How to measure well-being without using an extensive questionnaire? I'm trying to create an iPhone app for music therapy (or other kinds of experimental therapy). Such app would help a music therapist keep track of sessions and evaluate progress.  One of the issues that I'm facing is evaluating the effects of therapy - I would like the user to rate their "well being" before the session and immediately following the session using iPhone screen.

I want the rating process to be a one tap operation - I'm thinking of producing an X-Y like graph with two axis and letting the user tap on the chart to rate their well being.

While I can create my own graph like that (for example thought(positive/negative)/action(no desire to act/desire to act)). I'm wondering:

Is there a more scientifically accepted or validated scale of well-being that does not involve extensive questionnaires?

If there are no such axis, can you suggest which other metrics I may use in an app like that.

In general, having multiple items will increase your reliability of measurement. A common measure of what the literature calls "subjective well-being" is a combination of the following scales.

The PANAS: A measure of positive and negative affectivity. A 20 item measure of positive and negative affect (see Watson et al, 1988).
Diener's Life Satisfaction Scale. Five short items measuring life satisfaction.

I.e., well-being is measured as a combination of high positive affect, low negative affect, and high life satisfaction. Of course, there are many other measures of subjective well-being (for a review, see Kahneman and Krueger, 2006).

When to use single item and when to use multiple item

In general there are trade-offs in research. More items brings greater reliability but it also takes more time, which can potentially reduce participation or lead to other costs.

A single item measure of well-being might be appropriate when:

measuring the construct reliably is not that important
You are concerned with population level estimates and you have large sample sizes per group
You are doing experience sampling research where you are getting tens or hundreds of observations of well-being at different time points, and thus, participant fatigue is a major issue.

In your case, you are conducting a pre-post study to assess the effect of an intervention. In such cases, it would really be worth administering a reliable multi-item measure of well-being. For example, to complete the PANAS plus Diener Life Satisfaction combination above, might only take a couple of minutes. For the sake of getting reliable measurement, that seems like a valuable use of two minutes.

Affective grids

That said, if you still wish to explore single item measures, check out this  previous answer on where Gaël Laurans mentions Russel et al 1989 and Larsen et al 2009 as useful sources:

What is a validated single-item measure of mood?

References

Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(6), 1063-1070.
Kahneman, D. & Krueger, A.B. (2006). Developments in the measurement of subjective well-being. The journal of economic perspectives, 20, 3-24. PDF
Russell, J.A., Weiss, A., & Mendelsohn, G.A. (1989). Affect Grid: A Single-Item Scale of Pleasure and Arousal. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57 (3), 493-502.
Larsen, J.T., Norris, C.J., McGraw, A.P., Hawkley, L.C., & Cacioppo, J.T. (2009). The evaluative space grid: A single-item measure of positivity and negativity. Cognition and Emotion, 23 (3), 453-480.

See Also:


What is the difference between 'stereoscopic depth' and 'crossed/uncrossed disparity'? What is the difference between stereoscopic depth and crossed/uncrossed disparity, and specifically in terms of their use in the methods to manipulate visual stimuli to investigate depth-perception?

Short answer
Stereoscopic vision is the perception of depth via disparity. Disparity is the mechanism that the visual system uses to create binocular depth perception.

Background
A dictionary definition of Stereoscopic is the following:

  [N]oting or pertaining to three-dimensional vision or any of various processes and devices for giving the illusion of depth from two-dimensional images or reproductions, as of a photograph or motion picture.

So stereoscopic depth perception refers to the ability of perceiving depth in a 2D image.

A more visual-scientific description of stereopsis is the following (Kalloniatis & Luu, 2016):

  Stereopsis refers to our ability to appreciate depth, that is the ability to distinguish the relative distance of objects with an apparent physical displacement between the objects. [...] Stereopsis is an important binocular cue to depth perception. Stereopsis cannot occur monocularly and is due to binocular retinal disparity [where] two objects stimulate [...] disparate (non-corresponding) retinal points [...].

Monocular cues include occlusion, lights & shade, among others. Binocular cues, i.e., stereoscopic cues are caused by the slightly offset retinal images on our two eyes due to the distance between them. This is called disparity. Disparity depends on the focal distance, and in a nutshell, uncrossed disparity refers to points in space closer than the focus distance and crossed disparity to points more distant than the focal distance (source: Heeger, New York University).

Hence, long story short, stereoscopic depth is a perception, disparity is the mechanism that the visual system uses to create that perception.

Reference
- Kalloniatis & Luu, Perception of Depth. In: The Organization of the Retina and Visual System, Utah University (2016)


Method for evaluating how emotionally evocative a question is? I would like to measure the change in emotional state in response to a question. For example, asking the question, "What is your favorite color?" would be fairly benign; I would not expect any change in emotional state. However, I would expect a strong emotional response if I asked "What type of person do you hate?" or "Have you ever smoked marijuana?"

Ideally, we would measure this immediately after asking the question. Does anybody have any suggestions on how this can be done, or how it has been done reliably in the past? I have access to surveys and special cameras (thermal, pupil analysis, etc) if it helps.

Edit: To clarify, I'm more interested in measuring the level of emotional arousal more than measuring what specific emotion somebody is feeling. For example, I don't care if somebody is frightened or angry, just the extent to which the emotion caused arousal.

You could go with the most direct approach: After every question, ask your subjects how emotionally aroused the last question made them, for example by using a visual analogue scale. Now, this might not be suitable for your research (maybe you don't want your subjects to start to think about their own emotional state), but I think there's a danger in using advanced measurement technologies just for the heck of it. I would imagine a direct question would give your research quite high face validity for example.

However, if want to go with a more indirect approach I would recommend you check skin conductance measurements out. Here, you could for example (there are numerous examples) check out the research on precognition, which started with an experiment by Dean Radin. In these studies, you can see how skin conductance measurements vary with the content of presented pictures quite nicely (never mind if you agree with the precognition hypothesis or not).


Neurotransmitter based imaging techniques All the brain imaging techniques I know fall into two categories:

Tracking blood

Either by looking at the magnetic (fMRI), or near-infared absorption (diffuse optical imaging, NIRS) properties of hemoglobin, or
Injecting tracers into the blood stream (PET, SPECT)

Tracking electric and magnetic fields in neurons (EEG, MEG).

The problem with the first approach is that it is fundamentally secondary in nature: it tracks the response of the vascular system to brain activity. Although the BOLD signal correlates well with neural activity, it is still an indirect indicator of firing rate, has time lags, and limited spatial (limited by distribution of capillaries) and temporal (limited by flow rate) resolution.

The second  approach is better, but still not perfect from a pharmacology perspective. Although it gives us good information about the post-synaptic potential (EEG) or intraneuron potential (MEG), it still provides no information on specific neurotransmitters released. The approach also suffers from limitations on spatial resolution and the fact that EM-fields follow the superposition principle and thus it is mathematically impossible to reconstruct signals that interfere destructively outside the neuron but before the sensors.

The perfect approach for a pharmacologist would be to track individual types on neurotransmitters. Are there imagining techniques that use the resonance, absorption, or other properties of neurotransmitters (instead of hemoglobin)? Or is there a fundamental reason why this won't work?

I know that the same exact techniques as for hemoglobin won't work (since as far as I know most neurotransmitters don't contain nice things like iron to play with), but is there a reason other resonance or scattering techniques wouldn't work?

The closest work I know in this direction is the event-related optical signal (Gratton & Fabiani, 2001) because it tracks the light-scattering properties of something other than hemoglobin: neural tissue. Unfortunately, this is still tracking activity of the neuron and not neurotransmitters.

I found an example of a system that researchers are aiming to use in the future for determining the level of neurotransmitter activity in the brain using MRI.  You were on the right track with the utility of hemoglobin.  The molecule used is somewhat similar.  To understand how the probes were generated requires a bit of a biological detour.

There are enzymes in the body known as P450 cytochromes, so named because they were observed as absorbing light in the 450 nm range.  They are membrane bound (e.g., in the mitochondria) and one of their primary purposes is to carry out monooxygenase reactions, and liver-based P450s are responsible much of the drug metabolism that goes on in the body.  So, different classes of these enzymes have a high affinity for certain molecules.  The most important characteristic that the P450s possess is a heme group, which is paramagnetic, and will produce a signal in an MRI.

These P450 enzymes are also found in bacteria, which can be readily used as a test bed due to their rapid cell division.  What these scientists have done is repeatedly mutated bacteria and tested the affinity of the P450s of the resulting mutants for various molecules (in this case serotonin and dopamine).

So, in retaining a culture of the bacteria, scientists can mass produce the mutated heme groups from the bacterial P450s.  Presumably once the sequence of the subunit is determined, it could be created using standard techniques.

Some challenges remain.  Primarily, the probes will have to be checked for safety, and measures will have to be taken to make them into robust MRI contrast agents, and ensure that they can localize and persist in the brain for the duration of testing.  Presumably, the proper correlations between strength of signal and local transmitter concentration can be established with in vitro studies.  It sounds like we're fairly close to non-invasive methods of measuring neurotransmitter levels.

Reproduced from here

  Brustad, E.M., Lelyveld, V.S., et al (2012). Structure-guided directed evolution of highly selective P450-based magnetic resonance imaging sensors for dopamine and serotonin.  Journal of Molecular Biology, in press, doi.


Two different values for criterion in signal detection theory? I'm a signal detection theory newbie. I have data with a classical SDT design: the participants can answer YES or NO to a question where the correct answer is YES or NO, depending on the presence or absence of a stimulus feature. I looked online for a script to calculate d', and found one which is confusing me.

