# Question
Title: Is Allen Carr's "easy way to stop smoking" a form of cognitive therapy?
David Burns is a cognitive therapist, who in his *Feeling Good* describes how to overcome depression. He states that depression is a logical result of irrational negative thoughts, which can be generalized to a finite set of thought patterns called cognitive distortions. For example, one such cognitive distortion is **over-generalization**, an example of a negative irrational thought matching this pattern is *"this girl rejected my advances outright, i'll probably never have success with a girl"*. In general, cognitive therapy states that our thoughts determine emotions, feelings, moods, habits and behaviors. Thoughts here not only mean thought-phrases, but also perceptions, interpretations, attitudes and beliefs.

Allen Carr was a smoking cessation expert, who wrote *Easy Way to Stop Smoking*. In short, his method revolves around changing your perception of smoking and quitting, and if you succeed, you will quit easily, painlessly and instantly, as if you were never a smoker. First, Carr deconstructs every single argument for smoking, such as concentration, relaxation, stress coping aid, taste, hobby and so on, showing that they are just incorrect rationalizations of an addicted mind. Then he explains the mechanism of addiction — you smoke to relieve the unpleasant withdrawal symptoms, your mind associates sense of relief with the cigarette, therefore cigarette deprivation is so painful, even though it itself doesn't bring pleasure, only returns you to the state, in which non-smokers always are. Finally, he goes through the fears of quitting and deconstructs them by showing that physical withdrawal symptoms are mild, and the cravings are creatures of the deluded mind, that quitting is not a sacrifice and a chore, and the only obstacle was fear.

Carr meticulously describes every facet of smoking, therefore his book doesn't propose written exercises and ideally takes only one reading through to quit smoking. Burns's approach, in contrast, is generic and gradual, he gives you some tools, namely, list of cognitive distortions and a vast amount of written exercises, and asks you to manually apply them in everyday situations. His therapy course lasts for several weeks.

My question is, can Carr's method viewed as a kind of cognitive therapy? What is its relation to a vast ontology of cognitive-behavioral therapy variants, what is the same and what is different? Do mainstream cognitive therapy academics acknowledge Carr's method and his similarities with their approach?

# Answer
> 3 votes
## Cognitive therapy

The driving principle behind **cognitive therapy** is that mental problems are caused not by any 'objective' qualities of the events that we experience, but our perception and interpretation of those events. By changing these perceptions and interpretations, we can alleviate or solve those problems (Beck, 1970).

In this sense, **Carr's method can be seen as consistent with cognitive therapy**, but I would not go so far as to call it a *form* of cognitive therapy without peer review and validation that does not seem to exist.

## Cognitive behavioral therapy

The difference between Burns' and Carr's methods can be explained by the fact that Burns is a **cognitive behavioral therapist** (CBT). This is a form of therapy which incorporates and expands on the principles of cognitive therapy, by acknowledging that not all of our perceptions and interpretations are under rational or conscious control. It therefore incorporates both cognitive and behavioral elements. An introduction to and meta-review of CBT's efficacy compared to therapy forms like cognitive therapy can be found in Butler et al. (2006).

## Validity of Carr's method

Carr's work does not appear to have been directly referenced, at least not in any readily discoverable form, in the psychological literature. This may be because his method is actually not new, but seems to have been loosely based on a mix of Beck's ideas and Albert Ellis' stoicism-inspired **rational therapy**, so it should not necessarily be taken to mean that the method is nonsense; Carr may simply be popularizing established methods.

## References

* Beck, A. T. (1970). Cognitive therapy: Nature and relation to behavior therapy. Behavior therapy, 1(2), 184-200.
* Butler, A. C., Chapman, J. E., Forman, E. M., & Beck, A. T. (2006). The empirical status of cognitive-behavioral therapy: a review of meta-analyses. Clinical psychology review, 26(1), 17-31.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, clinical-psychology, validation
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# Question
Title: Would a patient benefit from continuing cognitive therapy even after solving his pathology?
According to this question: Would most people benefit from psychotherapy? most people would benefit from psychotherapy.

**I'm trying to narrow that question to only the people who have experienced some *psychopathology* and went into a *cognitive therapy*.**

Wikipedia explains that the differences between psychotherapy and counseling can be summarized in the following sentence:

> Unlike the patient in psychotherapy, the client in counseling does not need to be cured or helped to overcome a psychological suffering, but draws on the skills of the counselor as an aid skills they already possess in order to achieve the goals you want, in the ways and in the times that are responsive.

Does the evidence support the idea that most people affected by psychopathology would **strongly** benefit from continuing cognitive psychotherapy / counseling after the main problems disappear?

# Answer
**No, people who have experienced some psychopathology, went into cognitive therapy and resolved their problems would most likely not benefit strongly from continuing cognitive therapy.** However, they may still benefit from additional therapy in case of relapsing or future problems.

## Cognitive therapy

Cognitive therapy is a short-term therapy that was designed to "modify an individual's idiosyncratic, maladaptive ideation" (Beck, 1970).

> The basic cognitive technique consists of delineating the individual's specific misconceptions, distortions, and maladaptive assumptions, and of testing their validity and reasonableness. By loosening the grip of his perseverative, distorted ideation, the patient is enabled to formulate his experiences more realistically.

Strictly speaking, therefore, **once maladaptive ideation can no longer be detected in the individual, the individual's problem is solved to the extent it can be solved**, at least insofar as cognitive therapy's notion of psychopathology is concerned. This does not necessarily mean the patient is problem-free, only free of detectable problems that cognitive therapy applies to.

## References

* Beck, A. T. (1970). Cognitive therapy: Nature and relation to behavior therapy. Behavior therapy, 1(2), 184-200.
> 2 votes

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Tags: abnormal-psychology, clinical-psychology, psychiatry
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# Question
Title: How much sleep is needed for peak cognitive performance?
How much sleep is needed for peak cognitive performance? If some were to, for example, wake up one morning at 12:30PM, would a sleeping pill help obtain better sleep required for that performance the next morning at 08:00AM? And when would the optimal time be for the consumption of that sleeping pill? Is the amount of drawbacks in cognitive performance perceptible for 4.5 hours of sleep vs. 7 hours of sleep?

# Answer
> 8 votes
> How much sleep is needed for peak cognitive performance. If some were for \>example wake up one morning at 12:30 pm would a sleeping pill help obtain \>better sleep required for that performance the next morning at 08:00 am ?

It depends on what pharmacotherapies - per the clinical judgement of their treating physician - one may have consumed. Conceptually, we might consider the two most psychopharmacologically relevant agents to be psychostimulants (coll. "uppers") and sedatives (coll. "downers" aka "goofballs").

Regarding sedatives, one's biggest concern would be a residual hangover effect. This is influenced by the agent's half-life (t½). For future reference, some 8 drug half-lives are needed for complete elimination. A short-acting benzodiazepine such as midazolam (t½ = several hours) is less likely to have residual effects than a long-acting barbiturate such as phenobarbital (t½ = 100+ hours). Non-benzodiazepine sedatives such as zolpidem appear so-so with regards to hangover, zaleplon seems to fair considerably better \[1\]. sedating antihistamines are horrendous \[2\]. If one had an enterically-coated "XR" tablet, one might do well to crush it up before swallowing, to ensure a more amenable pharmacokinetic profile.

> Is it perceptable the amount of drawbacks in cognitive performance in a situation of 4.5 hrs of sleep vs 7 hrs of sleep?

First, a caveat: individual differences apply here \[3\]. You know the answer for your own cognitive faculties better than anyone else. Interestingly, here is one paper that shows relatively modest drops in performance after acute sleep deprivation; chronic sleep deprivation, however, appears to have a deleterious dose-dependent effect \[4\].

Of direct relevance to your actual question, the above study notes:

***Based on these findings, it appears that the inflection point (i.e. the minimum amount of nightly sleep required to achieve a state of equilibrium in which daytime alertness and performance can be maintained at a stable, albeit reduced, level) is approximately 4 h per night.*** \[4\]

Who'd've thunk, right?

The issue boils down to this:

Will the time you spend attempting to encode new memories into your LTM be more beneficial than the loss in attentional and executive function, as well as loss of potential REM-related memory consolidation and subsequent recall at the time of your examination?

When it comes to one's own therapeutic needs, it is always prudent that one consult with their treating physician. Here are my own reckless thoughts on the matter:

* Ideal situation: if one's healthcare practitioner has prescribed them the sedative sodium oxybate (better known as GHB), then per oral administration of 4-5 grams GHB, followed by rapid onset of 4 hours of deep, refreshing sleep, might be indicated \[5\]. It would appear very unfortunate that GHB developed a reputation as a date rape drug, as anecdotally, some individuals consider it the "perfect sleep aid", particularly during exam periods.
* If one's healthcare practitioner has prescribed them any of the following psychostimulants: d-amphetamine \[6\], modafinil \[6\] or perhaps methylphenidate they may wish to consider - per the recommendation of their physician, of course - skipping sleep entirely. Obviously, this is contingent upon their ability to recover following completion of their work, study or family-related responsibilities, but may result in greater performance relative to brief, fragmented sleep.
* If one's healthcare practitioner has prescribed them a short-acting benzodiazepine, one may still find that their sleep disorder is refractory and follows this particular clinical course: sleep from 10 pm to 2-4 am, awakening, titration of caffeine as indicated. They may find that 4-6 hours post-awakening, their cognitive abilities are better than had they slept the same amount of time and awoken closer to 8 am.\[7\]

Remain valiant, soldier. Some people's best exam performances have come from around 3-4 hours of broken sleep care of a third of a bottle of Jack Daniels.

