I'm a TMS, but not an fMRI, researcher but I have experience using anatomical masks. I can guide you through the steps to make an anatomical mask, but unfortunately I don't have any code to offer you.

First of all you need a set of x, y and z co-ordinates that specify where TOFC or LOC are. One way to find these is to find a paper that reports the x,y,z values corresponding to a voxel that contains the peak BOLD signal change co-ordinates within the LOC or TOFC. An alternatively way, might be to find some anatomical studies that provide these co-ordinates for you. I cannot recommend one or the other to you; this is a decision for you to make based on the analyses you are doing.

Once you have found some LOC or TOFC co-ordinates you are happy with, you can create a mask based on them using FSLView (type in fslview in the Linux terminal to open it).

First of all, open FSLView and open one of the standardized brain images. You can enter your TOFC or LOC co-ordinates (in MNI or Talairach space - I'd recommend MNI) in FSL using the x, y and z boxes in the bottom left corner. This will move a crosshair on top of the peak voxel. Then click file - create mask. This will enable you to use the toolbar, on this toolbar you will see an icon shaped like a pencil. Use it to mark voxel the crosshair is pointing at, making it sure it corresponds to the voxels you entered earlier. Do this separately for both site

You can then save this you will have an image containing an anatomical mask indicating where LOC and TOFC are. If this is unclear, try this blog - an fMRI researcher in my lab found it really useful.

http://andysbrainblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/creating-masks-in-fsl.html

Good luck!


Does the effect of naturalistic exposure on second language acquisition vary with age?

(Unfortunately, the links appear to be broken, so I will reply to the title and bolded question.)

Being forced to use a language you are unfamiliar with as a language technique is known as immersion learning. I could not find direct comparisons of adults and children, but based on evidence from educational systems, it appears that early immersion does not change the helpfulness of immersion learning outcomes compared to late immersion, but interestingly, it does appear to change the way we obtain those learning outcomes (Harley and Hart, 1997).

  Evidence is found to support the main hypothesis that in late immersion starting in adolescence there will be a positive relationship between L2 [second language] outcomes and an analytical dimension of language aptitude, whereas in early immersion beginning in grade 1 a positive relationship will hold between L2 outcomes and memory ability. A further hypothesis that early immersion students will have higher language aptitude as a result of their early L2 exposure is not supported by the findings.

This would appear to at least partially satisfy the question. Since the question is about a fictional movie, I'll go out on a limb here and say that speculatively, an unrelated earlier study might be helpful in explaining why this could be the case.

Newport (1990) reported support for the hypothesis that language learning abilities decline because of the expansion of nonlinguistic cognitive abilities. It's conceivable this allows individuals increasing freedom to avoid using second language, but these nonlinguistic abilities may be unhelpful in cases of extended immersion learning as depicted in The Terminal.

References

Harley, B., & Hart, D. (1997). Language aptitude and second language proficiency in classroom learners of different starting ages. Studies in second language acquisition, 19(03), 379-400.
Newport, E. L. (1990), Maturational Constraints on Language Learning. Cognitive Science, 14: 11–28. doi: 10.1207/s15516709cog1401_2


How do I obtain recordings of the P300 wave of the event-related potential in the EEG?

The P300 wave is a positive deflection in the human event-related potential (ERP). A common experiment in which it is analyzed is the "oddball" paradigm, where a subject detects an occasional target stimulus in a regular train of standard stimuli. The P300 wave only occurs if the subject is actively engaged in the task of detecting the targets and its amplitude varies with the improbability of the targets. Its latency varies with the difficulty of discriminating the target stimulus from the standard stimuli. A typical peak latency when a young adult subject makes a simple discrimination is 300 ms. The P300 wave may represent the transfer of information to consciousness, a process that involves many different regions of the brain (Picton, 1992).

Your questions:

ad. 1: Averaging reduces the random background EEG activity (noise), as well as artifacts due to movement or eye blinks. Random events will average out, while the ERP itself, being highly synchronized with the stimulus, will persist in the signal. In short: averaging increases the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Is this wanted? - That depends on the SNR you wish to obtain. The more averages, the better the SNR. [M]aybe there is an unwanted adaptation effect of the subject - if you are afraid of adaptation - do repeated measures and analyze single ERPs, or small chunks of averages across the recording - it will give you an idea whether there is adaptation, and if yes, how much. I wouldn't worry about it too much. The long time scale of P300 recordings (second-range) allows the nervous system plenty of time to recover.
ad. 2. There is always background EEG, except in (brain) dead subjects - and these subjects won't be too cooperative. [A]re there certain frequencies that are expected in the EEG - ERPs are not analyzed in the frequency domain, but in the time domain. If you are interested in the frequency content of the EEG; it is much dependent on the state of the subject. An awake, vigilant test subject with their eyes open will show beta activity (6 - 31 Hz band).
ad. 3. Averaging doesn't change the timing characteristics of the ERP, barred the recording is properly time-locked with the stimulus.
ad. 4. Higher sampling rates are generally better. If your system allows it, crank it up. You can always downsample later. Downsampling may have the advantage of smoothing high-frequency noise and enhancing the ease of handling of the data. ERPs are slow responses, so you don't need 100 kHz signals. For EEG generally 500 Hz is used, because according to the Nyquist criterion you need at least twice the numbers of samples than your highest frequency of interest. The gamma band is 32+ Hz, so 500 Hz is pretty safe (De Haan, 2013). For ERPs, 200 Hz may be sufficient. Wikipedia suggests higher rates for EEG.

References
 - De Haan, Infant EEG and Event-Related Potentials; Psychology Press (2013)
 - Picton, J Clin Neurophysiol (1992); 9(4): 456-79


Do men have a higher sex drive than women?

The most straight forward ways to quantify people's sex drive, and hence determine if there's any empirical /objective truth to this disparity, are to measure their self-reported interest in sex (usually by asking "how much do you think about sex?") and also the behavior element (e.g. asking about pursuing sex). Though both of these rely on participants self report, the results are very clear: on average, men think about sex more frequently than women and pursue sex more actively than women.

Here's a WebMD article that summarizes some of these findings and links to various sources:

http://www.m.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/sex-drive-how-do-men-women-compare

Sex Drive: How Do Men and Women Compare?
Study after study shows that men's sex drives are not only stronger than women's, but much more straightforward. The sources of women's libidos, by contrast, are much harder to pin down.

It's common wisdom that women place more value on emotional connection as a spark of sexual desire. But women also appear to be heavily influenced by social and cultural factors as well.

"Sexual desire in women is extremely sensitive to environment and context," says Edward O. Laumann, PhD. He is a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago and lead author of a major survey of sexual practices, The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States.

[...]

Men think more about sex.
The majority of adult men under 60 think about sex at least once a day, reports Laumann. Only about one-quarter of women say they think about it that frequently. As men and women age, each fantasize less, but men still fantasize about twice as often.

In a survey of studies comparing male and female sex drives, Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist at Florida State University, found that men reported more spontaneous sexual arousal and had more frequent and varied fantasies.

[...]

Men seek sex more avidly.
"Men want sex more often than women at the start of a relationship, in the middle of it, and after many years of it," Baumeister concludes after reviewing several surveys of men and women. This isn't just true of heterosexuals, he says; gay men also have sex more often than lesbians at all stages of the relationship. Men also say they want more sex partners in their lifetime, and are more interested in casual sex.

Men are more likely to seek sex even when it's frowned upon or even outlawed:

About two-thirds say they masturbate, even though about half also say they feel guilty about it, Laumann says. By contrast, about 40% of women say they masturbate, and the frequency of masturbation is smaller among women.
Prostitution is still mostly a phenomenon of men seeking sex with women, rather than the other way around.
Nuns do a better job of fulfilling their vows of chastity than priests. Baumeister cites a survey of several hundred clergy in which 62% of priests admitted to sexual activity, compared to 49% of nuns. The men reported more partners on average than the women.


What background is required to understand the book "Principles of Neural Science"?

I think you should reverse your approach.  Rather than trying to find every prerequisite, start reading sections of PNS and as you encounter something you don't understand, look up the background information.  It's an exhaustive work (and well worth reading!) but you're going to find different sections require different levels of background.  For example, the section on ion channels requires a bit of E&M physics, and the section(s) on neurotransmitters will make more sense with some basic organic chem.

If you get through some of it and feel like you need more of the basics, a book like Bear's is a bit more accessible.

There's another version of Kandel (it's probably older than you are, but your library might be able to get it) that takes a slower approach.


Is there a technical term for "fear of the unknown"?

The closest formal term I'm aware of is Xenophobia but that term has been primarily used to describe a fear or dislike of foreign people, so I wouldn't use it in any context other than that.

I would simply use the explicit phrase fear of the unknown; general fears are often referred to in an explicit manner like that. "Fear of the unknown" written out as such is commonly used in articles as are "fear of death" etc. While phrases like "arachnophobia" are common in popular use, phobias are really only irrational and extreme fears; as such an X-phobia term is often inappropriate when not discussing irrational, specific fears on an individual basis.


Mental Health Optimisation and the Macro Environment

For a high-level overview, I usually start with Wikipedia.  Wikipedia is a peer-reviewed, community-contributed, comprehensive source of high-level information.  The user community has already done the work for us of aggregating large volumes of primary and secondary source material, digesting it for the reader, keeping it up to date, and ensuring a balanced approach. so it should meet your needs as a starting point of "where the most up to date/popular/most respected views" might be.  Wikipedia also provides links to related articles, and reference source materials that you can follow up on to dig deeper.  Any similar online encyclopaedia-style wiki would be fine too (eg, Scholarpedia) if you prefer.

