025). You do not need a one-tailed test to infer the direction. If there is a significant difference with a two-tailed test, it clearly must be in the direction of the observed difference.

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Tags: statistics
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# Question
Title: Why could too much BDNF be detrimental in terms of depression and memory?
I am interested in looking at the effects of too much BDNF and other proteins such as repressor element one silencing transcription factor (REST). Most research suggest that elevated levels are protective, however there is a small amount of research suggesting that too much (over expression) may actually be detrimental (Cunha, et al. 2009).

> Our results demonstrate that chronic BDNF overexpression in the central nervous system (CNS) causes learning deficits and short-term memory impairments, both in spatial and instrumental learning tasks. This observation suggests that a widespread increase in BDNF in forebrain networks may result in adverse effects on learning and memory formation.

I was wondering if there is any more research, or theories as to why too much of a protein that is considered to be protective could be harmful? Thank you.

## References

Cunha, C., et al. (2009) Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) overexpression in the forebrain results in learning and memory impairments. *Neurobiology of Disease*, 33(3), pp. 358—368
DOI: 10.1016/j.nbd.2008.11.004

# Answer
This is a fairly open-ended question... One example of the potentially negative consequences of overexpressed BDNF is its effect on the likelihood and frequency of epileptic seizures.

I guess the short version of this effect is that BDNF appears to promote neuronal growth, including neurogenesis, axonal and synaptic sprouting, and neuronal excitation, in exactly the areas of the brain that are associated with epilepsy. Epileptic seizures are essentially hyper-excitations of neurons, so any factor that increases the excitability of neurons in brain areas associated with seizures can be a culprit.

A good, fairly recent, and open access review of the role of BDNF and its primary receptor TrkB in epilepsy is McNamara & Scharfman (2012):

> Intrahippocampal infusion of BDNF and transgenic overexpression of BDNF or TrkB increase seizure susceptibility or severity. Conditional knockout of TrkB eliminated epileptogenesis altogether in the kindling model.

That is, in epileptic mice, adding BDNF increased seizure frequency, and removing it eliminated seizures entirely. The authors suggest several mechanisms by which this might happen:

> ... long-term potentiation (LTP) of excitatory synapses between principal cells may contribute to limbic epileptogenesis; that is, potentiation of these synapses may facilitate propagation of seizure activity through synaptically-coupled neuronal populations throughout the limbic system and beyond.
>
> One interesting possibility is that enhanced TrkB activation reduces expression of the K-Cl cotransporter, KCC2, ... an important molecular and cellular mechanism contributing to limbic epilepsy.
>
> The effect of estrogen on NPY levels could be mediated by BDNF, because BDNF induces NPY synthesis following TrkB activation

In other words, (1) BDNF-induced LTP \- the mechanism that underlies memory and learning - increases the excitability of neurons, potentially causing seizures; (2) BDNF may inhibit KCC2, itself a synpatic inhibitor, again increasing the excitability of neurons; and (3) hormone-induced BDNF may moderate neuron hyper-excitability through its effect on yet another protein, the neurotransmitter NPY.

Another recent review, though not open access, is Iughetti et al (2018). Similar to the previous review:

> ... BDNF has excitatory effects in neuronal cultures and animal brain slices. Furthermore, both BDNF and its conjugated receptor (... TrkB) are increased in animal models and humans with epilepsy, particularly in the temporal and hippocampal areas. Acute injection of BDNF in brain of mice induces seizures, which are almost or totally abolished \[by\] blocking its transcription and pathway.

The authors also implicate the effects of BDNF on axonal sprouting and neuronal hyper-excitability, KCC2 and NKCC1 downregulation, and NPY synthesis on seizure likelihood and frequency.

Neurochemistry is complex and not well understood, and there is indication that BDNF can also have protective properties against epilepsy under certain conditions (eg, long-term in low doses). Lots more detail is available in the reviews cited.
> 3 votes

# Answer
Because the too high expression will cause to lose specificity in the process of neural plasticity because it would make synapses too easy to make. Synapses that didn't should be made. The trkb receptor will exist in lower ammounts too, it is a protective mechanism, I think. The last thing that I can think it is the too easy LTP, that is stimulated by BDNF itself by interaction of TRKB with NA+ pumps
> -1 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, cognitive-neuroscience, memory, depression
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# Question
Title: Assuming a neuron does not reach activation, what is the rate of repolarization in the absence of new stimulus?
How long does it take for a neuron to return to it's resting state, due to absence of further stimulus?

# Answer
> 2 votes
Neurons (either the neuron as a whole, or segments such as a length of dendrite) can be modeled as an RC circuit. This is because the membrane acts as both a resistor and capacitor.

RC circuits have a time constant tau, equal to R * C. This time constant describes how long it takes to passively discharge the membrane capacitor.

In the context of neurons, this is referred to as the "membrane time constant" and like other exponential decay constants it refers to the amount of time that passes before the voltage has gone ~63.2% of the way towards rest.

In exponential decay, equilibrium is never truly reached, but after ~2-3 time constants it is likely decayed to within measurement precision given other sources of noise.

To answer your question "how long" the only answer is "it depends" - neurons with different functions have very different time constants. Time constants also aren't perfectly static, because the membrane resistance is not constant due to channels gated by voltage or signalling molecules. Typical values are from milliseconds to tens of milliseconds.

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Tags: neuroscience
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# Question
Title: Do men look more similar to each other than women?
Looking at an awards ceremony, I find that all the men look the same to me. Whereas all the women look very "unique". I wonder if this is a psychological thing in which, because I am male, I am less interested in the particular characteristics of males than females.

It makes me wonder do females think most men look the same? In Western society it is usuall the men who do the chasing so it would make sense for women to at least appear to be distinct?

I suspect men's uniqueness might present itself more in facial hair which because mostly it's socially accceptable to be clean shaven then the uniqueness doesn't come through.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Any apparent difference between sexes probably has more to due with the perspective of the viewer than the physiological characteristics of the group. Males and females are both highly diverse in appearance. The particular balance of physiological diversity among a population will depend on the ethnic balance, cultural norms (e.g., having facial or head hair at a certain length), dress, etc.

People recognise different members of their own race more easily than of other races (well-established effect): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-race\_effect

Finally, there's limited evidence suggesting an own-gender effect as well, potentially driven by how people see hair: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691803000520?via%3Dihub (Wright et al., 2003, 'An own gender bias and the importance of hair in face recognition').

