What is the meaning of the brain scan of borderline patients?

This picture in her talk (which is very good, by the way) refers to the study about amygdala hyperreactivity - see below. Essentially the picture shows fMRI scan differences between  controls and borderline patients when looking at neutral, happy, sad and fearful faces. Neutral faces and fixation point were used to transition between the exposure blocks to the emotional faces. Authors state the study points towards the role of greater amygdala activation in borderline patients being a key component to their emotional vulnerability in context of disturbed interpersonal relationships. To put it very simply - borderline patients' amygdala response (i.e. mostly - fear) is more sensitive. The speaker does not talk about the above picture in particular; it rather serves as a general illustration for her presentation.

Donegan, N. H., Sanislow, C. A., Blumberg, H. P., Fulbright, R. K., Lacadie, C., Skudlarski, P., … Wexler, B. E. (2003). Amygdala hyperreactivity in borderline personality disorder: implications for emotional dysregulation. Biological Psychiatry, 54(11), 1284–1293. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0006-3223(03)00636-X

In addition I found a good overview article on neuroimaging in borderline patients:

Lis, E., Greenfield, B., Henry, M., Guilé, J. M., & Dougherty, G. (2007). Neuroimaging and genetics of borderline personality disorder: a review. Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience, 32(3), 162–173.


What cognitive bias is it when an (ideally objective) evaluation is influenced by the prior opinion of another person?

It's an example of the confirmation bias:

  Confirmation bias (...) is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses.

Research has shown that people have a strong tendency to engage in a positive test strategy when investigating a hypothesis (see e.g., Klayman & Ha, 1978). That is, when testing an expectation (such as in your example) they tend to search for confirming, rather than disconfirming evidence. This tendency then results in the kind of confirmation bias you are describing in your example.

References

Klayman, J., & Ha, Y. (1987). Confirmation, disconfirmation, and information in hypothesis testing. Psychological Review, 94, 211–228. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.94.2.211


What personality traits affect ability to cope with pain?

Gathered from M. Pecina et al., “Personality Trait Predictors of Placebo Analgesia and Neurobiological Correlates,” Neuropsychopharmacology, doi: 10.1038/NPP.2012.227, 2012:

  A recent study has found that personality traits appear to influence
  how strongly a person responds to a placebo treatment for pain.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/unique-everybody-else/201301/personality-and-pain-relief

  Pain relief tended to be stronger in participants who rated themselves
  higher in the personality traits of ego resiliency and agreeableness
  and lower in neuroticism.
  [...]
  The facets that predicted placebo response most strongly were high altruism and straightforwardness (facets of agreeableness) and low angry hostility (a neuroticism facet that is also related to low agreeableness).

More thorough explanations are found in the link provided.
Further information on the same study:
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/33300/title/Personality-Predicts-Placebo-Effect/


What are the neurological mechanisms for a fear of heights when atop a building, but not in a plane?

A fear of heights on buildings is very common because there are natural vestibular and vertigo responses within certain height ranges. Furthermore, the effect is heightened if you're exposed to the elements out on a balcony as opposed to within the building.

Fear of flying is almost always related to the sensations of landing and taking off. If you've flown before you'll notice that those two events are very turbulent and it even seems amazing that some airplanes can stay together. However, once in the air you don't have the same effects of acrophobia that many people have on high buildings. Essentially, all perspective of height is removed when you look out the window of an airplane and thus the cues that trigger acrophobia. Your brain sees it like a painting of things in the distance and doesn't process it as height in the same way at all.

Brandt, T., Arnold, F., Bes, W., & Kapteyn, T. S. (1989). "The mechanism of physiological height vertigo. I. Theoretical approach and psychophysics". Acta Otolaryngol, 5-6, 513-23.


How to report an F statistic in APA style?

The F ratio statistic has a numerator and denominator degrees of freedom. Thus, you report:

F (numerator_df, denominator_df) = F_value, p = ..., effect size = ...

The numerator degrees of freedom relates to the factor of interest; the denominator degrees of freedom corresponds to the degrees of freedom for the error variance.

The exact way that these degrees of freedom are calculated depends on the statistical test you are using. Standard textbooks will describe these approaches.
For example, in a standard one-way between subjects ANOVA with $k$ groups and $n$ participants per group, you would have $k-1$ numerator degrees of freedom and $kn-k$.

Generally, you will be able to read off these numbers from the output of your statistics package.

Example

Here is an example with k=3 groups and n=5 participants. See the df in the "group" row and the "error" row.

F(2, 12) = 24.667, p < .001.


Psychologically, how does volunteer work help the volunteer?

Some of the "pay-offs" of altruism, but within the more extreme circumstance of risking one's life to save another are address in this answer.

In my opinion, volunteer work fulfills a person's needs to be useful, it also places a person in a position of superiority, as they are bestowing their "gifts" upon a "lesser" person in need. There is evidence that charitable work releases chemicals akin to pleasure in the brain. [Dan Schulman]

I cite Ferguson, Eamonn; Farrell, Kathleen; Lawrence, Claire :

  The benevolence hypothesis is supported, suggesting that blood donor
  motivation is partly selfish.

Citing  from the moral maze.

  "Even in human societies we can still trace many behaviours seemingly
  carried out for the benefit of the group back to benefits for the
  individual," Stanford explains.

In the study Altruism Costs - the Cheap Signal from Amygdala, it was demonstrated that there a neurological changes within the brain when contemplating making donations.

  neural processing of the cost-benefit difference. The presentation of
  a charitable donation goal evoked an insula activity that predicted
  the later decision to donate.../...   Our findings imply that the
  emotional system has an important role in real decision making as it
  signals what kind of immediate cost and reward an outcome is
  associated with.

So in summary, I believe the pay-off is a feeling of well-being, that is in accord with supporting the individual's self-esteem and some evolutionary theories of our instincts as a species.

The Biology of Benevolence
Humans may be hardwired to cooperate. The choice to cooperate stimulates pleasure centers in the brain.
By Dan Schulman,
published on November 01, 2002 - last reviewed on May 02, 2006

Blood donation is an act of benevolence rather than altruism.
Ferguson, Eamonn; Farrell, Kathleen; Lawrence, Claire
Health Psychology, Vol 27(3), May 2008, 327-336

Altruism Costs - the Cheap Signal from Amygdala.
Gospic K, Sundberg M, Maeder J, Fransson P, Petrovic P, Isacsson G, Karlström A, Ingvar M.


Why can't we understand text without subvocalizating it?

In japanese language, kanjis are more than phonemes but represent an idea. For instance, both tree and spirit have the same sound (ki) and can be written with the hiragana "letter" き. But when kanjis are used tree is 木 while spirit is 気.
Therefore, it is possible to read without subvocalizing. We can read as if it was graphics.
So, when using kanji is much more like text > undestanding.
But is hard to think doing it purely because we use many words that have no physical meaning such as "as", "such", "meaning" etc.


Pashler et al

It is worth reading the critical review of learning styles by Pashler et al. To quote some of the summary:

  Our review of the literature disclosed ample evidence that children
  and adults will, if asked, express preferences about how they prefer
  information to be presented to them. There is also plentiful evidence
  arguing that people differ in the degree to which they have some
  fairly specific aptitudes for different kinds of thinking and for
  processing different types of information.

However, they reviewed experimental evidence comparing the learning outcomes of students that either were or were not assigned to educational interventions based on their learning style, and found almost no evidence of differences.

  which was judged to be a precondition for validating the educational
  applications of learning styles. Although the literature on learning
  styles is enormous, very few studies have even used an experimental
  methodology capable of testing the validity of learning styles applied
  to education. Moreover, of those that did use an appropriate method,
  several found results that flatly contradict the popular meshing
  hypothesis.

  We conclude therefore, that at present, there is no adequate
  evidence base to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments
  into general educational practice. Thus, limited education resources
  would better be devoted to adopting other educational practices that
  have a strong evidence base, of which there are an increasing number.
  However, given the lack of methodologically sound studies of learning
  styles, it would be an error to conclude that all possible versions of
  learning styles have been tested and found wanting; many have simply
  not been tested at all.

References:

Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., Bjork, R. (2009). Learning Styles
Concepts and Evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9, 105. ARTICLE.


What are the effects of social rejection on the brain?

I followed your info and found 2 research papers:

Why Rejection Hurts?
(In case you want to skim through more papers, visit Papers from Social And Affective Neuroscience Laboratory. Naomi Eisenberger is the director of this Lab.)
Belongingness as a Core Personality Trait: How Social Exclusion Influences Social Functioning and Personality Expression

To help you access this paper promptly, I shared a pdf version here.

I read through the paper 1 and skimmed paper 2 in order to extract conclusions that are relevant to your question:

    "If the external circumstance can not change,
     how can the impact on the brain be reduced?"

  From Why Rejection Hurts

  factors that increase or decrease one kind of pain should affect the other kind of pain in a similar manner.
  participants reported significantly less pain when holding their partner’s hand than when they held a stranger’s hand
  “If all this is true, does that mean that painkillers could reduce the pain of social rejection?” ... -- in fact the answer is yes.

  From Belongingness as a Core ...

  Acetaminophen(the active ingredient in Tylenol) Reduces Daily Hurt Feelings
  Tylenol Reduces Neural Activity Associated With Social Pain
  Acetaminophen Reduces Nonconscious Coping Responses
  Mindfulness interventions reduce the sting of rejection, thereby decreasing self-control impairments and aggressive outbursts.

About the second question, I only digged a little bit.

    "What is the average sensitivity to social rejection
    and are some not effect by it?"

