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1500 questions
14
votes
5 answers
At what age are women perceived to be most attractive?
Someone once quoted a research at me:
Men were shown photographs of female body parts and asked to judge the attractiveness. The result was that men (of all ages) found 14 year old females the most (sexually) attractive.
I have tried to locate this…
user3116
14
votes
4 answers
Running on autopilot
Sometimes, people say that they are "running on autopilot", meaning that they are doing the things that they normally do, without any real conscious involvement. I have read that it is not uncommon for people to drive routes that they regularly…
Schroedingers Cat
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14
votes
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What is the neurological basis of maintaining self discipline?
Self Discipline, as defined in this meagre Wikipedia article as being
as the ability to motivate oneself in spite of a negative emotion
This is partly distinct from self control and willpower which from Wikipedia, is defined as
the ability to…
user4185
14
votes
1 answer
How to predict romantic attraction
Dating websites and psychological researchers attempt to find those factors that predict the fit between potential romantic partners. Examples for factors taken into consideration are the "big five" dimensions of personality, attractiveness, or…
user3116
14
votes
1 answer
Is dissociative identity disorder a medical condition or artifact of psychotherapy?
The popular media has offered such examples as "Eve" (based on Chris Costner-Sizemore) and "Sybil" (based on Shirley Ardell Mason) as sufferers of dissociative identity disorder (at one point known as multiple personality disorder). Doctors and…
Chuck Sherrington
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14
votes
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How do humans control saccades?
I've gathered the standard rational for a visual system utilizing saccades from perception textbooks: the neural cost of processing an entire scene at a high level of detail would be prohibitive, but low-fidelity images aren't good enough to…
zergylord
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14
votes
4 answers
Which R packages have good collections of psychology datasets?
The open source statistical software R has a range of contributed packages. Some of them include datasets.
I teach research methods in psychology and I'm looking for interesting real-world dataset to use as the basis for tutorials. I've found a few…
Jeromy Anglim
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14
votes
3 answers
Are there any pragmatic uses of hallucinogens?
Hallucinogens (psilocybin, LSD and others) are often regarded as risky substances, therefore they are banned in most places.
Are there ways of using these substances that can be beneficial?
Or in other words can a hallucination, or a set of…
Aidis
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14
votes
1 answer
What evidence is there that the adult brain can produce new neurons?
At school I was taught that the adult brain did not produce new neurons. That we had the maximum number of neurons and this would only diminish over time due to events, like head injuries, drinking excessive quantities of alcohol, various other…
user10932
14
votes
1 answer
What are the negative effects of meditation?
I see lots of articles touting the benefits of meditation. But what are the bad things about it? Maybe if a person has to make quick decisions, meditation would not be a good thing? This could be similar to a paridigm of "Thinking Fast, Thinking…
goog
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14
votes
3 answers
Why do people talk fast in presentations when nervous?
I was at a professional development seminar today, and the presenter, while being interesting and knowing his subject admitted to being nervous and was speaking very fast. I know I do this when I am giving presentations, despite knowing my audience…
user3554
14
votes
2 answers
Why does repeating one word over and over again sound weird to us after some time?
This effect seems to be observed with almost any word. I would say this phenomenon 'works' for longer and complex words better.
When we repeat a word over and over again, it starts to sound very weird and become only a bunch of repeating sounds. You…
tsykora
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14
votes
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What is the maximum number of objects an average human being can recognize at once?
I'm wondering, how many objects can the average human being can recognize?
For example, most of us can't look at this and say how many boxes there are without counting them:
But I think we can all recognize that there are only 3 boxes here…
MiJyn
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14
votes
3 answers
What is the status of evolutionary psychology in academia today?
Having an interest in human psychology (but no formal training) I decided to take Coursera's Introduction to Psychology as a Science. Here's a snippet from an introductory lecture (it requires signup, so I'll paste the transcription):
Statement:…
tokland
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14
votes
2 answers
What is the effect of mindfulness practice on cognition?
The following article by ScienceDaily reported on a paper in Psychological Science (Mrazek et al., 2013), claiming that mindfulness training led to improved working memory and GRE scores. These studies always pique my interest, but there is always…
Christian Hummeluhr
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