# Question
Title: How to obtain well-written demographic items?
I've noticed over the years supervising student projects that it is actually surprisingly difficult to write good demographic items. Specifically, I'm thinking about questions related to gender, age, relationship status, employment status, educational attainment, country of birth/citizenship/residence, area of employment, English language experience, language spoken, and so on.

**Are there any good sources that provide a wide range of well-written demographic items?**

# Answer
So I revisit this question every once in a while, constantly starting an answer with some resources, and then deleting it. Long story short: I think that there are several places where such items could be found, though I think "good" can be hard to define (as it is so situational)!

First off, here is a link that provides a few options for most of the contexts you described. I like this particular list as it describes multiple options (though sometimes there is little to distinguish) for each class of question. Perhaps this is a resource that could be used.

Let me emphasize that, in my experience, demographic questions are **very context specific**. For example: why are you using the questions? Is it for sampling weighting purposes, where you wish the sample to match population values? If so, then the "correct" demographics to use would be those that best match the provided population information. Is it to be included in analysis of some kind? If so, what are your research questions? A question asking the relationship between age and weight would ask for very different information than a question focused on the differential functioning of a psych evaluation between those college aged (18-22) and elderly (65+). In the first, a demographic question with a write in answer would likely be most appropriate (albeit perhaps biased), while in the second categories would serve best (with the categories being dependent on the question: so 18-22 and 65+ should be two of the categories).

As I believe that these are so connected to the situation, I'll also recommend ICPSR as a place where questions from multiple surveys can be looked at side by side. I've used this to compare *many* different versions of demographic questions to see which one fits the situation best (though again, I wouldn't say any are "good" out of context). This type of feature, that which compares multiple versions of the same class of question, may the best recommendation that I could give. It gives multiple options, while leaving room for professional judgement in the context of the use of the measurement instrument.

A final thought. If there is not a particular purpose for the use of demographic information, then strongly consider *not* including such questions in your measurement. Often researchers wish to all sorts of information (as "what if I need it later?"), but this can have some adverse effects: it increases fatigue, increases the time it takes for participants, and can increase the ability to identify individuals based off of the information (potentially changing it from anonymous to confidential, or even open!). It is not hard to imagine a researcher studying teachers who wishes to know a whole series of demographics, in addition to the grade, school, and subject an individual teaches. The degree of specificity from these demographics can make participants easily identifiable. All this to say: if you don't need them, don't use them!

In closing, I recommend only using demographic questions that are necessary for your research (this includes exploratory research). If used for a specific purpose, I would challenge that the purpose often dictates the structure of the demographic question to be used (as can the population). As the purpose and population can be so different from situation to situation, I suggest the comparisons of multiple versions of the class(es) of demographic item(s) that you need, and selecting from them the one that best fulfills your purpose. For this goal, I suggest ICPSR as a great place to look at surveys who speak to a wide audience (and are well designed).
> 2 votes

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Tags: measurement, methodology, survey
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# Question
Title: identifying scale of measurement for the dependent variable
I am doing a research study on short-term memory. My research study will be whether gender has an impact on short term memory for college students. I need help identifying the scale of measurement for the dependent variable (which is the ability of both genders to recall the words) and providing a rationale.

# Answer
> 0 votes
I understand Dependent and Independent Variables as:

The Independent variable: What you Manipulate, in this case gender, and to a lesser degree the stimulus (word, nonsense syllable, size of nonsense syllable, etc)

The Dependent variable: A measure of performance, in your case if you are testing for word or nonsense syllable recall (I suggest the later as to avoid familiarity issues), **how many they could remember after X time period**, which you could turn into recall probability.

Source:

Tulving, Endel, and Fergus IM Craik. The Oxford handbook of memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

*Additional variations on dependent variables &tests targeting short term memory and variations are mentioned in various chapters, see page 20 for instance and the chapters on short term memory*

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Tags: measurement, psychology, short-term-memory
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# Question
Title: Standard Academic set of emotions, and cognitive functions
As far as modern psychology is concerned, do we have a "standard" set of emotions agreed upon by academics? For example, **happiness**, **anger**, **sadness**, etc. Is there a single list that contains all emotions?

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Also please pardon my novice understanding of psychology for this next question, but is there also a standard set of cognitive functions? For example, Carl Jung proposed the following:

**Extroversion**: An attitude defining the self in accordance to the standard of the external world.

**Introversion**: An attitude defining the outer world in accordance to the standard of the self.

**Intuition**: Abstract perception of the environment.

**Sensing**: Concrete perception of the environment.

**Thinking**: Impersonal assessment.

**Feeling**: Person-centered assessment.

Is there a more modern understanding of these functions? And has academia been able to agree on a particular set?

# Answer
> 7 votes
There is no "standard" set of emotions or cognitive functions. The set depends on the theory.

For example, some theories of emotion posit a basic six or seven (e.g., Ekman), while allowing room for many more "non-basic" emotions (e.g., Izard). Others suggest that there are virtually infinite emotions and that none are basic (e.g., Barrett, Russell).

Similarly, for cognitive functions, some theories attempt to unify them under a basic set of brain computations (e.g., predictive coding, Friston). Others list a bunch like your Jung example.

It's important to keep in mind that emotions and cognitive functions are just concepts. We can carve up the functions of the brain in a million different ways (concepts) and arrive at a different set of emotions and cognitions each time. All of these could simultaneously be useful and explanatory. Which one you choose depends on your assumptions, biases, experimental questions, methods, and so on.

Relevant sources:

Ekman, P., & Cordaro, D. (2011). What is meant by calling emotions basic. Emotion Review, 3(4), 364-370.

Barrett, L. F. (2006). Are emotions natural kinds?. Perspectives on psychological science, 1(1), 28-58.

Izard, C. E. (2007). Basic emotions, natural kinds, emotion schemas, and a new paradigm. Perspectives on psychological science, 2(3), 260-280.

Barrett, L. F., & Russell, J. A. (2014). The psychological construction of emotion. Guilford Publications.

Clark, A. (2013). Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36(03), 181-204.

Friston, K. (2010). The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory?. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(2), 127-138.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology
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# Question
Title: Miscarriage throwing potential shadow on life of next child
I came across this description in a biographical sketch of Emmanuel Macron, the currently leading candidate in the coming French presidential election (translation from German courtesy of Google translate.)

> On 21 December 1977, Emmanuel Macron came to the world just under a year after a miscarriage, which almost killed his mother. She was in a coma and needed a long time to finish the tragedy on the lost child. Emmanuel had therefore "almost a mission" at his birth, Fulda quoted his mother. It is tempting, Macron's desire to please everyone, to the shadow of this sister, who was still dead in the mother's womb, says the author.

Does this family situation have a well-defined name among psychologists and if so, is there a study about such cases that can be recommended?

# Answer
If they knew the gender it was more likely to be a stillbirth than a miscarriage.

As a mother of a stillborn child, and as a psychologist, I've been interested in research on the trauma involved, but have found only a few medical papers and no serious empirical work in psychology. There is some grief literature but a lot of the accent is on 'everyone grieves differently', whereas my impression is that the trauma involved leads to quite a decisive set of commonalities among the bereaved. But I have never seen a professional, empirically informed description of these commonalities in the case of early child loss.

The next child is a big theme in the bereaved parents community (they call them 'rainbow babies', in case you want to Google). One thing I've heard from a neonatologist working with parents in this situation, is that anxiety about the next baby is usually very high, even after birth, even when everything is clearly all right. It seems to take several years to get back to baseline (even in the absence of another child).

Sorry for the anecdotal reply, I wish I had some empirical articles to back my observations. The overarching belief used to be that stillbirth is something a women can get over easily, and that it's best if the baby is not mentioned by anybody. This used to be the medical approach a few decades back, and it is only now that parents (usually mothers) are speaking up, doctors are listening, and the psychological profession yet has to follow in a serious way.

I think your best chance of catching some new research is by following perinatal ptsd research. Perhaps the old school psychoanalysts have had thoughts about this as well, but I haven't come across them.

Hopefully someone will prove me wrong and give you an answer with proper references.
> 3 votes

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Tags: personality, reference-request
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# Question
Title: How successful is hypnosis or hypnotherapy over a distance, for example, over Skype?
Some hypnotherapists offer healings over the internet, whereas some other don't. I'd like to know how successful is hypnosis or hypnotherapy over a distance, for example, over Skype?

# Answer
> 4 votes
A literature review was conducted Barak et al. (2008) that compared the effectiveness of internet-based psychotherapy in general (not specifically hypnosis). From their abstract, the results indicate that:

> The overall mean weighted **effect size** was found to be 0.53 (medium effect), which **is quite similar to the average effect size of traditional, face-to-face therapy**.

Following, they

> \[...\] examined interacting effects of various possible relevant moderators of the effects of online therapy, including type of therapy \[...\], type of outcome measure, time of measurement of outcome (post-therapy or follow-up), type of problem treated, therapeutic approach, and communication modality, among others. **A comparison between face-to-face and Internet intervention as reported on in 14 of the studies revealed no differences in effectiveness**.

In short, the studies reviewed,

> provide **strong support for the adoption of online psychological interventions as a legitimate therapeutic activity** \[...\].

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, hypnosis
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# Question
Title: Why do some people refuse to wear their seat belt while being aware of the risks?
I have multiple friends that simply refuse to wear their seat belt whenever they ride in a car. I make them wear it when in my car, but in any other situation they choose to go without it. They are all aware of the risks of not wearing their seat belt and the implications of even the smallest car accident, so a lack of knowledge is not the problem. Also, I consider them all quite intelligent people, so the ignorance of such a simple task that can be life saving blows my mind.

I cannot see it a denial of evidence because they agree with my side of reasoning, and my question is not specific to my friends, so I am asking why would **anyone** who knows all the facts still proceed without a seat belt?

