# Question
Title: Which personality theories do belong to humanistic?
I went through literature and I am confused which theories of personality belong to humanistic, in literature there is often just Rogers (who is sometimes also considered to be phenomenologic) and Maslow. Do you know about some other that could be considered for humanistic too? Can I say that all humanistic psychologists created humanistic personality theory (e. g. Allport, Frankl etc.)?

# Answer
# TLDR: All humanistic psychologists helped to shape todays overall humanistic personality theory "(e.g. Allport, Frankl etc.)"

In order to enable a full grasp of the subject, I need to go over a few things, and to a degree, I am revisiting a few areas I covered in other answers to questions. In fact, mentioning Gordon Allport in your question made me find something out which changes a few things in my past research. You got an upvote from me with that.

## First, a bit of history

As I pointed out in Why has behaviourism fallen out of favour?, there are what is known as 3 forces of psychology

>

Although there is now talk of a possible fourth force such as Multicultural Psychology or Transpersonal Psychology

The humanistic approach is said to have been fully developed in the 1950s through a meeting between Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and Clark Moustakas; and the underpinning philosophy of humanistic thinking is that, in the view of Maslow (1968, p. 10), psychoanalysis attends to the ‘sick’ half of therapy – disorder and treatment – whilst humanistic therapy tends to the ‘healthy’ half – growth, potential and self-actualisation. (Reeves, 2013). However, the discussion regarding Humanistic Psychology was started a lot earlier than that by Gordon Allport in 1930 (see below).

Humanistic models of approach include (Counselling Directory, n.d.):

All the founders of the above therapies (including Eric Berne) helped form Humanistic Psychology.

As my first link indicated, Behaviourism hasn't completely fallen out of favour. Due to the work of Carl Rogers, there has been some shift, although not a complete shift, away from the rigidity of the Psychodynamic approach towards the Humanistic approach to therapy and Behaviourism has also started to gain more of the spotlight again.

The key concepts of Person-Centred Counselling, Transactional Analysis and Gestalt Therapy are three of the most widely practiced. (Reeves, 2013)

According to Dr. David R. Hiles of De Montfort University, Leicester, England, the *Pioneers of Humanistic-Existential Psychology* include:

## Carl Jung (1875-1961)

> Carl Jung is possibly one of the most important figures in psychology, and yet he remains controversial. For many psychologists he is little more than a historical curiosity. Someone who worked with Freud in the early days of the founding of psychoanalysis, and then went his own way, founded his own school of psychology, became rather eccentric, and is worthy of only the most cursory of mentions in introductory text books. To other psychologists, he is possibly the most complete psychologist that there has ever been.

## Rollo May (1909-1994)

> Rollo May, the distinguished existential psychologist and existential psychotherapist, was a co-founder of the Humanistic Psychology movement. He was an outspoken critic of his contemporaries, and was largely responsible for integrating the humanistic and existential traditions.

## Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)

> Maslow was a major American psychologist, a visionary, an inspired thinker, who radically altered the course of development of the discipline of psychology. Born in New York, he was educated at the University of Wisconsin, where he studied primate behaviour under Harry Harlow and Clark Hull. He returned to New York in 1935 by accepting a research position with Edward Thorndike at Columbia University. Through his contact with the New School for Social Research, near Greenwich Village, he came to know and study with:- Alfred Adler, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney of the psychoanalytic school; Kurt Goldstein, Max Wertheimer and Kurt Koffka of the Gestalt school of thought.

Frederick (Fritz) Perls, the founder of Gestalt psychology, is also on the list (see below).

## Carl Rogers (1902-1987)

> Rogers pioneered the development of client-centred therapy. A major figure in the history of psychology, with a basically optimistic view of humankind, he was a co-founder of the Humanistic Psychology movement.

## James Bugental (1915- )

> James Bugental is an important figure in the early development of humanistic psychology, and in the practice of a humanistic approach to psychotherapy.

## Erich Fromm (1900-1980)

> Erich Fromm was a German psychoanalyst and social theorist, who always saw himself as neo-Frudian in orientation, but who many regard as having occupied a key position on the periphery of the humanistic movement.

## Roberto Assagioli (1888-1974)

> Assagioli was an Italian psychiatrist and founder of Psychosynthesis. He trained as a psychoanalyst and was a member of the Freud Society in Zurich. He withdrew from membership as he became discontented with a lack of consideration with the growth of human potential by Freud and his followers, and during the 20's and 30's began to develop his own theory and methods. Only in the 50's and 60's was his work recognized outside of Italy.

## Frederick (Fritz) Perls (1893-1970)

> Perls was a Freudian trained psychoanalyst, the founder of Gestalt therapy, and a charismatic figure. Born in Berlin, he received his M.D. from Frederich Wilhelm University, and then received a psychoanalytic training with Wilhelm Reich as his analyst. He met many of the key founders of Gestalt psychology (Kohler, Wertheimer, Lewin) and worked as Kurt Goldstein's assistant. He went to South Africa in 1934, where he set up the Institute of Psychoanalysis, and met Jan Smuts, the inventor of the term "holism". Moving to the USA in 1946, with his wife he set up the New York Institute of Gestalt Therapy in 1952.

## Viktor Frankl (1905-1997)

> Frankl saw that each person's suffering is unique, and opportunity for growth lies in the way the person bears their suffering. Logotherapy is an attempt to implement that insight in a therapeutic context. Frankl had been strongly influenced by the existential philosophers, Heidegger and Jaspers, and began to develop a philosophy of his own. As the titles of his many popular books suggest, Logotherapy is concerned basically with meaning, the will to meaning, the unheard cry for meaning.

## And a few others

## Gordon Allport (1897–1967)

You mentioned Gordon Allport in your question and yet he is not mentioned by Dr. David R. Hiles, or Reeves above, which is interesting because it is argued that the term "humanistic psychology" was first coined by Gordon Allport in 1930 (DeCarvalho, 1991).

(Allport, 1930) under the subheading of 'A new Science Needed' said:

> My points, I fear, have been arbitrarily chosen and rather dogmatically presented. In no other way, however, is it possible to illustrate in a short time the thesis of this paper, namely that a deliberate formulation of a science of personality is not only a necessary but an altogether possible task. It is mere laziness to insist that knowing people is an art, and therewith to dismiss the subject. If knowing people is an art, it seems to be an art which, like medicine, can be formulated and communicated, and which can and should be included within a new and broader type of *humanistic psychology* (p.127, italics added)

DeCarvalho states that you can find similar statements in all of Allport's major works and particularly in the 1960s.

> Ignorance of Allport's use of the term *humanistic psychology* is symbolic of a larger ignorance of Allport's contribution to the humanistic current in American psychology: This omission occurs not only in the texts of the history and systems of psychology, but unfortunately also among humanistic psychologists themselves.....Allport was a well-known personality theorist and perhaps the most prestigious thinker of the early and mid-20th century psychological world who championed the humanistic movement in psychology in the earliest stages. (DeCarvalho, 1991)

## References

Allport, G. W. (1930). Some guiding principles in understanding personality. *The family*, 11(4), 124-128.
DOI: 10.1177/104438943001100407
**Free PDF**: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/104438943001100407

Counselling Directory (n.d.) *Humanistic Therapies*. \[Online\]
Available at: http://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/humanistic.html
\[Accessed 16 February 2017\].

DeCarvalho, R. J. (1991). Gordon Allport and humanistic psychology. *Journal of Humanistic Psychology*, 31(3), 8-13.
DOI: 10.1177/0022167891313002

Maslow, A. (1968). *Toward a Psychology of Being*. New York: Van Nostrand.

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

Short, F. & Thomas, P. (2015) *Core Approaches in Counselling and Psychotherapy*. Hove: Routledge.
> 0 votes

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Tags: personality, terminology
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# Question
Title: What are the meanings of the word 'gender'?
Gender is often loosely described as the psychological parallel of sex. But this is more like a simile than a description. It is also often noted as being in the mind e.g. the genderbread man.

When you look for a more complete description results vary. It is sometimes described as:

1. A person's expectation of their physical sex. This implies that we know in our heads what our secondary sexual characteristics ought to be, in the same way that we have an awareness of where our arms and legs are. This relates strongly to gender dysphoria. Under this definition of gender transgender people are defined by their feelings of gender dysphoria, which is to feel that your secondary sexual characteristics are somehow incorrect.
2. Gender is also sometimes described as a personality label. Under this definition we associate different genders with different averaged personality. No real personality exactly fits a gender, but like the difference between a feminine face and a masculine face we identify ourselves by that which we are closer to. So for example having a larger nose is generally a masculine face trait but there would still be predominantly female faces with large noses, just as attention to detail is predominantly a female trait but there will still be male personalities that incorporate high attention to detail.
3. Gender is also described as a set of socially constructed roles. There are behavior patterns and activities that are associated with different genders. The behavior of an individual defines their gender. This would make gender entirely a social construct.

This is probably not a complete list. I also suspect that multiple items might be 'true' (or perhaps useful is a better word) simultaneously. The word gender clearly has many different meanings to different people. I would like to know what meanings are out there and who uses each meaning. Please feel free to only add one definition.

# Answer
> 6 votes
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics the following is stated:

**Sex is a biological construct, what is real**:
Attributes that characterize biological maleness and femaleness including:
Chromosomes
Hormones
Anatomy

**Gender is a social construct, or 'man-made'**:
Attitudes and feelings that a given culture associates with a persons biological sex such as:
Gender expression
Gender roles and behavioirs
Gender identity
This Varies by time and culture

I am not able to identify to what degree the AAP's views are accepted or rejected by other organizations.

