How might the "Imposter Syndrome" typology be reconciled with the robustness of the "self-serving bias"?

You might as well ask how comes there's depression (or low self-esteem in general) if everyone has self-serving bias. The answer is that the self-serving bias is reduced in depressed individuals; see Greenberg et al.(1992) or Alloy & Abramson (1979) for original investigations; the latter paper has some 2000+ citations in Google Scholar. Allan et al. (2007) do note that there have been some successes and some failures replicating the Alloy & Abramson experiments, so it's perhaps not a totally settled question. There's even a 2012 meta-analysis by Moore & Fresco; quoting its abstract:

  The current investigation represents the first meta-analysis of the depressive realism literature. A search of this literature revealed 75 relevant studies representing 7305 participants from across the US and Canada, as well as from England, Spain, and Israel. Results generally indicated a small overall depressive realism effect (Cohen's d=-.07). Overall, however, both dysphoric/depressed individuals (d=.14) and nondysphoric/nondepressed individuals evidenced a substantial positive bias (d=.29), with this bias being larger in nondysphoric/nondepressed individuals. Examination of potential moderator variables indicated that studies lacking an objective standard of reality (d=-.15 versus -.03, for studies possessing such a standard) and that utilize self-report measures to measure symptoms of depression (d=.16 versus -.04, for studies which utilize structured interviews) were more likely to find depressive realism effects. Methodological paradigm was also found to influence whether results consistent with depressive realism were found (d's ranged from -.09 to .14).

When you study self-serving bias in the general population you might not get enough depressed subjects in your sample to notice the heterogeneity of self-serving bias, particularly since the difference doesn't seem big.

While I cannot give you any numbers on the change in self-serving bias in the impostor syndrome group relative to individuals unaffected by it (I could not find research on this specifically), I will point out some correlations between impostor syndrome and other psychometric measures linked to (depressive) psychopathology.

Bernard et al. (2010) looked at how impostor syndrome related to Big Five personality factors and found that Neuroticism correlated fairly well (0.52 or 0.47 depending on the impostor scale used; 0.52 on a combined measure) as did conscientiousness (-0.31 on both scales; -0.38 combined). In a hierarchical regression model:

  In Regression
  1, Neuroticism made a significant contribution accounting for 27% of the variance
  (p < .001), whereas Conscientiousness contributed just 3% (p < .01). When the order
  of entry was reversed in a second regression, Conscientiousness accounted for
  15% in a first step (p < .001), but Neuroticism accounted for another 15% in a second
  step (p < .001). As expected, the other three NEO–PI–R domain scales did not
  contribute to the prediction of IP, accounting for less than 1% of the variance. In
  other words, unconfounded by Conscientiousness, Neuroticism explained 15% of
  the variance of IP scores, whereas Conscientiousness unconfounded by
  Neuroticism explained 3%; the overlapping variance explained by both traits was
  thus 12%. In short, Neuroticism is the best predictor of IP scores, but Conscientiousness
  adds to the model.

Sonnak and Towell (2001) found a strong correlation of impostor syndrome with low self-esteem (on the Rosenberg scale) as well as with poorer mental health on the GHQ-12, which is mainly a measure of depressive symptoms. Correlated with the CIPS imposter scale, these two measures had r = -0.67 (self-esteem) and 0.33 (GHQ) respectively.


Transmission of beliefs through networks

Check out Networks, Crowds, and Markets (David Easley and Jon Kleinberg, 2010), esp. chapters 16 and 19.


Verifying this statement in a movie named Oculus

The mind creates all kind of protections to help them cope.

I would say that is a very simplified, narrative-oriented perception of certain extreme responses to trauma. From a cursory googling, I see the movie in question is refering to traumatic exposure to violence in childhood. Yes, in situations such as these, some children develop psychological defense mechanisms, which may confer a distorted view of reality.

Defense mechanisms don't really function in the extreme way generally shown in narrative, though. There are many documented defense mechanisms, all of them have their own unique characteristics, and all of them can vary in intensity. It's also vital to remember that not everyone who survives a traumatic event, no matter how violent, will develop post-traumatic symptoms.

  [T]he mind takes random information and forces it to support that narrative.

This is less post-trauma, and more the purview of cognitive psychology. Cognitive distortions exist and are quite common. How common is a matter of some controversy. This particular statement describes a kind of confirmation bias, which manifests as overconfidence in one's own views. It is not particularly related to trauma, as far as I know.

Overall, I would say that the kind of extreme reinterpretation of facts that is suggested by the quote you posted, is not a common thing. Reactions of a similar tenor may be usual, but as always, reality is more ambiguous than fiction. I would not call this statement fact so much as a directed or tendentious interpretation of facts.


Why are so many people arachnophobes (afraid of spiders)?

Humans are most comfortable with those things that resemble themselves, both in terms of physical features and mentality. A dog, for example, may have an extra set of legs and a tail, but does not differ all that significantly from humans or other mammals—we can similarly see ourselves in the behavior and apparent emotions they exhibit.

Arachnids, on the other hand, are several orders of magnitude more alien. Beyond the gross physical dissimilarities, it is impossible to attribute anything resembling human emotion or motivation to them. Add to that their penchant for appearing unexpected in dark places and their inherently predatory nature, the very idea of spiders triggers in many people a primordial dread.


Finding largest level of imperceptible noise in an image

You are describing two classical psychophysical techniques. The first one is called matching: you try to perceptually match stimulus J to stimulus I. The problem I can see here is that under the level of noise for which the two images are indiscriminable (called absolute threshold), any value would be a match, so that's an ambiguous task. There is another technique where you would ask your observer to press a button when she first notices a difference between the two images while the noise is slowly increasing. You alternate with trials where the observer reports when she cannot perceive a difference between the two images while the noise is slowly decreasing (these values will be different because of perceptual hysteresis). Then you take the average of these values.

The second technique is called a 2-alternative forced choice task. It's the technique used by most psychophysical studies today. There are different ways you could implement it but the simplest would be to ask your observer which of 2 images displayed simultaneously (or successively) contains noise. Then you can indeed use an adaptive technique such as QUEST, a fixed-step staircase or any of the hundreds of staircases that exist to find the threshold at which your observer is N% correct (N being an arbitrary value you fix in advance).

A last technique could be useful. If you want to find not only the threshold at which your observer can perceive noise but the entire function that links noise level to perceived "noisiness", then you could use Maximum Likelihood Difference Scaling. See the paper below.

Sources

Any psychophysics textbook would do, this a very good one:
Kingdom, F. A., & Prins, N. (2010). Psychophysics: A practical introduction.

MLDS technique:
https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2192635


Why a person may have a temptation to do something unrelated when doing especially important thing?

This is a partial answer to your question.

It is something that I do frequently - often it is a case of having several tasks that must be done in varying degrees of important and urgency.  What seems to happen is that the main, most urgent, task is 'deferred' whilst performing the less urgent and less important smaller tasks - effectively shrinking the 'to do' list.

A phenomena that seems to relate to what you are asking is known as 'mind-wandering', in the article "Tracking the train of thought from the laboratory into everyday life:
An experience-sampling study of mind wandering across
controlled and ecological contexts", (McVay et al. 2009), asserts that mind wandering is symptomatic of people being unaware of conscious activity.  That mind-wandering

  increasing with stress, boredom, sleepiness, or chaotic environments, and
  decreasing with concentration, effort, successful performance, enjoyable tasks, or happiness.

Also, according to the article "The Importance of Mind-Wandering", (Lehrer, 2011), assert that,

  Activation in medial prefrontal default network regions was observed both in association with subjective self-reports of mind wandering and an independent behavioral measure (performance errors on the concurrent task).

In the article, there is a suggestion that normally opposing neural systems ('executive' and 'default') work cooperatively.

So, while it may seem as self-distraction or procrastination, it appears to happen often and is a normal function.


Does expecting to be in a safe situation elicit unsafe behavior?

The psychology of the Jay walker or those who violate small laws (virtually unimportant to society expect when assigning blame and compensation for damages) is indeed a tricky thing. The motivational force behind the jay walking and the present awareness of the dangers of the situation often prove key to determining if the person will experience hardship as a result of their choices. That is to say the drunk or otherwise impaired will be at a higher risk of improperly crossing the street and being harmed. Then those experiencing emotional extremes are thus also likely to be biased to ignore danger. Likewise those who are otherwise sick or mentally afflicted. However the level headed person who is fully aware of the situation would have an increased probability of assuming his action is dangerous and may take more precautions. Those who fail to understand the danger of the situation though fully aware may not be as vigilant and may experience additional harm. Likewise also some drunks drive excessively slow knowing that what they are doing is wrong and dangerous but because of their impairment the amount of damage they do can still be catastrophic.


Is touch sensitivity higher for females?

Short answer
Females are more sensitive to some, but not all somatosensory stimuli. Males are either less sensitive, or as sensitive as females.

Background
A normative study by Blankenburg et al. (2010) determined reference values for a battery of somatosensory tests including cold detection threshold (CDT); warm detection threshold (WDT); thermal sensory limen (TSL); cold pain threshold (CPT); hot pain threshold (HPT); pressure pain threshold (blunt pressure, PPT); mechanical pain threshold (pinprick, MPT); mechanical pain sensitivity (pinprick, MPS); wind-up ratio (WUR); mechanical detection threshold (MDT); vibration detection threshold (VDT) in male and female subjects in the age range of 6 - 16 years.

Girls were significantly more sensitive to CDT, WDT, TSL, CPT, HPT and PPT.

No significant difference was found for MPT, MPS, WUR, MDT or VDT.