# Answer
> 6 votes
I think this is a rather difficult question to answer. Psychology Today sums up some interesting reasons why people totally aware of the risks involved in not wearing a seat belt (or in smoking tobacco products, alcohol abuse, dangerous driving...), still choose not to wear one (light up another cigarette *etc*.):

* **Justification of risky behavior** may be re-enforced by **unreliable anecdotes** that "show" how safe it is. For example, a friend or relative never wears a seat belt and smokes every day. People can use this as 'evidence' that not buckling up or smoking are perfectly safe. The dreaded remark comes to mind that "*My grampa smokes three packs a day and is in his nineties - now ciggies can't be that bad...*".
* In that same line, **personal anecdotes can reinforce risky behavior**. *If it hasn't happened yet, it will never happen*. When people have never worn a seat belt for the last five years, they may start assuming that it is safe, because nothing has happened. They believe in the pattern, rather than considering that that luck may well be running out. *I never use a seat belt* may be used as an argument to conclude that the absence of a bad outcome is evidence that one is somehow 'immune' to the danger involved.
* The **small statistical chances** involved may be used consciously or subconsciously **as excuse**. When we think about taking another smoke, overeating, drinking yet another beer, or not wearing a seat-belt we often think *There's very little chance that the next time it will kill me*. This is all too true. The next cigarette may not, and in fact very likely will not, kill you. But what if this is your continual belief for the next 350,000 cigarettes during your lifetime? It may not be that the next cigarette will kill you, but it may be true that holding onto this belief will kill you, eventually.

All of these risks involve a sort of "near-sightedness". We focus on the next one-not on the long string of behaviors. We tend to think that the "next time I go out driving without my seat-belt, there is a very low probability that I will get killed". This is true, but each time increases the probability.

The underlying problem is that our primitive brains battles itself over **short-term rewards versus long-term goals**. As a regular quitter of smoking (I've stopped so, so many times) I know this more than anyone. The short-term reward is more important than the long run. Impulsive choices or preferences for short-term rewards result from the emotion-related parts of the brain winning out over the abstract-reasoning parts. Psychological factors other than pure reasoning often drive people's decisions, for example the small nuisance of the seat belt or the dangers of long-term smoking loose over the improved comfort of driving without a seat belt and activating the dopamine release in our limbic system when smoking a ciggie.

Our evolutionary more ancient emotional **limbic brain** has a hard time imagining the future, even though our logical, evolutionary more recent **neocortical brain** (Fig. 1) clearly sees the future consequences of our current actions. Our emotional brain wants to max out that credit card, order dessert and smoke a cigarette. Our logical brain knows we should save for retirement, go for a jog and quit smoking. Quite apparently, the **primitive emotional brain often tips the balance and defeats the newer evolved logical brain**.

Fig. 1. The three brain areas. source: Big Commerce

# Answer
> 3 votes
Despite the neatness of the Hyperbolic Discounting idea in the first answer, I think it extremely unlikely that anyone would find putting a seatbelt on so much of a hassle that the reward gained from avoiding it is worth anything at all, let alone worth taking a known risk.

There are much more nuanced theories as to why people take risks that would cover this situation better.

One that comes to mind is Sykes and Matza's neutralization theory (originally developed to explain moral shifting) applied here http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1080/0007131032000045888/full to denial of risk from cannabis, but applied in other areas of risk perception also.

Perhaps even more likely here is the concept of Risk Denial as part of a construction of a safe world view as in this study for example http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022022191221006 . Essentially what happens here is that people fail to mitigate risks (such as with driving in the OP's example) in order to help them construct a safer world view in which the risk does not exist, by acting as if the risk were not there at all.

Here is an article relating the issue to smokers, but the same research has been done on AIDS denial, Adolescent risk-taking, and heart-disease.

The same has been posited as a reason why it has proven so difficult to establish proper hand washing regimes in high risk areas (such a hospitals and day-care). The theory being that if the practitioners there could not easily cope with the reality of working in an environment with such high (and importantly, unobservable) risks, so they have to act as if they weren't there as a coping mechanism. Again, hyperbolic discounting (the hassle) has been cited as the most lilkley reason, but research such as this shows it to have very little statistical influence. Video capture of hand-washing practises in hospitals with sensors have even shown people crawling under the sensors supposed to detect whether they've washed their hands properly or deliberately turning on the water to activate the sensor but not actually washing their hands.

It obviously would show considerable weakness of character (by society's standard, not mine) to admit this inability to cope so it rarely crops up in self-reporting. I personally wouldn't take the agreement with the existence of the risk verbally as anything other than superficial.

It is likely that people who take risks such as not wearing a seatbelt simply can't cope with the risk of driving and so have to deny it exists and reinforce that denial by their actions.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, personality, motivation, decision-making, psychology
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# Question
Title: Any studies on the link between popularity and happiness amongst school aged people?
It is an interesting topic, at least to me, the psychology of people considered 'popular' at school and whether this perception of popularity is a coping mechanism for a deeper issue of self worth.

Could anyone link me any studies on this subject? If not, could you devolve any personal scientific opinion on the subject and any studies that may help in my further study of perceived social popularity.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I am not very familiar with the field, but a quick Google search brought up this paper ("The Happiness Paradox: Your Friends are Happier Than You" from Bollen, Goncalves, Leemput, and Ruan) which had some interesting results and conclusions. This paper considers a happiness paradox within the concept of friendships, and a friendship paradox within the concept of happiness. It also includes correlation coefficients between happiness and popularity, which may address your question. I'll note that the sample of this study isn't exactly what you are looking for: it is done via Twitter data (and, as noted in the supplementary materials of the paper, the sample only includes users with greater than 15 friends).

Results seem to show that there *is* a mild correlation for "happy people", but there is not much of a correlation for "unhappy people" (very slight, though statistically significant, negative correlation). For more details, I encourage you to read the article (which includes some nice graphics depicting their theories and the distributions of outcomes).

Perhaps a start in the right direction?

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Tags: social-psychology
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# Question
Title: Prevalence of mental health problems in medical professionals caused by exposure to death?
Some medical professionals work in areas where they are exposed to death often (say, E.R, O.R, Cancer Treatment, etc.), specifically in an area where they bond with the patient and the patients' families over a long period of time, such as cancer treatment.

* Does such exposure sometimes cause psycopathic/sociopathic behavior, shizophrenia, apathy, and other mental and emotional scarring?
* Does such exposure cause changes to thoughts on death significantly?
* In an attempt to numb this pain, would the subjects be more likely to believe excessively and obsessively in religion and the afterlife? (Please don't take offense if you are religious.)

Of course I'm not saying that all subjects in this situation would display these symptoms, but depending on pre-existing conditions I wonder whether some are more susceptible to emotional trauma than others.

# Answer
I believe, and I do not know if good quality epidemiological evidence exists, that such situations may trigger abnormal illness representations among medical professionals. Factitious disorders, for instance, I believe could be some way to deflect depression in some individuals. Along with abnormal illness representations could also come abnormal moral representations of illness, which, if not outright religious, links in somewhat with the notion of salvation.

Studies concerning abnormal illness representations are usually concerned with patient's illness representations. I see no epidemiological studies or data concerning the illness representations of medical staff, would be medical staff, or former medical staff (for instance, those who quit after traumatic experiences with patients) when they present as patients. Indeed, calling into question the illness representations of medical staff is not exactly politically correct. It's even a rather effective way to get you labelled as psychotic in some flavour or another.

However, from a clinical perspective, (i.e. with a clinical bias) a risk factor for factitious disorder is when someone has or has had a professional wish of working in the health care field. Such as a medical doctor who went into depression after a patient died and who did not fully get over it...

I'd love to know what data there really is out there to back up this clinical claim. Best I could find is Lois Krahn's work at Mayo Clinic:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12777276

To me, this is an extreme manifestation of more common mental issues affecting medical professionals.
> 4 votes

# Answer
I can offer a case study - Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, creator of the infamous "Kubler-Ross Model" or "five stages of grief" (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance). Her entire career as a psychiatrist was spent working with terminally ill patients and their grieving families. She strongly believed in a life after death and outer-body experiences, and worked with a man at her Healing Centre who claimed to be able to contact people after they had passed over. This was of course a sham, you can read more about it here.
> 2 votes

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Tags: emotion, abnormal-psychology, schizophrenia, ptsd
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# Question
Title: What's the correct way to use 'schadenfreude' to describe a person who has/uses/suffers from it?
There are examples at dictionary.com on uses of 'schadenfreude'.

But what is the correct way to describe a person that has/uses/suffers from schadenfreude as part of a personality disorder/mental illness?

She suffers from schadenfreude? She's diagnosed with schadenfreude? She delights in schadenfreude? (probably not as the word itself tells us of the delight) She engages in schadenfreude? She commits schadenfreude?

I've no idea how to describe someone's mental illness where the primary symptom of this illness is schadenfreude.

What is the correct way to say this?

Edit:

I see from the comments/answer that the question is wrong - I've asked correctly with more details here: Term for ASPD Specific for Causing Pain to Others

# Answer
Schadenfreude is an emotion only the German language has a word for. Put simply it is a person enjoying someone else’s misfortune. It does not matter if its monetary, a divorce, a failed exam, or the person being yelled at by the boss…

Link Definition:https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/schadenfreude

Definitely not a mental illness. (for details on mental illness see ICD-10 Fxx.xy. Link: http://www.who.int/classifications/icd/en/)
> 1 votes

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Tags: abnormal-psychology
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# Question
Title: Kelly Criterion Observed to Be Adhered by Psychopaths?
As this study shows, psychopaths are much more willing to take advantage of expected gains despite recent losses as opposed to normal people who frequently stop after a series of losses.

