At what time in a psychophysical test are catch trials preferably presented?

Short answer
Based on the experimental restrictions provided in the question and comments, my best bet would be to include 6 catch trials and to randomly present them from trial 6 and onward. Trials 1 & 2 are reserved for training purposes, trials 3 - 5 I would reserve for above-threshold stimuli.

Background
First a problem breakdown as I understand it from the question and the comments:

A Yes/No task is performed using method-of-constant stimuli;
Dynamic stimulus range is known and expected outcomes are available;
The detection rate is important, whereas a 50% threshold or psychometric curve are not of interest;
Zero-stimulus ('catch') trials are a necessary component to validate the method in the normal-group;
No pilot experiment can be performed to validate the methods in a small group of controls;
Two practice trials are needed (stimulus-tone alone; noise-alone);
Critical bottle neck: 20 trials per run

So - here is my suggestion, based on my experiences.

First off, in a yes/no task there's anything possible from correct rates from 0% to 100%. To have a reasonably estimate of the correct rate at a certain constant stimulus, multiple trials are necessary. With one trial you only get 0% or 100% correct - such a binary approach may make sense, but it will add substantial jitter. With four trials, you basically end up with correct-rate increments of 25%. Not too bad, but not pretty either. One subject error and the outcome will be substantially affected. With 8 trials, you are left with steps of 12.5%. From my point of view, 8 trials is the least you should have to have a reasonable estimate with some precision and to allow the subject to make an error without too much of an affect on the outcome.

From a more practical standpoint, you are left with 18 trials per run per subject (?), namely 20 trials minus two practice runs. At the minimum, from my stand point, you should use 3 stimulus levels: zero-intensity (catch trials) and two above detection-threshold stimuli to spread your chances of finding a statistical difference. I would recommend one far-above detection threshold ('High' condition), where also your impaired group will reach correct rates >50% and one low level ('Low) where your impaired group will score <50% to have a condition that will make a positive outcome (difference control-impaired) guaranteed.

This means 18 trials for three conditions: 'Catch'; 'Low'; 'High'. That means 6 trials per condition, leaving you with correct-rate increments of 16.7%. Not too bad.

Now, where to put those catch trials into the picture?

I would personally enforce the paradigm to start with the two practice trials (first the tone, then noise) and then have at least the first two or three trials above threshold; best thing to do is have the 'High' condition first for two times, then the 'Low' and start randomizing from there. Again, this is all personal opinion, based on my experience that dis-ambiguating the test protocol is paramount. There's nothing worse than a confused subject. By having 2 well-above detection threshold stimuli (the same as training trial #1 I guess) the task is clear cut. If you start off with a catch trial after training they will likely be confused ('I didn't hear a tone!?' ; 'Should I press the button?').


Do we pick partner most similar to opposite-sex parent?

Good question. Here is what I found.

People may be attracted to the physical features that our opposite sex parent posses {1,2} However, the jury is out as to whether people are more likely to be attracted to people who share the mental traits of parents {3,4}. As an example of this {3} write

  "Much of the current research on parental identification and mate
  selection is contradictory and inconclusive. The studies that are
  available suggest a similarity between partner choice and parental
  similarity, although the results for similarity between partner choice
  and parent vary by gender. Various theories suggest that individuals
  choose mates based on some type of similarity with their partners.
  Such similarities include values, religion, physical attractiveness,
  or expressiveness (Bailey et al., 1994; Boyden, Carroll, & Maier,
  1984; Howard et al., 1987; Murstein, 1976). Parental identification
  research also is inconclusive, with some studies finding same-sex
  parent identification and others finding opposite-sex parent or both
  parent identification (Geher, 2000; von der Lippe, 1965)"

I am happy to go into more detail about any of this, if you want me to.

References:

{1} Little, A., et al. (2003). "Investigating an imprinting-like phenomenon in humans: partners and opposite-sex parents have similar hair and eye colour." Evolution and Human Behavior 24(1): 43-51.

{2} Perrett, D. I., et al. (2002). "Facial attractiveness judgements reflect learning of parental age characteristics." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 269(1494): 873-880.

{3}van Eeden-Moorefield, B. and E. W. Lindsey (2005). "Intergenerational Effects of Parental Personality and Relationship Traits on Mate Choice Among Gay Male and Lesbian Offspring." Journal of Homosexuality 49(1): 123-143.

{4} Strokoff, Johanna, "Parental influence on romantic attraction with simulated online dating profiles." (2015). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 2232.
Retrieved from


Does gender as a factor always make my experiment quasi-experimental?

If your experiment is preselecting and assigning participants non-randomly, such as using sex as the main factor to partition participant groups and responses, then yes it is quasi-experimental design. If the participant partitioning is random then this is not a quasi-experimental. However many studies may investigate sex differences as part of an exploratory analysis. You may investigate sex differences as a byproduct of a between-, within- or mixed-experimental designs to see if there are any sex differences influencing the data outside of the experimental manipulations. This does not make the design quasi, but is important to investigate because there are often differences between males and females in cognitive task performance e.g. working memory tasks, and neural activity. The examples I have given are easily found in papers on the areas I'm personally investigating at the moment (working memory) which are quasi-experimatal designs because sex was the main grouping factor, but differences can be found in a great many papers which were not looking at sex differences specifically.

Essentially the quasi design basically just means non-random assignment, and is useful in many study types not just for investigating sex differences. To summerise, quasi-design if preselected non-random assignment. Not quasi if used as part of exploratory analysis of a study using random group assignment to the experimental conditions.


Does hypnotherapy/hypnosis, in any form, for any type of disorder, work?

Hypnosis "works" only insofar as it induces1 a trance. Hypnosis is not a type of therapy. Hypnosis does not cure any disorders or do anything at all, except induce a trance.

Hypnotherapy, from the perspective of psychodynamic theory, utilizes this trance to directly access the subconscious. In traditional hypnotherapy (of the Victorian era), direct suggestions were "planted" in the "unprotected" subconscious; in modern Ericksonian hypnotherapy, the unconscious is stimulated to participate in the healing process.

So the question we are dealing with asks:

Does hypnotherapy work for any type of disorder?

Yes, it does. Standard works (Burrows & Dennerstein, 1980; Brown & Fromm, 1986; Cheek & LeCron, 1968; Crasilneck & Hall, 1985; Hammond, 1990; Kossak, 1989; Kroger & Fezler, 1976; Peter et al., 1991; Revenstorff, 1993; Lynn et al., 1996; Wester & Smith, 1984; Erickson, 2007-2010; O'Hanlon & Hexum, 1990) show that hypnosis has been successfully applied to a multitude of psychosomatic, psychiatric and somatic cases including:

behavioral problems

nail biting
enuresis (bedwetting)
smoking
overweight
academic and athletic increase in performance

psychoneurotic disorders

phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorders
depressive reactions
post-traumatic stress disorder
dissociative disorders
sleep disorders

psychosomatic disorders

chronic pain
migraine, tension headache
morbus crohn, ulcers
asthma, hay fever
hypertonia (high blood pressure)

somatic disorders

immunology: warts, dermatosis, ichtyosis, tumors
vasomotoric: bleeding control, morbus raynaud, wound healing
acute pain: obstetrics, dentistry, postoperative pain
neurology: amnesia, rehabilitation after brain lesions

In addition to case studies, there is a growing number of controlled group studies on the effectiveness of hypnotherapy which show empirically confirmed indications for this method. Meta-analyses have become the accepted method of judging the effectiveness of a therapeutic procedure, so I will confine myself to these in the following overview.

In a meta-analysis (Rominger, 1995) of 36 control group studies with more than 1200 patients  the effect sizes ranged from g = .54 to g = .952. This corresponds (converted after Rosenthal, 1984) to a correlation between treatment and effect ranging from r = .26 to r = .44. From this a success rate (in %) can be estimated for treated and untreated patients (table 1).

                 Number of Studies    Success Rate    Success Rate
                                      untreated (%)   treated (%)
all studies      36                   31              69
smoking           4                   30              70
anxiety           6                   29              71
pain             14                   37              63

Table 1. Results of a meta-analysis of hypnotherapy (after Rominger, 1995).

In a more recent meta-analysis, Bongartz et al. (1999) found comparable results in 112 studies with 5600 patients (table 2).

                       Number of Studies    Success Rate    Success Rate
                                            untreated (%)   treated (%)
psychotherapy (all)    85                   32              68
addiction               6                   37              63
somatoform disorders   11                   35              65
anxiety                11                   26              74
behavioral problems     4                   33              67
pain (all)             27                   35              65
pain (cancer)           6                   36              64
pain (surgery)          8                   38              62
pain (birth)            5                   36              64

Table 2. Results of a meta-analysis of hypnotherapy (after Bongartz et al., 1999).

In a new meta-analysis (2002), Bongartz et al. again confirmed the effectiveness of hypnotherapy. The abstract recapitulates:

  From 193 studies published until 1998 that investigated the efficacy
  of hypnosis 43 randomized clinical studies were selected that compared
  a patient group treated exclusively by hypnosis with an untreated
  control group (or with a group of patients treated by conventional
  medical procedures).The 43 studies were integrated into a
  meta-analysis that yielded a weighted average post-treatment effect
  size of d=.60 (medium effect size) for hypnotic treatment of ICD-10
  coded disorders (24 studies; average treatment period: 5.1 weeks)
  and d=.38 (small effect) for hypnosis as an adjunct for supporting
  medical procedures (19 studies).These estimates are conservative
  since all variables of a given study were used. Most of the studies
  employed methods of the classical approach to hypnosis. In order to
  obtain an estimate to which extent non-clinical factors
  (design-quality, way of comparison of dependent variables) have an
  influence on the effect sizes, effect sizes were computed for all
  studies of the original 193 studies that reported the necessary
  statistical information (N=89). For those studies with an average
  effect size of d=.80 a mas- sive influence of non-clinical factors was
  demonstrated with a range from d=.51 for randomized studies with group
  comparisons to d=2.0 for non-randomized studies using
  pre-post-comparisons.

