How does raw IQ change over the lifespan at the group-level?

In general, the introduction section of McArdle et al (2002) provides a good literature review on the topic (see link to PDF in references).

Early research by Jones and Conrad (1933)

McArdle et al (2002) extract a quote from Jones and Conrad's (1933) summary of the literature based on large cross-sectional studies and also the classic Army alpha tests:

  "The chief characteristic of the curve may be summarized as involving
  a linear growth to about 16 years, and a negative acceleration beyond
  16 to a peak between the ages of 18 and 21. A decline follows,
  which is much more gradual than the curve of growth, but which by
  the age of 55 involves a recession to the 14-year level. (p. 239)"

Cattell on Crystalised and Fluid Intelligence

Also, see Figure 1 in McArdle et al (2002) which extracts a diagram from Cattell (1987) that shows Cattell's theorised relationship between age and two types of intelligence, crystalised and fluid. The theory suggests that fluid intelligence increases at a faster rate and peaks at around 18 and then shows a steady decline, whereas crystalised intelligence increases throughout the life span, with the rate of learning decreasing over time, and arguably approaching a plateau around 50 before commencing a very gradual decline around 60.

References

Cattell, R. B. (1987). Intelligence: Its structure, growth and action. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Jones, H. E., & Conrad, H. S. (1933). The growth and decline of intelli-
gence: A study of a homogeneous group between the ages of ten and
sixty. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 13(1), 223–275
McArdle, J., Ferrer-Caja, E., Hamagami, F., and Woodcock, R. (2002).
Comparative longitudinal structural analyses of the growth and decline
of multiple intellectual abilities over the life span. Developmental
Psychology, 38(1):115.
FREE PDF

NOTE: After posting the question, I did a little research and found the above research. I've self-awarded the answer for sake of closure, but I'm happy to award to someone else with a better answer.


Age vs. Receptiveness to propaganda/ ideology

Welcome to Psychology.SE.

This has the potential to be a very big subject, depending on how deep you want to go into it. You may wish to look at priming along with studies surrounding conformity and peer pressure, looking at how they play a part in early behaviour and belief forming.

You may also want to look at Ron Jones' "Third Wave" Experiment which was portrayed in the movie called The Wave


How can higher concepts get unrolled with upward and feedback connections differing?

Caveats

There's some points to keep in mind when thinking about this:

While it is true that connections in cortex are reciprocal, this does not mean that they are symmetric. Cortical connectivity is quite elaborate and the neurons that send bottom-up signals to the next higher area are not necessarily the same neurons that receive the feedback. The forward signals seem to originate mostly from cortical layers 2/3 and 5, whereas the targets of feedback are primarily layers 1 and 6 (see for example Roelfsema & Holtmaat (2018) figure 2 and Shipp (2007)). On the other hand, an axon that terminates in layer 1 may be contacting dendrites of neurons with cell bodies in other layers, so the story is not that simple (see Larkum et al. (2018)).
The connections may not be monosynaptic. Many of the communication between cortical areas happens via the thalamus and other subcortical structures (see the same papers as in the last point).

Learning symmetric connections

I will ignore these two points for now and just assume that a set of neurons in a lower-level cortical area (for example, V1) and a set of neurons in a higher-level cortical area (let's say V2) have reciprocal, monosynaptic connections. So how can a neuron $y_j$ in V2 ensure that its feedback to V1 generates roughly the pattern that excited $y_j$ in the first place? One possibility is to use Hebbian learning. Essentially, if synaptic strength $w_{ji}$ in the forward and $w_{ij}$ in the feedback pathway both grow when $x_i$ in V1 and $y_j$ in V2 fire synchronously / with strong rates, the connections will tend to become symmetric over time.

Instar-outstar learning

Pure Hebbian learning ($\Delta w_{ji} \propto x_i \cdot y_j$) tends to be unstable, so one needs to add a decay term to the weights. This way you arrive at instar-outstar learning (see for example Grossberg (2013), section 1.5), which has been used for exactly this purpose: learning appropriate connections between higher-level categories and lower-level inputs.

The forward connection would perform instar learning ($\Delta w_{ji} \propto y_j \cdot (x_i - w_{ji})$). This means that the weights of all synapses going into neuron $y_j$ compete. Over time, $w_{ji}$ will tend to the mean input vector $\langle \mathbf{x} \rangle$.

The feedback connection would perform outstar learning ($\Delta w_{ji} \propto x_i \cdot (y_j - w_{ji})$). This means that the weights of all synapses going out of neuron $y_j$ are in competition. Note that this may be difficult to implement in a biological neural network, since it means that synapses on different neurons $x_i$ have to compete with each other. Over time, $w_{ij}$ will also tend to the mean output vector $\langle \mathbf{x} \rangle$. Since the input of the forward connection is the output of the feedback connection are identical, the weight vectors should become symmetric.

Oja learning

Note however, that this means the weight matrices are transposes of each other, not inverses. Also, you would need to ensure that different neurons in V2 do not all learn the same pattern, for example by inhibitory connections between them.

One way to overcome both of these problems is to use the Oja subspace rule (see Oja (1992, 1997)): $\Delta \mathbf{W}_{ji} \propto (\mathbf{x} - \mathbf{W} \cdot \mathbf{y}) \cdot \mathbf{y}^T $ This rule ensures that the weight matrix is orthogonal, so that the transpose will be an inverse. However, note that this involves some more competition between synapses on different neurons, so it is not biologically plausible. Note also that the weight vectors will now tend to principle components of the input patterns, not to mean values.

Beyond the simple scenario

These learning rules make it possible to learn symmetric connections in a very simple scenario, assuming directly connected, rate-based neurons. The proofs to show that instar-outstart approximates the mean and Oja's rule performs PCA also assume linear neurons, which is a further simplification. So coming back to the caveats above, in cortex the story is probably not so simple. Still, these principles (Hebbian learning with competition in both directions) may provide the basis for an explanation.

For example, despite caveat 1 Hebbian learning may still be useful since neurons across all layers of a cortical column tend to respond to the same stimuli. So as long as the rates are similar enough, the connections could still learn to be somewhat symmetrical or at least to have the kind of concept unrolling function you have in mind.

Also, while I only talked about rate-based networks, something similar may work for spiking networks as well (see Clopath et al (2010) for a spike-time dependent plasticity rule that can lead to the formation of reciprocal connections).

TL;DR

Connections in cortex may not be directly symmetrical. Making several simplifying assumptions, it is possible to learn symmetrical connections with variants of Hebbian learning.

References

Clopath et al. (2010). Nature Neuroscience 13(3), 344-352. link
Grossberg (2013). Neural Networks 37, 1-47. link
Larkum et al. (2018). Frontiers in Neuroanatomy 12, 56. link
Oja (1992). Neural Networks 5(6), 927-935. link
Oja (1997). Neurocomputing 17, 25-45. link
Roelfsema & Holtmaat (2018). Nature Reviews Neuroscience 19(3), 166-180. link
Shipp (2007). Current Biology 17(12), R443-R449. link


Does psychology have a name for the "click" experienced in mathematics?

There are concepts like insight and the Aha moment which are similar to what you describe.

However, the aha moment is more aligned to flashes of insight to discrete problems. While this could be relevant to the experience you are describing of learning mathematics, perhaps you are also describing a more gradual process of learning. Mathematics can be quite complicated. With each iteration of practice, reflection and consolidation, an you typically learn more. At first you made need to go through the material just to get an organising framework. Then on  a second read, you can start to apply the organising framework to your interpretation. The meaning of the text and symbols begin to be stored in long term memory, so you can start to focus on the broader meaning rather than spending substantial cognitive resources on the components.

So in general, what you are describing sounds a lot like the process of cognitive skill acquisition. If you want to learn more you could read something like Anderson (1982). Basically, this is a movement from effortful and error prone performance to fluent and relatively error free performance. Thus, at a certain point, you reflect on your performance and you realise that you have acquired the skill.

References

Anderson, J. R. (1982). Acquisition of cognitive skill. Psychological review, 89(4), 369-406. PDF


Is 'intuition' related to 'extrasensory perception'?

No, intuition is not related to ESP in modern cognitive science.
A modern view on intuitive thinking
While ESP certainly retains its pseudoscience status (e.g., Rouder and Morey, 2011), intuition and intuitive thinking has been used in the psychological literature in evolving ways over the years. Outside the heydays of Skinnerian radical behaviorism, the notion of intuition has been consistently present in the cognitive sciences.
An influential modern model of intuitive thinking is called dual process theory (e.g., Evans and Stanovich, 2013). The dual process theory model, which entered the public consciousness with Daniel Kahneman's popular Thinking, Fast and Slow, proposes that reasoning happens by two discrete "paths": the deliberate and reasoned System 2, and the fast and intuitive System 1.
This account explains intuition and intuitive thinking in terms of different heuristics, which should be familiar. Heuristics can have multiple subtly different meanings depending on field and context, but broadly speaking, a heuristic is a decision process which is usually right. You can find a number of references about heuristics in this question.
While ESP is non-deterministic almost by definition, dual process theory does not take a position on determinism. We are simply not consciously aware of the underlying heuristic machinery's workings. (As Artem notes in his comment.)
References

Evans, J. St. B. T. & Stanovich, K. E. (2013). Dual-process theories of higher cognition: Advancing the debate. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8, 223-241, 263-271.
Rouder, J. N., & Morey, R. D. (2011). A Bayes factor meta-analysis of Bem’s ESP claim. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18(4), 682-689.


How can one describe personal space and its comfortable area

Personal Space may be seen as one's working area for carrying out autonomous actions and thoughts. When someone invades that space, you have decreased capacity to act autonomously. For example, when someone is physically too close, you have decreased freedom of locomotion and movement. When someone is being nosy or intellectually getting into your business, they are interfering with your ability to act by your own feelings and beliefs. The reason is that you begin to consider how that person might judge your actions and motivations. The key problem is interference with autonomy.