In sum: this is probably in the eye of the beholder.

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Tags: sexuality
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# Question
Title: Possible applications of the big five personality traits testing in human resource departments
I am a multimedia artist who is interning in a human resources department of a casino resort. In the department we have daily meetings to discuss updates to both the orientation and the performance of the casino's employees.

During the discussion I had an idea on maybe using psychometric ( big 5 ) testing for either helping in filtering out unfit candidates for certain positions or/and allocation of time or resources to certain to certain people or group's of people to help them in certain ways or identify problems as to improve the effectiveness of the staff.

My questions are;

1: Can it be used in this way, or what other ways can HR use it?

2: How to go about using it?

3: Will it be effective?

4: Does there exists other companies that use psychometric testing or big 5 for there employees?

# Answer
Personality testing of (potential) employees is big business, according to the BBC:

> A 2014 survey of global HR professionals by CEB, one of the largest providers of online talent tests, indicated that 62% of respondents used some sort of personality test pre-hire. Thirty percent indicated that personality assessments would be used to identify high potential talent in the future. By contrast, a 2001 survey of managers from the American Management Association found that 29% of employers used a psychological measurement or assessment.

Supposedly up to 10 years ago, personality testing was mostly used to improve employee retention, rather than predict performance:

> The most prevalent reason given for using personality testing was their contribution to improving employee fit and reducing turnover by rates as much as 20% (Geller, 2004), 30% (Berta, 2005), 40% (Daniel, 2005), and even 70% (Wagner, 2000). It is of considerable interest that evidence for the validity of personality tests for predicting job performance is rarely cited (see Hoel (2004) for a notable exception) by human resource professionals or recruiters.

The BBC cites some anecdotal evidence that personality testing is increasingly being used to predict performance as well.

And it does have some scientific basis. Restricting discussion to Big 5 main factors, from a 2017 review:

> * Conscientiousness is the best personality predictor of job performance and counterproductive behaviors, and it has shown validity generalization across samples, occupations, and countries. Operational validity of conscientiousness was found to be .39 when a quasi-ipsative forced-choice format was used (Salgado, Anderson, & Tauriz, 2015; Salgado & Tauriz, 2014);
> * Emotional stability \[the opposite of neuroticism\] was the second most relevant personality predictor of job performance and counterproductive work behaviors,
> * Conscientiousness, emotional stability, and agreeableness are the most valid predictors of overall counterproductive behaviors, interpersonally oriented counterproductive behaviors, and organizationally oriented counterproductive behaviors (Berry et al., 2007);
> * Conscientiousness, emotional stability, and agreeableness showed incremental validity over GCA \[general cognitive ability = IQ\] for predicting overall job performance (Salgado & De Fruyt, 2006);
> * The format of the personality inventory is an important moderator of the criterion-related validity of the Big Five dimensions, so that the validity increases dramatically when quasi-ipsative forced-choice formats are used (Salgado, Anderson, & Tauriz, 2015; Salgado & Tauriz, 2014);
>
> \[...\]

But sure there are plenty of management/HR fads out there as well in field of personality testing. A widely cited review of Hunter and Schmidt from two decades ago put the validity of personality testing (without much discrimination how it was done) to 0.22, in the context of hiring practices as predictors for job performance.
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, social-psychology, personality, io-psychology, big-five
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# Question
Title: Can the act of studying more be a defense mechanism?
Let's say he/she wants to get good grades because unconsciously he/she is afraid that otherwise a bad future awaits.

My question, is the act of studying more a defense mechanism? If it is, under which category we can classify it?

I thing closest is displacement, but as I understood if you are angry you redirect your anger with displacement. We can substitute other emotion for anger. If it is frustration, frustration needs to be redirected. But the person pushes herself more here so she is not redirecting her frustration(you can always clarify if I understood a concept wrong or send me a resource to clarify, I study by myself I just like learning).

Waiting for you answers! Thank you.

# Answer
Whilst I am a defender of Freudian and Neo-Freudian psychology, please be aware that this covers areas of psychology considered by some here to be pseudoscientific. With that in mind, you are right to question the hyposthesis that any defence mechanism involved would be displacement.

Ego defence mechanisms theorized by Sigmund Freud, could have a role in the situation you are talking about, but they also may not. *Displacement* involves displacing emotions towards an issue onto another issue.

Using a similar scenario to yours for an example, someone who is frustrated with their grades in science education may displace their emotions towards those grades on to their tutor. In this situation, instead of internalizing the issue with themselves not understanding the subject, they blame the tutor for not teaching them properly.

The defence mechanism you are talking about, is loosely connected to *sublimation* (satisfying an impulse - e.g. aggression - with a substitute object). In your scenario, the person is channelling their frustration constructively by trying to improve the situation through more studying.
> 1 votes

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Tags: personality, freud
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# Question
Title: When the DEA says a drug is X times more potent than another, what do they mean?
E.g.

> Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 80-100 times stronger than morphine.

What does that refer to?

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potency\_(pharmacology):

> The IUPHAR has stated that 'potency' is "an imprecise term that should always be further defined", for instance as EC50, IC50, ED50, LD50 and so on.

I guess effective dose is the relevant notion here, but which version does the DEA use ED50, ED95 (does it matter which)?

Presumably they are not talking about receptor affinity which would be mostly irrelevant from DEA's perspective (although the FDA suggests otherwise). The latter ratio between fentanyl and morphine is only 1.35 to 1.14 on the μ-opioid receptor. Even that is not really a good way to compare, because actual measurements of affinity have a large margin of error:

# Answer
At least the 100 number seems based on the CDC parenteral dose conversion:

(Fentanyl has poor oral bioavailability, so it's not intended to be used that way.)
> 2 votes

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Tags: measurement, psychopharmacology
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title: Why do people get "too old to learn"?

text:
# Question
Title: Why do people get "too old to learn"?
This may be a stereotype, but many of us encounter a lot of people who insist that they can't learn a new technology because they're too old. Some of these people can be brilliant learners in their youth - doctors, lawyers, prominent businessmen, academics. It's so common that one benchmark of good web design is whether the 'average grandma' can use it.

A part of this might be from the formation of habits - someone who's used to reading the newspaper for 50 years would have trouble replacing that with online news. Another possibility is that they may feel that they have limited years to live and don't want to spend their limited time learning a new skill, or that they would have a poor ROI on these skills.