A table listing all 43 analyzed studies and their area of application ("Störungsbild/Anwendungsbereich"), number of patients ("Patientenzahl"), type of hypnosis ("Hypnoseart"), treatment period in weeks ("Behandlungszeitraum") and effect sizes ("Effektstärke") is included in the publication which is available online at http://bscw.rediris.es/pub/bscw.cgi/d4416025/Bongartz-Effektivitat_hypnose.pdf (in German). It gives a more discriminating view and shows the large variance in effect sizes among the studies, but does not add anything new to this overview.

All the studies included in the meta-analysis used a control group, randomized assignment of patients to the groups, and used hypnotherapy as the only psychotherapeutic treatment (and not in conjunction with other forms of psychotherapy), but sometimes in conjunction with the medical standard therapy. As such, from my point of view, the meta-analysis is quite flawless. Some of the studies included measurements taken some time after the end of the treatment, but these were not considered in this meta analysis, because the 193 studies from which the ones included in the meta-analysis were selected are all the studies that the authors could find in relevant databases and literature ("footnote chasing") between 1974 and 1998, and the number of studies including "longer-term" effects were apparently not enough for a separate analysis. Thus, the authors of the meta-analysis considered only the immediate post-treatment measures of all studies.

In summary, it seems to me that the effectiveness of hypnotherapy has been shown especially for behavioral, anxiety and (psycho)somatic disorders and symptoms, while it seems not to have been applied, or not successfully, to psychotic, affective, dissociative, sexual, eating, sleep, impulse control, adjustment and personality disorders.

Footnotes:

1 Sometimes. An attempt by a clinical psychologist and trained hypnotist to hypnotize me did not lead to any trance.

2 In an analysis of 302 meta-analyses of psychologica, pedagogical and behavioral therapies, Lipsey and Wilson (1993) found 90% of effect sizes to be above 0.10, and 85% above 0.20. A more methodically severe selection of 156 meta-analyses returned a mean effect size of 0.47.

Sources:

Bongartz, W., Flammer, E., & Schonke, R. (1999). Die Effektivität der Hypnotherapie: Eine meta-analytische Studie. Vortrag auf der Jahrestagung der M.E.G., Bad Orb.
Bongartz, W., Flammer, E., & Schonke, R. (2002). Die Effektivität der Hypnose: Eine meta-analytische Studie. Psychotherapeut, 47, 67-76.
Brown, D. P., & Fromm, E. (1986). Hypnotherapy and Hypnoanalysis. Hillsdale, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Burrows, G. D., & Dennerstein, L. (Eds.) (1980). *Handbook of hypnosis and psychosomatic medicine. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Cheek, D. B., & LeCron, L. M. (1968). Clinical hypnotherapy. New York: Grune & Stratton.
Crasilneck, H. B., & Hall, J. A. (1985). Clinical Hypnosis: Principles and Applications* (2nd ed.). New York: Grune & Stratton.
Erickson, M. H. (2007-2010). Collected Works (10 vols.). Milton H. Erickson Foundation Press.
Hammond, D. C. (ed.) (1990). Handbook of Hypnotic Suggestions and Metaphors. New York: Norton.
Kossak, H. C. (1989). Hypnose: Ein Lehrbuch. Weinheim: PVU.
Kroger, W. S., & Fezler, W. D. (1976). Hypnosis and Behavior Modification: Imagery Conditioning. Philadelphia: Lippincott.
Lynn, S. J., Kirsch, I., & Rhue, J. W. (eds.) (1996) *Casebook of Clinical Hypnosis. Washington, DC: APA.
Lipsey, M, L., & Wilson, D. B. (1993). The efficacy of psychological, educational, and behavioral treatment: Confirmation from meta-analysis. American Psychologist, 48, 1181-1209.
O'Hanlon, W. H., & Hexum, A. L. (1990). An Uncommon Casebook: The Complete Clinical Works of Milton H. Erickson. New York: Norton.
Peter, B., Kraiker, C., & Revenstorf, D. (eds.) (1991). Hypnose und Verhaltenstherapie. Bern: Huber.
Revenstorff, D. (1993). Klinische Hypnose (2nd ed.). Heidelberg: Springer.
Rominger, M. (1995). Metaanalyse der Hypnotherapie (Diploma thesis). University of Tübingen.
Rosenthal, R. (1984). Meta-Analytic Procedures for Social Research*. London: Sage.
Wester, W. C., & Smith, A. H. (1984). Clinical Hypnosis: A Multidisciplinary Approach. Philadelphia: Lippincott.


Why do "cool" colors, which are actually warmer, look cool, and vice versa?

Why is red light seen as "warm", although it is still lower in energy than blue?

  Red and blue light differ in energy density, they are located on opposite sides of the rainbow. Blue light oscillates almost twice as fast as red and has a correspondingly shorter wavelength. And because it swings faster, the particles of blue light are also higher in energy. Nevertheless, red light appears warmer.

  This is the difference between physics and psychology. How a color affects us depends not just on whether or not the corresponding rays are energetic, but it depends on how the brain processes signals. And especially when it comes to colors, very archaic associations play a role.

  Red, yellow and orange - these are the colors of fire, of embers. The sun appears red in the evening sky. And red is also the color of blood. Blood means heat: If we are hot and our fingers are warm, they are red. This already happened to our early ancestors, and that's why this association of red = hot is probably anchored deep in our perceptual apparatus. Conversely, if we consider what is blue: blue is, for example, water - and water is cool.

  Now you can take this even further and say: Red light is not only psychologically warm, but also physically warm - if we think for example of infrared lamps, they really warm us. Which is why they are used in medicine, while, conversely, of course, no doctor would think to treat a person with UV lamps. Because UV light is aggressive, it can damage the skin and cause cancer.

  This is because UV light is even higher in energy than blue light - the high energy density makes the light so aggressive. Conversely, infrared light, while physically even lower in energy than red light, is seen as heat radiation.

  This has the following background: Basically, every body has a natural radiation, and this characteristic radiation depends only on the temperature. Therefore, one can, even if it is pitch dark, distinguish hot and cold items with an infrared camera, because warm objects glow stronger in the infrared spectrum. There is a clear relation between the temperature of a body and the kind of radiation that it emits.

  If something has room temperature, then we do not see this radiation, it lies in the infrared and our eyes can not see infrared radiation. But when things get warmer, the radiation changes and shifts into the range of visible light - in other words, it shifts from infrared to red. That is why red-hot objects are red.

  At still higher temperatures, the heat color would in fact shift to blue, but when a body glows blue, it would be even hotter than the sun, and in everyday life, we almost never have to do with such extremely hot objects. That is why red is the color of a warm, glowing body.

Translated from http://www.swr.de/blog/1000antworten/antwort/16474/warum-gilt-rotes-licht-als-warm-obwohl-es-doch-energiearmer-ist-als-blaues/


High blood pressure can lead to anxiety?

Neuroticism can lead to hostility:

Egan & Lewis (2011): "Neuroticism and agreeableness differentiate emotional and narcissistic expressions of aggression"

A key finding in this study is the influence of N on a variety of
distress types; Suls and Martin (2005) have observed the ‘neurotic
cascade’ produced by N. Hyper-reactivity, differential exposure to
negative events because of the environments high-N persons select and
create for themselves, differential appraisal for events (e.g.,
perceiving experiences as more troubling than they really are),
negative emotional transfer, and problems changing maladaptive ways of
coping with distress and challenges all combine to upset a high-N
person, which may make them hostile. However, high N does not drive
outwardly directed narcissistic aggression.

However, I am not clear about the difference between anxiety and neuroticism, as well as between hostility and aggression.
References
Egan, V., & Lewis, M. (2011). Neuroticism and agreeableness differentiate emotional and narcissistic expressions of aggression. Personality and Individual Differences, 50(6), 845-850. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2011.01.007


About Tracking the psychological defense mechanism

The conscious and unconscious aspects of Sigmund Freud's ego-defence mechanisms refer to the awareness of the thought patterns and actions; and how they are affecting the person and those around them.
As an example, someone going through an intense traumatic experience can completely dissociate from the acts in play. There are examples of this in many areas of trauma. One example was discussed in my answer to the question “Can calmness happen during the fight-flight response?”
Having said that, here are differing levels of conscious awareness within the different defence mechanisms. Take a look at my answer to another question concerning dissociation as an example.
With this in mind, it doesn't make things so clear cut when talking about (un)conscious thought patterns and actions when referring to the defence mechanisms.
When dissociation is at play in the first linked example, after the traumatic event, the person who has been traumatised can find themselves unable to remember everything that happened during the event. Some combat veterans have said that they cannot remember how they got out of some situations when others around them got killed.
They didn't consciously make the decision to dissociate from the trauma, but:

Dissociation is a psychological defence mechanism (Cardeña, 1994) which helps the person to get through the situation with as little harm as possible.

With regard to your example of ego-defence mechanisms (Intellectualisation), in order to intellectualise the incident in question, you need to consciously think about alternative thought patterns.
Another way of describing intellectualisation is by saying that it is creating some form of “justification” for the highly emotional and/or traumatic event (real or semi-real).

Related to rationalization, intellectualization involves removing the emotion from emotional experiences, and discussing painful events in detached, uncaring, sterile ways. Someone who intellectualizes becomes very distant from their feelings, and when asked to describe their feelings may find it difficult. They may understand all the words that describe feelings, but have no idea what they really feel (Niolon, 2004).