Put another way, invading someone's personal space interferes with that person's life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness by imposing external opinions or forces the individual does not desire in his or her life. Naturally social actions and interactions are meant to accommodate the feelings and desires of bystanders, but some actions are purely personal.

The situation is a bit different when we are talking about close friends or relatives. Presumably the reason here is that these external parties have already been screened for agreeability and likeability, so not only is there less likelihood of opposition, but there is also a personal desire to find agreement. Moreover, the less agreeable a person appears to be, the less you would want that person interfering with or even knowing your personal feelings, plans, and circumstances.


How is intelligence correlated to beauty?

In the general population there does seem to be a positive correlation between psychometrically measured intelligence and observer rated attractiveness (Kanazawa, 2011). The power of the relationship seems to be medium to low.

Two possible explanations for this relationship are:

Intelligence and physical attractiveness both depend on physical health; meaning that people who grow up unhealthily tend to be less attractive and less intelligent.
The genes for intelligence and physical attractiveness became collocated over time as more attractive people tend to mate with more intelligent people.

References

Kanazawa, Satoshi. Intelligence and physical attractiveness. Intelligence 39.1 (2011): 7-14. (free pdf here)


How to random assign subjects to a group without any equipment?

If the patient has given you some kind of ID number (soc#, drivers license, patient number, birthday month... most any number) just split by even/odd.

If we assume that such numbers are sequential or randomly assigned, then there should be no large bias, or association with any patient characteristics.

If you have two or more numbers available, you could add the last digits and see if that is even or odd.


As a slight modification of your statement: blood flow increases wherever activity in the brain increases.

The type of fMRI that uses this principle is blood-oxygenation-level-dependent fMRI or  BOLD fMRI. MRI in general detects signals by picking up proton signals from water molecules. This proton signal is basically caused by magnetizing the protons causing their spin to change. A subsequent powerful radiowave disrupts this spin and the following relaxation phase of the protons to the original state can be detected by MRI. Water, and hence protons are everywhere in the body, including the brain and the blood. Deoxygenated hemoglobin (hemoglobin without oxygen) in blood changes the proton signal in its immediate surroundings due to the magnetic properties of deoxyhemoglobin. This is caused by the fact that deoxygenated hemoglobin is paramagnetic and decreases the signal that protons release. In fact, it has been regarded as noise in structural MRI scans. Oxygenated hemoglobin does not have this property.
Radiopaedia has a nice explanation as to exactly how the BOLD signal is used in BOLD fMRI, and I quote:

  When a specific region of the cortex increases its activity in response to a task, the extraction fraction of oxygen from the local capillaries leads to an initial drop in oxygenated haemoglobin [...]. Following a lag of 2-6 seconds, cerebral blood flow (CBF) increases, delivering a surplus of oxygenated haemoglobin, washing away deoxyhemoglobin. It is this large rebound in local tissue oxygenation which is imaged.

So to sum up: brain activity increases the BOLD signal by picking up oxygen-changes after an increased blood flow to that specific part of the brain. So your statement that fMRI measures blood flow is technically incorrect. Doppler techniques can be used to measure the actual flow of blood.


From the way I understand it, everyone, male or female has both masculine and feminine personalities and it is up to the subjects whether they recognise that or not and to what level.  The idea is that in order to become all you can be you need to integrate yourself with your inner opposite sex.

The animus within the woman and the anima within the man are the opposing personalities to their sex and how they are 'supposed' to behave.  An example would be that if a man has a strongly developed anima (fully accepted and integrated into his psyche) the man will be fully open to emotionality.

The article from Wikipedia and this good article from Psychology Today may help.


How does belief in souls or the afterlife influence emotions related to the death of others?

Religion and spirituality provide coping strategies and relief for those who experience bereavement to help negate or provide incentive for surviving the trauma. Soul based beliefs tend to encourage the idea of an eventual reunification with the loved one.

Since this person was not a dear loved one your purely religious coping strategy is fine and perfectly normal. However I would be concerned and advise you to seek a doctor's help if you had the same absence of grief during the bereavement of a loved one.

The role of religion in dealing with bereavement is not well researched because its difficult to draw empirical data from unempirical relief. Especially with it being such a universally private and very tender time in a persons life. I did find one chapter from a book which provided a solid set of guidelines and so cite bellow.

  People often report that their religion or spirituality was helpful or even essential
  for getting through and recovering from their grief (see Wortmann & Park, 2008,
  for a review) in spite of the lack of solid empirical evidence that this is so. indeed, there are strong theoretical rationales for positing that religion and spirituality can strongly impact the process of grieving.for many individuals, religion or spirituality underlies their general approach to life and forms the system of meaning through which they experience and understand the world and operate on a daily basis, making the universe seem benign, safe, just, coherent, and, ultimately, controllable (Park et al., in press). Clearly, when facing highly stressful experiences such as the death of a loved one, this meaning system will influence their responses to it.

  Religious and spiritual perspectives provide many resources for understanding and coping with loss. Many traditions provide perspectives on death, such as viewing loss as illusory rather than real or as a necessary step toward a more glorious future. Several predominant religious belief systems hold out possibilities for everlasting life and for reunification with the lost loved one after one’s own death (Greeley & hout, 1999). Beliefs in a soul that is separate from and persists after the death of the physical body also allows for the possibility of remaining in contact with the deceased (Benore & Park, 2004), a commonly reported experience in the United States (klugman, 2006). in addition, religious and spiritual traditions offer a panoply of coping resources for dealing with death.

  these resources include social support from pastors and fellow congregants, and many rites and rituals to assist mourners through the process of grieving. for example, all religious traditions prescribe specific prayers, behaviors, and funeral ceremonies to deal with death, which comfort mourners and give them a sense of structure and a sense of belonging to a broader community (Wuthnow et al.,1980).

  through these resources, individuals may find solace and comfort and, over
  time, work through their grief in ways that allow them to find peace and acceptance
  and to return to their normal daily lives (halifax, 2008). of course, normal life is forever changed with the loss of a loved one, and people often carry a lingering sense of sadness and longing for the lost person (Stroebe, Abakoumkin, & Stroebe, 2010).

  importantly, mitigating negative outcomes is not the only possibility represented
  by religious and spiritual approaches to bereavement. in fact, many religious and spiritual traditions hold that the suffering experienced through bereavement can be an impetus for transformative spiritual experience. Such a perspective holds that to deny grief is to rob one of the heavy stones that will eventually be the ballast for the two great accumulations of wisdom and compassion. indeed, grief is a vital part of our very human life, an experience that can open compassion, and an important phase of maturation giving depth and humility to life; it can be regarded as a gift. Grief can ruin or mature us.

  like the mother who bathed her dead baby in her breast milk, grief can remind us not to hold on too tightly as it teaches us tenderness and patience with our own suffering. Many bereaved individuals report extensive personal growth following bereavement, including increased appreciation for life, enhanced spirituality, and closer interpersonal relationships, and religious and spiritual pathways are a common pathway to this transformative growth (Park, 2005).

-Religion and Spirituality in Adjusting to Bereavement


First, a definition: "Synaesthesia is a curious condition in which an otherwise normal person experiences sensations in one modality when a second modality is stimulated." [1] There are two basic explanations for this phenomenon: the hyperconnectivity
hypothesis and the disinhibition-unmasking hypothesis [2]. The former says that the condition results from excessive neural connections between two modalities, and the latter says that it results from a lack of inhibition of signals. A quick search reveals that it is indeed possible to induce this condition (with drugs, for example), and it isn't necessary to rewire any neural connections [2,3,4]. This is an example of how the brain transmits/filters information by many mechanisms, connectivity being just one of them.

[1] Ramachandran, Vilayanur S., and Edward M. Hubbard. "Synaesthesia--a window into perception, thought and language." Journal of consciousness studies 8.12 (2001): 3-34.

[2] Kadosh, Roi Cohen, et al. "Induced cross-modal synaesthetic experience without abnormal neuronal connections." Psychological Science 20.2 (2009): 258-265.

[3] Ramachandran, Vilayanur S., and Diane Rogers-Ramachandran. "Synaesthesia in phantom limbs induced with mirrors." Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences 263.1369 (1996): 377-386.

[4] Luke, David P., and Devin B. Terhune. "The induction of synaesthesia with chemical agents: a systematic review." Frontiers in psychology 4 (2013).


Where to find historical dream activity data?

I think you need to distinguish dream activity and dream recall. I thought that everyone dreams every night. However, many factors influence whether we recall the dreams.

Thus, I think a more productive search would be to focus on the factors that influence dream recall, and perhaps the prominence of dreams in peoples lives.

I found one older article by Cohen (1973) which summarises research on the frequency of dream recall. He states that

  Frequency of dream recall is affected by physiological, methodological, and psychological factors.

Beaulieu-Prevost and Zadra (2005) writes

  Schonbar (1965) suggested that people who remember many dreams are
  generally interested in dreams, in trying to understand them, in
  increasing their dream recall frequency, and tend to have an overall
  positive attitude towards dreams.

Beaulieu-Prevost and Zadra (2005) then go on to cite numerous such studies.

Thus, the next question would be whether the factors that influence dream recall have changed over recent history.  Palagini et al (2011) might provide a useful starting point as they review historical perspectives of dreaming.

References

Beaulieu-Prévost, D., & Zadra, A. (2005). Dream recall frequency and attitude towards dreams: a reinterpretation of the relation. Personality and individual differences, 38(4), 919-927.
Cohen, D. B. (1969). Frequency of dream recall estimated by three methods and related to defense preference and anxiety. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 33(6), 661.
Palagini, L., & Rosenlicht, N. (2011). Sleep, dreaming, and mental health: A review of historical and neurobiological perspectives. Sleep medicine reviews, 15(3), 179-186.


If we concentrate on our disappointment do we really get more disappointment?