What's confusing is that the criterion is calculated in two different ways. Does anybody have an idea why this is the case? These are the relevant lines of (matlab) code:

% Convert to Z scores
     zHit = norminv(proportion_of_hits) ;
     zFA = norminv(proportion_of_false_alarms) ;
% Calculate d-prime
     dPrime = zHit - zFA ;
% calculate BETA
     beta = exp((zFA^2 - zHit^2)/2);
% calculate C
     C = -.5 * (zHit + zFA);

I'm interested in beta and C - how one interprets them, how they differ from each other, what a high/low score in each of the two means. And also, which is the one that is more likely to be understandable to a reader who knows SDT.

For these types of questions I really like Detection Theory: A User's Guide by Macmillan and Creelman. They consider 3 types of bias. The criterion location $c$ is calculated relative to the zero-bias point and expressed in units of standard deviations, such that a $c$ of 1 means the criterion is 1 standard deviation to the right of the zero-bias location and a $c$ of -2 means the criterion is 2 standard deviations to the left of the zero-bias location. Since $c$ is relative to the zero-bias location, if $c$ is held constant, then as $d'$ changes the distance of $c$ to the mean of the distribution changes.  Arguably, this means that there is a change in response bias, but the measure of $c$ does not reflect that (after all, the distance to the zero-bias location, which is $c$, does not change with changes in $d'$).  The response bias metric $c'=c/d'$ avoids this issue by taking sensitivity ($d'$) into account. The third measure of bias $\beta$ is defined as $\beta = e^{cd'}$ (which if you do the math is what your code calculates). This measure of bias is based on the likelihood ratio of the two distributions. Because of the mathematical relationship between the measures, they tell you the same thing. There isn't a correct measure and it is easy to switch between the measures, so it does not matter which you report.

For further reading, see also Stanislaw & Todorov (1999), Calculation of Signal Detection Theory Measures


Is there any connection between visual processing ability and social skills? I suspect there is a connection because visual processing ability is necessary in noticing important subtle social cues.

Reading facial expressions is very important to understand others' intentions (Heise, 1985).

Recent research indicates that (1) the human face is a highly sophisticated signaling system for communicating affect, and (2) affect plays a key role in the experience of social organization and in the day-by-day production of culture. This essay suggests that emotional displays—on the face especially—are a primary means of socialization, allowing a neophyte to attain knowledge of the sociocultural system rapidly and efficiently.

Having a visual impairment may yield difficulties in socializing (at least in child in the Autism Spectrum Disorder) (Hellendoorn, et al, 2013):

This study suggests that visual perception may be a mechanism in the development of interpersonal relationships in ASD, which is in accordance with an embodied approach to social cognition.

...and in schizophrenia cases, as per @what comment (Sergi et al, 2006):

Social cognition appears to be a key determinant of functional status in schizophrenia. Using a very basic measure of visual perception, the present study found that social perception mediates the influence of early visual processing on functional status in schizophrenia.

Other indirect consequences may happen due to behavior related to some visual disorder. Vision problems and social skills (note: not a peer-reviewed article):

Vision problems also affect social interaction. Your child might appear awkward, clumsy, or other children may complain that he is invading their personal space, because he has trouble with spatial and body awareness and depth perception. The other children might treat him differently because he has developed coping habits, such as constantly rubbing his eyes, squinting, or tilting his head, or because he often complains of headaches or nausea. He may become distracted while talking or ignore the rhythm of a conversation and other social cues. Children or other parents might unfairly judge this behavior as unmannerly or inconsiderate.
Dealing with difficulty in school, awkwardness in social settings, poor performance in physical activities, and strained relationships with parents is a lot for a child to handle. While children with other learning disabilities may excel in sports or sociability, vision problems interfere more often beyond the classroom. Falling behind academically and being treated differently by peers and adults can lead to low self-esteem and withdrawal.


Is there a scientific opinion about the connection between Asperger Syndrome and AD(H)D? I have Aspergers and ADD. When I read autobiographies (most of all by female aspergers) I often think that they have actually at least a mild form of ADD or ADHD, too.

A German doctor (Dr. Helga Simchen) wrote she thinks that Asperger Syndrome should rather be on the AD(H)S spectrum than on the autism spectrum.
My personal opinion is: no. They're nevertheless different things.

But what is the current scientific standpoint about AS and AD(H)S?

There is a significant overlap between symptoms of classic Autism, Asperger syndrome, AD(H)D and OCD.
The following graph gives a good overview of how they are correlated at the behavioral and sensory level:

(source)

Further reading

Common brain changes found in children with autism, ADHD and OCD
The Co-Occurrence of Autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in Children – What Do We Know?
Autistic traits in some children with ADHD
A Third Of Autism Cases Also Have ADHD Symptoms
Autism and ADHD: Overlapping and discriminating symptoms
Autism and ADHD Share Genetic Similarities
Timing of the Diagnosis of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorder


Why are biosignals from the body said to be continuous? Whether we talk about EEG, ECG or EKG aren't all these signals discrete as we are reading the voltages from the electrodes that are due to certain bio-chemical or bio-electrical activities. I do not get why people say that EEG is continuous and hence we need to convert it to digital when it is already digital.

Biological signals are analogues and hence continuous. Early EEG systems simply recorded the analogue signals and displayed it as a continuous signal graphically as wiggly lines written by little pens on a roll of paper (Fig. 1). Only after analogue-to-digital converters became available, could EEG signals and the likes be digitally sampled.

Fig. 1. Analogue EEG signal. source: Britton et al., 2016)

Reference
- Britton et al., Electroencephalography (EEG): An Introductory Text and Atlas of Normal and Abnormal Findings in Adults, Children, and Infants, 2016. Chicago: American Epilepsy Society


Why humans like to rank things, make lists etc.? I was wondering if anyone can provide some scientific explanation on why humans seem to like organising (cultural) items in arrangements such as lists, rankings, best-ofs etc. Some reference to scholarly literature on the topic would be also appreciated. Thanks!

Taxonomic classification seeks to identify similarities and differences between entities to assist in conceptualizing and communicating (Bailey, 1994).

Rouse (2004) discusses Motivational Systems Theory which seeks to explain why we strive to perform, a component of which is learning, understanding and communicating.

Bailey, K. D. (1994) Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences: Typologies and taxonomies. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. doi: 10.4135/9781412986397

Rouse, K. A. G. (2004) Beyond Maslow’s hierarchy of needs what do people strive for? Performance Improvement, 43(10), 27–31. doi:10.1002/pfi.4140431008


Does the informational content of the mind determine its structure? I have been thinking for several years that maybe the mind could be described as a space, in the mathematical sense, of information and that similarly to the relativistic case of the spacetime whose geometry is determined by its content in mass-energy, the informational content of the mind could determine its structure. This would be a generalization of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis with general informational content and not only language shaping the topology/ geometry of the "informational space" I think the mind must be.

Have similar considerations been published in psychology literature so far?

I don’t think the question of whether the informational content of the mind determines its structure can be answered definitely by referring to current standard psychology or neuroscience references because there is still no consensus on what the mind is, and likewise for its structure. I’ll try to to give the answer based on current knowledge in physics and neuroscience, though.

First, let’s clarify what you mean by the phrase “determine its structure”. You give an analogy in your comment above: in general relativity, the distribution of mass-energy determines the space-time geometry (of that region). So, “determine its structure” here means “determine the topology/geometry of the structure”, not “determine the basic structure, per se”. That is, the mass-energy distribution does not determine the basic structure of the space-time – the basic-structure of space-time is still a 4-dimensional differentiable manifold, with three space coordinates and one time coordinate, coupled with the metric tensor g and governed by the Einstein Field Equation. [1,2] Each different space-time region with different mass-energy distribution just has different topology/geometry of space-time.

What is the basic structure of the mind? Certainly, there is no standard answer for this yet. However, currently, there are several theories [3-5] that assert that the mind is composed of information and information processing, which is the concept similar to the concept of your question. But none of these theories propose that the basic structure of the mind is determined by its informational content although the topology/geometry of the mind or what the individual mind is actually like is determined by its informational content. For example, in the Integrated Information Theory, the mind is invariably the integrated information, and in the Basic Theory of the Mind, the mind is invariably the composite of information processes – no matter what the informational content of the mind is. But, like the case of topology/geometry of space-time above, what the mind is actually like in each individual case is determined by its informational content.

Another obvious analogy is us. Each of us has different physical and mental compositions, which determine who each of us individually is (or determine the topology/geometry, if you will, of each of us). But the basic structure of us are all the same – the basic structure of homo sapiens.

To recap, the informational content of the mind determines the topology/geometry of the mind but does not determine the basic structure of the mind. This is what I can logically conclude from the current scientific knowledge.

References:

1.Wikipedia. Space Time.

2.Wikipedia. General Relativity Theory.

Doyle B. Mind-body Identity Theory The Information Philosopher.
Tononi G. Integrated Information Theory of consciousness: An updated account. Arch Ital Biol. 2012 Jun-Sep;150(2-3):56-90.
Ukachoke C. The Basic Theory of the Mind. 1st ed, 2018. Charansanitwong Printing Co.: Bangkok, Thailand.


Are a lot of highly logical people (such as mathematicians) prone to depression? In my math and physics classes, half the students are seeing or have seen psychologists because of depression.

Based on my experiences I feel that there is a huge correlation between logical people doing, maths, physics, informatics, programming, computer game making and depression.

Is this just a personal opinion or is it more widespread? Does anybody have an explanation for this?