I would add to that by saying that if you have no idea what you really feel, you will have no complete idea why you feel that way.
Glen O. Gabbard M.D. spoke about defence mechanisms, including intellectualisation, in pages 31 and 32 of his book (Gabbard, 2004). He basically talked about the relevant defence mechanisms with regard to “the patient's level of personality organisation”.
Emphasis mine

The psychodynamic clinician uses a combination of defense mechanisms,internal object relations, ego strengths or weaknesses, and an assessment of reflective function to determine the patient’s level of personality organization (Table 2–2). This assessment differs from one based on DSM-IV-TR categories (American Psychiatric Association 2000). It involves diagnostic understanding of the person, rather than a diagnostic label. Its value is primarily in the way it informs the psychotherapy.
[...]
Table 2-2 Level of organization

Neurotic level
Borderline level

Superego well integrated but punitive
Superego integration minimal; capacity for concern and guilt fluctuating considerably

High-level defenses, including repression, reaction formation, intellectualization, doing and undoing, and displacement
Primitive defenses, including splitting, projective identification, idealization, and devaluation

Identity reasonably stable, and internal object relations characterized by ambivalently regarded whole objects and triangular conflict
Identity diffusion and object relations of a “partial” rather than “whole” nature—split into “all good” and “all bad” aspects

Notable ego strengths, including good impulse control, intact  judgment, consistent reality testing, and capacity for sustained work
Nonspecific ego weaknesses, including impulsivity, impaired judgment, brief compromises in reality testing, and difficulty sustaining work

Conflict-based pathology
Significant deficits existing alongside conflicts

Intact reflective function
Impaired reflective function

[...]
People who are neurotically organized experience a great deal of intrapsychic conflict, and they have intact reflective function so they can recognize that their representation of a person or event is not necessarily the same as the actual reality of the person or event. They also can understand that their behaviors are motivated by internal beliefs or feeling states. By contrast, people with a borderline level of organization often have substantial deficits in the self-structure alongside their conflicts and have poorly developed reflective function. They often experience things as just happening to them, rather than being motivated by internal states.

Further reading

For more on dissociation: Term for Trance During Violent Episodes

For other forms of defence mechanisms:My answer to When are dreams created? covers repression and suppression
Can the act of studying more be a defense mechanism?
(Loosely) Due to Gestalt Psychology, is the face an illusion?

References
Cardeña, E. (1994) The domain of dissociation. In: Dissociation: Clinical and theoretical aspects, Edited by: Lynn, S. J. and Rhue, J. W. 5–31. New York, NY: Guildford Press.
Kernberg, O. F. (1976). Technical considerations in the treatment of borderline personality organization. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 24(4), 795-829. https://doi.org/10.1177/000306517602400403
Gabbard, G. O. (2004). Long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy: A basic text. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing. Available from https://www.academia.edu/31570203/Glen_O_Gabbard_Long_Term_Psychodynamic_Psychotherapy_A_Basic_Text_Core_Competencies_in_Psychotherapy_2004_
Niolon, R. (2004) Defences. PsychPage http://www.psychpage.com/learning/defenses.html


How does the brains "focused" and "diffused" modes facilitate learning?

A big assumption here is that diffuse mode is something you can activate at any time. Where as most teachers on the subject view it as a process that activates through inattention (think daydreaming). Inattention can be difficult with work, commute, home, and family as sources of stress or focus.

Another is that focused mode is only for unique identification. Every researcher I've come across acknowledges that making connections is readily available in the focused mode, but it's going to be more limited to the concept you're working with. In her class on Learning how to Learn Barbara Oakley states,

  With the focus mode... You're able to figure out the problem you're trying to solve or the concept you're trying to understand while it's related to something you're rather familiar with.

Segway into the zero-sum-game of these modes. While one is turning on the other is turning off. Not in a binary sense, but along a spectrum. Which is why you might let a problem sit in the back of your mind while you work on similar subjects and all of a sudden you reach an 'aha' moment and make the final necessary connection. Or at least move onto next steps. Instead of inattention to a problem leading you straight into sandy beaches. Again from Barbara Oakley,

  As far neuroscientists know right now, you're either in the focus mode or the diffuse mode of thinking. Being in one mode seems to limit your access to the other mode.

Salvador Dali would take advantage of the diffuse mode and spoke about such with his "sleeping key" method. The idea is to relax to the point you're about to enter the first stage of sleep while keeping a primary thought in mind. As you drift off you'll lose focus letting your mind make connections, until the key drops and you wake up ready to jot down ideas or work.

Further Reading:

A Mind for Numbers by Barbara Oakley
Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, "Rest is Not Idleness: Implications of the Brain's
Default Mode for Human Development and Education"


What is the name of the bias that associate a thing as good because it has a relation to another good thing?

It's called the Halo Effect:

  The halo effect is a ... cognitive bias, where a person making an
  initial assessment of another person, place, or thing will assume
  ambiguous information based upon concrete information.

  The term halo effect is used in marketing to explain customer bias
  toward certain products because of favorable experience with other
  products made by the same company. ... A notable example is the manner
  in which the popularity of Apple’s iPod generated enthusiasm for the
  corporation's other products.


What paper discussed the cognitive properties of Likert/visual analogue scales in ratings?

I did eventually find something which may be what I was thinking of, examining the normality & psychometric properties of Likert scales with differing numbers of points.  They concluded that the 11-point scale was closest to interval-type data in scaling and normality.

Reference:
A comparison of psychometric properties and normality in 4-, 5-, 6-, and 11-point Likert scales. Leung, Shing-On. Journal of Social Service Research37.4 (Jul 2011): 412-421. http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.library.tufts.edu/10.1080/01488376.2011.580697


What are the factors that make the membrane more permeable to Potassium ions than Sodium or Chloride (or any other ions)?

The two-pore-domain potassium channels. There is otherwise nothing intrinsic in the membrane that makes it more permeable to potassium, but the membrane contains these channels which are referred to as "leak" channels because they are not voltage-gated and are always open. These allow cells to turn the concentration gradient maintained by the sodium-potassium ATPase into an electrical gradient.
Other channels are also present and can contribute to the membrane potential at rest, but the two-pore potassium channels are typically the largest contributors.
Most of what you've written as background in your question is only applicable to rest so be sure to consider that as you learn about action potentials and post-synaptic potentials. What is true is that if you were to hold a cell at 0 mV without any voltage-gated channels, you would see much more potassium leaking out than other positive ions moving in, and this is why the inside becomes more negative (establishing the resting membrane potential). The resting potential is the potential at which the net charge of ions flowing across the membrane is equal: that is, there are just as many positive ions flowing out at rest as there are flowing in. If anything else were true the cell would not be at equilibrium and the membrane voltage would continue to change until it were true.


Does referring to each other by number in group meetings lead to better results?

This is way outside of my area, but reducing identity expression definitely can increase group conformity. This is the basic idea underlying e.g. school uniforms and cultural restrictions in totalitarian regimes. It might be important to keep in mind that identity expression could promote many positive outcomes (greater creativity, more flexible approaches to problem solving, etc) in addition to increased conflict.


What is the evidence to suggest that the introvert/extrovert distinction is a shallow distinction?

I think it is safe to say that in psychological research on personality differences, extraversion (vs. introversion) is one of the most important personality dimensions. In fact, extraversion (along with neuroticism) has been included in "virtually all major dispositional models" (see Watson,
Clark, & Harkness, 1994; Zuckerman, Kuhlman, Joireman, & Teta, 1993; as cited in Watson et al. 1999). Extraversion can be reliably measured with personality questionnaires (e.g. Costa & MaCrae, 1992), it is a heritable trait (e.g., Jang et al. 1996) and it meaningfully predicts other important variables such as trait positive affectivity (Watson et al. 2009) or job satisfaction (Judge et al., 2002) to pick two arbitrary examples.

Of course, neither does this mean that it is useful to categorize people into introverts and extraverts (personality research has long moved away from "type" approaches to investigate gradual differences) nor does this mean that extraversion is the only personality difference that matters (it is an important one, but there are others).

In conclusion, extraversion-introversion is a robust and widely replicated personality dimension that features in almost all models of personality.

References

Costa, P.T.,Jr. & McCrae, R.R. (1992). Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.

Jang, K.; Livesley, W. J.; Vemon, P. A. (1996). Heritability of the Big Five Personality Dimensions and Their Facets: A Twin Study. Journal of Personality 64 (3): 577–591.

Judge, T. A., Heller, D., & Mount, M. K. (2002). Five-factor model of personality and job satisfaction: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 530–541. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.87.3.530

Watson, D., Wiese, D., Vaidya, J., & Tellegen, A. (1999). The two general
activation systems of affect: Structural findings, evolutionary consider-
ations, and psychobiological evidence. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 76, 820–838.


Which type of stimulus results in an optimal learning curve for rats and mice?

First, the concept of optimality of a learning curve is not well defined. You can measure at least 3 different aspects of learning:

Speed of learning
Time before extinction
Performance at peak

Of course, there may be other measures as well, and any combination of such measure may also be a legitimate measure for certain uses.

Conditioned Taste Aversion (CTA) is a form of learning in which animals (and humans) learn to avoid a type of food after consuming it and suffering symptoms resembling food poisoning shortly after. In certain cases, the learning can take a single trial, cause the animal to completely avoid the food, and last for a lifetime [1], making this an optimal learning in all of the above 3 measures.

However, CTA is a very special and specific type of learning, and won't help you in teaching your rat to walk in a maze... I haven't found a methodological comparison of different types of reinforcements, and I suspect such a comparison might be very difficult or even impossible, because the efficacy of a (positive) reinforcement is greatly affected by the animal's "appetite" for it: for example, to use food as a reinforcement, rats are usually starved (the technical term is "maintained on a food deprivation schedule") for a few days. To use water as a reinforcement, rats are kept on a water deprivation schedule. How would you equate the subjective level of starvation and thirst?