  From a book named "Are You Ethical" by Steve Soto

  The following text does not directly answer the question, you could view it as a heuristic: When someone is less sensitive, she/he will be less affected by social rejection.

  "On the other hand, others take rejection as an indication that others don’t realize that what they have to offer is beneficial, it only amplifies the faith they have in themselves, and they persevere that much harder. It is never taken personally, or as an affront. This is “a low level of rejection sensitivity”. -- Karen Horney


Should psychological checks be as frequent as physical checks to evaluate a patient's condition?

ABSOLUTELY! The physical and mental are often connected. Take, for instance, the Thyriod. If the thyroid is physically unhealthy then it can cause mental disturbances. It can cause a slew of psychological manifestations for someone. When preceived by a psychological professional, they treat the symtoms they interpret and preceive from their paradigm they treat their patient with psychological techniques and medications.

I have seen this first hand where someone can exhibit pyschological disturbances and are incorrectly diagnosed because the psychological professional does not test their physical state.


What is the term for learning to group objects

I would suggest you start with the Wikipedia articles on Categorization and more specifically Prototype theory.

While the Categorization article gives a number of branching points for you to drill down on and hone in and/or prime your thinking for further searches, the Prototype theory topic is where my mind went upon first reading your question

Even though the focus of prototype theory is on the shared artifact of language which you may or may not have been thinking of when you posed the question. I would expect any further reading you did on the topic to have plenty to say about the individual language user/learner also.

...

As a follow up I also found the following article which is from the perspective of Developmental Psychology.


How to design ballot papers with a large number of candidates in a preferential system?

This is a partial answer to your question, there is considerable research touching on specific designs and strategies in ballots that will be outlined below

This issue has come up in research around the world.  A specific concern is:

  Ballot design can be an important factor in determining whether voters are able to cast a ballot accurately, which can influence the legitimacy of elections.

Source: "Ballot design and Unrecorded votes on paper-based ballots" (Krimball and Kropf, 2005).

Krimball and Kropf assert that there is a lot in common between a ballot and a self-administered questionnaire, in that voters must process a myriad of verbal, symbolic and graphical language (which includes the written instructions etc).  There has been some research in making ballot papers more 'realistic' so to speak.

Research in Britain has looked into including a photo with the ballot, according to "Candidate appearance and voting in British elections: The potential impact of ballot paper photographs" (Johns, 2008), asides from making an Australian Senate ballot sheet the size of Tasmania:

  Some MPs express worries that voters may be swayed in their choice by the photos. This concern is consistent with psychologists’ findings that we automatically make judgements about people’s characters based on the briefest inspection of facial appearance, and that these judgements influence behaviour towards them. This is especially true when, as with most constituency candidates, we know little else about the people.

Swinburne Politics Professor Brian Costar, in the online article "We need to simplify voting for the Senate" suggests:

  the Senate ballot paper should be redesigned to abolish above- and below-the-line voting. Instead, voting should be optional preferential. At a normal Senate election, a voter would need to number at least six squares, and at a double dissolution election at least twelve. This would keep informal voting low and put a stop to secret wheeling and dealing over preferences and unexpected successes for candidates with extremely modest direct support.

One main problem is, according to the empirical analysis "Influence of ‘Cognitive Sophistication’ on Ballot
Layout Effects" (Geys and Hayndels, 2003), is that

  Candidates in ‘critical’ (top and
  bottom) positions in multi-column ballots obtain a larger percentage of the vote in
  multi-column ballots than in a single-column ballot.

These positions are, according to the authors, in the top and bottom corners.  But, the authors assert that this is actually not a huge issue, given

  The results of our empirical analysis have shown that cognitive sophistication
  of the electorate does have a strong effect. A larger share of highly
  educated (or richer) voters significantly reduces the strength of Ballot Layout
  Effects.

However, a key point from the article is that

  avoiding layout effects by randomizing the order of candidates or using
  additional layouts such that each politician has an equal probability of being
  on top (bottom) of a column may be hard to use in practice.

An interesting point the authors found in regards to computerised ballots is that

  preferential votes are more evenly
  distributed among candidates when voting is done via computerized ballots.

Further information could be sourced from the International Centre for
Electoral Psychology

Anecdotal side note: In my electorate (I am an Australian also), we had the same thing happen - about 30 above the line, and over 100 below the line for the Senate.  I have wondered about this also - I am "apolitical" (this is not up for discussion) and could not be bothered doing the 'under the line' thing - this apathy was a topic of conversation when I was in the long queue to get into vote (Reminder to everyone else, voting is compulsory in Australia).

The point of this anecdote is that voter enthusiasm (or lack thereof) could also be a factor in the effectiveness of any ballot design.


What would the effect on psychology experiments be if we found out that one person sees blue if another sees red?

While the sensation of color is well defined, the perception of color is indeed shrouded in ambiguity (Brainard, 2001). There are no colors, just electromagnetic radiations that oscillate in different frequencies in the frequency domain. Our brains interpret those various wavelengths as color.

Now on to your experiment: if you find a statistical difference and you later find out that a group of people perceive the color blue as red and vice versa, the first thing you want to do is control for that population and take them out from the data set. Then you can compare the 'true seers' with the 'reversed seers' and see if they are statistically different in their emotional response. If yes, you'd better split them and analyze them separately. If not, a pooled analysis is fine, perhaps you can add the normal or inverse perception as a co-factor, dependent on the exact analysis.

But then, perhaps, the most important question here is - how would you find out what a person actually perceives?

Reference
- Brainard, Int. Encyclopedia Social & Behavioral
Sciences, Smelser & Baltes (eds.), Pergamon Press, Amsterdam


Are people more likely to pick the odd one out?

I am not sure I understand the refill example, and I do not have any empirical study in mind, but here is a classical fictitious  example drawn from Mas-Collel, Winsthon and Green, Microeconomics, which might be relevant to your question. The example is slightly far-fetched but I think it's good to get the idea.

Suppose you want to choose a color to paint your bathroom. You go to two shops who have the same colors available but walk you through a different choice process.

Both shops have available colors number 1 and 20 in the following grid.

Here comes the difference.

Shop 1

The seller ask you whether you prefer color 1 to color 20. You are rather a green person so you say  $20\succ 1$, meaning you prefer 20 to 1. As a consequence, you chose color 20 for your bathroom.

Shop 2

The seller still has only 1 and 20 available but walks you through a different process to elicit your preferences. He first asks you whether you prefer 1 to 2. Really, the difference is so small that you cannot see it, so you say $1 \sim 2$, meaning that you are indifferent between 1 and 2.

Then he asks you whether you prefer 2 to 3, and again you answer $2 \sim 3$.

As the process keeps unfolding, you eventually get to the point where your preferences are $1 \sim 2 \sim 3 \sim \dots \sim 19 \sim 20$. So if you are consistent (i.e., if your preferences are "transitive"), you should admit that $1\sim 20$, that is you are indifferent between 1 and 20 and you might end up letting the seller chose for you.

Now this argument is usually used to demonstrate that people preferences are not always transitive : $1\sim 2$ and $2\sim 3$ does not always imply $1 \sim 3$. In the shop example it makes little sense to claim  that you are really indifferent between 1 and 20. In fact, you really prefer green but you have been tricked by the progressiveness of the preference elicitation process.

You might also consider other situations in which you would be tricked so subtly that you would not change you preference at the end of the choice process. Suppose I come in you bedroom every month and repaint it following the same pattern (from color 20 to 1), without you knowing it. Chances are you will not realize it, get use to the new color and end up claiming that you prefer the final color, although at the beginning of the repainting process you strictly preferred green to yellow.

I guess this is a common strategy in marketing. Not so long ago, Mc Donalds steadily changed the background of their logo from red to green. They could have done this all at once, in a week say. But they did not. They changed the background color of some restaurant first, and others later. My impression is that they purposely spread the repainting process in order to get people used to the new green color. The likely outcome of such spreading is that some people who were initially disgusted by the new green color steadily started wondering how they ever liked the red background in the first place.


Let's first dispel this myth: "all the things that could happen in a dream are made up by us, and should be utterly predictable".  This is a common fallacy known as the introspection illusion:

  The introspection illusion is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly
  think they have direct insight into the origins of their mental
  states. ... In certain situations, this illusion leads people to make
  confident but false explanations of their own behavior (called "causal
  theories") or inaccurate predictions of their future mental states.

This is a common notion in psychology research.  So the more interesting question is not why are we surprised by our dreams, so much as why are we not surprised by our non-dreams.  But I digress.

Dream imagery is often generated partly from long-term memory rather than external stimuli.  Unlike normal perception, which is continuous and generally sensical, dream imagery is disjointed and not sensical.  Interestingly however, subjects of dream research report only realizing the bizarre nature of their dreams after they wake - they are not "surprised" by the imagery during the dream:

  During most dreams, the person dreaming is not aware that they are
  dreaming, no matter how absurd or eccentric the dream is. The reason
  for this may be that the prefrontal cortex, the region of the brain
  responsible for logic and planning, exhibits decreased activity during
  dreams.


Cannot find a journal paper on a study on caffeine, even though it is registered at clinicaltrials.gov

Short answer
Haskall et al., The effects of L-theanine, caffeine and their
combination on cognition and mood, Biol Psych (2008); 77: 113–22.
Background
Here's some of the detective work I've done:
The principal investigator of this study is listed on your link on ClinicalTrials.gov as Andrew Scholey of Northumbria University.
Looking on Google Scholar, and searching with the key terms "Andrew + Scholey + Caffeine" and looking for publications after the study's 'actual completion date', as listed on ClinicalTrials.gov, I found an article by Scholey & coworkers, namely:
Haskall et al., Biol Psych (2008); 77: 113–22.
The study doesn't mention 'ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT00487227' explicitly, but given the study's senior author (Scholey), the publication date (2008) being a few years after the clinical study's completion date (2005), and the topic of the paper (cognitive effects of caffeine) that closely resembles the clinical trial's topic, I bet this is the article you're after.
Otherwise, I should simply contact Scholey - most researchers appreciate an email enquiry about their work. More often than not they're eager to spread their work across the scientific community.