## References

\[1\] A comparison of the residual effects of zaleplon and zolpidem following administration 5 to 2 h before awakening http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2125.1999.00024.x/epdf

\[2\] Next-Day Residual Sedative Effect After Nighttime Administration of an Over-the-Counter Antihistamine Sleep Aid, Diphenhydramine, Measured by Positron Emission Tomography http://journals.lww.com/psychopharmacology/Abstract/2010/12000/Next\_Day\_Residual\_Sedative\_Effect\_After\_Nighttime.9.aspx

\[3\] Inter- and intra-individual variability in performance near the circadian nadir during sleep deprivation. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2869.2004.00429.x/full

\[4\] Patterns of performance degradation and restoration during sleep restriction and subsequent recovery: a sleep dose-response study. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2869.2003.00337.x/epdf

\[5\] Enhancing Slow Wave Sleep with Sodium Oxybate Reduces the Behavioral and Physiological Impact of Sleep Loss. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2938863/pdf/aasm.33.9.1217.pdf

\[6\] Modafinil, d-amphetamine and placebo during 64 hours of sustained mental work. I. Effects on mood, fatigue, cognitive performance and body temperature. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2869.1995.tb00172.x/abstract

\[7\] Personal communications with myself.

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Tags: performance, sleep, psychopharmacology
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# Question
Title: When using APA style citations, is it acceptable to have page numbers for everything?
I am taking a psychology class. The professor wants us to use APA format for citations. I have read that if I am not quoting material directly, then the page numbers are not required.

However, I think its bad practice not to cite page numbers. For example, when I cite my textbook, if I don't give a page number, the person would have to go through the entire book to find the passages I am talking about. And that just seems stupid when I could simple add the page number. But I am not quoting directly, so I'm not sure if it customary to incorporate page numbers like that.

**My Question:**

Any suggestions for what to do? I'm sure my professor is trying to get us to practice using APA style correctly, so I'm really just trying to find out if I incorporate page numbers for everything would that be outside the norm.

# Answer
> 5 votes
In APA style, when you cite a work, you add an in-text citation in the body of the work and you add the full reference to the reference list at the end of the work.

* End of text references for book chapters, journal articles, and similar works include the page range of the work in the reference. This refers to the start and end page of the cited work (and not to the particular pages that contain the content most relevant to your citation).
* In-text citations need to include page numbers when you are quoting a passage of text.
* APA stye encourages but does not require the use of page numbers in in-text citations where you are paraphrasing a specific passage of text (i.e., putting a passage of text in your own words). That said, I rarely see this practice in journals, and don't be surprised if someone marking your paper is unaware of this rule.
* The more common rule is that if it is not a quote, then you don't use page numbers in in-text citations.

### Rationale

As @Josh points out, most citations in psychology refer to overall works. For example, a journal article may present the results of an experiment, and these results and communicated and discussed in multiple points in the article. Thus, you are citing the work as a whole, and it does not make sense to refer to specific page numbers.

That said, I think there are times where authors cite an entire book written by one author for a reference, and some form of page reference would make the citation more useful for the reader (e.g., a particular chapter might be most relevant).

### Tutorials

# Answer
> 4 votes
Page numbers aren't required in APA style because in a typical journal article a citation doesn't refer to a specific part of the work being cited. For example, if I make the claim that *dogs are better than cats* then I might reference an experiment that tested this claim. I'm not referring to any specific passage in the journal article, I'm referring to the whole article and what they found.

# Answer
> 1 votes
**Yes, page numbers should generally be included.** (As Josh notes in his answer, periodical articles need only cite the pages of the article as a whole, rather than the specific claim.)

The spirit of a citation is to allow the reader to quickly and conveniently locate what you're citing, and especially citations of extensive books can be difficult to pin down without knowing the pages that include the relevant information. (However, when making a reference to a book or its themes more generally, I think it is not strictly necessary.)

You can find more information in the APA style manual, but a great online resource is the Purdue OWL Online Writing Lab's APA formatting guide. All citations need to follow some basic guidelines, but the APA style manual has explicit standards for how to cite different sources―periodical articles, books, and so forth.

**How to cite periodical articles and books**

> **Periodicals**
>
> > Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume number(issue number), pages. ttp://dx.doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyyy
>
> **Article or Chapter in an Edited Book**
>
> > Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year of publication). Title of chapter. In A. A. Editor & B. B. Editor (Eds.), Title of book (pages of chapter). Location: Publisher.

Google Scholar, most reference managers (such as Mendeley) and some periodical websites will also allow you to automatically export an APA-style citation.

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Tags: apa-style
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# Question
Title: What is the difference between (and importance of) extrinsic vs. intrinsic rewards in gamification?
What is the definition of extrinsic and intrinsic rewards?

Why are they important to, and what is their role in, gamification?

# Answer
> 3 votes
**Intrinsic** Rewards (motivation) These are rewards which are directly of value to the person, rather being something that represents (or could be "traded in") for something to of value.

So getting a badge in and of itself isn't an Intrinsic Reward, but up votes on an answer would be b/c it converts Status and Validation of the user's work. These rewards are also intrinsic to the task. They have not been "bolted on" or "dangled like a carrot" in front of the user.

**Extrinsic** Rewards (or incentives) are rewards which are not naturally a part of the task. So if you enjoy drawing and I compliment you on the drawing that's intrinsica. If I offer to pay you to draw more, that's extrinsic.

from this slideshow.

**Extrinsic Incentives are demotivating and, thus, should be avoided in Gamifying a system** There is a lot of research that shows that Extrinsic Rewards are demotivating because: They extinguish internal motivation

* Result in Habituation, requiring higher levels of the External reward to achieve the same effects.
* Send a message that you think they should not want to do this (why else would you need to bribe them)
* Seem manipulative

Therefore, Extrinsic Rewards should be avoided. And if you find that your "players" are focused more on the *game mechanics* than the work then that's a clue that your game mechanics may be offering extrinsic motivation.

# Answer
> 2 votes
I feel that there is a misnomer here... a reward is a reward.
There are Intrinsic and Extrinsic ***Motivators***.

**Intrinsic** \- The feel good motivation you get from within for accomplishing of completing a task. Because it felt good, you want to do more. This could be classified as a *reward*, but generally speaking an emotional response isn't necessarily a reward. Generally in Gamification a reward is a tangible or virtual gift given to the user for completing a task - an extrinsic component.

**Extrinsic** \- An enticing benefit will be earned/granted if you complete the challenge/task so you follow through to completion to earn the gift. Extrinsic motivators *are* rewards. One is coaxed into finishing the task because of the reward, not the good feeling of accomplishment.

At the risk of pulling users away from this site, and plopping them down at the newly launched **Gamification site**, I thought I may post these questions here that directly relate to your question:

I will reuse what I posted on the Gamification site for this answer as it applies here as well. There is a great Ted talk on the "Puzzle of Motivation" by Dan Pink is available. It is a short talk, but it discusses this exact topic. I think you will find it enlightening.

> Career analyst **Dan Pink** examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories — and maybe, a way forward.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Intrinsic reward is the emotional pay-off that you get by completing an activity.

Extrinsic reward is everything else.

For example, In an real game, the sense of accomplishment that you get after completing a level is intrinsic, all the points and badges are extrinsic rewards.

Introducing Intrinsic rewards in gamification is not trivial, you have make the activity fun, memorable and truly satisfying.

Having said that, extrinsic reward can trigger intrinsic reward. For example, I will get a really great felling of having contributed something great to this site when you vote up on this answer!

# Answer
> 1 votes
According to Frederick Herzberg's two-factor theory of motivation,

**intrinsic rewards** are *motivators* (e.g. challenging work, recognition, responsibility) that give positive satisfaction,

while **extrinsic rewards** are *hygiene factors* (e.g. status, job security, salary, fringe benefits, work conditions) that prevent dissatisfaction.

Intrinsic rewards related to the *job content* (i.e. they are intrinsic to the job), while extrinsic rewards related to *job context* (they are extrinsic to the job).

---

**Notes**

1) In Herzberg's theory, satisfaction and dissatisfaction are not two extremes along one dimension, but two independent factors:

```
traditional theory:

       dissatisfaction <------------------------------> satisfaction

Herzberg's theory:

    no dissatisfaction |------------------------------> dissatisfaction
       no satisfaction |------------------------------> satisfaction

```

2)

**Intrinsic motivaton** is caused by a *intrinsic process* ("I like doing this") or an *internal self-concept* ("I am the kind of person who does this").

**Extrinsic motivation** is *instrumental* ("I do this to achieva a goal"), caused by an *external self-concept* ("People expect me to do this"), or *goal internalization* ("I must do this for ").

