# Question
Title: Is there a difference between hearing and decoding the sound?
I presume that deafness is the inability of hearing any sounds. And I presume that it may also be possible to be less able to decode sounds. In other words, an inability to translate or understand the spoken word into a meaningful message. The inability to understand speech happens a lot to me when people tell me one message and I *decode* it wrongly, understanding a completely different message.

**Is there a discrepancy between *hearing* and *understanding* sound?**

# Answer
**Short answer**

**Yes**, there is a difference between hearing and understanding sound.

**Background**

Acoustic information is processed in different neural centers along the auditory pathway. The auditory system runs from the peripheral end organ in the inner ear (the *cochlea*) to the cortex. Along the way various processing steps are carried out. For example, basic reflex behaviors in response to acoustic stimuli (e.g., startle responses) are processed in subcortical structures (Bocca, 1985), while complex sound perception, such as listening to music, is mediated in the cortex (Philips & Farmer, 1982).

Source: New York University

It is not until the **cortex** that complex sounds such as **speech** are **processed into meaningful information**. **The difference between hearing and understanding** sound is strikingly evident in people with **lesions in the auditory cortex**.

Damage to the auditory cortex can result in an inability to recognize complex sounds and in a loss of speech understanding. These symptoms are referred to as *agnosia* or **cortical deafness** (Rosati, 1982). The loss of speech understanding (**word deafness**) is the most debilitating and therefore most investigated aspect of agnosia (Philips & Farmer, 1982).

However, tone audiograms (i.e., tonal hearing sensitivity) of people with cortical deafness are largely unaffected (i.e., their auditory thresholds are fine) and they may have normal sound-intensity and sound-frequency discriminating abilities as well (Rosati, 1982). Hence, the auditory cortex is thought to fulfill a **synthetic function**, in that it **integrates** complex sounds such as speech in time (Bocca, 1985). Word deafness may therefore be comparable to hearing a strange language, or hearing reversed words being spoken; one can hear it, but not comprehend it (Rosati, 1982).

It has been shown that the **auditory cortex** is crucial in **storing information** as well as processing of sound stimuli with **rapidly changing content** (in the order of milliseconds to tens of milliseconds). A loss of storage capacity and the loss of the ability to analyze rapidly changing acoustic signals are thought to at least partly explain the detrimental effects of auditory cortex lesions on speech understanding and other auditory abilities (Philips & Farmer, 1982).

**References**
**-** Bocca, *The Laryngoscope* 1985;**68**:301-9
**-** Philips & Farmer, *Behav Brain Res* 1990;**40**:85-94
**-** Rosati et al., *J Neurol* 1982;**227**:21-7
> 11 votes

# Answer
It is well documented that people are able to selectively attend to different speakers. The ability to tune-in to a particular speaker and filter out others was dubbed the cocktail party effect, since it is the kind of skill that is required in when trying to have a conversation with another person in a crowded party.

A common way of studying this phenomenon in a laboratory setting is a dichotic listening task. The subject is presented with two auditory stimuli simultaneously, and must respond in some way (such as repeating what was heard) to only one of the stimuli.

In general, people are good at filtering out a particular auditory stimulus, there is some evidence that filtered out information is still being processed. When people hear taboo words in the unattended stimulus, they tend to notice (Straube & Germer, 1979). The same applies for hearing your own name (Moray, 1959).
> 6 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, perception, cognitive-neuroscience, hearing
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# Question
Title: Long term effect of using noise generators
Some people use noise generators as http://playnoise.com/ to reduce distraction by background noise. Is there any research on the long term effects of this? Does this affect the neuronal connections in a known way?

\[I don't know, but I suspect that longer exposure to senseless information (noise) should have an effect on some part of the brain. I am also suspecting that if "low-level senseless information" (i.e. static noise) has an effect, "high-level senseless information" (i.e. random combinations of patterns) could have a similar effect on a deeper cognitive level, but that is wild guessing.\]

# Answer
> 7 votes
**Short answer**

Yes, continuous exposure to white noise affects neural responses in the auditory system. First, it can **alter the tonotopic map** in the auditory cortex. Second, it can lead to **reduced responsiveness** of the auditory thalamus.

**Background**

*Note: this answer is based on animal experiments using extreme conditions, namely a **continuous noise exposure** for at least a month.*

The most striking effect of continuous low-level white noise exposure (30 days) is a dramatic **reorganization of the tonotopic map** in the auditory cortex (Zheng, 2012). Basically, the normally regular distribution of low-to-high frequency representation in auditory cortex was **grossly disorganized** in noise-treated rats. The noise-treated rats performed better on a pitch-discrimination task in noise than non-treated rats. They performed worse in a quiet environment, though. Hence, their auditory system had adapted to the noise and was optimized for noisy environments.

In another study it was shown that **adult rats** exposed to noise (50 days) showed **increased long-term-depression (LTD)** in A1 neurons of the medial-geniculate nucleus (MGN) (Speechley et al., 2007). The MGN is the thalamic processing centre of the auditory pathway (Rees, 2009). Speechley et al. mention the following, and I quote:

> The facilitation of depression observed here \[..\] suggests that in the developed A1 continuous white noise produces general over-excitation of thalamocortical networks, resulting in greater LTD induced by low-frequency inputs to the network.

LTD can be interpreted as a long-term decrease in responsiveness of the auditory system to stimulation. Basically it reacts to the white noise by decreasing its activity. They explain these effects by the fact that white noise can act as a mild stressor, with accompanying changes in neuroendocrine activation and immune function. Stress and related hormonal changes may increase corticosteroid levels that facilitating LTD.

Interestingly, in **newborn rats**, the same treatment resulted in **enhanced long-term potentiation (LTP)** of the MGN. The authors raise the following explanation, and I quote:

> White noise reared animals showed greater levels of LTP relative to rats raised in unaltered auditory environments. Also, stimulation parameters (single 1-Hz pulses) that induced depression in control animals resulted in robust potentiation in white noise-reared rats, indicating that lack of patterned auditory stimulation during early post-natal life results in a preferential readiness of the auditory thalamocortical system for synaptic potentiation over depression.

**References**
Rees, *Encyclopedia of Neurocience* 2009:2275-9
Speechley et al. *Eur J Neurosci* 2007;**26**:2576–84
Zheng, *Front Syst Neurosci* 2012;**6**:1-14

# Answer
> 3 votes
There is some cool evidence (e.g., Canlon et al. 1988) that low level noise exposure can actually protect you against high level noise exposure. That said, I am not sure that one should constantly expose themselves to low level sounds in the hope that it will protect them from high level sounds. Melamed et al. (1996) found that long term exposure to moderate sound levels (85 dB) can increase cortisol levels, fatigue and irritability.

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Tags: neuroscience, perception, sensation, plasticity, hearing
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# Question
Title: What's the difference between injunctive norms and descriptive norms?
I can't seem to understand the difference. From wikipedia

> Injunctive norms involve perceptions of which behaviors are typically approved or disapproved They assist an individual in determining what is acceptable and unacceptable social behavior. This would be the morals of your interpersonal networks and surrounding community . Descriptive norms involve perceptions of which behaviors are typically performed They normally refer to the perception of others' behavior.

# Answer
The distinction stems from research on the "Focus Theory of Normative Conduct" (e.g., Cialdini et al. 1990)

**Injunctive norms** refer to the perception of ***what ought to be***, or as you state, perceptions of what is approved or disapproved by others.

Example: If you think that other people would consider tax fraud as something that is morally wrong, you would perceive an injunctive norm.

**Descriptive norms** refer to the perception of ***what is***. Or, in other words, perceptions about how people do in fact behave.

Example: If you think that most people engage in tax fraud, that would be a descriptive norm.

As you can see, injunctive and descriptive norms are distinct concepts. Sometimes they may overlap (tax fraud is wrong, and nobody does it). However they may also conflict (tax fraud is perceived to be wrong, but everyone does it). Of course they can also be about positive things (it's a good thing to eat 5 portions of veggies each day vs. nobody does that).

**Reference**

Cialdini, R. B., Reno, R. R., & Kallgren, C. A. (1990). A focus theory of normative conduct: Recycling the concept of norms to reduce littering in public places. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 1015–1026. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.58.6.1015
> 3 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, terminology, norms
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# Question
Title: What is the influence of "effort put into pursuing wealth" on happiness?
As presented in the TED talk by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (3:30) repeated research has been unable to show a correlation between happiness and level of material wealth (above a certain minimum threshold).