The article on "Causes of mental disorders" has a section on environmental factors.  Some highlights:

  ... environmental causes are stressors that individuals deal with in
  everyday life. These stressors range from financial issues to having
  low self-esteem.
  ...
  The lower the socioeconomic status of an individual the higher the
  risk of mental illness. Impoverished people are actually two to three
  times more likely to develop mental illness than those of a higher
  economic class.
  ... there is a strong association between poverty and substance abuse.
  ... Problems in communities or cultures, including poverty,
  unemployment or underemployment, lack of social cohesion, and
  migration, have been associated with the development of mental
  disorders.

You may also be interested in the reverse effect - of mental health on the economy.  You can also use Wikipedia to research specific disorders, such as the effect of the economy on major depressive disorder (depression).  It's important to pay attention to cause and effect when doing this.  For example:

  Depression is often associated with unemployment and poverty. ...
  prevalence is in groups with stronger socioeconomic factors i.e.
  homelessness.

Read this carefully, as it doesn't mean that a bad economy causes depression, only that poverty and depression co-occur - it's equally likely that depression causes poverty than the other way around.  Having said that, there is strong evidence that economic health does affect rates of depression:

  Although reverse causation—poor mental health leading to lower
  earnings—is present, it is no longer considered the primary mechanism
  behind the association between income and health. Several longitudinal
  studies have specifically examined the relationship between depression
  and socioeconomic status and concluded that the causal direction runs
  from socioeconomic status to depression.

I hope that this is what you were looking for to get started.


Is there terminology for perceptual illusions at the moment that figure-ground reversal occurs?

There are many such illusions. It mostly belongs to pattern-recognition and gestalt psychology. From German it means "shape", "form", "essence". To answer your question, I think, here there are illusory contours (when you watch and understand an illusion) and lateral inhibition (when you have got new understanding of the picture and compare it with previous form).

Enjoy more pictures ;)


Are there distinct visual perception themes that have been recognized in dreams?

I think this is the closest article to what I'm attempting to describe -An artists illustration of the effect of 20 different drugs on perception. He draws the same image "under the influence".

Here's an example of an image with the color palette and "decay" attributes I was describing


What are the rules that govern neuron behavior?

My question is: are these all the rules?

No.

Some things you left out:

Plasticity (change)

Very-short-term synaptic "plasticity" (changes in synaptic strength); at least a few different forms of this (post-tetanic potentiation, short term synaptic depression, synaptic facilitation).
Very-short-term intrinsic "plasticity" (changes in spiking behavior): spiking accommodation, etc.
Medium to long-term synaptic plasticity; several forms of this: classical Long Term Potentiation or Depression, Spike Timing Dependent Potentiation, synaptic underpinnings of habituation and sensitization in, e.g., Aplysia, synaptic scaling.
Medium to long-term plasticity of intrinsic properties, like threshold, input resistance, firing properties.
Metaplasticity (changing the changeability)

Neuromodulation

Co-transmission of classical neurotransmitters with a neuropeptides
Neuromodulation of ionic conductances directly, postsynaptically
Neuromodulation of ionic conductances directly, presynaptically
Neuromodulation via metabotropic receptors and signaling to the nucleus
Why there are dozens of neuromodulators just for controlling a crab's digestion. (ref)

Odds n' Ends

Electrical "synapses" ("gap junctions")
Refractory periods preventing firing even if above threshold
Extrasynaptic and presynaptic receptors
Retrograde transmission
Axonal failures and branch points
Non-traditional innervation (dendro-axonic, dendro-dendritic, autapses, etc.)
Ephatic coupling (ref) (through local electrical fields)
Wiggling dendritic spines
Glial function as a modifier of neuronal function.

And I'm sure I'm leaving out another 20 or so interesting ones. Arguably, everything I've listed here modifies or has causal relevance to the simple set of rules you provided above. And of course, I'm still leaving out an enormous amount of detail of neuroscience (cell types, architecture/circuit diagrams, molecular cascades, cytoskeletal aspects, development, etc.) that have relevance to "the rules" as well.

  And do all neurons have the same rules?

No. Any of the above may vary depending on cell type, part of the nervous system, individual differences, development, species, sex, time of day or other cycles, environmental factors, and possibly other factors.


Are association, conditioning, and symbolic learning the same thing?

Conditioning is considered an example (type) of association by associationism, a school of philosophy in psychology that suggests that all mental processes may be based on similar or proximal mental states.  Usually this idea is too broad and vague to be very practical to apply, but it has spawned a number of useful fields of study, including connectionism, a general strategy used in neural networks and learning modelling, and schemata, used in memory research.

Using connectionist models, artificial neural networks have demonstrated learning in a variety of subject areas, including operant and classical conditioning (examples of association), and handwriting recognition and sign reading (examples of symbols).  This suggests that the process involved may be essentially the same.

One of the major challenges to basic associationism has been that in practice, associations do not seem to obey any straightforward rules.  For example, children learn to associate words like "food" with their meaning very quickly with few (sometimes no) repetitions, while branding requires many more repetitions, and other associations (there is nothing intrinsically bad about this song) may never be learned.  For this reason, more rigorous theories, such as conditioning, are preferred.


Do ability tests predict maximal more than typical job performance?

The distinction between maximum and typical performance was originally established by Sackett et al. (1988), and since then, how to predict either and their relation to one another seems to have been a very active area of research. In fact, there is a prohibitively large literature on the matter for a full review.
Fortunately, your questions were recently addressed comprehensively, along with other inquiries about the relationship between typical and maximum performance, in the December 2007 issue of Human Performance. To start, one paper by Barnes and Morgeson (2007) which provides support for Ackerman and Beier's claim, in its descriptive sense, that typical performance is that which is of interest to employers, which found that compensation was predicted by typical performance and intra-individual performance variability, but not by maximum performance. I suspect the claim was made in a prescriptive sense, though, so let's continue and see where the evidence takes us.
In the same issue, Marcus et al. (2007) reported support for the long-standing claims that measures of cognitive ability, such as g, serve as predictors of maximum performance, whereas measures of personality serve as predictors of typical performance. Tables provided in this paper also suggest, to me, that a meaningful correlation between typical and maximum performance may be tricky or impossible to elicit, as does another paper in the same issue of the journal.
This paper, by Mangos et al. (2007), suggests that job performance in an ecologically valid setting tends to be characterized by a mixture of need for typical and maximum performance, which I think makes life somewhat difficult for Ackerman and Beier's claim about what IO psychologists and managers are interested in, in the prescriptive sense, with respect to performance. Methodologically, it is not clear how we ought to dissociate the two, and theoretically, it is not clear why we would want to.
In conclusion, based on this special issue on the matter, it seems the simplest answer to your question about ability tests and maximum performance is that ability test scores seem to account for a large amount of the observed variance. With respect to your question about the correlation between maximum and typical performance, it unfortunately appears the answer to your question is complex and not readily summarized.
References

Barnes, C. M., & Morgeson, F. P. (2007). Typical performance, maximal performance, and performance variability: Expanding our understanding of how organizations value performance. Human Performance, 20(3), 259-274.
Mangos, P. M., Steele-Johnson, D., LaHuis, D., & White III, E. D. (2007). A multiple-task measurement framework for assessing maximum-typical performance. Human Performance, 20(3), 241-258.
Marcus, B., Goffin, R. D., Johnston, N. G., & Rothstein, M. G. (2007). Personality and cognitive ability as predictors of typical and maximum managerial performance. Human Performance, 20(3), 275-285.
Sackett, P. R., Zedeck, S., & Fogli, L. (1988). Relations between measures of typical and maximum job performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 73(3), 482.


Are the language and sound centres of the brain in the same area?

Short answer
The primary auditory cortex is mainly involved in relatively simple processing of sound. The language areas involved in producing and understanding speech are associative auditory cortices and are considered to be areas higher up in the hierarchy. They are connected to the primary auditory cortex, but are situated at anatomically different locations in the brain.

Background
The primary auditory cortex is engaged in the low-level processing of sound. For example, it contains a tonotopic map that is used to separately process the various frequencies in the incoming sound (Purves et al., 2001) (Fig. 1).

The language area involved in production of speech of the brain is called Broca's area (Fig. 1) and is anatomically distinct from the primary auditory cortex.

The part of the brain dealing with understanding speech is Wernicke's area (Fig. 1), and is also a distinct anatomical structure in the brain.

The angular gyrus has also been associated with specific speech production pathologies (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Central auditory system. source: McGill University

Reference
- Purves et al. (eds). Neuroscience, 2nd ed. (2001). Sunderland (MA): Sinauer Associates


What effect does the colour of an "Open" sign have on people's behavior?

It's a conscious choice, so to truly know why, you'd probably have to ask the sign designers themselves...but I can speculate a bit on reasons one might want to choose red. Red is often associated with appetite, impulsivity, and excitement, all of which a merchant might want to encourage in potential customers. Here are some excerpts [emphasis added] from one of many research articles relating color to emotion (Kaya & Epps, 2004; this site may raise security warnings with your browser):

  It is widely recognized that colors have also a strong impact on our emotions and feelings
  (Hemphill, 1996; Lang, 1993; Mahnke, 1996). For instance, the color red has been associated with excitement ...Red, symbolically known as a dominant and dynamic color, has an exciting and stimulating hue effect. It has both positive and negative impressions such as active, strong, passionate, warm, but on the other hand aggressive, bloody, raging and intense...Choungourian (1968) found that the colors red and blue were the most preferred colors among American subjects, but were less preferred in other cultures...Warm colors (e.g., red, yellow, orange) are seen as active and stimulating (Ballast, 2002)...As cited in Lang (1993), Grandjean made observations about the effects of color on perceptions of room size and psychological response noting that...warm colors such as red, orange,
  and yellow make a space less spacious, while increasing stimulation. Furthermore, people exposed to red and yellow colors reported higher levels of anxiety than did people exposed to cool blue and green colors (Kwallek, Lewis, & Robbins, 1988, Mahnke & Mahnke, 1993). However, in other studies, no relationships have been found between the individuals' mood states and colors (Ainsworth, Simpson, & Cassell, 1993; Kwallek, Lewis, Lin-Hsiao, & Woodson, 1996)...