But do they actually have more difficulty learning from a physical perspective or is it just psychological?

# Answer
Firstly, the matter of lifestyle is probably a significant factor. Someone who is an alcoholic their whole life and never tries or learns new things is going to have a different outcome that somebody who is still learning new things and exercising and eating healthy.

That being said, lifestyles equal, there's at least two factors in age-associated reduction in memory and learning. Firstly, just like hips and shoulders start falling apart, so does the brain (characterized by morphological abnormalities and synapse loss). Organisms are very complex machines and lots of the equipment is gradually failing throughout our life. Dementia is a typical result of age-induced wear and tear on the brain.

The other is reduced plasticity. We start off with a very plastic brain, which allows us to learn our environment. However, part of the process of learning is to stabilize our learning circuits so that they can't be changed again (i.e. you want memories to stay as robust as possible). Our whole brain goes through series of this stabilization. At 4-5 years, pruning removes "unused circuitry", greatly reducing plasticity. In the early 20's, our frontal lobes finalize and myelinate (and this is thought by some to pertain to why people start practicing better judgment at this point).
> 6 votes

# Answer
## It's better that way

Disregarding *how* this is implemented biologically, the answer to *why* is because it provides optimal results.

In learning systems where you are able to freely adjust the ability to learn - e.g., AI research 'reinforcement learning' paradigm, there is a tradeoff commonly called Exploration vs Exploitation - i.e., should the agent focus on gaining new experiences by trying out new solutions that might be worse or better (but you don't know), or should it do things in the way that it believes to be best, and ignore the other options. Quite intuitively, you do get the best results by focusing on exploration early-on when you have little knowledge, and avoiding exploration after you have 'sufficient' amount of experience.

Similarly, in learning systems which "passively" receive new knowledge, there is a balance decision - how much should you alter your beliefs after seeing new evidence. If a two year old kid saw a flying man, it'd make sense to believe that men could fly - after all, two year olds see radically new phenomena almost every day, and it is useful to adjust their beliefs to note "ok, X is working that way, and Y always happens before Z" - even if they'd just seen it a single time. However, if a sixty year old saw a flying man, it'd instead make sense to look for wires and a movie camera crew. Similarly, in machine learning systems it is optimal to slow down belief adjustment(=learning) with time - as you've accumulated a larger baggage of earlier evidence, the newer evidence is comparatively much less important.

Now, going back to people - as per the above examples, in any learning system, you get the best results by slowing down your learning rate with time. Learning is a very useful capability for survival&reproduction; doing learning *properly* is a competitive advantage in natural selection.

So there is evolutionary pressure to do it this way - it should be expected that all animals, including us, would have evolved some biological way to adjust their learning so that it slows down with age. Animals would experiment and learn during adolescence, and afterwards mostly stick to the already formed habits. Changing neuronal plasticity is one way to implement this, there may be others.

Of course, it may be that it's no longer optimal given the radical change in our lifespan - if you live twice longer, then it'd be useful to learn twice longer as well - but it's originally implemented because it is (was?) actually an advantage to have it that way.
> 3 votes

# Answer
I think that people don't get too old to learn and some people can gain an understanding of all kinds of stuff in older age. I realize that sometimes somebody has touble learning something when they're older but that does't mean older people can never learn anything. Also, sometimes somebody may claim that somebody else didn't learn because they disagree with them on how to do things. Just becase somebody doesn't agree with somebody else on how to do things doesn't always mean they don't have an understanding of the other person's way of thinking.
> 1 votes

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Tags: learning, aging
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# Question
Title: CBT approach and why we generate unrealistic thoughts
On reading about Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT) I encounter

> But, if you feel sad after a friend cancels your lunch plans and you begin to think there’s obviously something seriously wrong with you and no one likes you, this is problematic because this thought is extreme and not based on reality.

This makes sense because concluding that none likes you from canceling lunch is overestimation.

But my question is different: how or why are we generating these unrealistic thoughts in the first place? Especially given that after some challenging these thoughts, we can correct them ourselves. So if we can correct them ourselves after challenging them, why do we generate these unrealistic thoughts in the first place, and not the correct ones?

# Answer
> 1 votes
Another way to phrase these questions would be:

In the broadest terms, the answer is that we evolved to have these mental characteristics because they probably gave our ancestors a survival and/or reproductive edge over their contemporaries. In the past, humans needed to be socially accepted in a small tribe; exclusion meant actual death as it was too hard to survive alone. Hence, we evolved to be hyper-sensitive to signs of social exclusion.

Your final question might be:

* How come we can't control our feelings with our thoughts?

See the first point above. It didn't help us survive to be calm and at peace.

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Tags: psychology, thought, cbt
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# Question
Title: What is the distinction between "relationship" and "difference" in behavioural statistics?
Quoting \[emphasis added\] from D.C. Howell's (2012) *Statistical Methods for Psychology*, chapter 9 (*Correlation and Regression)*, Pg 252:

> Although you should not make too much of the distinction between **relationships** and **differences** (if treatments have different means, then means are related to treatments), the distinction is useful in terms of the interests of the experimenter and the structure of the experiment. When we are concerned with **differences between means**, the experiment usually consists of a few quantitative or qualitative levels of the independent variable (e.g., Treatment A and Treatment B) and the experimenter is interested in showing that the **dependent variable** **differs from one treatment to another**. When we are concerned with **relationships**, however, the independent variable (X) usually has many quantitative levels and the experimenter is interested in showing that the **dependent variable is some function of the independent variable.**

My question is: What is the distinction between a mere difference of the dependent variable (DV) from one one level to another, and the DV as a function of the independent variable (IV)? In other words, the distinction that Howell explains in the quoted text is unclear to me.

# Answer
Howell is just making a distinction between types of independent variables (predictors in a regression context): continuous variables versus categorical ones.

In the case of categorical variables, like "Treatment A" and "Treatment B", your regression equation will contain variables that contrast between Treatment A and Treatment B - often this is by "dummy coding" where we consider Treatment A as "0" and Treatment B as "1" though there are other schemes as well. In a two-treatment case, you can consider the coefficient for Treatment to be a *difference between A and B*. You are likely to plot these sort of data in a box-and-whisker plot (or a bar graph like the infamous 'dynamite plot' that many statisticians abhor) where you have distinct categories on the X-axis and your dependent variable on the Y-axis. You are likely to do statistical inference to determine whether the outcomes for Treatment A are "significantly different" from outcomes for Treatment B.