Different terminology is listed here: http://www.uri.edu/research/lrc/scholl/webnotes/Motivation\_Sources.htm

# Answer
> 1 votes
This discussion of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation covers most of what you are after.

A reward is intrinsic to an activity if it comes from doing the task itself. A reward is extrinsic if otherwise. The classic extrinsic reward is money. Classic intrinsic rewards are challenge and stimulation.

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Tags: motivation, gamification
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# Question
Title: To what degree is emotional state visible in a person's eyes?
Is it true that a person's emotional state (such as arousal, fear, etc) can be determined by looking solely at the persons eyes?

Here I am assuming that this may be the case only in limited circumstances (specific scenarios or specific basic emotions such as fear) but if emotional state can be determined from the eyes, is there any research on the extent to which this is possible?

# Answer
This question has mostly been asked in reverse in the research literature--not whether the eyes can show emotion (which is often called affect by psych researchers), but whether humans can accurately judge affective state based only on the eyes. That ability varies somewhat depending on demographic parameters (age, gender, and socioeconomic class, as well as autism spectrum disorder status).

The "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" test, developed by Simon Baron-Cohen, tests exactly that, using stimuli like these.

Participants are asked to choose the most applicable emotion word for a picture restricted to the eye area. Neurotypical controls are more successful at this task than autism spectrum participants; since most of the research has focused on showing differences between populations on this task and not on quantifying normal performance, the reported data on controls alone is difficult to interpret by itself. The test has fairly good test-retest reliability, but it has been criticized for gender bias since there are considerably more male eyes in the stimuli set than female eyes. This is particularly problematic in light of Baron-Cohen's "extreme male brain" theory of autism.
> 10 votes

# Answer
Humans do commonly use the eyes, area around the eyes, and other eye-related information such as movement and orientation to deduce the emotional states of others. What isn't as clear from research examining this capability however, putting aside subjects' confidence in their own skills, is how accurate / valid such assessments actually are.

But it turns out that the eyes alone *can* be used objectively to determine a wide variety of information about a person's mental state.

A fairly large research sub-field in this area is Pupillometry, the measurement of pupil diameter. Just copying from a Scientific American article:

> Scientists have ... used pupillometry to assess everything from sleepiness, introversion and sexual interest to race bias, schizophrenia, moral judgment, autism and depression.

Other research also shows a connection between mental states and eye-related information, such as eye contact and cognitive load, blinking and certain mental disorders related to dopamine, eye movement and memory recall, eye movement and beliefs, and of course, there's crying.

Though humans may not usually use those particular cues, we presumably evolved certain skills to discern emotional states from eyes as a survival mechanism, suggesting that the cues we use are generally valid. For example, fear causes widening of the eyes / increase in exposure of the sclera (white of the eye), that has the evolutionary advantage of increasing peripheral vision, and the side-effect of alerting others around us to danger, and even to where the danger is. Even infants are found to be quite skilled at discerning emotional state from the sclera, suggesting a genetic origin.

However in general, physical or physiological cues are only part of the picture, as other context information is also crucial for correct attribution of emotional states. So in practice, eyes do not generally provide sufficient information for determining emotional state - humans use a lot of additional context information for that.
> 7 votes

# Answer
I'd like to add some nuance here. While not isolated to reading emotion in the eyes, consider these images from Hillel Aviezer's work (, ):

In all four images above, the face is the same. What changes is the body language and objects in the scene. What also changes is the emotions you perceive in each image (in alphabetical order: disgust, anger, sadness, fear).

Can you tell above which tennis players have just won or just lost? It's hard, isn't it? They all look like they're in pain, but 1,4,6 have just lost and 2,3,5 have just won. If you stick the faces back onto the bodies, you'll have better luck at telling who just won or lost.

The point is that we don't interpret the features of the face independently of its context. When we lose context (like in the images Krysta linked), we will rely on concept knowledge about emotions (e.g., the prototypical Ekmanian fear emotion involves wide eyes, as Arnon pointed out). But if you situate those wide eyes in several different contexts, then how you judge the emotion will change.
> 6 votes

# Answer
First we need to define emotional state. If we define it as basic emotions then eyeballs are connected to those and we can see effects of PNS (Adrenal gland, fight or flight (or freeze)

More interesting is if we can find effects of higher order emotions (care, love, guilt) There are not much research about it. According to ie. Ledoux theory of emotion we could even guess about effect of higher emotions on state but it will not be precise.

http://dericbownds.net/bom99/Ch10/Ch10-4.gif

Third very important thing is eye movement, eyemovement can tell us a lot about cognition especialy perception and memory formantion (and rehearsal) and it could be one more puzze for educated gues of higher order emotions: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0064937
> 1 votes

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Tags: emotion
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# Question
Title: Problems with using personal feedback to motivate participation in an online psychological experiment?
I am planning on running an online psychological experiment where participants must learn about various simulated environments and then make inferences about them. Because completing the experiment would require a nontrivial amount of attention and time, I have been toying with the idea of giving personal feedback at the end of the experiment (i.e., using gamification).

I am considering giving participants feedback regarding how their responses compare to our computational model's predictions and/or to the average. The hope is that receiving a "score", even when it's made clear that such a score is not evaluative or absolute, will get people to pay more attention and will make them more likely to complete the task. The feedback would only be offered following the experiment itself, and its precise nature would not be revealed until that time. Moreover, I wouldn't specify how our predicted scores are derived. Calculating the exact values by hand would be extremely time consuming, so even if the derivation is explained I don't see how anyone could realistically bias their responses with that knowledge.

### Questions

* Does giving personal feedback raise any ethical problems?
* How might it affect response patterns?
* Will giving personal feedback elicit higher completion rates and more attentive responding, without any significant complications?

# Answer
**Ethics of Feedback:**

The APA's code of ethics (2010) as well as the Advisory Group on Conducting Research on the Internet (AGCRI) report (2004) summarize ethical issues related to conducting offline and online psychological research. Feedback is normal in psychological experiments, and researchers are encouraged to debrief participants, before, immediately after, or as soon as the research conducted reasonably allows without risking an effect on results.

Research proposals should undergo an Institutional Review Board (IRB) review prior to initiation. A consideration with respect to feedback is if it might reasonably be construed by participants as being on a positive-negative dimension (ie , the feedback could be considered negative), then you may want to reconsider providing it, whereas if the feedback is on a neutral dimension (an example would be a personality trait such as placement on an introvert-extrovert dimension), then there is unlikely to be any concern.

**Effect of Motivation:**

Of course, feedback provided after task completion cannot affect task performance. Presumably however, the promise or expectation of feedback at the end of a task may have an effect. Without knowing the nature of the research, the general findings on the effect of incentives on results are that they are negligible if any. For example, Mason and Watts (2009) find that "Accuracy ... is not reliably different for different wages," and similarly, a review of online studies conducted on Mechanical Turk (2011) reports that "most workers are not motivated primarily by the financial returns and genuinely care about the quality of their work," and result validity is quite high after some basic spam filtering is applied.

Nonetheless, I would recommend testing the effect of your chosen incentive if at all possible. This can be done either by comparing results from unincentivized participants to those of incentivized participants, or through validity checks - for example in surveys common practice is to include multiple questions with similar meanings but different wordings to check that they all get similar responses as a way of confirming that answers are legitimate and not just trying to get through the survey as fast as possible.

**Completion Rates:**

The effect of incentives on task completion in general is very mixed. Online studies do consistently see greater participation for higher paid experiments, but for non-monetary incentives the results are more complex. The overjustification effect is an example where incentives may actually reduce task completion rates or performance quality, though this effect is not very robust in practice. Houmanfar and Hayes (1998) report that "the results indicated no effects of either private feedback or public feedback on task completion," Conrad et al (2010) find that "feedback can improve their experience though not necessarily their completion rates."

The difference between a simple score at the end of the experiment, and more typical notions of gamification may be considerable however. Gamification in general does have an overall positive impact. Gamification typically involves a variety of interactive features that come into play throughout the task. So if at all possible, I would recommend incorporating say, a progress indicator, badge system, storyline, or any other gamification feature that can reasonably be added. Note that gamification features are not uniformly successful, so some experimentation may be necessary to determine what works best in your particular situation.

**Non-contingent Incentives:**

One final note: You didn't mention if the feedback would be contingent on completion of the experiment. While the idea of providing incentives only on task completion may seem intuitively sound, there is substantial evidence that non-contingent incentives are generally more effective. For example, if you promise to provide a score only on task completion, then fewer people might attempt the task than if you promise to provide a score regardless, and even if completion rates are much lower you might get higher participation overall. Say only 10 people attempt the task for a contingent incentive, and have a 50% completion rate, then you get 5 results. On the other hand if 100 people attempt the task for a non-contingent incentive, and have a much lower 10% completion rate, then you get 10 results - twice as many. Worth considering I'd say.
> 7 votes

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Tags: measurement, methodology, experimental-psychology, motivation, gamification
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# Question
Title: Studies on visually recognizable personality traits?
Are there any studies on the possibility of visually recognizing someone's personality? When I say "visually recognizing" I mean things like clothes, accessories, body attitude, visible behavior, vehicles driven etc. When I say personality I mean things like Big 5 traits, personal motivations (money, love, attention, etc) and life goals (die rich, have a happy family, have high career, etc).