Other aspects of the learning schedule have been studied more thoroughly. For example, to produce a long lasting learning (increase measure #2) at the expanse of speed of learning (measure #1) and peak performance (#3), you can provide partial reinforcement: reinforce the animal only on some of the trials [2].

[1]  Conditioned taste aversion: Memory of a special kind. Bures, Jan; Bermúdez-Rattoni, Federico; Yamamoto, Takashi; Oxford University Press, 1998  doi: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198523475.001.0001

[2]  Partial reinforcement: a review and critique. Jenkins, William O.; Stanley Jr., Julian C; Psychological Bulletin, Vol 47(3), May 1950  doi: 10.1037/h0060772


Is there any evidence for the cell assembly?

EVIDENCE FOR THE CELL ASSEMBLY

The idea of the cell assembly is grounded on the following 3 principles:

The neurophysiological basis of a concept is the cell assembly, ie population coding.
The neurons in a cell assembly continuously fire even after environmental stimulus ceases.
Learning gives rise to cell assemblies through the interaction between presynaptic and postsynaptic synapses.

NOTE I will briefly talk about the first two principles; however, there is evidence for all 3.

EVIDENCE FOR PRINCIPLE 1

In The Organization of Behavior Hebb observed that brain surgery did not affect intelligence. Given this he proposed that the cell assembly was the neurophysiology basis for a concept.

The studies that support this principle show this; different neurons get activated in response to the same feature, but, unless the neurons function collectively, an object is not identified.

(Averbeck 2006) reports that individual neurons count for little; as an example, he mentions the visual cortex. He says:

  visual discrimination in the primary visual cortex (V1) is much more accurate than would be predicted from the responses of single neurons.

EVIDENCE FOR PRINCIPLE 2

Principle 2 could explain why a stimulus triggers a memory. Consider this example from Seung, Connectome:

  It's a fine spring morning, and you are walking down the street on the way to work. You catch the scent of flowers; within a few steps the smell becomes overpowering. You're not yet conscious of the magnolia blooming at the side of the road, but all of the sudden you're transported far away. You remember standing next to a magnolia tree, outside the red brick house of your first sweetheart. He is holding you in his arms. You feel shy and embarrassed. A plane is flying overhead, and you hear his mother calling for you to come have a glass of lemonade.

He then goes on to explain why this might happen:

  How do these connections trigger the recollection of your first kiss? Since the neurons are assumed excitatory, the activation of the "magnolia neuron" excites the other neurons in the cell assembly to become active.

Since neurons in a cell assembly continuously fire even after the stimulus ceases you remain thinking about your first kiss.

Principle 2 is supported by the following studies:

(Funahashi 2001)
(Assad 2000)

This post is not great, but I hope it helps someone.

Thanks.


Are autonomy, mastery, and purpose the most important motivators?

That was an interesting TED Talk, I enjoyed it. Motivation is a very complex, but fascinating thing to think of. You're asking if those three things he listed are the most important aspects to motivation, but I'm not sure the answer can be straightforward. So let's talk about what motivation is first, before talking about how those three things relate to motivation.

We can think of motivation as simply the urge for an organism to do something. But what determines what things the organism wants to do? Activities are done in the pursuit of value. Value itself is an internal thing; determined by the individual and the context the individual finds himself in. Actually defining "value" is a can of worms we don't need to open here. The point is, when a person finds an activity or object valuable, they will pursue it. I think of it from the perspective of neurobiology, and if you're curious you can look into Samejima et al. (2005), and Kawagoe et al. (1998).

So, let's think of the two types of motivators he listed, extrinsic or intrinsic. In the context of value, an extrinsic motivator is when value is placed on an external object. The motivation is to acquire the reward, and the actual activity is made into an obstacle to obtaining it. With intrinsic motivators, value is placed on the activity itself, so the behavior is to perform that activity. An excellent demonstration of this is in what's called the over-justification effect. Lepper et al. (1973) tested children under different reward situations, and found a significant drop in a coloring activity when a big prize was promised beforehand.

So, to get back to this guys three criteria. Autonomy makes sense right away; when a person can choose their own activity they will choose one they find valuable. Additionally, because they chose it, they will likely value it further. This was shown in a kind of funny/sad study by Brehm (1956), where housewives were allowed to choose an item they would supposedly get for free. Their ratings of the value of each item swung significantly towards the item they chose, when compared to their initial ratings. They were never actually given the item, causing one woman to cry.

Mastery is a little more complex. The amount of effort a person is willing to spend on a task is proportional to the magnitude of the reward. By mastery, Pink is actually talking about progress. Consider those little window file transfer boxes, and how they estimate the total time something will take. They look at the current rate of progress, and use that to estimate the total. People do the same thing. If they are making no progress on a topic, they calculate the amount of effort required to complete it to be monumental. If they are making rapid progress, the amount of effort seems far less. Expectancy-value theory has some interesting things to say on this topic, read Wigfield and Eccles (2000).

Purpose is probably the most esoteric, but it is still perfectly possible to understand. Purpose is a feeling that the activity has value in a larger context. Again, value is an internal thing. It is something we construct. Part of the value we assign to an activity is based on the results that activity will have. Feeling that our actions have absolutely no value in a larger context could destroy the value we place in that activity itself.

I like his three criteria, but there are many ways to understand thing like motivation. Like I said in another thread, these psychological constructs are not absolute. They are just ways of thinking of how we work. There are no laws, and no right way to deconstruct them. These three criteria is just one way to deconstruct motivation.

References

Brehm, J.W. (1956) Postdecision changes in the desirability of alternatives.
The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 52(3),384-389. [DOI]

Kawagoe, R., Takikawa, Y. & Hikosaka, O. (1998).  Expectation of reward modulates
cognitive signals in the basal ganglia.  Nat Neurosci. 1(5), 411-6. [PDF] [DOI]

Lepper, M.R., Greene, D. Nisbett, R.E. (1973) Undermining children's intrinsic interest with extrinsic reward: A test of the "overjustification" hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 28(1),129-137. [DOI]

Samejima,K., Ueda, Y., Doya, K., Kimura,M. (2005). Representation of action-specific reward values in the Striatum.  Science 310(5752), 1337-1340. [DOI]

Wigfield, A.,Eccles, J.S. (2000).  Expectancy–Value Theory of Achievement Motivation.  Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25(1),68–81. [DOI]


How is the biological error signal in predictive coding computed?

I provided an answer to a similar question here that limitedly deals with the role of biological prediction errors.
Here's an excerpt of that answer:

...to answer this properly, we must first make it clear that there are potentially dozens, hundreds, or an arbitrarily high number of other "prediction error types" in use by the brain. Here are just a few major ways, hypothetically:

Lots of different neurotransmitters (e.g. dopamine)
The opening/closing of various ion channel species that regulate the membrane potential
Synaptic vescicles/receptors
Neuronal firing rates (as in bursting, a rapid succession of action potentials)
Temporal coding (relative firing times to the firing of other neurons)
And I can think of 10 other more-subtle and harder to explain possibilities, but that are just as important, off the top of my head

Keep in mind that each neuron also seems to have its own differentiated mechanisms for, both, interpreting and signaling prediction error. This complicates things further. For instance, one neurotransmitter may communicate prediction error to one particular neuron, but has no effect (or a different effect) on a different neuron. It may even be that neurotransmitter X must be present while temporal code Y happens for the event to be interpreted as a prediction error.

The study of biological mechanisms for prediction error is a very complicated thing that has no simple interpretation, as opposed to what you find in artificial approaches (presumably, like your PredNet example). While we have not yet uncovered how the brain computes or uses these mechanisms to encode and communicate prediction errors across neurons, what is obvious is that the brain has to be doing some kind of prediction error coding. However, if we try to oversimplify what the brain is doing, we are likely to not have a very intelligent model. The fragility of predictions, susceptibility to error from data complications, and limited nature of current artificial intelligence implementations lends to the idea that there is a lack of good ideas about how to implement and fully utilize prediction error.
The work I do is of a theoretical nature so your question is right up my alley. I have some unique ideas on how various biological prediction errors may work, but it requires a lot of background to understand. Unfortunately, I also have not published my ideas so they are definitely not peer reviewed. That makes me somewhat reluctant to mention my personal ideas as an answer.
It's possible that a kind of prediction error is used in all the listed mechanisms to fine tune the respective properties. Each mechanism likely has a unique role that is central to intelligence- from not only prediction errors encountered in the environment, but even to intrinsic behaviors and being able to predict the outcome of its own actions.


Are there empirical studies showing that one sex is more sexually selective than the other?

As noted above, evolutionary theories suggest that (heterosexual) females should be more choosy than males, because they typically invest far more resources in raising offspring (men have enough time and sperm that their genes are going to be more successful if they adopt a scattergun approach!).

A disclaimer here is that, in humans, research on sex preferences is difficult because it is mostly based on self-reported preferences, and because these are likely coloured by cultural and historical norms. However, there is significant empirical evidence that females are more choosy. Searching on google scholar for "sex differences" and "mate preference" or similar will give you lots of options. Here are a few.

Here is a study which summarises, across many cultures, some sex differences in self-reported mating preferences. As predicted by Buss and others, the authors find that across all cultures men report that they desire more sexual partners than women. This is not a small effect. They also find that men are more likely to consent to sex after a brief period of time, and that men everywhere are more likely to be seeking short-term partners.

Here is a more experimental paper where they changed the attractiveness and implied wealth of potential partners and found that men were more likely to go for short term, multi-partner strategies than women who were more likely to go for long term, committed relationships.

Of course, there are also many studies from other species, some of which show the conditions in which men become more choosy. This paper even includes a video of a female beetle trying to reject a male!