However, the authors note that some of their findings did not match that of other studies. For example, better thermal detection in female than in males as found in their study matches the data in adults of previous studies, but did not match other studies that also used kids. The lack of sex-dependency of mechanical pain sensitivity contrasted other studies in children and adults.

I would suggest reading Blankenburg et al. (2010) for more details.

Another study showed female infants to have lower electro-tactile thresholds (are more 'sensitive') than age-matched males (Lipsitt, 1959).

References
- Blankenburg et al. Pain (2010); 149: 76–88
- Lipsitt, Child Development (1959); 30(4): 547-54


NOCICEPTORS AND THE PERCEPTION OF PAIN

The pain from nociceptors remain in bundles for that region until they reach the spinal cord at which time the signal begins to be processed to the appropriate pathway with primitive intelligence (like instinctive jerk away) till the signal reaches the brain and is processed by sentient intelligence (form a plan to avoid these situations in the future). The resolution of pain is something like 100x the size of a nerve branch equal to one bundle in theory but the minimum resolution of pain varies from person to person.


We refer to neurons that are connected to each other as having a "reciprocal" connection (however, the term is also used to refer to regional reciprocal connections in addition to neuron-neuron connections).
For typical neurons, much more than one input is necessary to reach action potential threshold, so you wouldn't expect reciprocally connected neurons to result in an "everlasting" response of the two cells. Pyramidal cells in neocortex, for example, are often connected to their neighbors, but that doesn't mean one always fires after its neighbor. Holmgren et al 2003 tested 542 pyramidal cell pairs from layer 2/3 of rat neocortex. 61 of those pairs were connected, and of the 61, 7 were connected reciprocally, and these were much more common among cells less than 50 microns apart.
There are, however, central pattern generators that can include reciprocal connections to create a repeating rhythm. These networks typically involve substantial inhibitory components, though, rather than just two interconnected cells.

Holmgren, C., Harkany, T., Svennenfors, B., & Zilberter, Y. (2003). Pyramidal cell communication within local networks in layer 2/3 of rat neocortex. The Journal of physiology, 551(1), 139-153.


Measuring originality of a person on a sentence completion task

First, I am a bit worried about your comment:

  (a) They are told to finish a sentence differently of others.

Are they given any other instructions? Do the answers have to "make sense" somehow? What's to stop someone from answering "yesterday I bought a stomach" for instance? That would certainly be unique. You do say they had to have answers they thought were "suitable" but, still, that's a huge range! Maybe not "stomach" but what about "heart lung machine"?

Second, I think you have to precisely define what you mean by "creative". You say (also in a comment) that "least used words mean higher creativity" but I am not so sure that I agree.

But, if you want the least used word and you want to account for the "no answers" then one way is:

All no answers get a 0 score on creativity.
Call the number of answers (excluding those with no answers) $N$
For each answer, call the number of people who gave that answer $Q_i$ where i ranges from 1 to the number of different answers.
The creativity score of each answer is $N/Q_i$

The key is step 4. There are certainly other formulas you could use. Which one to choose depends on what you want the distribution of creativity to look like and whether you thing "only person with this answer" is twice as creative as "one of two people with this answer".

But, again, I'd hesitate to call this creativity.


Yes. Emoji smiles are contagious just like real human smiles.

As this study suggest the brain activity observed when people look at emojis is the same when we look at real faces, and subsequently mimicry and emotion contagion follows.

  We presented 20 participants with images of upright and inverted
  faces, emoticons and meaningless strings of characters. Emoticons
  showed a large amplitude N170 when upright and a decrease in amplitude
  when inverted, the opposite pattern to that shown by faces. This
  indicates that when upright, emoticons are processed in
  occipitotemporal sites similarly to faces due to their familiar
  configuration.

Also, a more general study for on-line expressed emotions demostrated emotion contagion similar to face to face comunication.

  We show, via a massive (N = 689,003) experiment on Facebook, that
  emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion,
  leading people to experience the same emotions without their
  awareness. We provide experimental evidence that emotional contagion
  occurs without direct interaction between people (exposure to a friend
  expressing an emotion is sufficient), and in the complete absence of
  nonverbal cues.


Are some methods of teaching reading "bad"?

In general, parental involvement/engagement has lots of positive social, emotional, cognitive, and academic effects for a child's development. Some evidence suggests that the positive effects of relatively general factors like improved parent-child relationship, increasing motivation and (positive) expectations, etc., are stronger than the specific benefits of learning particular educational material. Based on this, I would say that if you and your daughter enjoy doing these learning to read activities, then they will have positive effects because they will teach your daughter that reading is important and that her parents care about her and her intellectual/academic development, whether or not your daughter specifically learns to read from this DVD.

On the specific subject of reading, it is important to keep in mind that the vast majority of children will learn to read regardless of the particular method of instruction. Phonics-based methods (which emphasize letter-sound correspondences) are generally thought to be more effective than whole-word methods, especially for children at risk for reading disability/dyslexia. However, even the most die-hard phonics supporters acknowledge that phonics needs to be embedded within a comprehensive reading instruction program that makes reading fun and meaningful. In other words, phonics is the best method, but any fun reading activities that you do at home to get her interested in books will have positive effects.

A few references:

Nokali, Bachman, & Votruba-Drzal (2010). Parent Involvement and Children's Academic and Social Development in Elementary School. Child Development, 81(3), 988–1005.

Senechal & LeFevre (2002). Parental Involvement in the Development of Children's Reading Skill: A Five-Year Longitudinal Study. Child Development, 73(2), 445-460.

Rayner, K., Foorman, B. R., Perfetti, C. A., Pesetsky, D., & Seidenberg, M. S. (2001). How Psychological Science Informs the Teaching of Reading. Psychological Science in the Public Interest Monograph, 2, 31-74.

Ehri, Nunes, Stahl, & Willows (2001). Systematic phonics instruction helps students learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panels meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 71, 393–447. [Note: there has been some statistically complex back-and-forth regarding this report, but I believe the original finding still stands.).


Visual acuity is highest in the foveal region, namely around 1/60 of a degree, or 1 minute of arc (1 MAR). At about 30 degrees of eccentricity, visual acuity is reduced to anywhere between 1.5 and 10 MAR when determined by a shape recognition task, as shown in Fig. 1 taken from Lie, 1980:

A later study (Anderson et al., 1991) shows the following picture:

This figure shows that chromatic (color) visual acuity is about 60 cycles/degree in the fovea (i.e., 1 MAR) and approximately 0.4 cycles/degree at 30 degrees eccentricity temporally, which means a reduction in acuity of 150x.  At 30 degrees eccentricity to the nasal side acuity drops to 1 cycle per degree, which means a 60x reduction. Under achromatic (black-and-white) conditions it drops about 60x temporally and 30x nasally at 50 degrees eccentricity. These tests were done using colored (red/green) and black-white grating-visual acuity tasks.

The Lie, 1980 study mentions several references and the Anderson, 1991 study is definitely worth checking out as well.

To get back to your scaling question: it is difficult to directly translate these findings into scaling factors for your stimuli as you make no mention of their approximate size, or their eccentricities. What the figures do show, however, is that people may not be able to see much detail in their periphery and that acuity may drop as much as 150x at an eccentricity of 30 degrees. It also shows that black-and-white stimuli may be better visible in the far periphery and also, quite interestingly, that acuities deteriorate at a faster rate with eccentricity in the temporal retina.


What's the psychological issue name of fear of people?

The general symptoms (NOT the background scenario) may point to a psychological disorter called  social phobia :

Social anxiety disorder (SAD), also known as social phobia, is an
anxiety disorder characterized by a significant amount of fear in one
or more social situations, causing considerable distress and impaired
ability to function in at least some parts of daily life.
...
Physical symptoms often include excessive blushing, excess sweating, trembling, palpitations, and nausea. Stammering may be present, along with rapid speech.
...
The first line treatment for social anxiety disorder is cognitive
behavioral therapy (CBT) ... . The cognitive and behavioral components
seek  to change thought patterns and physical reactions to
anxiety-inducing
situations. ... . Prescribed medications include several
classes of antidepressants: selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors
(SSRIs), serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs), and
monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs)
...
It is the most common anxiety disorder with up to 10% of people being affected at some point in their life


Using "it sounds" instead of "it tastes"

Has this something a name?

In general Speech Errors

In your case (Depends on context and your particulars) it could be considered semantic substitution,(a correct word is substituted with an erroneous but similar word) although verbs seem to be rare and it happens more with nouns. (Hotopf  1980's).


Are there any studies regarding elderly people and learning resiliance?

This isn't quite my area of expertise, but I did find a couple recent papers that attempted to use behavioral interventions to improve some measure of resilience in older populations and showed positive results:

Luskin, F., Reitz, M., Newell, K., Quinn, T. G., & Haskell, W. (2002). A controlled pilot study of stress management training of elderly patients with congestive heart failure. Preventive cardiology, 5(4), 168-174.

Perez-Blasco, J., Sales, A., Meléndez, J. C., & Mayordomo, T. (2016). The effects of mindfulness and self-compassion on improving the capacity to adapt to stress situations in elderly people living in the community. Clinical Gerontologist, 39(2), 90-103.

In addition to one showing an effect of a physical intervention, which makes sense since physical and mental/emotional outcomes tend to be highly correlated:

Roh, S. Y. (2016). Effect of a 16-week Pilates exercise program on the ego resiliency and depression in elderly women. Journal of exercise rehabilitation, 12(5), 494.

In summary, it seems like it's possible to improve psychological habits in older adults, though I didn't find anything comparing older to younger populations, and the vast amount of literature in this area seems to be focused on measuring and correlating measures of resiliency with other health outcomes, rather than improving it directly. Seems like an important area for future work.