As a result, a line of reasoning that is often made is:

> "We should stop pursuing more wealth, since attaining it will not make us happier."

While i agree that we can conclude from this research that ***attaining*** more wealth will not make us happier, i don't think we can conclude that the amount of effort we put into ***pursuing*** more wealth has no influence on our happiness.

There is anecdotal material to show that putting less effort into the pursuit of wealth makes you happier, take Zen monks for example, but there are a lot of other factors that could be causing their increase in happiness.

* **What research has examined the merit/effect of detachment from material wealth?**
* **To what extent is pursuing or not pursuing wealth related to happiness?**

EDIT: Happiness, as roughly defined by any of the known measurement methods.

# Answer
In alignment with the question author's commentary refinement, *"It would already be a nice and useful answer if there was -any- clue on -any- type of happiness."*:

# I submit:

Stevenson, Betsey, and Justin Wolfers. "Subjective Well-Being and Income: Is There Any Evidence of Satiation?" American Economic Review 103.3 (2013): 598-604. Web.

Abstract
> Many scholars have argued that once “basic needs” have been met, higher income is no longer associated with higher in subjective well-being. We assess the validity of this claim in comparisons of both rich and poor countries, and also of rich and poor people within a country. Analyzing multiple datasets, multiple definitions of “basic needs” and multiple questions about well-being, we find no support for this claim. The relationship between well-being and income is roughly linear-log and does not diminish as incomes rise. If there is a satiation point, we are yet to reach it.

Summary of findings:
> To preview, we find no evidence of a satiation point. The income–well-being link that one finds when examining only the poor, is similar to that found when examining only the rich. We show that this finding is robust across a variety of datasets, for various measures of subjective well-being, at various thresholds, and that it holds in roughly equal measure when making cross-national comparisons between rich and poor countries as when making comparisons between rich and poor people within a country.

---

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# In contrast...

Diener, Ed, and Biswas-Diener, Robert. "Will Money Increase Subjective Well-Being?" Social Indicators Research 57.2 (2002): 119-169. Web.

Abstract (reformatted for ease of reading)
> Four replicable findings have emerged regarding the relation between income and subjective well-being (SWB):1. There are large correlations between the wealth of nations and the mean reports of SWB in them,
> 2. There are mostly small correlations between income and SWB within nations, although these correlations appear to be larger in poor nations, and the risk of unhappiness is much higher for poor people,
> 3. Economic growth in the last decades in most economically developed societies has been accompanied by little rise in SWB, and increases in individual income lead to variable outcomes, and
> 4. People who prize material goals more than other values tend to be substantially less happy, unless they are rich.
>
> Thus, more money may enhance SWB when it means avoiding poverty and living in a developed nation, but income appears to increase SWB little over the long-term when more of it is gained by well-off individuals whose material desires rise with their incomes. Several major theories are compatible with most existing findings:* The idea that income enhances SWB only insofar as it helps people meet their basic needs, and
> * The idea that the relation between income and SWB depends on the amount of material desires that people's income allows them to fulfil\[\].
>
> We argue that the first explanation is a special case of the second one. A third explanation is relatively unresearched, the idea that societal norms for production and consumption are essential to understanding the SWB-income interface. In addition, it appears high SWB might increase people's chances for high income. We review the open issues relating income to SWB, and describe the research methods needed to provide improved data that will better illuminate the psychological processes relating money to SWB.

---

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* Parducci, A.: 1995, Happiness, Pleasure, and Judgment: The Contextual Theory and Its Applications (Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ).
* Pearlin, L.I. and J.S. Johnson: 1977, 'Marital status, life strains and depressions', American Sociological Review 42, pp. 704-715.
* Richins, M.L. and S. Dawson: 1992, 'A consumer values orientation for materialism and its measurement: Scale development and validation', Journal of Consumer Research 19, pp. 303-316.
* Rosenberg, M. and L.E. Pearlin: 1978, 'Social class and self-esteem among children and adults', American Journal of Sociology 84, pp. 54-58.
* Ross, C.E. and J. Huber: 1985, 'Hardship and depression', Journal of Health and Social Behavior 26, pp. 312-327.
* Sandvik, E., E. Diener and L. Seidlitz: 1993, 'Subjective well-being: The convergence and stability of self-report and non-self report measures', Journal of Personality 64, pp. 319-341.
* Saris, W.E.: 2001, 'The relationship between income and satisfaction: The effect of measurement error and suppressor variables', Social Indicators Research 53, pp. 117-136.
* Schor, J.B.: 1998, The Overspent American (Basic Books, New York).
* Schwartz, B.: 1994, The Costs of Living: How Market Freedom Erodes the Best Things in Life (W.W. Norton, New York).
* Schwarz, N. and F. Strack: 1999, 'Reports of subjective well-being: Judgmental processes and their methodological implications', in D. Kahneman, E. Diener and N. Schwarz (eds.), Well-being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology (Russell Sage Foundation, New York, pp. 61-84).
* Schyns, P.: 1998a, Nation wealth, individual income and life-satisfaction in 42 countries: A multilevel approach. Paper presented at the Second Annual ISQOLS conference. Williamsburg, VA. December 3-6.
* Schyns, P.: 1998b, The Relationship between Wealth of Countries, Individual Income and Life-satisfaction: A Multilevel Approach. Paper presented at ISA XIV World Congress of Sociology, Montreal, Canada, July 26-August 1.
* Schyns, P.: 2000, 'The relationship between income, changes in income and life satisfaction in West Germany and the Russian Federation: Relative, absolute, or a combination of both?' in E. Diener and D.R. Rahtz (eds.), Advances in Quality of Life Theory and Research, Volume 1 (Kluwer, Dordrecht, Netherlands, pp. 83-109).
* Schyns, P.: in press, 'Income and satisfaction in post Communist Russia', Journal of Happiness Studies.
* Sirgy, M.J.: 1997, 'Materialism and quality of life', Social Indicators Research 43, pp. 227-260.
* Smith, J.R., J. Brooks-Gunn and A. Jackson: 1997, 'Parental employment and children', in R.M. Hauser, B.V. Brown and W.R. Prosser (eds.), Indicators of Children's Well-being (Russell Sage Foundation, New York).
* Srivastava, A., E.A. Locke and K.M. Bartol: 2001, 'Money and subjective well-being: It's not the money, it's the motives', Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 80, pp. 959-971.
* Smith, S. and P. Razzell: 1975, The Pools' Winners (Calibon Books, London).
* Suh, E. M., E. Diener, S. Oishi and H. Triandis: 1998, 'The shifting basis of life satisfaction judgments across cultures: Emotions versus norms', Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74, pp. 482-493.
* Sumners, R. and A. Heston: 1991, 'Penn World Table (Mark 5): An expanded set of international comparisons, 1950–1988', Quarterly Journal of Economics 106, pp. 327-368.
* Templeton, J.M.: 1999, 'A worldwide rise in living standards', The Futurist 33, pp. 17-22.
* Thoits, P. and M. Hannan: 1979, 'Income and psychological distress: The impact of an income-maintenance experiment', Journal of Health and Social Behavior 20, pp. 120-138.
* Tomes, N.: 1986, 'Income distribution, happiness, and satisfaction: A direct test of the interdependent preferences model', Journal of Economic Psychology 7, pp. 425-446.
* van Praag, B.M.S.: 1993, 'The relativity of the welfare concept', in M. Nussbaum and A. Sen (eds.), The Quality of Life (Clarendon, Oxford).
* Veenhoven, R.: 1991, 'Is happiness relative?' Social Indicators Research 24, pp. 1-34.
* Veenhoven, R.: 1993, Happiness in Nations: Subjective Appreciation of Life in 55 Nations 1996–1990 (RISBO, Rotterdam).
* Veenhoven, R.: 1995, 'The cross-national pattern of happiness: Test of predictions implied in three theories of happiness', Social Indicators Research 34, pp. 33-68.
* Veenhoven, R. and P. Ouweneel: 1995, 'Livability of the welfare-state', Social Indicators Research 36, pp. 1-48.
* United Nations Development Programme: 1998, Human Development Report–1998 (Oxford University Press, New York).
* Wheaton, B.: 1994, 'Sampling the stress universe', in W.R. Avison and I.H. Gotlib (eds.), Stress and Mental Health (Plenum Press, New York, pp. 77-114).
* Wilkinson, R.G.: 1996, Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality (Routledge, London).
* Wilson, J.B., D.T. Ellwood and J. Brooks-Gunn: 1995, 'Welfare-to-work through the eyes of children', in P.L. Chase-Lansdale and J. Brooks-Gunn (eds.), Escape from Poverty (Cambridge University Press, New York).
* Wirtz, D., C. Scollon, J. Kruger and E. Diener: 2001, Selecting a spring break: On-line versus recalled mood of the last one. Manuscript submitted for publication, University of Illinois.
* World Value Survey Group: 1994, World Values Survey, 1981–1984 and 1990–1993 (Institute for Social Research, ICPSR, Ann Arbor, MI).