For instance, I realized that big seller personalities (loves money, loves attention, will lie for any sale, loves to manipulate) would wear (or want) a gold watch. So when you see someone wearing a gold watch there is a high chance the person is a big seller-personality.

In general, I would claim that everyone spends the most money, the most time and the most attention on what is most important to them. But what is the most important owned properties for different personalities?

# Answer
I am currently reading a book called "Snoop", written by researcher Sam Gosling (I recommend this very interesting book!). He's doing just the kind of research I am looking for, and thus I've found tons of research documents on these things:

> Our research focuses on the following issues:
>
> Everyday manifestations of personality – Which cues are reliably linked to what individuals are like?
>
> Everyday person perception – Which cues do individuals use to form their impressions of others?
>
> Consensus – Do observers agree with one another in their impressions of others?
>
> Accuracy – Are observers impressions of others accurate?
>
> Stereotype use – how do stereotypes hinder or promote consensus and accuracy? \- http://gosling.psy.utexas.edu/current-research/everyday-manifestations-of-personality/

http://gosling.psy.utexas.edu/publications/

**The expression and perception of personality in everyday life**

Back, M. D., Stopfer, J. M., Vazire, S., Gaddis, S., Schmukle, S. C., Egloff, B., & Gosling, S. D. (2010). **Facebook profiles reflect actual personality not self-idealization**. Psychological Science, 21, 372-374.

Carney, D. R., Jost, J. T., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2008). The secret lives of liberals and conservatives: Personality profiles, interaction styles, and the things they leave behind. Political Psychology, 29, 807-840.

Gebauer, J. E., Bleidorn, W., Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., Lamb, M. E., & Potter, J. (in press). **Cross-Cultural Variations in Big Five Relations with Religiosity: A Socio-Cultural Motives Perspective.** Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Gosling, S. D., Augustine, A. A., Vazire, S., Holtzman, N., & Gaddis, S. (2011). **Manifestations of personality in Online Social Networks: Self-reported Facebook-related behaviors and observable profile information.** Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 14, 483-488. \[DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2010.0087\]

Gosling, S. D., Gaddis, S., & Vazire, S. (2008). F**irst impressions based on the environments we create and inhabit.** In N. Ambady, & J. J. Skowronski (Eds.), First Impressions (pp. 334-356). New York: Guilford.

Gosling, S. D., Gifford, R., & McCunn, L. (2013). **The selection, creation, and perception of interior spaces: An environmental psychology approach.** In G. Brooker & L. Weinthal (Eds.), The Handbook of Interior Design (pp. 278-290). Oxford, UK: Berg.

Gosling, S. D., Ko, S. J., Mannarelli, T., & Morris, M. E. (2002). **A Room with a cue: Judgments of personality based on offices and bedrooms.** Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 379-398. \[Available in pdf\]

Gosling, S. D., Sandy, C. J., & Potter, J. (2010). **Personalities of self-identified “dog people” and “cat people.”** Anthrozoös, 23, 213-222.

Graham, L. T., & Gosling, S. D. (2012). **Impressions of World of Warcraft players’ personalities based on their usernames: Interobserver consensus but no accuracy.** Journal of Research in Personality, 46, 599-603.

Graham, L. T., & Gosling, S. D. (2013). **Personality profiles associated with different motivations for playing World of Warcraft. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking,** 16, 189-193.

Graham, L. T., & Sandy, C. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2011). **Manifestations of individual differences in physical and virtual environments.** In T. Chamorro-Premuzic, S. von Stumm, & A. Furnham (Eds.), Handbook of Individual Differences (pp. 773-800). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Mehl, M. R., Gosling, S. D., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2006). **Personality in its natural habitat: Manifestations and implicit folk theories of personality in daily life.** Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 862-877.

Naumann, L. P., Vazire, S., Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2009). **Personality judgments based on physical appearance.** Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 1661-1671

Obschonka, M., Schmitt-Rodermund, E., Silbereisen, R. K., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2013). **The regional distribution and correlates of an entrepreneurship-prone personality profile in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom: A socioecological perspective.** Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105, 104-122. \[DOI: 10.1037/a0032275\]

Rentfrow, P. J., Goldberg, L. R., Stillwell, D. J., Kosinski, M., Gosling, S. D., & Levitin, D. J. (2012). **The song remains the same: A replication and extension of the MUSIC model.** Music Perception, 30,161-185. \[DOI: 10.1525/MP.2012.30.2.161\]

Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2003). **The do re mi’s of everyday life: The structure and personality correlates of music preferences.** Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 1236-1256. \[Available in pdf\]

Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2006). **Message in a Ballad: The role of music preferences in interpersonal perception.** Psychological Science, 17, 236-242. \[Available in pdf\]

Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2007). **The content and validity of music-genre stereotypes among college students.** Psychology of Music, 35, 306-326.

Rentfrow, P. J., Gosling, S. D., Jokela, M., Stillwell, D. J., Kosinski, M., & Potter, J. (2013). **Divided We Stand: Three Psychological Regions of the United States and their Political, Economic, Social, and Health Correlates.** Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105, 996-1012. \[DOI: 10.1037/a0034434\]

Rentfrow, P. J., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2008). **A theory of the emergence, persistence, and expression of geographic variation in psychological characteristics.** Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 339-369.

Sandy, C. J., Gosling, S. D., & Durant, J. (2013). **Predicting Consumer Behavior and Media Preferences: The Comparative Validity of Personality Traits and Demographic Variables.** Psychology and Marketing, 30, 937-949. \[DOI: 10.1002/mar.20657\]

Swann, W. B., Jr., Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2003). **The precarious couple effect: Verbally inhibited men + critical, disinhibited women = bad chemistry.** Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 1095-1106. \[Available in pdf\]

Vazire, S., Naumann, L. P., Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2009). **Smiling reflects different emotions in men and women.** Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32, 403-405.

Vazire, S., Naumann, L. P., Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2008). **Portrait of a narcissist: Manifestations of narcissism in physical appearance.** Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 1439-1447.

Vazire, S. & Gosling, S. D. (2004). **e-perceptions: Personality impressions based on personal websites.** Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 123-132. \[Available in pdf\]

Wilson, R. E., Gosling, S. D., & Graham, L. T. (2012). **A review of Facebook research in the social sciences.** Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 203-220. \[DOI 10.1177/1745691612442904\]

Anderson, C. P., Ames, D. R., & Gosling, S. D. (2008) **Punishing hubris: The perils of status self-enhancement in teams and organizations.** Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 90-101.

Erdle, S., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2009). **Does self-esteem account for the higher-order factors of the Big Five?** Journal of Research in Personality, 43, 921-922.

Gosling, S. D., Sandy, C. J., & Potter, J. (2010). **Personalities of self-identified “dog people” and “cat people.”** Anthrozoös, 23, 213-222.

Gosling, S. D., & Srivastava, S. (2011). **Changes in perceptions of George W. Bush’s personality in the wake of the September 11 2001 World Trade Center attacks.** Acta de Investigación Psicológica, 3, 486-490.

Jost, J. T., Hawkins, C. B., Nosek, B. A., Hennes, E. P., Stern, C., Gosling, S. D., & Graham, J. (2014). **Belief in a Just God (and a Just Society): A System Justification Perspective on Religious Ideology.** Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 34, 56-81. \[Translated to: Jost, J. T., Hawkins, C. B., Nosek, B. A., Hennes, E. P., Stern, C., Gosling, S. D., & Graham, J. (in press). Creencia en un dios justo: La Religión como una forma de Justificación del Sistema. Psicologia Politica, 47, 55-89.\]

Mathieu, M. T., & Gosling, S. D. (2012). **The accuracy or inaccuracy of affective forecasts depends on how the question is framed: A meta-analysis of past studies.** Psychological Science, 23, 161-162. \[DOI: 10.1177/0956797611427044\]

Pennebaker, J. W., Gosling, S. D., & Ferrell, J. (2013). **Daily online testing in large classes: Boosting college performance while reducing achievement gaps.** PLOS ONE, 9, e79774. \[doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0079774\]

Ramírez-Esparza, N., Gosling, S. D., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2008). **Paradox lost: Unraveling the puzzle of Simpatia.** Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 39, 685-702.

Robins, R. W., Tracy, J. L., Trzesniewski, K. H., Potter, J., & Gosling, S. D. (2001). **Personality correlates of self-esteem.** Journal of Research in Personality, 35, 463-482. \[Available in pdf\]

Vazire, S., Naumann, L. P., Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2009). **Smiling reflects different emotions in men and women.** Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32, 403-405.

Wood, D., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2007). **Normality evaluations and their relation to personality traits and well-being.** Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 861-879.
> 3 votes

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Tags: personality, sensation, recognition
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# Question
Title: What are the characteristics that make complex problem solving complex?
In real-world problem-solving tasks that many people call "complex" (like flying a jet, programming, fixing a car, fighting a fire - the type investigated by the naturalistic decision making community) what are the key characteristics that separate problem solving in these types of tasks and problem solving in "toy" or "experiment" tasks where one or two stimuli are presented to participants?