Valence conveyed in simple geometric shapes

I love this kind of research because it shows how there's an affective undercurrent to essentially every part of our lives.  This is formalized in microvalence theory (Lebrecht et al., 2012), which posits that all objects, even ordinary ones, are imbued with valence (e.g., explaining why you prefer one chair over another).

As far as positive geometric shapes, there is evidence for consistent positive reactions to circular and curvilinear shapes (e.g., Bar & Neta, 2006; see also Larson, Aronoff, & Steuer, 2011).  There may be some obvious top-down mechanisms mediating this effect, such as positive associations with a smile (vs. a frown; Salgado-Montejo, 2015).


Do some people possess more or more active mirror neurons than others?

An inability to watch others in pain can be described as an empathetic reaction, which mirror neurons aren't necessarily responsible for. Mirror neurons are hypothesized to facilitate 'action understanding'. In other words, they are able to recognize the intentions of others' actions, thereby allowing them to anticipate their future actions. What may be happening is that stronger activation in the mirror system for emotions may be a contributing factor to empathy and moral thought.

The VMPFC (ventromedial prefrontal cortex) is sometimes considered the 'moral network' of the brain, and mediates the automatic reactions which occur when one must face moral decisions [1]. Patients with emotion-related damage in the VMPFC have been shown to express more utilitarian judgments than average, which judges not based on the perceived harm of the individual but rather the negative objective impact on the world at large, and thus may be less readily affected emotionally by suffering, particularly at the individual level. [2] Other studies have shown that rational processes mediated by the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) can override the moral network [1] and lead to utilitarian judgments.

Sources:

[1] Marazziti, Donatella, et al. "The neurobiology of moral sense: facts or hypotheses?." Annals of general psychiatry 12.6 (2013).

[2] Moll J, de Oliveira-Souza R: "Moral judgments, emotions and the utilitarian brain." Trends Cogn Sci 2007, 11(8):319-321


What type of friends do narcissists have?

Since I don't think this question should be closed with no answers, here's a brief summary: most of the research (never mind the popsci articles, which far outnumber actual research on this) seem to focus on the profile/personality of intimate partners who "fall" for narcissists.

Haslam and Montrose (2015) after surveying a British sample of young females (18-28 years old) say that

  Females value different traits in short-term and long-term partners. [...]
  Females with greater mating experience and those desiring marriage were more attracted to the narcissistic male personality. The narcissistic personality, whilst having many negative qualities, possesses qualities associated with status and resource provision. These traits are desirable in short and long-term mating contexts. Despite future long-term mating desires which are unlikely to be achieved with a narcissistic male and possession of substantial mate sampling experience, females view the narcissistic male as a suitable partner: a testament to the success of the narcissistic personality in facilitating short-term mating.

While this doesn't say much about the personality of the narcissists' potential mates, it does say something about their goals (aspriging for status and resource provision).

A study on speed dating by Jauk et al. (2016) found that

  Across both sexes, narcissism was positively associated with mate appeal for short- and long-term relationships. Further analyses indicated that these associations were due to the shared variance among narcissism and extraversion in men and narcissism and physical attractiveness in women, respectively. In women, psychopathy was also positively associated with mate appeal for short-term relationships. Regarding mating preferences, narcissism was found to involve greater choosiness in the rating of others' mate appeal (but not actual choices) in men, while psychopathy was associated with greater openness towards short-term relationships in women.

Again not much is said directly about the personality of the partner, but something is said about what they saw valuable in narcissists (extraversion, looks).

On non-intimate but long-term relationships, the OP himself found Maaß et al. (2016):

  Results showed that the friends' similarity in narcissism significantly predicted similarity in all Big Five domains. For the general Big Five similarity as well as extraversion, the effect of narcissism similarity was stronger for male than female or mixed friends. Similarity in psychopathy and Machiavellianism significantly predicted all domains except for openness and extraversion, respectively.

And that's basically summarized in the paper's title "Narcissists of a Feather Flock Together".


This question becomes more complicated if we think in terms of "emotions" (e.g., angry, happy, sad, afraid, etc.) than in terms of "affect" (positive and negative feelings, high and low arousal).  I'll start with affect and move on to emotions.

An affective state tags an object with a certain value--and it does so very quickly (e.g., Pham, 2007). For example, if a snake makes you feel bad, then it must be undesirable. This motivates a plan of action that could involve elimination of the snake (fight) or withdrawal from it (flight). You do not have to spend time considering the value of the snake (i.e., that it's bad and dangerous) and developing a plan of action to deal with it. Instead, your negative affect facilitates automatic evaluation and action, which might increase your evolutionary fitness. Gerald Clore has suggested that negative affect serves a STOP function whereas positive affect serves a GO function.

Emotions are a bit more complicated, in part because we don't have a consensual definition of them.  If emotions are merely socially shared concepts (happy, sad, angry) that we use to describe and organize our situated affective experiences (e.g., Barrett, 2014), then we can say that emotion concepts serve self-regulatory and social-communicative functions.  For example, by labeling as anger my high arousal and negative affect in the context of having my autonomy violated, I've organized this multifaceted affective experience into a single concept (of anger). This enhances my capacity to develop ways to regulate my affective experience (Kashdan, Barrett, & McKnight, 2015) and it facilitates communication of it.  If I tell you that I am angry, then you'll have a general idea of what I'm feeling.  Self-regulation and social communication are certainly important for survival.

Emotions are involved in lots of other things, e.g., facilitating cooperation (e.g., DeSteno et al., 2010), motivating the pursuit of new goals (Bench & Lench, 2013), social bonding, deceptive behavior, cheating, and so on.  All of these can be adaptive in certain contexts.

It's also important to note that emotions are flexible. For example, we don't have a "fear module" in the brain that motivates a rigid pattern of action (e.g., Lindquist et al., 2012).  Instead, emotions (on one view) emerge from the interactions of more domain-general processes (including exteroceptive perception, language, interoception, conceptualization, executive attention, and core affect; Oosterwijk, Touroutoglou, & Lindquist, 2015).  These domain-general processes interact to produce emotional episodes with patterns of cognition, behavior, physiology, and experience that are flexible to the situation at hand (Barrett, 2015). The kind of flexibility and efficiency that you might expect from the "reasoning part of the brain" probably does not match up to the kind of flexibility that I just described.  Also, it's important to note that emotion and cognition are not separable constructs.

EDIT:  As far as reason vs. emotion is concerned, emotion is a much more potent motivator.  If you consider seizure patients with lesions to the majority of their amygdalae (from lobectomies), they don't show fear.  If you put them in a dangerous situation, they won't run away--despite having their prefrontal areas intact. (Although an alternative non-emotional interpretation is that these patients have lost the ability to discern what is salient, e.g., threatening, in their environment.)  If you have a hobby that you really enjoy, your motivation to continue doing it is largely emotional ("It makes me happy").  As onigame implied in his/her answer, emotions motivate these kinds of decisions.

Anyway, I think I've provided you a very incomplete view on the adaptiveness of emotions, but hopefully this clarifies some things.


Why does staring at a single point make it easier to balance on one leg?

Vision and balance are linked
Balance is fluid:
Vision and balance are connected within the brain. Balance is not something that the brain determines, is learned, "this way is up" and never revisited- like this smell = coffee, this sound = a bird; it is a continual process of biofeedback.
Three aspects of balance: vestibular system, vision and proprioception

Balance is the result of several body systems working together: the visual system (eyes), vestibular system (ears) and proprioception (the body's sense of where it is in space). Degeneration or loss of function in any of these systems can lead to balance deficits

We use our surrounds as a frame of reference, for our internal spirit level.  Maintenance of an accurate spirit level  involves continual measurement and feedback between the visual and vestibular systems, they are connected via the vestibulo-ocular reflex. When vision remains fixed upon an object, balance is achieved by the eyes moving to  counteract   the body's movements. These processes are interdependent, happening simultaneously, as the neurons that are stimulated within the visual system causing the neurons within the vestibular system to fire and vice versa.
Or simply put; Movement  is detected by the vestibular system, and the eyes give a plane of reference, offering proprioception.
It could be likened to axes on a graph, and both dimensions (vision and vestibular) are needed to plot the point of proprioception.
Vestibulo-ocular reflex:

The vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) is a reflex eye movement that stabilizes images on the retina during head movement by producing an eye movement in the direction opposite to head movement, thus preserving the image on the center of the visual field. For example, when the head moves to the right, the eyes move to the left, and vice versa. Since slight head movement is present all the time, the VOR is very important for stabilizing vision: patients whose VOR is impaired find it difficult to read using print, because they cannot stabilize the eyes during small head tremors. The VOR does not depend on visual input and works even in total darkness or when the eyes are closed.

Image courtesy of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vestibulo-ocular_reflex_EN.svg
An integrated view of balance:

The vestibular system works with other sensorimotor systems in the body, such as the visual system and proprioceptors in muscles and joints to check and maintain the body’s position at rest or in motion. These systems enable individuals to maintain a steady focus on objects even when body position changes and to safely maneuver in the environment.
The visual system specifically interacts with the vestibular system via the vestibular-ocular reflex, which senses head movements and generates equal and opposite eye movements to maintain image stability on the retinal fovea. The visual system is thought to provide continuous feedback about any retinal slip and the need to recalibrate the vestibulo-ocular reflex. (UC Davis Health System)

As we read and move our heads, our gaze is held steadily and we are able to continue reading uninterrupted thanks to the VOR. Given any alteration within the visual system, results in an alteration in our vestibular system and vice versa; when attempting a task that requires difficulty in maintaining balance, if the vision remains steady, as in constant upon an object, the vestibular system is able to measure (or locate)  the body's  proprioception and make adjustments to keep the vestibular system in the required plane (like the spirit level being kept level). So the effect is, we have one constant, vision and two variables; vestibular and spatial awareness.
Given the fluid nature of how the brain achieves balance; if the eyes were flitting and the visual field was varying, we have three variables. Mathematically this becomes a more complex formula for the VOR to determine where the body is spatially.
Interestingly, uncorrected poor vision can also cause poor balance when the eyes are closed.