Source: PDF, slide 7, from the AAP

## Reference (Best attempt available for now)

Garofalo, R. (2013). Understanding Gender Nonconformity in Childhood and Adolescence
**Webinar Video**: https://www.aamc.org/initiatives/diversity/449804/aap2.html
**Free Original Source PDF**: https://www.aap.org/en-us/Documents/solgbt\_webinar\_transition\_garofalo.pdf
**Source PDF Bibliography \[Free PDF\]**: http://www.pedsuniversity.org/Portals/2/biblios/Garofalo\_Gender\_biblio.pdf

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Tags: social-psychology, terminology, gender
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# Question
Title: Is gender biologically or socially determined?
I guess the word "gender" needs to be defined, but that is part of the problem I suppose, since it can mean many different things to many different people. By gender, I do not mean anatomical physical sexual structures( like breasts, or a penis). Maybe the best definition I could conceive is: whether one identifies as man or women or w/e gender intermediate.

The question is in the title, and I am aware that it could be due to both effects, and was curious about this question due to the existence of transgender people, which in my mind means gender is more of a social concept. But then some transpeople claim they have "felt" that they were a women or man at birth, which implies a biological origin. And even though both are "story-based" evidence, I was hoping for something more conclusive from this stackexchange.

# Answer
Gender identity, or the gender that a person feels they are (regardless of physical makeup) is usually imprinted in the neural circuits in early childhood. This could be genetic, environmental, or a combination of both. Gender identity can also change at various points in life, and can change from moment to moment within the course of a day.

There are no nice, neat holes to fit things into (no pun intended.) There are as many possibilities and configurations as there are people.

As an example, the following link discusses these concepts in great detail and draws from multiple studies. References are provided on the 4th page.

"...one's gender is on a continuum, a blending, analogous to a "gray scale." But, our distribution of gender is bimodal, that is, most people are lumped at the two ends with only a minority in the middle. The great majority will see themselves as either male or female with all that implies. Probably more upsetting to our conventional view of gender than this fuzziness of gender roles is that we can be a MIX of male and female identities within the same individual." http://www.healthyplace.com/gender/inside-intersexuality/multi-dimensionality-of-gender/
> 6 votes

# Answer
There has been a lot of debate amongst scientist, and they are not in agreement on any one argument. In general, there is a trend towards thinking that gender identity is based on biology.

Argument that gender identity is based on biology (but not necessarily genitally):

The arguments here are that the brain patterns of transgendered people are more similar to the brain patterns of people of the gender that they identify with, which seems to indicate that gender identity is based in biology.

Argument that there is a lot more to be understood:

> "Neither the affects of prenatal and puberty hormones nor socialization alone are enough to explain gender identity development, the process must lie in a brain structure."
> 8 votes

# Answer
**Answer**
According to the American Association of Pediatrics Gender is a socially determined identity. Gender is based on how a person feels specifically as it relates to how the society that person lives in believes that biological sex should act. Each individual is unique, so each person's Gender should be considered unique, and each society in history has had different standards for Gender roles. So, this topic is very subjective, yet real since so many are engulfed in it.

What this means is that if a person grew up alone their gender would perfectly match their biological sex because there are no preconceived notions or expectations on that person. The Gender issue has increased as a problem as society puts expectations on people that doesn't match their own personal expectations for their biological sex.

**Doxology**
The pressure and conflict from this clash of societal will and personal will have resulted in something called Gender Dysphoria. Because Gender is changing term based on person, place, and time and complicated by other social and emotional issues most attempts to discuss the topic end up in ideological conflict instead of caring and personal discussion.

**Sex is a biological construct, what is real**:
Attributes that characterize biological maleness and femaleness including:
Chromosomes
Hormones
Anatomy

**Gender is a social construct, or 'man-made'**:
Attitudes and feelings that a given culture associates with a persons biological sex such as:
Gender expression
Gender roles and behavioirs
Gender identity
This Varies by time and culture

I am not able to identify to what degree the AAP's views are accepted or rejected by other organizations.

Source: PDF, slide 7, from the AAP
> 2 votes

# Answer
Although most people only have two sex chromosomes (XX or XY) genetic defects seem to occur in this pair of chromosomes more frequently than others even though these are still rare. Some of these are: \- Extra X or Y chromosomes \- Phenotype one gender with genotype of another (i.e. male who has XX genes) \- Intersex individuals with that have characteristics of both genders

Very few of the growing number of people who say they have been born with the body of the wrong gender show signs of chromosomal defects.

Most children are aware of their gender by age three. This becomes one of the first "groups" that they attempt to fit into. There are studies that show many boys and girls within Western society prefer different types of activities. However, the external characteristics that young children show to be like other males or females are not identical through out the world. So these characteristics are evidently learned.
> 0 votes

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Tags: gender
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# Question
Title: Conscious basis for gender identification
What conscious experiences lead a transgender person to identify with the opposite sex?

* *Physiology* is clearly not determining.
* *Sexual orientation* is not determining (homosexuality).
* *Clothing* preference is not determining (cross-dressing).

To put it more simply: how does someone know that they were born as the wrong gender?

# Answer
> 18 votes
# A conscious basis for gender identification?

**There is currently no evidence to suggest that conscious experiences are a factor in leading a transgender person to identify with the opposite sex.** Additionally, there is mounting evidence that transgender children are statistically indistinguishable from children of the gender with which they identify, meaning the process is set as early as five years old in humans (Olson, Key and Eaton, 2015). This suggests a predominantly biological basis. Because we cannot, for good reasons, conduct the appropriate experiments on humans, it is difficult to collect direct experimental evidence for any biological hypothesis, however.

# Mammalian gender and sexual behavior

Rather than resulting from experience, **the direction in which any mammal's sexual behavior will develop generally appears to be set sometime during the prenatal period**, long before humans start having or remembering conscious experiences. In some sense, it appears that gender may be more biological and less psychological than traditionally believed.

The subject was covered in a recent Nature article, where researchers concluded that DNA methylation plays a primary role in the determination of gender and sexual behavior (Nugent et al., 2015). In their experiment, the researchers manipulated developing rats' exposure to gonadal steroids by gene manipulation and pharmacological means, and thereby **induced or inhibited masculinized sexual behavior**.

> Pharmacological inhibition of Dnmts mimicked gonadal steroids, **resulting in masculinized neuronal markers and male sexual behavior in female rats. Conditional knockout of the de novo Dnmt isoform, Dnmt3a, also masculinized sexual behavior in female mice.** RNA sequencing revealed gene and isoform variants modulated by methylation that may underlie the divergent reproductive behaviors of males versus females. **Our data show that brain feminization is maintained by the active suppression of masculinization via DNA methylation.**

One should be careful to generalize from rats to humans, but the proposed developmental dynamic of gender is highly consistent with the way mammalian *sex* is believed to be determined, and **the ability to induce and inhibit masculinized sexual behavior at will provides substantial evidence for the DNA methylation dynamics** hypothesis.

# Concluding remarks

We ultimately do not yet fully understand the basis for human sexual behavior. What we can say is that **we have no evidence for the idea that conscious experiences are in any way a factor in the development of gender or sexual behavior**, and that already by five years old, **the direction of sexual behavior development has been set for long enough to render the transgender child statistically indistinguishable from a cisgender child of the gender they identify with**. A possible candidate theory for an underlying biological mechanism is prenatal DNA methylation dynamics.

# References

* Nugent, B. M., Wright, C. L., Shetty, A. C., Hodes, G. E., Lenz, K. M., Mahurkar, A., ... & McCarthy, M. M. (2015). Brain feminization requires active repression of masculinization via DNA methylation. Nature neuroscience.
* Olson, K. R., Key, A. C., & Eaton, N. R. (2015). Gender Cognition in Transgender Children. Psychological science, 0956797614568156.

# Answer
> -5 votes
You asked a good question and I want to help clarify technical information in the hopes of everyone who discusses this topic doing so more clearly.

> To put it more simply: how does someone know that they were born as the wrong gender?

The question itself displays a misunderstanding of terms. When we all learn the terms and understand how they relate to each other we can really start to come together on this very polarizing topic.

Based on the American Psychiatric Association which is documented on my answer here, the following defines Gender and Sex:

Gender is a man made social construct that changes with time and place. Sex is the biological reality of a person.

Based on these definitions it is technically impossible for a person to know they were born as the wrong gender for 2 reasons: You are born with a sex. Second, gender identity is changing by social norms at any given time.

So, I propose to you that an answer of sorts to your question is this:

We are all born a biological sex and that there is inherently nothing wrong or missing in what we were born with. As unique individuals we grow in a society/culture which is also unique in how they expect a biological sex to act. The Gender Dysphoric person has negative experiences which cause emotional and psychological stress which can have the outward expression of one wishing to no longer be identified with the Social Gender identity of the Biological Sex they were born as.

This problem is purely a man made problem as the internal feelings of a biological male/female do not match the expectations of what the population around that person have. This mismatch, when strongly negative or complicated by mental disorders, causes a reaction.

It is important to note that based on these definitions that the reaction of Gender Dysphoria is mismatched with the actual problem. The true problem is Gender which is social. Gender Dysphoria is medically treated on a Sex/Biological level. There is a great divide in the understanding and acceptance of this issue as it applies to the real definition of terms and impact on people's lives.

Added Reference link. https://www.aap.org/en-us/Documents/solgbt\_webinar\_transition\_garofalo.pdf

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Tags: developmental-psychology, gender
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# Question
Title: Is there a test that measures gender dysphoria?
Gender dysphoria according to wikipedia is

> \[T\]he distress a person experiences as a result of the sex and gender they were assigned at birth. In these cases, the assigned sex and gender do not match the person's gender identity, and the person is transgender.

Other sources, such as WebMD and the **APA** basically agree that people with gender dysphoria

> \[F\]eel strongly that their gender does not match their biology.

Is there a test that measures gender dysphoria? I am interested in making an adaptation to such a test into Spanish.

# Answer
Based on my research through the APA Gender is a subjective term, so the 'Dysphoria' of how a persons feels about being one biological sex and how the current society feels that biological sex should be are both changing standards which are unique based on experience, place, and time.

This is a factual representation of the APA (who supports Gender Dysphoria), yet classifies gender as a social construct. At the very least we should try to understand that technical assessments of the difference between two changing and subjective points are not easily done.