This paper proposes a mathematical model which might also be helpful. Modern models are much more nuanced about how male and female choice interact.


Has a hypersensitivity to depictions of embarrassing situations in media been described in the psychology literature?

If you have access to online databases via a university or public library, I would recommend searching for scholarly articles using keywords such as “embarrassment” and “media.”  Using my university’s library website I was able to search two major psychology databases, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection and PsycARTICLES. First I searched using the term “embarrassment” by itself, which produced the largest and broadest set of hits. Then I tried combinations of “embarrasement” plus other keywords, including “media,” “art,” “film,” “television,” and “sensitivity.”

While I did not find any articles specifically pertaining to hypersensitive reactions to embarrassing situations in media, I did find some that seem tangentially related, and which may be of interest. The lack of results also points to a need for scholarship in this area, if you are looking for something to research!

My search yielded multiple articles about the feeling of embarrassment itself. One that seemed promising is "The Unwanted Exposure of the Self: A Phenomenological Study of Embarrassment” by Robbins and Parlavecchio. From the abstract:

  Through a synthesis of prior theory and empirical research, these authors propose a model of embarrassment in which embarrassment is understood to signify the core, essential theme of a self that has been exposed to unwanted attention. Through an empirical, phenomenological method of analysis of data from 6 undergraduate college students, the authors identify 8 themes of embarrassment and relate them through a structural description of the phenomenon. The findings support the unwanted exposure model of embarrassment. (Robbins and Parlavecchio 2006)

This article may offer a useful framework for understanding of how embarrassment is viewed in psychology.

Only one article I found made mention of embarrassment in media, and it was Tom Ballingall’s book review of Documentary's Awkward Turn: Cringe Comedy and Media Spectatorship by Jason Middleton. In this review, Ballingall writes that the book examines the evolution of “cringe comedy” and mockumentary, and the various dimensions of spectatorship the genre engenders.  He states:

  “When individuals sense and feel the rules of social life and/or documentary filmmaking breaking down (i.e., when awkwardness emerges), they are confronted with nothing less than the constructedness of documentary's criteria for truth and authenticity.” (2015)

Middleton's book may be a good place to start.

Sources:
Ballingall, Tim. "Documentary's Awkward Turn: Cringe Comedy and Media Spectatorship." Journal of Popular Culture 48, no. 1 (February 2015): 209-211. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed December 5, 2016)

Robbins, Brent Dean, and Holly Parlavecchio. 2006. "The Unwanted Exposure of the Self: A Phenomenological Study of Embarrassment." Humanistic Psychologist 34, no. 4: 321-345. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed December 5, 2016)


Research operationalizing so-called strategic thinking?

There is a large body of research on complex problem solving that is highly relevant to your question.

The starting point of this research was a critique of classic reasoning and problem solving research which seemed to focus on very small problems (such as the Tower of Hanoi), which may not capture the complexity of many real world problems that people face. The initial goal of this research was to conceptualize the characteristics of such problems.

In an attempt to find the common denominators of various definitions, Frensch and Funke (1995) define complex problem solving in the following way:

  [Complex problem solving] occurs to overcome barriers between a given state and a desired goal state by means of behavioral and/or cognitive, multistep activities. The given state, goal state, and barriers between given state and goal state are complex, change dynamically during problem solving, and are intransparent. The exact properties of the given state, goal state, and barriers are unknown to the solver at the outset. CPS implies the efficient interaction between a solver and the situational requirements of the task, and involves a solver’s cognitive, emotional, personal, and social abilities and knowledge.

The method of choice to investigate complex problem solving has been to use computer-simulated microworlds to pose complex problems, such as trying to improve the success of a simulated city as its mayor, fighting a wildfire, or running a factory  (Brehmer & Dörner, 1993, Dörner, 1997). In line with the definition, the performance in these simulations is determined in a complex way in that it is based on many decision variables, who are highly interconnected, and affect each other in a dynamic way. Furthermore, at the outset of the simulation, these variables and their relationships are intransparent and the simulation may be characterized by conflicting goals that have to be achieved by setting priorities and reaching compromises.

From this description, it may be clear that this research has focused more strongly on the "problem side". However, it has also explicitly incorporated personality and characteristics of the decision maker, such as motivation, certain (strategic) knowledge, and emotion regulation (see for example, Wenke et al. 2005). For example, much research has been devoted to the question whether the ability to solve complex problems can be distinguished from general intelligence. Some studies (e.g. Wüstenberg et al. 2012) suggest that even though performance assessed with in complex computer-simulated problems is highly related to intelligence, it can indeed predict behavior above and beyond IQ (incremental validity).

References

Brehmer, B., & Dörner, D. (1993). Experiments with computer-simulated microworlds: Escaping both the narrow straits of the laboratory and the deep blue sea of the field study. Computers in Human Behavior, 9, 171–184.

Dörner, D. (1997). The logic of failure. Recognizing and avoiding error
in complex situations. New York: Basic Books.

Frensch, P. and Funke, J. (1995) Definitions, Traditions and a General
Framework for Understanding Complex Problem Solving. In P. A. Frensch and
J. Funke (Eds.), Complex Problem Solving: The European Perspective.(Hillsdale, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum). 3-25.

Wenke, D., Frensch, P. A., & Funke, J. (2005). Complex problem
solving and intelligence: Empirical relation and causal direction.
In R. J. Sternberg & J. E. Pretz (Eds.),Cognition and intelligence:
Identifying the mechanisms of the mind (pp. 160–187). New York:
Cambridge University Press.

Wüstenberg, S., Greiff, S., & Funke, J. (2012). Complex problem solving — More than reasoning? Intelligence, 40, 1–14. doi:10.1016/j.intell.2011.11.003


Can General Assessment of Functioning (GAF) be used to measure recovery etc. from all mental health problems?

Yes, the General Assessment of Functioning (GAF) score can be used for all psychiatric disorders.

The GAF is not commonly used now as the DSM V has opted for the WHODAS 2.0 instead of GAF. There were fundamental problems with GAF including poor reliability with people who were less trained, cross-cultural variations and symptom severity tended to influence symptom scoring instead of functional impairment (Gold, 2014). The DSM V also commented on their concerns -

  We do not believe that a single score from a global assessment, such as the GAF,
  conveys information to adequately assess each of these components, which are likely to vary independently over time. Further, we are concerned about evidence that the GAF requires specific training for proper use, and that good reliability and prediction of outcomes in routine clinical practice may depend on such training
  (APA, 2013).

References:

American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Insurance Implications of DSM 5. In Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.).

Gold, L. H. (2014). DSM-5 and the Assessment of Functioning: The World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 (WHODAS 2.0). Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online, 42(2), 173–181.


Laughing as a psychological defense when nervous

I haven’t seen the movie Joker (2019) ... yet ... but I have observed what is often referred to as nervous laughter occurring with many people, including those involved in the controversial Milgram Experiment (Milgram, 1963) as you can see in this YouTube video at 5 mins 40 secs for example.
There isn’t necessarily any psychological disorder which will cause nervous laughter, but it is a physical reaction to stress, tension, confusion, or anxiety.
Neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran states (Ramachandran, 2004):

We have nervous laughter because we want to make ourselves think what horrible thing we encountered isn't really as horrible as it appears, something we want to believe.

and also suggests that laughter is used as a defense mechanism used to guard against overwhelming anxiety. Laughter often diminishes the suffering associated with a traumatic event.
Psychologist and neuroscientist Robert Provine, from the University of Maryland, studied over 1,200 "laughter episodes" and determined that more than 80% of laughter isn't a response to anything he described as “resembling a formal effort at humour” (Provine, 1996).
References
Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(4), 371-378. doi: 10.1037/h0040525 Free PDF: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/29e4/8c1365346fc67137423a016096622ac6a215.pdf
Provine, R. R. (1996). Laughter. American Scientist, 84(1), 38-47. Retrieved from: https://www.webcitation.org/67VExLQDj
Ramachandran, V. S. (2004). A brief tour of human consciousness: From impostor poodles to purple numbers. New York, NY: Pi Press.


Is the Myer Briggs Type indicator (MBTI) a reasonable scientific theory?

From what I remember, the MBTI has been compared in some studies to the Big Five (or OCEAN) model of personality. If you've not heard of it, the Big Five is the primary theory of personality that is accepted by researchers who do this sort of thing. Here are some papers comparing the two approaches:

Recent comparison and another.

The main point is that a number of the MBTI traits are correlated with the Big Five traits, though the MBTI can be criticised for various reasons (e.g., it's binary approach to personality). I think from what I remember is that the main criticism revolves around the fact that the MBTI has no place for neuroticism whereas the Big Five does.

That should be enough to get you started (e.g., reading their intro and seeing where this has been cited). There's also a somewhat useful infographic available here.


What exactly is the neurobiological mechanism behind the functioning of the human muscle?

Both recruitment and firing rate contribute to the overall "strength" of muscle action, but there are early and late stage depending on the load under which the muscles are operating.  This allows more precision for lighter objects (where muscle recruitment is the dominant mechanism).  For heavier objects, most of the muscles get recruited and all the body can do at that point is increase the firing rate more.  Note that throughout the whole process, both mechanisms are occuring: it's just a matter of which mechanism dominates at which stage/degree of muscle exertion.

And this makes sense: for smaller objects that you will be manipulating, you want more precision, so having muscle recruitment control gives you that spatial precision that allows you to manipulate objects (like tools) in novel ways.  Whereas when you're just trying to lift  a giant rock, to block a small stream, there isn't much precision required, you're just trying to get it to go a general direction (up and over), so you recruit all muslces and drive the spiking frequency as high as it will go.  Whether you fail or not at these extreme loads depends on your personal pain tolerance and your muscle's tensile strength (people with a higher pain tolerance are more likely to snap a tendon or muscle, or even bone).