**What are the characteristics that make complex problem solving complex?**

**Are there levels of complexity that can capture the differences?**

# Answer
The complexity of the environment certainly is an issue. According to AI - A modern approach, the environment may be

* observable / partly observable
* deterministic / stochastic / strategic
* episodic / sequential
* static / dynamic
* discrete / continuous
* single agent / multiple agent

See also WikiDoc for a short overview. In my oppinion, these criteria apply also to human problem solving.

Another issue is the type of problem to be solved. A measure for complexity may be the number of steps that must be anticipated to solve the problem, e.g. solving a chess endgame is more complex than solving tic tac toe.
> 3 votes

# Answer
MariaAnt provided a relevant definition of complex problem solving in the answer to the question, "Research operationalizing so-called strategic thinking?" based on Frensch and Funke (1995).

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

# Background

## Complexity in science

In modern scientific jargon, complexity and the quality of being complex can have a number of different meanings, depending on the field and subject of interest. These can be traced back to a historical distinction between **organized and disorganized complexity** (Weaver, 1948). In the cognitive sciences, a problem is complex (sometimes called *ill-defined*) if the relations between initial state, goal state and space of intermediate states are interdependent, nonlinear and/or the state properties are unknown for the solver. Generally, something (such as a problem) is "complex" when it has a moderate number of time- and inter-dependent variables.

## Organized or disorganized?

Problems of disorganized complexity, Weaver argued, were characterized by large numbers of variables and erratic behavior, with the analysis of telephone exchanges being a prototypical example of such problems. Meanwhile, problems of organized complexity were argued to be characterized by “dealing simultaneously with a sizable number of factors which are interrelated into an organic whole” and were exemplified by biological and social systems. Modern use of "complex" refers to (problems of) organized complexity, and this is also true in the cognitive sciences.

## Levels of complexity

Complexity types and classes are studied within the context of many fields, but there is not much agreement on a universal framework we can use to objectively define levels of complexity. Neither is there agreement on how to measure complexity, though many measures have been proposed and used (Lloyd, 2001).

The closest thing to a universal framework is the mathematical study of complexity classes, which defines a large set of possible complexity classes in terms of how long time it would take a particular computational solver to solve the problem for a given input. The most famous of these classes are probably Polynomial-Time (P) and Nondeterministic Polynomial-Time (NP), as in "Does P = NP?" This is probably better covered by CSTheory than CogSci, but hopefully provides a place to start looking.

It may also be helpful to study the work of Herbert Simon, though covering his extensive contributions to complexity and problem solving are beyond the scope of this answer.

## References

* Frensch, P. and Funke, J. (1995) Definitions, Traditions and a General Framework for Understanding Complex Problem Solving. In P. A. Frensch and J. Funke (Eds.), Complex Problem Solving: The European Perspective.(Hillsdale, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum). 3-25.
* Lloyd, S. (2001). Measures of complexity: a nonexhaustive list. IEEE Control Systems Magazine, 21(4), 7-8.
* Weaver, W. (1948). Science and complexity. American Scientist, 36(4), 536-544.
> 3 votes

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Tags: terminology, decision-making, problem-solving
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# Question
Title: Are woman more Judging than men in the MBTI?
Since I lack of academic formation please be tolerant if I write something not correct.

As you know the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test is based on 4 personality dimensions (E/I, S/N, T/F, J/P) each of which can assume two possible values (I think the name is trait) for a total of 16 clusters. link

There are gender differences with regard to a number of psychological variables (see for example gender roles and wikipedia Sex differences in human psychology). These differences may be due to education, culture, hormonal difference and so on.

According to the stereotype, many women are more judging than men.

Does any empirical evidence show that the prevalence of Judging is higher in women compared to men?

# Answer
The MBTI is widely used in applied contexts, such as for personnel selection. Nevertheless, it is hardly used in scientific research on personality because its theoretical basis questionable, because its validity is limited, and because its reliability is inferior to other established measures of personality (for a starting point to criticisms of the MBTI see McCrea & Costa, 1989 and this earlier post). For these reasons it is unlikely that you will find reliable data on gender differences in the MBTI.

However, it has been shown that the MBTI traits overlap with those of the Big Five (the most widely adopted model of personality) and gender differences with regard to the Big Five have been studied extensively.

The MBTI **Judging** dimension and its Perceiving counterpart **overlap to a large extent with the Big Five trait conscientiousness** (e.g., Furnham, 1996, McCrea & Costa, 1989). This is not surprising if you look at how Judging vs. Perceiving and conscientiousness are measured:

**Judging vs. Perceiving** is measured by having people choose between sentence pairs such as

* "I like to have things decided." vs. "I like to stay open to respond to whatever happens."
* "I like to make lists of things to do." vs. "I appear to be loose and casual. I like to keep plans to a minimum."
* "I like to get my work done before playing." vs. "I like to approach work as play or mix work and play."
* "I plan work to avoid rushing just before a deadline." vs. "I am stimulated by an approaching deadline."

Conscientiousness is measured by items such as

* "I get chores done right away."
* "I carry out my plans."
* "I stick to my chosen path."

Thus, there appears to be a clear semantic overlap between the two constructs.

Are there gender differences with regard to conscientiousness? According to a large scale meta analysis (with data from more than 23.000 participants from 26 nations, Costa et al. 2001), 1. there are far more personality differences within the genders than between genders 2. **for conscientiousness there doesn't seem to be a detectable gender difference**.

**References**

Costa Jr., P., Terracciano, A., & McCrae, R. R. (2001). Gender differences in personality traits across cultures: Robust and surprising findings. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 322–331. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.81.2.322

Furnham, A. (1996). The big five versus the big four: the relationship between the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and NEO-PI five factor model of personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 21, 303–307. doi:10.1016/0191-8869(96)00033-5

McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. (1989). Reinterpreting the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator From the Perspective of the Five-Factor Model of Personality. Journal of Personality, 57, 17–40. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.1989.tb00759.x
> 8 votes

# Answer
According to the following document there is a prevalence of the Judging trait most of women seems to be Judging.

> the stereotype that females prefer routines, plans and outlines is largely justified; the majority fall into the judging category. It may come as a surprise, however, that the majority of boys (about 52-58 percent) are judging types as well.

http://schreibendepot.wordpress.com/2007/02/23/mbti-and-gender-a-personality-divide/

However a stronger difference, correlated to gender, from MBTI is about other traits (dimension?).

The following picture, taken from this article is interesting: http://www.statisticbrain.com/myers-briggs-statistics/
> 0 votes

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Tags: personality, gender, mbti
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# Question
Title: Intuitive explanation of MBTI test and it's gender bias
According to this data there is a small bias related to the gender and some traits of MBTI.

Is it scientifically possible to provide an explanation for these differences?

My intuitive definition of the judging trait could be: "A judging subject spends time trying to classify the reality into categories (i.e. ethical or not). A high percent of his automatic thought go in this direction. Thinking how the world should be instead of changing himself to get the maximum from the world he could be less adaptive."

# Answer
From the data in the table, it is not possible to tell whether there is a meaningful difference between men and women with regard to the Judging trait, because it does not state the size of the sample, the effect size, and whether the difference is statistically significant. All differences could be just random noise. In fact, the data may just as well be more supportive of the idea that gender does not make a difference here.

Because the MBTI does not hold up to scientific scrutiny (and is hardly used by academic personality researchers), it should be difficult to find reliable data on gender differences. However, because the Judging dimension overlaps with the Conscientiousness factor in the Big Five, one can look at gender comparisons there. There do not seem to be strong gender differences with regard to Conscientiousness (see this earlier answer).
> 7 votes

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Tags: personality, mbti
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# Question
Title: What is the psychological effect of wearing black clothes?
**Background**: I read that black is usually favored by people who are dominant. I read that the black color projects dominance, and also hides the person's feelings. Police, for example, adopt black as a color. However, I also read that black can demonstrate submissiveness. Priests wear black clothes to show submissiveness to God. In addition, sales people and business people who work with clients often wear black suits. Are they trying to appear dominant or submissive?

* What is the psychology of wearing black?
* Does wearing black communicate dominance or submissiveness?

# Answer
This question is studied within the fields of color psychology and enclothed cognition (e.g., Adam and Galinsky, 2012), currently a hot/controversial topic in cognitive science. Without addressing the *substantial* questions surrounding the premises of these interpretations for situated/embodied cognition in my answer, it seems that **wearing black is *associated* with aggressive behavior and the tendency to be perceived as more aggressive** (Frank and Gilovich, 1988).

> An analysis of the penalty records of the \[U.S.\] National Football League and the \[U.S.\] National Hockey League indicate that teams with black uniforms in both sports ranked near the top of their leagues in penalties throughout the period of study. **On those occasions when a team switched from nonblack to black uniforms, the switch was accompanied by an immediate increase in penalties.** The results of two laboratory experiments indicate that this finding can be attributed to both social perception and self-perception processes—that is, to the biased judgments of referees and **to the increased aggressiveness of the players themselves**.