In the case of a continuous variable, for example, blood pressure, now your regression coefficient for blood pressure is interpreted in terms of *units of change in your dependent variable per each unit of difference in your predictor* \- in this case you are looking at a relationship. For a single linear predictor you are likely to discuss this relationship in terms of a correlation coefficient. You would often plot these sort of data as a scatter plot, with your predictor variable on the X-axis and your outcome variable on the Y-axis, often with a line depicting some sort of fit between the two variables. You are likely to do statistical inference on whether your predictor is significantly related to your outcome variable: that is, whether knowing your predictor gives you better than chance information about the outcome.

From the perspective of linear regression, however, these two types of predictor variables are really not all that different, and it is quite straightforward to combine them in the context of multivariate regression.
> 1 votes

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Tags: measurement, statistics
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# Question
Title: Easy-to-use simulations of human behavior
I'm interested in simulations of human behavior.

Nicky Case has done some really good ones:

https://ncase.me/trust/ \- A simulation of repeated prisoner's dilemma under different scenarios, showing how trust can be built and destroyed between people.

https://ncase.me/crowds/ \- A simulation of memes spreading in a society, and how the relations between people affect whether a meme will spread or not.

I like the fact that they are easy for people to interact with, and you can learn how things that we accept just happen in society are shown to be emergent phenomena that are the result of simple behavior.

My question: **Do you know of more sources of simulations like these that you can share?** I'm especially interested in simulations of people's emotional connections with each other, and group dynamics.

# Answer
> 3 votes
Nicky Case is a tough act to follow, but there are a lot of simulations available for a variety of different theories in social psychology and behavioural economics. As such, I won't try to list them all, but provide a "list of lists" that should help you to find more.

The above lists are all free; the catalogue would be much larger if you add paid services such as classroom education software.

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Tags: emotion, sociology, trust
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# Question
Title: Why do people want to harm those who harmed them?
Several social psychologists try to explain the science behind revenge.

For example, Ian McKee of Adelaide University in Australia writes in Social Justice Research (Vol. 138, No. 2), linking vengeful tendencies primarily with two social attitudes: right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance.

Popular social psychologist Dan Arieli in *The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home* (New York: Harper Collins, 2010) suggests that revenge has a biological basis and feels pleasurable.

I am looking for new research explaining this topic.

# Answer
> 2 votes
There are at least two additional domains you can investigate.

*The first is **reciprocity** as a means towards justice.* In The Fourth Arm of Justice: The Art and Science of Revenge (1997), Judi Parks looks at this from the perspective an employee, but cites Susan Jacoby's report on the survivors of the Majdanek concentration camp in her 1983 Wild justice: The evolution of revenge:

> A desire for retribution does not require rationalization. "A victim wants to see an assailant punished not only for reasons of pragmatic deterrence but also as a means to repairing a damaged sense of civic order and personal identity. Deterrence and retribution are hardly identical, but the former invariably involves an element of the latter.

A more recent book that explores this dimension is Payback: Why We Retaliate, Redirect Aggression, and Take Revenge (Barash & Lipton, 2011).

Since deterrence is quite salient in game theory, this aspect shows up there, too. See, for example, The Paradox of Revenge in Conflicts (Amegashie & Runkel, 2012).

*The second is **identity** theory.* An example in “If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” Social identity salience moderates support for retaliation in response to collective threat (Fischer, Haslam, & Smith, 2010)):

> Specifically, we found that a threat to national identity (the 7/7/2005 London bombings) led to greater aggression and greater support for revenge when national rather than gender identity was salient. In contrast, a threat to gender identity (Taliban misogyny) led to greater aggression and greater support for revenge when gender rather than national identity was salient.

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Tags: social-psychology
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# Question
Title: What sources of randomness does the brain use for sampling?
As an applied mathematician, I have a growing interest in the mechanisms for uncertainty representation and computation in the human brain. In fact, I recently compiled a list of papers on this subject. But, so far I haven't found many papers which answer a fundamental sub-question:

> What sources of randomness does the brain use for sampling?

Dan Goodman, a neuroscientist, suggested that I have a look into neuronal noise. The neuronal variability perspective is quite popular among computational neuroscientists and 'Bayesian inference with probabilistic population codes'(2006) is an example of a publication which demonstrates its use:

> At first sight, it would seem that the high variability in the responses of cortical neurons would make it difficult to implement such optimal statistical inference in cortical circuits. We argue that, in fact, this variability implies that populations of neurons automatically represent probability distributions over the stimulus, a type of code we call probabilistic population codes. Moreover, we demonstrate that the Poissonlike variability observed in cortex reduces a broad class of Bayesian inference to simple linear combinations of populations of neural activity. These results hold for arbitrary probability distributions over the stimulus, for tuning curves of arbitrary shape and for realistic neuronal variability.

However, a recent paper published in 2018 \[3\] presents compelling counter-arguments against the utility of neuronal noise for sampling in the brain.

In particular, the authors make the following case in their abstract:

> Since the precise statistical properties of neural activity are important in this context, many models assume an ad-hoc source of well-behaved, explicit noise, either on the input or on the output side of single neuron dynamics, most often assuming an independent Poisson process in either case. However, these assumptions are somewhat problematic: neighboring neurons tend to share receptive fields, rendering both their input and their output correlated; at the same time, neurons are known to behave largely deterministically, as a function of their membrane potential and conductance.

While I find the arguments in \[3\] compelling due to their fundamental nature, this makes me wonder whether there are other fundamental contributions to this problem that I ignore.

**Note:** Cian O'Donnell recently shared his PhD thesis with me on Twitter \[4\]. The neural noise vs. no neural noise variant of this question is still very much an open problem.