I think some scientific insights on this can come from a couple of sources:

Cognitive therapy

This is a branch of psychological therapy that interprets the human experience as follows.
There is an event, then the evaluation of that event, and then the emotion. Disappointment would be the end result, the emotion. Regular therapy might focus on avoiding the event, the trigger. In cognitive therapy one would try to change the evaluation of the event, and as a result, change the triggered emotion.

To put it simply by example, if you were once bitten by a dog, you evaluate seeing a dog as a threat, and therefore experience fear when you see one. By learning to evaluate dogs as friendly and nice, the fear goes away.

So, this seems to imply that there might be things you can concentrate on that make it more likely for negative emotions to go away. But you would have to look into the details of cognitive therapy to figure out how exactly this works.

Learned optimism

Diener and Seligman have done quite some research on learned optimism. This includes the question of whether it's possible to "teach" a pessimist to become an optimist. In one of their studies (Diener & Seligman, 2002), they have identified the 10% of happiest people in a group of 222 undergraduates, and compared them to the unhappiest students. Both experienced the same amount of negative emotions, but the happy people got over it much faster because they had different cognitive interpretations of the events.

There are also some studies, not sure by who, that have shown that applying simple techniques can turn you into an "optimist" [citation needed]. A few studies (e.g., Johnstone, van Reekum, Urry, Kalin, & Davidson, 2007; Ochsner, Bunge, Gross, & Gabrieli, 2002; McRae et al., 2012; Hecht, 2013) were able to see brain activity changes and brain-density changes in the prefrontal cortex. In "optimists" the left side is more active. In "pessimists" the right side is more active. So this might support the brain and "chemicals" claims. But you'd have to Google the exact reference.

Broaden and build

Barbara Fredrickson has some interesting research (e.g., Fredrickson, B.L., 2001) on how negative emotional states limit your range of reactions to "choose" from in response to a situation. And how positive emotions increase this range. She calls it the broaden and build theory. The most limited range on this spectrum is the fight or flight reaction in times of great stress and danger.

She does describe some "spiral" effects, where the negative emotional states (e.g. disappointment) can lead to cumulatively more restricted mindsets.

Meditation

Also, maybe this is worth mentioning. There is a lot of research supporting the claim that meditation increases emotional stability. Mindfulness meditation specifically has been associated with the same changes in the brain as described earlier, associated with optimists. The "technique" taught here is to observe all events and emotions as if looking at them in third-person perspective, letting emotions rise and fall as they come without clinging to them.

This would indicate that it's not the "concentrating on disappointment" that is the problem, but it is the "type" of concentrating.

I think on most of the above topics you should be able to find references quickly on Google. I don't have time to look up the actual papers...

References

Diener, E., Seligman M.E., (2002). Very happy people. Psychological Science, 13(1):81-4. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11894851

Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The Role of Positive Emotions in Positive Psychology: The Broadenand-Build Theory of Positive Emotions. American Psychologist, 56, 218-226. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3122271/

Hecht, D. (2013). The neural basis of optimism and pessimism. Experimental Neurobiology, 22(3), 173–199. Retrieved from http://synapse.koreamed.org/search.php?where=aview&id=10.5607/en.2013.22.3.173&code=0142EN&vmode=FULL.

Johnstone, T., van Reekum, C. M., Urry, H. L., Kalin, N. H., & Davidson, R. J. (2007). Failure to regulate: Counterproductive recruitment of top-down prefrontal-subcortical circuitry in major depression. The Journal of Neuroscience, 27(33), 8877–8884. Retrieved from http://www.jneurosci.org/content/27/33/8877.full.

McRae, K., Gross, J. J., Weber, J., Robertson, E. R., Sokol–Hessner, P., Ray, R. D., Gabrieli, J. D., & Ochsner, K. N. (2012). The development of emotion regulation: an fMRI study of cognitive reappraisal in children, adolescents and young adults. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 7(1), 11–22. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3252634/.

Ochsner, K. N., Bunge, S. A., Gross, J. J., & Gabrieli, J. D. (2002). Rethinking feelings: An fMRI study of the cognitive regulation of emotion. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14(8), 1215–1229. Retrieved from http://brainimaging.waisman.wisc.edu/~perlman/0903-EmoPaper/CogRegEmoOschner.2002.pdf.


Article for bypassing spinal cord after spinal cord injury

The most recent paper that was published is Bouton et al. (2016) in Nature, but is not openly available (though can be accessed via http://sci-hub.cc/ ). The abstract of the paper is as follows:

  Millions of people worldwide suffer from diseases that lead to paralysis through disruption of signal pathways between the brain and the muscles. Neuroprosthetic devices are designed to restore lost function and could be used to form an electronic ‘neural bypass’ to circumvent disconnected pathways in the nervous system. It has previously been shown that intracortically recorded signals can be decoded to extract information related to motion, allowing non-human primates and paralysed humans to control computers and robotic arms through imagined movements1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. In non-human primates, these types of signal have also been used to drive activation of chemically paralysed arm muscles12, 13. Here we show that intracortically recorded signals can be linked in real-time to muscle activation to restore movement in a paralysed human. We used a chronically implanted intracortical microelectrode array to record multiunit activity from the motor cortex in a study participant with quadriplegia from cervical spinal cord injury. We applied machine-learning algorithms to decode the neuronal activity and control activation of the participant’s forearm muscles through a custom-built high-resolution neuromuscular electrical stimulation system. The system provided isolated finger movements and the participant achieved continuous cortical control of six different wrist and hand motions. Furthermore, he was able to use the system to complete functional tasks relevant to daily living. Clinical assessment showed that, when using the system, his motor impairment improved from the fifth to the sixth cervical (C5–C6) to the seventh cervical to first thoracic (C7–T1) level unilaterally, conferring on him the critical abilities to grasp, manipulate, and release objects. This is the first demonstration to our knowledge of successful control of muscle activation using intracortically recorded signals in a paralysed human. These results have significant implications in advancing neuroprosthetic technology for people worldwide living with the effects of paralysis.

Bouton, C. E., Shaikhouni, A., Annetta, N. V., Bockbrader, M. A., Friedenberg, D. A., Nielson, D. M., ... & Morgan, A. G. (2016). Restoring cortical control of functional movement in a human with quadriplegia. Nature, 533(7602), 247-250.

More publications from Chad Bouton can be found on his institution's page: http://www.feinsteininstitute.org/our-researchers/chad-bouton/


Is there any credible evidence for the theory of Spiral Dynamics?

Dr Graves' research relates to human developmental psychology, not 'all living things'. In his book Integral Psychology (2000) Ken Wilber cross references multiple bodies of work, including eastern philosophy and western psychology. Wilber mentions a number of other researchers whose work correlates with Graves' findings, including Paiget, Fowler, Kegan, Cook-Greuter to name a few.

Three key findings from Graves' work are:
1. The responsive nature of human consciousness to the complexity of life conditions.
2. The trajectory of and the human experience of change between the stages.
3. The open-ended, staged developmental sequence with alternating themes of self-expression and self-sacrifice.

You can find my interpretation of Graves' model at my website https://www.eman8.net


How to interpret neuron spiking models one comes across in literature?

Read dayan and abbot "theoretical neuroscience"
Learn differential equations
Know the relationship between voltage, current, resistance and conductance
Differential equations is absolutely essential though. you don't need to learn to solve them (the computer will do that for you), you just need to learn to know what they mean.
How do researchers translate observations of nature into symbolic, mathematical approximations/models of these phenomena? By gaining intuition of how the model components relate to empirical observations. it is relatively rare that someone comes up with a new model from scratch. most of the time people retool or remix previous models.


What is the relationship between the ego, amygdala and consciousness?

Assuming your question is "Is person's ego a projection of the responses of their amygdala onto the conscious experience?", I think it would translate to "Does the amygdala determines or houses the ego". In that light, the question hinges on the meaning of ego. Given the question is asked at Cognitive Sciences SE, I assume the ego is "The part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is responsible for reality testing and a sense of personal identity". In that case I would say no, the amygdala is not involved in the ego.

Generally, the amygdala is considered to be an essential part of the limbic system. The limbic system controls the core emotions (fear, pleasure, anger) and drives behaviors essential to life (hunger, sex, and the care of offspring). The functions of the amygdala are indeed mainly associated with emotions, but also with learning and memory (Martin & Hans, 1985). A notable example is post-traumatic stress disorder (Shin et al., 2006), where it mediates imprinting of memories through fear.

However, the amygdala definitely shapes "the self". Given the Latin meaning of "ego" (literally, "I") one could definitely argue for an essential role of the amygdala in the ego. In that context, though, arguably every single part of the brain at the macroscopic level is an essential part of the ego.

PS: the 'blog' you linked is an advertisement for the services of Sara Harvey, a personal coach for folks with executive functions. Not the most reliable source of information.

References
- Martin & Hans, Behav Neurosci (1985); 99(2):342-80
- Shin et al., Ann NY Acad Sci (2006); 1071: 67–7


Study about how position of head influences thoughts

Hue,

It sounds like you are interested in a field of research known as embodied cognitive science. It is a fascinating field that looks at how we use our bodies and environments in conjunction with or instead of our brains to complete some cognitive task.

I suggest you start by reading Risko & Gilbert (2016) for a recent review of a phenomenon known as "cognitive offloading" which I think will give you some interesting insights to some of the questions you posed. Evan Risko has done some interesting work on the effects of head tilts on cognition which I think you'll find interesting.  If you can't access the article due to the paywall, let me know, and I can send it to you.

Unfortunately, I do not know any research on dreams and such.


How does people's sense of right and wrong affect their behavior?

This is an interesting question which seems that even the experts are still investigating it to a degree.

Take a look at the links I provide in this answer and look at the conformity studies like the Milgram Experiment and the works of Dr Phil Zimbardo with his Stanford Prison Experiment and his book on The Lucifer Effect (a study of the Psychology of Evil and heroism) etc.