  [From this study's own results] About 80% of the responses to the principle hues, including red, yellow, green, blue, and purple were positive...Only 17.8% of the responses to the principle hues' were negative...The color green attained the highest number of positive responses (95.9%), closely followed by yellow (93.9%)...Among the principle hues, the next highest number of positive response was given for the color blue (79.6%), followed by red and purple (64.3% each)...The color red prompted both positive and negative emotional reactions. Red was seen to be positive because it was associated with love and romance, while the negative aspects of red included having associations with fight and blood as well as Satan and evil.

It seems like green might be a good choice too (this article had more to say about green than I've copied here), especially outside of USA, but red certainly isn't a bad choice for attracting interest, according to these references. Many of these associated emotions involve arousal of interest and activity, which might encourage a person to act on any impulse to gain something by entering. Any increase in anxiety or fear might also snap a person out of complacency if that person is on any level worried about passing up an opportunity or losing something by not entering. However, the opposites may be true too: red might encourage a person to continue pursuing other passions that preoccupy the person's attention before viewing the sign, even if the sign captures attention momentarily. If a person is afraid to enter for whatever reason, associating the store with anxiety, fear, evil, or of course Satan himself would certainly seem a likely disincentive. Nevertheless, positive responses seem more frequent in general, so a red sign might do a store more favors than harm overall, regardless of whether it's the best choice.

Edit: @DominicLloyd found a cool article on colors in marketing that includes an interesting infographic:

(source: netdna-cdn.com)

Not quite sure what evidence there is to support these claims, but the original source is KISSmetrics, so maybe one could follow up with them for details.

References

Ainsworth, R. A., Simpson, L., & Cassell, D. (1993). Effects of three colors in an office interior on mood and performance. Perceptual & Motor Skills, 76, 235-241.

Ballast, D. K. (2002). Interior design reference manual. Professional Pub. Inc.: Belmont, CA.

Choungourian, A. (1968). Color preference and cultural variation. Perceptual & Motor Skills, 26, 1203-1206.

Hemphill, M. (1996). A note on adults' color-emotion associations. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 157, 275-281.

Kaya, N., & Epps, H. (2004). Relationship between color and emotion: A study of college students. College Student Journal, 38(3), 396-405. Available online, URL: https://nzdis.org/projects/attachments/299/colorassociation-students.pdf. Retrieved January 27, 2014.

Kwallek. N., Lewis, C. M., & Robbins, A. S. (1988). Effects of office interior color on workers' mood and productivity. Perceptual & Motor Skills, 66, 123-128.

Kwallek, N., Lewis, C. M., Lin-Hsiao, J. W. D., & Woodson, H. (1996). Effects of nine monochromatic office interior colors on clerical tasks and worker mood. Color Research and
Application, 21(6), 448-458.

Lang, J. (1993). Creating architectural theory: The role of the behavioral sciences in environmental design. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Mahnke, F. (1996). Color, environment, human response. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Mahnke, F. H., & Mahnke, R. H. (1993). Color and light in man-made environments. New
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.


Is it possible to measure the working memory of a non-human animal?

Sure. For example, working memory can be assessed using the delayed match to sample task. Here are examples from monkeys, rats, pigeons, and bees.

The problem with comparing them is that the actual stimuli used for each species are different (e.g. odors for bees, shapes for monkeys) and this is known to affect the results.

In humans, if you run similar tasks, just with small verses large sets of possible stimuli, for example digits verses general words, you can get very different results. Even if you did try to use the same stimuli set, the result will probably not be "subjectively" equal to that of a different species. Think of yourself trying to do the odor task of the bees; it's not a fair game.

Other seemingly small changes in the paradigm can also affect the results, for example a delay between the trials, etc. So the only way to seriously compare them would be to conduct the same experiment, by the same lab, of different species. I personally don't know of any research that was directly aimed at comparing them. Maybe someone using (lesioned) animals as a model for dementia would know more.


The short answer is that there is no such mental disorder as schlemielism and the characteristics of a schlemiel described in Games People Play (Berne, 1964) are part of Eric Berne's description of Transactional Analysis (TA) and how it comes into play in life and within therapy.

  As an arbitrary categorisation of human behavior lacking in empirical evidence, TA is often considered a pseudoscience and a pop psychology fad. (RationalWiki, 2016)

For more about Pseudoscience within Psychology, see this meta post and Hansson, S. O. (1996)

Schlemiel, as pointed out by both you in your question and within comments by others, is a Yiddish term meaning "unlucky bungler" or "chump", or fool.

For more on these games, there are some videos on ericberne.com (Berne, 1966) from a 1966 National Educational Television broadcast in which Dr. Eric Berne was interviewed.

Background

Developed in the late 1950s by Eric Berne (1958), Transactional Analysis (TA) is mainly humanistic, but is an integrative method of therapy combining psychodynamic and humanistic approaches. On the difference between TA and other theories, Eric Berne said

  I think most other therapies . . . talk about thinking and feeling. Our question to the patient is not what do you think or how do you feel, but what are you going to do about it? (Berne, 1966)

In TA, the concept is that interactions – transactions – between different people in a given situation when communicating with each other, can be different and changing; and using TA you can analyse these transactions to give you and insight into what is happening.  The philosophy behind TA is that

People are ‘OK’ – We may not like or agree with other’s behaviour, but we can accept them as worthy individuals.
People can think for themselves and it is there responsibility to do so.
People make decisions that decide their destiny and these decisions can change.

TA in action

Whilst practicing TA, there are four theoretical foundations to look at individually

Ego States
There are structural and functional ego states (Short & Thomas, 2015).
Structural – Parent/Adult/Child
Functional – Controlling Parent/Nurturing Parent/Adult/Free Child/Adapted Child
Parent is an exteropsyche or exteropsychic state (e.g. identificatory), adult is a neopsyche or neopsychic state (e.g. data-processing), and child is an archaeopsyche or archaeopsychic state (e.g. regressive) (Berne, 2015).
ScriptsOn-going psychological processes, in which meaning is given to life experiences
TransactionsExchanges between two or more people
GamesEmotional and relational patterns learnt in childhood re-enacted as adults without adult awareness, such as ‘See What You Made Me Do’ or ‘Why Don’t You – Yes But…’ (Berne, 1964)

No.4 here is what we are talking about with the question on schlemiel.

Although Berne defined transactions long before he published Games People Play, his description of transactions in Games is the most easily understood:

  The unit of social intercourse is called a transaction. If two or more people encounter each other… sooner or later one of them will speak, or give some other indication of acknowledging the presence of the others. This is called transactional stimulus. Another person will then say or do something which is in some way related to the stimulus, and that is called the transactional response. (Berne, 1964)(Berne Calcaterra, n.d.)

Dr. Thomas Harris stated in I’m OK – You’re OK that in Transactional Analysis,

  we have found a new language of psychology. (Harris, 1995)(Berne Calcaterra, n.d.)

The Game of 'Schlemiel'

This is described in ericberne.com with the following — numbers representing the transaction number and W and B representing each person in the game (White and Black):

  The moves in a typical game of “Schlemiel” are as follows:

  1W. White spills a highball on the hostess’s evening gown.

  1B. Black (the host) responds initially with rage, but he sense (often only vaguely) that if he shows it, White wins. Black therefore pulls himself together, and this gives him the illusion that he wins.

  2W. White says “I’m sorry.”

  2B. Black mutters or cries forgiveness, strengthening his illusion that he wins.

  3W. White then proceeds to inflict other damage on Black’s property. He breaks things, spills things and makes messes of various kinds. After the cigarette burn in the tablecloth, the chair leg through the lace curtain and the gravy on the rug, White’s Child is exhilarated because he has enjoyed himself in carrying out these procedures, for all of which he has been forgiven, while Black has made a gratifying display of suffering self-control. Thus both of them profit from an unfortunate situation, and Black is not necessarily anxious to terminate the friendship.

The breakdown of this game scenario is that All the way through the game, White is in the structural ego state of child and Black initially entered either as child or parent with the rage response, but then quickly adjusted to adult.

Both can be seen to have won the first 2 transactions of the game, as well as the 3rd transaction.  However, depending on your standpoint, with the 3rd transaction, White could be seen to have won whilst Black has lost because he/she hasn't controlled the child within White.

References

Berne Calcaterra, N. (n.d.). Transactional Analysis - ericberne.com. [Online]Available at: http://www.ericberne.com/transactional-analysis

Berne, E. (1958). Transactional analysis: A new and effective method of group therapy. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 12(4): pp. 735—743.PMID: 13583264

Berne, E. (1964). Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships. London: Penguin Books Ltd.

Berne, E. (1966). Games People Play – The Theory Video. [Online]
Available at: http://www.ericberne.com/videos

Berne, E. (2015). Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy: A Systematic Individual and Social Psychiatry. United States: Martino Fine Books.

Harris, T. (1995). I’m OK – You’re OK. London: Arrow Books Ltd.

Hansson, S. O. (1996). Defining Pseudoscience and Science In:Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem Pigliucci & Boudry (Eds.) Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press

RationalWiki (2016) Transactional Analysis [Online]Available at: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Transactional_Analysis

Short, F. & Thomas, P. (2015). Core Approaches in Counselling and Psychotherapy. Hove: Routledge.