## References:

1. Wei Ji Ma, J. Beck, P. Latham & A. Pouget. Bayesian inference with probabilistic population codes. Nature Neuroscience. 2006.
2. Andre Longtin. Neuronal noise. Scholarpedia. 2013.
3. D. Dold et al. Stochasticity from function - why the Bayesian brain may need no noise. Arxiv. 2018.
4. R. Cannon , C. O'Donnell , M. Nolan . Stochastic Ion Channel Gating in Dendritic Neurons: Morphology Dependence and Probabilistic Synaptic Activation of Dendritic Spikes. PLOS. 2010.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Not sure if I am getting your question right. You are asking for noise that has an inherently information processing function? I would add an other aspect of noises

## Noise as an emerging property

1. On a **large scale**, when massive amounts of neurons are synchronising, then you can detect Noise with Electrodes, like in the case of EEG. EEG follows an 1/f² or 1/f³ law (brownian noise, red noise, pink noise, depending on the literature). This principle can be found anywhere in the world. It states that higher frequencies / faster oscillating signals have increasingly smaller amplitudes, similar to smaller and larger waves on the sea and so on. *In this case is noise a byproduct of other (stochastic) processes.*
2. On a **small scale**, which would probably be something you would measure by using 'clamping'-technique on single neurons. The firing rate of a neuron (a neuron chemically charging, until it reaches a threshold, which turns into a all-or-nothing case) also follows some 'systematic randomness' on which probabilistic, stochastic and noisy properties might be useful to describe these processes. *In this case is noise a property that emerges from natural stochastic single-neuron firing processes.*

Noise emerging from signals related to certain **anatomic sources**

3. In how far I remember (I do not have a good resource on that) the **hippocampus**, which is highly relevant for memories, has a strong randomization aspect inherently in its functioning. *This might be my closest guess to your question?!*
4. Another very distinct **'stochastic' process created by the Thalamus**, a largely dominant, pace-giving rhythm within the brain.

Ressource: Buszaki Rhythms of the Brain is a nice read on various of these topics

## On noise as an error process

Maybe I got your question a little wrong, but thinking of the brain that in the run of evolution turned out to be highly efficient and energy saving, does not want to have any noise that does not fulfill any purpose. (But as I understand, your question was related to the functional aspect of noise.)

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Tags: neuroscience, theoretical-neuroscience, computational-modeling
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# Question
Title: What information does the connectome actually contain?
I am not a brain scientist but the following question seems reasonable to me.

Prof. Sebastian Seung has given a TED talk named "I Am My Connectome". If I understand correctly, connectome is basically the graph whose vertices are neurons and whose edges are synapses (strictly speaking, there are many different kinds of neurons so the vertices of the graph should be colored, but let us forget it for now).

The title then appears to be a (probably intentional) oversimplification, since even though we do not understand how exactly memories are stored in the brain (and there are many different kinds of memories), things I will roughy call "electrical and chemical variables" play some role in it (so simply remembering whether there is a link or not between two neurons is not going to fly). I understand that studying these "electrical and chemical variables" is like over a half of the brain science but the exact definition is not particularly important for this question. If my understanding is correct, then one should not get overly excited about the present achievements of the Brain Preservation Foundation (the most promising one is, I think, preserving the connectome of a mammal for some time after its death using a chemical solution/freezing), since they have not shown that they can preserve any of the "electrical and chemical variables".

The question is: what information can you actually extract out of a connectome, assuming you do not know anything else about the brain? Like something about a person's health, personality, anything? The chance of them having schizophrenia? Their most likely age?

# Answer
> 1 votes
## Well, regarding this short definition of a connectome from Wiki:

> A connectome (/kəˈnɛktoʊm/) is a comprehensive map of neural connections in the brain, and may be thought of as its "wiring diagram". More broadly, a connectome would include the mapping of **all neural connections** within an organism's nervous system.

Therefore **you could read out *all* information, assuming you have enough computational power.** (A perfect connectome would represent all information processes in the brain. Because processing information through connections is all the brain does, right? :D)

In the real world however, we need **'models' as simplifications** to deal with these phenomena. A connectome is nothing else than such a model.

## Influential Factors to consider

1. To **make predictions of real-world constructs, you need to assess real-world phenomena**. F.i. you need to have postulated some outcome-variables (for lets say Schizophrenia) that need to be quantified in the real-world *(external validity)* to be related to inner-brain processes. These real-world concepts of psychological processes, speaking of the behavioral, emotional and cognitive aspects (which can be measured), are inherently fuzzy, which raises the question, to which certainty we will be able to predict psycho-physiological correlates.
2. Not to forget, memories are mainly coded as '**processes over-time**', something like chains of activation (other than distinct anatomy and brain-areas who would define thoughts). Also noisyness and randomness is always a variable you need to consider. (I think the Hippocampus functioning of neurons induces randomness by design, but I have no source right now.)
3. Also to mention: The **individuality of brains** leads to decreased prediction of the model or a general model that would hold for every individual
4. The **plasticity** of the brain states states the ability to change and evolve over time. (Concepts like Imprinting and so on). A static model might also not be sufficient to represent these (also highly individualized) processes.
5. **Situational- or environmental dependency** also influences your current state of mind. (It is not possible to 'control' all environmental factors, unless you had infinite computational power.)
6. Also the brain and **toughts are highly self-/auto-activating, recurring and in parallel**. Millions of neurons firing at the same time and oscillating in rhythms. Thoughts that become conscious might only be the tip of the iceberg in a sea of thoughts that are below a certain threshold.

## My proposal to your question: "What exactly can you get from a connectome?"

*In principle everything is possible, but practically we might never truely decode everything from a philosopical and mathematical point-of-view (we needed to create a perfect connectome, which would be a perfect simulation of the entire brain). We might however be able to find **very accurate brain-markers** that help in **predicting real-world concepts** that seem relevant for humans* :)

## Resources

Because it is great: Video of synchronizing fireflies

Buszaki: Rhythms of the Brain is a nice read on some how information is created in the brain and different processes

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Tags: neuroscience, memory, brain
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# Question
Title: What are effective methods to overcome the initial psychological resistance towards an unpleasant task?
## **Background**

Some self-help books note the difficulty of starting a boring or cognitively-difficult task (relative to maintaining the 'momentum' once the task has been started). Sometimes they describe an analogy to physical systems whereby a certain amount of 'activation energy' needs to be provided in order for a process to start.

## **Examples**

To generate this initial energy, some self-help authors have described simple techniques:

> The moment you feel an instinct or a desire to act on a goal or a commitment, use the Rule. When you feel yourself hesitate before doing something that you know you should do, **count 5-4-3-2-1-GO** and move towards action.

*Robbins, Mel. The 5 Second Rule: Transform Your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage. Simon and Schuster, 2017.*

See also: Is there any direct or indirect empirical support for the effectiveness of Mel Robbins' five second rule?