... visually impaired individuals and those with uncorrected refractive error — those who could benefit from glasses to achieve normal vision but don’t wear glasses — have a significantly greater risk of diminished balance with their eyes closed on a compliant, foam surface than individuals with normal vision. (UC Davis Health System)

The link between balance and vision is an area of ongoing research.

References:

The Human Balance System
GOOD BALANCE IS OFTEN TAKEN FOR GRANTED
Vestibular Disorders Association

Common Conditions/Symptoms Associated with Vision
Brain and Eye Connection
Vision Clinic

Queensland University of Technology
Faculty of Health
Vision, Balance and Falls

How Our Balance System Works
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association


What's the difference between a "mental disorder" and a bad personality trait?

I don't want to address the issue of defining mental disorders in general here, because just about any malfunctioning system in the brain can be considered a disorder. However, some disorders affect the set of processes in the brain which ultimately determine whether or not someone takes an action (the neural basis of volition, or "free will", if you will...). If these decision processes are broken, people shouldn't be held responsible for what they do, because they really have no control. So, a "mental disorder" which exempts one from responsibility can be considered one which consists of damage to the following processes:

Of course, there is the philosphical objection that mechanistic explanation (deterministic or random, doesn't matter) means nobody has free will - but the issue in society is really about free will as the ability to learn rules and follow them. A bad personality trait usually doesn't affect the above processes, and therefore doesn't impede someone's ability to make their own decisions.


Desire to climb from evolutionary perspective?

It's an interesting question, I imagine the desire is multifaceted and that it may reflect multiple desires and multiple activities. In particular, I'd distinguish between (a) the desire for a viewing experience and (b) the desire to get to the top and achieve goals.

Desire to Climb

There are many examples of people taking joy in climbing.
This can be seen for example in rock climbing, mountain climbing, and hiking.

Obvious motivations include  motivation for exercise and a desire to experience nature. Some mountain climbers are seeking thrills (see sensation seeking). Some studies of mountain climbing mention the flow inducing nature of mountain climbing (see MacAloon et al 1983 for an analysis).

Climbing in such cases also has a rather natural goal of reaching the top. Attaining goals can be satisfying (see goal theory for further elaboration). And clear goals may be part of the enjoyment in various related activities such as in sports and games.

Part of these activities is that the process of reaching the top is often a big part of the pleasure independent of the pleasure of the final view.

Desire for a view

There is another broad class of behaviour related to people's desire for a "good view". Houses, apartments, offices, restaurants, and so on with better views are valued by people. Viewing platforms are popular tourist attractions.

Benson et al (1998) provide an empirical analysis of the price added to real estate that is attributable to various view types and quality of views. In their analysis they found that high quality ocean front views added some of the most to house prices.

I imagine a distinction could also be made between people's desire for a once off experience and a daily experience. There is a novelty associated with a viewing platform whereby for that moment you get to see the world from a different perspective. You get to see connections between streets and buildings or mountains and rivers that you otherwise miss when immersed at regular ground level. I wonder whether this desire for a novel experience is somewhat different to a desire for a pleasant view on a daily basis.

Reflections on evolutionary psychology

I'm always a little bit uncomfortable with evolutionary psychology arguments. They often have a "just so" feel about them where it is difficult to prove or disprove them.

For example, I could make up an evolutionary argument. Human ancestors presumably climbed trees and liked to survey the land. Places which provided a good overview of the surrounding land enabled greater identification of both potential benefits (e.g., food, drinking resources, mating opportunities) and threats (e.g., other tribes, predators, scarcity of food and water). Such places would also provide further information on impending weather. Thus, humans and ancestors may have been more likely to survive and reproduce if they experienced pleasure in such circumstances.

However, the above evolutionary argument could also be complete rubbish. The desire to experience a view may be connected to many other rational explanations. Or alternatively, you could look at the nature of aesthetics and how they map on to the beauty of a view.

For further discussion of evolutionary psychology and aesthetics see here

References

MacAloon, J., Csikszentmihalyi, M., Harris, J. C., & Park, R. J. (1983). Deep play and the flow experience in rock climbing. Play, games and sports in cultural contexts., 361-384.
Benson, E. D., Hansen, J. L., Schwartz, Jr, A. L., & Smersh, G. T. (1998). Pricing residential amenities: the value of a view. The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 16(1), 55-73.


Composer Thomas Schoenberger's Sophia Musik effect on the brain?

Ok.  After some additional information has come to light in the comments - initially from @StevenJeuris and through further assistance from @Eff - things look a little different.
Although there was an accepted phenomenon called the Mozart Effect (Rauscher, et al. 1993), the term Schoenberger Effect was coined by Thomas Schoenberger himself and there are no studies I can find to back his claims.  The Mozart Effect was debunked through a 16 year meta-analysis by Pietschnig, et al. (2010) and so the chances of the Schoenberger Effect being valid are slim in my view.
Thomas Schoenberger's blog article titled Music for Infants states that he

was inspired to write music for infants with the birth of his son, Wolfgang. Schoenberger’s work for infants is composed in the style of musical compositions shown to stimulate the portion of the child’s brain associated with special skills such as music, mathematics, and chess.

The CD cover image provided in the article describes the effect as the Schoenberger Effect and claims to be endorsed by Stevanne Auerbach, also known as Dr. Toy

Looking at the Schoenberger Effect, there is a Cision PRWeb article (Shaw, 2002) which links this term to the Mozart Effect

Back in 1993, U.C. Irvine professor Gordan Shaw started the trend when both He and Dr. Helen Raucher coined the term "Mozart Effect" to describe the powerful effect [certain] classical music has in neural development of infants and babies. Since then, "Mozart Effect" products have glutted the baby market, with most of these products having no connection with the actual research done by Raucher and Shaw.

See Rauscher, et al. (1993) for details on their study.
Further into Shaw (2002), he states that the Ultimate Baby CD became an underground best seller largely through word of mouth

which lends credibility to the "Schoenberger Effect" phenomenon.  After all, if mother's swear by it's effects on their own children, there must be some type of reaction present. I listened to the Cd several times and was impressed with the "Bach meets Mozart" quality of the pieces. It's obvious that Schoenberger has tremendous talent as a melodic composer. It' also clear that something is going on with this music that separates it from the rest of the Mozart Effect products. This Cd appears to have some effect on babies. What exactly that effect is remains to be diagnosed by further scientific studies.

When you couple this with, Pietschnig, et al. (2010) who said

[F]ormal tests yielded evidence for confounding publication bias, requiring downward correction of effects. The central finding of the present paper however, is certainly the noticeably higher overall effect in studies performed by Rauscher and colleagues than in studies performed by other researchers, indicating systematically moderating effects of lab affiliation. On the whole, there is little evidence left for a specific, performance-enhancing Mozart effect.

it seems that although there maybe anecdotal evidence for it's effects, the idea that music can have positive effects on infant neural development does not stand up to scientific scrutiny.
References
Pietschnig, J., Voracek, M., & Formann, A. K. (2010). Mozart effect–Shmozart effect: A meta-analysis. Intelligence, 38(3), 314-323. doi: 10.1016/j.intell.2010.03.001
Rauscher, F. H., Shaw, G. L., & Ky, C. N. (1993). Music and spatial task performance. Nature, 365(6447), 611. doi: 10.1038/365611a0 pmid: 8413624
Shaw, F. (2002). The mysterious "Schoenberger effect" Fact or fiction? Retrieved from: https://www.prweb.com/releases/2002/12/prweb52834.htm


What is the psychology behind choosing to be weird?

The psychology behind choosing to let one's weird side show?
I think the this question would work as effectively as:
The psychology behind choosing to let one's individuality show?

Human beings are social animals. Social pressures  play significant factors in moulding personality.

  The term conformity is often used to indicate an agreement to the
  majority position, brought about either by a desire to ‘fit in’ or be
  liked (normative) or because of a desire to be correct
  (informational), or simply to conform to a social role
  (identification).

So assuming "weird" is more likely to be further away from social norms. The more social pressure to be borne. This means a greater courage is needed to be oneself. There are links between self-acceptance, social pressure and depression.

  Correlational results indicated that all three trait dimensions of
  perfectionism (i.e., self-oriented, other-oriented, and socially
  prescribed perfectionism) were associated negatively with
  unconditional self-acceptance. Also, as expected, depression was
  associated with relatively low unconditional self-acceptance. Finally,
  a path analysis revealed that unconditional self-acceptance mediated
  the association between socially prescribed perfectionism and
  depression, and other-oriented perfectionism was found to affect
  depression only indirectly through its association with low levels of
  self-acceptance.

Dimensions of Perfectionism, Unconditional Self-Acceptance, and Depression
Gordon L. Flett, Avi Besser, Richard A. Davis, Paul L. Hewitt
Journal of Rational-Emotive and Cognitive-Behavior Therapy
June 2003, Volume 21, Issue 2, pp 119-138

Conclusion
Gaining self-acceptance, one's individuality or "weirdness" is inversely proportional to the incidence of depression; and also improves the individual's capacity to cope with social pressure to conform.  So by accepting one's strengths and weaknesses one is freed from (social and psychological) pressure, improving one's sense of well being.


is the question: What makes people like other people? or: how can you explain the phenomenon described above?