So, my answer is, that while there are tests that are used for this topic as the first answer states, that these are highly subjective and to date there are no scientific factors and assessments to measure this classification.

Scientific tests in my mind would include technical baselines for brain or other biological markers which become standardized over time. Brainwave activity, identified genes are two such options, which currently do not exist.
> 1 votes

# Answer
**Short answer**
Yes.

**Background**
A cursory Google Scholar search with the key terms **Gender Dysphoria Questionnaire** brought up

> The Gender Identity/Gender Dysphoria Questionnaire for Adolescents and Adults.

If you wish to search for more related inventories you can look further using keywords like *'gender dysphoria'* \+ *'inventory'* / *'test'* / *'diagnosis'*.

<sub>**References**
**-** Deogracias *et al*., *J Sex Res* (2007); **44**(4): 370–9
**-** Sing *et al*., *J Sex Res* (2010); **47**(1): 49-58</sub>
> 6 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, measurement, test
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# Question
Title: Names of branches of neuroscience and related fields dealing with hunger, taste, attachment, and digestion, and their relationship to other perception
* I would like to know what the branches of neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, and psychiatry related to what happens when the tongue touches and other possible related mouth sensors, touch, or come into touch, with food, in the mouth, possibly interacting, with saliva and salivary glands and allocation, the back of the tongue and the back part of the hard palate or soft palate, the uvula, and swallowing and interaction with the tongue while swallowing and peristalsis through the throat, other than the feeling one gets when food is being digested by the stomach, gallbladder, and bowls, and related cognitive processes and psychology.
* Also, what are the food and sense of taste disorders described in the DSM V?
* What are the interactions of attachment theory with these processes?

# Answer
> 1 votes
**Short answer / Intro**
This question is (superbly) broad, and I've merely attempted to try to give some pointers, without even trying to be complete in any way.

**Background**

> I would like to know what the branches of neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, and psychiatry related to what happens when the tongue touches...

In terms of disorders, Hummel *et al* (2014) say:

> These functions reflect the complaints of patients with smell and taste disorders: Patient complaints include loss of “fine taste”, inability to detect the odour of a partner or child, and the occurrence of, for example, food poisoning. **In general the value of these senses is only recognised when they are lost.** It is assumed that about 5% of people exhibit functional anosmia.

**Anosmia** being:

> the loss of the sense of smell, either total or partial. It may be caused by head injury, infection, or blockage of the nose.

In terms of psychiatric illness I'm moving into unfamiliar territory, but there seems to be mention in the literature of a correlation between taste dysfunction and psychiatric disorders (Mott *et al*., 1993)

<sub>**References**
**-** Hummel *et al*., *GMS Curr Top Otorhinolaryngol Head Neck Surg* (2011); **10**: Doc04
**-** Mott *et al*, *Dental Clinics North Am* (1993); **37**(1): 33-71</sub>

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, social-psychology, neuroscience, neurophysiology, psychiatry
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# Question
Title: Which is the scientific name of stubbornness?
Some people are *stubborn*, with strong, absolute ***beliefs***, and it's really hard to change the ideas. They tend to see just the evidence that confirms their ideas.

What is the scientific name of this phenomenon? Confirmation bias? Mental rigidity? Stubbornness? Can you give me some explanation of that?

# Answer
> 6 votes
A few bits of useful jargon come to mind...

* Low cognitive complexity may lead to simplistic and absolutist thinking, which one may also refer to as splitting or "black-and-white" thinking (because there's no recognition of "grey areas").
* Need for closure and low openness to experience may lead to *resistance to change*, which is a somewhat less pejorative alternative to "stubbornness". "Mental rigidity" is a little more subtly pejorative, in that you'd probably feel a little offended if someone called you mentally rigid, but clinical literature sometimes uses these terms nonetheless. Hence it has more pathological connotations than "stubborn", which I think people recognize as more normally applicable – i.e., you can be stubborn without being psychologically abnormal or clinically dysfunctional, but you probably won't feel proud of it, and would prefer more euphemistic terms like "assertive" or "traditional"...which differ in literal meaning from stubbornness.

I guess that's the sort of cognitive distortion that you'd expect to result from self-serving bias: "I'm not stubborn! I just happen to be right!" Then again, if I were to say that, I might not be biased; I might actually be right! How's that for self-serving bias? :)
* Confirmation bias differs somewhat from these. Its effects appear when actually seeking to confirm a belief (or hypothesis in a research context, wherein which we're probably most familiar with it), as opposed to when simply stating an absolute, simplistic belief, or refusing to question it at all. If I actually engage in argument and ignore your counterpoints, then you could say I'm demonstrating confirmation bias, but if I simply "tell you how it is" or tell you that you're wrong and refuse to change, that's really not a matter of confirmation bias per se.

# Answer
> 1 votes
STUBBORNNESS is one of seven basic character flaws or “dark” personality traits. We all have the potential for stubborn tendencies, but in people with a strong fear of change, Stubbornness can become a dominant pattern.

Like all character flaws, stubbornness involves the following components:

1 Early negative experiences 2 Misconceptions about the nature of self, life or others 3 A constant fear and sense of insecurity 4 A maladaptive strategy to protect the self 5 A persona to hide all of the above in adulthood

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, personality
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# Question
Title: Is there any good alternative to the International Affective Picture System (IAPS)?
I'm looking for (particularly negative) emotion inducing pictures or videos. After some research, I think the best known and widely used database is the International Affective Picture System (IAPS).

However, there is a problem. You do have to request access, then you get have to send them a letter and then it takes up to 30 days to get the pictures. For me, this is way to long. Therefore, I'm looking for a good alternative to either speed this process up significantly or to find an alternative that is also widely used.

# Answer
I would recommend the 730 pictures Geneva affective picture database (GAPED).

It has been validated worldwide, and the cultural bias is more limited than other image resources.

There are general positive/neutral/negative images, with valence and activations scores. Some other more specific images are also provided (snakes, spîders).

Download the datebase and ratings here Read the .txt provided.

Dan-Glauser, E. S., & Scherer, K. R. (2011). The Geneva affective picture database (GAPED): a new 730-picture database focusing on valence and normative significance. Behavior Research Methods, 43(2), 468-477. doi: 10.3758/s13428-011-0064-1

EDIT: The GAPED Pictures can be downloaded from the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences site (or directly from here)
> 9 votes

# Answer
NAPS

Marchewka A, Żurawski L, Jednoróg K, Grabowska A. The Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS). Introduction to a novel standardized wide range high quality realistic pictures database.Behavior Research Methods, 46: 596-610, 2014

> Selecting appropriate stimuli to induce emotional states is essential in affective research. Only a few standardized affective stimulus databases have been created for auditory, language, and visual materials. Numerous studies have extensively employed these databases using both behavioral and neuroimaging methods. However, some limitations of the existing databases have recently been reported, including limited numbers of stimuli in specific categories or poor picture quality of the visual stimuli. In the present article, we introduce the Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS), which consists of 1,356 realistic, high-quality photographs that are divided into five categories (people, faces, animals, objects, and landscapes). Affective ratings were collected from 204 mostly European participants. The pictures were rated according to the valence, arousal, and approach-avoidance dimensions using computerized bipolar semantic slider scales. Normative ratings for the categories are presented for each dimension. Validation of the ratings was obtained by comparing them to ratings generated using the Self-Assessment Manikin and the International Affective Picture System. In addition, the physical properties of the photographs are reported, including luminance, contrast, and entropy. The new database, with accompanying ratings and image parameters, allows researchers to select a variety of visual stimulus materials specific to their experimental questions of interest. The NAPS system is freely accessible to the scientific community for noncommercial use by request at http://naps.nencki.gov.pl .
> 3 votes

# Answer
You may have a look at the EmoMadrid-database. Here are the instructions on how to get access.
> 2 votes

# Answer
If you have nothing against crawling the figurative arse of the internet, then 4chan's /b/ board might provide what you're seeking. I managed to scrape together a few hundred images for a quick-and-dirty EIB study using this approach (I don't have the images anymore, else I'd gladly forward them to you). Just make sure the ethics committee doesn't have a problem with it.

4chan requires no subscription, so you could even start a so-called "gore thread" yourself and save everything that pops ups. If you'd like to automate this, you can use my (still unstable) Python API wrapper. I simply ask that you report any bugs you encounter, and in return I'll try to iron them out post haste (I have tomorrow off ;) )

Using the above library, you could also search all through the text portion of all posts looking for words like "gore" and grab all images from those threads.

If you don't know Python, I'd be more than happy to assist!
> 1 votes

# Answer
Andero Uusberg actually compiled a bunch of Affective Image Databases and has some useful graphics visualizing how they compare. Some of these have been mentioned above but I include the full set to show completeness and associated metadata.

International Affective Picture System (IAPS)

Lang, P.J., Bradley, M.M., & Cuthbert, B.N. (2008). International affective picture system (IAPS): Affective ratings of pictures and instruction manual. Technical Report A-8. University of Florida, Gainesville, FL. Pictures: 1196 Categories: Multiple, from furniture to complete scene, wide range of semantic categories. Normative ratings: Valence, arousal, and dominance

Geneva affective picture database (GAPED)

Dan-Glauser, E. S., & Scherer, K. R. (2011). The Geneva affective picture database (GAPED): a new 730-picture database focusing on valence and normative significance. Behavior Research Methods, 43(2), 468-477. doi: 10.3758/s13428-011-0064-1 Pictures: 730 Categories: spiders, snakes, and scenes that induce emotions related to the violation of moral and legal norms (human rights violation or animal mistreatment). Positive and neutral pictures were also included. Normative ratings: Valence, Arousal, external norm and internal norm.

Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS)

Marchewka, A., Zurawski, L., Jednoróg, K., & Grabowska, A. (2014). The Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS): Introduction to a novel, standardized, wide-range, high-quality, realistic picture database. Behavior research methods, 46(2), 596-610. Pictures: 1356 Categories: people, faces, animals, objects, and landscapes Normative ratings: Valence and arousal

Erotic subset of Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS-ERO)

Wierzba, M., Riegel, M., Pucz, A., Lesniewska, Z., Dragan, W. L., Gola, M., … & Marchewka, A. (2015). Erotic subset for the Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS ERO): cross-sexual comparison study. Frontiers in psychology, 6, 1336. Pictures: 200 Categories: opposite-sex couple (50), male couple (50), female couple (50), male (25) and female (25)

Normative ratings: Valence and arousal

Set of Fear Inducing Pictures (NAPS-SFIP)

Michalowski, J. M., Drozdziel, D., Matuszewski, J., Koziejowski, W., Jednoróg, K., & Marchewka, A. (2016). The Set of Fear Inducing Pictures (SFIP): Development and validation in fearful and nonfearful individuals. Behavior Research Methods, 1-13. Pictures: 886 Categories: Spiders, bugs, blood injection, fearful social exposure, angry faces Normative ratings: Fear, arousal and valence

Open Affective Standardized Image Set (OASIS)

Kurdi, B., Lozano, S., & Banaji, M. R. (2016). Introducing the Open Affective Standardized Image Set (OASIS). Behavior research methods, 1-14. Pictures: 900 Categories: Animal, Object, Person, Scenery Normative ratings: Valence and arousal

Emotional Picture System (EmoPicS)

Wessa, M., Kanske, P., Neumeister, P., Bode, K., Heissler, J., & Schönfelder, S. (2010). EmoPics: Subjective and psychophysiological evaluations of new imaging material for clinical-bio-psychological research. Journal of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Supplement, 1/11, 77. Pictures: 378 Categories: Diverse social situations animals, and plants Normative ratings: Valence, excitement and complexity

Besançon Affective Picture Set-Adolescents (The BAPS-Ado)= The Attachment Picture Database (APD)

Szymanska, M., Monnin, J., Noiret, N., Tio, G., Galdon, L., Laurent, E., … & Vulliez-Coady, L. (2015). The Besançon Affective Picture Set-Adolescents (the BAPS-Ado): Development and validation. Psychiatry research, 228(3), 576-584. Pictures: 93 Categories: Distress, comfort, joy-complicity and neutral Normative ratings: Valence, Arousal and dominance

EmoMadrid emotional pictures database

EmoMadrid affective picture database (http://www.uam.es/CEACO/EmoMadrid.htm) Pictures: 700 Categories: Normative ratings: Valence and arousal

Military Affective Picture System (MAPS)

Dretsch, M., Thiel, K., Born, S., Goodman, A. M., & Katz, J.S. (2013). Military Affective Picture System (MAPS) \[Picture Repository\]. Unpublished instrument. Auburn University. Pictures: 240 Categories: Military Normative ratings: Valence, dominance, and arousal

Image Stimuli for Emotion Elicitation (ISEE)

Hanjoo Kim, Xin Lu, Michael Costa, Baris Kandemir, Reginald B. Adams, Jr., Jia Li, James Z. Wang and Michelle G. Newman, \`\`Development and Validation of the Image Stimuli for Emotion Elicitation (ISEE),’’ Association for Psychological Science Annual Convention, poster, New York City, May 2015. Pictures: 10 696 Categories: Pictures with emotional label and categorization from Flickr Normative ratings: valence, arousal, dominance, and likeness

Open Library of Affective Food (OLAF)

Miccoli, L., Delgado, R., Guerra, P., Versace, F., Rodríguez, S., & Fernández-Santaella, M.C. (2016). “Affective Pictures and the Open Library of Affective Foods (OLAF): Tools to Investigate Emotions toward Food in Adults.”. PLOS ONE, DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0158991 Pictures: 95 Categories: Food Normative ratings: pleasure, arousal, dominance, and food craving

The DIsgust-RelaTed-Images (DIRTI)

Haberkamp, A., Glombiewski, J. A., Schmidt, F., & Barke, A. (2017). The DIsgust-RelaTed-Images (DIRTI) database: Validation of a novel standardized set of disgust pictures. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 89, 86-94. Pictures: 240 Categories: food, animals, body products, injuries/infections, death, and hygiene Normative ratings: disgust, fear, valence, and arousal.
> 1 votes

# Answer
If your time constraint isn't too strict, I would say its well worth it. And sometimes they can get it out faster than 30 days. I actually work in the lab that made the IAPS and especially the mutilation ones are pretty gruesome. Depends on what category of negative ones you need, some databases specialize in only select ones. The IAPS has mutilation, violence, disgust, accident scenes and loss/death scenes. I know I know, total advertisement. =\]
> 0 votes

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Tags: emotion, data
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# Question
Title: Lottery question, why do we people think this is logic?
For a project we did a small survey, one of the questions was about the following scenario.

> Last week the lottery was won by a ticket with the numbers x x x, this week you can make one choice. Pick a ticket with the numbers from last week or pick one that is different.

More then 95% of the persons we asked answered they took different numbers as reasoning they give that its unlikely that the same numbers win in a row.

Mathematically it has the same odds but why are we not seeing this as logic?

# Answer
It is a variation of a classical fallacy:

> The gambler's fallacy, also known as the Monte Carlo fallacy or the fallacy of the maturity of chances, is the mistaken belief that, if something happens more frequently than normal during a given period, it will happen less frequently in the future. It may also be stated as the belief that, if something happens less frequently than normal during a given period, it will happen more frequently in the future. (Source: WikiPedia)

The fact that the number was advertised as having been a winning number makes it salient to the respondent, just as if it would have won multiple times in a row. So, judging through the fallacy above, the number is less likely to win again.

We rarely judge mathematically or logically if we are not prompted or educated to do so, we rely judgements on heuristics instead.
> 6 votes

# Answer
The mathematical calculation of probability as an independent event will be the same but while people will make a decision it is influenced by past memory. It is day to day experience of people that in a random event it is highly unlikely and almost imposssible for same numbers to come in a lottery.

Here people will calculate the odds as dependent event. So that is not the logic or is the logic whichever way you put it.
> 1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology
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# Question
Title: Why didn't I wake up after dying in a dream?
So I found a lot of articles about the facts why death in dream wakes us up, like that our brain doesn't know what happens after death, or because of the adrenaline and so on... I had two dreams in my life where I didn't wake up after being killed. I only remember one of them where I have been chased by a woman (the killer) and I was running, I was so nervous and scared and then she caught me and took me somewhere with some indians keeping telling me "It is going to be ok/cool/alright" and I was tied, I noticed the axe she was holding, it was so scary, and then she cut off my head. No awakening. I saw indians taking my body somewhere else, the woman came to me and I told her "It is ok, as you said" and I was so satisfied, filled with a feeling like Why was I scared?/It is absolutely alright... and the dream continued, but nothing special happened.

# Answer
We still don't know much about dreams, and researching them is, at the most, a volatile kind of attempt to do science. It would be interesting what the statistics in the papers you read were based on, but the subject itself of those researches would be very unscientific because:

* you cannot compare the "being dead in a dream" condition to any other condition that opposes it (not being dead in a dream doesn't count, if you look at it, as it means every other dream, and that is a lot of alternate conditions that might or might not wake you up equally)
* you rely on "subjective" and hazy accounts of the event, hardly on a MRI scan or anything plausible (how would you choose specifically the subjects and situations where that specific type of dream occurs)?

...and so on.

To put it bluntly, the answer to your question is: because the science in those papers you read was, most probably, questionable if not downright bad.
> 3 votes

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Tags: sleep, dreams
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# Question
Title: Do separate neural circuits express separate genes in the same type of brain matter?
In other words, even though there may be two distinct neural circuits which process separate forms of information in the same type of brain matter (i.e. cerebral cortex processing language in one area and planning in another area) can gene expression differences be found between such distinct and separate neural circuits, despite being in the same type of brain matter?

# Answer
> 1 votes
So, I am revisiting your question as asked by community, and I discover I misunderstood it initially: you didn't say neurons process information, you said neural circuits do. And that distinct neural circuits process separate forms of information. Well, that is inexact. There are several types of neurons, adapted to create neural circuits able to process motor, sensory and a combination of the two. Here's a jolly picture of some of them from here :

As for your question itself, it is quite confusing, at least at the level of knowledge of the brain we have at the moment: Do separate neural circuits express separate genes? We hardly know the surface of how the brain works, we consider a great improvement in science the fact that the psychotic spectrum gene pool has been somewhat mapped .

However, to somewhat answer your question, for example, there is a gene that is sometimes (not always) involved in Tourette syndrome and has been studied. The main idea is that "The SLITRK1 protein probably plays a role in the development of nerve cells, including the growth of specialized extensions (axons and dendrites) that allow each nerve cell to communicate with nearby cells. " Now, Tourette's might be associated with Altered parvalbumin-positive neuron distribution in basal ganglia, which could be either the result of SLITRK1 gene mutation, or some other gene.

Let us put it this way: we do not have genes that suddenly create a third arm or a second heart, so we shouldn't have genes that suddenly create the wrong kind of neurons in the wrong region of the brain (I suppose that's what you mean by "type of brain matter", region of the brain, as neurons are generally all on the same level of the brain matter).

My best hunch, judging by the research I presented above, is that gene mutations might *encourage or discourage* the development of the type of neurons you'd expect in certain areas, which improves or disables the ability to process this or that type of information. Same as above, expressions of the genes involved in making this or that protein or physiological process that favors development of neurons in very specific areas of the brain - will also influence the way or intensity we process information with that specific region of the brain.

But - and it's a revelation I had myself while documenting this answer - **genes do not express or suppress neuron development directly.** The brain is what it is, and has the same format , if you will, no matter whose you dissect.