> **Shrink** your desired hyperfocus period **until you no longer feel resistance** to the ritual. Minimize the amount of time you’ll dedicate to focusing on one task until you no longer feel mental resistance to it. Even setting a mental deadline of five minutes will likely be enough to get you started.

*Bailey, Chris. Hyperfocus: How to Work Less to Achieve More. Macmillan, 2018.*

One could certainly enumerate an endless amount of techniques beyond these. For example, closing the eyes and visualizing oneself of performing the task, or one could pretend with a high degree of conviction that there is an infinitely large payoff for doing the task and an infinitely large penalty for not doing the task. However, it is not clear whether any of these methods would actually be effective.

## **Question**

However, I have not found a single study that evaluated these, or similar, methods (i.e., interventions that increase the probability of people to initialize a psychologically unpleasant task).

**What are effective methods to overcome the initial psychological resistance towards an unpleasant task?**

## **Assumptions and differentiation from related questions**

Kelly McGonigal distinguishes between *I won't* and *I will* willpower (see *The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It (2012, ISBN 978-1583335086)*). The former type of willpower (*I won't*) has been discussed in this Q&A forum previously:

Best meditation techniques to overcome Behavioral Addictions?

Beyond CBT and MBI, what are effective behavioral interventions for modern lifestyle addictions during their engagement?

However, the question here is more in line with the *I will* willpower type.

# Answer
I don't know of evaluations of those types of techniques. To broaden your query slightly, there is strong evidence from social psychology that increasing helpful behaviors and decreasing unhelpful behaviors is more about context than willpower (e.g., see how Nisbett & Ross talk about the power of the situation for behavior: http://faculty.babson.edu/krollag/org\_site/soc\_psych/ross\_pers\_sit.html). So if a person were seeking to initiate difficult behaviors, I would first modify the context rather than use the tools mentioned. For example, if a person had trouble doing a work task and was using stackexchange as a distraction, they could disable their internet for a period.
> 1 votes

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Tags: motivation, self-control, willpower
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# Question
Title: Gender differences in IQ among undergraduate psychology students
While marking undergraduate coursework relating to gender differences, it occurred to me that there could well be systematic effects of gender on IQ among the undergraduate populations relied on for so much of psychological research.

My impression is that male psychology students, who are in the minority, are likely to be on average more intelligent than female ones, because **(warning, anecdotal evidence, and broad sweeping statements, ahead)**:

* Women tend to study psychology at undergraduate level in the belief that it will involve *understanding* or *helping* people, while men tend to be more interested in psychology as a science. Although women's motivation is probably the more admirable one, men's seems likely to indicate higher general intelligence.
* Despite making up a small minority of undergraduate students, men make up about 50% of psychologists at later stages (PhD onwards), with the possible exception of clinical/educational psychologists.
* Men's IQ's are more variable - there are more male geniuses, but also more men with extremely low IQ's. Since university students will have above average IQs in general, we would expect more men to have extremely high IQs in this sample (for the same reason as we would expect men who don't finish second-level education to have lower IQs on average than women who don't).

However, all this speculation aside, I haven't been able to find any research putting this apparently simple, and possibly very important, for the interpretation of a lot of research, idea to the test.

**Are there any?**

# Answer
I think what happens is that researchers often don't report on - or at least don't highlight - uninteresting results, partly because of the difficulty getting uninteresting results published. So given that gender differences in IQ in general are eliminated for validity, a lack of gender differences in IQ amongst a seemingly arbitrary sub-population such as undergraduate psychology students doesn't seem to merit attention. I similarly wouldn't expect to find a study published about the lack of gender differences in IQ amongst say, red-haired truck drivers with carpal tunnel syndrome. In fact, researchers often highlight the usefulness of psychology students as research subjects for being representative of the general population in many respects, in addition to being convenient to recruit.

On the other hand, as undergraduate psychology students are so often used as subjects in many areas of research, it shouldn't be too difficult to find data that records both IQ and gender, and confirm that it is indeed uninteresting.

Starting in the 1990's, there was a flurry of research based on some *interesting* results - that there are gender differences in estimates of IQ (presumably due to some stereotypes). Although these studies don't specifically focus on gender differences in IQ amongst undergraduate psychology students, some of them do measure and report gender and IQ, and in some cases, the subjects are in fact undergraduate psychology students. Here are some examples:

> ... despite the fact that psychology attaches no significant gender differences to general intelligence, psychology students appeared to believe in the superiority of males.

> Two hundred and forty-five undergraduate psychology students (65% female) participated in the present study for extra course credit. ... The only association with cognitive ability was the small positive correlation between IQ and narcissism.

> A total of 182 undergraduate students from British and American universities participated in this study. ... 49 males and 132 females were included in the statistical analysis ... Students participated in this study as part of two lectures on personality and intelligence assessment ... Correlations between Raven's test scores (Gf), SAI, ... gender and age are presented in Table 1.

(Sex is listed in Table 1 as having a correlation with Gf of -.00.) There are many other similar examples from all over the world.

In some ways, the premise of the question seems odd: In as much as IQ is correlated with academic achievement (and it is, again for validity), it should correlate as much with acceptance to the program as it does with graduation results. Thus, other reasons, such as discrimination or life choices might seem like better explanations. Another possibility to consider is that psychology students are not always enrolled in the psychology program, and might include a disproportionate number of female students early on, who are actually from other programs that list psychology as a requirement, and have a female dominated enrolment throughout (eg, nursing).

However, the question is not entirely baseless. More recent research has started to use alternative measures of intelligence that are not gender-corrected as standard IQ tests are. This research does show gender bias in different sub-types of intelligence, and to some degree, overall intelligence. From a 2011 thesis:

> No uniform agreement exists about male advantage in general intelligence (‘g’) (e.g. Colom & Garcia-Lopez, 2002; Deary et al., 2003; Halpern et al., 2007; Jackson & Rushton, 2006; Lynn, 1999; Spelke, 2005), with historically no sex differences presumed, as evidenced by the development of standardised intelligence tests (e.g. Ackerman, 2006; Wechsler, 1944). Recent investigations have supplied contradicting data, with male advantage reported on various measures of Gf and Gc, such as General Knowledge Test (GKT), Raven’s Standard and Progressive Matrices (SPM) and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) (cf. Lynn, Allik, & Irwing, 2004; Lynn, Irwing, & Cammock, 2001; Lynn, Wilberg, & Margraf-Stiksrud, 2004).