Many of the neurons in the auditory system have voltage-gated low threshold potassium channels which allow neurons to maintain high firing rates and high temporal acuity. This makes the auditory system a good candidate for finding "fast" neurons. McGineley and Oertel (2006) looked at temporal integration in the ventral cochlear nucleus of the auditory system and found that the integration window was as low as 1.4 ms for octopus cells and of "unlimited" duration for T stellate cells.

I think, but I do not know how to calculate an integration window, that the cells of the Medial Superior Olive are even faster. These cells need to encode differences in timing between the ears on the order of 10s of microseconds.


"Memory and the Computational Brain" by Gallistel & King

If you are interested in information theory and neuronal physiology, you shouldn't be looking for an intro to cognitive neuroscience, but rather cellular neuroscience.  Most applications of information theory in modern neuroscience are related to neural coding.  The classic (and recently updated) text is Kandel's "Principles of Neural Science".  Byrne and Roberts' "From Molecules to Networks" has a more quantitative approach, but is not as comprehensive.


Why would I be asked to count backwards by 3, from 100 in a psychological test?

This is to test your cognitive reasoning abilities, particularly your ability to concentrate and recall serial information. Similar tests are administered to injured sports players to ensure that they do not have a concussion. 1

  What's a baker's dozen? What do you think "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" means?

This is used to test your ability to handle abstraction in language. One symptom of autism is an inability to understand metaphorical significance of language in non-literal terms. While the average adult would understand that the second sentence is a proverb (and can infer its meaning even without context), an autistic adult might interpret the sentence literally, i.e. 'people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones because their parents might get mad at them.'


Entry into the literature

As a starting point, Simonton (2009) provides an excellent introduction to the field of historiometric assessment of intelligence. To quote the abstract:

  Running parallel to mainstream research on the psychometric assessment
  of intelligence is another tradition of research on the historiometric
  assessment of intelligence and closely affiliated variables.
  Historiometric assessment is based on four data sources: (a)
  personality sketches (e.g., Intellectual Brilliance), (b) developmental histories (e.g., IQ), (c) content analyses (e.g., integrative
  complexity), and (d) expert surveys (e.g., Openness to Experience).
  The first two represent major lines of intelligence research that
  involved key figures in the development of corresponding psychometric
  methods (e.g., Galton, Terman, and Thorndike), whereas the last two
  constitute independent research paradigms that later intersected with
  the first two. The literature on U.S. presidents then provides an
  integrated illustration of the four historiometric approaches and how
  they converge on the same broad conclusions. Significantly,
  historiometric investigations on the relation between broadly defined
  intelligence and adulthood achievement obtain about the same effect
  size as that found in psychometric research (i.e., $r$ or $\beta$ .25 $\pm$
  .10). Because historiometric and psychometric studies have rather
  distinctive methodological advantages and disadvantages, this
  consistent outcome provides corrobora- tive support for both sets of
  empirical findings.

The review summarises various studies aiming to assess intelligence of royalty, U.S. politicians, and eminent figures.

Critical thoughts

For current and recent public figures substantial additional information would be available. In particular, many powerful predictors of IQ would often be available including university grades, scores on standardised assessments, SAT scores and so on. Furthermore, the existing literature on IQ correlates is huge and provides substantial information that could inform predictive models of IQ prediction. In contrast where such models are applied to the past, the predictive power of such models may be wrong.

I'd also be extremely wary of estimates of intelligence that yield estimates like 200 (i.e., around 7+ standard deviations above the mean). E.g.,

  After comparing the chronological age in which .. achievements
  appeared with the mental age that they represented, Terman decided
  that Galton’s IQ must have been close to 200. (Simonton, 2009, p. 319)

The expertise literature has highlighted the importance of not confusing eminence with IQ. Eminence is substantially influenced by years of practice, training, focus, opportunity, and luck. IQ is useful, but the correlation between IQ and eminence is insufficient to yield the kind of certainty in prediction to result in IQ predictions above something like 3 or perhaps 4 standard deviations above the mean (i.e., 145 to 160).

References

Simonton, D.K. (2009) The “other IQ”: Historiometric assessments of intelligence and related constructs. Review of General Psychology, 13, 315.


Does cognitive training enhance dopamine release?

The paper claims that training on updating (based on the influential view of executive function proposed by Miyake et al., 2000) tasks, which require maintaining and manipulating information in WM in response to new input or feedback, transfers to other memory tasks such as letter-memory and n-back, and that this transfer is associated with changes in phasic dopamine activity.
Hardy is therefore stretching the study conclusions quite far here. As Tyler Langan notes in his comment to the question, the effect of a neurotransmitter is enormously dependent on a number of factors beyond the type of transmitter, such as exactly where it is released, and for how long it is released, among others. In some sufficiently broad sense, it is probably true that "cognitive training leads to enhanced dopamine release," but I don't necessarily think that is meaningful in any explanatory sense.
When interpreting fMRI studies, it is always important to consider very, very carefully the exact relationship between the evidence and the claim, especially when venturing beyond the careful boundaries set down by the original authors. Consider, for instance, the carefully bounded conclusion reached by the original authors:

Our data are consistent with findings of displacement of ligand binding to D2 receptors during cognitive processing (5, 8) and indicate a link between previously observed increases of BOLD activity after WM training (1) and DA release.

Contrast with Hardy's more free-style take on the matter:

This result shows that cognitive training with exercises similar to those on Lumosity can change the way the brain works at a fundamental chemical level.

That's not technically incorrect, at least not as such, but it is disingenuous. In the particular sense his claim is "not incorrect," it is also "not incorrect" to say that virtually any other activity performed over a long enough time-span (e.g. five weeks) "can change the way the brain works at a fundamental chemical level." Changing at the chemical level is a part of how the brain works, and what the study by Backman et al. illustrates is a specific way it changes under certain conditions.
References

Miyake, A., Friedman, N. P., Emerson, M. J., Witzki, A. H., Howerter, A., & Wager, T. D. (2000). The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex “Frontal Lobe” tasks: a latent variable analysis. Cognitive Psychology, 41(1), 49–100. doi:10.1006/cogp.1999.0734
(link to pdf)


Does logical thinking or counting develop first in children?

Counting, easily.  It's a matter of rote and repetition, dominated by procedural learning.  Critical thinking requires more advanced circuitry and learning.  There is a lot of really rapid neural development still occurring in the first couple years and children are learning from society and parents and experience in the meantime.  During this time, they can easily count and say the alphabet.

Logical thinking isn't apparent until around 3 or 4, though I suppose a robust discussion would require a formal definition of what constitutes logic.


Is there a relationship between viewing and committing war crimes

It may have to do more with the group norms and what they deem as acceptable behavior, this might be what drives actions that go against established rules.
There was a very limited study from a few years ago that looked at how members of a paramilitary group in Columbia evaluated situations morally, the findings illuminate some cognitions in the group, that might provide some insight into breaking RoE.
In the study, Baez et al. (2017), show that what might be driving cruel behaviors in this group is that their moral reasoning is skewed, where their cognition seems to gravitate towards an "ends justify the means" approach. The paramilitary members stood out from a comparison of criminals, in that the paramilitary members viewed accidental harm as more heinous than intentional harm. The intentional harm being quite cruel, with their actions meant to cleanse the streets of vulnerable people (drug addicts, homosexuals, prostitutes, and the homeless). The group's cognition seemingly dictated by their own moral norms which they then adapt to.
A note on the study is only one particular paramilitary group was investigated, so the generalizability of the results is uncertain, the findings may only apply to this particular group.
Reference:
Baez, S., Herrera, E., García, A. M., Manes, F., Young, L., & Ibáñez, A. (2017). Outcome-oriented moral evaluation in terrorists. Nature Human Behaviour, 1(6), 0118. doi:10.1038/s41562-017-0118


What is the name of inattention/autopilot phenomenon that results in 'swapping out' errors

The Stroop Effect is more for rapid-fire tasks and task switching.

Unconscious Thought Theory may be related.

Absent-mindedness can lead to automatic behaviors or automatisms.

Highway hypnosis is similar, where you don't remember the task you've done even though it's correct.

Otherwise, making a mistake due to habit/habituation?


What do id, ego and super-ego exactly mean?

You are pretty much on the money with your description, but here is some further information to help understand the definitions:

Paraphrased from "Freud's Structural and Topographical Models of Personality" (allpsych.com):

The id is what we are born with, it is the mechanism that allows our basic needs to be met, and is with us from birth. Essentially, the part of the brain that 'cares' only about it's own satisfaction and needs.

The ego meets the needs of the id, while taking into consideration the reality of the situation (e.g. needs of others).  According to Freud, this is the strongest part, meeting the needs of the id, while not upsetting the superego.

The superego is the moral part of our psyche, that deals with the ethical and moral constraints, i.e. belief in what is right and wrong.

Edited to add: Further and more detailed information can be found included from page 5 in this article from the University of Notre Dame "Id, Ego, and Superego" (Lapsley and Stey).


Are there any reliable self-tests for autism spectrum disorder?

You could take the AQ Test, which is based on the Autism Spectrum Quotient. It was published by the Autism Research Center at Cambridge University. It doesn't give you a diagnosis, but rather suggests that some have more autistic traits based on their score. It measures autistic tendencies other than ones that would be considered a disorder, like most in the DSM.