Introductory resources on bayesian modeling for cognitive sciences

+1 to Speldosa's suggestion. Griffiths and colleagues have written several primers on the use of Bayesian  models in cogsci. Many of them can be found on Griffiths' website under 'Foundations':

http://cocosci.berkeley.edu/publications.php?topic=Foundations

e.g.

  Perfors, A., Tenenbaum, J.B., Griffiths, T. L., & Xu, F. (2011). A
  tutorial introduction to Bayesian models of cognitive development.
  Cognition, 120, 302-321.

  Griffiths, T. L., & Yuille, A. (2008). A primer on probabilistic
  inference. In M. Oaksford and N. Chater (Eds.). The probabilistic
  mind: Prospects for rational models of cognition. Oxford: Oxford
  University Press.


Diagnosis for consistently preceiving mild displeasure as personal threats?

Short answer
Paranoid personality disorder and social anxiety disorder come to mind.

Background
Perhaps you are after paranoia, which is thinking and feeling as if you are under threat even though there is no (or very little) evidence that you are. Paranoid thoughts can also be described as delusions. Paranoid thoughts can be exaggerated suspicions, e.g.., someone made a negative comment about you once, and one inflates that rather irrelevant remark to a full-blown hate campaign.
Thanks to r0berts' commentary below, I wish to add that, according to the DSM-IV-TR, paranoia in itself is not a diagnosis. Instead, it is diagnosed in the form of paranoid personality disorder, paranoid schizophrenia (a subtype of schizophrenia), or the persecutory type of delusional disorder. paranoid personality disorder may be what you are after in specific:

  Paranoid personality disorder is generally characterized by a
  pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of others. Sufferers often
  believe that other people’s motives are suspect or even malevolent.

Paranoid schizophrenia is characterized by predominantly positive symptoms of schizophrenia, including delusions and hallucinations. Without going into detail, schizophrenia is probably not what you are after.
People with persecutory type of delusional disorder believe that they (or someone close to them) are being mistreated, or that someone is spying on them or planning to harm them. Likely also not what you are after.

Another disorder that comes to mind is anxiety disorder, and specifically

  social anxiety disorder, or social phobia. This is
  characterized by overwhelming worry and self-consciousness about
  everyday social situations. You fixate about others judging you or on
  being embarrassed or ridiculed.


Is there really a Shiny Object Syndrome?

Does this phrase represent an actual clinical diagnosis?

There is no such diagnosis in the DSM. Based on your definition (the tendency to start new ideas without thinking them through), it is probably correlated with psychological constructs such as impulsivity or deliberation. These can be measured using tests such as the Barratt Impulsivity Scale and Cognitive Reflection Test, respectively. Whether or not people who fall prey to "shiny object syndrome" in business are actually more impulsive or less deliberate is not clear.

Are there people who are more likely than others to be distracted by "shiny objects"?

Since "shiny object syndrome" hasn't been operationalized, it's impossible to say for sure. I think it's reasonable to believe there is individual variation here, either because some people are more cautious than others, or because they have learned from their mistakes.

Can "shiny objects" cause further effects other than distraction?

Sure, why not? By definition, it sounds like there would be a drop in efficiency or productivity, which can at least cause negative monetary outcomes.


Method/Unit for measuring activity in specific frequency band for EEG

How you analyse your data depends a bit on how you did your time-frequency decomposition.

If you're using a fast Fourier transform, you will likely cut out the temporal window of interest prior to analysis, and your power estimate will be a single value (per subject and/or condition) within this time window. For example, alpha wave desynchronisation is likely to kick in something like 100 ms after the onset of a tone, and you might be interested in its power between then and 300 ms. This is based on theory and literature, there is no single answer. But if you do cut out a time window in advance like this, make sure that the time window of interest is an exact multiple of the size of the cycle you are looking at! (e.g. a multiple of 1/10th of a second for 10 Hz.) Otherwise you might get some nasty artifacts.

What you will then end up with is one data point per subject and condition, per EEG sensor. Some people pre-select a group of sensors based on the literature, and look at average power across these sensors. In that case you can use any of the standard parametric statistics to test your hypotheses.

Alternatively, you might adopt a sliding time window or similar approach (see here), where you get an estimation of how power develops over time (per sensor and frequency band). In that case your data space is larger, and the usual way to constrain it is to use cluster-based permutation tests which are nonparametric. This will give you back clusters of significant differences across time and/or sensors (this means groups of successive time points or sensors near each other that show an experimental effect). Again, whether you want to average across sensors is a theoretical question. You can also decide to average across time using this approach, and to end up with a single data point per subject/condition as above. This approach is not particularly temporally precise - the data will be a bit smeared across time - but it gives you a better overview of what is going on in the brain and in which frequency bands the interesting effects might lie.

As for the unit, I prefer to convert raw power to decibel, because the scale is symmetric around zero and comparable across experiments. So, 10*log10 of the power in your signal. If you're using a baseline, make it an absolute baseline (it's equivalent to a relative baseline for raw power, which is the standard).


Is there a psychological term for finding your former partner sexually attractive?

FWIW, I've tried to find existing research on this and come up with next-to-nothing. Hypothetically speaking, I doubt it would be constructive to adopt new psychological jargon that even social and personality psychologists (like myself) have never heard of, given how little research there appears to be on this. The closest match I found was the following reference, which doesn't really discuss sexual attraction or infatuation:

Rubin, Z., Peplau, L. A., & Hill, C. T. (1981). Loving and leaving: Sex differences in romantic attachments. Sex Roles, 7(8), 821–835. Retrieved from http://www.peplaulab.ucla.edu/Peplau_Lab/Publications_files/Rubin_Peplau_Hill_81.pdf.

Anyway, if it's jargon you want, you might consider passion, lust (this has somewhat more negative connotation than I'd expect an author to desire, but at least one article uses it), limerence, or infatuated love. These don't connote the existence of a broken commitment, but infatuated love does connote a lack of commitment or intimacy by Sternberg's definition, and all connote sexual attraction.


Are there any cases of a person with misophonia for which the condition has been passed on to their child?

Noise sensitivity aggregates in families and the estimate of heritability is 36% (Shepherd et al., 2015).

A popular scientific source states that misophonia is not caused by a traumatic event, but might as well be caused by (seemingly) harmless sounds in the past that become associated with stress responses. Both PTSD and misophonia are classified as classical conditioning, though, so there seem to be parallels there (source: Misophonia Institute), but I don't think they misophonia is a form of PTSD.

Heritability of PTSD is approximately 30% in males, and in females it seems even higher (Sartor et al., 2012).

References
- Sartor et al., Arch Gen Psychiatry (2012); 69(3): 293–9
- Shepherd et al., Noise Health (2015); 17(76): 165–71


Are there any personality theories that use the scientific method?

What you may be interested are personality traits caught by some statistical correlations, rather than 'manually' merged by an author's intuition.
One of such tools is 16 Personality Factors.

The 16 Personality Factors, measured by the 16PF Questionnaire, were derived using factor-analysis by psychologist Raymond Cattell. This article summarizes the analysis that resulted in the 16 factors and allowed the development of the questionnaire, as well as the relation between the 16 factor theory and the popular five-factor personality theory.
[...]
This statement has become known as the Lexical Hypothesis, which posits that if there is a word for a trait, it must be a real trait. Allport and Odbert utilized this hypothesis to identify personality traits by working through two of the most comprehensive dictionaries of the English language available at the time, and extracting 18,000 personality-describing words. From this gigantic list they extracted 4500 personality-describing adjectives which they considered to describe observable and relatively permanent traits.

(from Wikipedia: 16 Personality Factors and 16PF Questionnaire)


How can humans tell when something diverges from the norm

The predictive coding model of brain function suggests that the entire function of the brain is to update an internal model of the world.

This process occurs by generating predictions based on the current model, and comparing these predictions to sensory information. The difference between the predictions and the actual information is the prediction error: this is the stuff that the brain has to work harder on, because it is these errors that require further action to update the models and make better predictions in the future.

Based on this model, unexpected things are highly salient, because they generate large prediction errors. In contrast, expected things are boring, and can mostly be ignored. This is a mechanism to filter the massive amount of sensory information we are capable of taking in at any given moment.

As of now, predictive coding is still just a model, and there is a lot of work being done towards finding evidence for predictive coding in the brain. That said, it explains the phenomenon you are describing fairly well.

Some references for further reading:

Bastos, A. M., Usrey, W. M., Adams, R. A., Mangun, G. R., Fries, P., & Friston, K. J. (2012). Canonical microcircuits for predictive coding. Neuron, 76(4), 695-711.

Kok, P., & de Lange, F. P. (2015). Predictive coding in sensory cortex. In An introduction to model-based cognitive neuroscience (pp. 221-244). Springer, New York, NY.

Melloni, L., van Leeuwen, S., Alink, A., & Müller, N. G. (2012). Interaction between bottom-up saliency and top-down control: how saliency maps are created in the human brain. Cerebral cortex, 22(12), 2943-2952.

Rao, R. P., & Ballard, D. H. (1999). Predictive coding in the visual cortex: a functional interpretation of some extra-classical receptive-field effects. Nature neuroscience, 2(1), 79-87.

Spratling, M. W. (2012). Predictive coding as a model of the V1 saliency map hypothesis. Neural Networks, 26, 7-28.

Yuille, A., & Kersten, D. (2006). Vision as Bayesian inference: analysis by synthesis?. Trends in cognitive sciences, 10(7), 301-308.