Stanley Milgram tested earlier conformity studies by Solomon Asch to see what extent the experiment can reach.

It seems that even though there are a few who are an exception, there are those with high moral standards who can be swayed into doing something bad.  Especially when their actions are "justified" by someone in authority or seem to have more knowledge of the situation.

There seems to be a fine line which can be very blurry to a degree.  For a rather pessimistic view on society have a look at this article.


The term eustress was coined by endocrinologist Hans Selye, consisting of the Greek prefix eu- meaning "good", and stress, literally meaning "good stress".

There is also the Yerkes–Dodson law which is an empirical relationship between arousal and performance dictating that performance increases with physiological or mental arousal, but only up to a point.

The curve diagram you provided in your question is a rehashing of the Yerkes–Dodson law curve (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908) — See also Diamond, et al. (2007).

This version is the most common version and often incorrectly cited in text books (Source).

Your question

Are there any ways to measure that you are within these limits of eutress in that curve?

Well detection of peak eustress levels would be practically impossible and one person's eustress levels can be very different to another person.

Le Fevre, et al's (2003) revised version of Spector’s (1998) model which incorporates all three tenets drawn from the literature on occupational stress

  Selye's concept of eustress or “good stress” appears to be largely ignored in the literature, while the Yerkes Dodson Law is illustrated as a model for management practice. We suggest that the meaning assigned to the word stress has shifted from Selye's original formulation, and that this shift, in conjunction with the use of the Yerkes Dodson Law leads to inappropriate management of stress in organizations.  We conclude that the concept that some stress is good and enhances performance should be rejected in favour of more useful and accurate concepts (Le Fevre, et al. 2003).

Le Fevre et al. (2003) also says:

  From the point of view of the individual, it is only they themselves who can manage, through perception and interpretation, to what degree they experience their organisational environment, including its demands and resources, as distress or eustress. They are themselves responsible for their eustress or distress. As such, it is the individuals’ responsibility and choice to reflect on, and manage their interpretation of the stressors inherent in their occupation, and to endeavour to make interpretations that increase eustress and decrease distress.

  From the management standpoint, it seems to us that a key contribution of management lies in assisting employees to experience the stressors of the workplace as eustress. First, when employees can be supported to make positive interpretations of their environment, support should be given. This may necessitate investment in coaching and a variety of related personal development interventions. Second, when demand and resources can be modified to reduce stressors identified by employees as distress, then management should seek to address these stressors. Management should not assume that any particular stressor is experienced as eustress or distress but should rather engage in understanding the employees’ experience of the stressor.

References

Diamond, D. M., Campbell, A. M., Park, C. R., Halonen, J., & Zoladz, P. R. (2007). The temporal dynamics model of emotional memory processing: a synthesis on the neurobiological basis of stress-induced amnesia, flashbulb and traumatic memories, and the Yerkes-Dodson law. Neural plasticity, Vol. 2007.DOI: 10.1155/2007/60803

Le Fevre, M., Matheny, J., & Kolt, G. S. (2003). Eustress, distress, and interpretation in occupational stress. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 18(7), pp 726-744.DOI: 10.1108/02683940310502412

Spector, P.E. (1998), A control theory of the job stress process. In: Cooper, C.L. (Ed.), Theories of Organizational Stress. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, pp 153-169.

Yerkes, R. M., & Dodson, J. D. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit‐formation. Journal of comparative neurology, 18(5), pp 459-482.DOI: 10.1002/cne.920180503


I'm using your example, because another example would lead to a different interpretation. Using your example is not meant to help you, just to illustrate my answer.

The normal situation is to forget things. There are people who dispute this, believing that you store any and all information you ever encountered (after all, what would the famous 90% unused brain be for?), but from a more scientific perspective, most of the info that goes into your sensorium is simply lost after it was used. Because you don't need to remember the color of the car that just passed.

So the question is, why and when do we actually store stuff in our memories? Short answer: when it appears important. Usually, because it is connected to an emotion. If you care about something, you remember it, if you don't, you won't. This does not mean that you only forget stuff that is unimportant, though. If you are stressed or distracted, important things are momentarily unimportant.

Interpreting your example from this perspective, we could infer that you did not much care about those questions you wrote, at least not individually, because you asked them for other purposes (passing the time, gaining reputation, socializing in a community), or that you have other more important stuff going on in your life and that you ask questions here as a distraction, while part of your mind is still elsewhere.

But then, there is another phenomenon: If you have a thought and want to remember it, it blocks your mind. I'm sure you have noticed how trying not to forget the great sentence that you want to begin your next novel with keeps you from having any other ideas. That's why writers carry notebooks: they jot down the sentence, and immediately forget it, freeing their minds to new ideas.

So when you write your question here, you are actually telling your mind: "Okay, that's done, now let's think of something else." And your mind complies, discards that idea, and starts thinking of other things, forgetting any former thoughts.


Which schools of psychotherapy are most credible to a hard scientist?

For several reasons, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) should have a good fit for someone who has a skeptic and scientific outlook on life.

There is a large body of research showing that CBT is effective (see e.g., Hofmann et al. 2012). Obviously, this also depends on the kind of disorder. And of course, other forms of therapy can be effective too. However, for some disorders, CBT may be more effective than other therapies. For example, in a recent randomized trial, CBT was more effective in treating Bulimia Nervosa (Poulson et al., 2014) than psychoanalytic therapy (the other main form of psychotherapy). By and large, most empirical evidence we have about psychotherapy regards CBT. Despite your premise that the question is not about effectiveness, I believe that a skeptic would love that.
CBT is informed by and has inspired much basic research about the cognitive processes that may underlie different disorders. For example, there is much research about attentional processes in affective disorders (e.g., MacLeod et al., 2002). A skeptic should value this.
Another way to frame this is to say that CBT is scientific in the sense that it is based on testable theories and disorder models. In contrast many concepts in psychoanalysis, such as resistance or repression may be criticized as unfalsifiable (Popper, 1963). Again, a skeptic should prefer a more scientific therapy form.
A core technique in CBT is to question wrong beliefs and assumptions. CBT has a very rational, thought-focused way of explaining an dealing with problems (some say overly). A central tenet of CBT is that people often hold wrong (self-defeating) beliefs about the world and that they engage in schematic thought processes (e.g. someone who has social phobia may have "catastrophizing" thoughts about how others might react to him in public and therefore avoid such situations). Questioning such beliefs should be right up a skeptic's alley.
Conducting behavioral experiments to collect evidence about oneself is an important therapeutic tool in CBT (e.g., Brennet-Levy et al. 2004). Whereas psychoanalytical approaches strongly rely on the interpretation of clients' (unconscious) conflicts, CBT encourages people to collect data about their thoughts and behaviors and to conduct experiments that clarify important questions about themselves. Skeptics should love this facts-driven approach.
Whereas psychoanalytic therapies are focused on trying to solve core, unconscious intrapersonal conflicts (brought from the past) in (mostly) long therapies, CBT is problem- and behavior-focused and short. A skeptic should like this pragmatism of CBT.
Even though your question highlights the role of the therapist, this is actually not an important feature of CBT. CBT relies on structured therapeutic manuals, and not so much on talent or personality of the therapist. In fact, CBT may be effective if conducted via the internet (Andersson et al., 2009), or even in the form of self-help books (Anderson et al., 2005). A skeptic should value that CBT is focused on technique and not on the therapist.

References

Andersson, G. (2009). Using the Internet to provide cognitive behaviour therapy. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 47, 175–180. doi:10.1016/j.brat.2009.01.010

Anderson, L., Lewis, G., Araya, R., Elgie, R., Harrison, G., Proudfoot, J., et al. (2005). Self-help books for depression: how can practitioners and patients make the right choice. British Journal of General Practice, 55, 387-392.

Bennett-Levy, J., Butler, G., Fennell, M., Hackmann, A., Mueller, M., Westbrook, D., & Rouf, K. (2004). Oxford Guide to Behavioural Experiments in Cognitive Therapy. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy: Science and Practice.

Hofmann, S. G., Asnaani, A., Vonk, I. J. J., Sawyer, A. T., & Fang, A. (2012). The Efficacy of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: A Review of Meta-analyses. Cognitive therapy and research, 36, 427–440. doi:10.1007/s10608-012-9476-1

MacLeod, C., Rutherford, E., Campbell, L., Ebsworthy, G., & Holker, L. (2002). Selective attention and emotional vulnerability: assessing the causal basis of their association through the experimental manipulation of attentional bias. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 111, 107–123.

Popper, K.R. (1963). Conjectures and Refutations. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Poulsen, S., Lunn, S., Daniel, S. I. F., Folke, S., Mathiesen, B. B., Katznelson, H., & Fairburn, C. G. (2014). A Randomized Controlled Trial of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy or Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Bulimia Nervosa. American Journal of Psychiatry, 171, 109–116. doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.2013.12121511


How to computationally model the Wisconsin Card Sorting task?

Dehaene & Changeux (1991) made a neural-network model:

  The coding units are clusters of neurons organized in layers, or assemblies. A sensonmotor loop enables the network to sort the input cards according to several criteria (color, form, etc.). A higher-level assembly of rule-coding clusters codes for the currently tested rule, which shifts when negative reward is received. Internal testing of the possible rules, analogous to a reasoning process, also occurs, by means of an endogenous autoevaluation loop. When lesioned, the model reproduces the behavior of frontal lobe patients.

Parks et al. (1992) extended the previous neural models of WCST to take into account verbal-fluency.

Amos (2000) built a neural-network model that helps distinguish between the sort of errors made by patients with schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease, and Huntington's disease. He relates the model to neuroanatomy and says:

  The model also made specific, empirically falsifiable predictions that can be used to explore the utility of these putative mechanisms of information processing in the frontal cortex and basal ganglia.