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In spite of the substance in my answer (above), I maintain that the premise and question are poorly framed. Not unlike Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), I firmly believe that a post-modernist philosophical approach is being employed by this line of research that flirts dangerously close to pseudo-science. While there is little doubting the potential for the sensational, I stand with those who venture that applying immature definitions, as well as, recursive and undeclared assumptions create an illusion of scientific maturity that simply does not exist. Further, the current approach (unintentionally?) advocates unsound scientific short-cuts that, at best, run the risk of gross misinterpretation by lay persons -- while at worst, subject the entire body of knowledge to endless premise challenges. There is very little in this thread of research that is meaningful or actionable outside a very narrow community -- and still, for them, most appropriately, only to conclude that more focus is needed. It can, after all, be considered an advance to get off the blank page and begin scratching away at the "we don't know what we don't know" knowledge boundary. I suppose through Dr. Steven Wright (Visiting scientist, Brain and Language Lab, Georgetown University), I can be more cogent (and diplomatic) on this point.

According to Dr. Steve Wright, it is important for researchers to level set their understanding of the meaning happiness before measuring happiness or interpreting statistics for actionable conclusions. He suggests that, currently, two high-level meanings of happiness have emerged. One is happiness as a transitory emotion, a feeling. He further suggests, there are researchers who seem to think this is all there is, and would define a happy life as nothing more than a tally of emotionally “up” or "down" snapshots. While the completely, separate and distinct alternative meaning has a stronger cognitive component (bias), involving memory and judgment (which introduces entirely different, if not equally subjective challenges to scientific measurement and replicability. Finally, Dr. Wright also suggests the integrity of subjects answers can (should?) be viewed through a lens of disbelief -- that is, *'is a respondent's answer true and accurate or skewed selectively and/or unintentionally?*

> Researchers have not yet come to an agreement about this dichotomy. They’re still quite a ways from being able to shed much light on most of the big questions. What’s really known scientifically advances slowly.

Disclaimer: With the exception of the final blockquote, I am not purporting to channel Dr. Wright. My representation of him is applied interpretation.
> 3 votes

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Tags: well-being, economics, positive-psychology
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# Question
Title: What's the explanation of this optical illusion where many coloured arcs radiate from a central point?
I saw the image below on facebook. At first, I thought it's a GIF animation since it doesn't appear static but it turned out to be a static JPEG image and the apparent motion is caused by the brain. So why does my brain trick me into believing that there's something moving? Does the brain have a purpose to do this optical illusion?

# Answer
This is a type of illusory motion (or motion illusion) called a peripheral drift illusion:

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Peripheral drift illusions, as their name suggests, create the illusion of motion in the periphery of the visual field. Similar images that generate illusory motion in the center of the visual field have been termed central drift illusions. Both of these types of illusions use high contrast "luminance gratings" - repeating patterns of high and low brightness - to generate illusory motion.

The cause of motion illusion in general is not well understood, but research suggests that there may be slightly different reasons for the different types of motion illusions.

The dominant explanation for peripheral drift illusions in particular is that high-contrast colours have slightly different processing latencies at the retina, and as a result, neural signals arrive at the visual cortex at slightly different times, causing the illusion of motion (eg, Faubert & Herbert, 1999; Backus & Oruç, 2005). Comparison of brain activity using fMRI between actually moving and apparently moving images shows similar activity in the visual cortex, supporting the assertion that the illusion is caused at the retina rather than at the visual cortex (Larsen et al, 2006).

Since the difference in processing latencies is effective only at image onset, maintenance of the illusion should be enhanced by small eye movements (eg, saccades, fixational eye movements, microsaccades, and blinks). This is indeed what experiments suggest (eg, Otero-Millan, Macknik, & Martinez-Conde, 2012; Kuriki et al, 2008).
> 12 votes

# Answer
Mark Changizi proposed another level of understanding this illusion based on the "Perceiving the Present" hypothesis. Here is the explanation:

> Optical illusions are actually a result of our brains trying to predict the future. When light hits our retina, it takes about one-tenth of a second for our brain to translate that signal into perception. This neural delay makes our brains generate images of what it thinks the world will look like in one-tenth of a second. It's not always right.
>
> “Your brain is slow, so you need to basically create perceptions that correct for that delay,” said Changizi, director of human cognition at 2AI Labs.
>
> Creating an image of the very near future probably kept early humans alive because it kept them from bumping into dangerous objects or being attacked by a fast-moving predator.

To learn more about the "Perceiving the Present" hypothesis
> 3 votes

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Tags: vision, optical-illusion
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title: Central and peripheral route dilemma

text:
# Question
Title: Central and peripheral route dilemma
Pretend a woman watching tv and she is moved by the speaker's credibility and his ability to speak at length on the new product. She also notes that he is attractive.

So in this case she is likely being influenced by 'Peripheral route', but does she also have been influenced by 'central route' ? (Minded because of the credibility of the speaker. Or is that also a characteristic of the peripheral way?)

# Answer
The terms stem from Petty and Cacioppo's Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion (e.g., 1984, 1986). They posit that persuasion can go via two different routes, depending on whether people have the motivation and the ability to give the persuasive arguments much thought.

Petty and Cacioppo (1984, p. 70) on the **central route**:

> One, called the *central route*, says that attitude change results from a person's careful consideration of information that reflects what that person feels are the true merits of a particular attitudinal position. According to this view, if under scrutiny the message arguments are found to be cogent and compelling, favorable thoughts will be elicited that will result in attitude change in the direction of the advocacy. If the arguments are found to be weak and specious, they will be counterargued and the message will be resisted—or boomerang (change opposite to that intended) may even occur. To the extent that increasing the number of arguments in a message affects persuasion by enhancing issue-relevant cognitive activity, the central route to persuasion has been followed.

Petty and Cacioppo (1984, p. 70) on the **peripheral route**:

> Attitude changes that occur via the second or *peripheral route* do not occur because the person has diligently considered the pros and cons of the issue; they occur because the person associates the attitude issue or object with positive or negative cues or makes a simple inference about the merits of the advocated position based on various simple cues in the persuasion context. For example, rather than carefully evaluating the issue-relevant arguments, a person may accept an advocacy simply because it is presented during a pleasant lunch or because the message source is an expert. Similarly, a person may reject an advocacy simply because the position presented appears to be too extreme or because the source is unattractive. These cues (e.g., good food, expert and attractive sources, extreme positions) may shape attitudes or allow a person to decide what attitudinal position to adopt without the need for engaging in any extensive thought about the arguments presented. To the extent that a person agrees with a recommendation because of the simple perception that there are a lot of arguments to support it, the peripheral route to persuasion has been followed.

All attributes given in your example (credibility, attractiveness, eloquence) refer to cues that should be especially relevant if the peripheral route is followed, because they are not arguments about the product itself but refer to the context of the persuasion ("This guy looks legit, sure I'll buy the Slap Chop!").

**References**

Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1984). The effects of involvement on responses to argument quantity and quality: Central and peripheral routes to persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 69–81. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.46.1.69

Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 19, pp. 123–205). Academic Press.
> 4 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, persuasion
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title: How do SSRIs work?

text:
# Question
Title: How do SSRIs work?
I've found a reasonable explanation on Wikipedia...

> SSRIs are believed to increase the extracellular level of the neurotransmitter serotonin by inhibiting its reuptake into the presynaptic cell, increasing the level of serotonin in the synaptic cleft available to bind to the postsynaptic receptor.