If it's the former, it has an answer already and this should be marked a duplicate.

I will try to answer the latter, if it can be considered on topic here.

Just because you have a mutual friend, doesn't mean you are going to be friends with someone. Humans are not this simple. The factors involved in deciding whether you like someone is very complicated. As you mentioned, the way you get introduced can definitely affect whether someone likes another person.

Humans have evolved as social creatures and our social interactions have evolved deeply like our intelligence. When you try to logically predict a phenomenon based on ONE factor when there exists a LOT more, you will not get a good prediction. It is not a strange phenomenon, it is quite natural if you consider the personalities that each person and the desires that they have in a friend. A and B might have a completely different type of friendship than B and D, by the way. To me, this question is misguided.


The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) are clinical diagnostic and classification criteria for clinical work.
The Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) initiative is a research framework for investigating mental disorders. It integrates many levels of information (from genomics and circuits to behaviour and self-reports) in order to explore basic dimensions of functioning that span the full range of human behaviour from normal to abnormal. For more information, visit the About RDoC page.

In contrast to existing diagnostic guidelines, which are used for clinical purposes, RDoC is a research framework meant for supporting biobehavioral approaches for studying mental disorders. It is not for diagnosing mental disorders or for clinical practice. Studies that use the RDoC framework could lead to more knowledge of the mechanisms and processes in mental health and mental disorders. This information could help inform future diagnostic criteria (National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)).

The concept behind the RDoC initiative can be seen as an extension to the debate over the level of real scientific research in psychology and psychiatry.
I have covered this extensively in my answer to a meta question on the subject.
On April 29, 2013, a few weeks before the publication of the latest version of the DSM (DSM-5), which is published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), NIMH director Thomas Insel published a blog post critical of the methodology of the DSM and highlighting the improvement offered by the RDoC project (Insel, 2013).
It is good to debate things like this and I have no objection to debating the subject which in effect is what the NIMH is doing with this initiative (Insel & Lieberman 2013] emphasis below mine).

Thomas R. Insel, M.D., director, NIMH
Jeffrey A. Lieberman, M.D., president-elect, APA
NIMH and APA have a shared interest in ensuring that patients and health providers have the best available tools and information today to identify and treat mental health issues, while we continue to invest in improving and advancing mental disorder diagnostics for the future.
Today, the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), along with the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) represents the best information currently available for clinical diagnosis of mental disorders. Patients, families, and insurers can be confident that effective treatments are available and that the DSM is the key resource for delivering the best available care. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has not changed its position on DSM-5. As NIMH’s Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project website states, “The diagnostic categories represented in the DSM-IV and the International Classification of Diseases-10 (ICD-10, containing virtually identical disorder codes) remain the contemporary consensus standard for how mental disorders are diagnosed and treated.”

The same applies now with DSM-5 and the International Classification of Diseases 11th Revision (ICD-11).  The DSM and RDoC could be used in combination, as the APA uses all research available to formulate their diagnostic criteria anyway.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–5) is the product of more than 10 years of effort by hundreds of international experts in all aspects of mental health. Their dedication and hard work have yielded an authoritative volume that defines and classifies mental disorders in order to improve diagnoses, treatment, and research (APA, 2013).

References
APA. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-5®). American Psychiatric Pub. https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/dsm
Insel, T. R. (2013). Post by Former NIMH Director Thomas Insel: Transforming Diagnosis National Institute of Mental Health https://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/directors/thomas-insel/blog/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml
Insel, T. R. & Lieberman, J. A. (2013). DSM-5 and RDoC: Shared Interests (Press release). American Psychiatric Association. http://publichealthunited.org/pressreleases/DSM5andRDoCSharedInterests.pdf


Free software to run questionnaire based experiments

It sounds like you're looking for a platform on which to implement computerized adaptive tests (since subsequent questions are contingent on prior responses).

I found Concerto, which is based in R and MySQL, but allows some flexibility in presentation (it says it uses HTML directly, but you could probably couple it with another language).


What is the psychology of notification colour?

It is all about attention and reaction time: Information are coded in visual, aural and tactile channel. Here you have primer of visual coding. Visual coding could be signs or text.

You have shorter time of reaction to primary colors (red yellow blue) and there is some kind of international standard which determine meaning of colors ( red-stop, green - walk... etc...) That is the reason why red.

I recomend you that you read some text in visual sensory perception, measuring time reaction, and some book of ergonomics psychology.

EDIT: Literature:
http://hfs.sagepub.com/content/17/6/542.short

http://www.who.int/fctc/guidelines/ArtElevenWogalterNine.pdf

EDIT2: Here are lot about reaction time:
http://biae.clemson.edu/bpc/bp/lab/110/reaction.htm


It seems that specifics on the heredity of IQ are largely unknown today. That same wiki page says,

Intelligence in the normal range is a polygenic trait, meaning that it is influenced by more than one gene, and in the case of intelligence at least 500 genes.

The frequency and disconnection of studies like this and this shows just how uncertain this field of science is today.
Since the genes that are passed on at random, they would be equally likely to be passed on from the mother as from the father - and the sheer amount of them would probably statistically lower any discrepancies.
However, there is one little thing that might dictate that one parent is more likely to pass on IQ than the other: IQ is partially determined by environmental factors, and these environmental factors can sometimes be manipulated by the parents - and this manipulation may depend on the parents' intelligence. For example, according to this article, infant massages can improve intelligence. It is quite possibly true that a more intelligent parent is more likely to find and notice this information. But perhaps it is also true that a father is generally more likely to accept and use this information than a mother, or vice versa. This would mean that one parent finding out this method to improve the baby's IQ would have more of an effect than the other one finding out.
Of course, this is only speculation, and this is clearly not strictly genetic, but it points to the possibility of one gender's IQ mattering more to the baby's development than the other's.
But with your example question, yes, that would probably be more likely, since that means there are more likely to be more IQ-related genes passed on.


In general, no. People with excellent memories can just as easily misapply the availability heuristic as people with poor memories.

To see why, consider a situation where a reasoner is asked to estimate the relative frequency of murder and suicide. Because examples of murder or more "available" (i.e., more easily recalled) than examples of suicide, the reasoner may conclude that murder is more common than suicide. This conclusion would be mistaken: murder is actually less common than suicide, and murders are only more "available" because they are more likely to be reported in the media than suicides. Note that the problem with this inference is NOT inaccurate memory, but a failure to recognize that memories do not reflect the actual frequencies of murder and suicide.

Of course, someone who has specifically memorized statistics about causes of death -- something that an autistic is perhaps more likely to do -- may be able to draw on that knowledge to answer the question correctly.

  For more information on the "suicide paradox," see http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/08/31/new-freakonomics-radio-podcast-the-suicide-paradox/


What is the difference between hindsight bias and confirmation bias?

Hindsight Bias (Also known as the "knew-it-all-along phenomenon"), is the tendency when an individual assumes that he/she knew and predicted an outcome after the outcome has been determined (Hoffrage & Pohl, 2003). Due to that, it makes the individual believe that he/she could have predicted that outcome with statements such as: "I knew it all along" or "I knew it would happen" (Hoffrage & Pohl, 2003).
Hindsight bias functions in a way that after learning the outcome, it gives the individual a sense of predictability, a higher degree of certainty of the outcome without any prior knowledge. Having hindsight bias could potentially lead to people being overconfident on their ability.
As an example, consider a student who is answering a test question and is uncertain whether he should answer A or B. The student eventually answer B. When the teacher mentioned the actual answer is B. The student's first thing that came into his mind after the answer is mentioned: "I knew the answer is B all along". Making him feel confident about it despite the fact that he was uncertain about the answer during the initial stage on doing the test.
Confirmation Bias is the tendency for the individual to find and gather information that is more inclined and supports his/her beliefs (Nickerson, 1998). At the same time, ignoring the other possible alternatives of the information; making it biased.
Example, if a person strongly believes that playing games is harmful for children, he/she would find information/studies that supports the connotation that playing games is harmful. Without acknowledge or accept the fact there are also information/studies shown that it is beneficial for children to play games.
References:
Hoffrage, U., & Pohl, R. (2003). Research on hindsight bias: A rich past, a productive present, and a challenging future. Memory, 11(4-5), 329–335. doi:10.1080/09658210344000080
Nickerson, R. S. (1998). Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology, 2(2), 175–220. doi:10.1037/1089-2680.2.2.175


Can signals from the prefrontal cortex alone trigger a readiness potential in the pre-supplementary motor area?

The original author is not making a claim one way or another for logical AND or logical OR within this context. The statement

  the pre-supplementary motor area (preSMA), which in turn receives inputs from the basal ganglia and the prefrontal cortex

is referring only to inputs to the preSMA; it is not making any strong statements about which inputs are causal for the readiness potential, only mentioning that those connections exist and therefore could be involved in communication of the readiness potential.

There are in fact cortico-cortical loops that route through the basal ganglia (see for example Lopez-Paniagua & Seger, 2011; there is probably a better canonical reference but not one I have in hand right now); if there is a signal from frontopolar cortex that reaches motor cortex that does not tell you the basal ganglia were not involved. A signal originating in cortex could communicate with another cortical area both via direct cortico-cortico and via basal ganglia open loops, not that a basal ganglia signal preceded both.

The only way to truly answer your title question would be to somehow inactivate either basal ganglia or PFC inputs to preSMA. I am not aware of such an experiment, it would be quite technically and ethically difficult both in humans and primates, and PFC is less developed in rodents so it's difficult to make direct analogy there.

More generally, the basal ganglia are definitely involved in voluntary movement. One can simply observe Parkinsonian patients, who have difficulties initiating voluntary movements due to basal ganglia pathology (DeLong 1990 discusses some of the motor impacts of lesions of the basal ganglia).