Overall, based on my limited research it appears there is no evidence that people who are more logical are more likely to experience depression. There is a theory that people who see the world more accurately (of which rationality would be a component) are more likely to become depressed. It is called depressive realism {1}. However, the theory doesn't seem to be well researched or supported.

Rather that high levels of logical thinking supporting depression it may well be that factors that predict logical thinking also predict depression. One of these is introversion which, based on some research {e.g., 2}, may be correlated with intelligence (which is related to logical thought) and appears to be correlated with depression {3}.

Also, and this is just my opinion, I think that it is possible that the relationship that between maths, physics and programming students and depression might actually be explained by link between introversion and depression as all of these types of careers are probably more commonly associated with introverts.

References

{1} Ackermann, R. and R. J. DeRubeis (1991). "Is depressive realism real?" Clinical psychology review 11(5): 565-584.

{2} Furnham, A., et al. (1998). "Personality and intelligence." Personality and Individual Differences 24(2): 187-192.

{3} Janowsky, D. S., et al. (2002). "Myers Briggs Type indicator personality profiles in unipolar depressed patients." The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry 3(4): 207-215.


Why would the brain flip the images perceived by your eyes? The following is a common scientific statement, which you don't have to google long for to find:

  The eye views images upside-down in the manner of a camera lens, but
  our brains reinterpret this input to allow us to see things the
  correct way up.

My first question is quite straightforward: Is this statement valid?

I don't understand why you should come to the conclusion that your brain should 'flip' the image. Wouldn't your brain be able to cope just fine without flipping it? If anything I would suspect the brain to not flip the image, if there is no reason to do so.

In order for this statement to be valid, I would expect a scientific theory/experiment from which can be concluded that the brain does process the vision in such a way that, after it being processed all subsequent processing occurs on the 'inverted' image. That seems to me to be the most logical interpretation of 'to flip'.

It is not meaningful to talk about your brain processing something as 'right-side up"' or 'upside-down'. The 'images' in your brain are just collections of neural activations, and not actual pictures. Thus they cannot have an orientation. The only meaningful way to test your question is to try flipping the input the brain receives and seeing if it can cope.
Fortunately, the brain is capable of flipping your visual field if required as measured through perceptual adaptation experiments using inversion glasses. This has been demonstrated very drastically in studies, by for instance requiring a participant to wear inversion glasses for a long time. At first they are confused, and unable to orient themselves and do basic tasks, however after enough time the brain can adopt enough to even do activities like riding a bike. This suggests that from the only way you can measure things (i.e. behaviorally) the brain is capable of adapting to an upside down world (some participants even reported that after extended use the world even seemed "right side up"). This is functionally equivalent to the brain being able to process your visual information in either orientation. If it is capable of processing in either orientation, the question of "does my brain flip the image" becomes a pseudo-question and unanswerable.
References

Taylor, J. G. (1962). The behavioral basis of perception. New Haven: Yale University Pres

Harris, C.S. (1965) "Perceptual adaptation to inverted, reversed, and displaced vision." Psychological Review 72(6): 419-444. [pdf]]

Di Paolo, E.A. (2003) "Organismically-inspired robotics: homeostatic adaptation and teleology beyond the closed sensorimotor loop", {Dynamical systems approach to embodiment and sociality: 19-42 [pdf


What's the difference between cognitive distortions and logical fallacies? I'm doing some reading on said topics, but I struggle to really make a difference between them.

I've gathered that logical fallacies are flaws in reasoning, or arguments that serve poorly to arrive at the truth.

Cognitive distortions are our mind convincing us of something that isn't true.

So couldn't logical fallacies be said also to be convincing us of something that isn't true, in the case where they are unintentional? I can see several instances where there is no real difference. Take for example the distortion of emotional reasoning (I feel X, therefore X must be true). Why is this not a logical fallacy given the logical reasoning within the parentheses?

The two concepts can seem similar, but they are different.  When trying to understand the difference for the first time it can be complicated and I hope I can put it across effectively.

Cognitive distortions

These are simply ways that our mind convinces us of something that isn’t really true (Grohol, 2017). These inaccurate thoughts are usually used to reinforce negative thinking or emotions — telling ourselves things that sound rational and accurate, but really only serve to keep us feeling bad about ourselves.

For instance, a person might tell themselves, “I always fail when I try to do something new; I therefore fail at everything I try.”

Logical Fallacies

Dr. L. Kip Wheeler of Carson-Newman University in Jefferson City, TN says that these are

  statements that might sound reasonable or superficially true but are actually flawed or dishonest. When readers detect them, these logical fallacies backfire by making the audience think the writer is (a) unintelligent or (b) deceptive. It is important to avoid them in your own arguments, and it is also important to be able to spot them in others' arguments so a false line of reasoning won't fool you.

One example is the Strawman Fallacy

  A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be "attacking a straw man".

  The typical straw man argument creates the illusion of having completely refuted or defeated an opponent's proposition through the covert replacement of it with a different proposition (i.e., "stand up a straw man") and the subsequent refutation of that false argument ("knock down a straw man") instead of the opponent's proposition.

Your Logical Fallacy Is — a microsite of the not-for-profit organisation schoolofthought.org — describes a strawman fallacy as

  Misrepresenting someone’s argument to make it easier to attack.
  After Will said that we should be nice to kittens because they’re fluffy and cute, Bill says that Will is a mean jerk for wanting to be mean to poor defenseless puppies. Everyone loudly boos Will, drowning out his protests that
  this isn’t what he said at all.

Reconciling the two concepts

They can seem to merge into each other in some respects at time, especially when you look at the logical fallacy called the gambler's fallacy

  Believing that ‘runs’ occur to statistically independent phenomena such as roulette wheel spins.
  Red had come up six times in a row on the roulette wheel, so Jen knew that it was close to certain that black would be next up. Suffering an economic form of
  natural selection with this thinking, she soon lost all of her savings. (Your Logical Fallacy Is)

You could be forgiven for thinking it may be a cognitive distortion, as in a sense it could be, but it is a logical fallacy because it is a false statement of fact which is believed to be true.  If it was a pure cognitive distortion, it would be a false belief which is believed to be true.  Now, again reading this back myself it can sound the same, but think of it this way.

A false statement of fact (logical fallacy) is a statement often echoed by many people around within the social circle.  It is a statement believed to be true because the statement was generally made by someone else and it was believed to be true as logic dictates it to be true.  If you was to think about the logic and examine the evidence, the fallacies can be brought into the open and destroyed.

A false belief (cognitive distortion) can be the same, but primarily will be a belief only held by the person holding the cognitive distortion.  It is a statement believed to be true because the statement was generally built up in the mind of the person holding the cognitive distortion and it was believed to be true as past experience dictates it to be true.  If logic was allowed to take over, the cognitive distortion could be destroyed in time.

How can you avoid cognitive distortions and logical fallacies within yourself?

One way you can avoid them is to apply Occam's Razor.  This has been termed as

  [with] other things being equal, simpler explanations are generally better than more complex ones (Wikipedia)

and this is an interpretation of William Ockham's principle:

  "non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem" [i.e., "don't multiply the agents in a theory beyond what's necessary."] (Wheeler, n.d.)

Wheeler expanded on this with an explanation and said:

  to phrase it in modern terms, "Don't speculate about extra hypothetical components if you can find an explanation that is equally plausible without them." All things being equal, the simpler theory is more likely to be correct, rather than one that relies upon many hypothetical additions to the evidence already collected. (Wheeler, n.d.)

There is also Jesse Richardson (2014) who states that you need to think for yourself and not take for granted everything you are told to think.  So if you combine what both William Ockham and Jessie Richardson points out, it seems you can't go far wrong.

Further Reading

Beck, A. T. (1976). Cognitive therapies and emotional disorders. New York: New American Library.

Burns, D. D. (2012). Feeling good: The new mood therapy. New York: New American Library.

Leahy, R. L. (2017). Cognitive Therapy Techniques, Second Edition: A Practitioner’s Guide. New York: Guilford Press.

McKay, M. & Fanning, P. (2016). Self-Esteem: A Proven Program of Cognitive Techniques for Assessing, Improving, and Maintaining Your Self-Esteem. New York: New Harbinger Publications.

Wheeler, L. K. (n.d.) Logical Fallacies [Online]https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/fallacies_list.html

References

Grohol, J. (2017). 15 Common Cognitive Distortions. Psych Central. [Online]https://psychcentral.com/lib/15-common-cognitive-distortions

Richardson, J. (2014). How to think, not what to think TEDx Brisbane [Online]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dluwVks444

Wheeker, L. K. (n.d.). Occam's Razor: A Useful Tool in Logic [Online]https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/logic_occam.html


The genetics of handedness In response to these questions:
Are there benefits to learning to write with your non-dominant hand?
Spontaneous change of handedness

I used myself as an example for spontaneous handedness change.

Example:

I began as a left hander. I spontaneously changed to a semi-ambidextrous right hander.
Two of my three children are true left handers, the other is a true right hander (their father and his family are all right handed).
My parents and siblings are right handed.
 My maternal grandmother was ambidextrous.

Question:

What are the genetics of handedness?

There appears to be a higher correlation with environmental influences affecting handedness, as opposed to the genetic factors; although there is conclusive genetic evidence, it is not the major contributing factor in determining handedness.

I quote from the link @what provided in the comments.

  Handedness displays a complex inheritance pattern. For example, if
  both parents of a child are left-handed, there is a 26% chance of that
  child also being left-handed.[8] A large study of twins from 25,732
  families by Medland et al. (2006) has indicated that the heritability
  of handedness is roughly 24%.[9] This leaves about three quarters of
  the effect to be explained by environmental factors.