Has there been any follow up to this to observe whether psychopaths also take the Kelly Criterion into account? The participation rate was still only 84% for the psychopath group. I didn't see any data that shows whether those that stopped participating were ones whose amount of money in immediate control declined to nothing or near-nothing. If those who lost stopped at some point relative to the amount of money in their immediate control instead of a bad run regardless of money in immediate control, it might indicate that psychopaths are acting more rational than normal because they quit when the Kelly Criterion is being violated, that they quit positive expected values when their "risk of ruin" is greater than ~0%.

Do psychopaths care about the so-called "risk of ruin"?

**Kelly Criterion**

The math behind the Kelly Criterion was actually originally developed by John L. Kelly, Jr. to maximize data transfer rates relative to risk of data loss due to noisy (error prone) lines. Taking into account those two factors, the amount of data to transfer, the possible loss, and the possible success, choices of which lines to use at which times and amounts of data relative to noise can be quantitatively made to more or less maximize the total expected data transfer rate with an almost certain chance of no loss over time.

Later, Edward O. Thorpe, the first to prove that blackjack can be beat by counting cards, discovered that the Kelly Criterion can be employed to maximize returns from card counting with an almost certain chance of no loss over time (now called the "risk of ruin") when "bankroll" (total amount available for gambling), risk of a single or series of gambles, cost of the single/series of gambles, and payoff of the single/series of gambles are all taken into account.

A formula was also derived to give a risk of total loss, "risk of ruin", from a collection of potential investment choices. When the Kelly Criterion can be strictly adhered to, the risk of ruin is always ~0%.

# Answer
I do not know about psychopaths adhering to the Kelly criterion or not. Technically, for a perfectly informed agent seeking to take advantage reccuringly from an objectified winning yet risky position, the Kelly criterion sets the maximum bet amount over which betting would be irrational. In the sense that betting more than the Kelly criterion would deplete your finances by exposing yourself to too much risk.

Imagine that you know that a tossed coin ends up 49% of the time on heads and 51% of the time on tails. For 1 buck you bet, you earn 0 or 2 bucks depending on the outcome of the coin toss.

Betting on heads is irrational. So you bet on tails. The question is "what proportion of your total assets" are you willing to bet? If you bet 0% of your assets, you never earn anything. If you bet 100% of your assets, you've got 49% chances of being broke the next round and having nothing left to bet again, which is kind of stupid since you've got a rational structural advantage on the bookmaker.

The question therefore becomes "what fraction of my assets should I bet to maximise the gain with respect to the risk"? The answer depends on your so called "utility function". In the case where each buck gained increases your utility linearly, (i.e. you're as eager to gain a buck whether you're broke or a bilionaire, to put it simply... a buck is a buck no matter what), the Kelly criterion applies:

You bet the the fraction that maximises the probabilistic expectation of the logarithm of the ratio of assets after the bet to assets before the bet. If I recall things well off the top of my head.

Betting less than Kelly is not greedy enough. Betting more than Kelly is self-destructive. That's the theory.

In the financial stock broking business, the Kelly criterion has been used in the past... almost. They divided the Kelly criterion by 2 to be on the safe side. The reason is simple: no matter how rational Kelly is, draw up a chart of the typical fluctuation of your assets using the Kelly criterion under perfect circumstances (even correcting for your utility function). Take a close look at it. Then you'll realise that you'll be in for such a bumpy ride for your assets that russian mountains on cocaine will feel like zen meditation. Technically, betting using Kelly is exactly being on the verge of self-destructiveness...

No one, ever ever ever ever would "reasonably" bet their assets using Kelly. Unless you have the self-denegation of a number theorist on ketamine. Not joking.

Not even a psychopath.

The closer you can get to the question would be: (1) are psychopaths inherently rational machines (2) are psychopaths greedy to the extreme that a buck is a buck whether they're broke or a billionaire, and (3) are they able to endure the cognitive dissonance by reconciling (1) and (2) assertively and agressively without fear of any sort.

I doubt this to be the case. They may well score higher than neurotypics, but it's quite a stretch to imagine a psychopath would spontaneously follow Kelly criterion when the greediest stock brokers would not dare to. According to your study, they may well score higher on points (2) and (3).

In this study, Kelly does not apply and does not determine a stop loss criterion. It simply shows psychopaths are either less emotional or have a more linear utility function than neurotypics. A fearful neurotypic may stop playing if he has had repeated bad luck. A rational and fearful neurotypic would have laid out beforehand his stop losses depending on which turn he's in and would have played all turns up to the point where he would have stopped playing definitely: he knows there's no point in postponing his luck. And he must be rather fearful to decide to stop playing, meaning that his utility function must be very concave near ruin to trigger a stop loss and very insensitive to wealth if he decides to trigger a stop loss early in the game. In a nutshell, rationality in the game is defined by playing all turns in the game up to a point where you stop playing. If the player plays, then stops, then resumes playing, he's irrational. But the more he plays, the less he's anxious. From what I've read of the article, psychopaths are not more rational, they are less fearful. Kelly has little to do here.

Another question you may ask is whether or not neurotypics and psychopaths end up behaving the same way as cohorts the longer they play at the betting game. How desensitised to the irrationality of the human conditioning to the game do neurotypics and psychopaths become the more they're exposed to it, and at what pace. To me that's perhaps the real question.

Moreover ruin theory such as developped in actuarial science is NOT Kelly criterion. It's standard stochastic calculus with ruin constraints. Kelly criterion is the poor man's naive implementation of stochastic calculus. Very much the same way that mysticism is the poor man's naive first attempt at science.

By the way, Kelly strategy cannot go to ruin, not because it's Kelly, but because it's a self-funded strategy, which in itself is a broad class of strategies, that includes very very stupid ones.

I hope that clarifies the scope of the question.
> 1 votes

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Tags: abnormal-psychology, decision-making
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# Question
Title: How did Shaver (1970) manipulate similarity in the defensive attribution study?
Shaver (1970) had two independent variables, severity of the accident outcome (severity) and similarity of the subjects to the transgressor.

Severity was manipulated by giving subjects in different conditions different scenarios:

* mild outcome = the boy had the metal splinter in his wrist
* severe outcome = the boy had a metal splinter in his eye

How did Shaver “manipulate” the IV similarity (similar/dissimilar)?

## References

Shaver, K.G. (1970). *Defensive attribution: Effects of severity and relevance on the responsibility assigned for an accident* In: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 14(2): pp 101-113.
DOI: 10.1037/h0028777

# Answer
This article has several experiments included in it. These have different operational definitions of variables, and specifically differ in their definitions of "similarity". I'll assume you are talking about Experiment 3 where the hypothetical child is injured. From the end of Experiment 2 (p. 108, c. 2, first full paragraph):

> ... a third experiment was conducted in which perceived personal similarity was one of the dependent variables ... Thus, only severity of consequences was actually manipulated.

So for this situation (Experiment 3), similarity is actually treated as an outcome and is not manipulated.
> 3 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, social
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# Question
Title: What is the difference between behaviorism and cognitivism?
Recently I've been reading about the subject, and I have trouble finding a definite difference between the two. What is the difference between behaviorism and cognitivism?

# Answer
Short answer: Behaviorism treats the human brain/mind like a black box whose internal processes cannot be known. As such, behaviorists claim that it only makes sense to study the association between a given stimulus and the behavioral output it produces.

Cognitivists, on the other hand, examine internal mental processes (attention, executive control, predictive coding, etc) and are just as interested in *what* behavior a stimulus elicits as *how* it elicits it.
> 9 votes

# Answer
Comparison between Behaviorist Theory and Cognitivist Theory

**What is the Behaviourist Theory?** Behaviorist theory says that learning is nothing more than the acquisition of new behaviour based on environmental conditions – linking a new behaviour to a stimulus by providing reinforcement after the correct behaviour is produced. **The Theorists :** Pavlov (1849 – 1936) Skinner (1904 – 1990) Watson (1878 – 1958)

The Behaviorist approach to language learning grew out of the belief that students could learn a second language by being taught to produce the correct “response” to the appropriate stimulus. The students would then receive either instant positive or instant negative “reinforcement” in the shape of either correction or praise from the teacher.

**What is the Cognitivist Theory?** A cognitive theory of learning sees second language acquisition as a conscious and reasoned thinking process, involving the deliberate use of learning strategies. Learning strategies are special ways of processing information that enhance comprehension, learning or retention of information. This explanation of language learning contrasts strongly with the behaviourist account of language learning, which sees language learning as an unconscious, automatic process.
> 0 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, terminology, behaviorism
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# Question
Title: What human factors play part in traffic congestion?
Traffic congestion is a daily phenomenon that costs people a lot of time, is bad for the environment and may even cost some money. There are many obvious causes for traffic congestion, such as the amount of cars, size of the road, situational factors on the road such as accidents etc.(e.g. this blog or (Wiki).

It seems that increasing the capacity of the road capacity is not a solution to the problem, since it only appears to attract more users (Arnott and Small, 1994). Therefore, I was thinking whether there were any other factors that could influence congestion. It is obvious that each car has a human drive (well almost each car). Perhaps, their behavior could likely also play part in causing congestion.

**Is there any scientific evidence that behavioral factors (e.g. excessive de- and acceleration or lane switching) may promote/prevent traffic congestion?**

## References

Arnott, R., & Small, K. (1994). The economics of traffic congestion. American scientist, 446-455.

# Answer
> 2 votes
Kesting, Treiber and Helbing (2000) created an Intelligent Driving Model (IDM) based on actual data on the German highway. The model is a single lane model, assuming that the trailing car tries to fixate the distance of the leading car by accelerating and decelerating only.