Resources for reliable psychology research

Short answer

There is no official database I can find that collects the different effects proposed in psychology and track how they replicate.  However, reputable psychology papers are published in professional journals and are re-examined all the time with meta-analyses and further research, also published in professional journals.

Professional psychologists, psychiatrists and therapists are required to maintain an up-to-date knowledge of psychological research as part of their professional codes of conduct and ethics.

Long Answer

Replicability

With regard to replicability within your question, if I am not mistaken, you are referring to finding the demarcation between science and pseudoscience within psychology as referred to by Karl Popper, in his book The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959)

I would like to first of all point out that although there is a lot of argument which states that a large proportion of psychology is non-scientific, I would direct you to Sven Ove Hansson (2013) who argues the fact that in order for any research in psychology to be non-scientific (pseudoscientific) it has to be non-scientific when a PsychologyToday article (2016) points out that

  psychology was defined by the application of scientific method(s) and psychologists conduct valuable research and have developed some key insights into animal behavior, cognition, consciousness, and the human condition.

I would also point you to my extensive answer on the subject in meta which you can read alongside other's viewpoints.

"Bi-partisanship"

As for "Bi-partisanship", I would argue that professional psychologists, psychiatrists and therapists do not fall down on either side of a given issue as intimated in your question. Whilst there are a select few, those who do are unprofessional as they are prejudicial and therefore do not abide by professional codes of conduct and ethics, which include:

General Principle E: Respect for People's Rights and Dignityof the American Psychological Association (APA) Code of Conduct (APA, 2017)

  ...Psychologists are aware of and respect cultural, individual, and role differences, including those based on age, gender, gender identity, race, ethnicity, culture, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability, language, and socioeconomic status, and consider these factors when working with members of such groups. Psychologists try to eliminate the effect on their work of biases based on those factors, and they do not knowingly participate in or condone activities of others based upon such prejudices.

Clause 22a-h of the Good Practice sectionof the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) Ethical Framework for the Counselling Professions (BACP, 2018)

  We will respect our clients as people by providing services that:
  a. endeavour to demonstrate equality, value diversity and ensure inclusion for all clients
  b. avoid unfairly discriminating against clients or colleagues
  c. accept we are all vulnerable to prejudice and recognise the importance of self-inquiry, personal feedback and professional development
  d. work with issues of identity in open-minded ways that respect the client’s autonomy and be sensitive to whether this is viewed as individual or relational autonomy
  e. challenge assumptions that any sexual orientation or gender identity is inherently preferable to any other and will not attempt to bring about a change of sexual orientation or gender identity or seek to suppress an individual’s expression of sexual orientation or gender identity
  f. make adjustments to overcome barriers to accessibility, so far as is reasonably possible, for clients of any ability wishing to engage with a service
  g. recognise when our knowledge of key aspects of our client’s background, identity or lifestyle is inadequate and take steps to inform ourselves from other sources where available and appropriate, rather than expecting the client to teach us
  h. are open-minded with clients who appear similar to ourselves or possess familiar characteristics so that we do not suppress or neglect what is distinctive in their lives. challenge assumptions that any sexual orientation or gender identity is inherently preferable to any other and will not attempt to bring about a change of sexual orientation or gender identity or seek to suppress an individual’s expression of sexual orientation or gender identity

Delivering a Service sectionof National Counselling Society (NCS) Code of Ethical Practice (NCS, 2018).

  All Practitioners undertake to:

  Work in ways that promote client autonomy and well-being and that maintain respect and dignity for the client.
  Demonstrate a fully developed, professional awareness of diversity issues; and specifically not permit considerations of religion, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, age, disability, politics or social standing to adversely influence client treatment. (See Appendix B)

  Appendix B: Conversion (Reparative) Therapy
  We take the view that the practice of conversion therapy has no place in the modern world.  It is unethical and harmful and not supported by evidence.

  Conversion Therapy is the term for therapy that assumes certain sexual orientations or gender identities are inferior to others, and seeks to change or suppress them on that basis.

  Sexual orientations and gender identities are not mental health disorders, although exclusion, stigma and prejudice may precipitate mental health issues for any person subjected to these abuses. Anyone accessing therapeutic help should be able to do so without fear of judgement or the threat of being pressured to change a fundamental aspect of who they are.

  The Society respects sexual diversity as part of our approach to diversity, equalities and social responsibility.
  The Society does not consider homosexuality, bisexuality, transsexual and transgendered states, or asexuality to be pathologies, mental disorders or indicative of developmental arrest. These are not ‘symptoms’ to be treated by counsellors in the sense of attempting to change or remove them. Counsellors must at all times respect the best interests of their clients.
  Practitioners must recognise the limits of their practice, training and experience in issues of sexuality and if necessary refer the client to an experienced therapist for specific help.
  If a practitioner’s personal, theoretical or religious beliefs mean that they are unable to work in a non-judgmental way with a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender client, or one who identifies as asexual, the client should be referred to another therapist.
  No member should offer counselling that seeks to change sexual orientation or influence gender identity (SOCE, reparative, conversion or reorientation therapy, or similar therapies by other names).
  Counselling should not be offered that seeks to eliminate or reduce same sex attraction in clients.

  Please contact the Society for further information if necessary.

Clause 22a-h of the Good Practice section of the BACP Ethical Framework for the Counselling Professions, and Appendix B of the NCS Code of Ethical Practice follows the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Conversion Therapy in the UK, signed by many professional registering bodies, including the NCS, BACP, NHS, The British Psychological Society, and the Royal College of General Practitioners (UKCP, 2017).

To summarise

Whilst there is no official database that would collect the different effects proposed in psychology and track how they replicate, reputable psychology papers are published in professional journals and are re-examined all the time with meta-analyses and further research, also published in professional journals.

References

APA (2017). Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct [Online]Available at: http://www.apa.org/ethics/codeFree PDF: http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/ethics-code-2017.pdf

BACP (2018). Ethical Framework for the Counselling Professions [Online]Available at: https://www.bacp.co.uk/events-and-resources/ethics-and-standards/introducing-the-new-ethical-framework-2018Free PDF: https://www.bacp.co.uk/media/3103/bacp-ethical-framework-for-the-counselling-professions-2018.pdf

Hansson, S. O. (2013). Defining pseudoscience and science. In: Pigliucci, M. & Boudry, M. (Eds.) The philosophy of pseudoscience, Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press. pp. 61-77.Fully Readable in: Google Books at https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Pc4OAAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA61&dq=Hansson%2C%20S.%20O.%20(1996).%20Defining%20Pseudoscience.&lr&pg=PA61#v=onepage&q=Hansson,%20S.%20O.%20(1996).%20Defining%20Pseudoscience.&f=false

NCS (2018) Code of Ethical Practice [Online]Available at: https://www.nationalcounsellingsociety.org/about-us/code-of-ethicsAudio Copy: https://youtu.be/zSjS0B7-saoCopies in braille or large format available as required: https://www.nationalcounsellingsociety.org/about-us/equal-opportunities/accessibility/

Popper, K. R. (1959) The Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York: Routledge

PsychologyToday article (2016) The “Is Psychology a Science?” Debate [Online]Available at:https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/theory-knowledge/201601/the-is-psychology-science-debate

UKCP (2017). Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Conversion Therapy in the UK. [Online]Available at: https://www.psychotherapy.org.uk/about-ukcp/public-policy/conversion-therapy
PDF: http://www.psychotherapy.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/UKCP-Memorandum-of-Understanding-on-Conversion-Therapy-in-the-UK.pdf


Why people choose "boring" colors for new cars?

Mainly, because they're too noticeable.

You don't really see houses in electric green, pink, or yellow. No one wants to stand out in a crowd or be the sore thumb.

Here: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/10/12/survey-americans-pretty-much-the-whole-world-prefers-boring-colored-cars

I'll post more sources when I can.


How does parental expectation lead a child from adaptive perfectionism to rebelliousness?

Childhood/adolescent rebelliousness could be explained by psychological reactance theory (Brehm, 1966) and self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000).

Psychological reactance theory, Brehm states:

  The idea fundamental to reactance theory, namely, that people become motivationally aroused by a threat to or elimination of a behavioral freedom. This motivational state is what is called psychological reactance. It impels the individual to restore the particular freedom that was threatened or taken away. It does not impel the individual to acquire just any freedom--only the one threatened or taken away will do.

Psychological reactance would be elicited when freedom is taken away, thereby motivating individuals to engage in oppositional behavior. It follows that it parents are perfectionist they would be more likely to take away freedom from their child.

Self-determination theory:

Central to SDT are the basic psychological needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence. When satisfied, these needs foster growth and psychosocial
adjustment. When frustrated, people would display maladjustment and psychopathology (Ryan & Deci, 2000; Vansteenkiste & Ryan, 2013).

Essentially "Don't tell me what to do"

Another idea is that parental pressure can create a lot of stress, and that rebelling or dropping out is simply a reaction to this stress. Stoeber & Rambow (2007) found that:

  Parental pressure to be perfect and negative reactions to
  imperfection, are associated with the motivation to avoid failure and
  low well-being and thus may undermine healthy adolescent development.

However they do also go on to say:

  Not all aspects of perfectionism are neurotic, unhealthy, or maladaptive. On the contrary, strivingfor perfection can form part of a healthy pursuit of excellence (Shafran, Cooper, & Fairburn, 2002) and may be adaptive in achievement situations where perfectionistic strivings could provide
  students with additional motivation to do their best and thus achieve better grades.

It appears to me that children/ adolescents reaction to perfectionist parenting is not a change in character, but just a reaction to the environment that has been created for them.