As per Artem's comment to the question, we need to be skeptical of inferring a causal relation when so many confounding factors, such as culture, could potentially be in play. A 2014 review of color psychology in the Annual Review of Psychology journal concluded that while there is mounting evidence for the influence of color on behavior, it is ultimately too early to theorize strongly on specific color psychological questions such as this (Elliot and Maier, 2014).

> The review clearly shows that **color can carry important meaning** and can have an important impact on people's affect, cognition, and behavior. **The literature remains at a nascent stage of development**, however, and we note that considerable work on boundary conditions, moderators, and real-world generalizability is needed before strong conceptual statements and recommendations for application are warranted.

## References

* Adam, H., & Galinsky, A. D. (2012). Enclothed cognition. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(4), 918-925.
* Elliot, A. J., & Maier, M. A. (2014). Color psychology: Effects of perceiving color on psychological functioning in humans. Annual review of psychology, 65, 95-120.
* Frank, M. G., & Gilovich, T. (1988). The Dark Side of Self-and Social Perception: Black Uniforms and Aggression in Professional Sports. Journal of Pereonality and Social Psychology, 54(1), 74-85.
> 11 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, communication, color
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# Question
Title: Do hints improve memorization when using spaced repetition?
For example, I'm learning geography using the spaced repetition method. I have some program which asks me questions like, *"In which country Melbourne is located?"*, and I have to recall the country (assuming I've studied the material and at least once seen Melbourne on the map). This program also gives me two possible hints when I can't recall the answer:

* If I choose "**obvious hint**" it says "kangaroo", which for me is a straight giveaway for "Australia".
* If I choose "**vague hint**" it says "hell". After thinking a while, I may come up with this: *"There's the Devil in Hell. There's an animal called Tasmanian Devil, which lives on the island Tasmania, which is near the Australia."*

The idea in both cases is to not show the answer right away when I can't recall it, but rather force me (more or less) to try recalling it once again, but now with some additional information.

Questions:

1. **Do obvious hints help memorization at all?** As you saw, the hint "Australia" is as good as just showing me the answer, but maybe it helps building association in my memory which helps recalling the answer later.
2. **Do vague hints help more?** I assume yes, since they trigger some associations in my memory, but I have no proofs.

Of course, the "obviousness" of a hint is very subjective, but the idea behind it should be clear: "obvious" hints are just one or two associations away from answers, while "vague" ones form longer association chains.

**EDIT**: There is a related question with an answer which mentions elaborative rehearsal and depth of processing, but I'm not sure if those processes are involved here, since hints are mostly related to an answer ("Kangaroos live in Australia"), not a question ("kangaroos" and "Melbourne" are not associated in my memories, neither do "hell" and "Melbourne").

# Answer
**Short answer:** Based on my assessment of the literature, I would say that a vague hint leaves room for retrieval practice, and will therefore likely elicit a testing effect. An obvious hint does not, and will therefore likely help recognition, but not recall.

# Background

Spaced repetition refers to the practice of combining two well-known memory effects, namely the **spacing effect** and the **testing effect**, typically implemented in some form of flash cards.

## Testing effect

The **testing effect** aspect of spaced repetition is highly relevant. It refers to the finding that *retrieval practice* leads to improved long-term recall (cf. recognition) ability for a practiced item compared to non-practiced items.

Modern theories on the testing effect tend to take the view that the testing effect represents a complex, active process in the brain rather than simple association formation or Hebbian learning. A critical meta-analysis of the recent testing effect literature unsurprisingly found support for the testing effect's existence, as well as some support for effortful processing as a contributing factor (Eisenkraemer, Jaeger and Stein, 2013). They did not find support for semantic elaboration theories (i.e., new/re-weighted brain associations).

Additional support for the testing effect as an active process comes from the fact that associated non-practiced items may be actively inhibited by retrieval practice, a phenomenon known as retrieval-induced forgetting (Anderson, Bjork and Bjork, 1994). We currently do not know much more than *that* the testing effect happens when we engage in retrieval practice. I know researchers who are studying exactly this, but at this point, I'm unfortunately not comfortable with discussing their thoughts or unpublished work.

## Spacing effect

I'm mostly including this for completeness' sake. The **spacing effect** was discovered by Herman Ebbinghaus in the 1880's and is one of the oldest phenomena studied in psychology. It refers to the tendency for animals to retain items presented over a longer period relatively better than when presentation of the same items is massed over a single brief period. It doesn't have any relation to the use of hints in spaced repetition learning, at least not one that I can think of.

# References

* Anderson, M. C., Bjork, R. A., & Bjork, E. L. (1994). Remembering can cause forgetting: retrieval dynamics in long-term memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20(5), 1063.
* Eisenkraemer, R. E., Jaeger, A., & Stein, L. M. (2013). A Systematic Review of the Testing Effect in Learning. Paidéia (Ribeirão Preto), 23(56), 397-406.
> 4 votes

# Answer
I can't yet comment, unfortunately, but for the answers to your questions I have to refer you back to your link. and to the references listed in the article. Along with this do a little exercise with a family member or a friend, but preferably someone who is not aware of your studying of Geography.

Both of you do the following:

```
 Write down 5 cities from around the world that
 are really obscure and not commonly known
 Write one vague hint and one direct hint for each
 Then give each other the questions and the hints
 Repeat this the next day, then again in two days, then again in three...
 if you really want you can repeat this for up to a
 total of 15 days which will have then given you 5 total tries,
 but more importantly you will now have actual proof of whether
 this works for your and in general.

```

Granted, with 5 cities you will probably remember them simply because of repetition, spaced or otherwise, and because they are too few. This is a technique that will work particularly if the hints are images, and so looking on a map can be a good way to store the information in memory in such a way as to make recall easier later.

Either way I think the answer is yes and it seems that it worked for you already since you did actually affirmatively answer your question.

P.S.: Just found this.
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, learning, memory, working-memory
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# Question
Title: Could a painful stimulus be effectively used as a learning aid?
In rats, the application of a painful stimulus has shown an increase in overall arousal and the ability to learn certain behaviours (The study is neatly summed up in this video: Motivation and Reward in Learning). The experiment with electric shocks is shown on the second half.

It is common sense that human beings would naturally avoid painful consequences, but the deliberate application of a noxious stimulus may also elicit a unconscious response, or conditioning, to avoid those behaviours, which would mean a faster learning rate.

Learning could also be improved because pain is an intrinsically meaningful response, while perceived failure is somewhat weaker and less imediate as a motivating agent.

Could small electric shocks, applied by another individual, or a computer program (maybe even self-administered), have any use in learning? At what specific tasks would this technique be more effective?

# Answer
> 6 votes
**Claparede's Pinprick Experiment**

From http://www.fearexhibit.org/brain/memory/claparedes\_pinprick\_experiment:

> In 1911, a French doctor named Edouard Claparede published his observations of an amnesiac patient. Despite repeated interactions with the woman, sometimes only minutes apart, Claparede had to reintroduce himself every time he reentered the room; the patient never recognized him as someone she'd met.
>
> During one of their "introductions," Claparede hid a tack in his palm and pricked the patient when they shook hands. The next time they "met," the patient refused to shake Claparede's hand though she couldn't explain why since she did not recall ever having met the doctor.
>
> Today, scientists interpret the patient's reaction as proof that multiple memory systems are at work within the normal human brain. A subconscious memory system in the woman's brain had formed an association between shaking Claparede's hand and a painful experience. Therefore, despite the dysfunctional state of the memory system that would have normally enabled the patient to consciously remember the event, another memory system was still working, trying to keep her safe from harm.
>
> A century ago, Claparede's observations were not readily understood as such evidence for multiple memory systems. We owe much of our knowledge about the brain and memory to studies of animals. Without these examinations, scientists might never have properly interpreted such observations of human subjects.

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Tags: learning, pain
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# Question
Title: Can scientific evidence support concepts of the soul?
In some spiritual premises, the **soul** is said to belong to the Almighty.

Religions (Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism) all talk about cleansing our inner being because only when it's pure, its actual purpose is served.

But modern science gives evidence that most of the **sentiments** have a **neurological** or **psychological** or **physical** basis.

Then does this narrow down the concept of the soul (if science opines that it exists at all) to just the **element** within us that binds all life together?

There are some beliefs that stem out of the concept of soul:

1. Soul decides who we love (our soul mates)
2. Soul guides us when we are stuck in deciding whether something is moral or immoral
3. Soul is essentially linked to how we live our life
    * E.g., goodness cleanses our soul, and hatred sullies the soul, and so on.

Do such beliefs have any relevance in the scientific world where everything good or bad is more or less a **hormone** or **environmental adaptation** or some other **scientific phenomenon**?

Do any **scientific** theories **support** the existence of a higher form of sacred energy, i.e. **soul** within us that guides us to a more meaningful existence?

# Answer
**\[Edit\]:** Parts of this answer respond to removed content in older versions of the OP, and to comments. The current version of the OP deserves some elaboration of this answer. (And, IMHO, other answers too!)