From Kesting, Treiber and Helbing (2008):

> The IDM acceleration is a continuous function incorporating different driving modes for all velocities in freeway traffic as well as city traffic. Besides the distance to the leading vehicle `s` and the actual speed `v`, the IDM also takes into account velocity differences `∆v`, which play an essential stabilizing role in real traffic, especially when approaching traffic jams and avoiding rear-end collisions (see Fig. 3). The IDM acceleration function is given by:

*work in progress. To be continued*

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Tags: human-factors, human-error
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# Question
Title: Cognitive (neuro)science and related mailing lists
I am looking for cognitive neuroscience (and related) mailing lists. For some time I have been subscribed to Visionlist and found it to be a tremendous source of information about conferences, PhD and postdoc opportunities. Does anybody else know any similar, good sources? Thanks!

# Answer
> 3 votes
The Visionlist is indeed extremely helpful. It's not quite the same, but I found the mailing lists of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) and of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS) quite useful.

# Answer
> 0 votes
There is a recently created cognitive science mailing list that is managed by the Cognitive Science Society.

Information here: http://www.cognitivesciencesociety.org/2016/08/10/new-cogsci-mailing-list/

Subscribe here: http://lists.cognitivesciencesociety.org/listinfo.cgi/announcements-cognitivesciencesociety.org

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, internet
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# Question
Title: How to calculate IQ from bhatia battery test?
How to find out IQ from bhatia battery test? Suppose time for each of the 5 subtests is noted down. What are the steps to reach at an IQ value from here?

# Answer
I hadn't heard of the Bhatia measure before. A little research (see page 42 of Sharma and Sharma) explains that it is a performance based measure of ability for children in India. In general, you should obtain the test manual to learn about the recommended scoring procedure. A quick Google suggests it might be available from here: http://www.npcindia.com/

### Reference

* *Experimental Psychology* By Ram Nath Sharma, Rachana Sharma
> 7 votes

# Answer
First you need to score for each of the five subtests.

1. Koh's block test: first 5 block - if completed in less than one minute give 2 mark and if between 1 and 2 minute give 1 mark or else zero block 6 to 10 : if completed in less than one minute give 3 marks, between 1 and 2 minute give 2 mark and between 2 and 3 minutes give 1 mark. failure zero
2. Alexander's pass along test: first four: less than one minute 2 marks, between 1 and 2 minutes give 1 mark 6 to 10 test : less than one minute 3 marks, 1 to 2 minutes 2 marks, and between 2 and 3 minute - 1 mark. failure zero
3. Pattern drawing: first four: less than one minute 2 marks, between 1 and 2 minutes give 1 mark 6 to 10 test : less than one minute 3 marks, 1 to 2 minutes 2 marks, and between 2 and 3 minute - 1 mark. failure zero
4. picture construction test: 1st to 3rd test: less than one minute 2 marks, between 1 and 2 minutes give 1 mark 4 and 5 test: less than one minute 3 marks, 1 to 2 minutes 2 marks, and between 2 and 3 minute - 1 mark. failure zero
5. Immediate Memory test there are forward and reverse for each set of forward and reverse if there is atleast one correct sequence give marks (this you need to recheck)

once you get all the scores added together that is your raw score. Now compare your raw score to Bhatia's Table where you will get the IQ score against the age of the individual and raw score.
> 2 votes

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Tags: measurement, intelligence
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# Question
Title: Are ACT-R and Spaun the state of the art in cognitive science computational models?
I've been looking for a computational model in cognitive science, and perused Anderson's "How can the human mind occur in the physical universe?".

I've also seen this question comparing ACT-R with a empirical model called Spaun.

Are Anderson's ACT-R model and Spaun the state of the art in Cognitive Science, or are there other competing models currently being researched?

# Answer
There are TONS of other Cognitive Models being researched. Specifically, see this giant comprehensive list of Cognitive Models \[1\]. Given such a wide array of models, it might be more helpful to focus on which framework are still under active use, in addition to Spaun and ACT-R. In "How to Build a Brain" by Chris Eliasmith, he compares Spaun with some other architectures in active use, including:

* LISA
* Neural Blackboard Architecture (NBA)
* ICS
* Dynamic Field Theory (DFT)
* Leabra
* Soar

However, in my personal experience as a researcher, the only one in that list that I've still seen active publications from is Leabra.

In conclusion, the cognitive modelling community is still very heterogenous. You never know when an old framework is going to be revived or a new one started, but hopefully the references I gave you are a good starting point.

* \[1\] "40 Years of Cognitive Architectures: Focus on Perception, Attention, Learning and Applications" Iuliia Kotseruba, Oscar J. Avella Gonzalez, John K. Tsotsos
> 5 votes

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Tags: computational-modeling
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# Question
Title: Is there a conventional use of the term "empirical grounding"?
## Background

The notion of grounding theory in empirical data, originates from the work by Glaser & Strauss (1967). At present, while reputable scholars, for instance Eisenhardt and Graebner (2007), make use of the term "**empirical grounding**", it doesn't seem to be used quite frequently in (English-language) psychological literature. For instance, today, the database "PsycINFO" returns not more than 66 journal articles where the mentioned term is used.

## Question

Does the term "**empirical grounding**" designate a distinct methodological procedure (or result) that exists independently from the grounded theory methodology?

## References

Eisenhardt, K. M., & Graebner, M. E. (2007). Theory Building from Cases: Opportunities and Challenges. *Academy of Management Journal*, 50(1), 25–32. https://doi.org/10.5465/AMJ.2007.24160888

Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: strategies for qualitative research (4. paperback printing). New Brunswick: Aldine.

# Answer
A search of "empirical grounding" in my small personal article database showed more results in test validation than in qualitative (though this could be a personal bias: I'd be curious what kinds of articles your search brought up). Searching this term in the university database brings up a large variety of results, really highlighting the diversity of the use of the term (from policy to measurement).

Additionally, a reading of the Eisenhardt and Graebner article makes it clear to me that their definition of "empirical grounding" is primarily focused on the thought that the theory is grounded in the data, and *not* as its own distinct methodology. In their sense, this could be viewed as an aspect of grounded theory (when done correctly, it is grounded in data).

Based on this, I would say that empirical grounding is not its own method (or, if it is, certainly not a standard/well-known method). To address the second part, I *do* think that the term has meaning independent of grounded theory: specifically, as its name implies, it is the practice of grounding theory/methods/conclusions within data (and this has a range of applications). In my understanding, "empirical grounding" is almost an epistemology in terms of its practice and scope. Thus it could, in the larger sense, be considered a broad methodology, under which traditional grounded theory (and perhaps all of quantitative) could fall.

I did find the below article that discussed the broadening of grounded theory from "empirical grounding". They, however, seem to come to this term merely by similar processes as Eisenhardt and Graebner (simply trying to communicate that the method is grounded in data) and do not seem to view it as its own proper method or name.

Goldkuhl, G., & Stefan, C. (2010). Adding Theoretical Grounding to Grounded Theory: Toward Multi-Grounded Theory. International Journal Of Qualitative Methods, 9(2), 187-205.

In example of the multiple uses, below is an article where Messick uses "empirical grounding" to mean "trustworthiness" regarding score interpretation (a pretty well known article and author in the measurement sphere).

Messick, S. (1980). Test validity and the ethics of assessment. American Psychologist, 35(11), 1012–1027. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.35.11.1012

**All in all, for the purposes of your question**: no, it doesn't appear that this is a well known or accepted methodology distinct from grounded theory. It seems to have many definitions in many contexts. Based on the Eisenhardt and Graebner article, it seems to a desirable outcome of a grounded theory. Based on definitions in the Goldkuhl and Stefan article, it is a piece of multi-grounded theory (and appears to capture the goals of traditional grounded theory).
> 0 votes

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Tags: terminology, methodology
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# Question
Title: Is a drop in intellect necessary for one to be diagnosed with psychosis?
Some psychiatrists claim that when someone has psychosis, there is usually a drop in intellect. Does a drop in intellect always happen, or are the boundaries for psychosis not as discrete? Why are they sometimes confused in the absence of a drop in intellect?

# Answer
> 1 votes
This question pertains to the perception of psychosis by psychiatrists and not to up-to-date interpretation of research data on psychosis classification. So I'll focus on how pure psychosis is roughly conceptualised by the average psychiatrist.

First of all, some diagnosis such as bipolar disorder or schizo-affective disorder, while usually being considered psychotic, have the additional component of problematic affective or mood states attached to it. I'll therefore leave that out to focus on the "pure psychosis" part of psychiatric diagnoses.

The notion of pychosis is usually presented as "being out of touch with reality". A more operational description of it would be to say that a psychiatrist perceives that (1) there is something about reality or your perception thereof or your lack of perception thereof that has a damaging impact on your life and (2) he does not objectify that item.

I purposely rephrased that definition since people are sometimes "persecuted" or "deluded" (or whatever else there may be, such as hypocondria, erotomania, et ceterae) in a way that is real though not objectifiable. Or at least not objectifiable at first glance.

That being said, clinical observations of psychosis have led, broadly, pure psychosis to be conceptualised as lying qualitatively on a linear spectrum extending from psychosis typical of the schizophrenia spectrum to psychosis typical of persistent delusional disorder.

Simply put, persistent delusional disorder psychosis pertains to a very well logically structured system of thought, where the patient adamantly holds some claim that seems self evident for him, and where evidence presented by him or to him is perceived discordantly by psychiatrist and patient.

On the other end of the psychosis spectrum lies schizophrenia-like psychosis. Which broadly speaking is a pattern of thought that is perceived by the psychiatrist as inconsistent, loosely organised, wishful thinking or otherwise unsupported "bullshit". This can range from "my parents are assholes, screw school" to "yeah, I've had a revelation, I can help save the world but I do not know how or why and it bothers me".

Persistent delusional disorder psychosis is a fixed set of thought pattern met by patients around 40 and that, aside from co-occuring depression or other form of distress, does not impact per se the ability to meet family obligations or job expectations. Intellect does not seem to be affected, and it is indeed used vigorously to fuel the persistent pattern of thought.