What is the role of dendrites in neural computation?

I think our best understanding of this (that I can think of) is Hebb's law: Neurons that fire together wire together. Basically, maybe you can think of it like a bit of information is saved in a physical space neurally. So one idea, like your grandmas face, is a combination of many of these bits being activated (This is in reference to the language of thought theory https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/). When trying to make sense of something, the more common connections will activate first and then less common ones, until an answer has been found or the task has been deemed not possible/unimportant.
As for how neurons are chosen, I would say in relation to what is already there. And dendritic connections are dampened the longer they go without linking.
To the best of my knowledge, it's still contested exactly how we encode new information. There is a lot of evidence that certain tasks can be associated to general areas of the neocortex, from neural mapping experiments.


What are the techniques to get over the learning plateau?

Increased spacing between learning sessions has been found to improve long-term learning when studying for tests. The key is to study less per session, but more often. To develop a habit, you could start by connecting your time of study to a habit that you have already established. For example, if you always brush your teeth, you could associate putting the toot-brush back with walking over to your study area and opening a book.

Repeated learning further enables learning. This is one of the reasons spaced learning works. Once you have studied a chapter the previous session, you go back to the same chapter, skim it, and think about the concepts that you have learned. Repetition is key to rote learning.

Facing the hard parts requires a very thorough understanding of the basics. Know the basics. Don't be afraid of your brain working harder on some problems. The more advanced stuff will take more time to learn. That is the natural course.

TLDR:

No.
A lack of repetition, spacing, and knowledge of the fundamentals.
See above.


Is there a way to hasten recovery from sleep inertia?

Not a completely scientific answer, but a few suggestions that I'd make based on a general understanding of the sleep literature:

Increase the amount of sleep you are getting in general and thereby reduce sleep debt
Increase the amount of sleep you are getting on the immediately preceding night (i.e., both these points are that its easier to wake up when you are less sleep deprived)
Permit morning light to enter your room (to trigger various arousal responses)
Maintain a regular sleep pattern to ensure that your various circadian rhythms are aligned (i.e., sleep with temperature with arousal, etc.)
Set a mental alarm clock the night before regarding when you want to wake up
Have a consistent morning routine to minimise the need for executive control after waking.


A few quick points:

There is a massive empirical literature that shows that fairly strong correlations are obtained between IQ and important real world outcomes, perhaps most notably educational and job performance, often in the r = .5 range (see here for a summary).

Correlations with learning are complicated by what we mean by learning. In particular, if we define learning as the improvement in performance between two time points, then we have what is sometimes called a difference score or gain score. While this is an intuitive way to think about learning, gain scores often have slightly counter-intuitive properties. For example, on some tasks, gain may be negatively correlated with initial performance levels. This makes sense when you think that those who perform poorly initially often have more to learn. However, initial performance typically correlates well with final performance after a period of learning.
As such, correlations of gain scores with ability can be a little strange also.

You might want to read some of Philip Ackerman's work on ability-performance correlations over practice.

There's some further discussion of the change score issue in learning here:

Ackerman, P. L. (1987). Individual differences in skill learning: An
integration of psychometric and information processing perspectives.
Psychological Bulletin, 102:3-27.


How do cognitive scientists measure creativity?

The Torrance Test of Creative Thinking is a good place to start.  It scores for fluency (number of responses) as well as originality (statistical rarity of responses) and elaboration (level of detail) on a variety of different tasks. The validity of the TTCT has been examined with several long-term studies, so there is a fair amount of data on its measurements as well as the form of the test itself.

Torrance, E. P. (1981b). Empirical validation of criterion-referenced indicators of creative ability through a longitudinal study. Creative Child and Adult Quarterly, 6, 136-140.


Has there been any research done that contrasts point-based and achievement-based gamification methods?

Reputation is a recognition system for participation, while the badges represent the type of participation.

Reputation amasses over time simply by recognizing that the individual is participating in a meaningful way, and that their experience can be judged by the amount of reputation. Badges, on the other hand, show where their aptitude and participation lies (Such as being a prolific editor, having insightful answers, etc.)

Both of these will appeal to people in different ways, and both will contribute to a thriving site, as it encourages several levels of participation. The reputation will be more of a benefit system, as you get increasingly advanced privileges on the site for higher reputation, and the badges are the "pat on the head" motivation.

While I don't have access to the full text, the precis for this article suggests that they presented specifically on the Stack Exchange model, and the badge/reputation system as applied to an online community. Other than that, most of the gamification models that I found searching scholarly articles were more geared toward education and social media rather than Q&A type sites.


"Give me a child..." Quote from Skinner?

I also think it's false that Skinner really said it (exactly like that), and even if he said it offhand verbally, it's almost certain he didn't put it in writing in that form.

My argument is that the 4-gram "shape him into anything" doesn't show in n-gram viewer, which means there are very few books containing it... according to the help. If you try "give me a child" you'll get an n-gram as there are plenty of books containing that 4-gram.

A book search (instead of n-gram) for the phrase "shape him into anything" returns only 10 books or so. 3 or 4 of these attribute it to Skinner, one reservedly, which is a psychology textbook. The other books are on the margins of psychology (philosophy etc.) so they likely propagate hearsay. None of the books containing that phrase is a biography of Skinner, and there are some book-length biographies of him. Also none of the books say or cite where he might have said or written it.

The exact same result (no n-gram, few books) also applies to the 4-gram "child and I'll shape".

As a related trivia, some of the books that hit "give me a child", have it for "give me a child until he is seven, and he is mine for life," attributed to unnamed Jesuits, but other books cast doubt on veracity of the attribution. I'm mentioning this because one book drew a connection between what Skinner supposedly said and what Jesuits supposedly said.

As for a passage that ideatically comes close to that and we know Skinner wrote... here's one in SEP

  Skinner protests that “it is in the nature of an experimental analysis of human behavior that it should strip away the functions previously assigned to autonomous man and transfer them one by one to the controlling environment” (1971, p. 198).

I read a few more pages from Skinner's Science and Human Behavior (195X). The passage I quoted is actually quite representative of Skinner's pretty convoluted writing style. The hypothesis that he would have written anything in a more direct fashion seems pretty unlikely. I don't know how he spoke...


Treisman & Gelade's Feature Integration Theory suggests that we are able to process an entire visual scene in parallel at the level of individual features. For example, in a visual search task, the time required to find a blue circle in a field of red circles is independent of the total number of circles. However, focused attention (typically foveal) is required to integrate independent features into a cohesive object. Thus, if searching for a red circle in a field of blue circles and red squares, search time grows linearly with the number of total objects. This is because the target is made up of two features (circle and red) which need to be integrated in order to be identified-- requiring saccades around the scene.
Several theories of visual search use this distinction to model visual attention shifts. Most notably, Jeremy Wolfe's Guided Search and Itti & Koch's visual attention model. The basic premise behind both models is somewhat similar: low level feature receptors respond automatically and in parallel to the entire visual field. Thus, there are many individual feature maps that represent bottom-up saliency of locations in the visual scene. This bottom-up saliency can be sufficient to trigger a saccade; for instance, a feature map that responds to local motion is beneficial for an organism to identify moving predators. Thus, areas with motion are given high value because they have a history of providing information that is beneficial to an organism.
During task conditions (such as visual search), top-down saliency maps may also be created based on knowledge of what things in the environment have value. If I am searching for my umbrella, I know that it is blue and long and straight, and this information can be encoded in the feature maps that drive saccades.
More generally, saccades are directed at targets that have a high expected value. (It has even been shown that the velocity of saccades is proportional to the expected value of the target: Shadmehr, et al.) This value is determined from a weighted evaluation of both top-down and bottom-up feature maps, available pre-attentively.
The exact location of a saccade is determined through a process called spatial pooling, which attempts to determine the 'center of gravity' of a target, again using low level feature maps. While saccades are amazingly quick and accurate, there is of course some error in final saccadic position which often require smaller saccades to reach the target. It has recently been suggested that this series of saccadic movements emulate Fitts' law with regards to speed-accuracy tradeoffs. A great, thorough review of the current state of saccadic eye movements can be found in Kowler, 2011.
There is obviously quite a bit of detailed information that I haven't covered here-- out of the references cited, I would start with section 3 ("Saccades") of the Kowler article, then move on to the Itti & Koch article for more concrete details on their specific model.

Wolfe, J.M. (1994). Guided Search 2.0. A revised model of visual search. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 1, 202-238.
Itti, L., & Koch, C. (2001). Computational modelling of visual
attention. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2, 1-11.
Shadmehr et al. (2010). Temporal discounting of reward and the cost of
time in motor control. Journal of Neuroscience, 30, 10507-10516.
Kowler, E. (2011). Eye movements: The past 25 years. Vision Research,
51, 1457-1483.

** Note I cite Guided Search 2.0 because it is a good exposition of the whole theory, though the theory itself has progressed to 4.0


Why do some days feel fast and others feel slow?

Several factors are proven to affect our experience of time. Those that differ from one day to the next include:

Biochemistry affects our perception of time.