Monchi et al. (2000) followed a similar approach as Amos. Their model suggested different impairments in Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenic patients, and made specific predictions of what would be observed in fMRI scans. They tested this prediction in their paper.

By 2005, the WCST had become a benchmark for more general models. Rougier et al. (2005) made a general model of the prefrontal cortex based on general neurobiological principles as opposed to symbolic approaches. They model learnt from experience and generalized to novel tasks. They tested it on WCST and the Stroop task data for typical and frontally damaged subjects.

Kaplan et al. (2006) use a neural-network approach with two parts: a Hopfield net serves as the working memory and a Hamming block as a hypothesis generator.

Bishara et al. (2010) use a more ACT-R-like (although not actual ACT-R) model with probabilistic loading on symbolic rules. The resulting sequential learning model is used to identify specific process that subjects might be struggling with. It is suppose to help diagnosis in a clinical setting, and they test it on substance dependent individuals.

Rigotti et al. (2010) created a network of randomly connected neurons that could solve the task.  The key point was that the random connections induced mixed selectivity, which would solve the task with high probability.


How can psychologists define 'mental health' when we know quite little about complexities of human life?

Although you are correct in thinking, mental health is not defined merely by what others feel, it is a lot more personal. If I am understanding your question correctly, you believe that mental health is based on predictions. While predictions are necessary for defining a lesser known disorder, ones such as major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder are quite common and have been so for long enough that diagnosing them is relatively easy. In addition, it can be widely agreed upon that behavior such as suicide and self-harm are abnormal. A persistent change in mood is another indicator of a cognitive error. Lastly, hallucinations and delusions are also clearly indicative of an underlying problem. All of these symptoms must be present without the use of drugs, obviously. Any other behavior or thought pattern that interferes with daily life and/or is societally unacceptable should be a reason for alarm. These symptoms are clear and require no similar cases to diagnose an "issue with mental health" Aside from common, well-known disorders, evidence of other cases must be present in order to label such as a specific disorder. What I cannot prove are the disorders that are few and far between, and seem highly implausible. Regardless, if one seems "different" for an extended period of time and does not seem to be improving, it would be wise to seek help. Hope this makes sense, it was a fun question to answer;)


If the instructions of a group intelligence test are misunderstood, are the results of that test invalid?

Kelley (1927) constructed test validity as:

The problem of validity is that of whether a test really measures what it purports to measure, while the question of reliability is that of how accurately a test measures the thing which it does measure.

In the example provided, the test purports to measure some aspect of synonyms.  The test actually (due to the misinterpretation) measures antonyms.  Therefore, in the example provided, the test is not valid.  If it were to argued that it was a valid test of synonyms, then you would also have to admit that it was not reliable and/or accurate.
Kelley's construction of validity remains in common use and adequate for the example provided.  For a more complete view of validity, see Boag (2015).
References
Kelley, T. L. (1927). Interpretation of educational measurements. World Book. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b239527
Boag, S. (2015). Personality assessment,‘construct validity’, and the significance of theory. Personality and Individual Differences, 84, 36-44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.12.039


Alien hand syndrome (AHS) is an extremely rare disorder. It is so rare, there appears to be no available prevalence studies. In the AHS literature, case studies are therefore nearly universal. For all intents and purposes, it is reasonable to say that AHS appears to be a disease so rare that the empirical prevalence rates are in every listed case statistically indistinguishable from zero.

One recent paper by Sarva, Deik and Severt (2014) reviewed 109 studies on AHS patients. Their first and foremost result was the finding that there appears to be three overlapping types:

Frontal: Associated with involuntary groping, grasping and tool use.
Callosal: Associated with intentional opposing movements.
Posterior: Associated with avoidance responses and uncoordinated movements.

Interestingly, they also briefly report an even rarer alien limb phenomena involving the leg!

Based on their review, Sarva, Deik and Severt (2014) suggested that different types of AHS may be caused by different kinds of disruptions to an executive system which is partly responsible for resolving between-task conflicts and prioritizing actions, causing disconnects and impaired coordination between hemispheres. They conclude:

  Our understanding of underlying mechanisms remains incomplete, but evidence from pathological and functional neuroimaging studies suggests a role for network disruption causing bihemispheric disinhibition and/or interhemispheric disconnection. Depending on the variant and the underlying pathology, apraxia, neglect, cortical sensory deficits, and other neurologic abnormalities may also be present in varying degrees, likely explaining the considerable phenotypic variability among patients. Functional imaging studies likely will continue to expand our knowledge of the pathophysiology of AHS, but the limited number of patients in these studies and the diverse underlying pathologies should raise caution when attempting to generalize their results.

References

Sarva, H., Deik, A., & Severt, W. L. (2014). Pathophysiology and treatment of alien hand syndrome. Tremor and Other Hyperkinetic Movements, 4.


Is there a named psychological condition for people who find every bad thing to be someone's "fault?"

I thing what you are looking for is scapegoating :

  Scapegoating is the practice of singling out any party for unmerited
  negative treatment or blame as a scapegoat. Scapegoating may be
  conducted by individuals against individuals (e.g. "he did it, not
  me!"), individuals against groups (e.g., "I couldn't see anything
  because of all the tall people"), groups against individuals (e.g.,
  "Jane was the reason our team didn't win"), and groups against groups.

  A scapegoat may be an adult, child, sibling, employee, peer, ethnic,
  political or religious group, or country.

  ...

  Unwanted thoughts and feelings can be unconsciously projected onto
  another who becomes a scapegoat for one's own problems. This concept
  can be extended to projection by groups. In this case the chosen
  individual, or group, becomes the scapegoat for the group's problems.

Hostile Attribution Bias is another possibility, defined as the tendency to interpret the behaviour of another as having hostile intent even when the behaviour is ambiguous, neutral or benign.

References :

Roy F. Baumeister & Kathleen D. Vohs, 2007, Encyclopedia of Social Psychology
Berkowitz and Green, 1962, the stimulus qualities of the scapegoat, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 7, 202-207
Gemmill, G., 1998, The dynamics of scapegoating in small groups, Small Group Behavior, 20, 406-418


While spoting a liar, whether observing the verbal cue or observing the non-verbal cue helps?

It is not entirely clear whether you are asking how much weight should we place on different cues (if we want to spot liars) or how much people actually do use these cues. There is a big literature on lie detection though. Here is a recent paper that discusses some of this work and will give you a start.

Some of the salient points are:

People are actually pretty bad at guessing truths and lies, though it is hard to do experiments on.
Although there are some cues that give people away, these are faint and unreliable. The most reliable ones are actually just the things that they say (the facts).
Non-verbal cues and speech disturbances are actually pretty poor cues even though people think they are good ones. They are also pretty easy to fake.


How do I choose the correct sigma when applying a Gaussian filter to a fixation density map?

Yes, they almost certainly mean visual degrees. I presume you know how to calculate visual angles at the distance of your display and how to transform your eye tracked data to that coordinate system.

Full width at half maximum (FWHM) means just what the individual words say: for a Gaussian filter, there are going to be two points on either side of the center that are half of the maximum height of the Gaussian.

When you mention authors writing 2D circular Gaussian Kernel with 0.5° full width at half maximum they mean that the width of their kernel defined this way is 0.5 degrees (or more specifically, the diameter is 0.5 degrees, because they are talking about a 2D circular kernel).

Kernel widths can also be described as "half-width at half-maximum" which would be half of the FWHM.

See Wikipedia for a bit more: Full width at half maximum

To know what sigma to use, you will need to know how the units of your tracking measurements relate to visual degrees.


Term for incentives working without conscious awareness

Annoyingly, it depends what area of the research literature you happen to find yourself in. In the perception literature, the distinction lies between subliminal and supraliminal. In the memory and learning literature, the distinction lies between implicit and explicit. In dual-process decision-making theories, the distinction lies between automatic and controlled. The former terms broadly refer to "unconscious processing" while the latter terms refer to "conscious processing," but I wouldn't say unconscious/conscious is a well-defined distinction.

There is some general cross-overlap, but of these three distinctions and areas, the distinction that sees the most use in the other two areas would have to be explicit/implicit. They differ mostly in what stage of the process in the mind the researcher is interested in: perception, memory or thought. There is, to my knowledge, unfortunately no term which broadly captures all unconscious processing from input to output AND maps to the literature.

If you want the term to map to the literature, I think you'll have to commit to one or another. If it's for a lay audience, "implicit X" is fine, where X is whatever you think best fits the intended meaning.


How has geometry been applied in cognitive science?

Here are a few off the top of my head from neuroscience:

neural activity may primarily exist on low dimensional attractors.
reconstructing PET signal origins from emitted gamma rays
It's widely believed our brains are gyrencephalic (wrinkly) to maximize surface area.
Various distance metrics (Euclidean, Mahalanobis) are common tools for clustering data, for example spike sorting.
Neuron morphology (shape) follows function.
Microgeometry of objects is important for tactile texture perception.
Bat echolocation and fish electrosensation are limited in range due to the inverse square law.


Can rewards incentivise shortcuts to be taken which wouldn't be done otherwise?

TL;DR
When a boring, repetitive task is being gamed for rewards, there are two things that you need to look at. First, the problem definition and whether it is accurately defined (keeping in mind that autonomy is not lost). Second, the conditions of the reward and what is the actual behavior that is being rewarded.

There are two main factors influencing how effective or ineffective the system is for encouraging a certain behavior and they are:

The Problem Definition
The Reward Conditions

I will use two examples to discuss this problem:

First, the task of folding and putting in envelopes 40 letters.
Second, the task of proofreading 20 articles.