One of my best friends has Aspergers. He isn't as socially inclined, but he's incredibly brilliant, with an IQ of over genius, and has remarkable spacial intelligence (the ability to take apart things in his mind).
Although I don't have any form of Autism, I do have the gene for spacial intelligence, and can assemble and dissemble things as large and complex as glass skyscrapers, although I am not nearly as intelligent as my friend. My father also has this ability, and it is thought that it was passed through his side of the family, as almost all of them majored in the sciences (see hyperlink). This is interesting, because spacial intelligence is not measured in a standardized IQ Test, which means it isn't officially recognized as a form of intelligence (due to it being kind of hard to measure). What's more interesting is that anyone who has strong spacial intelligence can tell you that it's based on examining parts and breaking them into smaller parts, much like the DSM cites that a person with Autism has:

  "(d) persistent precoccupation with parts of objects."

This supports the Theory of Multiple Intelligences. This theory cites that there are different types of intelligence, and among those are not only Spacial but interestingly enough, Interpersonal, which, according to the DSM, Autistic people do not tend to have. It would make sense that there were different variations of the human race who were able to develop diverse skills, as the intelligences are widely varied. Neanderthals could have invented Spacial Intelligence, but could have lacked strong Interpersonal Intelligence. We could have inherited these genes from intermingling these variations.

Based on your theories of autism, I believe the AQ test is one of the best suited tests for determining whether different traits were passed through the human species. However, although I think this is an interesting theory, I wouldn't discuss this with someone who has Autism because he/she might find it offensive.


Why can I see the number only when I don't look directly at it?

You can see the number better when you move the image or your eyes, because with this action you reduce the overall contrast of the image.
The "image" in brain is a composition of many images which are acquired in small time periods, and the result can be approximately described as an average of many still images. So they are kind of blurred together. When scrolling it can also help to reduce contrast, because in short time periods the LCD pixels cannot reach the full contrast, so it appears in lowered contrast.

The contrast of stripes in your initial image is very high. Actually contrast is the synonym for information. So the underlying number 17 is simply lost in dominant information.

To demonstrate it better, one can play with different image filters which can reproduce the movement effect. A good one is Photoshop's "Motion blur" filter, here is the result for Motion blur at 45 degrees:


Does social psychology include study of human cultures?

I can see where the confusion may lay as the disciplines are very similar but different in their own ways.
Social Psychology

is about understanding individual behavior in a social context (McLeod, 2007).

This field of psychology therefore looks at human behaviour as influenced by other people along with the social context in which this occurs.
McLeod also points out that:

Topics examined in social psychology include: the self concept, social cognition, attribution theory, social influence, group processes, prejudice and discrimination, interpersonal processes, aggression, attitudes and stereotypes.

Cultural aspects of psychology will affect interpersonal processes etc. but in depth analysis of culture in psychology is covered by cultural psychology, which informs several other fields within psychology, including social psychology, cultural-historical psychology, developmental psychology, and cognitive psychology.
How they differ with anthropologists or sociologists in this respect.
Anthropologists
scientifically study human behaviour and societies in the past and present. Social anthropology studies patterns of behaviour and cultural anthropology.
Whilst anthropologists will study the cultures, past and present, they don't analyze the psychology of, or within, cultural differences.

Early anthropology originated in Classical Greece and Persia, and studied and tried to understand observable cultural diversity. As such, anthropology has been central in the development of several new (late 20th century) interdisciplinary fields such as cognitive science (Wikipedia).

Sociology
is the study of society, patterns of social relationships, social interaction and culture of everyday life. It is a social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order, acceptance, and change or social evolution (Wikipedia). Sociology is also defined as the general science of society.
While culture forms part of society, again sociology doesn't deeply examine cultural aspects in the same way as anthropology or cultural psychology.
To understand more about the differences, please read the Wikipedia articles linked and follow the citations referenced in them.
References
McLeod, S. (2007). Social Psychology. Simply Psychology [Online].Retrieved from: https://www.simplypsychology.org/social-psychology.html


Human behaviour in one-shot perfect information games

The question seems to ask for reviews; well, a Google Scholar search on...

  one-shot + game + review

...yields:

Credibility and Policy Convergence in a Two-Party System with Rational Voters (Alessina, 1988)
Game-theoretic analysis of cooperation among supply chain agents: Review and extensions (Nagarajan & Sošić, 2008)
Game theory and human evolution: A critique of some recent interpretations of experimental games (Hagen & Hammerstein, 2006)
Review: Game theory of public goods in one-shot social dilemmas without assortment (Archettia & Scheuring, 2012)

...among a host of other hits (65k+), so enough out there!

The Hagen & Hammerstein (2006) provides a critical review that seems to be matching your 'bonus' question (you're going to upvote my answer twice? :-)

References
- Alessina, American Econom Rev (1988); 78(4): 796-805
- Archettia & Scheuring, J Theor Biol (2012); 299 (2012); 9-20
- Hagen & Hammerstein, Theor Pop Biol (2006); 69(3): 339-48
- Nagarajan & Sošić, Eur J Operat Res (2008); 187(3): 719-45


I think the key term here is dwell time. There is abundant literature on this. For example, Sample et al. (2008), go into quite some detail as to how to calculate this. In a nutshell, it basically boils down to defining a cluster of pixels around the mouse pointer tip. If the mouse cursor stays within those bounds, the clock should start ticking. A certain time-based cutoff criterion (say a few hundred milliseconds) could mark it as a dwell.

Reference
- Sample et al., Geospatial Services and Applications for the Internet (2008), Springer


How does obedience correlate with the Big 5 factors of personality?

Bègue et al. (2015) have recently investigated how the Big 5 traits predict obedience in a variant of the Milgram paradigm.

Participants believed they were participants in the pilot screening of a TV show. The talk show host (as the authority figure of the experiment) asked them to deliver electric shocks of increasing intensity to another participant (presumably a quiz contestant) whenever he or she gave an incorrect answer. As the intensity of the shocks increased, the contestant (in reality a confederate of the study) could be heard screaming and protesting, asking to stop the shocks. Nevertheless, the host insisted that the shocks should continue for the sake of the game show. The central measure of obedience was the highest intensity of the shock (when the participant refused to continue).

Result: Conscientiousness and Agreeableness predicted obedience as expressed in the willingness to administer electric shocks of higher intensity as demanded by the authority figure.

Here are the detailed results:

References

Bègue, L., Beauvois, J.-L., Courbet, D., Oberlé, D., Lepage, J., & Duke, A. A. (2015). Personality predicts obedience in a milgram paradigm. Journal of Personality, 83, 299–306. doi:10.1111/jopy.12104 (pdf)


What is an empirical proof that two concepts are not independent/orthogonal?

Since the data show a two-way dependence (low A -> low B, hi A -> hi B and the reverse) this would prove the variables are not independent, as

  Linearly independent, orthogonal, and uncorrelated are three terms used to indicate lack of relationship between variables.

Reference
- Rodgers et al., The American Statistician (1984); 38(2): 133-4


Does Emotional Intelligence (EQ) demonstrate the Flynn Effect?

The Flynn effect actually says that fluid intelligence is a function of modernization. This is shown as early as Luria's work during the introduction of formal education in rural Uzbekistan, and it can be still observed today in societies that for example do not allow women into formal education.

In such cases one sees that male IQ has increased during the past decades whereas female IQ has not. Thus an argument can be made, based upon cross-cultural comparisons and taking into account differences of various groups within the same culture.

For example between religious and not religious women in Israel -- the former do not serve in the military, the latter do, and this factor interacts with the male-female difference in IQ.

So, in order to find an emotional intelligence parallel to the Flynn effect, the question is whether there are cultural factors that are rapidly introduced to traditional societies and produce measurable differences in emotional intelligence between groups that have a different degree to exposure to these factors.


Parallel arrangement of capacitor and resistor in leaky integrate-and-fire model

I see your confusion is caused by $u_{rest}$. Indeed that diagram is somewhat confusing because $u_{rest}$ is not the main source relative to which to consider the topology of the circuit. The main source is actually a current source designated by $I(t)$ in your diagram. With respect to that source R and C are in parallel. If that's not convincing enough, consider another (information) source which presents a different (but still leaky) integrate and fire model, sans a $u_{rest}$:

In the latter diagram, $I_{dc}$ is the equivalent of $I(t)$ in yours. In the alternative circuit, the firing actually comes from a voltage-controlled switch, which is indeed in series with the RC circuit (to the left of it).


Practical approach to electroencephalography by Mark H. Libenson.
ISBN: 978-0-7506-7478-2

This should address your issues:

dictionary of terms
what waves mean
how to connect some activity in waves to brain activity... etc

  Why consult encyclopedic references when you only need the essentials?
  Practical Approach to Electroencephalography, by Mark H. Libenson, MD,
  equips you with just the right amount of guidance you need for
  obtaining optimal EEG results! It presents a thorough but readable
  guide to EEGs, explaining what to do, what not to do, what to look
  for, and how to interpret the results. It also goes beyond the
  technical aspects of performing EEGs by providing case studies of the
  neurologic disorders and conditions in which EEGs are used, making
  this an excellent learning tool. Abundant EEG examples throughout help
  you to recognize normal and abnormal EEGs in all situations.

  Presents enough detail and answers to questions and problems
  encountered by the beginner and the non-expert. Uses abundant EEG
  examples to help you recognize normal and abnormal EEGs in all
  situations. Provides expert pearls from Dr. Libenson that guide you in
  best practices in EEG testing. Features a user-friendly writing style
  from a single author that makes learning easy. Examines the
  performance of EEGs—along with the disorders for which they’re
  performed—for a resource that considers the patient and not just the
  technical aspects of EEGs. Includes discussions of various disease
  entities, like epilepsy, in which EEGs are used, as well as other
  special issues, to equip you to handle more cases.

Another review here

  Practical Approach to Electroencephalography differs from other EEG texts of its level in that it takes the time to explain itself, resulting in a far more readable albeit less portable text than other condensed introductory texts.

Book Preview

This link will provide you with access to review the book yourself, before purchasing.