  To date, two theoretical single gene models have been proposed to
  explain the patterns of inheritance of handedness, the first by Dr.
  Marian Annett[10] of the University of Leicester and the second by
  Professor Chris McManus[8] of UCL.

  Both models propose that there is a variant in a single gene that has
  two alleles. Carriers of one allele are more likely to be
  right-handed, and the other allele does not specify the direction of
  handedness, instead leaving it to chance. They differ on the precise
  effect of the 'right-shift' allele, but both models provide similar
  fits to data on the inheritance of handedness. Oxford University
  psychiatrist Professor Tim Crow has taken the single-gene model one
  step further, and proposed that mutations in the gene PCDH11X were
  responsible for the evolution of handedness, cerebral asymmetry,
  language, susceptibility to schizophrenia, and was the speciation
  event that created Homo sapiens.[11]

  Although single-gene models can be fitted to the data, a number of
  genetic linkage studies have been performed, all of which have
  provided evidence for different regions of the genome contributing to
  variation in handedness.[12][13] [14][15] Only one of these studies
  has led to the identification of a specific gene that is proposed to
  contribute to variation in handedness. [16][17]

  Medland et al.[18] found a gene that is positively correlated with
  left-handedness in females, and negatively correlated in males. This
  may help to explain why there are more left-handed men than women
  (around 12% in men versus 10% in women globally).3

It is, also, important to define handedness, or types of handedness, and the variability between self-reporting and objective evidence.

  However, genes influencing sidedness remain elusive. We measured
  direction and consistency of hand, foot, and eye preference in 584
  Mexican-Americans from families participating in the San Antonio
  Family Diabetes/Gallbladder Study. Using maximum-likelihood-based
  variance components methods, we estimated weak (.11 ≤ h2≤.17) but
  significant heritability for foot preference, eye preference, several
  hand preferences (writing, drawing, throwing, using scissors, using
  spoon, striking match), and a composite hand preference trait.
  Self-reported handedness was significantly heritable (h2=.57), whereas
  hand preference for opening a box or using a toothbrush or knife was
  not. Many trait pairs had significant genetic correlations, and all
  had significant environmental correlations.

(Heritability and linkage analysis of hand, foot, and eye preference in Mexican Americans  Diane M. Warrena*, Michael Sternb, Ravindranath Duggiralac, Thomas D. Dyerc & Laura Almasyc   DOI:10.1080/13576500600761056)

There is also the concept that handedness is on a continuum and that there is not, necessarily, a definitive left or right handedness, bit rather where the individual sits on the contiuum of cerebral dominance. This study also examines  the genetic modelling versus the environmental factors, and the unreliability of self-reporting. It also, introduces the idea the people may under-report left handedness. This also demonstrates that left handedness is inherited maternally.

  Whereas many assume there is a true incidence of left-handedness, the
  RS theory suggests that degrees of hand preference map onto a
  continuous baseline of asymmetry that can be cut at any point to
  represent observed incidences of left-handedness. The parameters of
  the RS genetic model were derived from findings for speech
  lateralization in aphasics, supporting the argument that the relevant
  genetic locus is “for” cerebral dominance, not handedness. Genetic
  predictions are given for two levels of parental left-handedness (10%
  and 20%). Studies of family handedness distinguishing for sex in both
  generations gave generally good fits where handedness was assessed by
  self-report, but more variable fits for indirect report of relatives'
  handedness. The tendency to find a higher proportion of left-handed
  children born to left-handed mothers than left-handed fathers is not
  likely due to X-linked inheritance, but rather to slightly stronger
  expression of the RS+ gene in females than males, and also
  under-reporting of left-handedness in mothers by right-handed
  children.

(The genetic basis of lateralization Marian Annett dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511576744.006)

There has been research demonstrating that the LLRTM1 gene contributes to handedness. This gene has also been linked with increased incidence of schizophrenia. An interesting observation, given the historic "demonisation" of left handers. Could this be, because there was a perceivable  increased incidence of "insanity" amongst the left handers? (note, my own theory)

  Left-right asymmetrical brain function underlies much of human
  cognition, behavior and emotion. Abnormalities of cerebral asymmetry
  are associated with schizophrenia and other neuropsychiatric
  disorders.....    This is the first potential genetic influence on
  human handedness to be identified, and the first putative genetic
  effect on variability in human brain asymmetry. LRRTM1 is a candidate
  gene for involvement in several common neurodevelopmental disorders,
  and may have played a role in human cognitive and behavioral
  evolution.

LRRTM1 on chromosome 2p12 is a maternally suppressed gene that is associated paternally with handedness and schizophrenia. Francks C, et al.

So, given my example, it is not surprising that:

The left handed family members were all on the maternal side.
The incidence of left handedness was low.


Does night-sleep-deprivation have any effect on cognitive performance? Sleeping during the day might lead e.g. to vitamin D deficiency. But I am interested in what effects might night-sleep-deprivation have on cognitive faculties.

Does sleeping during the day and absolutely not getting night sleep have an effect on working memory, long-term memory, intelligence level, processing speed, etc.?

According to this article, yes it does have various symptoms including cognitive deficiencies that make us more prone to errors and less efficient :

  Circadian rhythms biologically program us to stay awake during
  daylight hours and sleep at night. Shift work goes directly against
  what our bodies desire to do, and those that struggle with this may
  suffer from shift work sleep disorder (SWSD).

  ... symptoms may include headaches, weight gain, gastrointestinal
  issues, fatigue, attention and concentration issues, work absenteeism,
  irritability and depression. ... Worst of all, shift workers are at a
  significantly greater risk for vehicular accidents and mistakes at
  work.

  The ideal situation is to maintain a steady sleep-wake schedule seven
  days a week, allowing for 7-8 hours of sleep. Although difficult to
  follow, it can be extremely helpful to help reset circadian rhythms.
  It can be especially tough on days off, when desires to socialize in
  the daytime and maintain more “normal” sleep periods kick in.

Additonal reference


What causes students not to be interested in problem solving? Sometimes students lack the drive for problem solving. One might say that they are bored.

However, is there a scientific account on what causes ignorance of problem solving, when they simply are not interested in solving any problem? Like when they think that it is the grown-up's task to solve problems, not theirs.

Nature supplies each of us with a Homo Sapien type brain with 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses. However the brain is plastic and can change its structure based on the way it is programmed psychologically.

Not all people are capable of solving all problems. Our abilities mental and physical are based on what we spend our time doing. Even the banal task that one could imagine is quite exhilarating to another person with a brain which was trained and programmed differently.

First the brains structure is made up of the connections the neurons make. My favorite study which shows this is the Cab Drivers Brain Experiment. It showed that after years of labor (and compared to a control group) London taxi drivers had enlarged in structure posterior hippocampus giving the cabbies the ability to store large amount of navigational data in their brain. (That is not to say that the cabbies all enjoyed driving though.) Another example of this includes changes to accommodate musical ability. Exploiting neural plasticity has led to treatments for dyslexia. Likewise also everyone who uses the internet has seen ads for Luminosity but not everyone knows that it doesn't work well.

People who are mentally ill have connections in their brain that lead them to illness. These connections can be caused by physical or by self-psychological training. That is to say chemical imbalances are often the result of a structural or physical malformations. A brain may for whatever reason produces too much or little neurotransmitter or have many connections to an incorrect part of the brain. If the brain was a terrane the paths traveled more often would eventually become "paved" (somewhat permanent). It take medication and counseling to break up those bad pathways and form new and healthy pathways.

Nature or nurture has resulted in the group of people which I think you describe as somewhat dependent or ADHD. Only proper counselling and perhaps even some medication will be able to free them from their lack of motivation. Even with proper treatment some people will for whatever reason never want to act in the way you see fit. Homework will always be at times left undone. This is a truth no matter how advanced the teacher is in academia or how driven and motivated the pupil.


Bayesian models of faking in selection and recruitment settings I'm doing some research looking at applying Bayesian models to faking personality tests in selection and recruitment.

I'm interested to know:

What existing work has applied Bayesian models to faking in selection and recruitment?
What studies have been done? What have they found? and what did a Bayesian perspective add to the analysis?

I'm interested in any application including

different selection instruments: i.e., not just personality tests (e.g., intelligence tests, interviews, etc.)
different approaches: modelling the decision to fake, modelling datasets that have examined faking, implementing faking detection algorithms, etc.

Quantitative papers

There are a number of papers that didn't use a Bayesian approach but provide a relevant basis for developing quantitative Bayesian models:

Zickar et al (2004) performed a mixed-model using item response theory to examine different classes of respondents to personality tests. While it doesn't appear to be a Bayesian analysis, it is an example of a more sophisticated quantitative model. Essentially it concludes that there is more than one type of "faking" process.
Komar et al (2008) performed a statistical simulation of the faking process that represented various mathematical models of faking. While this study wasn't Bayesian in approach and it didn't involve data collection, the mathematical models discussed are relevant in describing parameters of interest to a Bayesian model of faking (e.g., proportion of participants faking, average magnitude of faking, variability in magnitude of faking, etc.).

Bayesian papers

There are a couple of papers that I've found that have used a Bayesian approach to study faking.

Kuncel et al (2011) in their review article of faking detection techniques discuss a general approach for assessing honest responding originally presented by Prelec (2004) known as Bayesian Truth Serum. The approach involves asking respondents to indicate their own response to a question and to estimate the proportion of the population that would give the same response. If the respondent's estimate of the population proportion is greater than the average estimate, then the response to that question is expected to be more honest. The argument is that if we acquire our beliefs about the population from our experience, we are more likely to over estimate the degree to which the belief is shared with others because our experience is biased to include ourselves. See also this paper by Ray Weaver.
Ortega et al (2011)  applied a Bayesian approach to faking bad in malingering contexts.