Genes influence metabolic and general physiologic process that are *also* part of the brain development. Your brain regions will process better or poorer due to the types of proteins that trigger development for the neurons, neurotransmitters that control the electric flow through the etc involved in the matter. Neural cells are hard-coded. Their development and functioning aren't.

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Tags: genetics
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# Question
Title: How do certain individuals, like Quang Duc, develop the ability to remain calm when enduring significant nociceptive pain?
A famous picture depicts Quang Duc self-immolating himself in protest of the Vietnam War. David Halberstram: "As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound \[...\]. His face seemed to remain fairly calm until it was so blackened by the flames that you couldn’t make it out anymore." I'm ignoring shock and hormonal responses in this question, as he remained calm during the initial stage of the burning (where these effects are unlikely to have been live). I'm also (perhaps wrongly) assuming that he wasn't under the influence of drugs and didn't have a cognitive impairment that made him unable to feel the pain.

A question like this has been asked before on Quora, but I'm not satisfied by any of the given answers. Specifically:

* Based on personal/anecdotal experiences, I'm not convinced that confidence/motivation/conviction or any rationalization is able to trigger this ability.
* I also don't see how one can use deliberate practice in this task (i.e., build up tolerance with systematic desensitization or connecting the pain signal with positive thoughts/experiences) without seriously damaging the body.
* I'm also not convinced that traditional/standard mindfulness meditation has this kind of efficacy. I remember seeing various efficacy quantities of mindfulness meditation (and therapy) in a meta study and none of them seemed to be at the quantity required to remain calm in response to this extreme stimulus.
* I'm also skeptical that detachment is viable in this scenario, given the sheer magnitude of the nociceptive stimulus (also, I was under the impression that Buddhist meditation advises the practitioner to be aware to the pain, not detach from it).
* If the explanation is elevated gamma-wave activity, how does one reliably reach this state "on-demand" and how does one maintain it during the endurance of significant nociceptive pain?

I should note that I'm not sure how different the mindfulness-based techniques of today are from the Buddhist meditation practiced by Quang Duc.

Perhaps the research shows that one of the points I'm skeptical about is actually effective in remaining calm in the face of extreme pain. If so, I'd love to hear about it.

# Answer
> \[H\]ow does one reliably reach this state "on-demand" and how does one maintain it during the endurance of significant nociceptive pain?

It seems that activating the gamma wave on-demand is the key to withstand the pain. But how? No one knows.

From Koch, The Brain of the Buddha, American Scientific, 2013:

> Gamma activity in these monks is the largest seen in nonpathological conditions and 30 times greater than in the novices. The more years the monks had been practicing meditation, the stronger the (normalized) power in the gamma band.

<sup>Related: </sup>
> 4 votes

# Answer
As mentioned in Can calmness happen during the fight-flight response?, with looking at the possibility of calmness during stress and trauma, you only have to look at the situation with rape victims and soldiers witnessing severe traumatic events who dissociate (Ellert, et al. 2011)(Waller, et al. 2001) during the event.

Dissociation is a psychological defence mechanism (Cardeña, 1994) which helps the person to get through the situation with as little harm as possible. Think about it like throwing a switch on conscious awareness.

Whilst some define dissociation as a combination of 2 distinct psychological mechanisms (Brown, 2006), the psychobiological mechanism of dissociation is little understood; but, when someone is dissociated from the event, the detachment of conscious awareness from the event can make the person appear very calm.

With Thích Quảng Đức, I would hypothesise that he **somehow** managed to "mentally switch off from the event" by dissociating through detachment. Quảng Đức set light to himself as a protest because he felt there was no other way to convey such a strong message. As far as he believed, he had no choice, just like rape victims and soldiers can have no choice.

The thing with the football fan at the Bradford Fire @Robin mentioned, was that he was inevitably pumped full of adrenaline from his adrenal glands to assist in the Flight/Fright response. Cortisol is also released at the same time and Cortisol is good for numbing any present pain in order for you to flee.

Fear of impending pain could activate the flight/fight response releasing the Adrenaline and Cortisol which could be what was happening in the scenario mentioned in the question.

Needless to say that once the Cortisol has lowered he will feel the pain caused.

## References

Brown, R. J. (2006). Different types of “dissociation” have different psychological mechanisms. *Journal of Trauma & Dissociation*, 7(4), 7-28.
DOI: 10.1300/J229v07n04\_02

Cardeña, E. (1994) The domain of dissociation. In: *Dissociation: Clinical and theoretical aspects*, Edited by: Lynn, S. J. and Rhue, J. W. 5–31. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Ellert R. S. Nijenhuis PhD & Onno van der Hart PhD (2011) Dissociation in Trauma: A New Definition and Comparison with Previous Formulations, *Journal of Trauma & Dissociation*, 12(4), 416-445.
DOI: 10.1080/15299732.2011.570592

Waller, G., Hamilton, K., Elliott, P., Lewendon, J., Stopa, L., Waters, A., ... & Hargreaves, I. (2001). Somatoform dissociation, psychological dissociation, and specific forms of trauma. *Journal of Trauma & Dissociation*, 1(4), 81-98.
DOI: 10.1300/J229v01n04\_05
> 7 votes

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Tags: meditation, pain, self-control
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# Question
Title: Is there a survey regarding the meaning of distress in the definition of mental disorder?
Although without a doubt discussed in professional circles for a long time before, the definition of mental disorder has been recently brought to the limelight by Trump narcissism debate:

> “Everyone has a personality,” \[Allen\] Frances says. “It’s not wrong to have a personality; it’s not mentally ill to have a personality. It’s only a disorder when it causes extreme distress, suffering, and impairment.” \[...\]
>
> Gartner — who has a PhD and treats patients in a private practice — wholeheartedly disagrees with Frances’s position. “The thing about people with personality disorders … they don’t have distress related to their disorder; they cause distress in other people,” he says. “They’re in complete denial about the nature of their illness or even having an illness.”

I'm not going to ask here what is your take on the controversy because that would be primarily opinion based. What I want to know is **whether any surveys have been conducted of psychiatrists or psychologists on this issue, i.e. on where to draw the line with respect to harm/distress**. Asking them this will not violate any ethics rules, I think. (I know where the DSM letter stands; for others' convenience here are links to DSM-IV's and DSM-5's version.)

# Answer
> 2 votes
When it comes to any surveys on how mental health is assessed, you can't go **far** wrong with looking at the DSM-5

> In 2010, the APA launched a unique Web site to facilitate public and professional input into DSM-5. All draft diagnostic criteria and proposed changes in organization were posted on www.dsm5.org for a 2-month comment period. Feedback totaled more than 8,000 submissions, which were systematically reviewed by each of the 13 work groups, whose members, where appropriate, integrated questions and comments into discussions of draft revisions and plans for field trial testing. After revisions to the initial draft criteria and proposed chapter organization, a second posting occurred in 2011. Work groups considered feedback from both Web postings and the results of the DSM-5 Field Trials when drafting proposed final criteria, which were posted on the Web site for a third and final time in 2012. These three iterations of external review produced more than 13,000 individually signed comments on the Web site that were received and reviewed by the work groups, plus thousands of organized petition signers for and against some proposed revisions, all of which allowed the task force to actively address concerns of DSM users, as well as patients and advocacy groups, and ensure that clinical utility remained a high priority. (Source: Page 8 of DSM-5)

My copy of DSM-5 has the following definition for Mental Disorder:

Notice that it said:

> Mental disorders are usually associated with significant distress **or disability**

So therefore, Allen Frances was only slightly incorrect with what he said as there can be social or occupational disabilities without distress, but then based on the findings of Miller at al (2007), John Gartner was also wrong. An example is that Narcisistic Personality Disorder has "weak but significant" relation with intrapersonal distress (Miller, et al. 2007). However, in defense of John Gartner is the fact that;

> the strongest impairment associated with NPD is the distress or “pain and suffering” experienced not by the narcissist but by his or her significant others.

## References

Miller, J. D., Campbell, W. K., & Pilkonis, P. A. (2007). Narcissistic personality disorder: Relations with distress and functional impairment. Comprehensive psychiatry, 48(2), 170-177.
DOI: 10.1016/j.comppsych.2006.10.003 PMCID: PMC1857317
**Free PDF:** https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1857317/pdf/nihms18536.pdf

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Tags: abnormal-psychology, terminology, definition
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title: What is the shadow?

text:
# Question
Title: What is the shadow?
Does the shadow in shadow work theorised by Carl Jung refer to things we absolutely do not know about ourselves or just the parts of our personality we keep hidden?

If it is hidden in our subconscious, how can we bring it out?

# Answer
---

I would first like to point out that according to some, Jungian psychology is considered pseudoscientific and therefore off-topic here. However, as a lot of psychology cannot be measurable currently within the conventional field of science, and as Jungian psychology is still followed by many therapists, it is considered by others to be on-topic. This seems still open to debate though.

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## What is the Jungian Shadow?

Wikipedia gives a good outline on the Jungian Shadow and its difference to the Freudian version of the shadow.

In Jungian psychology, the "shadow", "Id", or "shadow aspect/archetype" may refer to either an unconscious or subconscious aspect of the personality which the conscious ego does not identify in itself, or even the entirety of the unconscious/subconscious, i.e., everything of which a person is not fully conscious. In short, the shadow is the "dark side" as opposed to being in the light of the conscious.

> Because one tends to reject or remain ignorant of the least desirable aspects of one's personality, the shadow is largely negative. There are, however, positive aspects that may also remain hidden in one's shadow (especially in people with low self-esteem, anxieties, and false beliefs).

Because the shadow is in the subconscious/unconscious you can be ignorant of it as you are not conscious of it. Sometimes the "shadow" can make itself known (see the second part of my answer) and therefore at that time you are conscious of that part of the shadow. You can choose to ignore it and repress it back to your subconscious or you can acknowledge it and deal with it, assimilating it into your conscious.

You might have a hidden talent which is repressed by anxieties or self-esteem issues for example, or you may have biases within your thoughts or actions which you are unconsciously aware of.