There are other spiritual "worlds" than those that are dualistic. By common psychological definitions of spirituality, the existence of an "ethereal soul" is not a definitional belief. That is not to say the "spiritual world\[s\]" to which you're referring are invalid—only that spirituality does not necessarily require belief in anything supernatural or unobservable. Psychological theory on spirituality is quite diffuse itself; in my own study of it (it's among my top five research interests!), I've found it hard to really limit what kinds of belief systems qualify as *spiritual*, except in as much as they entail some sense of self-transcendence, interconnectedness among identities of discrete beings, or at least an opposition to reductionistic or nihilistic systems that ascribe mundanity or emptiness to phenomena in general.

This is not to say that spirituality itself (i.e., spiritual beliefs) can't be studied scientifically either; in fact, some admirable progress has been made in defining a measurable set of dimensions by which spiritual beliefs can be assessed and compared at the individual level. Ralph Piedmont, with whom one of my former labmates has worked directly, has made a lot of this progress himself, so I'd recommend checking out some of his work to get a sense of what research on spirituality is like in the professional psychological community. He's even proposed spirituality as a "sixth major dimension of personality" that belongs in the same general domain of individual differences in personality traits as the Big Five Factor Model, and he's reported success in generalizing his operationalization of spirituality cross-culturally (Piedmont, 1999, 2007; Piedmont & Leach, 2002).

As I responded to your comment, "The oneness that we all share on accord of having the same Godly element within us" is also not a definitional belief in all forms of spirituality. You'll see this if you consider Piedmont's definition of spirituality (and don't find it too vague to be valid). Here's a brief quote from Piedmont (2007) that I think sums it up about as succinctly as any other quote from him that I've seen:

> To capture a broad-based aspect of spirituality that would be nondenominational in nature, Piedmont (1999)...Working from a trait perspective for construing spirituality...operationalized spirituality as a motivational drive directed towards creating personal meaning for one’s life. Three correlated subscales were identified: *Universality*, a belief in the unitive nature of life; *Prayer Fulfillment*, a feeling of joy and contentment that results from personal encounters with a transcendent reality; and *Connectedness*, a belief that one is part of a larger human reality that cuts across generations and groups.

If you look further into his work, you may note that the "unitive nature of life" is not required of all forms of spirituality. Universality is measured as one of three dimensional aspects, any one of which may be sufficient alone to qualify a belief system as spiritual (or at least, not completely non-spiritual) wherever present. Nor does Universality necessarily involve the existence of any "Godly element" anywhere. Even to whatever extent people believe we share oneness through having any of the same elements we have within us, Connectedness does not necessarily involve anything supernatural; definitionally (as in the above quote), it does not involve much more than "a larger human reality."

For reasons such as these, it is necessary that *you* narrow down the concept of a soul before it can find any scientific support. Consider your statement, "Everything that we feel or do or think is attributed to our soul." This conflicts with most folk and religious concepts of a soul with which I am familiar, at least when taken literally (your intended meaning may be necessary to specify here as well, if you didn't mean this literally). Most concepts of a soul do entail some amount of dualistic belief, whereby some feelings/thoughts are attributed not to the soul, but to the brain, mind, or body. (Even these three entities are not necessarily the same thing either, depending on whom you're talking to!) This lack of consensus on basic, crucial definitions is partly what makes the issue so difficult to separate the scientific issue from philosophical or religious issues.

If you can narrow it down, we might get somewhere, if only (I'd bet) to conclude that your definition of an ethereal soul is fundamentally inaccessible to empirical science for lack of measurability or falsifiability. Without narrowing down the concept of what would qualify as a soul more specifically than you have in your question, I suspect someone could come up with an equivalently strong counterargument to any scientific support one could give for an ethereal soul, so long as *ethereal* means unobservable and unknowable in some sense.

## \[Edit\]:

One complication that remains in the updated OP so far is that biological, cognitive, or social explanations of sentiments don't necessarily preclude a loosely defined "soul" from adding explanatory power. These three kinds of scientific explanations often work together (and may not even be distinct from one another, ultimately) in our models of behavior, emotion, and cognition; I'd say there's still plenty of room for more explanatory factors. The hard part is finding others that actually provide falsifiable explanatory power in ways that existing scientific theories haven't covered already. I'm unaware of any way of measuring unique, useful information about the soul, so I'd say the prospect of doing so is pretty dismal, even though I can't rule it out entirely (and I don't see how others could either).

In your examples of soul-relevant beliefs, I think this becomes even clearer. Each may deserve its own separate question and answers, but I'll respond very briefly to each here to help you decide whether you want to pursue them.

First, the soul mate concept is very loosely defined itself, and most plausible folk concepts don't seem universally applicable. Lots of research has examined romantic attraction and long-term commitment, and some very mundane factors (e.g., proximity, children) have a lot more influence than one might expect if people were routinely finding their soul mates in an idealized sense. Somewhat mundane factors like communication skills, shared values, and physical attraction seem to play predominant roles even in a more limited, rare sense of "true love". There's surely more to it, but good luck improving any statistical models with a soul concept.

Second *and* third, the soul may ultimately be little more than a popular metaphor and folk concept of a person's ethical systems, impulse regulation, and psychological well-being. It certainly may not too, because it refers to something supernatural and apparently unfalsifiable; i.e., there may be much more to the soul than we'll ever know in this life (regardless of whether there are other lives). In either case, the challenge remains to distinguish the soul's role in moral behavior from the roles of factors that fall within the scope of scientific research, such as attitudes, values, and other cognitive processes for decision-making, impulse regulation, and internal conflict resolution. Similarly, consequences for the soul that people might be able to detect seem very hard to distinguish from purely secular consequences for well-being.

However, again, the idea of souls is useful to study scientifically as a belief and social construct regardless of whether souls exist independently of culture. Plenty of research examines the relationship between religiousness and well-being in general, and some even considers the specific relationship between religiousness and the experience of meaning in life. Thanks in part to my own research efforts as an undergraduate, there's even one published study out there that reports the specific relationship between self-reported meaning in life and belief in an afterlife ($r=.32, p\<.01$; Steger et al., 2010). That's the best empirical evidence of which I'm aware so far that **belief in** a dualistic soul relates to the subjective meaningfulness of existence.

**References**

Piedmont, R. L. (1999). Does Spirituality Represent the Sixth Factor of Personality? Spiritual Transcendence and the Five‐Factor Model. *Journal of Personality, 67*(6), 985–1013. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-6494.00080/abstract.

Piedmont, R. L. (2007). Cross-cultural generalizability of the Spiritual Transcendence Scale to the Philippines: Spirituality as a human universal. *Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 10*(2), 89–107. Available online, URL: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/232602191\_Spirituality\_and\_religiosity\_as\_cross-cultural\_aspects\_of\_human\_experience/file/32bfe50d10210133de.pdf.

Piedmont, R. L., & Leach, M. M. (2002). Cross-cultural generalizability of the Spiritual Transcendence Scale in India: Spirituality as a universal aspect of human experience. *American Behavioral Scientist, 45*(12), 1888–1901. http://abs.sagepub.com/content/45/12/1888.short.

Steger, M. F., Pickering, N. K., Adams, E., Burnett, J., Shin, J. Y., Dik, B. J., & Stauner, N. (2010). The quest for meaning: Religious affiliation differences in the correlates of religious quest and search for meaning in life. *Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 2*(4), 206–226.
> 8 votes

# Answer
Science has not found a soul but it will never be able to disprove the existence of a soul because it would be non-material. Instead we can look at the nature of sentience and at some point in the future it will be well understood. We are unable to ascertain the exact functionality of sentience and the nature of emotions based on a purely materialistic view point at this time.
> 1 votes

# Answer
Step one would be to define what you mean by "soul".

The common Judeo/Christian/Muslim theory is that there is something that (a) is the essential core of a person's personality that is related to the brain but is not synonymous with the electrochemical processes of the brain; and (b) that continues to exist when the body is dead.

If you could prove that all aspects of a person's personality could be completely explained in terms of electrochemical actions in the brain, this would be strong evidence against the existence of a soul.

I often hear or read people boldly assert that the personality can indeed be completely explained in terms of brain chemistry: thought, emotions, memory, etc, it's all chemical. If you press them, the person will generally concede that we can't fully explain it now, but he is confidant that as science progresses, someday we will. Therefore, the idea of a soul is disproved.

This is a very weak argument. It essentially says, "I don't have the evidence to prove my theory now, but I just know that my theory is true so I'm confidant that eventually I will have the proof. Therefore, my theory is as good as proved." Of course you could say that about any crazy theory. I don't have any solid evidence that aliens are kidnapping people, but I just know they are, so I'm sure that someday we'll catch them in the act and then we'll have the proof. Therefore my theory must be true, because someday we'll have the proof. Umm, no.

Some say that ancient people believed in a soul because they didn't understand the chemistry of the brain, but now we have so much more knowledge so we know it's all chemistry. But again, that begs the question. Sure, ancient people didn't know about neurotransmitters and synapses and all that, but they were well aware that external physical and chemical stimuli could affect the mind. People have understood, for example, that consuming alcohol affects the brain for thousands of years.

Of course the fact that one theory cannot be proven true does not prove that a competing theory must therefore be true. I don't claim to have any scientific evidence for the existence of the soul.