The paper goes on to describe such a study, conducted on 85 undergraduate psychology students, that confirms the gender bias in "g" in that population as well.
> 8 votes

# Answer
One meta-analysis of gender differences in cognitive abilities (verbal ability, quantitative ability, and visual–spatial ability):

> Results indicate that gender differences in all of these abilities were small: For verbal ability, the median ω–2 was .01 and the median d was .24; for quantitative ability, the median values of ω–2 and d were .01 and .43; for visual–spatial ability, they were .043 and .45; and for field articulation, ω–2 was .025 and d was .51

* Hyde, J. S. (1981). How large are cognitive gender differences? A meta-analysis using! w² and d.. American Psychologist, 36(8), 892.

One study completed using Israeli military IQ tests over 8 years found no gender differences in IQ.

> The 1976 to 1984 data allow a comparison of male gains with female gains on both tests of IQ. They are virtually identical.

* Flynn, J. R. (1998). Israeli military IQ tests: Gender differences small; IQ gains large. Journal of Biosocial Science, 30(04), 541-553.

I can find no evidence to suggest that men have a higher IQ and that is why they pursue psychology to a higher level. I can't seem to find any research specifically on male IQ in a female-dominated undergraduate subject such as psychology.

However, In regards to men making up more phd students:

This study is about studying a male-dominated subject at undergraduate level, however could be applied to furthering study from a female dominated (undergrad psychology) into a male dominated (phd psychology) subject:

> First-year and final year female undergraduates in a male-dominated academic area (ie, math, science, or engineering) reported higher levels of discrimination and stereotype threat than those in a female-dominated academic area.

* Steele, J., James, J. B., & Barnett, R. C. (2002). Learning in a Man’S World: Examining the Perceptions of Undergraduate Women in Male‐Dominated Academic Areas. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 26(1), 46-50.

Another study found that women don't choose not to pursue a PhD because their IQ isn't high enough, but rather they may have concerns about flexibility:

> Findings suggest that desire for a flexible job, high time demands of an occupation, and low intrinsic value of physical science were the best predictors of women changing their occupational aspirations out of male dominated fields. These results suggest that despite the women’s movement and more efforts in society to open occupational doors to traditional male-jobs for women, concerns about balancing career and family, together with lower value for science-related domains, continue to steer young women away from occupations in traditionally male-dominated fields, where their abilities and ambitions may lie.

* Frome, P. M., Alfeld, C. J., Eccles, J. S., & Barber, B. L. (2006). Why don't they want a male-dominated job? An investigation of young women who changed their occupational aspirations. Educational Research and Evaluation, 12(4), 359-372.

As you said your assumptions are broad and anecdotal.
> 6 votes

# Answer
When I studied psychology and we learned about IQ tests, the professor had all N = 100 students in the lecture answer a handful of questions from an IQ test (I forget which one). He then quickly calculated the results and found that the average IQ was 120, with men (20% of the subjects) having an IQ that was on average 10 points higher than the average IQ of the women. He said that this was in line with his findings in past years and with published results.

Of course we did not take a whole test and not in a standardized manner (the questions were projected onto the wall and we sat side by side looking over each other's shoulder), but in the absence of better sources I found this an eye opening preliminary result.
> 0 votes

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Tags: intelligence, sex-differences
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# Question
Title: Why do people tend to avoid desperate people?
From my experience,often in social interactions, the person who seems more desperate is the least desirable person to be interacted with. And no one wants to engage them.

More often than not, people seems to avoid desperate people,even when that person needed help most. An example would be a beggar on the street, if group of pedestrian walk by a beggar sitting on the ground, most of us would ignore and continue our journey. (I myself did this before) Even though the beggar might be in a dire situation (i.e Hunger, No Shelter)

Is there psychological theories on this that describe the avoidance or disgust from desperate people?

# Answer
From a personal standpoint I would avoid these people because I expect people to be continually getting such needs met. I would wonder why a person doesn't already have a support network in place and be suspicious of them.

I the situation with the beggar I would think this would link more closely to the **bystander effect** whereby as an individual you feel less inclined and less responsible as there are many other people in the vicinity that could also make a difference.
> 2 votes

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Tags: social-psychology
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# Question
Title: Please recommend a book about codependency that is not in regards to substance abuse
I would like to find a book that would be helpful to a codependent person with the following criteria.

1. The book focuses on relationships with needy people who don't care for themselves, instead of focusing on relationships with substance abusers.
2. The book emphasizes leaving and avoiding these kinds of relationships instead of helping the reader improve these relationships.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Most any book on codependency will mention substance abuse, if for no other reason than the concept began there. Treatment of codependency is about empowering the person who is the caregiver to stop that sort of behavior. The best book I can recommend (I'm a LMHC) is Codependent No More. I would also suggest looking at Attachment Theory, as some researchers believe it can encompass the problems ascribed to codependency in a wider-reaching theoretical approach. To that end you might read Attached.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Maybe check out the work of Pia Mellody. It's nearly impossible to speak about codependency outside of the context of addiction. That being said, Pia comes at codependency from the perspective of trauma and attachment

# Answer
> -4 votes
# This is a non-scientific suggestion

**\[Please be open-minded since we're all just trying to help here\]**

Maybe we can try looking at codependency from a different angle. We are made of the physical body, emotional and spiritual elements.

If *biology* is the **logical** step towards understanding the pathway of the physical body, then *astrology* explains the whole **gravity of your personality**. Not only does it explains who you are, it also explains how you became who you are. One can only heal when there is an awareness of the root of an event. (There are many psychotherapists that are astrologers as well, a faster way to identify the cause of a trauma or event.)

The placements of Neptune and Pluto between two individuals are highly related to codependency and empath/narcissist or victim/saviour relationships. Know your boundaries and make them known, instead quietly resenting yourself for being submissive to the other party.

Healing might take place after reading a book, meeting someone, witnessing an event. What harm does it do to give it a try?