If you want to know whether movements can be triggered "purely by executive function and independently of primal urges/apprehensions" you will not find the answer simply by identifying whether the basal ganglia are involved or not. Although yes, the basal ganglia are often associate with more "primal" actions, that is only relevant in the absence of neocortex. In the presence of neocortex, that organization no longer applies because cortex influences the basal ganglia (and vice versa).

Furthermore, it does not seem possible to separate out the basal ganglia from neocortex in terms of cognitive control networks (Duncan 2010, Cole et al 2013), since coactivation of those areas is typically observed and not dissociable.

Cole, M. W., Laurent, P., & Stocco, A. (2013). Rapid instructed task learning: A new window into the human brain’s unique capacity for flexible cognitive control. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 13(1), 1-22.

DeLong, M. R. (1990). Primate models of movement disorders of basal ganglia origin. Trends in neurosciences, 13(7), 281-285.

Duncan, J. (2010). The multiple-demand (MD) system of the primate brain: mental programs for intelligent behaviour. Trends in cognitive sciences, 14(4), 172-179.

Lopez-Paniagua, D., & Seger, C. A. (2011). Interactions within and between corticostriatal loops during component processes of category learning. Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 23(10), 3068-3083.


Analysis of RTs when speed-accuracy trade-off leading to ceiling accuracy has occurred

You may be able to reduce errors by telling participants to react slowly. However, by adding this instruction, you may also dilute the response time differences that your are trying to find (whether between or within subjects). If you are lucky, you are just adding random noise, however it is more likely that you will add confounds or tap into different mental processes (occuring at a later time).

Another option to tackle this problem is to hold the speed more or less constant, by giving participants a very narrow time window to respond (which can also be tailored to their speed). As a result, they will produce more errors, which now become the dependent variable (see Draine & Greenwald, 1998, who have introduced this technique).

References

Draine, S. C., & Greenwald, A. G. (1998). Replicable unconscious semantic priming. Journal of Experimental Psychology. General, 127, 286–303.


What practical dysfunctionality characterizes severe autism?

Autism is an extremely broad and multidimensional set of difficulties. 2 severely autistic person does not necessarily have the exactly same set of difficulties. There are various psychometric tests and questionnaries (Related link: How do we measure autism severity) for measuring severety of autism, but you may call it a total or overall measurement of difficulty. The exact set of difficulties vary from one autistic individual to another.
If you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism.
If 2 person shows symptoms of autism severely that does not mean the 2 person will show the each symptom with same severety. Their areas of strengths, deficits, sensitivities etc. can be entirely different.
The functioning labels  indicate how much support an autistic person needs, with level 1 meaning relatively little support is required and level 3 indicating the need for a great deal of support.
Update:

So, I am curious what genuine functional disabilities severely
autistic people have, as opposed to social misbehaviors

I am afraid why social dysfunctions are "not genuine" one. The social misbehaviours come from some cognitive problems, such as context blindness, prosopagnosia, etc.

Ignoring traffic, walking into moving traffic without looking Failure
to discriminate between potentially dangerous strangers and friends
Failure to recognize dangerous objects like knives Increased
propensity to enter bodies of water and drown

Sounds like severe intellectual disability, an often overlapping condition with autism. Severe autism certainly means severe impairment in some aspects of cognition, but not necessarily all aspects of cognition and intellect, and may have advance or even gigantic ( Autistic savants ) intellect in specific areas of cognition.

The main practical failure I saw in him was an inability to convey
complex plans or ideas to other people.

Similar other failures the autistics may experience, are prosopagnosia, dyscalculia, dyslexia, dyspraxia, issues with sensory processing (including meltdowns and shutdowns), problems with processing multiple sensory inputs, working memory problems, and many other. Autistics also may face anxiety and confusion with unpredictability or sudden changes in a plan or routine, These problems are very practical, serious and debilitating.


Any studies on the link between popularity and happiness amongst school aged people?

I am not very familiar with the field, but a quick Google search brought up this paper ("The Happiness Paradox: Your Friends are Happier Than You" from Bollen, Goncalves, Leemput, and Ruan) which had some interesting results and conclusions. This paper considers a happiness paradox within the concept of friendships, and a friendship paradox within the concept of happiness. It also includes correlation coefficients between happiness and popularity, which may address your question. I'll note that the sample of this study isn't exactly what you are looking for: it is done via Twitter data (and, as noted in the supplementary materials of the paper, the sample only includes users with greater than 15 friends).

Results seem to show that there is a mild correlation for "happy people", but there is not much of a correlation for "unhappy people" (very slight, though statistically significant, negative correlation). For more details, I encourage you to read the article (which includes some nice graphics depicting their theories and the distributions of outcomes).

Perhaps a start in the right direction?


Is there a relationship between schizophrenia and genius?

The question you have asked is not a new one. In fact, from the times of classical antiquity, Plato considered artistic creativity as a result of god-given madness. When it comes to popular figures in the arts and sciences, however, it is important to note that the illness is not restricted to them by any means.

Lord Byron and Beethoven are said to be manic-depressive, Dostoyevsky had epilepsy. In terms of madness and its impact on creativity and genius, we can merely speculate. In fact, some critics of psychiatry feel that mental illness has been given a pathological status as an 'illness' and that we tend to reverse-label these figures and diagnose them with labels that have only recently been defined.

What I meant earlier when I said that illness is not restricted to genius was to clarify a very important point, that majority of people that suffer from mental illnesses are not creative geniuses, or even accomplished in the traditional sense. Since mental illness has a strong genetic component, it is not surprising that Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russel's son were diagnosed with schizohprenia and James Joyce's daughter was also diagnosed with it. It is important to note that sensationalized examples can distort the statistical importance of certain correlations, so it is important not to focus too extensively on them.

Your hunch is correct though, take this from the Wikipedia page on the relation between mental illness and creativity.

  A study looking at 300,000 persons with schizophrenia, bipolar
  disorder or unipolar depression, and their relatives, found
  overrepresentation in creative professions for those with bipolar
  disorder as well as for undiagnosed siblings of those with
  schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. There was no overall
  overrepresentation, but overrepresentation for artistic occupations,
  among those diagnosed with schizophrenia. There was no association for
  those with unipolar depression or their relatives.

  Another study involving more than one million people, conducted by
  Swedish researchers at the Karolinska Institute, reported a number of
  correlations between creative occupations and mental illnesses.
  Writers had a higher risk of anxiety and bipolar disorders,
  schizophrenia, unipolar depression, and substance abuse, and were
  almost twice as likely as the general population to kill themselves.
  Dancers and photographers were also more likely to have bipolar
  disorder.

However, let me deal with the some of the evidence that psychology and neuroscience provide us. This evidence may come from different sources but they are attempts at determining a connection between the two phenomenon, and by no means is there any rock-solid connection that has been documented by any one study. Furthermore, I must warn you that some experiments are 'reductive' in the sense that they will ascribe the entire connection between mental illness and genius to a single factor, whereas many factors (or a very complex system) are actually the reason behind the apparent correlation. Here are some theories:

Dopermergic Theory

Since medical treatments that block dopamine receptors have show to reduce symptoms of schizophrenia, there is a consensus in the psychiatric community that schizophrenia is caused by an overactive dopamine system. The particular receptor I will discuss is the D2 receptor. For instance, a lower thalamic (from the Thalamus brain region) D2 binding potential is observed in those patients who do not take antipsychotic medications. Furthermore, a significantly larger number of D2 receptors are present in the striatum of schizophrenic patients.

As I am trying to answer your question, I will try avoiding getting trapped within semantic arguments about the definition of genius. Lets assume that they are individuals with great creative abilities and divergent thinking patterns that allow them to come up with novel solutions to difficult problems, or create original pieces of art. The study quoted found a negative correlation between divergent thinking and D2 receptor binding potential not in the thalamus, but present in the striatum. Similar to patients with schizophrenia, creative people had lower D2 receptor density in their thalamus. This phenomenon may relate to creativity because it might be because when compared to normal subjects, schizophrenics 'block out' less information from the external world. These abnormal thoughts might occasionally present themselves as novel ideas.

Brain Hemispheric Ambidexterity

Like mentioned below, divergent thinking can be associated with creativity. Studies have shown that bilateral activation of the prefrontal cortex is observed in people with divergent thinking patterns, and similar results were found for schizophrenic patients - however, they had greater activation in their right prefrontal cortex, showing that they can access both hemispheres. Simultaneous access to both hemispheres allows for greater ability to create associations. This greater ability to associate ideas may result in many of the multidisciplinary or revolutionary ideas advocated by exceptional figures.

Overrepresentation of Siblings in Creative Professions

Siblings of schizophrenic patients were found in a study to be overrepresented in creative processions. It has been hypothesized that these siblings have higher levels of schizotypal personality traits when compared to normal subjects. It is important to note the difference between Schizotypy and Schizophrenia, the second is a clinical case, the first is a personality category. It is highly probable, however, that both have a similar genetic basis. Schizotypal traits include weak mental boundaries between the self and external world, strange experiences, impulsive nonconformity and magical beliefs. As mentioned in this excerpt from this blog piece from Scientific American, this has implications for creativity:

  This has important implications for creativity. Mark Batey and Adrian
  Furnham found that the unusual experiences and impulsive nonconformity
  dimensions of schizotypy, but not the cognitive disorganization
  dimension, were significantly related to self-ratings of creativity, a
  creative personality (measured by a checklist of adjectives such as
  “confident,” “individualistic,” “insightful,” “wide interests,”
  “original,” “reflective,” “resourceful,” “unconventional,” and
  “sexy”), and everyday creative achievement among thirty-four
  activities (“written a short story,” “produced your own website,”
  “composed a piece of music,” and so forth).