References

Komar, S, Brown, D. J., Komar, J. A., & Robie, C. (2008). Faking and the validity of conscientiousness: A monte carlo investigation. Journal of Applied Psychology
Kuncel, N. C,  Bornemann, M.,  and Kiger, T. (2011).  Innovative Item Response Process and Bayesian Faking Detection Methods: More Questions than Answers. New Perspectives on Faking in Personality Assessment
Edited by Matthias Ziegler, Carolyn MacCann and Richard Roberts.
Ortega, A., Wagenmakers, E.-J., Lee, M.D., Markowitsch, H.J., & Piefke, M. (in press). A Bayesian latent group analysis for detecting poor effort in the assessment of malingering. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology. PDF
Prelec, D. (2004). A Bayesian Truth Serum for Subjective Data. Science, 306, 462-466. PDF
Zickar, M., Gibby, R. E., Robie, C. (2004). Uncovering faking samples in applicant, incumben, and experimental data sets: An application of mixed-model item response theory. Organizational Research Methods, 7, 168-190.


When does the brain 'switch on'? I am pursuing Computational Neuro-Science and learning about human Brain. After some reading I got this doubt that when does the brain actually gets switched on? Does it happen right in the mother's womb or when the baby comes out? or Is it wrong on my part to assume that the brain gets switched on one particular moment?

I love this question. While I don't have a definitive answer, I can help with some known factors of child development.

There are studies suggesting that the parents' voices and repeated music is heard in the womb by the fetus and responded to after birth.

Specific studies (see: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/08/babies-learn-recognize-words-womb) classify the third trimester (last three months) of development in the womb to be the key point at which sensory hearing and brain function/classification is active, thus suggesting the brain is "turned on" during or prior to the last trimester.

I would love to hear further studies from others that clarify this point.


What does the visual feed from the retina look like before it is processed by the visual cortex? I was recently at the ACM Symposium on Applied Perception, where I saw a keynote on visual attention. The speaker (Laurent Itti) showed an animation that blew my mind. It showed a video of fish swimming in the ocean, and next to it, the same video as "seen" by the retina. The latter was upside down and distorted beyond recognition except at the fovea, which darted around to salient locations in the video. I had heard it explained before that "your eye doesn't 'see' images, your brain reconstructs them," but I had never before seen it illustrated so well.

I want to find a similar animation to show friends and students, but I'm having trouble finding anything. Searches yield mostly diagrams of light passing through the eye or something similar. The only thing I've found that shows what an image actually looks like when it reaches the retina is this picture.

It's a nice start, but I'd really like an animation, like a video or GIF, to show how the brain stitches together the retinal images at each fixation into what seems like a coherent image/video.

Can you help me find such an animation? Something that shows what a raw visual feed actually looks like?

There is a LOT more to "your eye doesn't 'see' images, your brain reconstructs them" then what is shown in that picture.  After the image is flipped and distorted, contrast information at various scales is extracted and pretty much everything else is thrown away.  Here is a simulation of that:

This information is then used to build up progressively more complex and abstract representations of the visual scene.

I found a video showing a simulation of how this edge detection works, but it doesn't appear to include the distortion and receptive field sizes.  I haven't been able to find a video that combined everything.


What is "synaptic polarity" in a chemical synapse? I'm reading a paper and they are discussing modelling the neural networks of an organism. One of the key things they are interested in is finding out the synaptic polarity of chemical synapses.  What does that term mean, and what might its relevance be?

From a paper on C.elegans:

  To understand the neural basis of these behaviors requires some information not only about the pattern and strength of the connections but also about the type of their synapses. The same neural circuit can perform different functions depending on the signs of synaptic polarities it contains. Specifically, circuits in which excitatory synapses dominate can sometimes become epileptic. On the other hand, networks with only inhibitory connections could be silent, and therefore in many situations useless. Thus, it may seem that some sort of an intermediate regime is necessary for a proper functioning of the nervous system

In that paper that's all they mean by it. It's not a very widespread term, and should not be confused with [the much more widespread term] neuronal polarity, which means the differentiation between dendrites and axon as the neuron develops. Also of note that synapses can also be classified morphologically, and when doing that there are more than two types, e.g. S-type, F-type and C-type.


Is it possible to effect both positive and negative reinforcement through the same action? Consider the following scenario: a rhesus monkey is being put under severe duress somehow (isolation, sense of physical threat, whathaveyou). It is desired that a behavior, like pressing a lever, is increased. Let's say administration of a CNS depressant as a reward is used to try to get this outcome. This could possibly be seen as positive reinforcement (due to euphoriant effects in themselves) and as negative reinforcement (because stress is being taken away). Is it possible to model both sides of this picture and is this done in practice?

Yes.

In fact, the modern view of positive and negative reinforcement is that they are essentially synonyms. They are different ways of looking at the same thing, like describing a glass of water based on how full or how empty it is:

  In this paper, we reconsider the issue from the perspective of 30
  years. However, we could not find new evidence in contemporary
  research and theory that allows reliable classification of an event as
  a positive rather than a negative reinforcer.

Wikipedia as well:

  Distinguishing between positive and negative can be difficult and may
  not always be necessary; focusing on what is being removed or added
  and how it is being removed or added will determine the nature of the
  reinforcement.


Where can I find decent descriptions for each Big5 facet? I need some decent explanations/descriptions for each of the 30 Big5 facets, like a1, a2, a3 etc etc.
I have been googling around for it, but all I have found are very short descriptions that vary too much.
There must be some kind of official, scientific definition of the facets somewhere, but where can I find it?

This might help:
Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1995). Domains and facets: Hierarchical personality assessment using the Revised NEO Personality Inventory. Journal of Personality Assessment, 64, 21–50.
It is available on the web at:
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Paul_Costa3/publication/7402610_Domains_and_facets_hierarchical_personality_assessment_using_the_revised_NEO_personality_inventory/links/00b49515b9ad9348b8000000.pdf

Also, the test manual:
Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) and NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) professional manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.


What is the name of the bias when one expects you to possess his knowledge? What is the name of bias or fallacy when, often while in argument, someone expects you to know the same things as he does. Usually, you just say "well, how should have I known that. I'm not inside of your mind."

I've searched through wiki's list of cognitive biases, but couldn't find anything.

EDIT:

To clarify what I have in mind: When people disregard the availability of information to the subject they are talking to. Or maybe they do not take into account that the subject might not have given the question in hand as much thought as they have, therefore he might not have arrived at the same conclusions. Or they just forget the fact something might not be so obvious to the subject as it is for them.

(so in my original post I've been influenced by the same bias to a degree)

If you had asked about cognitive distortions, I probably could've answered straight away about one of those!

I think it might be an illusion of transparency. Your example somewhat aligns to the definition provided by Gilovich, Medvec & Savitsky (1998):

  "... we refer to this tendency to overestimate the extent to which others can read one's internal states as the illusion of transparency." (p.332)

However it doesn't necessarily meet the criteria for someone expecting another person to know the same things that they do. The illusion of transparency is rather an exaggeration of transparency rather than an exaggeration of being epistemologically levelled.

It could be a projection bias or an assumed similarity bias - both of which might be relevant to your scenario. Projection bias refers to the tendency to assume that others share one's current emotional states and thoughts (Hsee & Reid, 2006). An assumed similarity bias refers to the bias that others are similar to the self (Srivastava, Guglielmo & Beer, 2010). The response - "well, how should have I known that. I'm not inside of your mind." is a product of those biases being invalidated.

Hopefully, these were the ones you were looking for.

References

Gilovich, T., Savitsky, K. & Medvec, V.H. (1998). The illusion of transparency: biased assessments of others' ability to read one's emotional states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(2), 332-346
Hsee, C.K., Reid, H. (2006). Decision and experience: why don't we choose what makes us happy? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10(1), 31–37
Srivastava, S., Guglielmo, S. & Beer, J.S. (2010). Perceiving others’ personalities: Examining the dimensionality, assumed similarity to the self, and stability of perceiver effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(3), 520–534


What is the effect of not sub-vocalizing on reading comprehension? Sometimes when reading, text segments are not so important or relevant, when that happens I tend to read between lines in a visual manner, without sub-vocalizing or pronouncing the words in my mind.

Could that way of reading affect text comprehension?

Yes, inhibiting sub-vocalization is likely to impair comprehension.

Here is the abstract from Slowiaczek & Clifton (1980):

  Two experiments demonstrated that subvocalization is of value in reading for certain types of meaning. Blocking subvocalization by requiring subjects to count or say “cola-colacola …” aloud impaired their reading comprehension but generally not their listening comprehension. The effect of blocking subvocalization was found to be specific to tests that required integration of concepts within or across sentences, as contrasted with tests that required only memory of individual word concepts. Two hypotheses were offered: first, that subvocalization results in a more durable memory representation needed for integration of concepts; and second, that subvocalization enables a prosodic restructuring that makes information needed for sentence comprehension accessible.

Reference

  Slowiaczek, M. L., & Clifton Jr, C. (1980). Subvocalization and reading for meaning. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19(5), 573-582.


How do I get the "Avoidance and Inflexibility Scale"? I am working with a smoking cessation app and I want to study the acceptance of smoking behaviour. I found a good paper by Gifford et al. (2004) in which the authors use their own questionnaire called the Avoidance and Inflexibility Scale (AIS).

However, I cannot find it in PsycInfo and Google Scholar. A more general research on google does not yield any result.