But I'm confused about one thing. The whole point of reuptake is that after serotonin (or any other neurotransmitter) binds to the postsynaptic receptors, it has to vacate the receptor so that other signals can be conveyed. If SSRIs inhibit the reuptake of serotonin, it remains in the synaptic cleft... but then what happens?

Do the serotonin molecules bind to the receptors multiple times, since they keep on ending up in the synaptic cleft? If so, when would this end, and how would it affect the signal across two neurons?

# Answer
The serotonin that remains in the cleft continues to bind to receptors again and again, increasing the total membrane potential change in the postsynaptic neuron.

Think of this process as lowering the threshold for generating an action potential in the postsynaptic neuron. The serotonin that remains in the cleft has already changed potential of the postsynaptic neuron somewhat. Now, when a new release of neurotransmitter comes along, it has a greater chance of raising the membrane potential to the point that an action potential is generated.

While the effect of an SSRI on neurotransmitter levels can occur relatively quickly, most patients will not see an effect on their mood for several weeks. It is thought that the antidepressant action of these drugs may be an effect of a longer term downregulation of serotonin receptors. See Eison and Mullins (1996) for greater detail.

* Eison AS, Mullins UL (1996). "Regulation of central 5-HT2A receptors: a review of in vivo studies". Behavioural Brain Research 73 (1–2): 177–81.
> 6 votes

# Answer
When serotonin (5HT) uptake is inhibited, 5HT diffuses away from the synaptic cleft. It is believed that eventually 5HT disperses in the extracellular space and reaches the dendritic regions.

The delayed action (say, 2 weeks) can be explained by 5HT's action on 5HT1A receptors in the dendritic region. After continuous activation of 5HT1A receptors, they start to downregulate, which in turn changes the firing pattern of the serotonergic neuron into a more fluttering mode over time. This mode of firing tends to release a lot more 5HT (Lucas et al., 2007). Downregulation takes time, explaining the few weeks delayed onset.

**Reference**
**-** Duman, *Neuron* 2007;**55**: 679-81
> 4 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, neurophysiology, psychopharmacology, neuro-transmitters
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# Question
Title: Is there a term for enjoying or liking the feeling of guilt
Obviously not sociopathy - or anything like that.

I just wondered if there was a term for enjoying the sensations of guilt :)

EDIT can you go on - and say something about the differences between fear and guilt :) ?

# Answer
I don't think there's a term specifically for pleasurable guilt.

However, depending on whom you ask, there's a couple ways we can talk about this feeling.

1. If we assume that guilt can only be experienced as negative, then we might describe pleasurable guilt as pleasure *about* guilt (i.e., a positive meta-emotional experience of guilt; for a review on meta-emotions, see Mendonca, 2013). In other words, you experience a sense of pleasure in response to, and perhaps alongside, your emotion of negative guilt.
2. If we take a psychological constructivist view of emotions (Condon, Wilson-Mendenhall, & Barrett, 2014), then we can hypothesize that even prototypically negative emotions can be experienced as positive (e.g., positive fear, or conversely, negative happiness; see also Wilson-Mendenhall, Barrett, & Barsalou, 2014). So guilt isn't *necessarily* negative, even though our prototypical conceptualization of guilt is that it's negative. That is to say that guilt is not made up of a specific and consistent set of experiences, behaviors, and cognitions. Instead, it's a heterogeneous category that can include negative or positive experiences--depending on how the individual constructs his or her affective experience. The photo below (taken from Condon et al., 2014) shows how fear might be conceptualized as either negative or positive--and perhaps you can extrapolate from there how guilt might be similar.

By the way, the fruit category is meant to show a continuum of typical-atypical fruit examples (orange-olive), which perhaps helps to clarify the idea of typical-atypical fear (and guilt).

EDIT: To be clear, fear tends to be conceptualized as a negative emotion involving anticipation of a negative event in the future (e.g., a snake will bite me). Guilt tends to be conceptualized as a negative emotion about a negative past event for which you feel personally responsible. In this case, I'm using fear to describe the continuum of typical vs. atypical emotions, but note that guilt will have a different continuum.
> 3 votes

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Tags: emotion
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# Question
Title: How to quickly estimate the person's level of stress with a mobile based relaxation app?
I'm writing a simple iPhone relaxation app and am thinking of **a very quick test I can do to learn something about the user's level of stress, anxiety, etc.** The objective is to measure how effective the app is or to adjust the length of the session.

I thought of using the following measurement process:

* Ask the user to trace a line with their finger, prior to relaxation
* Repeat the tracing process following relaxation
* Analyze and compare results to the user's previous entry or historic entries for the same user

**Does this approach have any merit or validity? What other simple and quick ways are there to gauge how relaxed or stressed the user is?**

A mobile device, like iPhone has 3 axis accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, and a capacitive touchscreen that does not measure the pressure of a touch.

# Answer
> 3 votes
Anxiety and stress are very available states, and since you want to know how people currently *feel* (rather than some more implicit construct), you probably can't do much better than just asking them. A single-item anxiety measure as suggested by mlt should work.

# Answer
> 1 votes
What do you think about quick short-memory tests? It will measure distraction level and anxiety. Problem though is that first one must measure baseline rate of correct responses. For example, play game memory on 5x5 tile set.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Just found out that the upcoming Apple Research Kit for iPhone allows for some kinds of motor and touch activity monitoring. Maybe some of these can be re-purposed to collect data relevant to the original question.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, experimental-psychology, stress
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# Question
Title: Why might a person get widely varying scores on different online IQ tests?
Online IQ tests often yield wildly varying results (say 60 - 150). These are actual values obtained by repeated measures. It is puzzling, because it's such a wide range. How can the same person be mentally retarded and a genius at the same time?

# Answer
> 9 votes
Firmin et al. (2008) tested the validity of a handful of online IQ tests by having college students complete IQ tests at three different websites and also complete a validated lab measure, the Reynolds Intellectual Assessment Scales (RIAS). They found that there were moderate correlations ($r$ values were around 0.4 to 0.5) between some of the online tests and the RIAS, though other tests did not have a significant correlation with the RIAS. Thus, there was some evidence that online IQ tests are measuring the same kinds of things as lab-based IQ tests, but the correlations were weak and some tests were better than others.

In short: online IQ tests are widely variable in their validity, and even the good ones are probably not all that accurate.

**Reference**

Firmin, M., Hwang, C., Burger, A., Sammons, J., & Lowrie, R. (2008). Evaluating the concurrent validity of three web-based IQ tests and the Reynolds Intellectual Assessment Scales (RIAS). *Eastern Education Journal, 37*, 20-28.

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Tags: intelligence, test, internet
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# Question
Title: Does heritability define the person in terms of the population?
I recently read a statement that goes like this: heritability is a population construct. Isn't heritability dependent on genetic differences? **Can someone provide an example of what it means to be a population construct?** Thanks

# Answer
**Heritability** is the proportion of differences in some observable trait (the phenotype; e.g., intelligence, height, love for pizza) in a population that corresponds to differences in the genotype.

Heritability is estimated by comparing people who differ in terms of their genetic similarity and the non-genetic influences they are exposed to. For example, we know that monozygotic twins share 100% of their genes, whereas dizygotic twins share only 50% of their genes on average. If we compare twins that were raised in different homes (adopted twins) and monozygotic twins are more similar to each other than dizygotic twins we conclude that this difference overlaps with genetic differences, as expressed in a high heritability index.

Importantly, heritability does not describe the extent to which a person's individual characteristics were formed by genes or the environment, which is a frequent misconception. **Heritability only describes the variance of a trait within a given population that corresponds to genetic differences in that population**.

As described in Griffiths et al. (2000):

> It must be stressed that this measure of “genetic influence” tells us what part of the population’s variation in phenotype can be assigned to variation in genotype. It does not tell us what parts of an individual’s phenotype can be ascribed to its heredity and to its environment. This latter distinction is not a reasonable one. An individual’s phenotype is a consequence of the interaction between its genes and its sequence of environments. It clearly would be silly to say that you owe 60 inches of your height to genes and 10 inches to environment. All measures of the “importance” of genes are framed in terms of the proportion of variance ascribable to their variation.