  Stimulants produce overestimates of time duration, whereas depressants and anesthetics produce underestimates of time duration.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception

Fear affects our perception of time:

  Hammond points to a study in which people with arachnophobia were asked to look at spiders — the very object of their intense fear — for 45 seconds and they overestimated the elapsed time. The same pattern was observed in novice skydivers, who estimated the duration of their peers’ falls as short, whereas their own, from the same altitude, were deemed longer

  When a person is scared, a brain area called the amygdala becomes more active, laying down an extra set of memories that go along with those normally taken care of by other parts of the brain.

  "In this way, frightening events are associated with richer and denser memories," Eagleman explained. "And the more memory you have of an event, the longer you believe it took."
  http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/07/15/time-warped-claudia-hammond/
  http://www.livescience.com/2117-time-slow-emergencies.html
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception

Our attention affects our perception of time:

  Wearden et al. (2014) administered a questionnaire which asked about passage of time in different drug and emotional states, and generally found that situations associated with “distraction” from time were associated with faster passage of time, in accord with the idea that “attention to time” is an important determinant of time judgements.
  http://www.mind-and-brain.de/postdoctoral-program/scientific-events/archive/time/

Having fun(or not):

  When this was tested by Kellaris (1992), they found that when listeners enjoyed the music more, time seemed to slow down.

  Or—prepare yourself for a 180 degree about-face—it could all be the other way around. Perhaps you’re having fun when time flies. In other words, we assume we’ve been enjoying ourselves when we notice that time has passed quickly.

  There’s evidence for this in a recent experiment by Sackett et al. (2010). Participants doing a boring task were tricked into thinking it had lasted half as long as it really had. They thought it was more enjoyable than those who had been doing exactly the same task but who hadn’t been tricked about how much time had passed.

Being tired:

  When we’re tired, though, our perception of time goes awry and we find it more difficult to distinguish between short spaces of time. This fact can be used to measure whether people are too tired to fly a plane, drive a truck or be a doctor. Indeed just such simple hand-held devices that quickly assess your tiredness are already being developed (Eagleman, 2009).
  http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/06/10-ways-our-minds-warp-time.php

Emotional self-regulation:

  The effort of trying to either suppress or enhance our emotional reactions seems to change our perception of time. Psychologists have found that when people are trying to regulate their emotions, time seems to drag on.

  Vohs and Schmeichel (2003) had participants watch an 11 minute clip from the film Terms of Endearment. Some participants were asked to remain emotionally neutral while watching the clip and others were told to act naturally. Those who tried to suppress their emotions estimated the clip had lasted longer than it really had.
  http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/06/10-ways-our-minds-warp-time.php

Body temperature:

  Experiments have found that when body temperature is raised our perception of time speeds up (Wearden & Pento-Voak, 1995). Conversely when we are cooled down, our sense of time also slows down.
  http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/06/10-ways-our-minds-warp-time.php


What is the effect of studying logic or mathematics on general thinking skills?

Here are some references that may be of use to you:

Contrasting the cognitive effects of graphical and sentential logic teaching: Reasoning, representation and individual differences (Stenning et al, 2007).

The shaping of deduction in Greek mathematics: A study in cognitive history (Netz, 1999). - a bit of a historical context, but I'd imagine that there are similar ideas

A cognitive theory of graphical and linguistic reasoning: Logic and implementation (Stenning and Oberlander, 1995).

A Cognitive Analysis of Problems of Comprehension in a Learning of Mathematics(Duval, 2006)

Perhaps related to your request - The Logic of Scientific Discovery (Popper, 2005).


Is the consciousness currently in oneself the same as the consciousness that used to be or in the future will be in oneself?

Short answer
Consciousness is different between individuals and can change over time.

Background
Nelkin (1997) provides the following definition of consciousness:

  When philosophers and psychologists think about consciousness, they generally focus on one or more of three features: phenomenality (how experiences feel), intentionality (that experiences are "of" something, that experiences mean something), and introspectibility (our awareness of phenomenality and intentionality of experiences).

Although I am not an expert on the matter I think this definition answers your question. You say People seem to believe that one's consciousness is a "different" consciousness than that of others, but the "same" consciousness as the one that has been in one's body in the past and the one that will be in one's body in the future. Because the phenomenality changes over time, because past experience change the way sensations feel (new versus familiar sensations are very different) your statement that consciousness is constant is invalid.

The intentionality and most notably the introspectibility makes consciousness a very personal thing, meaning that your statement ...one's consciousness is a "different" consciousness than that of other is valid.

As a neuroscientist I can tackle the two statements posed on more familiar ground to me. I dare to say that consciousness is not a stable entity, because in the end, sensations, perceptions and awareness of the world are all in your head and generated by neurons. Because psychoneuropharmaca or brain damage can lead to temporary and permanent altered states of consciousness, respectively, the statement that ...the "same" consciousness as the one that has been in one's body in the past and the one that will be in one's body in the future is simply invalid.

From a similar neuroscientific vantage point one's brain is obviously different and physically separate from another person's brain, so we quite frankly are not sharing a consciousness. Consciousness is therefore a personal thing, the more since one can suffer brain damage without another even noticing it, hence one's consciousness is a "different" consciousness than that of others must be true.

Reference
Nelkin N, Philosophy of Science 1993


Is there a known reason why people feel a bit bad after other people do something for them?

What you seem to be talking about here are cultural influences affecting your judgement on what is right and wrong to say and do in certain situations.
Ecologies shape cultures, and cultures influence the development of personalities (Triandis & Suh, 2002).

The conceptualization of culture is by no means a simple matter. One possible way to think about culture is that “culture is to society what memory is to individuals” (Kluckhohn 1954). It includes what has worked in the experience of a society, so that it was worth transmitting to future generations.

Triandis & Suh (2002) went on to say that:

Funder (1997) defined personality as “an individual’s characteristic pattern of thought, emotion, and behavior, together with the psychological mechanisms— hidden or not—behind those patterns” (pp.1–2)

The kind of situation you talk about would not be seen as often in Western countries, but it seems to be widespread in Eastern cultures.  To use the Thai culture of เกรงใจ (Kreng Jai) you linked to in your question, as you pointed out, it is insisted that you must not cause anyone distress or discomfort.  But, Kreng Jai can be vexing and cause distress in itself as the insistence can even be

at the expense of efficiency, honesty, or one’s own interests (Thailand Family Law Center, 2012).

If you look at Fitzroy (2014), there are good aspects to Kreng Jai in business and general society.

By demonstrating more courtesy amongst the team you show more compassion and empathy which can lead to better teamwork and better results.

However, there are many ways where if Kreng Jai was over used, it can cause all sorts of problems.  For example, being too Kreng Jai to ask your boss for help can result in an important task not being completed on time.  This can cause cause loss of revenue for the business, and embarrassment for both parties.
When feeling bad for "being inconsiderate towards others feelings on the matter", it can cause a lot of psychological discomfort, and this is what you are describing here.
References
Fitzroy, P. (2014). เกรงใจ (Kreng Jai) – overused or misunderstood? Retrieved from: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141015014001-50338470-%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%87%E0%B9%83%E0%B8%88-kreng-jai-overused-or-misunderstood
Funder D. (1997). The Personality Puzzle. New York, NY: Norton
Kluckhohn, C. (1954). Culture and behavior. In Handbook of Social Psychology, ed. G Lindzey, 2:921–76. Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley
Thailand Family Law Center. (2012). Demystifying Kreng Jai. Retrieved from: http://www.thailand-family-law-center.com/demystifying-kreng-jai/
Triandis, H. C., & Suh, E. M. (2002). Cultural influences on personality. Annual review of psychology, 53(1), 133-160. doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.53.100901.135200


Why do long range axons in mammals travel in white matter tracts?

Wen & Chklovskii (2005) looked at exactly this question through a simulation study. They assumed that the segregation of white and gray matter was the the result of evolutionary pressure to maximize some aspect of connectivity. They tested the idea that simultaneously maximizing interconnectivity (neurons should be able to connect to all other neurons without too many intermediate steps) and minimizing conduction delay (time required for a signal to travel from one neuron to another) would result in the segregation of gray and white matter.

Through computational simulation, they were able to determine that these simultaneous pressure were sufficient to drive the white/gray matter divide. Part of what they were able to show is that, under some simple geometric assumptions, a mixed (homogeneous) design that had white matter interspersed with gray matter led to much higher conduction delays than a segregated design. The basic reason is that when white matter is mixed in with the gray matter, the short-range connections between nearby neurons in gray matter are longer to account for the interference of the white matter tracts.

Wen, Q., and Chklovskii, D.B. (2005). Segregation of the brain into gray and white matter: A design minimizing conduction delays. PLoS Comput Biol, 1(7): e78. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.0010078


What does it even mean to have a male/female brain?

I don't think the idea of a male/female brain is well established in the neurosciences.

If you read a book like Delusions of Gender you'll get a critical perspective on the status of sex differences in the brain.

At some level, sex differences in behaviour must be mediated through the brain. But there are major debates about the degree to which such behavioural differences are influenced by social versus biological factors. Likewise, the image of the brain can create an excessive sense in which we are talking about a fixed entity. In addition, with regards to a range of behaviours and brain factors, there is often more overlap than there are differences between the sexes.

None of this aims to deny the value of a deep study of the neuroscience of sex differences. It's just that I don't think the concept of the "female brain" makes sense, certainly not at this point in our understanding.


Is there a research on correlation between honesty and success?

No provocative experiment needed. Some of the major taxonomies within personality psychology have well-validated measures for honesty, and have been used in massive samples that could already address this question. I would start by doing a search on Google Scholar for those measures and the types of success you mention. E.g.,

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honesty-humility_factor_of_the_HEXACO_model_of_personality

Notice that the trait most often associated with success is Conscientiousness, which may include an aspect of honesty:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientiousness


A very generic question

It is very hard to answer this question because it is very generic.