Gifford, E. V., Kohlenberg, B. S., Hayes, S. C., Antonuccio, D. O., Piasecki, M. M., Rasmussen-Hall, M. L., & Palm, K. M. (2004). Acceptance-based treatment for smoking cessation. Behavior therapy, 35(4), 689-705.

In the measures subsection of the methods section in the paper you refer to (Gifford et al, 2004), you can see that Gifford et al. (2002) is cited when referring to the AIS questionnaire. However, I cannot seem to find this paper titled "Combining Bupropion SR with acceptance-based behavioral therapy for smoking cessation: Preliminary results from a randomized controlled trial."

Maybe this is what you were referring to when you stated "I cannot find it"?

I did a more general search for "Gifford Avoidance and Inflexibility Scale" and found Gifford & Lillis (2009) in which they cite the original paper you found (Gifford et al., 2004)—hardly useful.

Interestingly, a validation study of the scale was published by different authors (Farris et al., 2015), in which they provide the following citations:

  The Avoidance and Inflexibility Scale (AIS; Gifford, 2001; Gifford,
  2002; Gifford et al., 2002) is a smoking-specific measure of
  experiential avoidance that was specifically developed for
  process-based smoking cessation research.

They also provide the following description:

  Avoidance and Inflexibility Scale (AIS; Gifford et al., 2004) The AIS
  is a 13-item self-report assessment in which respondents to consider
  how they respond to difficult thoughts that encourage smoking (e.g.,
  “I need a cigarette”, “I wish I could have a cigarette now!”),
  different feelings that encourage smoking (e.g., stress, fatigue,
  boredom, enjoyment, satisfaction, etc.), and bodily sensations that
  encourage smoking (e.g., “physical cravings or withdrawal symptoms”).
  Items are rated on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = Not at all to 5 = Very
  much), with higher scores reflecting more inflexibility/avoidance in
  the presence of difficult smoking-related thoughts, feelings, and
  sensations.

Gifford (2001) is an unpublished manuscript. Gifford (2002) is a doctoral dissertation ("Acceptance based treatment for nicotine dependent smokers: Altering the regulatory functions of smoking related affect, physiological symptoms, and cognition.") which I am also unable to find online. Lastly, Gifford et al. (2002) is the first paper we could not find.

The validation study does provide all 13 items in Table 1 (Farris et al., 2015). Combined with the knowledge that it is a 5-point Likert scale (1= Not at all to 5 = Very much) you do have most of the information needed:

However, personally I would recommend you to contact Gifford and explain your struggles in obtaining access to her research, and kindly request her to place a copy of the unpublished materials on ResearchGate, arxiv, or any similar platform.

Gifford EV. The Avoidance and Inflexibility scale. 2001 Unpublished manuscript.
Gifford EV. Doctoral dissertation. University of Nevada; Reno, NV: 2002. Acceptance based treatment for nicotine dependent smokers: Altering the regulatory functions of smoking related affect, physiological symptoms, and cognition.
Gifford, E. V., Antonuccio, D. O., Kohlenberg, B. S., Hayes, S. C., & Piasecki, M. M. (2002). Combining Bupropion SR with acceptance-based behavioral therapy for smoking cessation: Preliminary results from a randomized controlled trial. In annual meeting of the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy, Reno, NV.
Gifford, E. V., Kohlenberg, B. S., Hayes, S. C., Antonuccio, D. O., Piasecki, M. M., Rasmussen-Hall, M. L., & Palm, K. M. (2004). Acceptance-based treatment for smoking cessation. Behavior therapy, 35(4), 689-705.
Gifford, E. V., & Lillis, J. (2009). Avoidance and inflexibility as a common clinical pathway in obesity and smoking treatment. Journal of health psychology, 14(7), 992-996.
Farris, S. G., Zvolensky, M. J., DiBello, A. M., & Schmidt, N. B. (2015). Validation of the Avoidance and Inflexibility Scale (AIS) among treatment-seeking smokers. Psychological assessment, 27(2), 467.


Does social psychology include study of human cultures? Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), not a professional psychologist or anthropologist but a smart thinker and philosopher, believed that jealousy was one of the main sources of the sexual ethics of his time. I'm much interested in this kind of analysis, relating cultures, customs, norms, and traditions to basic human drives and emotions and also to other factors (geographical, economical, etc.). For example, why is there hijab in islamic world? Was it originated as a result of jealousy of men at some period of time at a specific region?

I would like to know if professional social psychologists today deal with such questions at least partially, and how they differ with anthropologists or sociologists in this respect, if at all.

I can see where the confusion may lay as the disciplines are very similar but different in their own ways.
Social Psychology

is about understanding individual behavior in a social context (McLeod, 2007).

This field of psychology therefore looks at human behaviour as influenced by other people along with the social context in which this occurs.
McLeod also points out that:

Topics examined in social psychology include: the self concept, social cognition, attribution theory, social influence, group processes, prejudice and discrimination, interpersonal processes, aggression, attitudes and stereotypes.

Cultural aspects of psychology will affect interpersonal processes etc. but in depth analysis of culture in psychology is covered by cultural psychology, which informs several other fields within psychology, including social psychology, cultural-historical psychology, developmental psychology, and cognitive psychology.
How they differ with anthropologists or sociologists in this respect.
Anthropologists
scientifically study human behaviour and societies in the past and present. Social anthropology studies patterns of behaviour and cultural anthropology.
Whilst anthropologists will study the cultures, past and present, they don't analyze the psychology of, or within, cultural differences.

Early anthropology originated in Classical Greece and Persia, and studied and tried to understand observable cultural diversity. As such, anthropology has been central in the development of several new (late 20th century) interdisciplinary fields such as cognitive science (Wikipedia).

Sociology
is the study of society, patterns of social relationships, social interaction and culture of everyday life. It is a social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order, acceptance, and change or social evolution (Wikipedia). Sociology is also defined as the general science of society.
While culture forms part of society, again sociology doesn't deeply examine cultural aspects in the same way as anthropology or cultural psychology.
To understand more about the differences, please read the Wikipedia articles linked and follow the citations referenced in them.
References
McLeod, S. (2007). Social Psychology. Simply Psychology [Online].Retrieved from: https://www.simplypsychology.org/social-psychology.html


Are University Graduated WEIRD people psychologically different to Generally Educated WEIRD people? A recent question was asking around the subject of WEIRD psychology [WEIRD standing for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic — an acronym seemingly coined by Henrich, et al (2010)] and reading the Wikipedia article to find that out and get some understanding of the subject made me wonder if the concept of WEIRD psychology could have merit.
For the purposes of focus, let's take one aspect of the WEIRD category — Educated.
Would a person in Western society, educated at a lower level, be psychologically different to someone in Western society educated to the highest possible level?
To be precise in my meaning regarding psychological differences, ignoring the systems of education and assuming:

nobody in either group are suffering from any psychotic disorders,
both groups have the same powers of observation, and
both have equal access to any required reference materials and advice from experts,

is there empirical evidence to suggest that one of the groups cannot form a sound and reasonable argument based on their knowledge of the world around them?
Maybe I am not using the correct search criteria in Google but I can't seem to find any.
References
Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world?. Behavioral and brain sciences, 33(2-3), 61-83. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X0999152X. PMID: 20550733.

A lot of psychological research takes place in societies that are Western, Democratic, and Industrialized, and that from a global/historical perspective are relatively Educated and Rich.
Of course, within those societies, people vary in their level of education and their socioeconomic status (e.g., wealth, income, financial security, earning potential, etc.).
And education and socioeconomic status have numerous correlates with psychological variables and life outcomes.
E.g., educational attainment is positively correlated with life time income, intelligence, and political views.
There are two obvious explanations for these processes:

Education changes a person. They acquire general and discipline specific skills. They get exposed to different experiences, career opportunities and so on.
Psychological characteristics predict interest, access, and success in higher education. For instance, more intelligent people are more likely to be granted access and succeed in higher education.
Third variables. Factors like family socioeconomic status predict psychological characteristics as well as the probability of pursuing higher education.


Good neuroscience research blogs In the field of AI research there are really good research blogs that regularly analyse methods and review papers. Examples that come to mind are:

BAIR blog: The Berkeley AI Research blog
Distill: an AI journal devoted to clear explanations

Might there be something similar for neuroscience? To qualify what I mean by 'good' the blog would have to cover:

methods for experimental, computational and theoretical neuroscience
comprehensive reviews of basic neuroscience research

Three neuroscience blogs that come to mind are:

Harvard Neuro Blog: articles from graduate students and postdocs working on basic research in the neurosciences at Harvard University
Neuwrite West Blog: a blog to make neuroscience accessible to anyone curious about the brain
Niko Kriegeskorte's blog: the blog of the visual scientist Niko Kriegeskorte

So far, I am unaware of an online journal like Distill for neuroscience research.

Note: As per the suggestion of Arnon Weinberg I decided to qualify what exactly I mean by 'good' and provided examples for concreteness.

Also check:
https://bitsandbrains.io/
https://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/
calling it a blog is too much but sometimes we share stuff:
kordinglab.com

But also, there is maybe a bit more of a culture of publishing thoughts in papers in the field.


I want to find event1 in my EEG data, followed by event2 and then extract reaction time between them for i=1:length(subjects)
    EEG = pop_loadset([sub_name{i},'.set'],folder);
    for k = 1:length(EEG.event)-1
        disp(k);
        if strcmp(EEG.event(k).type,con1)
            k = k+1;
            if strcmp(EEG.event(k+1).type,con2)
                rt = EEG.event(k+1).latency-EEG.event(k).latency;
            end
        end
    end
end

I'm guessing you are using Matlab. Your code is mainly sound, but a few comments:

don't use "i" or "j" as they are function names in Matlab.
don't change the value of a for loop variable inside the loop.