Why do humans' eyes enter an unfocused gaze when recalling a memory or imagining something?

The unfocused gaze and eye direction when recalling a memory or imagining something.

Eye movements assist in recalling spatial visual memories. The eyes move in the direction of where the object was in relation to the person, when perceived. Restricting eye movements impairs memory recall.

  In a recent study we reported that when eye movements were prohibited for participants who orally described pictures from memory, their recollections became altered and impaired (Johansson, Holsanova, Dewhurst, & Holmqvist, (in press). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance). (1)

...

  Results provide evidence that eye movements do have an active and supportive role when visuospatial information is recalled by highlighting the circumstances under which a visual memory is hampered. Additionally, findings suggest that the influence of "eye movements to nothing" is primarily related to the processing and retrieval of spatial information. (1)

The hippocampus store long term spatial memory.

The hippocampus is the storage centre for long term spatial memory, as it is central to the storage of much our the brains long term memory. It is not physically connected the the optic nerve, nor is it connected to the eye muscles.

Image: Optic nerves,  Gray's Anatomy  (copyright expired)

Image: Hippocampus within the brain, Gray's Anatomy (copyright expired)

This post How do memories come up for no apparent reason? Is this evidence that we remember everything? offers some idea about memory storage types.

This is not a complete answer, I have not referenced comparable studies with other species.

Is this effect related to other phenomena that are life threatening and deprive areas of the body and/or perception deemed unnecessary for survival?

No, it is simply the way the body processes and recalls spatial information. The eyes move into the direction they were in when recalling spatial information to place the person in the same spatial orientation from that object.

References:

Eye movements play an active role when visuospatial information is recalled from memory
Johansson, et al  doi: 10.1167/12.9.1256 (1)
Spatial memory and the human hippocampus.
Shrager Y, et al
Spatial Memory and Hippocampal Function: Where
are we now?
Mark Good


Teens who get involved in graffiti 'tagging' may be showing early
symptoms of a personality disorder, an Australian psychiatrist says.
He says the study, presented at an international child and adolescent mental health conference in Melbourne this week, found that teens who graffiti "are significantly different to those who do not graffiti".
"These young people ... were very antisocial on a range of other factors. They weren't just mildly conduct disordered, they were scoring to the extreme range of antisocial behaviour."
He says the study found adolescent graffitists had done around six to eight other acts, such as setting fires, beating people up and stealing.
"You can pick many of these young people somewhere around the age of three," he says.
"The average kindergarten teacher will tell you, I don't like that child, I can't work with them, they spit at me, they spit at the other kids, they hit people, they won't learn.
"You can certainly predict which ones will go on to antisocial behaviour, and within that graffiti is going to be one of the things that stands out."
Martin says tagging conveys a number of messages, from saying "hello, I'm here" to being a territorial marker and an expression of rage against authority.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2006/09/13/1737822.htm


Here is an example of a verbal reasoning problem:

"When will Joe Bloggs retire?"

"Joe Bloggs currently works as a civil servant"

"Those in the civil service generally retire at 65"

How does one figure out that Joe Bloggs will retire at approximately 65? You connect civil servant to civil service then use association to get an output.

The LSAT is a Law School test for verbal reasoning, and the sections it tests you on are the components of verbal reasoning.

Reading Comprehension - ability to understand complex language material like paragraphs or passages and able to answer questions regarding them.
Analytical reasoning - ability to understand relationships in language material like statements or passages and being able to draw reasonable conclusions from them.
Logical reasoning - Using critical thinking to assess and complete an argument given on the test.

So how do you build up these skills? Well reading comprehension is easy, you read and then think about what you just read. For analytical reasoning, do research and practice on annotating. For logical reasoning, look into Deductive Reasoning and any other forms of reasoning in the "See Also" section.

It is very possible that you already have a good amount of practice in one or more of these skills. In that case, you want to practice what you have the least amount of experience in.


Do violent videos and video games affect your behaviour?

An answer to the same question in Skeptics.SE, states that the scientific community is heavily divided on the subject and no clear consensus has been reached.

The information on Wikipedia has been updated with a new article since the Skeptics answer, but the result has not changed.  ALL linked articles below have links to further reading backing the claims

  A common hypothesis is that playing violent video games increases aggression in young people. Various studies claim to support this hypothesis. Other studies find no link. Debate among scholars on both sides remains contentious and, as of yet, no clear consensus has been reached either for or against effects, whether positive or negative.(Source: Wikipedia)

In 2005, the APA even got involved and released an official statement referencing numerous articles backing their claims, saying:

  there appears to be evidence that exposure to violent media increases feelings of hostility, thoughts about aggression, suspicions about the motives of others, and demonstrates
  violence as a method to deal with potential conflict situations.

Some scholars however suggested that the APA's policy statement ignored discrepant research and misrepresented the scientific literature. (Bowman, 2014)(Ferguson, 2013)

  In 2015, the American Psychological Association released another review (APA, 2015) that found that violent video games caused aggressive behavior, with Mark Appelbaum, the chair of the task force that conducted the review, saying that "the link between violence in video games and increased aggression in players is one of the most studied and best established in the field." The same review found insufficient evidence of a link between such video games and crime or delinquency. However, controversies erupted over the task force conclusions, with concerns about perceived conflicts of interest among task force members, and methodological limitations of their review. (Wofford, 2015)

References

APA. (2015) Technical Report on the Review of the Violent Video Game Literature [PDF Online]Available at: http://www.apa.org/pi/families/review-video-games.pdf

Bowman, N. (2014) UPDATE: Four Respond to 228, Responding to the APA: Dissent Within the Academy Regarding Media Violence (#ECA14 Panel) [Online]Available at: http://onmediatheory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/four-respond-to-228-responding-to-apa.html

Ferguson, C. J. (2013). Violent video games and the Supreme Court: Lessons for the scientific community in the wake of Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association. American Psychologist, 68(2), 57-74.DOI: 10.1037/a0030597

Wofford, T. (2015) APA Says Video Games Make You Violent, but Critics Cry Bias [Online]Available at: http://www.newsweek.com/apa-video-games-violence-364394


Why people assign blame to deliberate act?

First, we need to distinguish between those punishments brought about by nature and those brought about by society and law. Many actions in nature have an implicit consequence, such as harm, that may come back on the performer. Regardless of whether a particular person or group agrees that the consequence is "right" or "just", jumping off a high cliff and landing on rocks will probably kill you. The stock market example is like this -- the consequence of a bad prediction can be disastrous on one's finances, and the result is basically independent of what society thinks about the situation. Many actions in society, on the other hand, have explicit consequences set by humans. Because these consequences are not determined by natural phenomena so much as thoughts of man, questions of intent, prior occurrence, and extraneous circumstance may be brought into the picture.

Free market is a system that while created by humans behaves like a natural system. Consequences in a free market generally do not consider intent, prior occurrence, of extraneous circumstance. Larger entities, as an exception, may have special treatment by governments since these entities may have strong effects on society as a whole.

Now to the question of why people (and other thinking animals) tend to consider intent when evaluating an action or inaction of another being. On the surface, one may argue that deliberate and unintentional results should be treated equally since they have the same potential for harm. If we look at the goal of preventing further harm in the future (to society as a whole), however, we see a very important difference between deliberate and unintentional results:

When the harmful result of a person's actions was unintentional, the result alone should prompt the person to control himself or herself. After all, we tend to disagree with results that do not meet our intentions. These results make us feel stupid, and they make us look stupid, the combination of which is in many cases sufficient deterrence from relapse. Those having empathy are even less likely to make the same mistake again when they see the unintended harm they have caused.

When the harmful result of a person's actions was deliberate, on the other hand, the balance of natural forces of deterrence is considerably different. Since the result was intended, the person will not feel stupid. In fact, he or she will probably feel proud of having succeeded. In some cases, we will still have empathy playing a role. In practice, however, those individuals lacking empathy are far more likely to commit crimes and other wrongdoing while simultaneously lacking any remorse. In the extreme case we call these people psychopaths. While the psychopath proper may be relatively uncommon, lesser forms such as many narcissists may still exist in sufficient number that we cannot expect empathy alone from acting as deterrence from relapse.

Hence, we must consider intent when an action leads to harm. Other important factors to consider are prior occurrence, extraneous circumstance, and the psychological profile of the individual. When a person has a history that suggests a lack of empathy, we can expect that person to be more likely to relapse and hence more dangerous to society.

A side case is that of the idiot. These individuals often lack prudence when acting or making decisions. While an idiot may not intend to do harm, he or she may be naturally unsafe as a result of being unable to make proper judgements. Punishment may be unsuitable for complete idiots since they may not be able to change their ways due to lack of awareness and understanding. In these cases, one option is to keep these individuals away from means to causing harm. For example, it is best if idiots do not operate motor vehicles or firearms.


Is it appropriate to do a study using only one trait from a larger personality inventory (e.g., Extraversion)?

Yes. It is quite common to do a study that measures just one personality trait. There are many variations in this and reasons for doing this. Here are some examples:

You measure the Big 5, but you want to incorporate some other personality trait not captured as well by the big 5 (e.g., honesty/humility from HEXACO; dark triad, etc.)
Personality is a minor component of the study, so you just measure the one or two dimensions of interest.
You are specifically interested in the facets of a particular dimension so for example, you measure conscientiousness as well as many different facet scales of conscientiousness.

In these cases, items are often taken from a larger inventory. E.g., you take just the extraversion items from a measure of Big 5.

There are legitimate reasons for why you might want to only measure one personality trait. That said, if length is not a major issue, I would strongly encourage you to measure a broader set of traits. In particular, there are many benefits to getting a complete measure of the Big 5 (or perhaps HEXACO). You can then examine correlations in context and provide a much more complete picture.