The Problem Definition
The first and foremost thing to look at is the problem itself. We are well-aware of human tendencies well before we even start to define a gamified system and so, I feel, it is the responsibility of the designer to be smart in defining the problem.
In the first example, the task itself consists of folding letters, and then putting them into envelopes. In this, a person may fold a letter in any way, any number of times, and may even just stuff it into the envelope. One way of reducing individuals from succumbing into bad habits is to redefine the problem to: fold letter, put in envelope and seal the envelope. Just this small change will now make it less likely for people to stuff an unfolded letter into the envelope as they themselves have to close it as well.
However, it is important to remember that one of the biggest motivators for gamified systems is autonomy, and over-defining a task will reduce it, thereby reducing the motivation to participate at all.
In the second case, there are multiple avenues by which the actual task can be avoided (read a few pages, read a few papers, etc.). So, its pretty clear, that this task has significant chances of being gamed.
Now, we come to the second factor that affects good behavior in a gamified system and how it can be leveraged to regulate it.
The Reward Conditions
The rewards being offered can be divided into three major types:

Participation-Contingent: The reward is awarded if the individual simply starts the task. In the first case, if the person, just does even one envelope, then he is given the reward. Similarly, in the second case, if the individual proofreads even one paper, he is given the award. This as can be seen will be least effective and promoting good behavior over long periods of time.

Completion-Contingent: The award is given to the individual if he completes the task, irrespective of the quality of the results. That is, all envelopes filled with letters folded (however they may be) and all articles proofread, not looking at accuracy or errors missed.

Performance-Contingent: The individual is rewarded if the quality of the work done is above a certain fixed threshold. None of the envelopes have any bulges anywhere and seal easily, and 18/20 articles are error-free. This is the most effective in preventing individuals from falling into bad behaviors within the system.

Therefore, it is important to think clearly about what the reward is and what is actually being rewarded.
Summary
Be aware of the task and what it requires an individual to do, and also, what a reward encourages and what is the minimum that needs to be done to get it.


How many samples are there when test subjects come through different recruitment strategies?

This depends on your research question, as well as the population you want to generalize your conclusions to.

If you care about whether complex sounds are easier to discriminate when they are longer, you can regard all the participants to be one sample because there is no theoretical reason to assume that people differ in this. In principle, the more universal the subject of your study is, the less you need to care about your sampling technique because any person should be as good as any other. In practice, the sample will likely be first year psychology students :)

But if you care about computer literacy or car ownership or attitudes towards standardized testing (i.e. if your question relates to individual differences or group differences), then clearly your samples are drawn from very different parts of the population. In that case you can say that you have drawn four samples. Or perhaps less - perhaps you drew two: people unlikely to have cars (school kids and train takers) and people likely to have cars (American newspaper readers and internet users). This is not the best example but you can see the logic.


Please recommend a book about codependency that is not in regards to substance abuse

Most any book on codependency will mention substance abuse, if for no other reason than the concept began there. Treatment of codependency is about empowering the person who is the caregiver to stop that sort of behavior. The best book I can recommend (I'm a LMHC) is Codependent No More. I would also suggest looking at Attachment Theory, as some researchers believe it can encompass the problems ascribed to codependency in a wider-reaching theoretical approach. To that end you might read Attached.


What percentage of the population have the brain anomaly associated with the inability to exhibit empathy?

In short, the question cannot be answered as-is.  I will explain why, and then answer a broader question that you may find useful instead.

Reverse Inference:

As background, consider the common problem of reverse inference: Suppose we identify subjects with relatively low grey-matter volumes (GMV) in the left anterior insula (LAI).  Can we conclude that these subjects have low empathy?  Well, the source paper for the referenced article already says ... not really:

  GM volume of the left anterior  insula  was  marginally,  positively
  correlated  with emotional empathy (... p<.10 ...).

What about NPD, can we conclude that they have NPD?  Well, subjects with low LAI GMV might have NPD, or they might just be good singers!  Or maybe they are just good at learning new languages!  In fact, low LAI GMV is associated with some cognitive advantages, as well as many mental disorders.  See, one of the problems with reverse inference is that psychological constructs simply do not line up well with gross neuroanatomical features - that is, brain regions do multiple things.

Anatomical Abnormality:

A second issue is with the concept of an abnormality.  Although the source paper discusses "structural abnormalities in fronto-paralimbic brain regions of patients with NPD," it does not define this abnormality.  Consider this figure from the paper:

Here, the vertical (Y) axis represents LAI GMV.  It does appear that NPD patients (green) have lower LAI GMV than healthy controls (yellow).  However, where is the abnormality?  What volume difference constitutes an identifiable condition?

Normal Distribution:

Technically, we should also be concerned with the low power of this paper (only 17 subjects in each group).  For example, an earlier study (with 11 subjects in each group) found differences in the right anterior insula rather than the left.  Hmmm...  Replication crisis anyone?  But let's put that aside for a minute, and consider the question at hand.

Suppose for a minute that low LAI GMV did indicate something about empathy (though it probably does not), and that there was a definable abnormality of LAI GMV (though there probably is not), what percentage of the general population would have such an abnormality?

Well, it's reasonable to use a normal distribution to estimate this.  For this, we need average and standard deviation values for LAI GMV.  I am not aware of a meta-analysis looking at this, but some individual studies report such values.  For example, this study of 39 subjects reports LAI GMV (corrected for total brain size) mean = 2209mm3 and std = 214.2mm3.  Supposing that this is representative of the general population (I wouldn't assume that, but it's a start), a normal distribution might look like this:

For this example, I just went with the cut-off being the mean for clinical patients in the study (2124mm3), resulting in about 35% of the population below the cut-off, but you can construct your own graph with whatever cut-off you deem useful for your purposes.


Is there difference between a memory of a dream and memory of waking experience?

Daytime conscious experiences come from our sensory organs. At any given moment, these organs split the incoming information between millions of neurons which then transport the info back to the brain. The info is processed in the sensory cortices, and then REASSEMBLED. This explains your "divided" experiences during the day. At night the conscious dream experiences come from memory where most of the information is already reassembled (consolidated). THAT is, I believe the difference.The other difference is in the attention we pay to the experiences. During the day whatever we pay the most attention to- is remembered best. At night, we are not making conscious attentional choices.


Meaning of a phrase '... reciprocal of neutral density value required arranged on an inverted scale'

From earlier in the paper:

The intensity of the flash was controlled by Kodak neutral density filters in the path of the projection beam.

Neutral density filters are those that are intended to filter equally across the visible light spectrum. They're using them to control the light intensity (a lot more common back in the day when it wasn't as easy to control brightness electrically due to the light sources used, though I believe still commonly used in psychophysics experiments and certainly still used in microscopy where we still use some older types of light source). The "reciprocal of neutral density value required" is an effective luminance value, because "more neutral density (filter)" means "less light", so 1/(neutral density filter) is increasing as light is increasing. It's a unit of convenience since the experimenter knows the strength of their filters.
As far as the bars above the numbers, these are clearly to indicate negative numbers though I agree the notation is unusual, it may be a relic of an earlier day in typesetting. There is a more standard notation to indicate the first digit of a logarithm as negative with a bar (see Wikipedia; see also here where it is referred to as a "vinculum" but again only for some of the digits in a number rather than the whole thing) but that doesn't quite match the usage here.

are these log relative luminance values?

In the figure posted, these are log absolute luminance values, measured in units of log(foot-Lamberts). Negative logarithms indicate luminance values less than 1 foot-Lambert.

how can it be that higher values mean less contrast?

If the background is brighter, and the stimulus to be detected is a flash of light, then the brighter the background the less the flash will stand out: less contrast between the flash and the background.


Difference between drowsiness/sedation and sleepiness

Sedation

This is a forced state of drowsiness or sleep and as indicated in your Ipnos link, it will not necessarily help with drowsiness or sleepiness brought about due to problems with your circadian rhythm

Sedation is

  the reduction of irritability or agitation by administration of sedative drugs, generally to facilitate a medical procedure or diagnostic procedure.

Drowsiness and Sleepiness

The terms drowsiness, sleepiness and hypnagogic period are often used to describe the same thing in the general domain, but but in the scientific domain there are important neurophysiological and psychophysiological differences.

Hypnagogic period

This is the neurophysiological and psychophysiological transition period from the wake to sleep state.

Drowsiness

This is the state of the transition period from the wake to sleep state that can be objectively measured, for example, by EEG (please see Hori et al., 1994)

Typical tests that describe the quality and quantity of the drowsyness are Multiple Sleep Latency Test (MSLT) and Maintenance of Wakefulness Test (MWT) (Doghramji et al., 1997).

Sleepiness

This is the subjective state of the subject/patient. It can also be qualified and quantified, but only by rating scales such as the Stanford Sleepiness Scale (SSS), the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) (See also Johns, (1991)), the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (Åkerstedt & Gillberg, 1990), etc.

References

Åkerstedt, T., & Gillberg, M. (1990).  Subjective and objective sleepiness in the active individual, The International Journal of Neuroscience, 52(1-2): pp. 29–37)
DOI: 10.3109/0020745900899424 PMID: 2265922

Doghramji, K., Mitler, M. M., Sangal, R. B., Shapiro, C., Taylor, S., Walsleben, J., Belisle, C. Erman, M. K., Hayduk, R., Hosn, R., O’Malley, E. B., Sangal, J. M., Schutte, S. L., & Youakima, J. M. (1997). A normative study of the maintenance of wakefulness test (MWT), Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology 103(5): pp. 554–562.
DOI: 10.1016/S0013-4694(97)00010-2 PMCID: PMC2424234

Hori, T., Hayashi, M., & Morikawa, T. (1994). Topographical EEG changes and the hypnagogic experience. In R. D. Ogilvie & J. R. Harsh (Eds.), Sleep onset: Normal and abnormal processes (pp. 237-253).
DOI: 10.1037/10166-014

Johns, M. W. (1991). A new method for measuring daytime sleepiness: the Epworth sleepiness scale, Sleep 14(6): pp. 540-545
DOI: 10.1093/sleep/14.6.540 PMID: 1798888


Why can we not see around our point of focus of our eyes?