Schizophrenia-like psychosis on the other hand is considered a disorganised pattern of thought that will lead the patient into hardships family-wise or job-wise. To diagnose schizophrenia, a usual criterion is that this pattern of thought happens at the same time as a job loss, family dysfunction, or academic or school underachievement. It is conceptualised as an impairment of intellect that will get worse the more the patient undergoes further or future life hardships. Also known as "persecutions".

That is why schizophrenia-like psychosis is supposed to be diagnosed with the crucial symptom of functional impairment with respect to so-called pre-morbid intellectual or social baseline functioning. Usually, in practice, determining this premorbid baseline depends on what parents or relatives say to the psychiatrist. IQ tests are not currently used for that.

In a nutshell, if a psychiatrist meets a patient who is not on the delusional disorder side of the psychosis spectrum, with no intellectual impairment compared to its premorbid baseline functioning, he should be confused as to why the patient is now in front of him in the first place. Every medical intervention is indeed triggered one way or another by someone asking for something... He might or should be confused as to what that motive really is or was.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, psychosis
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title: How to recognize contempt

text:
# Question
Title: How to recognize contempt
What are the obvious signs of contempt/hatred in human relations and what is the cause for these behaviors?

In other words, are there physical and behavioral traces/signs of contempt and hatred? Can a person be kind and friendly with you, but in reality he/she feels a great amount of contempt and hatred towards you?

# Answer
> 2 votes
**The fundamental question here is**: Can we "read" emotions in a perceiver-independent, objective way?

**The answer, I'd venture, is**: We don't really know (although, currently, we cannot do this with great reliability or specificity).

It would be painstaking to go through the history of emotion research and to go over every emotion theory that supposedly has a definitive answer to this question. **Fortunately, a great overview of this history can be found here.**

It would also be a pain to go through every emotion perception study, in cultures near and far, every psychophysiology study, every behavioral or neuroimaging study, and the many (sometimes quite giant) limitations of this literature. **Fortunately, you can find meta-analyses on these topics, which mostly suggest we cannot "recognize" contempt, or any other emotion, with notable reliability or specificity** (although we can "perceive" it; e.g., , , , .)

So, it's hard to answer this question. **We might be able to one day, but we are very, very, very, very far away from sampling the dynamic and highly variable range of potential expressions of "contempt," let alone any other emotion** (no study has actually tried to do this ever). Moreover, quite a few emotion theories do not recognize contempt as universal (see here for a recent overview).

If the above doesn't confuse you enough, I'll pull in the picture I pointed to in the comments. Same "disgust" face, different emotion. Well, what about contempt?

I realize my answer is pretty unsatisfying, but if you read a great deal of the emotion literature, you might just arrive to the same conclusion.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Contempt is expressed through a curled or snarled lip on one side of the face. It is a universal emotional expression that can be seen in all cultures.

The expression is often accompanied by a slight smile and raised chin, sometimes referred to as a "sneer", further showing disapproval to the target of one's contempt.

References:

> Passion and Reason: Making Sense of Our Emotions, by Richard S. Lazarus, Bernice N. Lazarus
>
> Liespotting, by Pamela Meyer, 2010
>
> The Cognitive Structure of Emotions, by Andrew Ortony, Gerald L. Clore, Allan Collins
>
> Scalar Ratings of Contempt Expressions by David Matsumoto, San Francisco State University

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Tags: social-psychology, psychology
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# Question
Title: How do cooperative vs. competitive activities impact the learning patterns of an individual?
**To what extent does cooperative versus competitive learning influence personality development or even pathological behaviors?**

If these activities need to be narrowed down to a specific category, I'm more interested in gaming patterns or gamified activities used in education. Still, I would prefer a broad answer if there was one. Still, ideally, these would include sports, games of any type, common activities and everything which can be compared from the cooperative vs. competitive point of view.

So far, my searches are only returning results that focus on the effectiveness of such learning strategies, but not on the imprinting effect that it may have on the individual, specially if short-lived.

If particular research or studies cannot be founds, I can settle for an answer explaining hypothesis on how these would work towards building personality and behaviors.

The question arises from trying to draw a parallel with AI and general game playing, where cooperative/competitive behaviors can be "trained" through heuristics. These heuristics and the balance between cooperation/competitiveness (for mixed activities) usually display a personality, a "strategy" that depends on the coder or designer, unless the algorithm is self-taught. At that point, I would like to see if the behaviors seen by the self-taught algorithms can parallel in any way those nuances by human strategies, but I don't know how those are to be expected in humans at all - hence the question.

# Answer
In this question are mixed different topics that are not very well categorized, to find documents or specific tests is better to adapt certain topics, is not usually talk of cooperative versus competitive activities, but individual versus group activities.

In research on the judgment or solution of group problems, the hypothesis is implicit that the interaction brings to the product of the group something other than the mere combination of the individual products (Shaw in the book of 1981, Group dynamics, about individual learning and group learning). Look for high performance groups. In social psychology an enormous amount of variables have been studied, many of it in relation to learning and personality.

In relation to the field of AI: Different programs could establish contact, store, learn and put into practice different ways of solving the problem.

Interesting books:

* Ferber, J. Multi-Agent System: An Introduction to Distributed Artificial Intelligence.
* Grace, D. and Zhang, H. Cognitive Communications, Distributed Artificial Inteligence.
> 2 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, learning, gamification, game-theory
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# Question
Title: Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Limitations
In treating people with Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy:

* Which people **can't be helped** by therapy?
* How are some people *more treatable* than others?

---

# Additional Info

In the comments of a blog post analyzing male seducers, a psychotherapist explained the effect of narcissistic mothers on their sons. She said that some people have a **greater capacity** for benefiting from therapy than others. Some people can't be helped by therapy.

What makes a person unable to benefit from therapy?

# Answer
I came across this question whilst researching CBT for a course I am studying.

## The short answer

As I will cover in the long answer, there has been a lot of articles stating that CBT is very effective, and there are articles which have stated that it is not as effective as has been claimed.

> CBT is not a single model of therapy, applicable to all clients in all situations. This has been one of the criticisms levelled at CBT, that its 'one size fits all' approach to the complex nature of human problems will, inevitably, fail to meet the needs of many, or (at best), simply focus on symptom reduction. (Reeves, 2013)

There are a fair few factors which can prevent CBT from becoming effective, and a trained and certified CBT practitioner will be able to assess the suitability of CBT. If they operate ethically, they will not go ahead with providing CBT to someone who it would not benefit.

One of the biggest factors which doesn't allow CBT to work is that if the client is not willing **or able** to challenge their thoughts and behaviours, then CBT will not be effective.

## Long answer

For the long answer, which will help to explain **some** of the reasons why CBT may not work with some people, I will be using a lot of the work I put into an essay I had to write for my psychotherapy course which covered Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and integrative approaches to therapy.

CBT is an integrative model of approach and we had to look at how an integrative approach may be used to support the client within a case study provided.

---

### Case study provided

Hassan has been referred to you for work-related stress and anxiety. He has a management position and is finding it difficult to cope. At present the information you have is that he is a 42 years old Muslim man, married with 2 children. He has lived in the UK since the age of 5 when his parents travelled here. His father died two years later and Hassan, as the eldest son, has felt responsible for the wellbeing of his mother and sisters as well as his own family.

Your referral is through an employee assistance scheme. Hassan’s assessment shows high level of anxiety without depression. He is otherwise fit and healthy. You may offer him six sessions with a further six sessions if appropriate.

---

An article (Dhami & Sheikh, 2000) adapted from a chapter in *Caring for Muslim Patients*, published by Radcliffe Medical Press, Oxford, England; provides key insights needed to allow Muslim clients' concerns to be adequately heard. The vignettes section of the article gives a few sayings of Muhammad regarding relationships with parents and one of them points out that you should “strive to serve them”.

If the client has had the opportunity to fully integrate with the western culture they are living in, they may be more open to challenging their thoughts and beliefs, however we need to be mindful that as therapists, just like we are not here to judge, for an example, on sexuality (Pink Therapy, 2016) (UKCP, 2015), we are not in a position to judge whether a cultural or religious belief is right or wrong, especially when we are not priests, vicars, rabbis, imams or the like. Not only that, if the client is devout in their religious beliefs, then we are not going to change those beliefs very easily, if at all. (Babilonia, 2015)

The only time when we can intervene in any religious or cultural beliefs is when it is believed that laws may be broken such as the FGM Act (Home Office, 2016) (Crown Prosecution Service, n.d.), in which case, we would refer the legal case to the necessary authorities and it would be down to the legal profession and not the therapist.

### Strengths and Limitations of integrative approaches to counselling

\**Strengths\**

Integrative counselling and psychotherapy can be seen as one of the most effective approaches within counselling. (The Counselling Directory, 2013) The idea behind the integrative approach is that no single approach suits every client and therefore you use different approaches and models of therapy to suit the situation and client. The article within The Counselling Directory cited also states that integrative therapy has four different categories:

* **common factors**
Looking at the common tools available in each approach that can be useful in the therapy. Therapist/Client rapport, therapist qualities – positive regard, and congruence etc. – emotional release, and clarification etc.
* **technical eclecticism**
The therapist looks at and selects the best interventions by relying on experience and knowledge of what has worked in the past for others, through theories and research literature.
* **theoretical integration**
The combination of two approaches with a common philosophy. The combined ideas are theoretically the same as each other. For example, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is part of the theoretical integration category, as it is a combination of behaviourism and behaviour therapy, and cognitive theories and their application in therapeutic settings (Reeves, 2013), plus, cognitive analytical therapy is also a theoretical integration of psychodynamic therapy and cognitive therapy.
* **assimilative integration**
The therapist primarily sticks to one therapeutic approach, for example Humanistic or psychodynamic, but the therapist will use strategies and models from other therapeutic approaches as well. The combination of ideas will assimilate the pure form of the primary therapeutic approach.

**Limitations**

The limitations of any integrative therapy depend on the category of integration.