Codepency from an astrological point of view:

1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vaJ2YiuRrQ 2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a93jjY\_Lj3g 3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg\_5xxlhxeM

Astrology book suggestion: Alive and Well with Neptune (Bil Tierney)

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Tags: reference-request, personality
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# Question
Title: Working on one problem opposed to working on mutliple problems when programming
I'm learning programming and I'm now at an advanced stage meaning that I need to solve problems from fields such as dynamic programming, path finding or recursion problems. Depending on the problem I need anywhere from multiple hours to weeks to solve a problem. I often get stuck which seems to be normal from what I have read so far. However sometimes I got stuck and did not code for weeks and then finally was able to solve the problem, even when not thinking about it. I just looked at it from a different angle and was able to solve it. The question is: If I am really stuck, so that I do not code for days to weeks, should I start another problem or should I insist on finding the solution to the problem I'm stuck with. Is there any research pertaining this phenomena?

# Answer
> 1 votes
Interesting queston I am a psychology student who is learning how to code as well. I am often thinking about what are the best strategies to learn. Below I am referencing a research paper that showed that a too rigid mindset impairs performance in general problem solving abilities.

ErEl, H., & Meiran, N. (2017). A drop in performance on a fluid intelligence test due to instructed-rule mindset. Psychological Research, 81(5), 901–909. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-016-0796-8

I am found something similar in my attempts to learn. Sometimes it is useful to take a break to relax your mindset, as it seems that the mind inhibits other solutions, when you are focused on something to exclusively.

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Tags: learning
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title: Is ADHD defined too loosely?

text:
# Question
Title: Is ADHD defined too loosely?
The criteria for the inattention part of ADHD from DSM-5. At least 6 of the behaviours for at least six months .

```
Fails to give close attention to detail, makes careless mistakes
Difficulty sustaining attention
Doesn’t listen when spoken to directly
Doesn’t follow through on instructions, doesn’t finish things
Difficulty organizing tasks/activities
Often avoids, dislikes tasks that require sustained mental effort
Often loses things necessary for tasks/activities
Often easily distracted
forgetful

```

This are supposed to be the criteria for diagnosing somebody with an attention deficit. Almost everybody has this traits to some degree. Are the definitions too loose?

Is there any evidence of training for delayed gratification helping ADHD patients?

# Answer
Snippet from https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/diagnosis.html (emphasis mine):

> DSM-5 Criteria for ADHD
>
> People with ADHD show a persistent pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity–impulsivity that interferes with functioning or development:
>
> Inattention: **Six or more** symptoms of inattention for children up to age 16, or five or more for adolescents 17 and older and adults;
> symptoms of inattention have been present for at least 6 months, and they are inappropriate for developmental level:
> Often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in schoolwork, at work, or with other activities.
> Often has trouble holding attention on tasks or play activities. Often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly.
> Often does not follow through on instructions and fails to finish schoolwork, chores, or duties in the workplace (e.g., loses focus, side-tracked).
> Often has trouble organizing tasks and activities.
> Often avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to do tasks that require mental effort over a long period of time (such as schoolwork or homework).
> Often loses things necessary for tasks and activities (e.g. school materials, pencils, books, tools, wallets, keys, paperwork, eyeglasses, mobile telephones).
> Is often easily distracted
> Is often forgetful in daily activities.
>
> Hyperactivity and Impulsivity: **Six or more** symptoms of hyperactivity-impulsivity for children up to age 16, or five or more for adolescents 17 and older and adults; symptoms of hyperactivity-impulsivity have been present for at least 6 months to an extent that is disruptive and inappropriate for the person’s developmental level:
> Often fidgets with or taps hands or feet, or squirms in seat.
> Often leaves seat in situations when remaining seated is expected.
> Often runs about or climbs in situations where it is not appropriate (adolescents or adults may be limited to feeling restless).
> Often unable to play or take part in leisure activities quietly.
> Is often “on the go” acting as if “driven by a motor”.
> Often talks excessively.
> Often blurts out an answer before a question has been completed.
> Often has trouble waiting his/her turn.
> Often interrupts or intrudes on others (e.g., butts into conversations or games)
>
> **In addition, the following conditions must be met**:
>
> Several inattentive or hyperactive-impulsive symptoms were present before age 12 years.
> Several symptoms are present in two or more setting, (such as at home, school or work; with friends or relatives; in other activities).
> There is clear evidence that the symptoms interfere with, or reduce the quality of, social, school, or work functioning.
> The symptoms are not better explained by another mental disorder (such as a mood disorder, anxiety disorder, dissociative disorder, or
> a personality disorder). The symptoms do not happen only during the
> course of schizophrenia or another psychotic disorder.

The extent and degree of the symptoms matters. For example, some people can have ADHD traits, but an individual with a legitimate psychopathology may have a lifestyle that significantly suffers without treatment. Certain brain volumes are also smaller in ADHD subjects, see

> Early results with structural MRI show **thinning of the cerebral cortex in ADHD subjects compared with age-matched controls in prefrontal cortex and posterior parietal cortex**, areas involved in working memory and attention.

*Malenka RC, Nestler EJ, Hyman SE (2009). "Chapters 10 and 13". In Sydor A, Brown RY (eds.). Molecular Neuropharmacology: A Foundation for Clinical Neuroscience (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Medical. pp. 266, 315, 318–323. ISBN 978-0-07-148127-4.*
> 2 votes

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Tags: adhd, definition
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# Question
Title: How can we get to know about the phobia of walk?
I want to know how to tackle someone suffering from phobia of walk. It sounds weird that anyone can be suffering from the fear of walk

# Answer
> 2 votes
Exposure therapy is the most effective treatment for phobias (it has been found to be more effective than cognitive behavioral therapy, medication, and insight therapy). It's important that the therapist break down the steps into a hierarchy of exposure exercises. Initially one can change various dimensions to be less intense by increasing the proximity to the triggering scenario, decreasing the duration of the exposure, lowering the feared characteristics of the triggering element etc. One can even start with visualizations first (or virtual reality simulations, in some cases).

If the phobia is too strong, one can add coping elements such as a support person, a minor amount of tranquilizer, positive self-talk and/or relaxation techniques during the exposure.

Consistency is key. For more info, see

*Bourne, Edmund J. Overcoming Specific Phobia: A Hierarchy and Exposure-based Protocol for the Treatment of All Specific Phobias: Therapist Protocol. New Harbinger Pubblications, 1998.*

For a patient with a walking phobia the exposure can be gradually increased in intensity by increasing the distance walked (it may initially be virtual or just one single step). To extract further degrees of freedom, it may be necessary to discuss it in more detail with the specific patient.

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Tags: phobia
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