I basically agree with @Nick Stauner, but I want to add another important aspect, namely the gradient of photoreceptor densities in the human retina: In the fovea there is a sharp peak in cone density compared to more eccentric regions, as described in Curcio et al. (1990) and see the following graph obtained from Web Vision:

The cones have a different retinal circuitry, as about 20-100 cones converge onto one ganglion cell via bipolar cells (Webvision. In contrast, tens of thousands of rods may connect onto a single ganglion cell through massive convergence of rod input into bipolar cells and amacrine cell connections (Webvision). This, together with the exceptional high density of cones in the fovea result in excellent visual acuity in the central field of view, and far lower acuity more eccentrically. Indeed, eccentric vision is used for movement detection and rod-driven night vision (conditions of low lighting), while central vision is used for tasks where high-acuity is preferred (analysis of fine spatial detail such as reading).

References
- Curcio et al. J Comp Neurol 1990; 292:292-523
- Webvision The Organization of the Retina and Visual System, Utah University


Is there knowledge of the receptive field patterns of cortical columns in associative brain regions?

Short answer
Associative brain areas are not retinotopically organized. Only lower visual areas more upstream from these areas are organized in such a predictable, low-level way. Higher up, things get complicated and unpredictable.

Background
Visual receptive fields and retinotopy are generally well-preserved in the periphery and subcortical areas (e.g. in the retina, optic nerve and the LGN in the brainstem) and lower cortical areas (e.g., V1 and V2) (e.g., Palmer & Rosenquist (1974)). Typically, receptive fields are larger and less well-defined in higher visual areas and are virtually absent in the associative cortices, where complex associations within and between modalities are made (e.g., Smith et al. (2011)).

Consider the ventral stream in the visual pathway as an example (Fig. 1). Here, the primary visual cortex (V1) shows simple representations of the retinal image with retinotopicity. However, along the way to the associative cortices, cells become responsive to progressively more complicated structures, including specific faces.

Fig. 1. The ventral ('what') stream of the visual system. source: Kaiser & Haselhuhn (2017)

References
- Kaiser and Haselhuhn, J Neurosci (2017); 37(8): 1965-7
- Palmer & Rosenquist, Brain Res (1974); 67(1): 27-42
- Smith et al., Cerebral Cortex (2011); 11(12): 1182–90


What motivates individuals to engage in cyberbullying?

From my understanding of the problem and my years of experience with the internet since the early days when IRC was popular and web forums were just starting to emerge, I believe I can shed some light on this subject. probably not enough for a full answer but more than just a comment.
I feel that a large part of the problem is the anonymity (or perceived anonymity) as well as the sense of detachment that communication over the internet provides us with. I think that psychologically it is much easier to be critical, mean, cruel and otherwise have a lack of empathy when not dealing with another person face-to-face or verbally. Just as text-based communication does not convey tone of voice to allow us to know when others online are being sarcastic, one can lose the sense of how much one's actions are hurting others when they are cruel online.
With respect to perceived anonymity, it becomes greatly easier to rationalize or entirely forget that one's actions have consequences. It's easy to attack someone online and never have them know who is attacking them. This is demonstrated by a 2005 study done by Qing Li of the University of Calgary (I am unable to find the actual link to the study but have found many places which reference it) that states that 41% of students surveyed did not know the identity of the perpetrators. To me this indices that the anonymity provides a means for humans to rationalize behaviors we otherwise would be ashamed to be associated with.
The paper Cyber bullying:  Clarifying Legal Boundaries for School Supervision in Cyberspace by Shaheen Shariff/McGill University, Canada and Dianne L. Hoff/University of Maine, Orono, USA also draws some very interesting parallels between cyberbullying and the 1954 novel Lord of the Flies by  William Golding, speaking to the roots of cruelty in human nature as well as lack of supervision/perceived anonymity:

Young people in cyber-space lose their inhibitions in the absence of no central power, clear institutional or familial boundaries, or hierarchical structures (Milson & Chu, 2002). As Bandura (1991) explained over a decade ago, physical distance provides a context in which students can ignore or trivialize their misbehavior, as easily as Golding’s boys did on their distant island. In cyber-space this form of disengagement is amplified
Lack of institutional and parental rules in cyber-space have the effect of creating virtual islands similar to the physical islands in Lord of the Flies. The absence of adult supervision allows perpetrators free reign to pick on students who may not fit their definition of “cool” because of their weight, appearance, accent, abilities or disabilities (Shariff and Strong-Wilson, 2005). Cyber-space provides a borderless playground that empowers some students to harass, isolate, insult, exclude and threaten classmates. [...] Without limits and clear codes of conduct, communication in cyber-space (even among adults) can rapidly deteriorate into abuse because of the knowledge and sense of security that comes with the limited possibility of being detected and disciplined.

It also talks about teenage hormones being a driving factor:

Moreover, adolescent hormones rage and influence social relationships as children negotiate social and romantic relationships and become more physically self-conscious, independent, and insecure (Boyd, 2000). Research on dating and harassment practices at the middle school level (Tolman, 2001) shows that peer pressure causes males to engage in increased homophobic bullying of male peers and increased sexual harassment of female peers to establish their manhood. During this confusing stage of adolescent life, the conditions are ripe for bullying to take place. The Internet provides a perfect medium for adolescent anxieties to play themselves out.

I associate it somewhat with the notion by Thomas Hobbes that humans are "warlike", that by our very nature we are completely self-centered, and that we form societies and governments by giving up some of our selfishness and collectively adhering to social contracts for a greater good. By the nature of online communities often we lose this sense of responsibility to the community and each other, and we are prone to regress to our more basic, warlike state. This is my personal belief; I am still searching for actual references with which I can back this up with.


What to call measures obtained between pre-test and post-test?

People use a wide range of language to describe measurement points in repeated measures design.

For example if you measured some dependent variable on multiple occasions you might have something like:

baseline (B)
treatment week 1 (T1)
treatment week 2 (T2)
post treatment (F0)
six month follow up (F6)
one year follow (F12)

Obviously such a design has aspects that are consistent with a pre-post test design, but it has more time points than just that. So my suggestion is to just have clear descriptive labels for the measurement points.


How to recruit participants for fMRI study who do not fall asleep during experiment?

Based on my own experience as a student, the problem is probably not that your participants are lazy... the problem is that, like many university students, they're severely sleep-deprived.

While a student, I once agreed to participate in a friend's (non-MRI) study, which involved listening to sounds and clicking buttons in response. To my embarrassment, despite being enthusiastic about participating, I kept drifting off briefly during the study. I managed to complete it, but I'm sure my results were affected. I'm pretty sure that if I had ever tried to participate in an MRI study, I would have fallen completely asleep.

I don't have experience running MRI studies so I'm not really sure what to suggest to solve this problem, other than to try recruiting from less sleep-deprived populations, or redesigning the study tasks to be more engaging.


Where is knowledge of how the brain works stored?

This type of knowledge is known as "semantic memory"; a type of "declarative memory". We don't yet know where semantic memory is stored in the brain, although there is evidence that hippocampal and/or parahippocampal structures are required to store semantic memory.

The fine details of exactly what a "memory" is in terms of neurobiology, where and how it is stored, and how it is retrieved is an area of neuroscience that is currently under very active research. However, our knowledge is very rudimentary at present.


How does architecture impact cognition and mental health?

Although this paper is not grounded in neurobiology "Up speeds you down. Awe-evoking monumental buildings trigger behavioral and perceived freezing" by Joey et al. should be a good starting point for further research into the domain of environmental psychology with a focus on human-made environments.

In the paper, subjects are shown to have slower reaction times when faced with larger buildings, which they relate to behavioural freezing.


What do you call the inability to see alternative solutions to a problem?

This is called the Einstellung effect:

  ...Einstellung refers to a person's predisposition to solve a given problem in a specific manner even though "better" or more appropriate methods of solving the problem exist

It is related to the idea of functional fixedness:

  Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used. `


This is just a few thoughts.

I agree with @adb that an obvious way to use facebook for conducting surveys is just to provide a link to an external website that runs the survey.

There is an interesting article by Tan and colleagues where they talk about using paid advertisements to get targeted participants on Facebook.  I thought the following statistics were interesting in highlighting the sheer scale required in order to convert an ad into completed surveys:  1.1 million ad impressions resulted in 280 clicks on the advertisement of which 59 responded to the survey of which 39 completed the survey.

References

Tan, H., Forgasz, H., Leder, G., & McLeod, A. SURVEY RECRUITMENT USING FACEBOOK: THREE STUDIES. FULL TEXT


Is it possible for non-BDSM relationships to learn anything from slave-master relationships?

BDSM relationships are generally very clear on the respective roles of the individuals. Thus, they provide a refuge from the "war of the sexes" that is being fought in most non-BDSM relationships.

In non-BDSM relationships today, men and women are usually extremely confused about their roles. Men and women both have difficulties accepting women as (co)providers; both partners are expected to partake in child-rearing and household chores, which does not relieve one partner from the tedium of the job, but double the stress by leading to conflicts and an unclear diffusion of responsibility; sex is a minefield where men are afraid to "use" their women, and women can no longer "let go"; etc.

BDSM relationships are reactionary in that they return to the clarity and emotional safety of pre-feminist relationships, only without the patriarchal roles. As both Skippy (user3267) in her question and MingYue in his answer have described, BDSM relationships are often less about specific forms of sexuality, but about a specific from of relationship: one with clearly defined roles, and both partners being able to relax and be themselves in the secure knowledge of what is expected of them, how to behave, and where the limits of their agreement lie – because every relationship is a contract, only non-BDSM relationships make the mistake of tabooing this fact and clogging the free flow of an honest exchange with a thick layer of romantic spirituality.

What non-BDSM relationships can learn from BDSM relationships is to communicate clearly, to define the roles of each partner, and to stop feeling guilty about not loving in a politically correct way. Equal rights don't apply inside the bedroom.