How this restricts the interpretation of heritability becomes clearer if we imagine cases in which there is no genetic variation (everybody has the same gene) or there is no variation in the environment (everybody is raised in the same way). In the first case, every variation would correspond to environmental differences, in the second case every variation would correspond to genetic differences.

A nice example is described here:

> One example is hair color among Eskimos (N. Carlson & W Buskirt, 1997). The whole Eskimo population appears to have the same alleles for hair color, so for Eskimos, the heritability for hair color is 0.00, even though the color is under strong genetic control! It's 0.00 because there is ***no genetic variation*** for hair color.

Furthermore, it is important to point out that there can be considerable overlap between genes and environment. People with certain genes can search specific environments that others with different genes would not. These environments can then have a high impact on them. Nevertheless, because of the way in which heritability is defined, these environmental differences are ascribed to genetic differences. Furthermore, they depend on the possibility of seeking certain environments in a society. An example is described by Neisser and colleagues (1996):

> A high heritability does not mean that the environment has no impact on the development of a trait, or that learning is not involved. Vocabulary size, for example, is very substantially heritable (and highly correlated with general psychometric intelligence) although every word in an individual’s vocabulary is learned. In a society in which plenty of words are available in everyone’s environment-especially for individuals who are motivated to seek them out-the number of words that individuals actually learn depends to a considerable extent on their genetic predispositions.

For these reasons, **heritability is a population construct, it hinges on the genetic and environmental variability within the population it describes.**

**References**

Griffiths, A. J., et al. (2000). An Introduction to Genetic Analysis (7th ed.). New York: W. H. Freeman. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21766/

Neisser, U., Boodoo, G., Bouchard Jr., T. J., Wade, A., Brody, N., Ceci, S. J., Halpern, D. F., et al. (1996). Intelligence: Knowns and unknowns. American Psychologist, 51, 77–101. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.51.2.77
> 3 votes

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Tags: genetics, nature-nurture
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# Question
Title: Difference in frequencies of mistakes between use of left-right vs. up-down
I have no hard data, but from my personal experience in people specifying right or left directions (similarly east or west) and up or down (north or south, top or bottom), people frequently make mistakes with specifying left or right much more often.

1) Is there some hard data on such a difference in frequencies?

2) If so, does cognitive-neuroscience address this difference?

(Certainly, there are physical properties of our world that enforce the distinction between up and down (gravity) but not between left and right although people do generally have a right-hand motor bias.)

# Answer
> 5 votes
There is data on this question generated by research on the embodiment of spatial cognition. The idea here is that we mentally represent and construct space in relation to our bodies. From this perspective, the differences that you describe (left vs. right more complicated than up vs down) stem from the properties of how we perceive the world in our bodies:

Tversky (2008) describing research of Franklin and Tversky (1990):

> We proposed that people keep track of the relative positions of the objects around them as they move by constructing a spatial-mental framework out of the three axes of the body and appending objects to it, updating it as the situation changes. We reasoned that accessibility of objects should reflect characteristics of the body axes and the world relevant to perception and action. The head-feet axis has salient asymmetries both perceptually and behaviorally; moreover, for the canonically upright observer, it correlates with the only asymmetric axis in the world, the up-down axis of gravity. The front-back axis separates the world that can be easily perceived and acted on from the world that cannot be easily perceived or acted on, but the left-right axis has few salient perceptual or behavioral asymmetries. This analysis predicts that, for the upright observer, things located along the head-feet axis should be fastest to retrieve, followed by things located on the front-back axis, followed by things located on the left-right axis.

Their data supports this reasoning. Furthermore in their experiments they also disentangled gravity from body orientation by having some participants recline:

> For the reclining observer, no body axis correlates with gravity, so accessibility depends entirely on the body axes. In this case, things located along the front-back axis should be fastest because of the forward bias of perception and action.

This was the case as well.

Note that accessibility was operationalized as the speed in which participants could name the position of an object. Participants made very few errors in this task. So strictly speaking it does not answer your question about left-right errors. On the whole, this has nevertheless much overlap with your question. They could have increased the number of errors by imposing a short reaction time window, for example. In this case they would have expected these effects on the error rate.

**References**

Franklin, N., & Tversky, B. (1990). Searching imagined environments. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 119, 63–76. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.119.1.63

Tversky, B. (2008). Spatial cognition: Situated and embodied. In P. Robbins and M. Aydede (Eds). Cambridge handbook of situated cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Tags: neuroscience, cognitive-neuroscience, cognitive-modeling
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title: Where do you get your news?

text:
# Question
Title: Where do you get your news?
I'm a software developer. Many of us get our news from http://news.ycombinator.com

Where do cogsci people get their news from? I'd like to read the latest trends and discoveries in cogsci research.

# Answer
I'm not sure how helpful my answer will be, but I get my "news" from scanning journals related to my interests. I look through 1) broad review journals, 2) broad empirical journals and 3) more specific empirical journals.

In general, I find that popular media outlets do a poor job of reporting on research in psychology/neuroscience (but hopefully someone else has some idea of reliable/quality news outlets).

Broad review journals that I tend to look at include:

1. Trends in Cognitive Sciences
2. Current Directions in Psychological Science
3. Perspectives on Psychological Science
4. Emotion Review
5. Behavioral and Brain Sciences
6. Psychological Review
7. Psychological Bulletin
8. Psychological Inquiry
9. Personality and Social Psychology Review

Then there are the broad empirical journals:

1. Psychological Science (studies from this journal appear very often in the news)
2. Clinical Psychological Science
3. Nature (usually hardcore neuroscience or behavioral economics)
4. Science (occasionally get a fun psych study here, which will be heavily advertised on the news)
5. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS has a good psychological and cognitive sciences section)
6. Neuroimage
7. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

And the more specific empirical journals (for me, mostly related to emotion):

1. Emotion
2. Cognition and Emotion
3. Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience

Looking at journals like these may not be too appealing if you want something quick and easy to read. But I hope that this is useful to you in some way. :)
> 6 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, cognitive-neuroscience
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# Question
Title: Are psychiatric disorders merely statistical deviations?
When we suppose that a segment X of the population is at high-risk for disorder Y, don't we assume that anyone carries the same psychophenotype, yet not in a statistically-significant degree?

# Answer
When diagnosing Psychological/Psychiatric Disorders, psychologists would consider the extent of the patient's:

1. Deviation from the norm;
2. Distress;
3. Danger to themselves and others;
4. Dsyfunction, i.e. ability for the person to carry out tasks important for everyday functioning in an independent fashion.

The current paradigm uses a continuum model for disorders; how severe a psychologist would judge your disorder to be depends on the extent of the 4 D's. However, they're aren't weighted equally.

Deviation from the norm is, in fact, the factor with the least weight given when considering if someone has a mental disorder. What is abnormal for one society may be completely acceptable for another.

Instead, what is given more attention to is the extent of the distress and dsyfunction a person exhibits. The greater the distress or dsyfunction, the more serious your disorder will be placed within the continuum.

Danger is the iffy component, since usually the person with the mental disorder who will become the victim of exploitation, violence, and general hostility and fear. Because of this, it's usually only brought up when there is a clear and present danger to themselves or others.
> 2 votes

# Answer
"Are psychiatric disorders merely statistical deviations?" No. Psychiatric disorders are mostly defined by the client's subjective challenges in everyday situations.

When a client does not report to have any challenges in everyday situations, and reports to not feel that a condition is an issue, then no disorder will be diagnosed. If a client reports to have regular challenges in everyday situations, directly linked to a condition, then a disorder is likely to be diagnosed.

*As such, disorders are indirectly diagnosed based on the norm*. This means that if a society grows stricter expectations to individuals, then a growing proportion of the population will fail to accommodate these expectations, and this will theoretically result in more and more individuals being diagnosed with various disorders. This may very well be an explanation to why disorders are seemingly more common in wealthy cultures.
> 1 votes

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Tags: abnormal-psychology, statistics
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# Question
Title: So why might people post seemingly excessive concerns regarding the danger in their neighbourhood?
**Background:** The reason for this post is that I have noticed that many people have a desire to make that which is pretty safe seem dangerous. It is very perplexing to me.

Despite holding a master's degree my psychology education is limited to 101, yet I am still curious about a trend I am seeing.