References:

Brehm, J. W. (1966). A theory of psychological reactance.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The" what" and" why" of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological inquiry, 11(4), 227-268.

Stoeber, J., & Rambow, A. (2007). Perfectionism in adolescent school students: Relations with motivation, achievement, and well-being. Personality and individual differences, 42(7), 1379-1389.

Vansteenkiste, M., & Ryan, R. M. (2013). On psychological growth and vulnerability: Basic psychological need satisfaction and need frustration as a unifying principle. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 23(3), 263.


What are the laws of female physical attractiveness?

There is an excellent paper at Evolutionary considerations of facial attraction which you may find useful. Neoteny is also a useful discussion.

My off the cuff summary would be that humans do appear to have retained much of their juvenile characteristics in comparison with other primates. Across cultures female faces with more neoteny (more childlike) are considered more attractive. As a general rule, the less masculine, the more feminine, so you can negate the masculine markers, i.e., larger jawbones, more prominent cheekbones, thinner cheeks, to increase femininity perception. That would, of course, include less facial hair, since that is a general neoteny character that would be more attractive. My recollection of several studies of so-called "baby face ratings" might pertain also, in that larger eyes, more prominent eyebrows, smaller chin, are typically perceived as innocent or less threatening, so I would guess that would also fall into the normal feminine perception category.

In general terms, symmetric faces are more attractive (right hand left hand comparison on the midline), so that would apply to women also. Averageness, surprisingly, is also more attractive, in that the more closely a face resembles the majority of faces is perhaps a sign that the person is less likely to have deletrious alleles.  Facial averageness seems to be associated with medical health. Skin color is also a measure of perceived health. Typically pallor is perceived as possible illness. Texture of facial skin is a marker, smoother being more attractive.

There is an interesting paper Cosmetics as Extended Phenotype that examines how cosmetics may be used to exaggerate cues to sexual dimorphism. Another paper, Face is not an empty canvas discusses how the morphology of faces is more desirable when it tends to heighten the expected emotions for the particular sex role, for example, the rounded baby face with larger eyes is perceived as more approachable and warm and more feminine generally. Finally, this article Aspects of Facial Contrast Decrease with Age and are Cues for Age Perception discusses how aspects like wrinkling and loss of luminance contrast between the eyes and surrounding skin and the lips and surrounding skin increases the perception of aging and decreases the attractiveness of female faces.


Do men look more similar to each other than women?

Any apparent difference between sexes probably has more to due with the perspective of the viewer than the physiological characteristics of the group. Males and females are both highly diverse in appearance. The particular balance of physiological diversity among a population will depend on the ethnic balance, cultural norms (e.g., having facial or head hair at a certain length), dress, etc.

People recognise different members of their own race more easily than of other races (well-established effect): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-race_effect

Finally, there's limited evidence suggesting an own-gender effect as well, potentially driven by how people see hair: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691803000520?via%3Dihub (Wright et al., 2003, 'An own gender bias and the importance of hair in face recognition').

In sum: this is probably in the eye of the beholder.


Is this brain map scientifically correct?

The diagram is a somewhat simplistic representation of brain functions, but it is accurate. The diagram given shows the primary areas that complete the actions listed. However, the entire brain is connected and communicates with itself extensively, so it isn't like the occipital lobe is the only brain region active when you see something.

For example, when you see an object, it is first processed in the occipital lobe as this is where the primary visual cortex is located. However, after the actual image itself has been processed, signals are sent to other brain regions for further interpretation. So if you see an angry dog running at you, the signal will begin in your occiptal lobe to process the visual image itself, but signals will then be sent to the temporal lobe to create an emotional response and to the frontal lobe to begin defensive motor activity.

  On one side I hear that the idea of single brain functions localized in specific brain areas is incorrect since everything is processed globally and on the other side I come up permanently with such kind of depictions of the brain

While these two explanations may seem conflicting, they are both somewhat correct. The diagram shows where primary processing of each task takes place, but it takes global communication to accomplish many of the complex tasks carried out by the brain. If there is a disconnect between the occipital lobe and parts of the temporal lobe, you will still be able to see just fine but may not have an emotional reaction to what you see. Vision is technically intact, but the full visual experience is damaged.

Just remember that diagrams like the one shown show you primary processing locations, but signals are sent between many brain regions to accomplish the full range of tasks carried out by the brain.

For further reading on the topic, this website offers a longer but still easy to understand explanation of current findings in brain connectivity: https://www.livescience.com/40855-brain-connections-no-neuron-is-an-island.html

Reference:
Kolb, B. & Whishaw, I. Q. (2009). Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology: Sixth Edition. New York: Worth Publishers


Can a mother's untimely death lead to misogyny?

The answer to this question lies within theories I covered in an answer to another question, developed by Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson.

Looking at the theories of life-span human development — Sigmund Freud's Drive Theory and Stages of Development, and Erik Erikson’s 9 life stages of man (Erikson & Erikson, 1998) — the theory you hypothesised comes from 2 Freudian stages called the Latency stage and Genital statge, and Erikson's industry vs inferiority stage and identity vs role confusion stage (which later also included a 3rd Erikson stage called intimacy vs isolation stage through splitting the identity vs role confusion stage in 2 parts).

These stages need to be "resolved" in order to move forward in life, and with Freud's Latency Stage or Erikson's industry vs inferiority stage, the child moves from extremely rigid attachments with their parents, directing his or her energies towards socially acceptable activities such as schooling, friendships, hobbies, etc. aiming for partial independence from the parents; whilst Freud's Genital Stage or Erikson's identity vs role confusion stage and intimacy vs isolation stage, psychological detachment and full independence from the parents is the aim.

If these dependencies are not properly dealt with due to death or divorce and separations, is is not implausible to say that misogyny will develop in boys or girls in anger towards their mother or misandry will develop in boys or girls in anger towards their father.

References and Further Reading

Erikson, E. H. & Erikson, J. M., 1998. The Life Cycle Completed. New York: W.W. Norton.

Miller, P. H., 2010. Theories of developmental psychology. New York: Worth.

Roche, D., 2009. Mapping the Human Phenome. [Online]
Available at: http://thewayitis.info/thewayitis/inhumandev/epigenetics/mapphenome/p71.html
[Accessed 16 March 2017].

Sigelman, C. K. & Rider, E. A., 2012. Life-Span Human Development. 7th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Freud Museum London, n.d. Are Freud's Theories All About Sex?. [Online]
Available at: https://www.freud.org.uk/education/topic/10567/subtopic/10571/
[Accessed 16 March 2017]

Further note on reading materials

I have been told that a book called Why Men Hate Women by Adam Jukes is a good book on the wider subject of misogyny, but I haven't read it so I cannot attest to it's value.  There is a review on the book within The Independent (1993)


Are a lot of highly logical people (such as mathematicians) prone to depression?

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.


This question is not answerable without having a measure of what the most common day-to-day scenarios are. However, I can try a guess: since most people interact in a public, anonymous setting on a daily basis, I would think the fundamental attribution error is most probable. This is especially true while driving -- "did that idiot just cut me off?!"

However, my estimation of fundamental attribution error as the most common cognitive bias may itself be an instance of availability heuristic.


Why is it more acceptable to get rich doing sports than business?

It's all about what people think are your motives for what you do, how hard people think you work for your money, and how nice people think you are.

If people think you earn money just because you love money, you can easily come off as cold and less pro-social. That makes people skeptical of you.

A bias makes people tend to think that whatever work they don't see you do, you never did (personal experience). This makes people value you less and admire you less if they can't actually see your contributions to society. Most office-work is prone to this bias.

People tend to see social people as more nice than less social people, and like them more. This is likely due to the advantage our race gains from social cooperation, which we would not have survived without. We prefer people who we think we can cooperate with and get well along with.

Talking about getting well along, we also prefer people with whom we share any interest, hobby, attitude, history etc because it increases the chance we get well along with them. Birds of a feather flock together.
This means that 1) We prefer people we know are social and 2) we prefer people who share some of our interests.

Business people will go well along with their kind. They might not be very fond of athletes.
Athletes go well along with their kind. They might not be very fond of business people.

Fact is, that which of these "professions" is more popular depends entirely on who you ask and the circumstances.
So I take it you wonder why the general attitude is that business people are less popular than athletes. Well, that's because most people feel they have more in common with athletes (who share their passion for sports) than business people.


Difference between the strong-AI (AGI) and cognitive science

An AGI is a man-made machine that can learn, adapt, think, plan, predict, etc.

Cognitive science is the study of how our "biological machines" do those same processes.


Are there any free databases of audio-visual emotional stimuli (English)?

We have been using audio databases from THE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF EMOTION AND ATTENTION.
Video databases we received from Anna Esposito & Maria Teresa Riviello:
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1694104
http://dl.acm.org/author_page.cfm?id=81100065756&CFID=220607811&CFTOKEN=47568792


How do the brains of savants such as Orlando Serrell and Temple Grandin compare to a standard brain?

I believe the answer lies in minicolumnar morphology in the neocortex. It's been shown that the minicolumns of autsitics and gifted individuals have narrower minicolumns, with greater spacing between each minicolumn. It's speculated that this creates an increased ability to distinguish percepts. Here is a paper on the topic:

Casanova MF, Switala AE, Trippe J, & Fitzgerald M. (2007) Comparative minicolumnar morphometry of three distinguished scientists. Autism 11(6):557-69.

I recommend reading through more of Casanova's work on the topic if you're interested.


I'll try to roughly answer your question. It's not an easy one, and by no means does it have a narrow answer. Scientists have suggested, like you mentioned that stories show a lot about the basis of human thought

So why do we like stories at all?