In order to get a clearer answer you'd have to narrow down your definition of what exactly constitutes subliminal message and what exactly constitutes an effect.

Once done, you can now talk about specific types of stimuli processed purely by the subconscious, and their specific effect and related variables.

Here are some examples of what might constitute 'subliminal messages':

A metaphor
Asking someone to hold a warm cup of coffee
Putting an image of eyes in the room
'planting' a video frame in a sequences of other frames

The effect (and the extent) of all of these depends on the 'message' itself and the specifics of the experiment.

You can read further about this 'complexity' simply by reading Wikipedia's entry on Subliminal Stimuli (and the references therein).

A very generic answer

Without specifics, you can argue the following:

  There is mounting evidence that pure subconscious processing can affect our behaviour, albeit often short lived.

Resources

I could point you to many resources dealing with specific cases, but I think you'll find much of what you're after (or at least a good subset/overview) in the first couple of chapters of this book:

Dehaene, S., 2014. Consciousness and the brain: Deciphering how the brain codes our thoughts. Penguin.


What term describes the discrepancy in reported intention to vote and actual voting behaviour?

There are many reasons why stated intention can differ from behaviour (e.g., see Theory of Planned Behaviour). Social desirability is one possibility. However, there are many other factors. A person may not know who they are going to vote for or may not have decided. Factors may arise between the point in time when asked and when voting occurs that change the person's voting plan.

Furthermore, there are many potential limitations to polls that can lead their estimates of population voting intention to be inaccurate, and even biased. There is basic sampling error that arises whenever you estimate a population property from a finite sample. There are also a wide range of issues related to getting a sample representative of the voting population (see sampling bias).

Furthermore, polls form part of the information available in betting markets. Thus, in betting markets, people are able to use an ensemble of information including multiple polls, various historical trends regarding how polls change over time, various adjustment to poll predictions that might remove perceived biases and so on.


How can we realize when a sociological question is impossible to answer?

Short version: A question is possible to answer sociologically if and only if its scale and region (informally speaking, its context) are completely defined and its variables of interest are operationalized.
Long (really long) version: The following answer may be colored by my quantitative background, but if you give me the benefit of the doubt here and there, this should generalize fairly well. My apologies for any untoward implications in advance.
Is my question amenable to empirical inquiry?
This is more than a question unto itself, but I will try to keep it as brief and general as possible while still answering the sociology-specific question. Sociological questions must be amenable to empirical inquiry. A question is amenable to empirical inquiry if and only if:

The variables of interest have been operationalized. If we are interested in "society," how exactly do you measure change in society? (I strongly recommend reading mfloren's excellent answer in the link.)
The region of interest has been completely defined. If we are interested in "society," where exactly should we start measuring our variables of interest?

There are (very) different views on how to interpret the evidence so collected, a fair covering of which is beyond the scope of this answer. In the cognitive sciences, I would say the dominant views tend to be in line with falsificationism and/or instrumentalism. Broadly speaking, this area is covered by the study of epistemology.
What is the scale of my question?
A question's scale refers to the level of detail involved. How "big" is the question? Informally speaking, the scale of an empirical question conveys information about the characteristics of the spacetime region we are investigating, and what level of precision/detail we are investigating it at.
Example: Cosmological or Quantum?
A prototypical example here that I think most people are familiar with from basic physics would be the cosmological scale—the largest known scale—and its opposite, the quantum scale, which is the smallest known scale. Informally speaking, the "physics scale" runs from least energy involved to most energy involved.
This is the simplest to understand because most of physics can be captured by how much energy is involved. In the biological sciences, it becomes more complicated. We might talk about trophic levels in a conceptually similar way when asking questions about ecologies, but we might also talk about the embryonic or neural scales for other questions. In other words, they are, in a very direct sense, different facets of the same "object." In general, the closer we get to a first-person human level of analysis, the more difficult it becomes to sufficiently define questions, and the further away we get, the easier it becomes.
Sociobehavioral science: Within or between individuals or groups?
In the social and behavioral sciences, we tend to look at the amount of people involved, the qualitative relationship between those people, and whether we are interested in the question at the intra-individual, between-individual, intra-group and/or inter-group level. As with the cosmological and quantum scale, or embryonic and neural scales, these are not ontologically distinct—scales are a strictly epistemological concept. Informally speaking, a question is sociological if it is a question about the collective behavior of relatively large groups of people (i.e., if regions and variables are defined relative to other 'groups' rather than in terms of their constituents' individual behavior or minds).
What field is appropriate for my question?
Once we have defined the scale and region (or area) of our question, and we have operationalized our variables of interest, we can say whether a particular  field is an appropriate context for situating our question in. If our question is, "How do modern bridges hold up so much weight?", then we could situate this in terms of quantum physics, but doing so would be a grossly excessive level of detail, so we'd probably want to use engineering instead.
So it is for the study of behavior and the human condition: it is important to use the right tool for the job. (Actually, I prefer to liken fields to painting styles, but the tool metaphor tends to get the job done faster, and I feel like this has already gotten long enough.)


The proverb you mention is overly general to the point of being largely false (or at least unfalsifiable, to give some credit to the defensibility of philosophical solipsism otherwise). @JunJun and @felino's answers also generalize too much, but this is partly a consequence of a lack of specificity in the OP. Depression in general is widely misunderstood and commonly oversimplified.

I prefer to conceptualize depression in general as a latent, dimensional, symptomatic state that is linked to its causes by theory, not by definition. This means not directly measured, not truly dichotomous (like clinical diagnosis often is – people are generally either diagnosed as having a mood disorder or not having one, but whether they truly are depressed is more a matter of degree), not a disease or disorder per se but rather a consequence thereof, and not defined as resulting from any one cause. This concept permits research to identify several partial influences that may operate together or separately to produce depression, and this is in fact what research on depression has done.

As @what points out, depression is known to have both genetic and environmental influences. Environmental influences are certainly not decided exclusively in the mind – this is the first reason your proverb overgeneralizes. Second, genetic influences are hardly decided in the sense of being voluntary. What remains may permit voluntary intervention, but not every case of depression leaves anything remaining.

Some cases arise entirely due to overwhelming, unforeseeable, and effectively unavoidable stress.
Some cases arise entirely due to genetic or other neurochemical influences (e.g., drugs, disorders).

Attitude change may aid coping in these circumstances, but one could hardly expect it to cure depressed affect altogether when one has good reasons to feel depressed or no real control over its sources.

However, many cases may arise from problematic attitudes (e.g., low self-esteem, external locus of control, social alienation). As mentioned in my answer to "https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/q/5803/4086" Lyubomirsky (2008) argues that for average people in average circumstances, roughly 2/5 of one's happiness may be altered voluntarily, as through attitude change:

  (source: edbatista.com)  (Based on Lyubomirsky, 2008)

Again, this won't be true in every case, especially those affected by special circumstances or involuntary or biological factors. Still, in many cases, it's enough malleability to facilitate important changes. In a falsely dichotomous model of depression, it's plenty of room in which to cross a clinical threshold and thereby become "not depressed". From a more dimensional standpoint, it's not going to allow anyone to change from the most depressed person to the happiest or vice versa: it's only enough to allow a percentile change of roughly 40% on average.

Several therapeutic modalities and positive psychological interventions incorporate attitude change, e.g.:

Cognitive behavioral therapy
Positive psychotherapy
Expressive therapy
Narrative therapy
Gratitude exercises
Compassion meditation

Reference
Lyubomirsky, S. (2008). The how of happiness: A scientific approach to getting the life you want. Penguin.


What measures are available for calculating big 5 congruence with a collection of profiles?

As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Similarity_measure states:

  Cosine similarity is a commonly used similarity measure for real-valued vectors, used in (among other fields) information retrieval to score the similarity of documents in the vector space model. In machine learning, common kernel functions such as the RBF kernel can be viewed as similarity functions

Also see: Congruence coefficient

Other measures: Euclidean distance


With psychological projection originating in psychoanalysis, is the concept currently considered valid?

There are several important aspects to your question.

Firstly it would be good to know what you would understand by modern science. Psychoanalysis is clearly outside the range of physics, mathematics or computer science. If you look deeper into it - so is an awful lot, if not all, of positivistic psychologies (especially when applied to psychological therapies) that are currently considered a valid field of study at university level.

What psychoanalysis is first and foremost, in my opinion, it is a clinical discipline. Psychoanalysis is not something that you can learn from books or Wikipedia; there is not even such a thing as a universally recognised textbook of psychoanalysis. But there are such textbooks in biochemistry, physics and mathematics. Furthermore - writings from various psychoanalytic authors tend to look at similar presentations to a significant extent differently.

Hence the answer to your question is rather complicated. The concept of projection is alive and well within the field. It is part of the language of psychoanalysis; language that is being used to describe human experience and as such it has a clear face validity. It is a term often also used within psychiatry and in practice of non-psychoanalytic psychologies. On the other hand presence or absence of the phenomenon of projection is equally clearly a subjective decision. Here your expectations of what modern science is are important.

Lastly I would like to mention that insights from biology and neuroscience do matter. They are very important and do add to our understanding of human brain and mind. But as for practical aspects of psychological therapies of any kind that I know of they are relevant mostly as a tool for triangulation between biological descriptions and psychological. When I first started in this rather complicated field I had an expectation of the  great importance of neuroscience to the practice of psychological therapies. The insights are important, of course, but not really for the practice except as far as they change what the therapist thinks of the human condition. At least for now and, sadly, I cannot see it being more than that for the next decades. And please do not get me wrong I firmly believe that psychoanalysis itself would benefit from more research, perhaps especially on the information that is provided by the patients.