***Theoretical integration***

One problem identified in theoretical integration is that it is difficult to integrate some theories; for example, it is difficult to integrate psychodynamic theory and behavioural theory. The psychodynamic approach suggests that our early experiences from birth onwards and their impacts lead to our psychological problems, where behaviour theory sees problems as much more agreeable to change (Reeves, 2013). These differences result in incompatibilities between these theories.

***Assimilative integration***

With this kind of integration, there is no balance compared to the other forms of integration. Where the therapist is primarily psychodynamic or humanistic, for example, they will pick and choose ideas from other approaches which may not be put forward by their primary approach, but can work very effectively and contribute to the treatment or treatment plan.

***Technical eclecticism***

This shares similarities and differences with assimilative integration, but it has no theoretical underpinning to the approach. (The Counselling Directory, 2013)

As CBT is a theoretical integrative model, and it is difficult to integrate some theories, CBT cannot and does not incorporate any psychodynamic theories. However, if you are going to work in a fully integrative manner, you need to bear in mind the theories within the psychodynamic approach too. If therapy seems to need some psychodynamic interventions, then you may need to drop CBT sessions sometimes and concentrate on the psychodynamic interventions, maybe through Cognitive Analytical Therapy instead, before continuing with CBT.

### The basic concept of CBT

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) was developed by \[Aaron Temkin Beck\]\[11\], and as mentioned before, CBT is a combination of behaviourism and behaviour therapy, and cognitive theories and their application in therapeutic settings (Reeves, 2013). CBT helps to change how you think, hence the word \*Cognitive\*, and what you do, hence the word \*Behaviour\*.

A difficult life situation, relationship or practical problem can lead to:

* Altered thinking
* Altered emotions and feelings
* Altered behaviour
* Altered physical feelings or symptoms

Things can happen the other way too. Any of the above alterations can lead to a difficult life situation, relationship or practical problem (Royal College of Psychiatrists, n.d.).

CBT works by trying to get the client to think about a situation in a more helpful way in order to move forward using more helpful behaviours.

### The basic concept of REBT

Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) has generally been put under the same umbrella as CBT, however although it has similarities, REBT is different. Where CBT was developed by \[Aaron Beck\]\[11\], REBT was developed by \[Albert Ellis\]\[13\] when he started to lose faith in the type of psychoanalysis he was using.

REBT is a practical and action-led model of therapy and personal growth. It doesn’t just focus on the client’s behaviours, but also allows the client to understand the behaviours of others and provide techniques that will help to solve future problems.

Although REBT looks primarily at our current beliefs and behaviours, it also looks at the cause and effect of past experiences and beliefs which create our present beliefs and behaviours. It does this whilst aiming to change irrational beliefs into rational ones quickly rather than slowly, however, one key point to note is that the therapist does not impose rational beliefs on the client, but accepts there are non-rational beliefs that may help people achieve happiness. That way, the therapist is accepting the client’s value system.

REBT, uses an A-B-C-D-E formula.

* **A**ctivating Experience
Also referred to by some as the Initial Sensitising Event (ISE), this is the root cause of our unhappiness
* **B**eliefs
Irrational self-defeating beliefs that are the source of our unhappiness, or come about as a result of the ISE
* **C**onsequences
The neurotic symptoms and negative feelings and emotions that result from the ISE and/or Beliefs
* **D**ispute
We must dispute and challenge these irrational beliefs in order for the client to enjoy a balanced outlook in life
* **E**ffects
The client must learn to enjoy the effects of the new rational beliefs and get used to the changes, letting them become the new norm.

### The shortfalls of CBT

As mentioned before, One of the ideas put forward about CBT is that it is a suitable form of therapy for all human problems. This idea can be damaging in some respects, as CBT is not suitable for all psychological conditions.

Interestingly, whilst researching the overall efficacy of CBT, I came across a few items of note.

* Carl Rogers emphasised the quality of the therapeutic relationship as a necessary and sufficient condition for successful therapy (Rogers, 1957) whereas CBT therapists tend to see the alliance as more instrumental in ensuring the patient’s adherence to the treatment protocol (e.g. Dunn, et al., 2006) (Goldsmith, et al., 2015)
* The Countess of Mar in the House of Lords suggested the results of a trial into the effectiveness of CBT and GET (graded exercise therapy) had been artificially inflated (BACP, 2013)

> The fact is that, as opposed to the spin that accompanied the publication of selective results, only 15% of patients improved with CBT and GET, leaving 85% with no benefit from those interventions. Furthermore, of the combined CBT/GET groups of 321 people, 91% experienced adverse events
> **\[...\]**
> \[The UK Medical Research Council\] PACE trial PIs \[Principal Investigators\] changed the primary outcome measures with the intention of artificially inflating the success of CBT and GET—treatments they promoted for more than 20 years—and that, consequently, they are guilty of scientific misconduct. (UK Parliament, 2013)

> …CBT is ‘probably effective’ with major depression, general anxiety disorder, panic disorder and social anxiety disorder, but not as effective as has been claimed, due to publication bias, poor quality of studies, and the use of waiting list control groups as a comparator. (BACP, 2016)

* CBT is as much based on the development of a therapeutic alliance as it is in a psychodynamic and humanistic approach. The success of therapy will be, at least partly, informed by the nature of the therapeutic process, and not simply the application of particular theoretical ideas, as some suggest (Reeves, 2013)
* Recent literature provides fairly strong evidence that CBT in addition to antipsychotic medication is effective in the management of acute as well as chronic schizophrenia (Rathod & Turkington, 2005). However, I would stress that CBT was not used alone in any of these studies from what I have seen. It was used carefully in conjunction with psychiatric help and antipsychotic medication.

An alternative to CBT called Metacognitive Therapy (MCT) has been touted to be better than CBT. But it was developed by Manchester University (Addelman, 2020) and studied by Manchester University (Wells, 2019) so more independent studies are needed.

Either way, if the client is not able or willing to challenge their thoughts and behaviours, then CBT will not be effective.

---

## References

Addelman, M. (2020). \*New therapy more effective than cognitive behavioral therapy for depression.\* Retrieved from: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-05-therapy-effective-cognitive-behavioral-depression.html

Babilonia, S. (2015). *Challenging religious privilege in public life*. Retrieved from: http://churchandstate.org.uk/2015/10/the-problem-with-faith-11-ways-religion-is-destroying-humanity/

BACP. (2013). Policy. *Therapy Today, 24*(2), p. 52.

BACP. (2016). News. *Therapy Today, 27*(8), p. 6.

Crown Prosecution Service. (n.d). *Female Genital Mutilation Legal Guidance.* Retrieved from: http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/d\_to\_g/female\_genital\_mutilation/#a02

Cuijpers, P. et al. (2016). How effective are cognitive behavior therapies for major depression and anxiety disorders? A meta-analytic update of the evidence. *World Psychiatry, 15*(3), pp. 245-258. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20346

Dhami, S. & Sheikh, A. (2000). The Muslim family: predciament and promise. *The Western Journal of Medicine, 173*(5), pp. 352-356. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071164

Dunn, H., Morrison, A. P. & Bentall, R. P. (2006). The relationship between patient suitability, therapeutic alliance, homework compliance and outcome in cognitive therapy for psychosis. Clinical *Psychology & Psychotherapy, 13*(3), pp. 145-152. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpp.481

Goldsmith, L. P., Lewis, S. W., Dunn, G. & Bentall, R. P. (2015). Psychological treatments for early psychosis can be beneficial or harmful, depending on the therapeutic alliance: an instrumental variable analysis. *Psychological Medicine, 45*(11), pp. 2365-2373. https://doi.org/10.1017/S003329171500032X

Home Office. (2016). *Mandatory reporting of female genital mutilation: procedural information.* Retrieved from: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/mandatory-reporting-of-female-genital-mutilation-procedural-information

Pink Therapy. (2016). *Why I am resigning from the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.* Retrieved from: https://pinktherapyblog.com/2016/02/17/why-i-am-resigning-from-the-british-association-for-counselling-and-psychotherapy/

Rathod, S. & Turkington, D. (2005). Cognitive behaviour therapy for schizophrenia: a review. *Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 18*(2), pp. 159-163. https://doi.org/10.1097/00001504-200503000-00009

Reeves, A. (2013). *An Introduction to Counselling and Psychotherapy: From Theory to Practice*. London: SAGE Publications Ltd..

Rogers, C. (1957). *The Necessary and Sufficient Conditions of Therapeutic Personality Change.* Retrieved from: http://www.shoreline.edu/dchris/psych236/Documents/Rogers.pdf

Royal College of Psychiatrists. (n.d.) *5 Areas Assessment.* Retrieved from: https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/healthadvice/treatmentswellbeing/cbt/5areas.aspx

The Counselling Directory. (2013). *Integrative Psychotherapy as an Effective Form of Counselling.* Retrieved from: http://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/counsellor-articles/integrative-psychotherapy-is-the-best-approach

UKCP. (2015). *Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Conversion Therapy in the UK.* Available at: https://www.psychotherapy.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Memorandum-of-understanding-on-conversion-therapy.pdf

UK Parliament (2013). *PACE Trial: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis - House of Lords Grand Committee* Available at: https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2013-02-06/debates/130206114000195/PACETrialChronicFatigueSyndromeMyalgicEncephalomyelitis

Wells A (2019) Breaking the Cybernetic Code: Understanding and Treating the Human Metacognitive Control System to Enhance Mental Health. *Frontiers in Psychology, 10*(2621). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02621
> 8 votes

# Answer
Generally, **therapy is more successful, the more resources a patient brings to the therapy**.

For example, a generally healthy person will recover quickly from a flu, while an old person with fragile health may even die from it. The same goes for psychotherapy.

The more "functional" a person was before he or she developed a psychological disorder, the more friends they have, the more functional their family was when they were children, the better educated that person is, and so on – the more likely it is that this person's psychological health can be restored through treatment.