However, it explores both sides of the camps and makes some important observations that question the validity of the hypothesis:

  In 2014, [Albert] Rothernberg [Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard] published a book, “Flight of Wonder: an
  investigation of scientific creativity”, in which he interviewed 45
  science Nobel laureates about their creative strategies. He found no
  evidence of mental illness in any of them. He suspects that studies
  which find links between creativity and mental illness might be
  picking up on something rather different.

  “The problem is that the criteria for being creative is never anything
  very creative. Belonging to an artistic society, or working in art or
  literature, does not prove a person is creative. But the fact is that
  many people who have mental illness do try to work in jobs that have
  to do with art and literature, not because they are good at it, but
  because they’re attracted to it. And that can skew the data,” he said.
  “Nearly all mental hospitals use art therapy, and so when patients
  come out, many are attracted to artistic positions and artistic
  pursuits.”

Important Note: Since the question you asked was very broad. I tried to focus on the particular mental condition you stated, schizophrenia. I have not discussed other conditions such as manic-depression, unipolar depression and so forth, and there is extensive literature on the connection between those conditions and genius. For example, this book:

Kay Redfield Jamison (1996). Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament.

Sources:

“Thinking Outside a Less Intact Box: Thalamic Dopamine D2 Receptor Densities Are Negatively Related To Psychometric Creativity in Healthy Individuals.”  Örjan de Manzano, Simon Cervenka, Anke Karabanov, Lars Farde, Fredrik Ullén.
PLoS One. 2010; 5(5).

The relationship between creativity, schizotypy and intelligence.
Batey, M. Furnham, A. (2009).
Individual Differences Research, 7: 272-284.

Creativity and mental disorders: Family study of 300 000 people with severe mental disorders
Kyaga, S.; Lichtenstein, P.; Boman, M.; Hultman, C.; Långström, N.; Landén, M. (2011)
The British Journal of Psychiatry 2011, 199(5): 373–379.

Cognitive training for divergent thinking in schizophrenia: A pilot study
Takahiro Nemotoa, Ryoko Yamazawaa, Hiroyuki Kobayashia, Nobuharu Fujitaa, Bun Chinoa, Chiyo Fujiid, Haruo Kashimaa, Yuri Rassovskye, Michael F. Greenc and Masafumi Mizunof (2009).
Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry 33 (8): 1533–1536.

Creativity in Offspring of Schizophrenic and Control Parents: An Adoption Study
Dennis K. Kinney, Ruth Richards, Patricia A. Lowing, Deborah LeBlanc, Morris E. Zimbalist, Patricia Harlan. (2001)
Creativity Research Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 1.


Short answer
I haven't been able to find studies on EEG correlates of antidepressant discontinuation syndrome.

Background
'Brain zap' is a colloquial term for antidepressant discontinuation syndrome.

Note that the sensations you mention in the arms, neck and lips etc are likely caused by central effects (i.e., in the brain) that evoke sensory perceptions as if they occur peripherally. Hence, any electrical activity associated with antidepressant discontinuation syndrome should, likely, be sought in the cortex.

I did a literature search on Antidepressant discontinuation syndrome AND EEG and I couldn't find anything.

The EEG is classically used to detect gross disturbances in the brain, like epileptic activity. Epileptic discharges are paroxysmal events characterized by large parts of the cortex being synchronously entrained in activation. Because it is the cortex that is activated, the EEG electrodes are right on top of where the activity is and hence pick it up easily. Furthermore, the amplitude of epileptic EEG activity is very high compared to the normal background EEG (Fig. 1), because large parts of the cortex fire synchronously. The clinical symptomatology of epilepsy is hence expressed as gross changes in motor behavior (convulsions), loss of consciousness or other signs (Smith, 2005).

Those brain zaps are comparatively benign events:

  Most cases of discontinuation syndrome last between one and four weeks, are relatively mild, and resolve on their own...

(source: wikipedia)

Hence these 'zaps' may not pop out so easily above the background EEG. Further, epileptic discharges happen often, even in the absence of clinical symptomatologies, so they are picked up easily. Moreover, epileptic activity can often be provoked, for example by flashing a stroboscope in fron of the sufferer. Evoked activity can more easily be registered with EEG because the time window of interest is defined. Brain zaps on the other hand may be less common and the electrophysiologist would simply have to wait for them to occur. And even then, mild brain activity may not be sufficiently different from background EEG to yield a proper signal.

Fig. 1. EEG of epileptic discharges show up clearly against the background EEG. source: Smith (2005)

Reference
- Smith, J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry (2005); 76(SII): ii2–7


Transsexuality in animals other than humans?

Transexuality is a very social (and human) phenomena that's directly a consequence of how we define it as a society and indirectly a consequence of having distinct male/female ideologies.

Humans can be born as an ambiguous sex.  We have a wide spectrum of hermaphrodites from androgen insensitivity syndrom (i.e. genetically "male" but can be legally "female" and can have varying degrees of both sex organs).  So our definitions of male/female aren't exactly robust in the first place.

Most (probably all) animals do not have language and are unlikely to have social symbols that are meaningful to them.  Most plants can change sex under stress, oysters can, too.  Many organisms don't have a defined sex role (all of them are hermaphrodites).  C. elegans are mostly hermaphrodites but can have the rare male.  Often, the gender changes here are a direct biological response, rather than a social response, whereas with humans, it's more about responding to a social label.

There's some small chance that some other species have developed some sort of social sex expectations (I.e., gender) and have somehow had members challenge it, but it would be really hard to tell without sharing brain architecture, facial expressions, or language with them.


A study about preference for making relatively vs. absolute more money?

I've found Neighbors as Negatives: Relative Earnings and Well-Being by E.F.P. Luttmer (2005), although I'm not sure it's the right one. I've heard about your study as well, but I thought it was older than 2005. You can read the study I linked and look up the references. There are quite a lot that touch the same subject.


Is procrastination greater when skill is low and rewards offer low status boost and does this lead to efficient  task allocation in groups?

As a starting point, the Steel (2007) meta-analysis in the highly regarded Psychological Bulletin is  an excellent starting place for learning about the theoretical and empirical literature on procrastination. However, a lot of the literature seems to be focused on procrastination as trait, rather than treating procrastination as a task specific, temporally varying phenomena (which I think is what is more relevant to your question).

Defining procrastination

Before we can talk about the causes and consequences, we should define procrastination.
The wikipedia article on procrastination cites Steel (2007) who defined procrastination as

  "to voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting
  to be worse off for the delay."

Thus, we should be clear that procrastination is not intentional stalling with the aim of getting out of a task.

Skill, difficulty, and procrastination

Steel (2007) suggests that procrastination may be greater when:

people have low self-efficacy, fear of failure, and perfectionism

Self-efficacy may be due to an actual lack of skill or may be a bias in thinking.

From a utility perspective, for a constant level of reward, having lower levels of skill on a task or doing a task that is more difficult, increases the cost of obtaining the reward.
I can also see a specialisation argument, whereby people seek out domains that they are good at because the link between effort and reward is shorter.

So in summary, I think there is reasonable theoretical support for the idea that being bad at a task whether through lack of skill or inherent task difficulty may increase procrastination (or even task avoidance).

Rewards and procrastination

I'd be more comfortable defining your question in terms of rewards rather than specifically focussing on social status. Social status is one, albeit very important, type of reward. However, I think as a starting point, it would be easier to think about the rewards provided by the task. Also, it is probably also worth thinking about the flipside, the punishment (or loss of rewards) that flow from not doing a task.

In reviewing the literature, Steel (2007) suggests that procrastination may be greater when:

the task is aversive in itself
rewards are more distal

It is also implied by the concept of procrastination that the person does want to do the task in the longer term, whether this be out of obligation or for another more material reward.
That said, greater reward and less distal rewards should reduce procrastination. Also, increasing the punishment and temporal proximity of not completing the task should reduce procrastination (as perhaps many all-nighter before an assignment is due can attest).

More broadly, there is a school of thought typified by this blog post by Daniel Lemire that sees procrastination as sometimes representing an adaptive indicator that one should focus on different tasks.

Thus, in a broad sense, reduced rewards for task completion should both increase procrastination and task avoidance.

Functional role of procrastination

Thus, in broad terms there is a theoretical argument suggesting that reward structures and the distribution of skill should lead to specialisation whereby people generally will tend towards doing tasks to which the opportunity cost is less than that for others. That said, there is a difference between procrastination and task avoidance in that task avoidance implies someone does not want to do the task at all.

Anyway, while the above analysis touches on the empirical literature, it is largely driven by a theoretical analysis grounded in concepts of rationality and utility maximisation. I'd be interested to read about what specific empirical studies have been conducted to test some of these ideas.

References:

Steel, P. (2007). The nature of procrastination: A meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure. Psychological Bulletin 133 (1): 65–94. FREE PDF


Can SSRI make things worse in the long term or cause delayed depression?

Contrary to another post here, in my opinion and also that of an increasing majority of researchers studying this field, SSRIs and the so called 'antidepressant' drugs cause great harm.

Firstly here is a list of common side effects: Insomnia (which is common in depression anyway), increased anxiousness, feeling sick, indigestion, diarrhea or constipation, loss of appetite, fluctuations in weight, dizziness, blurred vision, dry mouth, excessive sweating, headaches, reduced sex drive, difficulty achieving orgasm, erectile dysfunction.