One could say then, of course, does this archaic practice of psychoanalysis or therapies derived from it matter? Well, it does matter a lot, the moment you or your relative develop serious enough psychological problems to think that life is not worth living or you feel trapped in problems that just seem to hit you again and again. Depending on your predilection you may seek phrmacological help and/or psychological.

In terms of references I could offer several kinds: there are studies about what kind of psychological therapies professionals choose for themselves; there are  outcome studies for various psychological therapies. Then there are articles directly on the subject of psychoanalysis as a scientific theory. None could however provide a direct and valid answer to your question.

It seems that your question is sparked by Arnon Weinberg's answer to the question: Is there a term that describes the behaviour of a person which transfers personal problems to other people and tries to solve them there? That question describes a clinically defined problem and Weinberg's answer is clinically valid. I think it may be relevant to direct also to the famous stackoverflow answer that starts with: You can't parse [X]HTML with regex.


What criteria decides whether a technique is CBT?

What is CBT?

As I stated in my answer to a previous question on CBT,

  The basic concept of CBT

  Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) was developed by Aaron Temkin Beck, and as mentioned before, CBT is a combination of behaviourism and behaviour therapy, and cognitive theories and their application in therapeutic settings (Reeves, 2013).  CBT helps to change how you think, hence the word Cognitive, and what you do, hence the word Behaviour.

  A difficult life situation, relationship or practical problem can lead to:

  Altered thinking
  Altered emotions and feelings
  Altered behaviour
  Altered physical feelings or symptoms

  Things can happen the other way too.  Any of the above alterations can lead to a difficult life situation, relationship or practical problem (Royal College of Psychiatrists, n.d.).

  CBT works by trying to get the client to think about a situation in a more helpful way in order to move forward using more helpful behaviours.

Therefore, if the therapist is looking to help a client to use more helpful behaviours by getting them to think about their situation in a more helpful way, then the therapist is using a form of CBT.

References

Reeves, A., 2013. An Introduction to Counselling and Psychotherapy: From Theory to Practice. London: SAGE Publications Ltd..

Royal College of Psychiatrists, n.d. 5 Areas Assessment. [Online]
Available at: https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/healthadvice/treatmentswellbeing/cbt/5areas.aspx
[Accessed 5 May 2017].


Connection between sociosexual orientation and parental instincts?

There's not much research on this, but one study I found Kruger (2017) found no significant relationship between parenting effort and the usual measure of sociosexuality (SOI):


Has the perception of time changed over the last century? (e.g. 1960's vs. now)

I think, for a start, that you are absolutely right that time passes faster for older people. How can you do research to show this? It's a silly comment. Life itself shows that this is the case. When you're young (under your teens), normally, you enjoy life every day, crying and laughing. The days seem to last "forever". Although it is said that time flies by when having a good time. But I think the last is the case for older young ones (like Einstein said when having a good time with your girlfriend time seems to pass much faster than holding you're hands on a hot object for a minute). Though it could be possible that in a Hopi society (to name an example) this isn't the case, but I'm 100% are it's the case when growing older.
Considering your question. It is said we are living in fast times these days. It's a rat's race. Are living fast and the perception of the speed of time connected? I think indeed. When I lay in my bed the whole of the day while feeling depressed, I can tell you that time passes slowly! Except when you sleep, of course. When I have many things to do (which I like) there can't be plenty of time enough, so time flies by. On the contrary, doing a job you hate for eight hours, will slow down your perception of time. Always looking at the clock: when can I go home?
I think this has been the case in all eras we are looking at. Why shouldn't it? I think a physical clock will have no effect on that. In almost all, if not all, cultures a physical clock is present. It's not a Swiss-made precisely ticking clock or an atomic clock, but one that resides in Nature.
So my answer: No.


Is there a proper name of learning by experience (i.e. feeling something subconsciously)?

Maybe what you are looking for is tacit knowledge:

  Tacit knowledge is the kind of knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalizing it. For example, that London is in the United Kingdom is a piece of explicit knowledge that can be written down, transmitted, and understood by a recipient. However, the ability to speak a language, ride a bicycle, knead dough, play a musical instrument, or design and use complex equipment requires all sorts of knowledge that is not always known explicitly, even by expert practitioners, and which is difficult or impossible to explicitly transfer to other people.

  With tacit knowledge, people are not often aware of the knowledge they possess or how it can be valuable to others. Effective transfer of tacit knowledge generally requires extensive personal contact, regular interaction and trust. This kind of knowledge can only be revealed through practice in a particular context and transmitted through social networks. To some extent it is "captured" when the knowledge holder joins a network or a community of practice.

Another word that may suit your description is intuition:

  Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without proof, evidence, or conscious reasoning, or without understanding how the knowledge was acquired. Different writers give the word "intuition" a great variety of different meanings, ranging from direct access to unconscious knowledge, unconscious cognition, inner sensing, inner insight to unconscious pattern-recognition and the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning.

  Instinct is often misinterpreted as intuition and its reliability considered to be dependent on past knowledge and occurrences in a specific area. For example, someone who has had more experiences with children will tend to have a better instinct about what they should do in certain situations with them. This is not to say that one with a great amount of experience is always going to have an accurate intuition.


All this verbage, without a single answer. The archetypes are the forms with which we populate our psyches. They are only outlines. The context is filled in individually, and therefore differs individually. To use your example of "father." We can all agree upon the existence of "fatherness," the condition of being a father. Thus, the archetype "Father" arises. Yet, since we've all had different experiences of who and what that father is, and what he (to speak genetically) looks like, and how he acts, including those who have had an absent father, we fill in the archetype with that personal data. In brief, archetype equals form and is universal, context is personal and is unique.

That's as concise as I can make it. I hope this solves your dilemma. For depth, go to Jung's Collected Works, etc.

PS, to Community: I am not interested in debating this definition, and even less interested in debating whether it should exist. Oh, come now!


How is it that taking a break from a problem sometimes allows you to figure out the answer?

It sounds like you're talking about a classic example of Incubation.

  Incubation is defined as a process of unconscious recombination of thought elements that were stimulated through conscious work at one point in time, resulting in novel ideas at some later point in time.

Here's a great article by John F. Kihlstrom: Intuition, Incubation, and Insight: Implicit Cognition in Problem Solving. Basically it is believed that Incubation or stopping conscious thought on a problem allows one to find more creative solutions to a problem:

  In these cases, Wallas argued, thinkers enter an incubation stage in which they no longer consciously think about the problem. Wallas (1926) actually distinguished this phenomenon between two forms of incubation: "the period of abstention may be spent either in conscious mental work on other problems, or in a relaxation from all conscious mental work" (p. 86).

  Wallas believed that there might be certain economies of thought achieved by leaving certain problems unfinished while working on others, but he also believed that solutions achieved by this approach suffered in depth and richness. In many cases of difficult and complex creative thought, he believed, deeper and richer solutions could be achieved by a suspension of conscious thought altogether, permitting "the free working of the unconscious or partially conscious processes of the mind" (p. 87).1 In either case, Wallas noted that the incubation period was often followed by the illumination stage, the "flash" (p. 93) in which the answer appears in the consciousness of the thinker.

Kihlstrom's references contain many good experiments backing up the claims made.

A reason incubation may work is because it releases "fixation"; that case of being "stuck" which is a sort of mental rut which prevents one from thinking of new answers or methods of solving a problem.

We become stuck on an idea that we believe should work but doesn't, which may hold us back from thinking of a different solution which actually does work, one we may have previously not considered or disregarded.

A great dissertation by Bo T. Christensen
 covers both ideas of Fixation and Incubation in depth: Creative Cognition: Analogy and Incubation.


Who was the first to use Softmax to model decision making?

According to Sutton and Barto:

  The term soft-max for the action selection rule ... is due to Bridle (1990).
  This rule appears to have been first proposed by Luce (1959)


Anonymity creates an environment full of bullies?

Of course it would change the way people interact with one another. Social and situational settings strongly affect behaviour.

It's funny you see it this way. One can argue that it's exactly the opposite! Like with parliamentary elections, anonymity means that people act based on their own beliefs without being swayed by social pressure.

What's more without anonymity, people may start keeping score, which will further bias the objectivity of the votes.

When it comes to services like Stack Exchange, the general idea is that the various opinions will eventually regress to the mean - so the majority has it. Sure, for this to happen you need quite a lot of votes, but my experience is that usually gross down/up votes are justified.


Correlation between selfie and Narcissism

Self-reported number of selfies has been  found to correlate positively with some measures of narcissism in US men (Fox and Rooney, 2015).

  Fox, J., & Rooney, M. C. (2015). The Dark Triad and trait self-objectification as predictors of men’s use and self-presentation behaviors on social networking sites. Personality & Individual Differences, 76, 161-165. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2014.12.017


What is the optimal contrast ratio for best readability?

Short answer
Higher contrast increases readability.

Background
In a series of papers under the umbrella "Psychophysics of Reading" (link is to first paper in the series of five) the authors investigate parameters that affect readability in normally sighted folks, as well as people with impaired vision. These studies seem particularly relevant to your question.