Moderators of therapy success are the same as for the absence of a disorder in the first place. That is, **the more likely it is for someone to develop a disorder, the less likely it is that treatment will be successful.**
> 6 votes

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Tags: abnormal-psychology, clinical-psychology
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# Question
Title: What factors determine a healthy individual's required amount of sleep?
I suppose that it is well-known that different people need different amounts of sleep. I read somewhere that most people need something between 7 and 8 hours each day, though some people need only 6 hours, and (for instance) I have two friends who only need 5 hours.

Q: Besides genetic factors, what determines a healthy individual's required amount of sleep?

For example:

* Is there a correlation between an individual's g factor and their required amount of sleep?
* Is there a correlation between an individual's weight and their required amount of sleep?

Note: I am not interested in findings related to infants or teenagers.

# Answer
> 2 votes
It is a multifactorial question dependent or correlated with a large list of variables or factors that could be grouped into:

* Functions (mainly effects on neurotransmitters, also have been much studied the functions related to memory and learning).
* Biological factors or bases: Indistinguishable from the previous section.
* Sleep dysfunctions (terrors, somnambulism, somniloquies, nocturnal jactatio capitis, bruxism, epilepsy, mental retardation)
* Disorders (initiation and maintenance disorders, apnea, myoclonus, restless legs syndrome, narcolepsy, hypersomnia, Kleine-Levin, Pickwick)
* Patterns There are many sleep patterns.

It is not so easy to distinguish between health and disease since some individuals are very well adapted to patterns, dysfunctions and even some disorders. The general intelligence factor may influence further adaptation. The weight of the weight factor will influence to a greater extent when it is an extreme weight (mainly if there is difficulty in the breathing).

There are many manuals that address both general topics related to sleep (International Classification of Sleep Disorders, ICSD, good general books can be found in any library of psychology faculties) and very specific research (search in psycinfo).

Recommended source: Buela-Casal, G. (Comps.) (1990). Avances en la investigación del sueño y sus trastornos. Siglo Veintiuno de España Editores.

# Answer
> 1 votes
The National Sleep Foundation in the US, released the results of a world-class study that took more than two years of research to complete – an update to our most-cited guidelines on how much sleep you really need at each age. You can read the research paper published in *Sleep Health*.

Basically, the required amount of sleep varies from person to person and the recommended amounts are different depending on the age of the person.

## References

Hirshkowitz, M. et al. (2015) National Sleep Foundation’s sleep time duration recommendations: methodology and results summary. *Sleep Health*, 1, pp. 40-43

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Tags: sleep
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# Question
Title: Are schizophrenia and OCD genetically related?
Schizophrenia has a genetic component.

Persons with OCD and first parents having OCD have a higher probability to develop schizophrenia.

So, it seems that a possible overlap exists between schizophrenia and OCD. And I found this paper dealing with the genetic aspect of the relation.

So it seems like there can be a possible relation between schizophrenia and OCD, but I cannot find enough research to support it.

So, my question is: is there a **definitive genetic correlation** between schizophrenia and OCD?

# Answer
Yes, there is almost certainly a genetic overlap between schizophrenia and OCD.

Quantifying the overlap in variation requires genotyping a large number of individuals, and a lot of this cross-disorder work is done by consortia. The Cross-Disorder Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium estimated the genetic correlation due to common polymorphisms between ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity), BPD (bipolar), SCZ (schizophrenia), MDD (major depression), and ASD (autism spectrum) (Wray, N.R. et al. 2013). Their key findings may interest you:

> The genetic correlation calculated using common SNPs was high between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (0.68 ± 0.04 s.e.), moderate between schizophrenia and major depressive disorder (0.43 ± 0.06 s.e.), bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder (0.47 ± 0.06 s.e.), and ADHD and major depressive disorder (0.32 ± 0.07 s.e.), low between schizophrenia and ASD (0.16 ± 0.06 s.e.) and non-significant for other pairs of disorders as well as between psychiatric disorders and the negative control of Crohn's disease.

But OCD wasn't on their list, likely because not as many cases have been genotyped for OCD as for the five disorders listed. A review in Science from 2015 shows the number of cases involved in the largest genome-wide association study for each of 13 classes of psychiatric disorder at that time, including OCD, for which 1,889 subjects had been genotyped (Geschwind, D. H. & Flint, J., 2015). Most likely, as the sample size of OCD cases increases, OCD will be incorporated into the PGC's cross-disorder studies.

A recent study used the PGC SCZ data plus data collected from 370 Spanish OCD cases to estimate the shared polygenic risk between the two disorders. They claim that SCZ polygenic risk from the PGC data explains 3.7% of the phenotypic variance in their OCD data, which represents an overlap in the genetics (Costas, J., et al., 2016).

This study's results likely underestimate the true genetic correlation between the disorders for two reasons: 1) the sample sizes to date for OCD have been too small to identify genome-wide significant GWAS hits, so our understanding of OCD genetics still has quite a way to go, and 2) this study focused on exonic regions, while most of the polygenic risk for psychiatric disease is not found in exons.

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### References

Costas, J., Carrera, N., Alonso, P., Gurriarán, X., Segalàs, C., Real, E., López-Solà, C., Mas, S., Gassó, P., Domènech, L., Morell, M., Quintela, I., Lázaro, L., Menchón, J. M., Estivill, X. & Carracedo, Á., 2016. Exon-focused genome-wide association study of obsessive-compulsive disorder and shared polygenic risk with schizophrenia. *Translational Psychiatry*, 6(768).
DOI: 10.1038/tp.2016.34

Geschwind, Daniel H. & Flint J., 2015. Genetics and genomics of psychiatric disease. *Science* 349(6255), pp. 1489-1494.
DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa8954

Wray, Naomi R. and The Cross-Disorder Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, 2013. Genetic relationship between five psychiatric disorders estimated from genome-wide SNPs. *Nature Genetics* 45, pp. 984–994
DOI: 10.1038/ng.2711
> 3 votes

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Tags: genetics, schizophrenia, personality-disorder
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# Question
Title: What are the personality and behavioural correlates of divorce?
I've read quite a few statistics about divorce (sources here and here), and biggest factors seems to be:

1. Culture - from 71% in Belgium to 2-3% in some traditional societies
2. Income of the couple
3. Ratio of the woman's income to the man

Other factors such as education and whether they come from divorced family also plays a big factor.

But what are some behavioral characteristic that have the biggest impact? For example are shy people less likely to get divorced controlled for everything else? Do people who had less sexual partners in their lifetime are less likely? Introverts or extroverts? Which of the 5 big personality traits predict best (Conscientiousness, Openness to experience, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Extraversion)? I want some respected studies video lectures very much appreciated :)

# Answer
> 3 votes
This answer speaks mostly to the relationship between personality characteristics/disorders and divorce.

From the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire, it seems that Positive Emotionality and Negative Emotionality were positively related to divorce risk, while Constraint was negatively related (Jockin, Mcgue, & Lykken, 1996). Note that this study also looks at genetic factors, and finds that “In women and men, respectively, 30% and 42% of the heritability of divorce risk consisted of genetic factors affecting personality, and personality and divorce risk correlated largely as a result of these common genetic influences.”

From a bit of a different perspective, other studies have assessed the relationship between divorce and personality disorders:

> Multiple regression analyses showed Paranoid and Histrionic personality disorder symptoms to be consistently and positively associated with number of divorces across all three sources of personality assessment. Conversely, Avoidant personality disorder symptoms were negatively associated with number of divorces (Disney, Weinstein, & Oltmanns, 2012).

I'll note that the Jockin, Mcgue, and Lykken study is rather old (contextually), and that the relationships that were clear 20 years ago may be different today.

Finally, though not related specifically to divorce, there is a nice article out there that attempts to illustrated differences in personalities for those looking for short-term vs. long-term relationships (Holtzman & Strube, 2013). This article specifically addresses an "array of personality traits (Big 5, Dark Triad, and Schizoid Personality)". A bit tangentially related, but perhaps of interest.

**References**

Disney, K. L., Weinstein, Y., & Oltmanns, T. F. (2012). Personality Disorder Symptoms Are Differentially Related to Divorce Frequency. Journal of Family Psychology, 26(6), 959–965. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030446

Holtzman, N. S., & Strube, M. J. (2013). Above and Beyond Short-Term Mating, Long-Term Mating is Uniquely Tied to Human Personality. Evolutionary Psychology, 11(5), 1101–1129. https://doi.org/10.1177/147470491301100514

Jockin, V., Mcgue, M., & Lykken, D. T. (1996). Personality and Divorce: A Genetic Analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 7(2), 288–299. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.71.2.288

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Tags: personality
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# Question
Title: Psychology of disrespect and being proud of law breaking. How does it work and how to combat it?
I'm gonna talk about Russia. :) I'm not interested in foreign policy, relations, for this question... maybe just a tiny bit.

A little preamble.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union (hereinafter S.U.), the people got lost, they didn't know who they were, what they wanted to do and who was going to tell them what to do. S.U. did a really good cleansing (of people's minds)... they were destroying all the traditions and knowledge that people lived by before S.U.: how to organize themselves, how to protect your property and even how to manage your household (if you're living in your own house). Private property, businesses, gold and anything valuable were seized. From the Party's point of view it was better if you live in an apartment rather than your own house. So, after the collapse, it was, loosely translated in English, the wild and evil ’90s. Basically the time of socio-political chaos. All the bad in people surfaced and no one to stop them because bribery was a second nature and it got instilled in the culture and the government.

Now to the point of the question.
Nowadays, when people break laws, even those that just a manifestations of common sense and you point that out, they tend to just show "muscles" and try to scare you away. Examples: driving in places when it's prohibited, littering, bribing the law enforcement, causing disturbances (e.g. playing loud music). Driving dangerously is a particularly big problem.