My neighborhood facebook page, which can be very helpful, is also scattered with posts from a subset of people who want to make the neighborhood seem dangerous. It is a bit large, 1300, homes and really very safe. There was some vehicle "break-ins", which was really change and loose items being taken from cars that were unlocked. My family locked our three cars and never had a problem. That is really the extend of the crime.

One person recently posted: "Large box truck pulling a trailer on Xxx Pkwy. No company name. Anyone expecting home builder maintenance?". The street in question services all the homes an an elementary school. About 5% of residents are actually on the facebook page. It is a public street, not gated. How would one reasonably expect this to get any "traction". Turns out it was a crew painting fire hydrants.

Another example: Guy posts a picture of a car stopped in front of his house. "What are you doing in front of my house at 1:12 pm. Be warned I will not be robbed." Again this was just after lunch on a side street, but still public. One person points out that the house across from him is for sale. They were probably checking it out. To my knowledge there have been no reported break ins, other then abandoned houses, in the last 8 years.

### Question

So why might people post seemingly excessive concerns regarding the danger in their neighbourhood?

It seems counterproductive as it would tend to drive down property values.
My thought is that this behavior fulfils a particular need, but perhaps I am thinking about it wrong.

# Answer
@what has a great point in wanting to know the the social context. Sounds to me simply like *fear*, but to know the *origin of the fear* we need more context. A lot more.

My hypothesis is that something is giving the perception of danger to *some people*, either real or perceived, and they spread the mentality; some are more susceptible to it than others.

It can also be an effort to try to *keep people away*, like not wanting new people moving in. In a xenophobia (*also a flavor of fear*) fashion:

> An excessive and irrational fear of anything foreign. This fear is most often of foreign people, places or objects. People who are xenophobic may display fear or even anger toward others who are foreign.

---

Knowing how these people got this perception of fear is the blurry part. In a very safe neighborhood, these claims sound slightly paranoid. People can mix some story told from family or friends, plus some media, add a bit of cultural backing, mix up with a particularly fearful personality and bang, chaos ensured.

Given an incomplete scenario, like the tales above, our cognitive bias will fill out some details which we are missing, or we have trouble understanding, and we might have bad tendencies in what to fill. Negativity bias is a good example:

> The negativity bias refers to the notion that, even when of equal intensity, things of a more negative nature (e.g. unpleasant thoughts, emotions, or social interactions; harmful/traumatic events) have a greater effect on one's psychological state and processes than do neutral or positive things.

Suppose a crime happened in our very peaceful neighborhood some time ago. Not everyone is used to it. It is new, dangerous and provides a feeling of unsafeness:

This is an article from UK, but features some context-agnostic points when it comes to the fear of crimes:

> Many crimes have emotional effects on victims that include upset, fear and anger. They can also result in psychological problems where the crime involves the victim coming face to face with the offender, particularly when violence or the threat of violence occurs
>
> ...
>
> Robbery and its effects on victims may also affect the feelings and behaviour of non-victims, some of whom may be able to appreciate its effects at first hand.
>
> ...
>
> Street robbery is predominantly an urban phenomenon, with most robberies taking place in streets near the victims' home and close to transport access points (Barker et al., 1993; Mirlees-Black et al., 1996). Though not a seasonal crime, more attacks occur when it is dark, with violence used in approximately 44% of incidents (Barker et al., 1993) and weapons involved in about a third (Mayhew et al., 1992). Young people represent a substantial proportion of the victims of street robbery (e.g. Barker et al., 1993) and, though only slightly, males are more at risk (Mayhew et al., 1992)

This article, also from the UK, presents studies on risk perception in the fear of crime:

> Instead perhaps the strongest evidence relates to the importance of public concerns about neighbourhood disorder, social cohesion and collective efficacy (Ferra ro, 1995; Perkins & Taylor, 1996; Jackson, 2004; Wyant, 2008). The idea here is that the incidenc e and risk of crime has become coupled in the public mind with issues of social stability, mo ral consensus and the colle ctive informal control processes which underpin neighbourhood order (Ba nnister, 1993; Walklate, 1998; Girling, Loader, & Sparks, 2000; Jackson, 2006).

Forgive the below-average english.
> 2 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, forensic-psychology
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# Question
Title: Is there a name for the psychology behind lowering your bets?
I'm having a hard time phrasing my question into words, so I'll provide an example:

Imagine you ask someone how much it'll take to eat a worm. The person says they would eat a worm for \\$20. Instead of offering \\$20, you offer 1 dollar less. Reluctantly, they say yes to \\$19. You proceed to offer 1 dollar less so on and so forth. Eventually the reward money draws close to \\$0 and we're left with a bizarre situation.

Is there a name for this phenomenon or am I totally bananas?

# Answer
The answer I was searching for is Creeping Normality. It fits better examples and has a clearer definition for what I was attempting to express.

> **Creeping normality** refers to the way a major change can be accepted as the normal situation if it happens slowly, in unnoticed increments, when it would be regarded as objectionable if it took place in a single step or short period.
> 2 votes

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Tags: motivation, decision-making
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# Question
Title: Correlation between selfie and Narcissism
Are there scientific evidence to correlate selfie pictures and Narcissism? I am curious when and after what threshold does self love move into the Narcissistic phase?

# Answer
> 6 votes
Self-reported number of selfies has been found to correlate positively with some measures of narcissism in US men (Fox and Rooney, 2015).

> Fox, J., & Rooney, M. C. (2015). The Dark Triad and trait self-objectification as predictors of men’s use and self-presentation behaviors on social networking sites. Personality & Individual Differences, 76, 161-165. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2014.12.017

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Tags: love, self
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title: Obsessions: Synopsis and Effects

text:
# Question
Title: Obsessions: Synopsis and Effects
I've been thinking about this topic quite a lot recently. What exactly is obsession ? Is it a good trait indicating perseverance for a goal ? Or is it a sign of a psychological disorder ? Is it a sort of fixation ? Is isolation its main cause ? Also, is there a reason why geniuses are often obsessed with their fields and thus, driven to insanity ?

I think the most famous kinds of obsessions are obsessions with computers, chess, books and maths. However, is there a general theory to define obsession ? Giving examples of obsessions with different fields would clear doubts.

# Answer
Obsessions are defined as *intrusive and recurring thoughts that an individual finds disturbing or uncontrollable*, and are not a good thing.

There is a lay use of the word which means something like "a very strong interest," but it is just that: a perfectly normal if very intense interest, usually with no basis in abnormal psychology.

Note that 'fixation' is an outdated Freudian concept, unless, of course, you're talking about physically fixating your eyes on an object or area of visual space. Obsessions can be in almost any form, but common ones include recurring and distressing curse words, or a desire to perform dangerous or inappropriate acts (such as a spontaneous desire to jump out of a moving car, or to touch a nearby person in an intimate place.) Importantly, these are distressing and uncontrollable--the obsessive person does not desire these thoughts.
> 3 votes

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Tags: abnormal-psychology, personality, intelligence
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# Question
Title: Study showing how different ages of children learn about balancing objects
I'm trying to track down a source for an idea I saw in a documentary a while ago (sorry, no idea where!) It demonstrated how children learn differently at different ages, through showing them balancing an unevenly weighted bar (in other words, a bar that looks the same along its length, but is in fact heavier at one end).

Loosely, the programme suggested that: young children (toddlers?) can get such a bar to balance intuitively, through "trial-and-error"; slightly older children (5?) try to balance the bar half way, and so say "it won't balance"; older children again, understand that the bar is not evenly weighted and so once *again* realise that experimentation is needed to find the balancing point.

Am I completely imagining that I saw some research of this kind? Or does anybody know where I can find a link to such a piece of research?

# Answer
> 4 votes
I suspect you are thinking of Karmiloff-Smith's work. Here's an excerpt from an '88 article almost exactly matching the description.

> > Children were asked to balance a series of blocks on a narrow metal support. Some of the blocks had their weight evenly distributed and balanced at their geometric centre. Others had been drilled with lead in one end and, although they looked identical to the first type, they actually balanced way off centre.
> >
> > \[...\]
> >
> > Very briefly, it was shown that 4 and 5 year olds could do this task very easily. They simply picked up each block, moved it along the support until they felt the direction of imbalance, and corrected that by using proprioceptive feedback until the block balanced. By contrast, 6 to 7 year olds placed every block at its geometric centre and were thus incapable of balancing anything but the blocks where the weight was evenly distributed. Finally, 8 to 9 year olds were able to balance all the types of block, as had the youngest subjects.