The authors investigated reading rates as an outcome measure for readability. In paper V of the series (Legge et al., 2007) they tested the dependence of letter size and contrast (black-and-white) on reading rate. Rates were highest (about 350 words/min) for letters ranging in size from 0.25° to 2° visual angle. Within this range, reading rates proved to be tolerant to contrast reduction. For 1° letters, reading rate decreased by less than a factor of two for a tenfold reduction in contrast. The results were very similar for white-on-black and black-on-white text. Reading rate declined more rapidly for very small (<0.25°) and very large (>2°) letters with lower contrast.

Based on these findings, the intuitive answer to your question is, the larger the contrast, the better. I've never heard of decreasing contrast enhancing reading abilities, barred under some very specific conditions of ultra-low vision, regardless of Google's statements on this. Your first reference clearly supports 'higher contrast is better', without the presence of a sort of optimum.

Reference
- Legge et al, Vis Res (1985); 25(2): 239–52


How to ask in a survey for emotional vs. rational personality

I know that Helen Fisher, who is a love researcher, has developed a four factor personality model where two of the factors are quite relevant to your question. See (Fisher et al, 2015) for some general information regarding the personality model. The two factors that are relevant to your question are called (1) analytical/tough-minded, and (2) Prosocial/empathetic.

I will now show a few of the questions that load on the two factors:

Analytical/Tough-minded:

I pursue intellectual topics thoroughly and regularly
Debating is a good way to match my wits with others
I am intrigued by rules and patterns that govern systems
I am more analytical and logical than most people
I am able to solve problems without letting emotion get in the way
When making a decision, I like to stick to the facts rather than be swayed by people’s feelings

Prosocial/Empathetic:

I like to get to know my friends’ deepest needs and feelings
I highly value deep emotional intimacy in my relationships
Regardless of what is logical, I generally listen to my heart when making important decisions
After watching an emotional film, I often still feel moved by it several hours later
I am very sensitive to people’s feelings and needs
I feel emotions more deeply than most people

See (Fisher et al, 2010) for the rest of the questions. She has also conducted some research on the neural correlates of these personality types which might be of interest, see (Brown et al, 2013).

Another thing you may look at is the empathy and systemizing quotient, see for example (Groen et al, 2015). I believe the idea was originally developed by Simon Baron-Cohen.

This is far from a comprehensive answer, and I don't know how solid and well-established the research it. However, it may be a helpful starting point for you.

References:

Fisher, Island, Rich, Marchalik, Brown (2015). Four broad temperament dimensions: description, convergent validation correlations, and comparison with the Big Five. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01098

Fisher, Rich, Island, Marchalik (2010). The second to fourth digit ratio: A measure of two hormonally-based temperament dimensions. DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2010.06.027

Brown, Acevedo, Fisher (2013). Neural Correlates of Four Broad Temperament Dimensions: Testing Predictions for a Novel Construct of Personality. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0078734

Groen, Fuermaier, Den Heijer, Tucha, Althaus (2015). The Empathy and Systemizing Quotient: The Psychometric Properties of the Dutch Version and a Review of the Cross-Cultural Stability. DOI: 10.1007/s10803-015-2448-z


What free scientific measures of Big 5 personality are available?

IPIP

It should be noted that the IPIP has a range of multi-construct versions that are designed to align with some existing measures.

IPIP mapped to NEO-PI-R

The Big Five Inventory (BFI)

The BFI is available here in the Appendix of John and Srivastava (1999). Sanjay Srivastava has a page discussing the measure here. (Note the page also directed  me to other options I mention below). It is not public domain but it appears to be free for research.

It is a 44 item measure of the Big 5. Each item involves short sentences.

Big 5 Aspects Scale

As Sanjay Srivastava writes:

  Colin DeYoung and colleagues have published a 100-item measure, called
  the Big Five Aspect Scales (BFAS), which scores not only the Big Five
  factors, but also two "aspects" of each. The BFAS is in the public
  domain as well.

100 Unipolar Markers

Sanjay Srivastava notes that there is "Lew Goldberg's set of 100
 trait-descriptive adjectives" (Goldberg, 1992).

Big 5 Mini Markers

  Gerard Saucier reduced [Goldberg's] set to 40 Big Five mini-markers
  that have excellent reliability and validity (Saucier, 1994).
  More recently, Saucier has developed new trait
  marker sets that maximize the orthogonality of the factors (Saucier, 2002). Saucier's mini-markers are in the
  public domain.

HEXACO Personality Inventory-Revised

While the HEXACO is actually based on a six factor model of personality, it does share similarities to the Big 5. Specifically, five of the six dimensions map on to the Big 5, and HEXACO adds honesty-humility.
60 and 100 item versions of the test are available on the website (and 200 item version is available by request).

References

Goldberg, L. R. (1992). The development of markers for the Big-Five factor structure. Psychological assessment, 4(1), 26. PDF
John, O. P., & Srivastava, S. (1999). The Big Five trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and theoretical perspectives. Handbook of personality: Theory and research, 2, 102-138. PDF
Saucier, G. (1994). Mini-markers: A brief version of Goldberg's unipolar Big-Five markers. Journal of personality assessment, 63(3), 506-516. PDF
Saucier,G. (2002).  Orthogonal markers for orthogonal factors: The case of the Big Five.  Journal of Research in Personality,  36(1), 1-31. PDF


From a neuroscientific standpoint, what are the most effective ways to develop empathy, love and compassion for others?

I'm including some relevant papers below, but one important thing to note abot this whole compassion/Buddhism/neuroscience discussion is that neuroscience may not necessarily have the most to say about developing empathy/love/compassion (ELC), especially as compared to "real-world," social psychological, or behavioral measures linking prosocial behavior to certain practices like mindfulness/metta/etc.

What do I mean by that? Consider: let's say we throw people in an fMRI and demonstrate, quasi-experimentally, that increased BOLD response in area K of the brain predicts increased ELC.

Let's then say that we then have a sample group engage in metta practices for six months, and afterward they demonstrate increased ELC (as measured, perhaps, by scales, charity donations, patience--whatever!). If we then threw those people in an fMRI and they didn't demonstrate increased BOLD response in area K, we wouldn't really be able to say that they don't have increased ELC, just because the "neuroscience" doesn't suggest so. All of our applied measures of ELC--sending money to charity, being more patient with their kids, etc.--would still suggest that they effectively built ELC.

So, neuroscience can support existing associations between certain practices and ELC, but it would be difficult to use neuroscience as the independent arbiter of any causal links between ELC and certain practices.

But, to your question: you may find these papers and discussions helpful:

Klimecki et al., Differential pattern of functional brain plasticity after
compassion and empathy training; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4040103/

From the abstract: "In response to videos depicting human suffering, empathy training, but not memory training (control group), increased negative affect and brain activations in anterior insula and anterior midcingulate cortex—brain regions previously associated with empathy for pain. In contrast, subsequent compassion training could reverse the increase in negative effect ... We conclude that training compassion may reflect a new coping strategy to overcome empathic distress and strengthen resilience."
Note that one implication of the distinction between empathy/compassion training is that empathy training may incline us to feel self-concern in the presence of others suffering, which is distinct from the other-directed concern associated with compassion training. I could, from a theoretical perspective, feel complete empathy for your pain but have no motivation to alleviate it; in contrast, to feel compassion is, in some ways, to be concerned with or care about alleviating your suffering. The Buddhist monk Mathieu Ricard has explored this distinction: http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/blog/posts/empathy-and-the-cultivation-of-compassion

-

A discussion of recent findings on the neuroscience of compassion from UCB's Greater Good research center: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/three_insights_from_the_frontiers_of_the_mind

In sum: yes, meditation training can augment activity in brain areas associated with a whole host of positive traits/emotions--compassion, connectedness, etc. Note again though that demonstrating increased activity in a brain area previously associated with a positive thing is not necessarily the same as causing an increase in that positive thing. Neuroscience has a far ways to go before we can off-the-cuff describe all geographic brain activity in terms of its real-world and experiential consequences.

-

Also, here's the "recommended reading" all in one PDF from a 2016 seminar at Harvard Med School on meditation practice and neuroscience. Not all of it is directly related to compassion, but the sum takeaway (for me, at least), is that yes, mindfulness can cause (not just predict) reductions in stress, increases in positive affect, and increases in compassion. (The inter-correlations between some of those measures--like self-compassion and how we treat others--can make exact causal chains hard to suss out, but I believe the overall pattern of results is strong). https://hms.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/assets/Harvard%20Now%20and%20Zen%20Reading%20Materials.pdf

-

Stevens and Woodruff's book, The Neuroscience of Empathy, Compassion, and Self-Compassion; https://www.elsevier.com/books/the-neuroscience-of-empathy-compassion-and-self-compassion/stevens/978-0-12-809837-0

To be honest, I haven't read this, but it's a recent edition of their book, and they're both respected psychologists at Northern Arizona State University. If you're looking for a longer exploration of all the recent literature on compassion and neuroscience, this may be up your alley.

///

Additional papers on compassion training:

Weng et al. (https://centerhealthyminds.org/assets/files-publications/WengCompassionAssociationForPsychologicalScience.pdf)

"Compassion trainees were instructed to evoke feelings of compassion while silently repeating compassion-generating phrases." (NOTE: these trainees also engaged in a version of metta practice, so that clouds the non-meditative results).
Results: more altruistic behavior post-compassion training, more activation in brain areas associated with compassion (that's a broad way to put that, apologies--I'm not a neuroscience specialist).