> The shadow personifies everything that the subject refuses to acknowledge about himself (Jung, 1968 p.284).

## If it is hidden in our subconscious, how can we bring it out?

We cannot always "bring it out". It will manifest itself by itself. The shadow can appear in dreams or when the person projects it onto another person (Papadopoulos, 2006).

You can try to become aware of your "shadow" by being consciously aware of your thoughts, feelings and actions; and where necessary, analysing them either by finding out if your thoughts and feelings are founded on your own or by speaking about your concerns with a trusted person or therapist.

The books within the references may help more with this question.

## References

Jung, C. G. (1968) *The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious* Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
**Free PDF copy available** at https://archive.org/download/collectedworksof91cgju/collectedworksof91cgju.pdf

Papadopoulos, R. K. (Ed.). (2006). *The handbook of Jungian psychology: Theory, practice and applications.* New York, NY: Routledge.
> 3 votes

# Answer
for the definition of "the shadow" we firstly go throw the basic difference between Jung and Freud which is the collective unconscious or the storehouse of memories inherited from the common ancestors of the whole human race which contains the archetypes that we could define it as emotionally charged images and thought forms that have universal meaning. one of those archetypes we have is the "shadow" exactly defined as a prehistoric fear of wild animals, which represents the animal side of the human nature.
> -3 votes

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Tags: personality, jung
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# Question
Title: Which experimental design is this? Factorial vs within groups
I have two independent variables (age and gender) and one dependent variable (the results of a questionnaire using a Likert scale). I'm trying to see whether age and/or gender have an effect on the results of the questionnaire. All participants answered the same questionnaire. Is this a mixed factorial design or a within groups design?

# Answer
Let us see first what it is *not*:

**Not a within subjects design.** To be an within subjects experiment, you need a repeated measure, something that you would test for each individual multiple times. E.g.:

> In this experiment, subjects diagnosed as having attention deficit disorder were each tested on a delay of gratification task after receiving methylphenidate (MPH). All subjects were tested four times, once after receiving one of the four doses. Since each subject was tested under each of the four levels of the independent variable "dose," the design is a within-subjects design and dose is a within-subjects variable

**Not a factorial design.** For factorial designs, you need an interaction between different levels of your independent variables, which is not the case with age and gender. One might argue that your third variable might have levels that interact with the independent variables, but that is not an independent variable.

At the end of the day, you will have to look at your design this way: each combination of gender and age variables is a separate group of people, and you are testing the same variable on 3(male)+3(female)=6 or 4(male)+4(female)=8 groups of people, depending on how many age groups you are taking in consideration.

That is a between subjects design. For a study, not an experiment.

Note: I looked up the best explanation for it on several websites, here is the clearest I could find, which ended up being my source:
> 3 votes

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Tags: experimental-psychology, statistics, psychology, experiment-design
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# Question
Title: This is the 2,000th question posted. Why do people care about big round number events more than the surrounding events?
People seem to have a preference for celebrating "big round numbers", like the 2,000 post in the forum (although the 10,000 post would probably be more "special" - but not the 10,234 post, so it's not strictly a magnitude bias). There are lots of examples of this. Sports stats are another: baseball players celebrate 3,000 hits, 500 home runs, and 20 wins. Football players 1,000 yard seasons, and so on.

Why do we prefer marking events that are round numbers?

# Answer
> 2 votes
I might be wrong but it might have something associated with the numerical goals we acheive as children, young adults and grown up. For example, becoming 10 years of age is a sign of maturity, mainly due to the double digits it contains. This leads us (as children) to believe that we are that much closer to becoming adults. When people turn 40 or 50 they put a lot more pressure on them selves than they would have if that number was decreased a year or two. Maybe it's the obvious facts such as 50 is closer to 60 than 49 is?

Also, when we learn how to count, we don't necessarily stop at 3, or 7, 10 is usually the number that kids are first introduced to, and once they learn it get appraise from external figures.

Basically, our preffered simplicity for numbers may or may not reflect our own personal achievements during our childhood and other significant life experiences. I know for a fact that I wouldn't be as proud of running a 39.7K as I would have been for running a 40K, even though the difference is a tiny 0.3.

When we announce our achievements to others we say "I'm in the top 10 for my age in cross-country!", assuming we come 7th, top ten sounds like a greater acheivement, this is just me, others may have different opinions.

Growing up and being congratulated for our achievements by older family members and other adult figures for unspecified winnings might have an impact on our greater admiration of "rounded numbers". I'm not quite sure whether or not I explained my self very well but I hope you understand what I'm saying.

# Answer
> 2 votes
There might be a simple answer to that,involving a cognitive ability essential for survival: **pattern recognition**.

> In psychology and cognitive neuroscience, pattern recognition describes a cognitive process that matches information from a stimulus with information retrieved from memory. Pattern recognition occurs when information from the environment is received and entered into short-term memory, causing automatic activation of a specific content of long-term memory.

(Source:WikiPedia)

We simply do not have many non-rounded numbers memorised, so when we recognise a big, rounded number, we tend to celebrate the fact. That is simply how our brain is wired, to recognise patterns and feel comfortable with easily identifiable ones rather than with irregular figments of reality (or numbers, in this case).

Another element to that is the fact that

> Recognizing patterns allow us to predict and expect what is coming. The process of pattern recognition involves matching the information received with the information already stored in the brain. Making the connection between memories and information perceived is a step of pattern recognition called identification. Pattern recognition requires repetition of experience.

In other words and specifically in this case, it is not easy to predict what is after 19675 at a glance, as we hardly recognise the number, but it is easier to predict what follows after 20000.

Interestingly enough, this specific oddity of our brain is being used in marketing. Have you ever gotten annoyed at the 2.99 or 2.98 price tags? Your brain has to make an effort to round it to 3 instead of rounding it to 2, because you recognise 2 easier in that sequence (it's there) whereas to get to 3 you would have to pay attention to the calculation while going through the shopping list and making sure the kid doesn't knock the toy stand over.

# Answer
> -1 votes
Because round numbers are easier than full numbers. For instance, $$10^9=1000000000$$ saves a lot, instead of $$997843863678632762767267863$$ I do not know how to give you a short description of this number.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, social-psychology, aesthetics
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# Question
Title: Are there any introductory books about the relationship between art and psychology/cognition?
I'd like to know more about art, music, psychology, and cognition. Since they are related to each other, I'd like to read a book with a topic covering those. Bonus if it's for beginners.

# Answer
Oliver Sacks has an excellent and very approachable book on the topic (psychology/cognition + music in particular, less art in general): Musicophilia.
> 4 votes

# Answer
The introductory reading section in the Wikipedia page of music psychology has a lot of suggestions.
> -1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, reference-request, music
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# Question
Title: Cognition of people born by C-section vs born ordinarily?
Has there been any research comparing the cognition of people born via C-section to people born vaginally?

During a vaginal birth, the baby's head is pressured and deforms somewhat in order to make it through. Hypothetically, this could cause some minor brain damage which would be avoided by C-section birth.

# Answer
I don't know if there has been any research on this, but there is reason to doubt that such research would yield any meaningful results.

You would need to control for a large number of things to address your question. For example, people born by C-section are people who have access to medical care. Those people have money, which is associated with education and opportunities, both of which are associated with IQ.

Additionally, a C-section is medical intervention for when something goes wrong. The things that lead to C-sections (such as improper positioning of the baby before birth, compromising oxygen supply) can lead to brain damage. C-sections generally are associated with many more complications than healthy vaginal births.

Another thing to consider is that vaginal birth would be a poor evolutionary solution for human reproduction if it lead to significantly lower intelligence.

I would be much less surprised if the opposite of your hypothesis turned out to be true.
> 1 votes

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Tags: measurement, experimental-psychology
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# Question
Title: Any studies as to whether internet groups create even more groups, ideologues and "separation" than pre-internet?
Any studies as to whether internet groups create even more groups, ideologues and "separation" than pre-internet?

Since I've speculated that in the internet age we may be seeing even more "groups opposed to each other", "groups based on exclusivity" etc. But I wonder if it's just my perception or whether there's some science to back it up.

# Answer
> 6 votes
The literature you are looking for is regarding group polarisation in the Internet era (with "polarisation" being the main research keyword here).

There are supporters of your idea as well, most notably Eli Pariser (2011) and Cass Sunstein (2001, 2009, 2017) and studies that show polarisation on the Internet. That being said:

> However, when comparisons are made between offline and online sources, studies find similar levels of segregation. Figure 1, taken from Gentzkow and Shapiro (2011), shows that segregation across website visits is smaller than segregation across national newspapers, but larger than segregation across local newspapers. Halberstam and Knight (2016) examine political networks on Twitter and find similar levels of segregation in the Twitter political networks as in offline political networks. Furthermore, while suggestive, segregation across information sources on the internet is neither necessary nor sufficient for the internet to increase polarisation.

(Source: "The internet, social media, and political polarisation" - Levi Boxell, 2017

So you are on the right track, your question was thought of before and the keyword "polarisation" might lead your research about it in more depth than this quick answer.

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Tags: internet, social-networks, sociology
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# Question
Title: What is the connection between cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias?
Intuitively, I'd think that cognitive dissonance (CD) is one explanation of confirmation bias (CB), since if it's the case that most people believe "I am right about most things", then admitting one is wrong about something is dissonant with that. Searching "cognitive dissonance confirmation bias" I found a ton of (almost all non-academic) places asserting something similar, but no concrete evidence linking the two. Moreover, I don't see anything about CD here or in any of the various other places I've read about CB.

Is there any research that identifies a connection between the two and tests it?

# Answer
Related studies you might find interesting.

Confirmation bias in sequential information search after preliminary decisions: An expansion of dissonance theoretical research on selective exposure to information.

> The authors provide evidence that the increase in confirmation bias under sequential presentation is caused by heightened commitment due to the participants' increased focusing on their decision

Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises.