None of these are good effects which is why we don't give them to people who are 'healthy'. More importantly the devastating effect these side effects can have on a patients life could potentially be far more harmful than before the drug was taken, for example increased marital problems. According to Joanna Moncrieff these effects compound depression, and more importantly disturb the chemical balance in the the brain, and as a result compound or cause the very symptoms they are meant to cure. Central to this notion and the question presented here, the long-term use of SSRIs may causes what we call 'serotonin induced apathy', in other words, after initial positive effect of SSRIs (quiet possibly short-term placebo effect), patients become indifferent to their environments. Furthermore Long-term use of SSRIs leads to abnormal brain neurogenesis not seen in non-depressed samples, this is often taken to as proof of how SSRIs exert there action, or rather it was before 2008 (see below meta analysis). However it seems that this neurogenesis is less likely to be positive considering the negative effects and lack of efficacy SSRIs display.

The long-term use of SSRIs often leads to the development of apathy, which utimatley will lead many patients back into depression. The rate of relapse in people taking 'anti-depressants' is >40% while patients with placebo is roughly 24%. If that isn't bad enough at a 12 month follow up only <5% of patients are in remission for their depression. Why might this be? Well a 2008 meta-analysis by Kirsch et al found that all 'anti-depressants' are below clinical levels of acceptance, in other words no more effective than placebo. However it should be noted that in severe depression SSRIs are useful only!

The reason anti-depressants such as SSRIs are ineffective is because of the simplistic approach taken  to treatment with these drugs. The brain is not some 'big bag of chemicals', neurons  are not purely serotonergic in fact they often release multiple NTs. And crucially serotonin NT is used throughout the central nervous system, for more than mood regulation. The fact that SSRIs do not work over the long-term tells us the serotonin theory of depression is wrong. Perhaps more importantly roughly 10% of people in the UK are on 'anti-depressants', we can talk about over medicalisation of mental health, but the reality is large amounts of people are taking these drugs for large amounts of time (9-12 months recommend). This is not helped by the fact that governments are more interested in investing in cheap medical 'cures' than long-term methods with greater efficacy that cost more.

Sorry its so long, and I'm sorry its so short there is so much to say about how SSRIs don't work and how bad they are regarding people thinking they are getting effective cures, along with the neuroscience and discussions on publication bias. Its a fascinating topic, thanks for the question.


Modern replacement for Panksepp's "Affective Neuroscience" book?

I was about to recommend The Oxford Handbook of Social Neuroscience, by Decety and Cacioppo (Oxford University Press, 2011) which has an entire part (10 chapters) dedicated to the neural basis of emotion regulation, motivation, and social interactions. However, I just noticed Panksepp's forthcoming book, The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions, which is probably worth to look at.


How does one distinguish BPD anger from ADHD anger?

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a complicated diagnosis to understand and treat. A painful mix of emotional trouble, unstable relationships and self-destructive behavior, including suicide attempts are associated with BPD.

Experts have given a new name to BPD as Biosocial disorder. People who develop BPD are highly emotional, sensitive and reactive, more immediately and intensely than most people. And once a powerful emotion is triggered, it takes them longer to return to their emotional baseline.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a chronic condition which includes attention difficulties, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness.

ADHD is often seen in childhood persisting into adolescence and adulthood, which contributes to hyperactivity, low self-esteem, disturbed relationships and attention difficulties at school or work.

In relation to anger, individuals with BPD report higher traits of aggression and hostility when provoked than individuals with ADHD.

Furthermore, individuals with BPD exhibit a higher state of anger and stress-dependent anger increase. In BPD patients, aggression and anger were positively correlated with emotion regulation deficits.

Being a Special Education Teacher at Accel Centre, there are kids and adults with special needs education who require vocational training for special needs that helps them to develop social skills and anger management.

Reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5356413/


Papers/Resources on the source/process of shame and empathy

Empathy is a topic that has been addressed extensively by Frans de Waal; he has been studying primates intensively and draws parallels between them and us. Especially the differences and commonalities between humans, bonobos and chimps is interesting. Check him out.

Scientific American (a non-peer reviewed scientific journal I'm reading a lot), had a special issue recently (Sci Am, September 2018) on why humans set themselves apart from other animal species. Tomasello has an interesting contribution there on the evolution of empathy and its role in the domination of mankind. An interesting read for sure.


What happens inside the brain when we concentrate?

The Neurons become refractory which means that they can't fire again until time has passed. Look up Action Potential and the limits of firing rating.
There is also a competition for different circuits to become conscious so when one becomes tried the other takes over. This is why it is hard to continue to think about one thing, without soon considering something else.


The answer lies in what is known of the conscious, unconscious and the presconscious parts of the mind, with preconscious is the scientific name for the subconscious, however, for the purposes of this answer and because of how the theory of hypnosis is put together, I will refer to the preconscious as the subconscious.

When I was learning about the basis of hypnosis in formal training, I was taught to visualise the mind as the following diagram

Image: CCF diagram from my training notes - the "memories and belief system" part of the diagram is the subconscious part of the mind.  The CCF (the orange part of the diagram) is the filter between the conscious and subconscious parts of the brain. It compares a new situation with our memories, belief system and morals.

Formation of our beliefs and morals

Internal and external influences form our belief system which is stored in our subconscious mind.  External influences involve things within our environment.  Internal influences involve things we ‘know’ to be true.  I said ‘know’ because what we believe to be true and what is actually true, correlates with the things we have learnt during our lives.  Our belief systems are built from the moment we are born.  Our external influences such as what we have seen, touched, tasted, smelt and heard, help us to learn things whilst a baby.  Listening to words and speech patterns from our parents help us to learn our language including names for objects.

As we get older and start to be able to wander around and explore our environment our parents tell us things such as “Don’t touch that it’s hot” or “Don’t eat that or you will be ill”.  We were told that the grass is green and the sky is blue.  Cultural influences start playing a role too such as the idea that pink is a girls colour and blue is for boys, Barbie dolls are for girls and action men are for boys.  We took those ideas on as literal truth.

As we got older, experiences begin to confirm some of those ideas.  Some got hurt by the heat of a cup of tea.  Some got ill from trying the berries we were told not to eat. In these ways we had a model of the world confirmed and constructed.

Some of those beliefs were absolutely correct, we tested the ideas and had them confirmed by outside sources. Some beliefs may have been left untested but nevertheless all the beliefs in turn developed what many call the, Conscious Critical Faculty (CCF) (Watts, n.d.).

The CCF (the orange part of the diagram) is the filter between the conscious and subconscious parts of the brain. It compares a new situation with our memories and belief system and morals.  Everything stored in the subconscious is essential for your survival.  If the CCF encounters something which goes against the belief systems or morals, stored in the subconscious, it throws the idea out and the belief systems remains intact and life can continue.

But what if there are falsehoods stored in the belief system?  Phobias can develop and other damaging effects can take place.  This part of the belief system can be built by other people who are unfortunately basing their information on their own belief systems.  These in turn were given to them by people who formed their own belief systems.  What can we do about this?

Take a situation where comments from adults, taught someone when they are a child, that they are selfish, unattractive or lacking intelligence.  Once these ideas have taken hold it is very difficult to try and change these beliefs at a conscious level and remove them from the subconscious mind as the CCF will take over and reject opposing beliefs.  This can be damaging to the confidence and opportunities in that persons adult life.  This is why it’s so easy to give advice but so difficult for some others to take it even when you know it is correct.  For a more effective way of doing this, we need to bypass the Conscious Critical Faculty in order for the correct belief system to be accepted.

There are a number of ways that new information can be pushed past the CCF. (Burns, 2009)

They include:

Repetition
Shock
Hypnosis

Repetition

Selfishness and altruism, attractiveness and unattractiveness, intelligence and lack of intelligence etc. taught as a child or later instilled in adult life is often a result of repetitive comments.  The same goes for trust and distrust in certain people or animals.  How this happens is for example:-

A belief that no man can be trusted is put to you on a repetitive basis
This is usually backed up by other people’s actions.  Maybe a man disappointed you in the past
The concept or belief becomes part of your belief system because no one in your circle of friends can give you an opposing concept or belief to compare it to
This in turn affects the way you act towards men
This then causes some men to react in a way which can be perceived to reinforce your belief

Repetitive affirmations and confirmations over time can rectify falsehoods in belief systems.

Shock

Shock that someone may experience as a result of a traffic accident for example, can induce unhesitating acceptance of thoughts and beliefs. (Burns, 2009)  If the thought is given where someone says “that looks bad, I bet that hurts” then of course they will become extremely aware of the pain and in turn may develop a severe aversion to getting into a car again.  Other traumas can have similar effects.

If you look at someone suffering from the trauma of war, rape or sexual assault, this trauma will lodge the memory of what happened straight in the subconscious and develop either conflicting belief systems which cause more problems, or immediately alter the belief system completely.  Counselling sessions can dredge up those painful memories and the resulting shock induced can open the client to opposing thoughts and beliefs which can help to correct the faulty belief system.

Hypnosis

Hypnosis is a natural state of mind where acceptable selective thinking is established, concentration is enhanced and the Conscious Critical Factor is bypassed, opening the subconscious mind to suggestion.  With the subconscious mind open to suggestion without interference by the CCF, therapy will be able to work more quickly (Watts, n.d.) by installing correcting belief systems.

The hypnotic state can be induced by reading, carrying out a repetitive task or listening to a hypnotherapist’s hypnotic induction routine.  Watching television can induce a hypnotic state which helps to explain how effective on-screen advertising can be.

References

Burns, J., 2009. Beating the barriers to making life changes. [Online]
Available at: http://www.somersethypnotherapy.com/articles-by-John-Burns/beating-barriers-to-change.pdf

Watts, T., n.d. *The Conscious Critical Faculty. [Online]
Available at: http://www.selfhypnosis.com/the-conscious-critical-faculty