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1500 questions
6
votes
1 answer
What are the underlying mechanisms for optimism bias?
I have asked a question before about how does smoker's decision react to new personal health information. Link here.
How do people estimate smoking's impact on their mortality?
Now I have a follow up question. Psychologists have termed smokers's…
Yan Song
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6
votes
2 answers
How can I dream things that are impossible?
I remember having dreams whose contents were physically impossible, to the point that when I thought about them afterwards, I couldn't reconcile them with reality in a meaningful way, although when I dreamed them, they seemed to be logical and…
Lou
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6
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1 answer
Evolutionary motivation for the existence of pleasure?
It seems like pleasure goes beyond needs. What is its purpose? Is it supposed to make you not do anything, because of how good you feel?
Are there animals that don't feel pleasure, but only have needs to satisfy, and how would their CNS differ from…
Jake1234
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6
votes
4 answers
What is a good book for studying incentives?
I am looking for a book, which gives a broad overview of all the main theories regarding incentives. Using this book, I would like to further my understanding of things like:
Why slot machines keeps people motivated to play
Why extrinsic…
David
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6
votes
2 answers
Why is MATLAB so common in Neuroscience?
It is common knowledge that neuroscience -- particularly experimental neuroscience -- uses MATLAB more than any other programming language. I have always just taken this as a given, and pointed to existing toolboxes, legacy lab codebases, and social…
tbekolay
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6
votes
2 answers
What's the difference between a "mental disorder" and a bad personality trait?
Most people are held accountable for their actions. If diagnosed with a "mental disorder" however, they are often forgiven/treated more leniently and exempted from punishment.
The same thing couldn't be said about a bad personality trait however.…
Mary Anderson
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6
votes
1 answer
Body Language: Why do we act differently around someone we're attracted to?
Many professionals have said that when you're attracted to someone, you tend to fidget, run your hands through your hair, sit with your legs facing them, and that our faces light up around them, which are all actions that happen involuntarily. Why…
purpleink
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6
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1 answer
Does a loser prefer the winner to subsequently lose or win?
Most major league sports have some form of tournament bracket where there are several rounds of elimination before a winner is determined. In most of them, the winning team is undefeated over the course of the whole tournament.
This question…
Bobson
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6
votes
1 answer
What hidden latent variables could be responsible for the high correlation between WORDSUM and IQ?
WORDSUM is a measure of vocabulary ( see sample items here) where the test taker has to select which of a set of words has the most similar meaning to a target word.
There's been some discussion of how the test is strongly correlated with…
InquilineKea
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6
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0 answers
What to do when you have a speed-accuracy trade-off in your data?
Many studies report that a speed-accuracy trade-off (SATO) did not occur in the data since there is a positive correlation between RTs and error rates. In other words, people took longer to respond for the trials that were more difficult, i.e. the…
z8080
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6
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1 answer
How do people estimate smoking's impact on their mortality?
I am working on a project that looks at how information about one's health affects smoking decisions. I have an economic background, and not familiar with the psychology literature. So my questions are:
How accurate are people in estimating their…
Yan Song
- 121
- 4
6
votes
1 answer
What are the effects of visual deprivation on mental health and the other senses?
How do blind people who haven't always been visually impaired deal with their day-to-day lives? I've heard rumors (very, very unreliable rumors) that once you stay in the dark for too long you'll start to go insane, but I haven't met one "insane"…
Sam Chahine
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6
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0 answers
Grating orientation & frequency which induces highest gamma
I am doing some research on perception and gamma activity in V1 area.
To check some of my results I need to find an experimental result, from which I would know which orientations and frequencies of grating are most "popular" in V1. So I need to…
Ilya Kuzovkin
- 61
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6
votes
2 answers
Do we have a predisposition to view visual stimuli in a clockwise pattern?
I understand that we typically view the center of the image first and then are likely to move on a horizontal axis, but is there evidence that we tend to follow a clockwise path when viewing more complex visual stimuli?
Alternatively, for…
braintoast
- 61
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6
votes
2 answers
Is it possible to detect the mental flow state with EEG?
I know that it is possible to detect "focus" with a consumer EEG with a single electrode and a reference point (ear clip), even without conductive gel, but is it possible to detect a flow state with any level of technology (whether it be…
Seanny123
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