> Confirmation bias, as the term is typically used in the psychological literature, connotes the seeking or interpreting of evidence in ways that are partial to existing beliefs, expectations, or a hypothesis in hand.

Google Scholar has many more too, but you'll probably have to filter a bit.
> 3 votes

# Answer
If you look at the definitions, you realise that you don't need the research for explaining the relationship between the two.

Cognitive dissonance is the direct (emotional, if you will) result of holding two opposing beliefs at the same time:

> In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort (psychological stress) experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values.

Confirmation bias is the attempt to "twitch" information opposing to your beliefs so as to not generate a conflict in your cognition, so that it doesn't generate the discomfort that we just defined as cognitive dissonance:

> the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.

To say that confirmation bias's use is to avoid cognitive dissonance is something that derives from the definition of both.We do indeed avoid holding two opposing beliefs at the same time to avoid the psychological distress caused by it. No need to scientifically prove that. Furthermore, saying that cognitive dissonance is one explanation for Cognitive Bias seems to be an understatement of the above.

Easiest simile is, if you define the symbol "1" as representing one item of anything and the symbol "0" as representing no item at all, you do not have to prove that you can represent adding one item to nothing by the symbol "1". It's a working convention you simply accept.
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, bias, cognitive-dissonance
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title: Subconscious response to symbols

text:
# Question
Title: Subconscious response to symbols
How scientifically valid is the idea that the subconscious recognises, interprets and processes symbols? By "symbols" I mean representations of one thing using another.

The context is the article "The Inner Language of the Subconscious" by Brenner in Psychology Today. I'm reading of attempts to coax certain behaviours/thought processes or eliminate bad habits by means of communicating directly with the subconscious, and I wanted to know if this is legitimate thinking or pseudoscientific claptrap.

# Answer
You can start by checking out research on subliminal messaging. To summarize, subliminal messaging works to some degree, but it is much less effective than superliminal communication.

For example, will showing a dark gray coke bottle silhouette, so dark that you don't even know you're seeing it, in the momentary blank screen between movie previews cause people to decide to go buy a soda? It will probably influence a couple people, but not as many as would be influenced by just replacing the blank screen with a big, bright, picture of a coke, with the Coca-cola logo and condensation dripping down the glass. I say this because the benefits of conventional advertisements are well-established, but the effects of subliminal marketing are in doubt (Karremans et al., 2006).

That said, there is evidence that you can "prime" someone with subliminal information. Priming, though, is more about getting people to recognize something more quickly later than it is about getting them to change their behavior.

To your question, Greenwald has studied the effectiveness of subliminal messaging for self-help, and found it to be ineffective.

Refs:

Greenwald, A. G. (1992). New Look 3: Unconscious cognition reclaimed. American Psychologist, 47(6), 766.

Karremans, J. C., Stroebe, W., & Claus, J. (2006). Beyond Vicary’s fantasies: The impact of subliminal priming and brand choice. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42(6), 792-798.
> 3 votes

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Tags: psychology
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# Question
Title: Paper finding that explicitly welcomed minorities felt less welcome
I'm trying to track down a research paper that I have lost the details for. Any help tracking it down would be very, very welcome!

It described an experiment where a US college showed prospective students a promotional video with one of two narration tracks: one which said that all students are welcome; and another where various minority groups were specifically said to be welcome. I seem to recall that the video itself, which showed a variety of students, was the same for both groups.

The results showed that students from those minority groups rated the video that singled out demographic groups as *less welcoming*.

The conclusion was that by singling out demographics as needing to be welcomed separately, this made people feel different and therefore less welcome.

# Answer
I think the description provided (if accurate) should be enough to find the paper, unless it is not available online, or is only available in a different language. Sometimes authors of books and certain review papers will reference unpublished research, so it may have come up in that context. Or it may not exist at all.

The results described are in line with what diversity training guides often recommend, for example:

> **Do** talk about everybody’s differences. Teaching about cultural differences must be inclusive of all people, at all times.
>
> **Don’t** single out particular groups, such as ‘ethnic groups’.

Unfortunately, such materials rarely provide references to support recommendations.

This area of research falls under "multiculturalism vs colorblindness" - the question of whether it is best to highlight differences between groups, or to ignore them. A recent review (2018), that also references 3 other recent comprehensive reviews, echoes the findings of over 25 years of research (eg, see earlier review (1993)) that the multicultural approach is generally superior across a wide variety of outcome measures.

That said, there are certainly many ways in which attempts to foster diversity can go wrong, and can be more clearly refined. Perhaps singling out specific groups, as suggested by some training guides, is one of those pitfalls (for a similar example, see the minority spotlight effect). It would be interesting to see a study that addresses this question directly.
> 5 votes

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Tags: reference-request, cross-cultural-psychology
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# Question
Title: What is the difference between Symbolism and Abstract thinking in Piaget's Theory?
I'm having trouble understanding the difference between symbols and abstract thinking in Piaget's Cognitive Development Theory. Piaget says that in the preoperational stage, children 2-7 years old can think of things in terms of symbols, and that abstract thinking forms in the formal operational stage. I thought symbols are a part of abstract thinking, perhaps because symbols, to me, seem abstract. So, what does the theory mean when it refers to "abstract thinking?" Can someone give me a concrete example delineating the difference between the abstract thinking and symbolism parts in their respective stages? Much thanks!

# Answer
> 2 votes
Symbolism uses a symbol to represent an existing object, while abstract thinking can be thought of as considering things that don't actually exist.

For a rough example of each, consider representation as symbolism (this paper is the plane I'm on) and consider generalization as abstraction (what it means to be "on" something). For another, consider something (this blue line on a paper) that represents something else (this river), contrasted with considering the concepts of "blue" or "line".

# Answer
> 0 votes
I believe that when Piagetian theory refers to *abstract thinking* in the formal operations stage it means abstraction of propositional form from propositional content, in the sense that the individual is capable of reasoning on the basis of the structure of propositions, regardless of the fact that he/she considers such propositions to be true or false. This is also called hypothetico-deductive reasoning. In previous developmental stages it is very difficult to persuade a child to deduce the consequences of a fact that he/she considers to be false. Abstraction in the general sense does occur in the course of all development, as illustrated by the concept of *reflective abstraction*. The specific difference in the formal operations stage concerns the dissociation of propositional structure from propositional content, as mentioned above.

For more detail on this I'd recommend Piaget & Inhelder's book *the psychology of the child*. For more specific detail concerning the formal operations stages there is Inhelder & Piaget's book *The growth of logical thinking from childhood to adolescence*.

# Answer
> -1 votes
In plain English.

Piaget uses symbolism to mean the use of symbols as in words, objects, images, behaviors, mannerisms...things that tend to be concrete or can conjure concrete images in ones mind.

For example, think of the image of a gif of a man scratching his nose. That image is full of symbols. If you were to create a movie scene based on that info, I'd be easy to visualize it.

Piaget uses abstract thinking to describe the type of thinking that involves the manipulation of ideas, engages the imagination and makes creative thinking possible.

For example, if you're asked to start a discussion about constructing a theory on globalization or discuss the meaning of democracy or that of human rights... you'd engage in abstract thinking. These are ideas. Abstractions. At this stage a person can weave in and out of abstract ideas.

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Tags: developmental-psychology
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# Question
Title: Is there any theory supporting the idea that writing with your non-dominant hand is beneficial?
E.g. Could writing with your left hand increase creativity? Especially if the left hand is the non-dominant one. Could placebo effect also play a significant role?

# Answer
Yes. It is beneficial. There is physical evidence. And it also can play a role in terms of plasticity.
> -2 votes

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Tags: brain-training, creativity
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# Question
Title: Training adults on how to react to social cues.
I was researching social cues and stumbled upon this article, which concludes that:

> results suggest that implicit learning is context-dependent and can be influenced by the cue type, e.g., social and object cues.

Now, that is not surprising at all, the findings that learning is context-dependent, meaning that relevant social cues improve it. However, what if the subject has to learn how to react to social cues? Say we are talking about individuals that for various reasons, (let's say, social isolation growing up or as one symptom of a disorder or other) do not know how to react to most social cues, or to more complex ones? How do you train them, given that, as adults, exposure in a cvasi-controlled environment (like school) is not possible?

I guess my question is: **In adult learning, would it be possible to train people to understand or react to social cues, taking into account that you need to make the training context-dependent? ***

# Answer
> 1 votes
Yes. The first step in teaching others to recognize and how to respond to social cues is to help them learn self-awareness. They need to become aware of how they feel and naturally respond to stimuli. People with ASD often struggle with having a detached look of themselves- ToM. That too someone can overcome through self-awareness. Google scholar self-awareness and social competence.

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Tags: training
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# Question
Title: Are there psychological explanations for people being drawn to neo-nazism or other bad ideologues?
Are there psychological explanations for people being drawn to neo-nazism or other bad ideologues?

Since surely the people are not believing in them for no reason. But what is it that they try to achieve through such ideologues? Are these people "sane"?

Or perhaps e.g. their "superior race" beliefs mean that their ideologue is "rational" in the sense that they feel that they belong to the superior race and other races ought to be discarded in order for only the superior race to flourish?

# Answer
There are a few questions here which are related:

I will try and put some time aside to build a more full answer with references, but to give a starter, there are a lot of studies on this subject starting with conformity studies such as the Milgram Experiment (here is a documentary on the experiment) and the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Philip Zimbardo who was in charge of the Stanford Prison Experiment wrote the book *"The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil"* and led a talk on his research on the subject including other examples, but the biggest one for me was turned into a movie in Germany called Die Welle, and in English under the name The Wave.

The movie covered the true story of an experiment with a group of school children who wanted to understand the very same question you are asking, not believing it could happen today. Things turned nasty and out of control.