Here is you code, corrected:

for sub=1:length(subjects)
    EEG = pop_loadset([sub_name{sub},'.set'],folder);
    trial = 0;
    for eve = 1:length(EEG.event)
        if strcmp(EEG.event(trial).type,con1)
            trial = trial+1;
            trialonset(trial) = EEG.event(trial).latency;
        elseif strcmp(EEG.event(trial).type,con2)
            trialoffset(trial) = EEG.event(trial).latency;
        end
    end
    rtlist{sub} = trialoffset-trialonset;
end


What is the psychological term for reframing that uses false statements? I want to know if there is an established psychology term for this pattern of behavior:

A person does something, an action
That something becomes known to one or more people, and the action is seen as negative
(Optional) The person verbally acknowledges doing the negative action
The person then denies ever doing the negative action (a falsehood)

For example:

Donald Trump makes a remark that indicates he grabs women by their genitalia nonconsensually
A recording of Trump making this remark is published
Trump acknowledges that it was him making this statement
Trump eventually denies that he ever said this, and that it was made up "fake news"

I'm looking for a succinct term that describes this pattern. Psychology has other terms to describe complex behavior such as "projection" and "codependency". So is there a known term for the above pattern?

My opinion is that these terms apply to elements of this pattern: gaslighting, lying, manipulation, and reframing. But these terms do not describe the behavior pattern overall. Something that strikes me about this pattern is how it erodes one's sense of reality, almost in an Orwellian sense.

Short answer
I think you are referring to 'self-deception', or 'interpersonal deception'.

Background
Self-deception is

  a process of denying or rationalizing away the relevance, significance, or importance of opposing evidence and logical argument. Self-deception involves convincing oneself of a truth (or lack of truth) so that one does not reveal any self-knowledge of the deception.

Self-deception is not simply an erroneous thought, as the acquisition and maintenance of the false belief is intentional not accidental. Self-deceivers apparently must (1) hold contradictory beliefs, and (2) intentionally get themselves to hold a belief they know or believe truly to be false. Therefore, it is related to interpersonal deception, where people intentionally let others to believe something, while knowing or believing truly that that is not true (source: Stanford University).

  Interpersonal deception theory (IDT) attempts to explain how individuals handle actual (or perceived) deception at the conscious or subconscious level while engaged in face-to-face communication.


Coping with Asperger's in the workplace People with Asperger's Syndrome (AS) are often highly intelligent and are capable to complete their studies and do well in jobs where they can operate solo. Adding a person with AS to a team can cause considerable stress at the workfloor which may be justified by the extraordinary skills of the employee with AS.

Are there any strategies for teams (or individuals) to cope with, learn to utilize, their team member with AS?

I work with people who have Asperger's Syndrome every day and have had no major problems at all.  The reason is that I do indeed follow some documented strategies, particularly those outlined in "Working with a Person with Asperger’s Syndrome" (Autism Victoria, 2007). A brief list of strategies suggested by that document suggest that workers with Asperger's Syndrome need:

consistency 
predictability
a calm and controlled supervisor (this also applies to coworkers)
an organised workplace

Most of all, don't make a big deal of their condition, just be aware of what is needed.


Do porn and other remotely perceived entertainments work because of Mirror Neurons? As you might have known, Mirror Neurons are hypothetically the neuron pair - each of which is carried by other person - that make people to share their feeling although one of them just observes the action instead of take a part in the action. ( This short video is a succinct summary of this neurons, for more see this TED Talk )

the excerpt from the Wikipedia:

  "A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal
  observes the same action performed by another. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behaviour
  the other, as though the observer were itself acting. Such neurons have been directly
  observed in primate and other species including birds. In humans, brain activity
  consistent with that of mirror neurons has been found in the premotor cortex, the
  supplementary motor area, the primary somatosensory cortex and the inferior parietal
  cortex."

Considering the impulsing effect of Mirror Neurons for the observer, could all these remotely perceived entertainments be taking advantage of these neurons?

I think it is likely the case. I agree that the idea of a "mirror neuron" is a bit dubious, as it implies that the function of those neurons are related to mirroring. It's probably the case that they represent the actual movement, and their activation in witnessing the action is tangential to that.

As for your question, research was done on this exact topic, with positive results. Mouras et al. found that the magnitude of erection achieved by participants watching erotic videos correlated to the activation of regions known to contain "mirror neurons".

References
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811908006897


What exactly is an astroglial calcium wave? There are quite a few conflicting reports as to what stimulates them, how they propagate, whether they communicate intercellularly, and what they look like.

The only consistent information I can find on them is that they propagate through the astrocyte at about 20 microns/sec.

Are they solitons? do they propagate intercellularly? Are they independent of neuronal input? Can the astroglial mesh be viewed as an astroglial field (obviously more speculative)?

I'll try and answer this:

An astroglial calcium wave is the phenomena in which astrocytes express a variety of ion channels and membrane receptors, which enable them to respond on a millisecond time scale to neuronal activity with changes in membrane potential and/or increases in intracellular Ca2+ levels.

  Astrocytes were not only able to respond to external stimulation with increases in intracellular calcium elevations but, most importantly, they were be able to transmit these calcium signals to adjacent non-stimulated astrocytes, as intercellular Ca2+ waves (ICWs). The presence of such phenomenon of propagating waves of calcium lead to the proposition that “networks of astrocytes constitute an extraneuronal pathway for rapid long-distance signal transmission within the CNS.”

Are they solitons?

No as they are followed by similar events and a soliton is neither preceded nor followed by another such disturbance.

  A calcium wave is defined as a localized increase in cytosolic Ca2+
  that is followed by a succession of similar events in a wave-like
  fashion.

Do they propagate intercellularly?

I think so yes or if not propagate then communicate -

  They were be able to transmit these calcium signals to adjacent
  non-stimulated astrocytes.

Are they independent of neuronal input?

  There is a reciprocal communication between neurons and astrocytes.
  Hippocampal neuronal activity was shown to trigger calcium waves in
  astrocyte networks (Dani et al., 1992) and astrocyte calcium waves
  were shown to modulate neuronal activity (Dani et al., 1992; Kang et
  al., 1998; Nedergaard, 1994; Parpura et al., 1994; Parri et al.,
  2001).

Can the astroglial mesh be viewed as an astroglial field (obviously more speculative)?

This one I couldn't find any discussion on - nor could I form a conclusion on other than I suppose it could?

Reference:

Scemes, E., & Giaume, C. (2006). Astrocyte calcium waves: what they are and what they do. Glia, 54(7), 716-725.


Are there any studies regarding elderly people and learning resiliance? On Parenting, issues regarding emotional resilience are often discussed as something of great value, a lifelong gift to give to one's child, and I cite studies and articles to help parents learn what resilience is and how to teach it. I define resiliency as a kind of positive mind set which allows a child/person to maintain a healthier outlook in the face of stress. For example, resilient kids see setbacks as learning opportunities rather than failures, feel that they have agency instead of helplessness, avoid negative self-talk, etc.

It seems to me (totally uninformed opinion coming) that much older people are less likely to be able to change their psychological habits/traits. (It's a cognitive bias I have.)

I know from my own dogs that it's quite possible to teach an old dog new tricks (my 13 year old Border Collie could learn new tricks in a few minutes), but so far, I've not been able to find anyone willing to fund a grant involving clicker training patients my age to learn new ways to cope with unwanted emotions or negative experiences. (J/k about the grant. And the clicker training/operant conditioning, but with clicker training, there is no negative feedback except for lack of reward.)

If someone can point me in the right direction to literature demonstrating how to successfully increase resiliency in elderly patients, it would be much appreciated.

This isn't quite my area of expertise, but I did find a couple recent papers that attempted to use behavioral interventions to improve some measure of resilience in older populations and showed positive results:

Luskin, F., Reitz, M., Newell, K., Quinn, T. G., & Haskell, W. (2002). A controlled pilot study of stress management training of elderly patients with congestive heart failure. Preventive cardiology, 5(4), 168-174.

Perez-Blasco, J., Sales, A., Meléndez, J. C., & Mayordomo, T. (2016). The effects of mindfulness and self-compassion on improving the capacity to adapt to stress situations in elderly people living in the community. Clinical Gerontologist, 39(2), 90-103.

In addition to one showing an effect of a physical intervention, which makes sense since physical and mental/emotional outcomes tend to be highly correlated:

Roh, S. Y. (2016). Effect of a 16-week Pilates exercise program on the ego resiliency and depression in elderly women. Journal of exercise rehabilitation, 12(5), 494.

In summary, it seems like it's possible to improve psychological habits in older adults, though I didn't find anything comparing older to younger populations, and the vast amount of literature in this area seems to be focused on measuring and correlating measures of resiliency with other health outcomes, rather than improving it directly. Seems like an important area for future work.


Is there a correlation between high IQ and creativity? Is there a correlation between high IQ for example over 125 and creativity?

Is creativity improved or does its importance simply diminish?

Maybe there could also be confounding variables as well? It can be easier to be creative if you're not the best in the world in something (surprisingly enough), since then it might motivate you to get off the beaten path.

The article The Threshold Theory Regarding Creativity and Intelligence: An Empirical Test with Gifted and Nongifted Children found results that do not support this "Threshold Theory" of creativity.

Abstract:

  Results of divergent thinking tests (administered to 228 intermediate school students, of whom about 43 percent were gifted) and calculated correlations between creativity and intelligence measures did not support the threshold theory which posits that creativity and intelligence are related only up to an intelligence quotient of about 120.