I'm not super familiar with the author, but given the publication time and terminology, this seems like a theoretical predecessor to the more recent work on embodied cognition, dynamic systems and ecological psychology.

> Karmiloff‐Smith, A. (1988). The Child is a Theoretician, Not an Inductivist\*. Mind & Language, 3(3), 183-196.

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Tags: learning, cognitive-development
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# Question
Title: Does pessimism lead to greater happiness because low expectations lead to less disappointment?
One might think that optimists would be obviously happier. However being a pessimist means that your expectations will usually be worse than the reality. Presumably when reality exceeds your expectations, you will be happier. On the other hand if you always expect something good to occur you will be disappointed when reality does not live up to your expectations.

So in summary: Does pessimism lead to greater happiness because low expectations lead to less disappointment?

# Answer
> 1 votes
I do believe these concepts should not be applied as in boolean logic, with either `ALL PESSIMISTIC` or `ALL OPTIMISTIC`, but in a rather spectral fashion.

Happiness is closely linked to having lower expectations:

> (...) Robb Rutledge says, “Happiness depends not on how well things are going but whether things are going better or worse than expected.”

Pessimism also leads to being more careful:

> "Our findings revealed that being overly optimistic in predicting a better future was associated with a greater risk of disability and death within the following decade," said lead author Frieder R. Lang, PhD, of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. "Pessimism about the future may encourage people to live more carefully, taking health and safety precautions."
>
> (...) "Unexpectedly, we also found that stable and good health and income were associated with expecting a greater decline compared with those in poor health or with low incomes," Lang said. "Moreover, we found that higher income was related to a greater risk of disability."

There are pros and cons in each of them:

> Being optimistic allows people to pursue their goals in a positive way: to dream a bigger and better dream, which they can work their way towards. Optimists also seem to respond better to positive feedback, and part of being optimistic may be generating this feedback for themselves, i.e. thinking positive thoughts.
>
> On the other hand being pessimistic may help people reduce their natural anxiety and to perform better. Also, pessimists seem to respond better to negative feedback. They like to hear what the problems were, so they can correct them. Again, part of why pessimists generate these sorts of negative thoughts is that it helps them perform better.

Keeping up a mood tending to pessimistic while giving your best in the tasks might be a recipe for greater happiness due to lower expectancies.

# Answer
> -1 votes
I think the two can be mediated with being Realistic.

Sometimes, and in conclusion, this is pessimistic in nature - especially if one tends to dwell on things or generally 'suffer' from dampened, over-extensive neuronal networks.

Pessimism can lead to certain insights that can be a downward spiral of despair, but often lead to recognition of a situation that can be the light at the end of a tunnel.

I think the average stable persons' mindset flickers between the two, regardless of one's perceived outlook on life. It's about moderation.

I don't believe anything, pessimism or optimism, can lead to happiness - but anything can surely lead to some sort of contentment - which 'realistically' is the best we ought to hope for.

...and painlessness.

# Answer
> -1 votes
While this is not a credible answer, I'd like to share these personal anecdotes:

* My greatest disappointment when buying a game was when the game was **over hyped**, and the reality did not live up to exaggerated expectations.
* My greatest satisfaction with games came from discovering "hidden gems" - games which have **no expectations** attached to them.

We live in the world dominated by marketing, where it takes exaggerated promises and "hype" style marketing to sell anything or be noticed. This creates unrealistic expectations which are almost impossible to meet.

This is especially visible in the video game industry - there's a category of games called "early access games". These are unfinished games that are sold based on promises and "hype". Few of these games have ever lived up to the expectations. In general, there's backlash against "early access" products on game delivery platforms like Steam, particularly due to the feeling of disappointment that such titles create when they fail to deliver or fail to release.

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Tags: emotion, well-being
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# Question
Title: Conditioning/training value of objects in experiment
In visual attention and decision making, how do experiments teach participants the value of specific objects (high vs low vs none)?

Does anyone know of studies that done this which go into reproducible levels of detail about their procedure/paradigm?

# Answer
> 2 votes
Subjective value is most often manipulated using some sort of incentive structure in attentional studies. Most commonly, the reward is in the form of time or money earned either directly or through 'points.' This is a very simple and common thing to do, so I don't know what you mean by "reproducible details" -- most studies will report little more than having creating experimental conditions along these lines, because that is sufficient. I will try to give a more detailed example, however.

In an unpublished study of eye movements and attentional capacity during a visual memory task, we would manipulate the weights of certain shapes by rewarding the participants with different amounts of points for different shapes. Thus, in one condition, circles would award 90 points, while triangles would award 10 points. Participants were taught this through audio feedback, and were aware that they had to accumulate a certain amount of points to complete the experiment. (The study was not published because a subtle critical error in the experiment code was discovered near the end of data collection.)

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Tags: experimental-psychology, decision-making, conditioning, cueing
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# Question
Title: What it is called when a mother has sexual desires towards her son?
I know about Oedipus complex.

* What is it called when a mother has sexual desires towards her son?
* Is the term reserved for single mothers or does it include married mothers?

# Answer
> 7 votes
Jocasta complex syndrome is what you are referring to.

> In psychoanalytic analysis, the Jocasta complex is the incestuous sexual desire of a mother towards her son. SOURCE

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Tags: abnormal-psychology, parenting, sexuality, psychoanalysis
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# Question
Title: Is the book "The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance" worth reading?
I do not know whether this is the most appropriate place to post this question, but since the book is related to psychology, I will post it here. If there is a more appropriate place to ask this question, please direct me to it.

I'm wondering whether or not the book "The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance" is the best in its category (study of expertise) and is worth reading. If not, can you recommend me better books?

Another thing I want to ask is, judging from the table of contents, the book does not seems to cover the domain of expertise on Visual Arts (such as drawing, painting, sculpting, etc.). Is it true? If so what is the reason of the exclusion?

Thanks.

# Answer
> 2 votes
The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (CHEEP) was the state of the art in expertise research at the time of publication, and it remains a resource that I recommend and refer to frequently. Editor K. A. Ericsson, in my view, authored some of or simply the most important expertise acquisition research in the last century, overturning age-old beliefs about talent and innate ability, and he did a very admirable job of it, all things considered. Other contributors, such as B. J. Zimmerman, are authorities in their own right within their fields.

## What the book is

Importantly, CHEEP is an academic resource on expertise acquisition for domains that have been researched, not a guide to becoming an expert. If your questions revolve around appropriate theoretical frameworks for expertise, how to measure expertise, domains of expertise and the mechanisms which underpin expertise, then this book is an invaluable introduction and reference. If you are looking for a resource on becoming an expert yourself, then your mileage may vary much more, depending on your level of education in academic psychology.

## Limitations

With that said, cognitive science moves quickly, and I would say that while the book's contents remain relevant, some/many of its topics are already understood in greater detail than they were in 2006. There are a number of developments I would like to see included in a hypothetical update, such as retrieval-induced forgetting/facilitation, the growing embodied cognition literature and, perhaps more regrettably, a lot of recent skills acquisition research.

## Concluding remarks

Despite the increasingly worn pages of my copy, occasional missing recent development, and other signs of aging, the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance nevertheless earns itself a 9/10 and a prominent spot on my shelf. It is an unrivaled introductory text to the field of expertise research.

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Tags: learning
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# Question
Title: Are there working computational frameworks for human behavior and personality?
I've been scanning through the web, looking for some ideas and theories about computational modules of human behavior and personality, but so far all I could find regards to procedural programs and cognitive modules (which are tending towards learning and decision making, and not personality modeling).

What I mean by computational frameworks for human behavior is not some Java implementation of categorization of a given person, which are limited to the model constraints and specific domains, but high-level object oriented abstraction of the whole human personality. As Chris Crawford describes the difference:

> "A character is to a real human being as a story is to life, ... story is a simplification and a clarification of life. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end, where life just bounces along endlessly."

For example, a system called "The AntiBigData" takes some set of personality traits (which must adhere to predefined interfaces), and access the class package of "Humor", which associates to some repository of let say 100 MB of anecdotes, and sorts the repository by likeliness of the given personality traits.

