Psychology and Neuroscience Stack Exchange
Psychology and Neuroscience Stack Exchange

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Why do many people play Candy Crush without ever buying anything while some spend all their money on it?

I'm trying to understand how free-to-play games like Candy Crush Saga use existing knowledge of the human brain to keep people engaged and how they convince players to pay money for in-game goods. Some of their game mechanics remind me of the…
Pieter
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Food sharing and mutual aid among the homeless

Since the time of Peter Kropotkin, it's been observed and theorized that cooperation and mutual aid are more common in austere environments. A classic biological example would be slime mold spore-making (Starssman & Queller, 2011), and anecdotal…
Artem Kaznatcheev
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Why have historically most inventors been men?

I noticed something strange when I looked at about.com's list of famous historical inventors. You can see that most of the inventors are men, and only a few are women. Can this be explained by cognitive science in terms of men's brains having…
xralf
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Is there a random walk theory that can account for situations with more than two choices?

In the article "Two-stage Dynamic Signal Detection: A Theory of Choice, Decision Time, and Confidence" from 2010 by Pleskac and Busemeyer, a random walk model is presented for situations where a discrete choice is made (that is, signal present/not…
Speldosa
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is it possible to think without language?

I'm trying to fathom what it might be like for a person with aphasia and for one with agnosia. For a person with a visual agnosia I wonder this: if two unrecognizable objects are shown to them, and one is entirely within the background of the other,…
val
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Is Decision-Making Emotionally Based, with Rationalization as the only Conscious Component?

My interest is in how problem-solving decisions are made, and what, if any skills could be taught to increase people's ability to make effective decisions? Effective, in this case, means that an external observer finds the decision a sufficient and…
Thomas McNamee
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Which human instincts do gamification systems appeal to?

As a Stack Exchange user, I spent quite a while thinking about how they managed to trick me into putting so much effort into it. Reputation, badges, etc., are all virtually useless, yet I put great effort into gaining them. I've come to the…
blubb
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What's the relationship between priming and anchoring?

I've recently been dabbling in the behavioral literature, reading about cognitive biases such an anchoring, when one of my friends asked me how this phenomenon differed from the classical cognitive psychology construct of priming. It struck me as…
zergylord
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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…
dwelle
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Are the incidents of autism spectrum disorder on the rise, or is there an increase due to better definition of diagnostic criteria?

Statistics offered by the CDC indicate that the prevalance of autism spectrum disorder in the U.S. went from 1-in-150 children in 2002, up to 1-in-88 by 2008: A new report released in 2013 shows that this number has risen to 1-in-50. The most…
Beofett
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What is the psychology behind male pornographic actors having larger than average penises?

There is a question What does scientific research say about the relationship between penis size and attractiveness? This answer and this link give the statistics of penis size. Given these statistics, the average man performing in porn, would…
user10932
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Is there a practical limit to the amount of knowledge a human can learn?

There's definitely progressive interference and retroactive interference, which are basically two ways that old memories and new memories can interfere with each other. But on the other hand, do these types of interference always have to happen?
InquilineKea
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What is the effect of studying logic or mathematics on general thinking skills?

I frequently hear comments from people to the effect that "Studies have shown that students who take (intro) logic courses don't show any signs of improvement in logical/rational/critical thinking." Yet, as an undergrad, I got the opposite…
Alex Kocurek
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Do characters in a dream have their own separate thoughts or identity?

I am very curious as to if any research has been done in this area, or if such a question even can be researched given the current tools and methods available to cognitive scientists. When one dreams, one may experience interactions with other…
Josh
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What is the motivation model behind StackExchange?

I noticed that I didn't sleep yesterday for no reason and spent the whole night to answer questions in one of the communities in here. Why did I do this? I still come here every hour and check if someone chooses my answer or asks me something.…
Stewie Griffin
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