From "The Storytelling Animal" (Jonathan Gottschall)

  “Some thinkers, following Darwin, argue that the evolutionary source
  of story is sexual selection, not natural selection. Maybe stories,
  and other art forms, aren’t just obsessed with sex; maybe they are
  ways of getting sex by making gaudy, peacocklike displays of our
  skill, intelligence, and creativity—the quality of our minds. Thumb
  back a few pages to that image of the Kung San storyteller on page
  19. Look at the young woman sitting to the storyteller’s left—very pretty, very rapt. That’s the idea.

  Or maybe stories are a form of cognitive play. For the evolutionary literary scholar Brian Boyd, “a
  work of art acts like a playground for the mind.” Boyd suggests that
  the free play of art, in all its forms, does the same sort of work for
  our mental muscles that rough-and-tumble play does for our physical
  muscles.

  Or maybe stories are low-cost sources of information and vicarious experience; maybe, to modify Horace, stories delight in order
   to instruct. Through stories we learn about human culture and
  psychology, without the potentially staggering costs of having to gain
  this experience firsthand.

  Or maybe story is a form of social glue
  that brings people together around common values. The novelist John Hardner  expresses this idea nicely: "Real art creates myths a society can live by instead of die by."
  Go back again to the Kung San storyteller. Look how he has brought his people together skin against skin, mind against mind.

Why do some of us like stories to the point of obsessing over them?

  “Fiction, like cocaine, is a drug. People may invent high-minded
  aesthetic (or evolutionary) justifications for their fiction habits,
  but story is just a drug we use to escape from the boredom and
  brutality of real life. Why do we go to see a Shakespeare play, or
  watch a film, or read a novel? Ultimately, from Kessel’s point of
  view, it is not to expand our minds, explore the human condition, or
  do anything else so noble. We do it for kicks.

  Many evolutionary thinkers would agree with Kessel’s position. What
  are stories for? Nothing. The brain is not designed for story; there
  are glitches in its design that make it vulnerable to story. Stories,
  in all their variety and splendor, are just lucky accidents of the
  mind’s jury-rigged construction. Story may educate us, deepen us, and
  give us joy. Story may be one of the “things that makes it most worthwhile to be human. But that doesn’t mean story has a biological purpose.
  Storytelling, in this view, is nothing like the opposable thumb—a structure that helped our ancestors survive and reproduce. In this view, story is more akin to the lines on your palm. No matter what your fortuneteller claims, the lines are not maps of your future. They are side effects of the flexion of the hand.”

How does this happen? And is this something that can be controlled?

I couldn't find any experiment that, like you mentioned, discussed whether you can change someone's preference of what kind of stories they like. If someone finds any study, please mention it in the comments!

Why is it also that once we start with a story, it can be hard to stop because you want to know what happens next or want to know how it ends? Why do some of us care if people "spoil" the ending for us by telling us what happens before we see or read or hear it, while some of us seem not to care?

From this source, an excellent article on storytelling.

  Suspense works just as well as you’d expect

  The “cliffhanger” just may be the oldest trick in the writing book,
  especially writing for television, but there is a reason why it’s used
  so often…

  It works!

  Despite our numerous exposure to this method, our brain just can’t
  “get over” suspenseful moments: it’s a relationship that just won’t
  die, we will always want to know what happens next.

  In fact, suspense works so well that the hotly debated Zeigarnik Effect
  would have you believe that it’s the best way to kill
  procrastination.

  Research in that area seems to point to humans being much more
  inclined to finish something that has already been started
  (researchers interrupted people doing “brain buster” tasks before they
  could complete them… nearly 90% of people went on to finish the task
  anyway, despite being told they could stop).

  Suspense in stories really allows you to create an addictive
  narrative, as long as the suspense appears early enough to capture
  interest, and doesn’t keep people hanging on forever

Has any real research been done on this?

I might elaborate on this further. I don't want to comment without first exploring the research I have quoted to see whether they are good studies. If anyone else knows of any experiments related to this field, please mention it in the comments.

Co-creating stories: Collaborative experiments in storytelling
Management Learning November 2010 41: 507-523, first published on June 28, 2010

Sources:

The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall
(ISBN-13: 978-0547391403    ISBN-10: 0547391404)


What software to use for psychology questionnaire?

One that I used at my university is Qualtrics. It was under the university's license, so I don't know what the costs are for single users. Qualtrics allows you to ask many different types of questions (open ended, likert, option select and more) and can easily export the data to excel files for further processing.

Survey Monkey is another tool that is often used. Basic functions can be used for free, but for more powerful tools you'll need to pay.

Finally, I know of Google Form. Afaik it can be used for free, but I am unaware of their privacy policies (Google tends to collect a lot of data).


What is the correlation between self-monitoring and the Big 5 factors of personality?

I did a quick search and found the following:

Barrick et al (2005) (see Table 1). In a sample with a little over a hundred MBA students they obtained the following correlations with self-monitoring:

Conscientiousness r = -.24
Extraversion r = .31
Agreeableness r = -.08
Emotional Stability  r = -.10
Openness r = .23

Kring, Smith, and Neale (1994) (see Table 3): Correlations with self-monitoring were (I think in a sample of 300+ undergraduates):

Surgency (somewhat similar to extraversion): .51
Agreeableness: r = .06
Conscientiousness: r = -.15
Emotional Stability: r = .37

This would suggest that self-monitoring has only a weak relationship with the Big 5.

The positive relationship with extraversion makes sense given that self-monitoring is related to an aptitude and an interest in adaptive social interactions.

References

Barrick, M. R., Parks, L., & Mount, M. K. (2005). Self‐monitoring as a moderator of the relationships between personality traits and performance. Personnel Psychology, 58(3), 745-767.
Kring, A. M., Smith, D. A., & Neale, J. M. (1994). Individual differences in dispositional expressiveness: development and validation of the Emotional Expressivity Scale. Journal of personality and social psychology, 66(5), 934.


Is there a scientific definition of "fairness"?

I would also urge you to think about equality vs. equity as two important facets to understanding fairness, especially in the context of heterogeneous societies.

Simply put, Equality is the idea that all individuals are exactly equal. If X people work on a project, all of them would get remunerated exactly the same amount.

On the other hand, Equity is the idea that there exists a quid pro quo i.e. if X people work on a project individuals would get paid proportional to the amount of work they put in.

Both could be considered "fair" depending on your perspective. In fact, it has been shown that individuals tend to switch between equity and equality when self-presentational concerns are made salient.
(Ref: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022103176900792)

Needless to say, this "fairness" debate guides discussion on Affirmative Action in the West and social reservation policies in countries like India.  I like the following piece which sums up this discussion nicely:

http://www.ala.org/offices/oif/iftoolkits/toolkitrelatedlinks/equalityequity


Could we develop a notion of conceivability that would allow us to imagine impossible/inconsistent/illogical things?

There's a serious science of the theoretical limits of representation / information processing in CS, in complexity theory & computability theory. You can pull some of that stuff across to cognitive science, the question 'what level of the complexity hierarchy does language sit at' has a decent track record of productivity, it's not totally crazy to ask the same thing of cognition in general.

For me, there's a satisfying answer in https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/index.html, although if you start at the beginning, it takes a little while to get there. In the lecture videos, it's the bit where he puts on the wizard hat. Because if you're going to answer a question as profound as this one, it's best to wear a cool hat when you do.

This is not the only answer, some folks believe in literal quantum cognition, so you could go chat to them too. They're kinda fringe at the moment, and I'm not a subscriber, but they are very smart people and the only game in town if you want think about going beyond Church-Turing.


Are cognitive biases hardwired in the brain or they are acquired during lifetime?

Addressing your first question (like @Josh, I would advice moving the other point to a new question), Morsanya & Handley (2008) (I can't find an open-access copy, sorry) have recently argued that heuristics have to be learned and acquired over time.
They presented a group of children aged 5 - 11 with several multiple-choice reasoning tasks, consisting of conjunction fallacy tasks, if-only fallacy tasks (concerning counterfactual reasoning), sunk cost fallacy tasks, and syllogistic reasoning, and found that as children got older, or scored more highly on an IQ test, they tended to provide more "heuristic" responses, and less "correct" ones.

They interpret this result as indicating that younger/less intelligent children aren't sophisticated enough to figure out the correct response, but haven't developed the heuristics either, so respond as random. As children become older/more intelligent, heuristics develop, but the children still haven't developed enough to produce the correct responses (bear in mind that with adults, more intelligent individuals produce more correct and less heuristic responses, so the trend reverses once people are advanced enough to figure out the correct response).

Reference

Kinga Morsanyi, Simon J. Handley, How smart do you need to be to get it wrong? The role of cognitive capacity in the development of heuristic-based judgment, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Volume 99, Issue 1, January 2008, Pages 18-36, ISSN 0022-0965,


What is the effect of listening to music on walking?

Research suggests that endurance is improved when movements are synchronized with a musical beat. [1] This research also supports the idea that music has 'motivational' qualities that may enhance performance. One study measured the pace and attitudes of participants running on a treadmill. The control conditions included: 1) no music ('acoustic stimuli'), 2) a metronome condition (a sequence of beeps matching the tempo of the participant, but nothing else), and 3) synchronous motivational music matched to participants' running tempo. From the abstract:

  The beat of the stimuli -which was most salient during the metronome condition- helped runners to maintain a consistent pace by coupling cadence to the prescribed tempo. Thus, acoustic stimuli may have enhanced running performance because runners worked harder as a result of motivational aspects (most pronounced with motivational music) and more efficiently as a result of auditory-motor synchronization (most notable with metronome beeps). These findings imply that running to motivational music with a very prominent and consistent beat matched to the runner's cadence will likely yield optimal effects because it helps to elevate physiological effort at a high perceived exertion, whereas the consistent and correct cadence induced by auditory-motor synchronization helps to optimize running economy.