If the soul exists, what exactly is it? Is it, say, a form of energy that we don't presently understand? That leads to the amusing speculation that maybe someday we will be able to study a soul scientifically. A few hundred years ago electricity was not understood except in the vaguest terms. Electricity then seemed as magical and mysterious as the soul does now.

Actually there is one scientific experiment that supported the existence of the soul: In 1907 a Doctor Duncan McDougall performed a series of experiments in which he put terminally ill patients on a scale as they were dying. He then observed the weight before and after they died. He found that patients routinely lost between 1/2 and 1 1/4 ounces at the moment of death. He theorized that this might result from the soul leaving the body.

It was a fascinating experiment. It was much ridiculed, then and now, by people who consider themselves "scientific", but almost always on philosophical rather than scientific grounds. i.e. I think the idea that you could weigh a soul is ridiculous because ... just because it sounds silly. Therefore the experiment proves nothing. Need I point out that "Your theory sounds silly to me" is not a scientific argument?

Dr McDougall addressed most of the serious scientific objections. Like: 1. When a person dies, their bowels often release. The weight difference is just the weight of some urine or feces. McDougall replied that any urine and feces expelled remained on the scale, and so would still be included in his measurements. 2. The dying person might release air from his lungs, which would then not be measured. McDougall accounted for this with a simple control: He had a number of people lie on the scale, take a deep breath, and then expel as much of the air from their lungs as they could. He then observed the change in weight. He found it was consistently less than 1/4 ounces. I did some calculations based on average lung capacity and the density of air and estimated the air in a person's lungs would weight 0.24 ounces, consistent with McDougall's results. 3. His sample size was too small to give meaningful results: only 6 subjects. McDougall acknowledged this himself and said that further research was called for. Etc.

I certainly wouldn't say that McDougall proved the existence of the soul. But it's an interesting experiment.

**Update**

I see someone asks for citations.

Not my original sources on McDougals experiments, but I was easily able to find several in a quick Internet search. Such as https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/did-you-know-general-science/story-behind-21-grams, https://www.ststworld.com/21-grams-experiment/, etc.

I also mention this experiment in one of my own books, https://www.amazon.com/Errors-Bible-Sorry-About-Yours/dp/0983085900/ref=tmm\_pap\_swatch\_0?\_encoding=UTF8&qid=1680459658&sr=8-1

The rest of what I say in my post is logical argument that I think stands or falls on its own. I don't suppose I'm such a genius that I'm the first person in history to think these things, you could probably find similar arguments from others. But so what? Two people both making the same strong argument doesn't make it any stronger. And two people both making the same weak argument doesn't make it strong.
> 1 votes

# Answer
one difficulty with our current conception of *soul* is shown by the ease with which we use this word with possessive pronouns. if I say *my* soul, or *her* soul, then this seem to imply a relation of belonging or ownership. but what (or who) is it that the soul *belongs* to?

the same question can, for that matter, be asked about the body. if I refer to *my body*, who or what is the owner of this body? when we speak like this we can hardly be intending to imply that the body belongs *to itself*.

of course there are many uses of the word *soul* which are less problematic. terms like *soul music* or *soulful eyes*, or expressions like *with all my heart and soul* may be explained without raising the spectre of arcane problems of ontology.

on the other hand when I say, in a non-metaphorical sense *my shadow* then even though shadows themselves are rather tricky things to interpret as material objects, I do mean *the shadow of this body*.

in view of these kind of reasonings, it may well be that at our current level of development the most productive ways of thinking about what we mean by the word *soul* will be found in the use of analogy or metaphor. for example:

*the soul is to the body as meaning is to the sequence of words making up a sentence*

or

*the soul is to the body as a Schrodinger wave is to the proton, electron or quark whose behaviour it directs*

such metaphors can hardly be completely satisfying as explanations, but they do allow us to engage our intuition in a creative way with the question.

as a student of mathematics I am partially familiar with a whole world of things which are both absolutely definite and completely non-material - for example the wonderful number $\pi$ or the mysterious square roots of minus one. in the unique 4-space of quaternions, discovered by Sir William Hamilton, the unit sphere in the 3-space of pure quaternions is made up entirely of square roots of minus one, whilst the existence of this unique hypernumeric realm seems the most satisfying "explanation" I have found for the fact that the world of our experience has three dimensions of space and one dimension of time. it also demonstrates quite clearly that time is *real* and space *imaginary*, (which of course is only a manner of speaking, yet one which physicists have taken great trouble to suppress). now there have been very materialistic philosophers who have made the ridiculous claim that mathematics is simply the result of human neural activity. these dull souls are immune to the celestial harmony expressed in remarkable *truths* such as:

$$ \frac{\pi}4 = 1 - \frac13 +\frac15 - \frac17 + \frac19 - \dots$$

or the infinite product expression demonstrated by John Wallis in 1655:

$$ \frac{2^2.4^2.6^2.8^2...}{\pi} = \frac{1^2.3^2.5^2.7^2...}2 $$

finally, as a musician, I am wholly in agreement with Frederic Chopin's opinion that:

*the sustain pedal is the soul of the piano*
> 0 votes

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Tags: well-being, philosophy-of-mind, love, moral-psychology, religion
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title: How can we scientifically measure love?

text:
# Question
Title: How can we scientifically measure love?
I want to understand the psychology of love, and I found the Triangular Theory of Love on Wikipedia from this question, which I think is very believable. However, there is a big section on mixed support where it only says a little bit about THAT love was measured, not HOW:

> "Sternberg measured his theory on couples who were roughly the same age (mean age of 28) and whose relationship duration was roughly the same (4 to 5 years)."
>
> "The two other most obvious problems with Sternberg's theory of love are as follows. The first is a question of the separate nature of the levels of love. The second is a question of the measures that have previously been used to assess the three levels of love."

Can we scientifically measure love (without just asking the lovers)? How?

# Answer
> 15 votes
One way to measure love is to look at behaviors that people engage in to express love.

Chapman (1995) theorized that there were five broad classes of behaviors that people would engage in to express love: (1) words of affirmation, (2) spending quality time, (3) giving gifts, (4) acts of service, and (5) physical touch.

Goff, Goddard, Pointer, and Jackson (2007) developed a survey instrument to measure *expressions of love*. They created a series of questions that were designed to measure one (and only one) of the different behaviors that Chapman laid out. These involved asking questions about how a lover does things like: "giving presents," "offers encouragement," "spends time with me," "holds my hand," and "does yard work."

The goal of this work was mainly to see if the Chapman classes of expressions of love matched the kinds of behaviors that people wanted in a lover. The researchers administered the survey to a few hundred people, and in general found that the Chapman classes were a good set of high-level descriptions. People who tended to want one kind of behavior in a lover, e.g., receiving words of affirmation, also wanted other kinds of behavior from that class, e.g., receiving compliments.

References

Chapman, G.D. (1995). *The five love languages: how to express heartfelt commitment to your mate*. Chicago, IL: Northfield Publ.

Goff, B. G., Goddard, H. W., Pointer, L., & Jackson, G. B. (2007). Measures of expressions of love. *Psychological Reports*, *101*, 357-360.

# Answer
> 11 votes
To add some general theoretical background...

**Answering this is very complicated** because the answer depends on how you define emotions, whether you see emotions as latent or emergent, whether you recognize high heterogeneity (behavior, cognition, physiology) within emotion categories, whether you view emotions as circumscribed in the brain or emerging from distributed neural networks, whether you view love as basic (like fear, disgust) or complex/higher order, and so on…

Emotion measurement is tricky business, and while our means of emotion measurement (e.g., facial coding \[FACS\], behavioral coding \[SPAFF\], psychophysiology \[impedance cardiography, EKG, etc.\]), have served us well in a lot of ways, they are also very limited.

From a *constructivist perspective* (a la Lisa Feldman Barrett or James Russell), self-report is the gold standard. On this view, emotions are just the labels that we use to organize and communicate our situated affective experiences. There is not a one-to-one mapping of behavior, cognition, and physiology to emotion categories like love. That is, love is a heterogeneous construct. It is highly variable in how it presents itself.

From a *basic emotions perspective* (a la Ekman, Izard, Panksepp, Keltner, etc.), we can use the methods suggested by Josh and Arnon without much concern. We can infer from patterns of behavior, cognition, facial expression, and physiology that the person is experiencing love. We should also be able to do this reliably.

**So while we can certainly measure love "scientifically," how we do it depends on your theoretical orientation.**

# Answer
> 8 votes
This BBC documentary reviews a number of methods for measuring love that have enjoyed some success. To summarize:

* Dr. Angela Rowe of the University of Bristol presents subjects with unfavourably distorted, unindistorted, and favourably distorted photographs of their love partners, and asks them to identify the undistorted one. Subjects in love tend to select photographs distorted in favour of their partner, while others select undistorted or unfavourably distorted photos.
* Bartels & Zeki (2000) identify differences in fMRI images of the brain while showing subjects in the early stages of their relationships photos of their love partners as compared to photos of controls. When viewing their love partners, areas of the brain associated with pleasure light up while areas associated with critical thinking are inhibited.
* Harker & Keltner (2001) claim they can predict romantic love and relationship success from college yearbook photos.

Here are some others of interest:

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Tags: social-psychology, measurement, love
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