Teacher, Ron Jones's "Third Wave" experiment, which took place at a Californian school in 1967 was put together to explain how the German population could accept the actions of the Nazi regime during the Second World War. He founded a totalitarian, strictly-organized "movement" with harsh punishments that was led by him autocratically. The intricate sense of community led to a wave of enthusiasm not only from his own students, but also from students from other classes who joined the program later. Jones later admitted to having enjoyed having his students as followers. To eliminate the upcoming momentum, Jones aborted the project on the fifth day and showed the students the parallels towards the Nazi youth movements.

Image: Cutting of Klink (1967)

All of these studies and experiments provide strong proof that the risk of full Nazi style regimes can return on a national level given the right circumstances.

## References

Klink, B. (1967). 'Third Wave' presents inside look into Fascism. *Catamount*, 11(14), 3
Retrieved at: http://www.cubberleycatamount.com/Content/66-67/Catamount%20Pages/V11No14

## See Also

**Lesson Plan Movie**
The documentary by the students and teacher of “The Third Wave” (aka “The Wave”)
(http://www.lessonplanmovie.com)

**Teacher, Ron Jones' account of the experiment**
(http://libcom.org/history/the-third-wave-1967-account-ron-jones)
> 3 votes

# Answer
Milgram style conformity and Zimbardo's prison both relied pretty heavily on authority figures. A different mechanism is explored by the minimal group paradigm: people just seem predisposed to form in-groups and out-groups on the flimsiest pretexts. Although it's a different mechanism, in real life they're not independent. Zimbardo's work could be interpreted as an exercise in creating pretexts for this kind of arbitrary-group-formation tendency. (Although Milgram really was all about authority figures)

This perspective suggests that members of even the most incomprehensible ideologies (insert your own examples here) are basically held together by exactly the same sort of community-forming mechanisms that work well for creating other more positive/constructive cohesive communities (insert your own examples here)

There's a recent review of this sort of thing here: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0a1f/7c2330ae9c85ad13b2a374c0ed21e4ace4d3.pdf
> 1 votes

# Answer
You can look at a number of theories that can explain why people find neonazism seductive.

Schizophrenia- meaning they're delusional. Social Bond theory- who they respect and bond with Attachment theory- bonded with a White supremacist caretaker Belongingness- the need to belong The idea of manifest destiny and the historical oppression of minorities among others.

I'll edit when I can think of more.
> -2 votes

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Tags: political-psychology
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# Question
Title: What does science say about feeling appreciated/loved/valued?
I believe firmly that people who feel appreciated/loved/valued will (generally) experience all kinds of benefits for themselves and the people around them.

Think about:

* Being more healthy
* Experience more happiness
* Perform better at work
* Being more kind to others
* etc.

I would like to know what science says about the effects of people feeling appreciated, loved, valued, or things of that nature.

Can anybody recommend some sources? I would be interested in anything that is related, but mostly things that are backed up by science.

# Answer
> 3 votes
A broad question with an even broader scientific literature speaking to it; I'll highlight a few of the major "camps" with key references that you can follow up with if you find them interesting:

1. Without any particular theoretical allegiance, Baumeister & Leary (1995) argue that the need to belong is a fundamental human motivation. You can read a bit more about what they argue this classification implies in my answer to another question here. Baumeister (1991) also describes belong alongside other core "meanings" of life in his book (which I found an interesting read).
2. Supporters of an **attachment theory** perspective (e.g., Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007a) argue that establishing a sense of relational *security*--the feeling that others can and will be there for you in times of need, and are generally well-intentioned--corresponds to better emotion regulation, social relationships, and more pro-social behavior (see Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007b, for a review).
3. From an **existential psychology** perspective (see Solomon et al., 1999), humans have a unique awareness of their inevitable mortality, which they respond to in a number of ways in an attempt to preserve their symbolic selves (Burke et al., 2010). Close relationships are theorized to serve as one of these sources of existential security (see Hart et al., 2005), and existential security in turn has been linked to health (Goldenberg & Arndt, 2008) and interpersonal relationships (Greenberg et al., 1990).
4. According to **self-determination theory** (see Ryan & Deci, 2000), *relatedness* is one of three core human needs. When these basic needs (the others include *competence* and *autonomy*) are met, people are more intrinsically motivated, and experience benefits to their mental health, and well-being, as well as in many applied areas (e.g., work, education, etc.,).
5. Finally, according to some clinical perspectives (e.g., Rogers, 1992), clients need to feel *unconditional positive regard* from their therapists in order for therapy to be successful.

**References**

Baumeister, R. F. (1991). *Meanings of life*. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. *Psychological Bulletin*, *117*(3), 497-527.

Burke, B. L., Martens, A., & Faucher, E. H. (2010). Two decades of terror management theory: A meta-analysis of mortality salience research. *Personality and Social Psychology Review*, *14*(2), 155-195.

Goldenberg, J. L., & Arndt, J. (2008). The implications of death for health: A terror management health model for behavioral health promotion. *Psychological Review*, *115*(4), 1032-1053.

Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., Rosenblatt, A., Veeder, M., Kirkland, S., & Lyon, D. (1990). Evidence for terror management theory II: The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who threaten or bolster the cultural worldview. J*ournal of Personality and Social Psychology*, *58*(2), 308-318.

Hart, J., Shaver, P. R., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2005). Attachment, self-esteem, worldviews, and terror management: evidence for a tripartite security system. *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology*, *88*(6), 999-1013.

Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2007a). *Attachment in adulthood: Structure, dynamics, and change*. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2007). Boosting attachment security to promote mental health, prosocial values, and inter-group tolerance. *Psychological Inquiry*, *18*(3), 139-156.

Rogers, C. R. (1992). The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. *Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology*, *60*(6), 827-832.

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. *American Psychologist*, *55*(1), 68-78.

Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (1991). A terror management theory of social behavior: The psychological functions of self-esteem and cultural worldviews. In *Advances in experimental social psychology* (Vol. 24, pp. 93-159). Academic Press.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, social-psychology, emotion, health-psychology, happiness
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# Question
Title: Doing PCA and ICA analysis on EEG data with 24 channels
I am very new to this type of neuroscience research and I am trying to do some automatic artifact detection. I am having trouble understanding how I should work with my data. I have data recorded from 20 electrodes on my EEG. The outputs are all in microVolts and are recordings for only one person doing eye blinking during the recording. My question is, now that I have the data from the 20 electrodes, how would I do PCA or ICA analysis on them? Like should I apply sklearn (from python) PCA or ICA option to the whole matrix, meaning to the whole data of the 20 electrodes, at once or should I apply these options to the measurements from one electrodes at a time and then combine them?

Thanks so much for your help and let me know if more specificity in the question is needed.

# Answer
First of all, I would recommend working with a domain specific (EEG) and established analysis package of your choice. You mentioned python, so I would advise you to check out MNE-Python. There is a tutorial regarding eyeblink detection/correction/rejection from EEG data that you could work through.

To answer your general question, ICA and PCA are typically done on the complete data matrix, i.e., each row of the data matrix is a channel and each column is a sampled timepoint (values in microvolts).
> 3 votes

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Tags: eeg, signal-detection
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# Question
Title: Features for blink detection in real-time single channel EEG
I am looking to detect blink events in real-time single channel EEG. Classification of a moving window of samples to determine whether a blink artifact exists requires feature extraction (except when using deep learning, I am not experienced enough for this). What features would be useful to extract from a window of approx. 50-200 samples of time series data for detecting a blink event. The blink event can be easily seen in the below picture:

# Answer
The EEG signature of eye blinks is typically visible for about 200ms of data. When you want to move a window of 50 to 200 samples, I assume that your sampling frequency is 1000Hz (you should specify this in your next question).

A classical feature for eye blink detection is the *peak-to-peak amplitude*, which is the absolute difference of the maximum amplitude and the minimum amplitude of the EEG within your window. Another feature could be the variance within your EEG window.

Pseudocode:

```
peak_to_peak_amp = abs(window.max() - window.min())
variance = var(window)

```

Note that both of these features are rather unspecific to eye blinks and will have a hard time to distinguish blinks from other peaks in the data. For this reason, the methods are often combined with filtering of the data and converting the amplitudes in microvolts to z-scores.

For reading I suggest chapter 6 in the canonical book by Steven Luck: An Introduction to the Event-Related Potential Technique
> 2 votes

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Tags: eeg, signal-processing
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# Question
Title: Why do we find high pitched voices funny?
I believe it's understood what type of voice I'm refering to, but for context I'm linking this youtube video where that type of voice is clearly heard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hfms-v6G7n8

Why do people in general find such type of voice funny?

# Answer
Two things come to mind for me.. First, at a very basic level, things that are perceptually salient capture our attention (Corbetta & Shulman, 2002), and this is obviously important for understanding our environment and assessing changes for threats (e.g.). In the video you linked, you have that perceptual salience and it's also in an animated and clearly exaggerated fashion.

The second thing that comes to mind is the voices that older children and adults make when communicating with infants. This sort of speech seems to serve an attentional/affective function (Gauthier & Shi, 2011), and research suggests that this sort of speech is actually a reflection of the infant's own communication styles (Smith & Trainor, 2008). Obviously, we might use such a voice because it sounds funny to them and we might get the infant to laugh. Who knows whether we intrinsically find it funny (if so, why?), or whether we learn to laugh at it as infants. It could well be that we simply come hardwired to interpret a perceptually salient *and non-threatening* social stimulus like that to be amusing.

**References**

Corbetta, M., & Shulman, G. L. (2002). Control of goal-directed and stimulus-driven attention in the brain. *Nature reviews neuroscience*, 3(3), 201.
DOI: 10.1038/nrn755 PMID: 11994752

Gauthier, B., & Shi, R. (2011). A connectionist study on the role of pitch in infant-directed speech. *The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America*, 130(6), EL380-EL386.
DOI: 10.1121/1.3653546 PMID: 22225130

Smith, N. A., & Trainor, L. J. (2008). Infant-directed speech is modulated by infant feedback. *Infancy*, 13(4), 410-420.
DOI: 10.1080/15250000802188719
> 5 votes

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Tags: humour
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