The reasoning often goes something like this: that's ok, no one's there, and it's really stupid not to take the "opportunity" (for saving little time, money, effort), I will do no harm... And even if you don't take this "opportunity", in some circles there can be social pressure to act like this. Romanticizing and glorifying a criminal life-style is somewhat prevalent... unfortunately teens often don't grow out of it. The civil court is a huge hassle (unless you're some sort of a government worker), police officers often ignore "small" violations and you left with the aggressor alone, imagine a big guy with no morals or a sociopath.

**Why people don't see that they live such an a-typical, perhaps anti-social or criminal, life?** And is there a way to go about to make those people aware of how they behave?

Any terms in psychology that describe this, any books to read or forums to visit... I'll appreciate any advice.

# Answer
Even though @RobinKramer did some work to remove some opinion from the question, there are still some opinions in the question which to me cannot be backed up with hard facts. However, the question has enough in it to answer your question.

Apart from @AliceD's excellent answer in the possible duplicate question indicated by @RobinKramer, there is a theory followed in Sociology and Psychology which may be what you are looking for. That is Social Exchange Theory.

Although the theory is generally referred to when talking about social interactions in relationships, it can also be related to the situations you are referring to. The key point you mentioned is the thought that

> The reasoning often goes something like this: that's ok, no one's there, and it's really stupid not to take the "opportunity" (for saving little time, money, effort), I will do no harm.

### Social Exchange Theory

The basic idea is that the social exchange process brings satisfaction when people receive fair returns for their expenditures. The major difference between social and economic exchange is the nature of the exchange between parties. The social exchange perspective argues that people calculate the overall worth of a particular relationship by subtracting its costs from the rewards it provides.

Rewards – Costs = Worth

If the costs in the situation you are talking about is bigger than the benefits (Rewards), for example, if there is a **perceived** high chance that law enforcement will stop you and delay the journey (costs) this can be bigger than the rewards (a quicker journey by taking a short-cut through a restricted area), so the worth could then have a negative value leading to the choice of not taking the short-cut.

Social Exchange Theory was introduced in 1958 by the sociologist George Homans with the publication of his work "Social Behavior as Exchange" (Cook & Rice, 2001). Homans summarised the theory in 5 propositions (University of Amsterdam, n.d.):

* **The 1st Proposition - Success proposition:**
When an individual is rewarded for their actions, they tend to repeat the action;
* **The 2nd Proposition - Stimulus proposition:**
The more often a particular behaviour has resulted in a reward in the past, the more likely it is that a person will respond to it (possibly with reward); and
* **The 3rd Proposition - Value proposition:**
If the expected result of a behavioural action is considered valuable to the individual, it is more likely for that behaviour to occur
* **The 4th Proposition - Deprivation–satiation proposition:**
The more often in the recent past a person has received the same reward, the less valuable any further unit of that reward becomes.
* **The 5th Proposition – Aggression-approval proposition:**
When the rewards of a social exchange are not as expected, a person will react emotionally, usually in an angry or aggravated manner. Those who receive more than they expect or do not receive anticipated punishment will be happy and will behave approvingly.

### How to combat the problem using Social Exchange Theory

To tackle the problem using Social Exchange Theory, there needs to be an increase in the costs in order to out-weigh the benefits leading to a lower worth of carrying out the undesired action.

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### References

Cook, K. S. & Rice, E. R. W., 2001. Chapter 31: Exchange and Power - Issues of Structure and Agency. In: J. H. Turner, ed. Handbook of Sociological Theory. New York City: Springer Science & Business Media, LLC, pp. 699-719.

University of Amsterdam, n.d. SocioSite: George C. Homans - General Propositions. \[Online\] Available at: http://www.sociosite.net/topics/texts/homans.php \[Accessed 4 August 2016\].
> 2 votes

# Answer
This question can be unswered from the field of sociology.

> Sociology is the study of social behaviour or society, including its origins, development, organisation, networks, and institutions. It is a social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order, disorder, and change.

Specifically what you describe here are the social norms formed by society.

> From a sociological perspective, social norms are informal understandings that govern the behavior of members of a society. Social psychology recognizes smaller group units, such as a team or an office, may also endorse norms separately or in addition to cultural or societal expectations. In other words, norms are regarded as collective representations of acceptable group conduct as well as individual perceptions of particular group conduct. They can be viewed as cultural products (including values, customs, and traditions) which represent individuals' basic knowledge of what others do and think that they should do.

The values and expectations that you experience are formed in the socio-economical environment of the specific nation througout many years of interactions among members of that society.

**EDIT**: It is very very difficult to change deep rooted cultural habits and norms, and usually will take many years to do so. But I will give some practical advices that may help :

* **Lead by example**. If a higly regarded individual of the society, consistently demonstrates a different behavior, this may have a long lasting effect on other members of the society and may gradually change their behavior.
* **Don’t push information**, engage in active dialogue to change their goals and beliefs.
* **Changing the environment**. The environment have subtle ways in which they reinforce our habits.
* **Create activities** (like social gatherings, competitions etc) that indirectly falsify the bad sticky idea.

References of the EDIT:

Made to Stick

Smart Change

Switch
> 2 votes

# Answer
According to Hindu-Buddhist Philosophy ,the world (real and imaginary) ,contains pairs of opposite systems (mirror images). **The opposites exist in some type of a dynamic equilibrium** . Occasionally ,they may annihilate each other .Matter-antimatter pairs ,positive-negative charge pairs ,hot desert-cold desert pairs are examples.
**Desire to live and desire to die --also form a pair of opposites** . These ideas co-exist in a society--also in every individual .Some people are motivated by the desire to live more strongly than the desire to die ,where as some people are motivated by the desire to die more strongly than the desire to die.*Ordinary people (th common man , good citizens ) belong to the first group .Adventurers ,explorers ,soldiers , criminals ,high risk game players etc , belong to the second group*.
*Circumstances decide , whether an individual behaves like a criminal or a good citizen*...Chengiz Khan and Hitler believed that human bengs are essentially criminals , but behave like good citizens under fer of punishment ...Jesus Christ and Gandhi , on the other hand , believed that human beings are essentially good citizens , but behave like criminals when the society does not satisfy their needs and ill treats them .
*But human needs are Infinite ,and so it is not possible for the society to satisfy all the needs of any person* .This gives any individual a justification to behave like a criminal ..An intelligent person might understand the limitation of the society , be satisfied with whatever he gets from the society and work towards the improvement of the society .
Whether an individual decides to behave like a law breaking criminal ,or a law abiding good citizen , depends on his level of education and general intelligence .*You may read a biography of Swami Vivekananda to start with*.
> -1 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, decision-making, psychology, behavior, sociology
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# Question
Title: Where should I place a reference electrode?
This site gives basics of how to place electrodes for action potential recording. What I understand is that in order to get better signal, the reference electrode must be placed where there is minimum electrical activity. So, does that mean we can leave it hanging in the air, or attach it to a wooden surface?

# Answer
**Short answer**
In general, a reference electrode should be placed in a well-conducting medium close, or some distance away from the recording electrode.

**Background**
The idea of a reference electrode is that it picks up any *unwanted signals*, such as artifacts, that are also present on the recording electrode. Background noise and artifacts can ruin the electrophysiological signal.

As your linked web page explains nicely, a well-placed reference electrode can mitigate noise and artifacts. In the linked page they take the example of recording motoneurons in muscle. If you would place the active electrode in the nerve close to the muscle, and the reference electrode away from the nerve but still close to the muscle, any artifacts arising from, *e.g.*, muscle activity are picked up by the active and reference electrodes simultaneously. The closer the reference electrode is to the recording electrode, the larger the similarity of the artifact will be and the lesser the contamination. This effect can be achieved using a differential amplifier. The subtraction of the reference signal is referred to as common-mode rejection (Kappenman & Luck, 2011).

The terminology encountered is often referred to as **monopolar** recording and **bipolar** recording setups (*e.g.* Beck et al., 2007). Monopolar recordings use a distant reference electrode. This setup comes in handy when the potentials of interest are small and the preparation is devoid of artifacts. Because the distant reference electrode will almost pick up none of the signal, the signal is nicely preserved. However, any local artifacts will not be cancelled out. In case of artifacts and background noise, a bipolar setup is preferred by placing the reference close to the recording electrode. The signal amplitude may drop, but the added benefit of noise cancellation may outweigh that loss. Basically it is a trade-off to optimize the **signal-to-noise ratio**.

An electrophysiology amplifier records potentials (or currents). This requires a closed system that allows the passage of current through the system (Fig. 1). Large impedances will result in current flow to be minimal and hence the potentials cannot be picked up anymore. As a rule of thumb, in case of EEG recordings and other compound-action potential recordings as in your linked page, low-impedance measurements are best. Therefore, placing the reference on a high-impedance surface as suggested in the question (suspended in air or fastened to an insulator like wood) is the worst thing you can do.

Fig. 1. Diagram of an electrophysiological recording setup. source: InTech. Note that the reference electrode here is called a reference electrode. The terminology on your linked web page is likewise confusing as they call the reference electrode the ground electrode. A ground electrode is, however, different from the reference electrode, as the ground electrode is used to reduce outside influences on your signal, like the 50-Hz mains power or other electrical field emanating from equipment and so forth.

In addition, for the most optimal recordings, impedances should be matched between active and reference electrode (Kappenman & Luck, 2011). When there is a large mismatch between them, common-mode rejection works less effectively and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) will decrease. Therefore, placing the active electrode in tissue (low impedance) and the other one in a high-impedance medium will result in the common-mode rejection to fail.

**References**
**-** Beck *et al*., *J Neurosci Methods* (2007); **166**(2): 159-67
**-** Kappenman & Luck, *Psychophysiology* (2010); **47**(5): 888–904
> 2 votes

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Tags: measurement, methodology, electrophysiology
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