Can Only Intelligent People Be Creative? A Meta-Analysis by Kyung Hee Kim found a negligible correlation of IQ and creativity and does not support the Threshold Theory.

  The mean correlation coefficient was small (r = .174; 95% CI = .165 – .183), but heterogeneous; this correlation coefficient indicates that the relationship between creativity test scores and IQ scores is negligible. Age contributed to the relationship between intelligence and creativity the most; different creativity tests contributed to it secondly. This study does not support threshold theory.

Several studies dispute the claims of Threshold Theory but the most interesting is probably Biochemical Support for the “Threshold” Theory of Creativity: A Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy Study which appears to show some support for the idea in a fairly rigorous biochemical method.

There is at best contentious support for the threshold theory, and perhaps more importantly the association between creativity and IQ seems rather weak.


How to compare tasks completed by neural architectures objectively? When I first saw this video of Spaun and the tasks it can complete (solving the Towers of Hanoi problem, completing the Raven matrices), I was really impressed, but then I realized I didn't really know what other tasks were being completed by other neural architectures. Consequently, I almost asked a question here that was basically "How does Spaun compare in terms of task complexity to other neural architectures?". However, I realized that it would be better to if I could learn how to do this evaluation myself.

So, what metrics or heuristics can be used to evaluate the complexity of a task completed by a neural architecture? How can one evaluate the complexity of a problem/puzzle such at the Tower of Hanoi, to another problem, such as modelling how people solve algebraic equations, like ACT-R has accomplished?

More than two years later, I now have a heuristic (which is a close as I can get to an objective metric) that I rely on. As I write about in one of my blog posts, there are a couple of tasks that humans are capable of that are still really hard for machines. They require the following things for a machine (or a neural model):

Balancing Planning and Exploration: Modelling the environment's future state and the possible future states via exploration efficiently.
Scaling Skills: Transfering skills between tasks and building more complex skills atop of basic skills.
Knowledge Representation: Keeping relations between skills, environmental variables, past knowledge and priorities all usefully organised.

Any neural model that begins to leverage these things is evaluated as impressive in my eyes.

However, these requirements are mostly for Artificial Intelligence. What about neural models specifically? All neural models that complete a task are, by definition, cognitive models, so in addition to the above criteria they must satisfy various Cognitive Criteria to prove the system is achieving it's goals in a human-like manner.


Where to find a study on women and selfies? I have recently read the following Yahoo article: Guys, this is why you should never post too many selfies on social media.

This article describes a study that correlates selfies taken by men and their psychology.

So my question is where to find a similar study about women?

The Yahoo Lifestyle website gives a popular description of the following study:

Fox & Rooney. The Dark Triad and trait self-objectification as predictors of men’s use and self-presentation behaviors on social networking sites. Personality and Individual Differences 76 (2015) 161–165

The study basically concludes that in a population of males (and I quote from the abstract):

  Self-objectification and narcissism predicted time spent on SNSs.
  Narcissism and psychopathy predicted the number of selfies posted, whereas narcissism and
  self-objectification predicted editing photographs of oneself posted on SNSs.

With regard to females, the authors justify their choice of a male population on p.162 at the end of the Introduction, and I quote:

  Although some research on SNSs and other interactive media has shown a relationship between use and self-objectification among females (e.g., Fox, Bailenson, & Tricase, 2013; Fox, Ralston, Cooper, & Jones, in press; De Vries & Peter, 2013; Meier & Gray, 2013; Vandenbosch & Eggermont, 2012), at this time little is known about men. Given previous findings with females, we anticipate that trait self-objectification will be associated with greater social networking site use [...], more frequently posting selfies [...], and more frequent photo editing [...] by men.

In other words, in females the relation between self-objectification and use of interactive media was already known. The authors have therefore addressed the issue in a population of men.

Sifting through the studies cited in the Fox & Rooney article, and taking into account that your question emphasizes your interest in selfies, the De Vries and Peter study cited in the quote above is probably the reference you are after:

De Vries and Peter. Women on display: The effect of portraying the self online on
women’s self-objectification. Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013) 1483–1489


What is the term for two mutually exclusive, contrasting emotions I am a psychology student and I vaguely recall a term being used to describe two emotions that cannot be expressed simultaneously. The example was fear and relaxation in terms of Systematic Desensitization. Can anyone help me out with this? Many thanks in advance.

In terms of systematic desensitization, you're thinking of reciprocal inhibition (see, e.g., Wolpe, 1954).

For what it's worth, beyond this literature, there's a general debate about whether positive and negative affect can be experienced simultaneously.  (Indeed, Emotion Review just published a series of articles about this.)  It's fair to say that the debate has not been resolved.


why are all human brains so similar in brain structure, specialization of their parts and functioning? As a result of my growing interest in neuroscience, I have begun to try and understand the functioning of the brain. However, I am always confronted by the  following questions:

The brain is a highly specialized organ with innumerable nuclei and pathways, and yet the brain of one individual is surprisingly similar to that of another. Hence, it must be the case that the structure of the brain must, in part, be determined by our genes. If this assessment is correct, how much is our brain structure dependent on our genes?
Now consider the case of a newborn and suppose his/her brain structure has been established somehow. As he/she grows, the brain starts taking sensory input and learns to process it better through neuroplasticity. If so, then why does everyone's, say amygdala only process fear, anxiety, etc. What prevents it from maintaining autonomous functions? Are the functions of different parts also determined by our genetics? (Is neuroplasticity the only force dictating learning?)

In other words, why are all human brains so similar in brain structure, specialization of their parts and functioning?

Thank you

Up until the 70s and 80s, there were decades of hot debate about whether some phenotype such as brain structure or some behavior were caused by genes or by environment. Wikipedia has a decent summary of the history and content of that debate, and I've linked to the section on estimating the relative contribution of genes vs. environment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture#Heritability_estimates

The current consensus is that the #1 question isn't very meaningful. Genes and environment are both 100% necessary conditions for a brain to develop. Yes, the similarity between brains (and between species) show that a lot of the structure is conserved, and much of that design depends on genes. But those genes wouldn't develop into a brain without very specific environmental conditions.

There are three quite distinct questions under #2. Cells and regions differentiate in the body; brain plasticity isn't 100%. Some structure is conserved. Consider that "modularity", one type of which is that different areas of the brain do distinct operations, is at least partially false. The brain is not at all like a computer with a motherboard with distinct components. It might help to consider how you would answer your question for why people's thumbs don't look like their other fingers. What prevents a thumb from developing into a finger? Are the functions of a thumb determined by genetics? This might help you to zero in on the specific processes of the brain that are the mechanisms that explain how genes and environments interact to produce phenotypes.


What makes some criminals glamorous to others? Some murderers are glamorized by society while others labeled monsters.

In both cases, they can commit the same terrible crimes and cause the same amounts of pain - yet one can be romanticized the other not.

In extreme cases, some serial murders receive wedding proposals.

How does cognitive science classify this attraction?

Is it just based on the way the criminal looks?

Does physical attraction override reason even to this extent?

When is it ever considered a normal behavior and why?

Glamorization of a criminal is no different than glamorization of a non-criminal, except for the added excitement of doing something wrong. Not that glamorizing something wrong is the impetus for the glamorization itself, but it does add to its excitement. The more the excitement, the more the interest, and hence, what the media covers. In some cases, the individual may not be "interesting enough" without the added excitement.

A second factor is appreciation. Appreciating expertise in a specific field is closely related to our own involvement in that field. For example, while a person may watch the World Cup with interest, he might not fully appreciate the expert performance unless he has played the sport himself. The more he tries to become an expert himself, the more he would appreciate the actual experts. Similarly, the more he reads about a subject, the more he appreciates the experts in the field. (Pun intended.)

When a criminal takes an action, it is generally not random. Usually, there is a goal that most people can understand or there is a consistent set of actions along some line. People who have an appreciation of the goal or the subject, even if they "would never do it themselves", are led to an appreciation of the perpetrator as an expert in the field. If they have a latent desire to perpetrate the same action, but suppress the desire rather than sublimate it, they will identify with the perpetrator as well, or in extreme cases, see them as a form of secret hero, whether they realize it or not.


What evidences this technique of visualizing different color words in sequence, to help you sleep? What's this technique called? Any evidence?

  I'll make it easier. Visualize the word Red. In big red letters. Examine your creation but don't judge harshly. After a few seconds, switch to the word Blue, in blue letters. Then again with Green. Now repeat the sequence or feel free to wander off into any pattern of colors.

  This is how it works. You can't think and feel at the same time (by feeling I mean any of the senses including vision) so exercising your vision causes your brain to shut down. You can do the same by listening intently, etc.

  This has usefulness beyond relaxing enough to fall asleep. I have a theory that high level problem solving requires switching to feelings. We feel our way through tough problems because conventional thinking is too tedious, inefficient.

  BTW, you now know how to meditate.

Imagery Distraction

The technique referred to is called 'imagery distraction' (Harvey & Payne, 2002).

Some evidence has been found for “imagery distraction” being associated with shorter sleep onset latency and less frequent and distressing pre-sleep cognitive activity.

  The success of the “imagery distraction” task is attributed to it occupying sufficient “cognitive space” to keep the individual from re-engaging with thoughts, worries, and concerns during the pre-sleep period.

The type of imagery seems less important.  So visualizing coloured words should be equally as effective as counting sheep.

Harvey, A. G., & Payne, S. (2002). The management of unwanted pre-sleep thoughts in insomnia: distraction with imagery versus general distraction. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 40(3), 267–277. doi:10.1016/s0005-7967(01)00012-2