Of course, this system would have infinite potential of complexity and domain, and maybe developed in an Agile fashion, but I am surprised I couldn't find information about academic formalization of relevant topics.

# Answer
> 5 votes
# Cognitive Architectures

The description most closely matches the concept of a cognitive architecture. Whereas I would say most empirical cognitive science focuses on isolating cognitive functions or behavioral substrates, cognitive architectures are relatively unique because they attempt to run bottom-up simulations of interdependent sets of cognitive functions.

# Example: ACT-R framework

An influential example of a cognitive architecture is Carnegie Mellon's Adaptive Control of Thought—Rational (ACT-R), which is a hybrid cognitive architecture--meaning it comprises both symbolic pattern recognition and underlying processes such as utility functions. The ACT-R framework distinguishes between modules (perceptual-motor and memory), buffers for accessing memory, and pattern recognition between buffer states and perceptual-motor production.

## ACT-R model

## ACT-R usage

ACT-R allows researchers to obtain standard quantities like response times and accuracy on a very large amount of tasks. (Apparently it now also affords obtaining fMRI data, but I am not at all familiar with this.) It has been used to model virtually every kind of behavior and cognitive function, and there is little point in giving specific examples. The ACT-R website's publications section features a staggering amount of well-categorized articles, if you want to know more, but since you wanted to know about personality in particular, it merits pointing out that it does include individual differences.

# Conclusion

Cognitive architectures are an exciting development that promise to solve the dirty little secret of most cognitive science: while we are developing increasingly powerful explanations for isolated cognitive functions and behaviors, there was no way to bridge most of these models, or to combine them into a model of a coherent "mind" (i.e., *a cause of behavior*). While they are not the only player in that game (e.g., embodied cognition and dynamical systems), the concept of cognitive architecture, unlike competing concepts, has the advantage of being immediately compatible with the cognitive literature, and very amenable to digital simulation.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, personality, computational-modeling, artificial-intelligence
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title: Do nice guys finish last?

text:
# Question
Title: Do nice guys finish last?
I read a recent article, suggesting that

> the nicest guys in a society are selected last by females.

The article continues to identify the cause as a lack of aggressive nature and competitiveness, with these being ostensibly desirable traits. This is a common sentiment that is often expressed in popular media, yet rarely sourced. I was wondering if there were any psychology studies exploring this topic, or any further explanation to shed light on this topic.

**Is male prosocial activity and perceived niceness associated with sexual outcomes?**

# Answer
The question of whether "nice guys finish last", also known as the *nice guy stereotype*, is often studied in an economic or resource-allocation context as a more general case. According to the Competitive Altruism Hypothesis (e.g., Hardy and Van Vugt, 2006) altruistic or prosocial behavior helps the actor to accumulate social status, which in turn confers material benefits such as increased access to resources. In their words,

> Individuals may behave altruistically for reputation reasons because selective benefits (associated with status) accrue to the generous.

# Prosocial behavior and attraction

For the general case of resource allocation, reputation and status are plausible mechanisms for deriving benefits from prosocial and altruistic behavior, and covering this literature at length is probably beyond the scope of the question. Luckily, the question has also been tested specifically with respect to attraction, which is related but not identical to sexual behavior. In a 1995 study, Jensen-Campbell, Graziano and West reported the following results:

> In Study 1, **prosocial men were rated as more physically and sexually attractive, socially desirable, and desirable** as dates than were nonprosocial men. Dominant men were no more attractive than low-dominance men, and **male dominance did not interact with male prosocial orientation in eliciting attraction from women**. In Study 2, prosocial orientation was manipulated to avoid "personalism," but still affected attraction. Across all measures attraction was an interactive function of dominance and prosocial tendencies. **Dominance alone did not increase any form of attraction measured.** In Study 3, male prosocial tendencies and dominance interacted to affect women's attraction to men.

Their study has a number of limitations which are worth noting before accepting this at face value, notably that it used attraction rating rather than some form of measure of actual sexual behavior. It therefore remains conceivable that nice guys finish last in real settings because more dominant men can, well, dominate less dominant men out of the 'competition' (attraction vs. sexual behavior problem). The study was also relatively statistically underpowered, which increases the chance of false positives. It is also worth considering that human sexual behavior is almost certainly more complex than can be captured by a single continuum.

A later study found that perceived niceness was a significant factor in women's expressed desire for long-term relationships, whereas physical attractiveness was a significant factor in expressed desire for more casual sex (Urbaniak and Kilmann, 2003). While these findings broadly concur with the Jensen-Campbell study and with the more general Competitive Altruism Hypothesis (nice guys finish first given enough time to accrue status), the study ultimately suffers from the same limitations.

# Concluding remarks

It does not seem reasonable to make the unqualified claim that "nice guys finish last," but nor does it seem sound to claim that "nice guys finish first." What we can say is that nice guys do not *always* finish last, and not-nice guys do not *always* finish first, but rather, male niceness has different effects over time and contexts. Perceived niceness and prosocial behavior does appear to make a man more attractive on average, but it remains an empirical question whether this increased *attractiveness* really translates into successfully *attracting* women.

# References

> Hardy, C. L., & Van Vugt, M. (2006). Nice guys finish first: The competitive altruism hypothesis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32(10), 1402-1413.
>
> Jensen-Campbell, L. A., Graziano, W. G., & West, S. G. (1995). Dominance, prosocial orientation, and female preferences: Do nice guys really finish last?. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(3), 427.
>
> Urbaniak, G. C., & Kilmann, P. R. (2003). Physical attractiveness and the “nice guy paradox”: Do nice guys really finish last?. Sex Roles, 49(9-10), 413-426.
> 6 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, physical-attraction
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# Question
Title: Is there a downside to using more than the typical 20/40 trials in an IAT?
Most resources mention using 20 'practice' trials categorizing both targets and attributes, followed by 40 'real' trials categorizing both targets and attributes. Note that this is after practicing with targets and attributes alone. Is there a downside to using more than 20/40 trials? (I know some recommend using extra practice trials when learning the new target/button assignment.)

# Answer
> 2 votes
The main threat to a design's validity from increasing the amount of trials in any experiment comes from participant motivation and attention. After sitting in front of a monitor for a while, participants get tired, as anyone would. As a personal rule of thumb, a session should therefore not go beyond 40 minutes without breaks if possible. Rather than going with my anecdotal advice, though, I suggest you run planned analyses to check and/or control for any decline in performance.

Given recent developments, it would seem there is generally more of a downside to **using** the typical rather than to **not** doing so. The methodological skeletons have come tumbling out of the field's closet one after the other the last few years, and as we are seeing in recent open access efforts such as Many Labs, power matters.

Instead of going with the tried and (maybe, possibly) true, run a power analysis to determine your ability to detect an effect size of the magnitude you expect to find and set your sample size and trial length appropriately. If you don't find an effect or a different sized effect with a well-powered study, well, that's basically publishable these days. Especially if you pre-registered it!

Besides that, there is rarely a downside to gathering more data, provided your statistical methodology is appropriate to your research question and you know how to interpret it correctly. The more observations you make, the more confident in your increasingly narrow inference you can be. If performance declines substantially, it will show up in the data.

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Tags: social-psychology, measurement, experimental-psychology, methodology
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# Question
Title: Which areas of the brain make up the brain stem?
I am trying to learn the anatomy of the brain and am getting rather confused. When it comes to the brain stem, I have seen some sources say that it consists of the midbrain (mesencephalon) and hindbrain (rhombencephalon). However from what I understand, the hindbrain consists of the metencephlon, which is comprised of the pons and cerebellum, and the myencephalon (medulla oblongata). So these sources seem to say that the brain stem contains the cerebellum. However I have also seen sources say that the brain stem consisists of the medulla oblongata (myencephalon), midrbrain (mesencephalon) and pons, so it excludes the cerebellum.

# Answer
The brain stem comprises the medulla, the pons and the midbrain, according to Kandel's extremely authoritative Principles of Neural Science. This is equivalent to the midbrain and the hindbrain minus the cerebellum, which is probably where the confusion stems from.

> Kandel, E. R., Schwartz, J. H., & Jessell, T. M. (Eds.). (2000). Principles of neural science (Vol. 4, pp. 1227-1246). New York: McGraw-Hill.
> 4 votes

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Tags: neuroanatomy
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