Jazaieri et al. (https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs10902-012-9373-z.pdf)

Participants did "Compassion Cultivation Training," described as such: "Each class includes: (a) pedagogical instruction with active group discussion, (b) a guided group meditation, (c) interactive practical exercises related to the specific step of the week...and (d) exercises designed to prime feelings of open-heartedness or connection to others, either through reading poetry or through reflecting on inspiring stories.
So, unfortunately, the CCT does involve some metta/meditative practices and thus doesn't serve as a perfect comparison to meditative practice--but it includes other exercises as well, perhaps suggesting that even the non-meditative activities contribute to the cultivation of ELC.
Results: "...CCT resulted in significant improvement in [compassion]. Specifically, CCT completers reported reductions in fear of compassion (for others, from others, and for self) and an increase in self-compassion. These findings suggest that not only is the absence of compassion worth investigating but also one’s fear of compassion..."

Again, both of those papers utilize some meditative practices as part of their compassion training, rendering it difficult to parse out exactly what features of the training best served to increase compassion. However, it seems reasonable to assume that, at a minimum, the non-meditative aspects of the compassion training in each case at least did not hurt participants' compassion, and probably enhanced it.


What Ethical and Legal Provisions Release One from "Mandatory Reporting"?

You would need to seek the professional advice of someone in the legal profession for this but as far as I am aware there are no provisions releasing anyone from legal duties under mandatory reporting requirements.


How many trials are needed to estimate a response time distribution?

Disclaimer: I'm not generally doing experiments where reaction time is the primary DV. But I thought I'd look at this issue and explored RTs from a neuroimaging dataset, and I think the findings are relevant to the question.

I think without further qualification, this question doesn't have an answer. Here I've plotted the estimation of reaction time/RT over the time course of an experiment (248 trials total), based on the RTs collected up to each time point, for a single subject:

For each point, the CI is the CI of the mean for all trials up to the respective trial number; so at x = 10, it's the CI for the mean based on the first 10 trials. Incremental mean is the mean over all trials up to this point; it is not the mean of means, but the mean of RTs. The total mean is the mean over all trials collected in this experiment.
I'm ignoring that the data is probably not normal for now.

As you can see, the width of the confidence interval of the mean asymptotes fairly quickly and doesn't get much better after 100 or so trials. However, you also see that the "incremental mean" (the mean of all trials up to this point) has not yet reached the true ("total") mean yet. This is likely because of a significant practice effect; the longer the experiment goes on, the faster the subject becomes. So while the precision of the estimate does not improve much after the 100th trial, the CI doesn't actually contain the "true" value- because the "true" value is non-stationary!
So maybe 200, 250 trials is not enough!? But I don't think the mean would have become stationary at a certain time point/trial count. Rather, eventually, fatigue would have overtaken the practice effect and RTs would have started rising again. d' would probably worsen, and variance rise, etc.
Metaphorically, we could call this Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in experimental psychology, in that we change what we measure by the process of measurement.

Now as you can see, this experiment is fairly special in that RTs are quite high - around 1500 msec. This is because my paradigm is comparatively complicated. Maybe practice would matter less, and the estimates asymptote more quickly, and more stable, in a different paradigm; for example, a very simple low-level signal detection experiment.  This is why I'm saying there is no straight-forward answer so far, as the specific behavior of RT depends on the paradigm.

Maybe you could try to account for the time effect - for example, with a regression with time as a predictor and estimation of the subject-specific intercept for RT independent of the time term. But then, that's "subject-specific RT intercept after removal of covariates" or something like that, not "reaction time mean".


How respected is Viktor Frankl's logotherapy among modern psychologists?

I can't say whether Viktor Frankl is respected by modern psychologists on average, or how respected he is. Anecdotally, I have heard of both Frankl and logotherapy, but not enough to know much more than that they exist. The real question, though, is whether there is any empirical support for logotherapy, and overall, the evidence (for or against logotherapy) I could find is very limited.

Empirical support for logotherapy

At the very least, there has been a limited amount of recent research. Psychometrically, a 2004 review of logotherapeutic measures reported that the Purpose-in-Life test (PIL), the Life Purpose Questionnaire (LPQ), the Seeking of Noetic Goals test (SONG), and the Meaning in Suffering Test (MIST) were internally consistent (Schulenberg, 2004).

Logotherapy also appears to have some empirical support as a treatment for a few specific issues, such as reducing self-reported suffering in adolescents with terminal cancer (Kang et al., 2009), reducing self-reported sense of meaninglessness in people with paralysis (Julom and de Guzmán, 2013), and assisting with the treatment of PTSD (Southwick, Gilmartin, Mcdonough and Morrissey, 2006).

References

Julom, A. M., & de Guzmán, R. (2013). The effectiveness of logotherapy program in alleviating the sense of meaninglessness of paralyzed in-patients. International Journal of Psychology and Psychological Therapy, 13(3), 357-371.
Kang, K. A., Im, J. I., Kim, H. S., Kim, S. J., Song, M. K., & Sim, S. (2009). The effect of logotherapy on the suffering, finding meaning, and spiritual well-being of adolescents with terminal cancer. Journal of Korean Academy of Child Health Nursing, 15(2), 136-144.
Schulenberg, S. E. (2004). A Psychometric Investigation of Logotherapy Measures and the Outcome Questionnaire (OQ-45.2). North American Journal of Psychology.
Southwick, S. M., Gilmartin, R., Mcdonough, P., & Morrissey, P. (2006). Logotherapy as an adjunctive treatment for chronic combat-related PTSD: A meaning-based intervention. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 60(2), 161.


Music and the autonomic nervous system:

There have been studies linking the effects of music on well being, by affecting heart rate and blood vessel dilation.

There has been much research linking the effects of music on Autonomic Nervous System (ANS), which affects heart rate. The emotional nature of the music, be it restful or stressful, is linked with changes in the ANS.

  Music emphasis and rhythmic phrases are tracked consistently by physiological variables. Autonomic responses are synchronized with music, which might therefore convey emotions through autonomic arousal during crescendos or rhythmic phrases. (1)

Effects of music on brain function:

It has been demonstrated that music  can affect brain function through increased arousal or relaxation, depending on the tempo.

  Music induces an arousal effect, predominantly related to the tempo. Slow or meditative music can induce a relaxing effect; relaxation is particularly evident during a pause. Music, especially in trained subjects, may first concentrate attention during faster rhythms, then induce relaxation during pauses or slower rhythms. (2)

Effects of music on the heart

Music tempo or style also produces responses to heart rate and blood flow; relaxing or pleasant music producing results equivalent to studies showing the positive effects of laughter on the ANS.

  Music, selected by study participants because it made them feel good and brought them a sense of joy, caused tissue in the inner lining of blood vessels to dilate (or expand) in order to increase blood flow. This healthy response matches what the same researchers found in a 2005 study of laughter. On the other hand, when study volunteers listened to music they perceived as stressful, their blood vessels narrowed, producing a potentially unhealthy response that reduces blood flow. (3)

Rhythmic entrainment and heartrate:

Human beings are naturally disposed toward rhythmic entrainment. (4)

There has been some research suggesting that the body will synchronise with musical rhythm.  I say this with a disclaimer that this would need to be  music played with a regular tempo over a prolonged period, as for the heart beat to synchronise within a mathematical relationship with the music tempo, this would require stability and an absence of other external distraction for the body to achieve this state. Or better put, listening to a variety of music styles, with varying tempos, will affect the ANS, but will not create such a rhythmic coordination between the music and the ANS.

  • Entrainment is the process through which periodic events, i.e.
  oscillators, become coordinated through interaction. When oscillators
  come regularly into phase or of beginning their cycles  together, way
  say that they have synchronized.
    • Entrainment in music has been
  suggested by Juslin et al. (2010) as an emotion mechanism where the
  music causes an increase in arousal “because the powerful, external
  rhythm of the  music interacts with an internal body rhythm of the
  listener *…+, such that the latter rhythm adjusts towards and
  eventually ‘locks in’ to a common periodicity.” The adjusted body
  rhythm  then spreads through proprioceptive feedback to the
  subcomponents of emotion such as cognitive, neurophysiological,
  motivational, expressive, and subjective feelings components. (5)

References:

(1) Dynamic Interactions Between Musical, Cardiovascular, and Cerebral Rhythms in Humans
Luciano Bernardi, et al
doi: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.108.806174
(2) Cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and respiratory changes induced by different types of music in musicians and non‐musicians: the importance of silence
L Bernardi, C Porta, and P Sleight
doi:  10.1136/hrt.2005.064600
(3) Music & Cardiovascular System
University of Maryland Medical Center
(4) The ecology of entrainment: Foundations of coordinated rhythmic movement
Jessica Phillips-Silver, C. Athena Aktipis, and Gregory A. Bryant
doi:  10.1525/mp.2010.28.1.3
(5) Rhythm, entrainment and musical emotions
Carolina Labbé & Didier Grandjean
Neuroscience of Emotion and Affective Dynamics (NEAD)
Department of Psychology
University of Geneva
Answers to Sensory Challenges, edited by Kathleen Morris. MS CCC/SLP. 2010.(Originally published in SI Focus Magazine, Fall 2008) Article by Jeff Strong


'Mental Illness' covers such a broad range of illnesses that it would be very difficult to answer your question. However, general consensus is  that: people who are receiving an effective treatment for a mental illness are no more violent or dangerous than neurotypical/ 'healthy' people. People with a mental illness are more likely to harm themselves or to be harmed. There is a weak association between violence and mental illness, especially when alcohol or drug misuse is involved. Early treatment of mental illness is the key to preventing violence. This article covers the topic fairly thoroughly:

Link, B. G., & Stueve, A. (1995). Evidence bearing on mental illness as a possible cause of violent behavior. Epidemiologic Reviews, 17(1), 172-181.

This is from their conclusion on mental illness and public safety:

  People with mental illness pose no greater threat to public safety than do such other "high risk" groups as men or young adults or people with less than a high school education.