Since there has been some debate concerning the dangers and pathology of sadism, I would like to append a paraphrase of a section in a textbook on sexual deviance (Fiedler, 2004, p. 267f.):

  Research has shown that an inclination to sexual sadism is a mostly safe and harmless preference. Practices of sexual sadism are usally performed with the utmost caution and care, so that injury or trauma is extremely rare (Scott, 1983; Weinberg & Kamel, 1983).

  Studies with persons egaging in sadistic practices with their partners have repeatedly found that these persons are socially well integrated, valued by their friends and neighbors and successful (Spengler, 1977; 1979; Scott, 1983; Moser & Levitt, 1987; Baumeister & Butler, 1997). Some authors attest that the social adjustment and psychic health of individuals engaging in sadistic practices with their partners are above average.

  Since an inclination towards sexual masochism is about four times as common as an inclination towards sexual sadism (Baumeister & Butler, 1992), we may conclude that some persons practicing sadism in their relationships are not sadistic at all but rather complying with the needs of their loved ones.

  In sum, a majority of persons performing sadism in their relationships have no psychological disorder.

Sources:

Baumeister, R. F., & Butler, J. L. (1997). Sexual masochism: Deviance without pathology. In D. R. Laws & W. T. O'Donohue (Eds.), Sexual Deviance: Theory, Assessment, and Treatment (pp. 225-239). New York: Guilford.
Fiedler, P. (2004). Sexuelle Orientierung und sexuelle Abweichung [Sexual Orientation and Sexual Deviance]. Weinheim: Beltz.
Moser, C., & Levitt, E. E. (1987). An exploratory-descriptive study of a sadomasochistically oriented sample. Journal of Sex Research, 23, 322-337.
Scott, G. G. (1983). Erotic power: An exploraton of dominance and submission. Secausus, NJ: Citadel.
Spengler, A. (1977). Manifest sadomasochism of males: Results of an empirical study. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 6, 441-456.
Spengler, A. (1979). Sadomasochisten und ihre Subkulturen. Frankfurt: Campus.
Weinberg, T. S., & Kamel, W. L. (Eds.) (1983). S and M: Studies in sadomasochism. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus.


How to test whether THC or CBD gives a mental boost?

The only study I'm aware of is the following:

  Cannabis increased verbal fluency in low creatives to the same level as that of high creatives. Cannabis increased state psychosis-like symptoms in both groups and the high creativity group were significantly higher in trait schizotypy, but this does not appear to be linked to the verbal fluency change. Acute cannabis use increases divergent thinking as indexed by verbal fluency in low creatives.

Regarding whether THC or CBD causes an increase in creativity the authors note that:

  A few studies have attempted to objectively investigate whether cannabis increases creativity. Cannabis users produced more original (i.e. statistically infrequent) responses on an associative ability test when intoxicated with the drug compared to users given placebo (Block, Farinpour, & Braverman, 1992). Similarly, verbal fluency was significantly and dose-dependently improved by THC (the active ingredient in cannabis) compared with placebo in healthy volunteers given all treatments (Curran, Brignell, Fletcher, Middleton, & Henry, 2002). In contrast, Tinklenberg, Darley, Roth, Pferbhaum, and Koppel (1978) found that cannabis did not enhance scores in uniqueness, fluency, flexibility or elaboration during an object description task, considered to be a measure of creativity.

Schafer et al. 2012: Investigating the interaction between schizotypy, divergent thinking and cannabis use


Is sleep time related to any other characteristic?

Both sleep time, onset and duration have been correlated in various studies, some hard and some soft with intelligence.

This study suggests that the more intelligent people tend to be night owls, and stay up later in the day. This is somewhat related to intelligent people tending to seek out things that are not the "norm" for stimulation.

Related to that, is a theory that smart people need less sleep, as their brains are more efficient while they are asleep. This study bears that out, as a group of 60 children from 7 to 11 years old exhibited higher cognitive function when getting less sleep.

Both of these tend to bear out the perception that smart people sleep less. Napoleon is estimated to have an IQ of 145, using various estimations of accomplishments versus age.

Conversely, physical activity is known for needing higher amounts of sleep, and lack of sleep can impact both physical and mental recovery. This study with basketball players showed both mental and physical improvements with extended (10 hour) sleep periods. However, I could not find anything suggesting that stronger people slept more or less as a condition of being strong.


Why are some of us attracted to certain women while others are not

I've been pondering this question for awhile. What are the psychological differences between us men that cause us to be attracted to different types of women.

I assume that neither of you actually knows that woman, so the only "type" of person she could be to either of you is an actress (along with her other attributes: mother of 6 children, special envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), humanitarian, etc.).

People often put someone on a pedestal for various reasons, and redefine their preferences later.

Perhaps she has done something that your friend admires and that increases his opinion of her, while doing nothing to actually increase her attractiveness.

This article: "10 Highly Attractive Traits In Women (That Have Nothing to Do With Looks)" (which is hardly a definitive and reliable source) explains a few things that are probably relevant to an answer: kindness, positivity and sense of humour, passionate about her pursuits, confidence, emotional responsibility, decisiveness, her own sense of style, gentleness - not that you've seen her on her 'bad days', it's really a matter of perception.

Wikipedia (another non-expert) has a well thought out webpage and a section on female attractiveness. It lists Jessica Alba as proportional to the most attractive features:

  "A study by the University of Toronto found that specific ratios in the female human face correlated with attractiveness. The distance from pupil to pupil was 46% of the distance of the width of the face (from inside edge of ear to inside edge of ear). The distance between midpoint of eyes to midpoint of mouth was 36% of the length of the face from the chin to the hairline. Researchers found that ideal measurements, in proportion to the overall size of the face, were close to the average of all female profiles.".

The website MorphThing has closeups of each of them, and a mock-up of their faces combined:

If you're friend comes back with, "Oh yeah, I didn't mean Angelina Jolie, I meant Jessica Alba" - well that's another thing that happens. I know females whom are better looking than either of them, not as accomplished but 'better looking'.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Both of them are 40 and have a few children from other men, so I'm going to pass. I know females whom appear quite beautiful but make a lot of mistakes, covering for them wouldn't be worth the trouble.

I agree with you that your friend could have picked someone else. The wikipedia link provides many links to various studies as well as mentioning that beyond 'general traits' that opinions differ in different parts of the world.

This question is older than Aphrodite of Milos and Aphrodite of Knidos. So the answer is not "opinion based" the best explanation seems to be that the layperson seems to believe that they can look at facial features and body appearance, from that they can make a judgment about fertility; that being the deciding factor based on genetic selection. I (we) believe that some people are not so skillful as others.


Either, depending on the bias.
For example, the Müller-Lyer illusion could well have some significant learned aspects (how much is debated). Categorical perception of phonemes is a kind of bias, I guess, that's definitely mostly learning. At the other end of the spectrum supposedly 'irrational' context effects in decision making have been observed in slime molds, those are probably universal (so they're probably also adaptive).

In general it's probably not very useful to split cognition into 'biases' and 'the rest'. Maybe think of cognition as a memory system (with some flaws and a salience-not-probability weighting scheme) a reasoning/decision system (with limited resources and high time pressures) a perceptual system (facing a fundamentally underspecified problem) etc etc... the 'biases' are not really distinct processes. From that framing the question is hard to answer. If you singled out a particular bias, probably someone here could tell an evo story about how it came to be though! Maybe even a plausible one.


Two time points, control and experimental groups: What design is it?

You could call it a 2 by 2 mixed design where condition is a between-subjects factor and has two levels (intervention, no intervention) and time is a within-subjects factor and has two levels (time 1 and time 2).

Regarding how to analyse this data, check out this question on Best practice when analysing pre-post treatment-control designs.


Relationship between cognitive load and self-indulgent behavior in simple task completion

Gailliot et al (2007), didn't do it with a memorization task, but with a variety of other tasks requiring self-control:

  The present work suggests that self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source. Laboratory tests of self-control (i.e., the Stroop task, thought suppression, emotion regulation, attention control) and of social behaviors (i.e., helping behavior, coping with thoughts of death, stifling prejudice during an interracial interaction) showed that (a) acts of self-control reduced blood glucose levels, (b) low levels of blood glucose after an initial self-control task predicted poor performance on a subsequent self-control task, and (c) initial acts of self-control impaired performance on subsequent self-control tasks, but consuming a glucose drink eliminated these impairments. Self-control requires a certain amount of glucose to operate unimpaired. A single act of self-control causes glucose to drop below optimal levels, thereby impairing subsequent attempts at self-control.

Gailliot, Matthew T., et al. "Self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source: Willpower is more than a metaphor." Journal of personality and social psychology 92.2 (2007): 325. PDF


What triggers people to do competitive activities?

Culture, psychology and physiology (gender) all play an important role is determining ones willingness and ability to compete.

In one sense your nationality influences your desire to compete. Competition and conflict does not originate with Americans but we have fostered via our culture a society of those who compete. Human nature outside of modern social forces was largely communal and cooperative based.

Psychologically speaking on an individual basis what techniques you know to handle competition will help you perform under the stress of competition but will not itself cause you to be a better performer. It seems the challenge or resistance causes development; not competition.

Testosterone and the male gender roles make competition easier for men. Men are less anxious to start competition. Being easier to start will cause more men to engage in competitive behavior than woman. (Even though women are equally competitive once they begin). Men also outperform women on higher competitive test like college entrance exams where as women outperform men on high school exit exams.

  (a) attitudes toward competition (although men may feel comfortable performing in a competitive setting, women may be more anxious about such prospects), (b) beliefs about relative performance (men may be more confident that they are among the highest-performing participants and thus be more inclined to compete), and (c) risk and feedback aversion (the tournament is not only competitive but is also more uncertain and provides more information about relative performance than the piece-rate scheme; if women are more averse to such factors, they may be less inclined to select
  competitive compensation).

-Gender and Competition: Why do woman shy away from competition.