Another study [2] measured oxygen consumption with synchronous, fast-tempo asynchronous, and slow-tempo asynchronous music. They found that the physiological effects of exercising with synchronous music was the most effective.

You mention walking in your question, and while walking is less an exercise than running or more rigorous physical activity, the results from both studies would suggest that people tend to respond 'best' to synchronicity between their movements and the music that they are listening to. Thus, humans have a natural tendency to match their steps to the tempo of this music.

Unsurprisingly, people also tend to move more energetically in response to louder, more aggressive music, and move less energetically to gentler, softer music. This is true regardless of the tempo of the music.

Sources used:

[1] Bood, Robert Jan et al. “The Power of Auditory-Motor Synchronization in Sports: Enhancing Running Performance by Coupling Cadence with the Right Beats.” Ed. Ramesh Balasubramaniam. PLoS ONE 8.8 (2013): e70758. PMC. Web. 24 Aug. 2015.

[2] Effect of music-movement synchrony on exercise oxygen consumption. C. J. Bacon, T. R. Myers, C. I. Karageorghis. J Sports Med Phys Fitness. 2012 August; 52(4): 359–365.


How does look, tone and voice manipulate behavior

I don't know if this will help you, but when I first started to see patients (somewhat similar to customers), I was taught by attending physicians that what I  felt after a few minutes was most likely what the patient felt because of clues given off by patients in their look, manner, words, posture, etc. If the patient felt hopeless, I started to feel that way as a doctor; is he felt anxious, so would I; the same with anger. Once I really trusted that, I could step back from it and use it as a tool to understand the patient's feelings.

People who do not hold anything in them and behave as they see fit are usually not well adjusted socially, and that intimidates people who are more empathetic.

You ask:

  Should such susceptible people keep being socially avoidant type of people to avoid conflicts or become as their opposites through cognitive behavioral therapy or hypnosis?

Before seeking cognitive therapy to become more assertive, there is the possibility of trying the following (which is what we were taught to do as physicians):

1) Step back in your mind and describe how you feel (angry, afraid, insignificant, anxious, what exactly?)
2) Decide what the opposite emotions are (calm, confident, capable, peaceful, etc).
3) Try responding consistently in the opposite manner until they have calmed down (it usually works). It's like taking the wind out of someone's sails instead of blowing back. (This will work if someone is normal. With mentally ill patients, it's still very helpful, but there are other behaviors to use as well.)

This way, you can defuse situations instead of escalating them while staying true to yourself.


Why didn't the Left Twix/Right Twix ad campaign take off?

Because people do not see the parallels between the candy and any other dividing issue. People, just like Twix are neither left nor right when created. It is through labeling that divisions are made. So while left and right Twix are still just Twix, a difference in labeling makes them seem different to those that bestow the labels.


How do the correlations between Big 5 personality change in studies examining "faking bad"?

I don't know any actual "faking bad" studies or theories involving the Big Five, but there are some theories about the Big Five's general factor that can both explain the common finding you mention and inform a hypothesis about potential results from a study that would address your questions. I don't expect this will be a very satisfying answer, because I'm offering it in a bit of a hurry and referencing your own questions (and answer) to provide referential substance, but here it is anyway.

As your question and answer point out, there is a general factor underlying the Big Five, an even bigger "Big One." It partly reflects social desirability, as you know from your other question, and partly reflects people's efforts to align their personalities (or at least their opinions about their own personalities) toward those more desirable poles of the dimensions. It may even reflect some adaptive advantage to being slightly toward the desirable side of average (though probably not all the way to the extreme end of that side). Whether people succeed at being these desirable, maybe better-adjusted versions of themselves in the long term is immaterial. They try in the short term, and tell themselves it's working for various reasons, including self-serving bias and self-perceptive processes in identity (that inform judgments with recent behaviors).

People have some intuitive sense of the desirability of being sociable, stable, friendly, responsible, and curious (not to mention other aspects of each trait). If asked to act like a professionally desirable (i.e., hire-worthy) applicant, they will bias their answers in these socially desirable directions. These biases (whether intentionally deceptive or unconsciously ego-defensive) partly overlay some of the natural, independent variation with an internally consistent personality profile that suits the social consensus of what is desirable. Therefore people seem more uniform and correlations strengthen. Maybe you know other explanations of this finding as well; this may be one explanation, but I doubt it's the only.

I think this explanation could apply equally well if people were asked to "fake bad." Again, a socially undesirable personality profile is socially salient and consensual enough to overlay natural, independent variation with a relatively uniform pattern of bias. Most people know you're probably less likely to get hired if you act shy, edgy, hostile, impulsive, and stubborn (again, among other things that generally point in the same overall directions more often than not). Therefore I'd expect increased correlations in the "faking bad" scenario too.

Not a well-researched theory here I'm afraid; just a hypothesis or half-educated guess. I hope it's helpful nonetheless, and would be happy to look further into it and edit if anyone's interested enough to comment on a pseudo-answer that's nine months late. I can definitely offer some references for at least some of the instrumental points of theory I offer here without explicit support if that's socially desirable enough!


What scientific evidence is there for the definable real world quality of redness independent our perception?

Short answer
None.
Background
First off, I am not familiar with the principles as laid out in your question posed by Goethe and Feigenbaum (I'll look into these people, thanks for the pointer!).
However, I am familiar with Newton and with the interpretation of perception in general. Importantly, the late Neuroscientist Paul Bach-y-Rita  famously stated that (1972):

We see with the brain, not the eyes.

What he meant by that is that the brain has the ability to consciously perceive physical input. The eye serves to sense light and convey an electrical signal to the brain that translates the sensations to perceptions. The retina is sensitive to different wavelengths and red light activates different photosensitive cells (cones) than green or blue cones. The perceptual analogue arises only after extensive processing in higher brain centers.
In a series of experiments Bach-y-Rita showed that blind people are able to 'see with the skin' by converting camera images to tactile sensations on the body, a technique dubbed sensory substitution (Bach-y-Rita, 1969). Later, he founded a company (Wicab) that developed a sensory-substitution device on this principle, namely the BrainPort V100 (Stronks et al., 2016) (Fig. 1) that converts camera images to electrical stimuli on the tongue via a grid of 240 electrodes (the tongue display unit, or TDU) (Stronks et al., 2015). So a TDU allows people to 'taste the light'. These experiments showed that visual perceptions can be elicited by tactile stimulations, later corroborated by functional brain imaging, and thus that we see with the brain, not the eyes.
Having said all this it brings me back to your question...

[W]hat scientific evidence is there for the definable real world quality of redness independent our perception?

... and my answer on it would be: none.

Fig. 1. BrainPort V100 wearer. source: Independent
References
- Bach-y-Rita, Nature (1969); 221: 963-4
- Bach-y-Rita et al., Int J Human-Comp Interact (1972); 15(2): 285-95
- Stronks et al., Brain Res (2015); 1624: 140-52
- Stronks et al. Exp Rev Med Dev (2016); 13(10): 919-31


Why are people so attached to their possessions?

I think it's a primal need that is built in via natural selection. Those that had attachments to places and things outpased those who didn't. The affection a child shows for a favorite toy or a teenager shows for a favorite pair of shoes. Also, when a possession has been won over a great hardship, it has intrinsic meaning. This has a social and mental advantage when connecting to others. Social animals (like humans) must succeed in interactions to remain prosperous and leads to groupings of individuals for the overall benefits.


This is a part answer.  According to "Immersion Education for the Millennium:
What We Have Learned from 30 Years of
Research on Second Language Immersion", (Cummins, 1998), based on the Canadian example of French language immersion state:

  For immersion education to attain its maximum potential it must be integrated into an
  educational philosophy that goes beyond just the discipline of Applied Linguistics. Students
  must have opportunities to communicate powerfully in the target language if they are going
  to integrate their language and cognitive development with their growing personal identities.

I noticed this as well when I was a teacher in Japan (I am Australian), where (and this is an anecdotal observation) multilingual students seemed to pick up the language by immersion, rather than the classroom.  The same applied to me, in Japanese classes I did not do too well, but immersing myself into the surroundings, I was able to pick up the language (at least the functional parts) very quickly.

A great reference is "Integrating Language and Content in Immersion Classrooms:
Research Perspectives" (Swain, 1998), making an important point that the traditional way of teaching aspects of language, e.g. grammar in isolation, i.e. without a context is not a particularly effective means of language development.


Cosyne vs CNS conferences for Computational Neuroscience?

I have participated in NIPS, CNS, and COSYNE at least a couple times each. In fact, I have participated in all 3 last year.

COSYNE is the smallest conference, but it's growing fast. It's a great conference because it has a good balance between experimentalists and theorists. It takes an extended abstract (2 pages). It emphasizes the systems aspect of the brain.

CNS has more physicist/mathematicians (COSYNE and NIPS also have a high number of them, but CNS has the most), and has a feeling of "European" science. The themes are more theory oriented. I heard that it is usually bigger when it's held in Europe (it alternates).

NIPS started half machine learning, half neuroscience a long time ago, but it has been overrun by ML people. But, in recent years, I see more and more computational neuroscience coming back to NIPS. It has a strict double blind reviewing with high rejection rate around 25% for an 8 page full paper (+1 page reference).

Each conference has its own niche, so the impact would depend on your area within computational neuroscience. NIPS is the only one with a full paper, so it tends to be cited more. However, a lot of networking happens in COSYNE and CNS among neuroscientists, so it would definitely have more impact to experimentalists.

Feel free to ask me more questions.